I’ve been pretty pessimistic about the outcome of the election. I think the next two years are going to be gridlock and bickering and I’m just hoping it doesn’t send us back into recession. I’ve also been pessimistic that the lesson Democrats would learn is the predominant media narrative right now – Democrats tried to do too much and were too liberal. I may be wrong, though. Joe Klein (Joke Line) supposed liberal but generally purveyor of D.C. conventional wisdom, writes the following:
Normally, I don’t have much patience for the whining on the left about the Blue Dog democrats–who were sliced in half on Tuesday, losing at least 28 of their 54 seats. When they lose, the Democrats lose control of the Congress. This year, however, I do feel that there is an argument that, to an extent, the Dogs brought this on themselves by being penny-wise, dogpound-foolish. The argument goes like this: a larger stimulus package might have helped the economy recover at a faster clip, but the Dogs opposed it on fiscal responsibility grounds. A second argument: the public really has had it with Wall Street, but the Dogs helped water down the financial regulatory bill, gutting the too-big-to-fail provisions. There is real merit to both points. If the stimulus had been bigger and the financial reform package clearer and stronger, the public would have had a different–and, I believe, more positive–sense of the President’s agenda. (As I write in my print column this week, there is some blame to be shouldered by the Pelosi wing as well, diluting the focus of the stimulus package with a standard Democratic wish list and making the health care reform less market-oriented than it should have been, by moving 16 million people into medicaid.)
The point is, ideological myopia is counter-productive whether it’s found on the left, the right…or the center.
Wow, could it be that Democrats might actually learned that they’re better off running as Democrats and not as Republican-lite? Someone pinch me, I must be dreaming.