Yin-Yang D.C.? You’re Kidding, Right? (Reprising 2006)

So Republicans won big, and Washington is once again evenly divided--Democratic President, Republican Congress. Time for yin-yang: compromise and work together for the good of the nation?

GOP guru Karl Rove writes:

Republicans shouldn’t rest on their laurels or reach for last year’s congressional playbook. Voters expect constructive action, not obstructionism. They want Washington to work and lawmakers to get things done. Their expectations are low because their distrust of politicians is high. So surprise them. The rewards will be great if the GOP shows it has a governing agenda.

Republicans should go big, pushing a comprehensive reform agenda even if the president objects. Republicans should try working with Mr. Obama to forge legislative compromises. But if he refuses to engage, Republicans should move, although they must be willing to defend their proposals with conviction.

In other words, “no ‘yin-yang’ here!  Republicans are aiming to occupy the White House in 2016, with or without Obama’s help.”

Here’s what I wrote in 2006, after a similar opposite party (Democratic) triumph over an increasingly unpopular president (Bush). With words changed to update the entry; it reads well for 2014:

yin-yang unity is not to be. Why?

• The country is pretty evenly divided into two warring camps. The Republicans [first] nationalized congressional elections in 2002 and 2004, turning out Democrats for being wrong on the War on Terror. Now we have a [seventh] straight nationalized election, this time [again] by the [Republicans] running in every section of the country against [Obama] and [a poor economy]. Nationalized elections and polarization are the result of efficient political operations that find and bring home their voters. These nationalized elections are here to stay, and will keep America divided.

• [2016] will shape the next two years in Washington. [Republicans] in Congress aren’t interested in passing the kind of legislation [Obama] might sign. They’re interested in electing a [Republican] president in [2016], so they can truly take over. Every issue they push through Congress will be designed to divide [Democrats] from the national majority, so that [Republican] control will replace divided government. Every Congressional investigation of [Obama] administration wrongdoing will reach for the same objective. Taking over Congress is just a first step to true power.

• Only united government produces real change. The last [great] burst of real Democratic creativity came in 1964-65, when in the aftermath of Kennedy’s assassination, Democrats had the full control they needed to pass tax reform, civil rights legislation, Medicare, and the National Education Act. Reagan had a burst of creativity in 1981-82, because a Republican Senate and Southern “Blue Dog” House Democrats provided the majority needed to cut taxes and the size of government. [I]n 1995[-96], [Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich] united to produce welfare reform and the balanced budgets that turbocharged our late 1990’s economy. Clinton needed Republicans to give him a record to run on for re-election. And Gingrich fully understood he was aiding Clinton’s re-election. [Today's Republican] leaders, unlike Gingrich, hope for their own president in [2016]. Once everything is [red], [Republicans] will achieve their next burst of creativity.

But:

• Unified rule can blow up in your face.  To hold [Democrats] together [in 2009-2010 when Democrats had all the power, Obama hewed] to . . . the views of his extremes ([Democrats pushed] programs supported by [only Democrats--their “stimulus” and especially Obamacare]). Extremism ended up costing [Democrats] the [next] election. The same thing happened in 1993-94, the [previous] time Democrats controlled everything.

And here’s a bigger “but.” We have discovered another regular pattern--Republicans do better in low-turnout mid-term elections, Democrats do better in presidential years. It is markedly less likely that the Republicans will win in 2016, following their Tuesday mid-term triumph than it was that Democrats would win in 2008 following their (rare) mid-term victory in 2006. When their base shows up at the polls, Democrats win the popular vote--five of the last six presidential elections.

Republicans have their work cut out for them in 2016.

Obama Goes to Iran

Underlining the importance the Obama administration places on turning Iran from enemy into U.S. partner, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes likened an Iranian nuclear deal to Obamacare in a talk to progressive activists last January (audio here):

Bottom line is, this is the best opportunity we’ve had to resolve the Iranian issue diplomatically, certainly since President Obama came to office, and probably since the beginning of the Iraq war. So no small opportunity, it’s a big deal. This is probably the biggest thing President Obama will do in his second term on foreign policy. This is healthcare for us, just to put it in context.

Rhodes also said at the time that the White House wants to bypass Congress, which likely would seek to block any such deal:

We’re already kind of thinking through, how do we structure a deal so we don’t necessarily require legislative action right away. And there are ways to do that.

Matthew Continetti of the conservative Washington Free Beacon, which obtained the tape of Rhodes’ private remarks, noted the Rhodes proposal to bypass Congress echoes what an unnamed “senior administration official” told New York Times correspondent David Sanger last week: “We wouldn’t seek congressional legislation in any comprehensive agreement for years.”

Continetti fears Obama sees an Iran deal not just as his second term health care reform, but as his version of George W. Bush’s Iraq surge: a Hail Mary pass thrown in the fourth quarter in a long-shot attempt to salvage a legacy.

We’ve repeatedly said Obama’s aim is much higher. The president wants his own “Nixon goes to China” historic achievement--a grand re-positioning of U.S. foreign policy, gained by turning our greatest enemy into a new partner.

Democratic Progressivism--100 years plus, still going. . .going . . .

