Democrats lost the war for staying power
The conventional wisdom on both sides is that programms like Obamacare have a sort of ratchet mechanism: Once they�re in place, no matter how popular they are, no one will dare to take away the benefits
Megan McArdle
Back in 2004, commentators, possibly including me, were speculating about the possibility of a permanent majority for Republicans along the lines of the Democratic dominance of national elections following the Great Depression. Two years later, a wave election delivered the House of Representatives to the Democrats. By 2009, Barack Obama was president, with majorities in the House and the Senate.
By 2014, I was hearing a lot of claims that the Republican Party was on its way out: a regional rump party, confined to the South was the popular line for a couple of years. Sure, they might win some midterm elections here and there, but they were demographically doomed at the presidential level. This became such conventional wisdom that when I confessed I thought Republicans were likely to retake the White House in 2016, people stared as though I had said my columns were dictated to me by the ghost of Walter Winchell.
The midterm elections of 2014 did not necessarily shake this conventional wisdom. But two recent pieces of news ought to. Tea Party favorite Matt Bevin just won an upset election in the Kentucky governors race. Not only did he take back a seat that Democrats have controlled for 40 of the last 44 years, but also, he won by a smashing margin, 53 percent to 44 percent. This after polls had shown his Democratic opponent, state attorney general Jack Conway, in a narrow lead and the New York Times was speculating that Bevin might eke out a victory by driving conservative Christians to turn out.
Beshear built Kentuckys comparatively successful exchange and expanded Medicaid by executive order when the legislature wouldnt give him what he wanted. This is a great strategy -- as long as you think your party will continue to hold the executive pen. Now both the exchange and the Medicaid expansion are in danger, though Bevin has recently weaseled over exactly what hes going to do with the folks in Kentucky who got insured through the Medicaid expansion. This should give pause to fans of Obamas similar strategies at the national level.
Moreover, what you get through executive order is probably more radical than youd get via the legislative process, because it has input from only one half of the political spectrum. That appeals to the base, but also has political costs. I doubt that the Obama administration would have put its weight behind a bill to force schools to let trans girls change in open locker rooms, but thats the rule the Department of Educations Office of Civil Rights has apparently now adopted with a school district in Palatine, Illinois. Its actions on greenhouse emissions from power plants are almost certainly stronger than what would have emerged from a bargaining process with the Republican-controlled congress. And however laudable these moves may be, they make a difference in down-ticket races. Id guess that the Palatine school board elections will make this a prominent issue, to the detriment of liberal candidates. And it seems quite likely that the power plant regulations contributed to Conways loss in a coal state.
Policy wonks will be keeping a close eye on what happens in Kentucky in the next year. The conventional wisdom on both sides is that programs like Obamacare have a sort of ratchet mechanism: Once theyre in place, no matter how popular they are, no one will dare to take away the benefits. If Bevin actually dares (conventionally, I suspect he wont), and he seems to survive all right politically, Republican governors and members of Congress, and perhaps a Republican presidential candidate, will become more daring with their moves to roll back Obamas legacy. Of course, those arent the only reasons that losing down-ticket could hurt Democrats. Redistricting matters. Local policy questions matter. And where you get your future presidential candidates matters. If Democrats become a rump party, confined to the coastal north, then where are they going to get their presidential candidates? From a handful of governors, or a congressional caucus that has moved left as the Republicans moved right?
Not that I am predicting this will happen. Nothing is forever in politics -- not permanent majorities, and not structural defeats.
I expect that Democrats will reverse their down-ticket problems through assiduous labor. But that labor will not be done by 2016. And it will not be done at all unless the non-professionals -- the donors and the activist base -- stop pouring all their energies into winning Pyrrhic victories.
Bloomberg
