Fundamentalist

Michael Barone says not since Nixon has he seen a party drop as quickly as the Democrats under Barack Obama. He goes on:

Nothing is entirely static in politics, and opinions could change. Barack Obama could shift to the center, as Bill Clinton did after his party's thumping in 1994; the economy could visibly recover and start producing new jobs; a crisis like 9/11 and a good presidential response could boost the president and his party as 9/11 boosted George W. Bush and his party in 2001 and 2002.

But I sense that something more fundamental is at stake. Obama in his first year adopted the priorities of what pundit Joel Kotkin, a Democrat himself, calls the "gentry liberals." Obama called for addressing long-term issues like health care and supposed climate change. He and his economic advisers, like many analysts across the political spectrum, underestimated the rise in unemployment. Talk about "green jobs" has proved to be just talk.

Obama's conciliatory foreign policy and his attempts to mollify terrorists have produced no perceptible positive responses and run against the grain of most American voters. Questioning the Christmas bomber for just 50 minutes and then reading him his Miranda rights has left Obama open to charges that his policies fail to protect the American people.

The cacophony of conflicting advice from left-wing bloggers, pundits and elected officials is a sign of a party in disarray, its central premises undermined by events. Massachusetts may have been a wake-up call enabling the Democrats to recover. But right now they're tossing and turning.

While I agree that Obama has done a lot to disenchant America, I doubt something more "fundamental" is at stake.

Sure, Obama may be further left than any President we've seen in recent times. He was swept into office by events, and many voted for him hoping he'd be what they thought they heard, rather than what his record showed. He was always going to be in favor a lot of spending, and big government programs, like health care and cap and trade. The only question was what sort of resistance he'd meet and how he'd react.

But is this why Democrats are cratering? I think it's a factor, and being soft on terrorism doesn't play well either (as I've stated before, if the election had been about the war on terror, we'd have President McCain in office). But still, I believe the economy trumps everything. If we were out of the recession, with unemployment dipping back below 5%, I think Obama would be seen as a great leader, and he'd have enough trust to get through many of his bigger programs.

Yes, there is deep resistance to what Obama wants. But Americans are still mostly result-oriented. It's the economy, stupid.

PS Though I disagree with Barone, at least he's not delusional. Check Anna Quindlen in Newsweek:

In fact, the Senate election results in Massachusetts, in which a Republican seized the seat held by Ted Kennedy for almost half a century and threw the Democratic Party into a monumental tizzy, was a classic toss-the-bums-out event, neither specific nor illuminating.

So at the moment the problem in Washington is us, not them, or at least how they try to figure us out.

So we vote in the Democrats, it means we want them to lead and they should. We vote in Republicans, it means we've gone crazy.