Are Democrats in a rut? Jay Cost of the conservative Weekly Standard writes:

For over a decade, Democrats have been salivating at the prospect of demographic changes propelling them to permanent majority status. Obama in particular has been active on this front, and has ruthlessly divided the country along race, gender, and class lines in the hope of speeding this process along. But he has overlooked two historical realities[:]

• parties adapt, and; 

• despite our political class’s pretensions to power, they remain mere pawns [to, in Constitution architect James Madison’s words, a] “variety of parties and interests.” 

So is the public in fact tiring of Democrats’ constant effort to build and hold together its minorities-unmarried women-hip youth coalition? Maybe.

James Taranto in the conservative Wall Street Journal finds even the New York Times concerned about the stridency and bluntness of Democratic attempts to inject race into the mid-term elections. Taranto quotes the paper I brand “the liberals’ Pravda” writing:

In the final days before the election, Democrats in the closest Senate races across the South are turning to racially charged messages—invoking Trayvon Martin’s death, the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., and Jim Crow-era segregation—to jolt African-Americans into voting and stop a Republican takeover in Washington.

The images and words they are using are striking for how overtly they play on fears of intimidation and repression. And their source is surprising. The effort is being led by national Democrats and their state party organizations—not, in most instances, by the shadowy and often untraceable political action committees that typically employ such provocative messages.

Taranto calls “surprising” the Times story’s "somewhat disapproving tone,” adding, “It’s a news story, but it wouldn’t be hard to rewrite it into an opinion piece arguing that the Dems are getting desperate.”

A nation adrift. A Republican lifeline?

Republican guru Karl Rove, excoriated by the left because of his effectiveness, has the facts to back his argument when he writes:

voters don't believe the president's claims that the economy is thriving. Even people with jobs feel apprehensive. Paychecks are flat, growth anemic, and people are worried about their children's prospects. Mr. Obama had a 38% approval on handling the economy in the Sept. 9 Fox News poll. In the Sept. 7 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 67% believe America is on the wrong track.

Old figures? The latest (10/14) Fox News poll records the same 38% approval of Obama’s handling of the economy, and there hasn’t been an NBC/Journal poll since Sept. 7.

Stanford economics professor Michael Boskin, George H.W. Bush’s chairman of the council of economic advisers, is optimistic about America’s future, pointing out that

the U.S. has many strengths: the best higher-education system in the world; a highly productive workforce; the deepest, most liquid capital markets; the most dynamic and innovative companies, as witnessed in the “fracking” revolution and booming U.S. oil and gas industry; and, despite recent demagoguery, a diverse population supportive of earned success.

Of course, Boskin adds that these advantages “are not immutable.”

as has happened with our K-12 education, anticompetitive forces and poor policy can throw sand in the gears of these great contributors to American success. President John F. Kennedy, whose economic strategy emphasized tax cuts and trade liberalization, opined that “A rising tide lifts all boats.” That was overstated. But it lifts by far the most boats and leaves by far the fewest stranded or sunk.

That is why President Obama promoting redistribution at the expense of growth is a tragic mistake, for the nation and especially for those hoping to climb the economic ladder.

Boskin believes our highest priority is to remove obstacles to growth and to re-incentivize “the supply side of the economy.” He wants to phase in stronger budget controls, especially entitlement reform, and to lower tax rates across the board.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback has been trying these classic G.O.P. “a rising tide lifts all boats” policies, with decidedly mixed results. A sympathetic Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal, in writing about Brownback’s difficulties, tells us that

Most of the blowback Gov. Brownback has received for his tax cuts has come from big-spending Republicans who preferred the status quo and have resisted the party's reform wave. Mr. Brownback rolled them during the tax fight, and their revenge now has been to unite with Democrats to cause him political mischief.

Brownback seems to have discovered the price you pay when you go after the GOP’s “spend to hang on” wing. But on the other hand, conservative Jay Cost in the Weekly Standard believes that

Republicans . . . could start by adopting the perspective of families that make about $65,000 per year. These people’s economic situation is uncertain, and they pay a goodly portion of their income to the IRS—. . .through Social Security and Medicare taxes, which flow into the federal government’s general revenues. . . Economic security for this group primarily means lowering the cost of education, health care, and energy.

So instead of talking about tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy, about easing regulations on business, and about entitlement reforms that lower social security benefits, Republicans must (I said “must”) show how government raises the cost of education, health care, and energy for people making $65,000 a year, and how Republicans--by increasing competition and reducing regulation--will make education, health care, and energy more affordable for ordinary people.

Obamatime: List of Federal Government Missteps & Failures

the party of government is presiding over a time of government failure and malpractice.

--Matthew Continetti, Washington Free Beacon  

under Obama an ever-expanding federal government has become the essential raison d’être for the party. . . in the future Obama [will] be remembered simply for being the nation’s “first black president.”

