There’s a diary “The decline of the Democratic Party under Barack Obama” on the list that’s taking lots of flack. (diary here) Lots of comments, few tips and a bunch of hide-rates that triggered arguments that sidetracked things. The point of this diary is not to berate or defend the diarist or commentators. It’s to properly address the core claim of the diary.
The diary stated facts without context and laid blame without analysis of whether that blame was deserved or not. It gave no explanation of how Democrats failed, it just stated that President Obama failed the party. Again the point of this diary is not to attack or defend the president; it is to address the situation the Democratic Party is in now, and what it needs to do to change this dramatically in 2012. Waiting for the Republicans to hang themselves, although fun, is not an effective strategy.
The core of the diary was this factual statement:
When Barack Obama came into the White House, Democrats controlled 59% of US House seats and 59% of Senate seats. At the state level, Democrats controlled 29 governorships and 56% of all state legislative seats.
Now Democrats hold just 45% of US House seats and 53% of Senate seats. At the state level, Democrats hold just 20 governorships and just 45% of state legislative seats, the lowest since the Great Depression.
While this is true as a bald statement of circumstances then and now, it completely disregards what all these hundreds of Democratic officials did once they were in office.
The Republicans after the 2010 elections claimed they had a mandate to gut and cut. They claimed they had majority support for rolling back healthcare reforms, Medicare, gay rights, women’s rights, worker’s rights and on and on. That is now clearly not what voters meant for their votes to trigger, as poll after poll shows. The 2010 election was not a referendum on the president, nor was it an endorsement of Republicanism. The Republicans won in 2010 because they claimed they would focus on jobs and that their gutting government policies would generate private sector jobs. One governor in Wisconsin explicitly and repeatedly promised that if elected he would generate 400,000 new jobs during his four year term. Wisconsin, he claimed, “is open for business” though it is now clear he meant it is open for Big Business to rape, plunder and loot with impunity. But the critical point is this: People did not vote for cuts and austerity in 2010; they voted for jobs and economic growth.
THAT is what people primarily voted for. THAT is NOT what Republicans are delivering. But THAT is exactly what Democrats also failed to deliver between 2008 and 2010, at least in sufficient quantities and at sufficient speed to make the difference.
At the state level between 2008 and 2010, Democratic governors and representatives cut positions and expenditures by the hundreds of thousands. Remember, at the state and federal level a record number of seats went to the Democrats in 2008. At the federal level, Democrats took some action to ameliorate these cuts, but, as Krugman and other progressive economists have pointed out again and again in detail, the federal expenditures to assist the states never came even close to sufficiently address the massive Republican failure. The states, under Democratic control as never before between 2008 and 2010, delivered considerable pain in job and expenditure cuts.
People voted for the pain to end, not for it to increase. Republicans got it wrong.
And that is why we stand today on a fatal point: if Democrats continue to accept and even try to outdo the Republican insistence that voters voted for cuts and pain infliction in 2010, they will have only themselves to blame if the party fails to regain a massive number of seats at state and federal level in 2012.
What must be done
Democrats need to draft and pass a bill in the Senate that focuses on jobs, real jobs, needed jobs, good paying jobs. America needs to rebuild its road, rail and safety infrastructure. It needs to upgrade its defenses against the floods, hurricanes, tornadoes that are increasingly going to wreck large sections of the country as we move deeper into the period NOAA’s prophet of global warming Jim Hansen described as “Storms of My Grandchildren”. It needs to upgrade housing both in terms of energy use and in safety against storms and natural disasters. Major earthquakes are coming in the Pacific Northwest, in California and very likely in the center of the country. Our nuclear power plants need urgently to have their safety upgraded, and if they cannot be upgraded, the old ones must be closed down and we must launch a Manhatten Project to develop solar, wind, tidal, geothermal and other forms of alternative power, not just in labs but implemented as elements of the grid. The US urgently needs its power grid rebuilt and extended to the areas where solar and wind and tidal and geothermal do best.
We need a Rebuild America Act that creates 2 million jobs in the next 4 years. And let the Republicans attack it all they want, block it in the House as long as they would like, for that will seal their fate in 2012.
If the Democratic Party talks incessantly about jobs, jobs building and rebuilding the things America needs (like the Volt, like Greensburg KS rebuilding as an alternative energy driven, tornado resistant, LEED platinum level energy efficient city), then it will win big in 2012.
Addendum 1:
This diary on the recommended list shows the Republicans are onto this. They promise huge jobs growth if taxes are cut for the top 2 percent, at the cost of 4 trillion dollars. Democrats should propose a 2 trillion dollar Rebuild America Act that demonstrably delivers more jobs at less cost, and leaves the US much better off than this rewarmed Bush II failed policy. See Rec list diary on Republican job proposal
Addendum 2:
Yes, it is true that Democrats in 2008 did not push for card check. They did not push for vote by mail, instant registration, etc as a Federal right of citizenship. They did not handle the jobs issue well at all (stimulus is NOT the word; rebuilding is). They did not deal with immigration. The president, it is very true, kicked the teacher’s unions in the teeth and he and other Democrats continue to alienate vital union allies both unnecessarily and unwisely. Democrats left no banker behind between 2008 and 2010 when they could have and should have perp walked hundreds in front of the cameras with a placard around their neck indicating the donations they made to Republicans to hide and facilitate their misdeeds and the amount of money they defrauded from Americans or the number they made homeless. Yes Democrats should have investigated publicly every Bush appointee who failed to enforce regulations. And of course they should have characterized the 500 billion cut from the Republican’s unfunded Medicare giveaway to so-called health sector firms as targeting Republican fostered waste, fraud and abuse. And they should have said again and again their bill showed how much could be saved through proper regulation and effective oversight, something Republicans obviously failed to do in sector after sector.
But they did not. Democrats failed to make the Republican failures the main theme of their two years in power. They failed to make the case for effective regulation as a means to root out the massive amounts of waste, fraud and abuse the Republicans left behind. And they let Republicans saddle them with almost unmet charges of “cutting Medicare” and as a consequence they lost the over 65 vote by unprecedented numbers in 2010. (For a diary I wrote on this at the time, see state level Democratic losses
But now they have been handed a chance to recover and reveal the Republicans for what they have been all along: incompetent, corrupt, venal, and bent on selling everything they can get their hands on, no questions asked, to Big Business puppetmasters.
In 2012 it will be a referendum on Obama and a second chance for Democrats in the House and in state houses and governor’s mansions across the country. It is our chance to increase the number of progressive Democrats in the House and Senate and at the state level. It is absolutely vital that we get the causes of failure in 2010 clearly identified, and get them right in 2012.
Our country is at stake. Our future is at stake.