How fitting that on the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address news of Senator Joe Lieberman’s (D-CT) retirement hits the commentariat. In today’s Senate, Lieberman is the last lion of an old-school approach to being liberal: hawkish on foreign policy, civil rights, and fiscal policy. The statist mindset has so overtaken the modern Democratic Party that it’s hard to imagine “Give ‘em Hell” Harry Truman and Henry “Scoop” Jackson choosing to serve alongside the likes of Barack Obama and Barbara Boxer in what was once called “the most deliberative body in the world.”
Part of the corruption story of a once sane party is the outsize influence of public employee unions. When public employees were allowed to unionize, Democratic politicians found it irresistible to negotiate sweetheart union contracts in exchange for campaign cash and poll workers. After all, the wealth being wasted was just other people’s money.
With the economy sagging, the American people know who to blame. Veteran Democratic pollster Doug Schoen says in today’s Wall Street Journal that if his party doesn’t start scaling back overpromised union benefits, independent voters will continue to vote Republican. For current and future leaders of the Democratic Party looking for direction, it would be a good exercise to meditate on JFK’s famous admonition to “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”
Lest Freedom Line readers sink too far into despair over Jeff’s earlier post about the EPA’s transformation into a People’s Commissariat, it turns out there’s good news: it’s all to stave off the coming carbon wars. At least that’s the diagnosis of California’s taxpayer-financed parody of liberalism, Senator Barbara Boxer:
For those paying attention to the U.S. Senate race in California, it would be a forgivable sin of omission if one thought that all of Senator Barbara Boxer’s (D-CA) campaign opponents sported an “R” after their name. But apparently, she’s got competition in her Democratic primary next Tuesday: Slate contributor Mickey Kaus.
Surprisingly, Kaus is running to Boxer’s right on issues like firing bad public school teachers (supports), and amnesty for illegal immigrants (opposes). And for those who would tar and feather Kaus as an ideological heretic, consider his response:
I’d argue these are the positions a liberal who cared about government and inequality would take. Why do Democrats reject them? They increasingly say it’s not so much because of policy, but because of politics: they have to turn out the “base” to win the next election, and the “base” consists of union members and Latinos (plus African Americans, who are badly hurt by illegal immigration but whom the party takes for granted).
Never mind that this theory is nearly unfalsifiable–if the Democrats lose, its proponents will always say that they just didn’t please the base enough. Has base-pleasing ever panned out? Looking back over recent elections, I can only think of one where the “base” was clearly more important than the moderate middle–that was the presidential election of 2004, when George W. Bush turned out millions of new right-wing voters many people thought didn’t exist. But most recent mid-term elections have been preceded by predictions that “Hey, given the low turnout it all depends on mobilizing the base!”–only to be followed by acknowledgments that it was moderate swing voters who swung the result.
One of the measures of successful politicians is how much legislation they author, sponsor, and pass. Since the activities can be counted, the more a legislator does, the more he can claim to be “doing something” to justify his reelection.
So it must be frustrating for all the Senators who desperately want to “do something” when colleagues in their own party insist on larding unpopular policies into bills that would otherwise sail through the process. Though the main energy bill claims enough support to pass, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) are blocking it because its centrist supporters refuse to include the Environmental Left’s demands for cap-and-trade. When asked to present the cap-and-tax language as a stand-alone amendment, Kerry and Boxer balked because they don’t have the 60 votes to attach it.
Who can blame them? After the large scale corruption of the legislative process to pass ObamaCare, why wouldn’t a Democratic lawmaker think that rules only apply to Republicans?
Happily, adding text to the United States Code isn’t everyone’s definition of a good legislator. Senators like Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) pride themselves on reducing the word count of the nation’s legal regime. Less law means less room for bureaucrats to expand their reach. Let’s hope the Democrats’ insatiable demand for more government continues to be an obstacle to passing any new laws.
San Francisco’s ktvu.com reports that all three Republican challengers to three-term California Democratic U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer are now within striking distance of defeating her, based on results of a new Field Poll.
Former Congressman Tom Campbell – the most moderate of the three Republicans – has a one point lead over Boxer. Former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, a bit more conservative, trails Boxer by a single point. The most conservative Republican – Assemblyman Chuck Devore – trails Boxer by only four points, about the poll’s margin of error.”
Only months ago, Boxer – one of the most liberal members of the Senate – had double-digit leads over the three. Mark DiCamillo of the Field Poll told ktvu, “there has been a sea change in perceptions,” and attributed Boxer’s precipitous decline to the economy, people fed up with incumbents and the health care debate.
DiCamillo added, “The atmospherics surrounding health care is really – I think – a detriment to Democrats right now.”
With all the focus this week on off-year elections and the impending House healthcare vote this Saturday, it would be easy to miss the steady progress of two “climate change” proposals. The first is a bill approved today by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. If signed into law it would require industry to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 20 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels. As usual, the committee’s Chairwoman, Barbara Boxer (D-CA), thinks “this is a great signal for Copenhagen that there’s a will to do what it takes to advance this issue.”
Why does Senator Boxer care about Copenhagen? Because that’s the next destination on the U.N.’s perpetual climate change treaty writing circuit. For months, supporters of creating an internationally binding treaty to enforce hard caps on emissions and “carbon reparations” payments from rich to poor countries have seen the December meeting in Copenhagen as the moment when the Al Gore-negotiated Kyoto Protocol could become global. Boxer, with the help of the Obama Administration, is ready to put taxpayer money where the Environmental Left’s mouth is.
One snag though. Apparently, the global economic recession is putting the brakes on countries’ ability to raise taxes without creating jobs or improving infrastructure. How odd. Now the treaty’s negotiators are talking as if it may take another year to get an agreement signed. Thankfully, such a timetable puts any ratification decision by the U.S. Senate after next year’s mid-term elections. As the 2010 campaign issues continue to pile up, people looking to rebuke Obama & Co. for healthcare reform can also send a message that higher taxes, greater wealth redistribution, and lower productivity are as unpopular when imposed by foreign powers as they are when mandated domestically.
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