--Joel Kotkin, Orange County Register

It’s way beyond time to record the almost-continuous record of federal government screw-ups under the current administration, which loves Big Government (self-love):

1. The Stimulus (failure of “shovel ready”); Department of Transportation (2009) 
2. Foreign policy SNAFUs (Russian “reset,” abandoning Iraq, pull-out “date certain” in Afghanistan, chemical weapons “red line” in Syria, ISIS “JV terrorists,” Ukraine inaction, Iran gets bomb?); White House, National Security Council, Department of State (2009- ) 
3. Alternative Energy (Solyndra bankruptcy); Department of Energy (2011) 
4. “Fast and Furious” (gun walking); Department of Justice (2010-12) 
5. IRS (targeting conservatives); Department of Treasury (2010- ) 
6. $823,000 Las Vegas party; General Services Administration (2012) 
7. Benghazi (“spontaneous protest/anti-Muslim video”); Department of State (2012) 
8. Cartagena prostitutes; U.S. Secret Service (2013) 
9. Monitoring AP and Fox’s James Rosen’s phones; Department of Justice (2013) 
10. Monitoring our emails; National Security Administration (2013) 
11. Obamacare (rollout and “keep your doctor, keep your plan”); Health and Human Services (2013- ) 
12. Wait-list deaths; Veterans Administration (2014) 
13. Children crossing open borders; Department of Homeland Security (2014) 
14. Ebola outbreak chances “extremely low”; Centers for Disease Control (2014) 
15. Help! There’s a man in the (White) House!; U.S. Secret Service (2014) 
16. Cartagena prostitute; White House (2014) 

This incomplete list involves messups at 14 different departments or agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control, called by the New York Times’ liberal reporter Joe Nocera “the most trusted agency in the federal government,” and the U.S. Secret Service, two previously unsullied parts of a long-compromised federal behemoth.

When will we realize government’s just too big, too far beyond the people’s control? For insight into a related story--why and how the media protects Big Government--see former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson’s new book, Stonewalled.

Hong Kong’s “Occupy Central” Central to China’s Future

Night 20: Hundreds of protesters swamp Kowloon’s Mong Kok.

The Occupy Central protests centered on Hong Kong’s financial district are now into their 21st day. They are reportedly costing Hong Kong’s economy around $13.5 million (HK$105 million) a day in lost revenue. Talks are supposed to begin soon between the student-led protest movement and the administration of Hong Kong Chief Executive C.Y. Leung, a puppet of China’s leadership whom the students have called upon to resign. Understand, though, that talks have repeatedly been announced then reshaped, only to be later called off. A resolution of the crisis may not be in sight as long as crowds keep showing up in response to police and hired-goon beatings, talk cancellations, barricade removals, and other negative government actions.

Protesters want Hong Kong’s people to be able to elect their own chief executive--as provided for under the Hong Kong basic law’s promise of universal suffrage--not be force-fed a Beijing puppet. The Occupy Central movement specifically objects to Beijing’s announced plan to select on its own the individuals who compete in future Hong Kong chief executive elections. Beijing says its nomination plan is non-negotiable. Thus, the impasse.

Any solution in sight? The Economist recently editorialized its view that

Xi Jinping, China’s president, and his colleagues believe that the party’s control over the country is the only way of guaranteeing its stability. They fear that if the party loosens its grip, the country will slip towards disorder and disaster. They are right that autocracy can keep a country stable in the short run. In the long run, though, as China’s own history shows, it cannot. The only guarantor of a stable country is a people that is satisfied with its government. And in China, dissatisfaction with the Communist Party is on the rise.

China needs to find a way of allowing its citizens to shape their governance without resorting to protests that risk turning into a struggle for the nation’s soul. Hong Kong, with its history of free expression and semi-detached relationship to the mainland, is an ideal place for that experiment to begin.

Longtime China expert Orville Schell, writing in the Wall Street Journal, similarly paid tribute to Xi’s hard-nosed style before similarly recommending reform:

What has distinguished Mr. Xi to date is his persona as a tough, immovable leader. He has gone so far as to suggest that a “real man” might have been able to head off the demise of the Soviet Union. Such Putin-esque posturing will prove risky in a place like Hong Kong, where many already think that China’s leaders possess tin ears and strong, club-wielding arms. Hong Kong isn’t eastern Ukraine. Should Mr. Xi decide to take a softer path, it may signal that he is also capable of a more mature, subtle understanding. If he wants to build trust and confidence with surrounding countries, it is hard to imagine a more convincing and immediate way to do so.

Reform or revolution? Once again, China confronts two choices.

Richest Congressional Districts All Democrat

NY 12 (click to enlarge)

According to AP’s story, “Party of the rich: In Congress, it's the Democrats,” 8 of the 10 richest House districts--and every district where the per capita income exceeds $50,000 (that’s $50,000 for every man, woman, and child)--is represented by a Democrat:

1. New York 12 (Manhattan East Side, Queens):
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, Democrat
Per capita income: $75,479

2. California 33 (Malibu, Brentwood, Santa Monica, Palos Verdes):
Rep. Henry Waxman, Democrat
Per capita income: $61,273

3. New York 10 (West Side, Greenwich Village, Borough Park):
Rep. Jerry Nadler, Democrat
Per capita income: $56,138

4. California 18 (Palo Alto, San Jose, Los Gatos):
Rep. Anna Eshoo, Democrat
Per capita income: $54,182

5. Connecticut 4 (Greenwich, New Canaan, Lower Naugatuck Valley, Bridgeport):
Rep. Jim Himes, Democrat
Per capita income: $50,732

6. Virginia 8 (Fairfax, Arlington counties, Alexandria):
Rep. Jim Moran, Democrat
Per capita income: $50,210

Also: 7. New Jersey 7 (NW New Jersey, centered on Morris County): Rep. Leonard Lance, Republican, Per capita income: $48,556; 8. California 12 (San Francisco): Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Democrat, Per capita income: $48,523; 9. New York 3 (NW Long Island, Nassau and Suffolk counties): Rep. Steve Israel, Democrat, Per capita income: $47,991; 10. Virginia 10 (Manassas, Loudoun and Frederick counties): Rep. Frank Wolf, Republican, Per capita income: $47,281.

