Trump and the Democrats
The lesson: Progressive government can’t be imposed from the top.
Nov. 10, 2016 7:26 p.m. ET
Main Street Columnist Bill McGurn on the party's angry reaction to Tuesday's electoral defeats. Photo credit: European Pressphoto Agency.
Donald Trump’s victory is already inspiring reflection about the future of the Republican Party, and rightly so, but Democrats don’t seem to be undertaking any similar introspection. This is a mistake, because they wouldn’t have been ushered out of power up and down the ballot if the American public wasn’t rejecting the results and methods of the last eight years.
Liberals are attributing Hillary Clinton’s loss to FBI Director Jim Comey, while the more honest admit her email scandal and Clinton Foundation ethics were problems. Others note she was a less than inspiring campaigner. The left’s all-purpose answer seems to be that the same American people who elected President Obama twice have defaulted to their traditional sexism, racism and xenophobia.
Blaming “white-lash” is silly—of the roughly 700 U.S. counties that Mr. Obama won twice, about one-third broke this time for Mr. Trump—but these cultural rationalizations are lamentable and instructive. Too many liberals, and some conservatives, simply cannot imagine how great numbers of Americans think and perceive their own interests. Thus wrong opinions must be the result of cognitive limitations or character flaws. Mrs. Clinton called Trump supporters “deplorables,” “irredeemable” and “not America,” as if there could be no other explanation.
These failures of empathy are also a staple of Mr. Obama’s rhetoric, with his moral lectures about who we are as Americans and the arc of history always bending toward—well, his point of view. For the President, and most prominent Democrats these days, opponents who debate policies and principles never do so in good faith.
For eight long years Mr. Obama’s belief that he holds the mandate of heaven has guided how he has used and abused presidential power. He was elected in 2008 on a message of hope and centrist unity, but he was soon ramming through 40 years of pent-up progressive priorities. Recall his famous 2009 brush-off of Republican Eric Cantor, who had proposed some bipartisan ideas for the stimulus: “Eric, I won.”
Democrats imposed ObamaCare on a straight partisan majority, though the polls showed there was no political consensus about a new entitlement among the oft-invoked, rarely consulted American people. National health care is no more popular today and is now misfiring in all the ways the critics predicted. The GOP was frozen out of all major economic decisions in 2009-10, and one price was the weak recovery that persists to this day.
Democrats did have a historic supermajority, but that wasn’t a mandate to do whatever they could get away with, and they lost a record 63 House seats in the midterms as punishment. Mr. Obama then feinted toward a grand bargain with John Boehner, only to ambush the then Speaker with politically impossible tax-increase demands at the 11th hour.
The President won re-election in 2012 by converting a decent man like Mitt Romney into a monster who would prosecute a “war on women.” He also weaponized identity politics to polarize voters for his own purposes.
In his second term, Mr. Obama adopted his “pen and phone” strategy of executive rule to bypass Congress and avoid accountability. He unleashed the EPA to impose carbon cap and trade without basis in law. The Education Department rewrote Title IX to erode due process on campus. The Paris climate deal and Iran nuclear accord should have been submitted to the Senate as treaties for ratification.
Some of these gambits have been checked by the courts, and the left will learn that what’s done through regulation can be undone through new regulation. But liberals have also “normalized” such abuses, to borrow a now-popular phrase among progressives. Supposedly when Congress refuses to pass bills that the President desires, he has the power to achieve his aims by himself. That isn’t how U.S. democracy works, and it inevitably created its political counter-reaction in the form of Mr. Trump.
***
Democrats now face some decisions about how to deal with a Republican majority, and one irony is that their methods under Mr. Obama will make Mr. Trump’s job easier. The Harry Reid-Obama decision to break the filibuster for nominations will ease the path for Mr. Trump’s cabinet and judicial nominees. A GOP Senate won’t tolerate a filibuster of a Supreme Court pick.
The Elizabeth Warren left will want the party to reject any bipartisan accommodation, hoping to mobilize their base to sweep out the GOP Congress in 2018. But Democrats will be defending 25 Senate seats, several in states that went decidedly for Mr. Trump. A rejectionist strategy carries political risks, not least in the states where the Obama top-down strategy has left Democrats in their weakest position in 90 years. (See nearby.)
One result of Mr. Obama’s tenure is that Democrats lack a deep bench of younger candidates for federal office, including the Presidency in 2020. A third of all House Democrats will now come from a mere three states—California, New York and Massachusetts. Even as talented a candidate as Jason Kander, a military veteran who ran strongly against Senator Roy Blunt in Missouri, couldn’t win against the Trump tide.
The lesson for smart Democrats is that progressive policy goals can’t be imposed on a reluctant America by political diktat. They have to be won by persuasion and inevitably by compromise. Relying on judges and regulation left millions of Americans feeling disenfranchised and inspired the Trump backlash. This wasn’t about race or gender or Hillary Clinton’s emails. It was about reclaiming a voice in how their country is governed.
The same political lesson applies to Mr. Trump and Republicans as they seek to pass the agenda they campaigned on. But they now have that opportunity in large part because the Obama progressives were so uncompromising and condescending to Americans beyond the coasts. The tides of American politics mean Democrats will inevitably make a comeback, but that return will arrive stronger and maybe sooner if they learn the lessons of Mr. Obama’s disdain for his political opponents.
