Dial L For Liberal

From the current issue of Newsweek: "The test for the next president is whether he can use the powers of government to act on behalf of Americans. That's a liberal idea."

This is such an elegant explanation of why Americans are moving left. There is so much talk of game-changing, of purple states, of the demolition of the red states and blue states, but not a lot of talk of why. Yes, Bush has been mentioned over and over again by the Obama campaign. But why was the presidential race so close before the economic crisis? As this article points out, it's because people need help. And they're willing to ask for it.

If the polls are to be believed, today's hard-strapped Joes have more in common politically with Joe Biden. And millions of them are preparing to do something that they never thought they'd do in a million years—vote for a black guy with the middle name Hussein for president of the United States.

. . . When people are scared, whether it's after 9/11 or heading into a recession, they turn to government for protection. Cultural issues like gay marriage and resentment of elites fade. Even though voters don't trust Washington any more than Wall Street, it's their only option.

. . . Obama is lucky. Had Wall Street collapsed in 2009 instead of 2008, he would have had a much harder time shifting the political center of gravity. The critically important fact for Obama's agenda is that a conservative Republican (President Bush) is the one who has essentially nationalized banks with more than a trillion dollars in public money. That discredits the GOP argument on spending but also on the proper role of government, which is essentially what separates liberals and conservatives on domestic issues.

. . . Reagan's revolution in 1980 was so striking that it conditioned a whole generation to believe it was permanent. Many scholars even believed the GOP had an "electoral lock" on the presidency—an insurmountable geographical advantage in the Electoral College. Bill Clinton's victories in 1992 and 1996 didn't do much to change the map; he won both times with less than 50 percent of the vote, thanks to the presence of independent Ross Perot in those races.

. . . Now we're confronting a big deficit again—seemingly a recipe for a Democratic president to pull his liberal punches once more. But the political context has changed in ways that would give a President Obama more running room. Instead of a Democratic Congress that's out of gas after 40 years in power, as Clinton faced, Obama would have allies on Capitol Hill determined to prove that they can address problems in a practical way. Instead of an almost religious devotion to the libertarian ideas of Alan Greenspan, we're moving back toward what might be called neo-Keynesian economics.

Read the entire article over at Newsweek.