Ebola Democrats’ “October Surprise”?

"I want the American people to know that our experts, here at the CDC and across our government, agree that the chances of an Ebola outbreak here in the United States are extremely low."

--Barack Obama, September 16, 2014

I suggested earlier here that Barack Obama’s “September (or October) Surprise” was going to be a grand alliance against Islamic State that included current enemy Iran.

I was wrong. There is too much internal U.S. opposition to partnering with Iran if it comes at the price of accepting Israel’s enemy as a virtual if not actual nuclear power. The plan to link with Iran is apparently on hold at least until after the midterm elections.

Instead, we have a surprise sprung on the President himself, partly because of his unambiguous promise at the Centers for Disease Control this past September that “the chances of an Ebola outbreak here in the United States are extremely low" (see above).

Inside-the-Beltway journal The Hill’s Elise Viebeck in fact flatly stated that:

Ebola has become the October surprise of this year’s midterm elections. . . The U.S. public is increasingly fearful of the virus following three cases in Texas and news that the fatality rate for infected patients has hit 70% in West Africa.

A surprise indeed. Obama’s "RealClearPolitics" average disapproval-over-approval percentage is back above 10% after falling below that threshold, presumably due to the government’s unsteady handling of a crisis the President had called “extremely” unlikely.

There are only 20 days left in this election cycle. We'll soon enough know what the actual political fall-out from the Ebola crisis will turn out to be.

GOP Take-over of Senate?

The latest RealClearPolitics average of polls on Senate races has the Republicans picking up a net of 7 seats beyond their current base of 46. That would mean Republicans would have a 53-47 majority. Some of the races are polling very close, but Republicans in polling are already up one seat to 47. Georgia, Arkansas, and Alaska--all red states--seem trending Republican, which would yield a 50-50 split.

To push over into a majority, Republicans only have to hold Kansas, where Sen. Pat Roberts is in deep trouble.  But efforts to paint Independent Greg Orman for what he is--a closet Democrat--are just getting underway in this thoroughly Republican state. Or Republicans can pick up a seat in either Iowa or Colorado, where the GOP candidates currently hold paper-thin leads. All three going Republican means 53-47.

Iran’s Khamenei is no Mao

It takes two to tango. Iran has rejected for now any partnership with the U.S. to fight (what we now call) Islamic State. In an article that details U.S. backtracking in the face of a major loss of face (Iran doesn’t want us!), Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued a very public and seemingly definitive rejection of private U.S. overtures to the militant Shiite state.

According to an LA Times report, Khamenei said that when the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad requested a meeting with his Iranian counterpart to discuss “coordination” between the two nations to confront the Islamic State threat,

I opposed [the U.S. request] and told them we will not cooperate with the Americans on the issue because their intent and hands are not clean. How is it possible for us to cooperate with the Americans under such circumstances?

Khamenei added that Iran also rebuffed a request from Secretary of State John Kerry for “cooperation” conveyed “personally” from Kerry to the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. The Supreme Leader proclaimed that:

Iran has voiced its opposition to being a party to that coalition from the very beginning. The Americans’ coalition is nonsense.

Comment: The article verifies speculation the U.S. tried more than once to reach Iran. The atmosphere today, please understand, is different from that which Henry Kissinger exploited with his 1971 opening to China. In Kissinger’s time, China already had the bomb, both the U.S. and China could see that the U.S.S.R. was benefiting from having relations with both the U.S. and China at our mutual expense, and Russians had killed Chinese in 1969 clashes along the Soviet-Chinese border. Both sides looked for improved relations with each other at Moscow’s expense.

Iran feels no similar pressure to advance relations with Israel’s major supporter and the main force blocking Iran’s possession of the bomb. Still, Khamenei’s use of the phrase, “under such circumstances” seems to tell the U.S. that if it gives Iran a path to the bomb, things could change. Iranians know that improved relations with the U.S. would in and of itself undermine U.S.-Israeli ties, as suggested in our previous post.

Note to Obama: All "Islamists" are Against Us

Dennis Ross

In an important New York Times column titled, “Islamists Are Not Our Friends,” Dennis Ross, former Middle East advisor to Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, argues that the powers we identify as “Islamic extremists” should simply be called “Islamists.” Sunni or Shia, Islamists believe in the Umma, the larger Muslim community that should cross and obliterate state lines. Their opponents are non-Islamists, and, Ross says, we must back the opposition.

Ross, I believe, is surfacing a battle going on behind the scenes in Washington pitting defenders of Israel against those closest to Obama, especially Valerie Jarrett and including foreign policy guru Les Gelb, Peter Beinart and others, who want Iran’s help in defeating the terrorist “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (ISIS). Jarrett, Gelb, and company don’t mind that partnering with Iran alarms Israel.

Ross is careful to hide Israel’s importance to this inside-the-Beltway struggle, mentioning Israel only once in passing. Ross doesn’t want to come across as just another pro-Israel American Middle East expert (Ross is Jewish). Also, the non-Islamist states Ross defends, nations to which Israel now looks for common cause, need protection from Islamists all too ready to brand Arabs willing to side with Israel as lackeys of the Jewish state.