The lesson: Progressive government can’t be imposed from the top.
Nov. 10, 2016 7:26 p.m. ET
Main Street Columnist Bill McGurn on the party's angry reaction to Tuesday's electoral defeats. Photo credit: European Pressphoto Agency.
Donald Trump’s victory is already inspiring reflection about the future of the Republican Party, and rightly so, but Democrats don’t seem to be undertaking any similar introspection. This is a mistake, because they wouldn’t have been ushered out of power up and down the ballot if the American public wasn’t rejecting the results and methods of the last eight years.
Liberals are attributing Hillary Clinton’s loss to FBI Director Jim Comey, while the more honest admit her email scandal and Clinton Foundation ethics were problems. Others note she was a less than inspiring campaigner. The left’s all-purpose answer seems to be that the same American people who elected President Obama twice have defaulted to their traditional sexism, racism and xenophobia.
Blaming “white-lash” is silly—of the roughly 700 U.S. counties that Mr. Obama won twice, about one-third broke this time for Mr. Trump—but these cultural rationalizations are lamentable and instructive. Too many liberals, and some conservatives, simply cannot imagine how great numbers of Americans think and perceive their own interests. Thus wrong opinions must be the result of cognitive limitations or character flaws. Mrs. Clinton called Trump supporters “deplorables,” “irredeemable” and “not America,” as if there could be no other explanation.
These failures of empathy are also a staple of Mr. Obama’s rhetoric, with his moral lectures about who we are as Americans and the arc of history always bending toward—well, his point of view. For the President, and most prominent Democrats these days, opponents who debate policies and principles never do so in good faith.
For eight long years Mr. Obama’s belief that he holds the mandate of heaven has guided how he has used and abused presidential power. He was elected in 2008 on a message of hope and centrist unity, but he was soon ramming through 40 years of pent-up progressive priorities. Recall his famous 2009 brush-off of Republican Eric Cantor, who had proposed some bipartisan ideas for the stimulus: “Eric, I won.”
Democrats imposed ObamaCare on a straight partisan majority, though the polls showed there was no political consensus about a new entitlement among the oft-invoked, rarely consulted American people. National health care is no more popular today and is now misfiring in all the ways the critics predicted. The GOP was frozen out of all major economic decisions in 2009-10, and one price was the weak recovery that persists to this day.
Democrats did have a historic supermajority, but that wasn’t a mandate to do whatever they could get away with, and they lost a record 63 House seats in the midterms as punishment. Mr. Obama then feinted toward a grand bargain with John Boehner, only to ambush the then Speaker with politically impossible tax-increase demands at the 11th hour.
The President won re-election in 2012 by converting a decent man like Mitt Romney into a monster who would prosecute a “war on women.” He also weaponized identity politics to polarize voters for his own purposes.
In his second term, Mr. Obama adopted his “pen and phone” strategy of executive rule to bypass Congress and avoid accountability. He unleashed the EPA to impose carbon cap and trade without basis in law. The Education Department rewrote Title IX to erode due process on campus. The Paris climate deal and Iran nuclear accord should have been submitted to the Senate as treaties for ratification.
Some of these gambits have been checked by the courts, and the left will learn that what’s done through regulation can be undone through new regulation. But liberals have also “normalized” such abuses, to borrow a now-popular phrase among progressives. Supposedly when Congress refuses to pass bills that the President desires, he has the power to achieve his aims by himself. That isn’t how U.S. democracy works, and it inevitably created its political counter-reaction in the form of Mr. Trump.
***
Democrats now face some decisions about how to deal with a Republican majority, and one irony is that their methods under Mr. Obama will make Mr. Trump’s job easier. The Harry Reid-Obama decision to break the filibuster for nominations will ease the path for Mr. Trump’s cabinet and judicial nominees. A GOP Senate won’t tolerate a filibuster of a Supreme Court pick.
The Elizabeth Warren left will want the party to reject any bipartisan accommodation, hoping to mobilize their base to sweep out the GOP Congress in 2018. But Democrats will be defending 25 Senate seats, several in states that went decidedly for Mr. Trump. A rejectionist strategy carries political risks, not least in the states where the Obama top-down strategy has left Democrats in their weakest position in 90 years. (See nearby.)
One result of Mr. Obama’s tenure is that Democrats lack a deep bench of younger candidates for federal office, including the Presidency in 2020. A third of all House Democrats will now come from a mere three states—California, New York and Massachusetts. Even as talented a candidate as Jason Kander, a military veteran who ran strongly against Senator Roy Blunt in Missouri, couldn’t win against the Trump tide.
The lesson for smart Democrats is that progressive policy goals can’t be imposed on a reluctant America by political diktat. They have to be won by persuasion and inevitably by compromise. Relying on judges and regulation left millions of Americans feeling disenfranchised and inspired the Trump backlash. This wasn’t about race or gender or Hillary Clinton’s emails. It was about reclaiming a voice in how their country is governed.
The same political lesson applies to Mr. Trump and Republicans as they seek to pass the agenda they campaigned on. But they now have that opportunity in large part because the Obama progressives were so uncompromising and condescending to Americans beyond the coasts. The tides of American politics mean Democrats will inevitably make a comeback, but that return will arrive stronger and maybe sooner if they learn the lessons of Mr. Obama’s disdain for his political opponents.