Here are Ross’ major points:

• non-Islamists want to know that the United States supports them. For America, that means not partnering with Iran against ISIS [emphasis added]. . . It means recognizing that Egypt is an essential part of the anti-Islamist coalition.

• America should also coordinate with Egypt and the U.A.E.[, which] will make their military operations more effective, as well as provide America with greater ability to influence their actions. 

• [While t]he Obama administration worries about the consequences of excluding all Islamists [and] appearing to give a blank check to authoritarian regimes. . . likely to prove unstable over time. . . America’s traditional partners are ready to act without us, convinced that the administration does not see all Islamists as a threat — and that America sees its interests as different from theirs. That is a problem. 

• do not reach out to Islamists; their creed is not compatible with pluralism or democracy.  

Comment: Ross has given us a clear look at the real battle going on within Washington’s foreign policy establishment. It’s the battle we have been talking about over the past month.

It’s 9.11, it’s Obama’s war, with “help” (Iran) on the way.

Persian Army Attacking Alexander's Forces, 333 B.C.

In his 9.11-eve primetime address to the nation, Barack Obama took America into Syria, and back into Iraq. Our recent blog entries have focused on Obama’s emerging effort to build a coalition against the “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (ISIS). Now the effort is out in the open. And look who’s standing in the wings, as predicted here earlier. Iran!

According to the BBC:

Iran's Supreme Leader has approved co-operation with the US as part of the fight against Islamic State (IS) in Iraq, sources have told BBC Persian. Ayatollah Khamenei has authorised his top commander to co-ordinate military operations with the US, Iraqi and Kurdish forces, sources in Tehran say. . . CNN's Christiane Amanpour. . . tweeted that Iraqi President Fuad Masum had told her as much on Thursday. . . However, Iran's foreign ministry . . . spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham told Iran's Press TV the report was not correct.

A “BBC Persian” analysis added:

Iran's change of heart will no doubt be welcomed in Washington and London, where a joint strategy is taking shape towards creating a broad alliance of international and regional players to deal with the IS threat.

One of the things we learn in life is not to let the immediate crowd out the important. The ISIS threat is “the immediate”. The Iran threat is “the important”.

Obama is lining up the traditional Sunni authoritarians--Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates--against the radical Sunni threat ISIS. In the next wave, he is after Shia already pre-disposed to go after Sunni, including Iran, Iraq's Shia, and Hezbollah, as well as Iran Sunni allies Turkey, Qatar, and Hamas.

Are we really partnering with Iran? And what about Syria’s Basher Assad? So far, we say Assad remains an enemy.

Iran coming aboard our ship is the important threat.  Here from former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, in the Wall Street Journal:

You want to think [Obama] is playing a cool. . . watching new alliances form—wasn't that the Kurds the other day fighting alongside the Iranians? Obama's supporters frankly hope that there's a method to the madness, that he is quietly, behind the scenes and with great subtlety pulling together a coalition that will move. But this is more hope than knowledge. [emphasis added]

We will see at the UN September 24, when Obama chairs the Security Council, who shows up and exactly how importantly Iran treats the event.

Of course, ISIS is a real enemy. But so is Iran, a nation whose supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calls Israel “the wolfish and child killer regime,” the only solution for which “is its destruction.” The “final solution”? From our “partner” Iran?

Do our leaders see clearly the threat we face? Not if you listen to Hillary Clinton, in her review of Henry Kissinger’s book on World Order:

International problems and solutions are increasingly centered, in ways both good and bad, on nongovernmental organizations, businesses and individual citizens. As a result, foreign policy is now as much about people as it is about states. Kissinger rightly notes that these shifts require a broader and deeper order than sufficed in the past.

Clinton and Kissinger are right that world power has moved beyond the nation state leaders both so readily access. But Clinton’s list completely overlooks religion and the power it holds, Islamic extremism in particular, whether Sunni or Shia.

A colossal oversight and a dangerous one.

Foreign Policy: Obama Readies a “September Surprise”

“I don't want to put the cart before the horse. We don't have a strategy yet.”

--Barack Obama, 8.28.14
 

Iran Foreign Minsiter Mohammad Javad Zarif with Sec. John Kerry

People are unfairly jumping on the president for his “no strategy” comment. Obama does have a strategy. He’s just not ready to spring it on us. When he does, he hopes it will have the impact that John Kennedy’s “October surprise”--the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis--had on that year’s mid-term congressional elections. Hapless Republicans arguing at the time that Kennedy was soft on Cuba ended up embarrassed and their party defeated. Obama is about not only to be tough on ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), but also dramatic: Obama is readying an anti-ISIS coalition he hopes will include current enemy Iran.

We have argued that President Obama is moving toward a rapprochement with Iran that will be a lesser version of President Nixon’s dramatic 1971-72 opening to China. Evidence this move is on the way continues to mount. FOX News correspondent James Rosen recently reported that

Iran – one of four countries the United States accuses of supporting terrorism – has begun arming the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq, as the Kurds scramble to combat the threat posed by ISIS. . . Dr. Dlawer Ala'Aldeen, a former Kurdish Cabinet officer [said] in an interview. “If you are in the place of the Kurds, what would you do when you’re facing that? You would ask for help from any neighbor.”

The link-up of Iran with Iraq’s Kurds is a surprise, because, as Rosen says, Iran

has used brutal means to suppress Iran’s own population of 8 million Kurds, whose yearning for independence matches that of their Iraqi brethren. By steering arms to the Iraqi Kurds, . . . the Iranians may be trying simultaneously to weaken the military position of ISIS and use influence with the Kurds to slow their bid for complete autonomy.

The Iran-Kurd link makes more sense if we notice that Iran’s backing a U.S. ally in the fight against the terrorist ISIS moves Iran and the U.S. itself closer together against the common enemy, along the path foreign policy guru Les Gelb earlier recommended.

 Peter Beinart, like Gelb a liberal New York City-based Jewish critic of Israel associated with New York’s Council on Foreign Relations, has in the Atlantic similarly hinted at an Iran-U.S. link. Beinart has done so by separating Iran from terrorist entities such as ISIS that plan for direct attacks on the U.S.

According to Beinart, Obama has a coherent strategy: it’s “don’t take on any foreign entity except al Qaeda-related forces.” That means leaving Iran alone:

Obama’s strategy—whether you like it or not—is [h]undreds of thousands can die in Syria; the Taliban can menace and destabilize Afghanistan; Iran can move closer to getting a bomb. No matter. With rare exceptions, Obama only unsheathes his sword against people he thinks might kill American civilians.  . . Electoral politics has driven him in the same direction. There’s a reason Obama spent his reelection campaign declaring that it’s time to “focus on nation-building here at home.” Those declarations won him votes.

Already, we can see the outlines of the coming Iran-U.S. anti-ISIS coalition in Secretary of State John Kerry’s Friday New York Times “we DO have a strategy” op ed. Kerry wrote that ISIS:

if left unchecked, will not be satisfied at stopping with Syria and Iraq. . . Even as they butcher Shiite Muslims and Christians in their effort to touch off a broader ethnic and sectarian conflict, they pursue a calculated strategy of killing fellow Sunni Muslims. . . With . . . the broadest possible coalition of nations, the cancer of ISIS will not be allowed to spread to other countries. . . The United States will hold the presidency of the United Nations Security Council in September, and . . . President Obama will lead a summit meeting . . . to put forward a plan to deal with this collective threat. . . no decent country can support the horrors perpetrated by ISIS, and no civilized country should shirk its responsibility to help stamp out this disease.

Drawing Iran into an anti-ISIS coalition works for Syria, Turkey, Qatar, Hezbollah, Shia Iraq, and Hamas, all already on Iran’s side. But it is most certainly a problem for Israel and Iran’s Sunni Muslim enemies worried about a nuclear, terrorist-helping Iran. Iran’s growing power has brought together Israel with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. Re-read Kerry’s words above. He’s not addressing Shia Iran when he talks of ISIS pursuing “a calculated strategy of killing fellow Sunni Muslims.”

Discussion about Obama’s lack of strategy, along with growing signs some sort of major foreign policy re-alignment is afoot--one that possibly includes a surprise patterned after Nixon’s trip to China--has prompted the 91-year-old Henry Kissinger to educate us once again. Kissinger still believes in the relevancy of the nation-state, balance-of-power strategy he feels kept the peace in his time. Kissinger writes in the Wall Street Journal:

The clash between the international economy and the political institutions that ostensibly govern it . . . weakens the sense of common purpose necessary for world order. The economic system has become global, while the political structure of the world remains based on the nation-state. Economic globalization, in its essence, ignores national frontiers. Foreign policy affirms them.

Yet although Kissinger honors nation states, they are growing ever more irrelevant in the Middle East. Aren’t we able to see that though Kissinger is right about the power of the global economy to disrupt the traditional order worldwide, the chief counterforce isn’t the nation state?  Rather, it’s religion in the form of anti-modern Islam, whether Sunni extremism or Shia extremism, and whether Mecca- or Tehran- or ISIS-based.

The Coming U.S.-Iran(-Russia) Axis

Valerie Jarrett with Iran Flag

Former Council of Foreign Relations president Leslie Gelb continues to press for Obama to partner with Iran.  Gelb is apparently seeking a U.S. foreign policy surprise that parallels what Henry Kissinger achieved with his secret 1971 trip to China on the eve of U.S. defeat in Vietnam. When Kissinger sold rapprochement with China to President Nixon, the two turned disaster into triumph.

Iran is no China, and America’s Middle East problems, serious as they are, don’t compare to the dangers we faced in the Nixon-Kissinger Cold War era. Partnering with Iran would be a pale imitation of Nixon’s opening to China. Nevertheless, here’s evidence, in his latest writings, of Gelb’s effort to replicate the Kissinger strategy:  

•  Gelb kisses up to his “boss” in Kissinger-like fashion, writing,

Mr. Obama always says a lot of smart things—and mostly without Hillary-like hedges. Much more than most foreign policy blabbermouths, he is attuned to the underlying centrality of politics in most world problems, and to the need to seek diplomatic solutions.

• As did Kissinger, Gelb shifts focus to a new enemy to justify a new partner:

If the jihadis are allowed to . . . gain a strong foothold in the Middle East, all other neighboring nations will be seriously jeopardized. But these are not stakes for America alone. The costs are great for dozens of nations. . . the United States . . . must have partners and allies. The jihadis are a direct threat to Assad’s Syria, Russia, Iran. . . Yes, Moscow and Tehran are troublesome[, but] they feel as or more threatened by the jihadis, and would be as or more willing than Washington to contribute to the jihadi defeat. . . which is the bigger threat, Assad or the jihadis, the jihadis or Iran?

We fought in Vietnam to contain China. Kissinger told Nixon the real enemy wasn’t China, it was the Soviet Union. Nixon agreed; paving the way for America's opening to China.

Now Gelb is pushing Obama toward declaring the “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)” the principal enemy (even as he calls them, "only about 327.   .   . riding in circles around the mountains to make it look like they have 2 million"), instead of the Iran-Russia-Syria-Turkey-Qatar-Hezbollah-Hamas grouping that threatens Israel; potentially including a nuclear-armed Iran able to threaten us.

I think Gelb is dangerous, even more so because the Iran-born Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s closest confidante, presumably agrees with Gelb.  Lest you think me an alarmist, read this latest from sober conservative sage Walter Russell Mead:

If there is one fixed star in the administration’s Middle East policy it has been the belief that a ‘grand bargain’ with Iran offers the best hope for regional stabilization. From the campaign trail back in the Democratic primary season in 2008 right up through the current round of negotiations with Iran, President Obama has done his best to steer American policy toward some kind of arrangement with the government in Tehran.

many of the President’s advisers share a belief that the rise of ISIS is as frightening to the mullahs as it is to the West, and that the new jihadi peril will therefore strengthen the factions in Iran who believe in compromise with the West. They will. . . urge President Obama to . . . seize the opportunity for a breakthrough with Iran. U.S. negotiators will sweat blood to meet the new November deadline in talks with Tehran. . . and militarily we may even look for ways to cooperate with Iran against ISIS.

Comment: You can bet “many advisers” means Jarrett. And you can bet this line of thinking freaks out Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Arab Gulf states, and most especially Israel. Still, the pleading tone of Gelb’s article suggests Obama may not yet have signed on to a dramatic “opening to Iran.”

Don't "Party Like It’s 1669"

Charles II (r. 1660-1685)

“What you’ve seen with our politics. . . partly because of the Balkanization of media so people just watch what reinforces their deepest biases, partly because of big money in politics, is increasingly politicians are rewarded for taking the most extreme, maximalist positions.”

--Barack Obama, to New York Timesman Tom Friedman

We have offered three lessons for those who would “tip” America away from its current progressive rule:

• expose the corruption of Democratic crony capitalism at the top; 
• fight for control of American popular culture without losing one’s values, and;
• run female and minority candidates for higher office, including president. 

We’ll take up crony capitalism later. That conservatives must seek out female and minority candidates is obvious on its face. That leaves culture, and the need to contest liberal domination of it.

What our progressive president means when he describes (see above) our politics as 1) Balkanized, 2) dominated by money, and 3) catering to extremism, is that our system 1) is insufficiently progressive, 2) lacks a liberal campaign financing monopoly (in spite of Obama’s 400+ fundraisers), and 3) has yet to crush its “most extreme, maximalist” opposition.

In short, Obama wants the England of Charles II, culturally libertine with a king powerful enough to keep Parliament dissolved. He wants England before the Glorious Revolution (1688) yielded parliamentary rule, before John Locke promulgated an individual right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

A ratings system known as the Bechdel test suggests why the left may not deserve its current cultural monopoly. The Bechdel test looks at how women are portrayed in film. In order to pass the test, a film must accomplish three things:

1. It has to have at least two named women in it; 
2. Those two named women must talk to each other and; 
3. Those two named women must talk to each other about something other than a man. 

According to Katie Pavlich, conservative author of Assault and Flattery:

A majority of major Hollywood films fail the Bechdel test. . . The entire “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, all “Star Wars” movies, “The Social Network,” “Pulp Fiction,” and all but one of the “Harry Potter” movies fail this test. . . When the Bechdel test was applied to major 2013 films in the United States, the majority of them failed.

So Hollywood--misogynistic?

Conservative Andrew Breitbart (1969-2012) used to say that politics is downstream of culture, meaning “any truly successful political turnaround needs to start by changing popular attitudes.” Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg agrees that Hollywood is liberal, but argues America isn’t. Hollywood liberals support abortion rights, but since “Maude,” sitcoms don’t talk about abortion, and nearly every pregnant TV character treats her unborn child as if it’s already a human being.

Goldberg reminds us that:

The Left may be anti-military, but such movies tend to do poorly, which is why we see more pro-military films. Similarly, it’s a safe bet that Hollywood liberals loathe guns. But you wouldn’t know that by what they produce. Not many action stars save the day by quoting a poem. Most Hollywood liberals probably oppose the death penalty, yet they make lots of movies where the bad guy meets a grisly death to the cheers of the audience. The Left rolls its eyes at “family values,” but family values are at the heart of most successful sitcoms and dramas.

One explanation is that while it is true that culture is upstream from politics, reality and, I would argue, morality are upstream from culture. Good stories must align with reality and a sense of justice. They can be set in space or Middle Earth, but if they don’t tap into something real about the human condition, they will fail. As Margaret Thatcher used to say, “The facts of life are conservative.”

It’s true that conservative cultural successes don’t necessarily last--“Duck Dynasty” being a recent example. Still, we are once again witnessing the odd phenomena of conservative box office successes. From an article by the AP’s Lucas Johnson II:

It's the Hollywood ending every studio wants: Low-cost production and high returns at the box office. Filmmakers Alex and Stephen Kendrick seem to have the formula down — grossing nearly $80 million on four films made for less than $4 million combined. Only thing is the Kendrick brothers work far from Hollywood and, outside the world of Christian-themed cinema, many have never heard of their films.

At one point in April, there were four faith-based movies in the Top 20 at the box office, including "Heaven Is for Real," about a 4-year-old boy's account of his trip to heaven. It has grossed more than $99 million on a production budget of $12 million by Sony Pictures.

"Hollywood has taken note," said DeVon Franklin, former Sony senior vice president of production, who oversaw "Heaven Is for Real." The Kendrick brothers . . . are making movies that could see wider release as distributors pay attention to the box office trends in the traditional Bible Belt and beyond. . .While the Kendricks have found success, they're still in the shadows of faith-centric blockbusters like "Noah," which was released in March and has made more than $359 million at the global box office on a production budget of $125 million.

Two possible lessons for dispirited conservatives: 1) Hollywood may not be so liberal after all, and 2) the over-riding urge to make money may explain lesson #1.

The “Tipping Point” Years: 1863, 1914, 1964, 20??

1968: "The Year That.   .   . "

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

--Douglas Adams (1952-2001), author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

1863 is an obvious--and well-marked--”tipping point” year. Slavery ended with 1863‘s Emancipation Proclamation, with the new America defined in Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Gettysburg Address, but most importantly with Gettysburg itself, the battle from which the forces defending slavery never recovered. 1863.

As for the latest “tipping point,” Peggy Noonan talks about a country heading for a crack-up, the very morning after I watched the CNN “Sixties” show on 1968. Now 1968 was America going through a crack-up.  So far, 2014 is no 1968.

Nor does it seem to be even a 1964.

1968 ended post-war America’s muscular Democratic administrations, but 1964 was the New Deal/Fair Deal/New Frontier/Great Society’s “tipping point” year. 1964 was the year of civil rights triumph: Lyndon Johnson orchestrating passage of the law that at last, a century after the Civil War ended, gave blacks their hard-earned place in the sun. It was also a year of Johnson personal triumph; he slaughtered Barry Goldwater in the Fall presidential election, carrying two-thirds of Congress with him.

But 1964 actually turned on what didn’t happen: Kennedy’s “best and brightest” team failed to steer Johnson away from Vietnam, the war that ruined his presidency, transformed his party, and divided the nation. 1964 unfolded in the immediate aftermath of President Kennedy’s assassination, which devastated American optimism, of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem’s assassination that guaranteed deepening involvement in Vietnam, and of publication of Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique, the book that launched women’s liberation.

Every year after 1964 was worse than the year before: 1965, sustained bombing campaign of North Vietnam, U.S. combat troops to South Vietnam; 1966, as escalation continued and combat deaths rose--in color on the evening news--Defense Secretary McNamara privately soured on the war (he would secretly launch the “Pentagon Papers” project a year later); 1967, anti-war protests reached a boil with an October march on the Pentagon as Martin Luther King, Johnson’s close civil rights ally, came out publicly against Johnson's war. Then 1968, the year the country gave up on Vietnam--the year of the Vietcong Tet offensive, of the Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations, of the Chicago Democratic Convention and police riot, and of the election of “I’m not a crook” Richard Nixon--the year our cultural revolution overturned the old order.

Now fifty years on, we are asking, “When will the forces that triumphed in the 1960s ‘triple revolution’ of civil rights, sexual freedom, and women’s rights finally exit the stage?” They won, they rule, things are going badly, but they go on, even if they don’t seem happy.

As conservative writer Heather Wilhelm notes, the

depressing logical endpoint of the “free-spirited” ’60s counterculture [is] government-guaranteed “fairness” paired with forced, humorless conformity[. While] it is important to “know thyself[,” m]any modern progressives. . . lack a basic understanding of what they’ve become.  “Man, when you lose your laugh,” as ’60s icon and Merry Prankster Ken Kesey once noted, “you lose your footing.” Despite their enthusiasm for a growing, invasive state and a community-based thought police, many leftists seem to believe they’re . . . hippies of yore, or community activists fighting the power.

Lawlessness is on the rise, as the “new” establishment, the children of the 1960s, fight to hang on to the top-down, inefficient, big government state they control through Democrats’ money and power. Progressives tell themselves they are the future, ruling growing numbers of minorities and unmarried women (not to mention poor), representing an increasingly dominant popular culture freed from conventional moral constraints. So it seems.

Peggy Noonan, who as we saw watches today’s “crack up,” is intrigued (as are we) by how people missed the biggest “tipping point” of all one hundred years ago, 1914:

As you read of the [Great War] and its aftermath, you are always stopped by this fact: There is no recorded instance of masses of people gathering together to weep the day it was declared. They should have. The beautiful world they were day by day constructing was in jeopardy and ultimately would be consumed. Yet when people heard the news they threw their hats in the air, parading and waving flags in every capital. In Berlin "crowds thronged the streets shouting, cheering, singing patriotic songs." In London the same. In St. Petersburg thousands waved banners and icons. In Paris, as the city's regiments pushed off, "an immense clamour arose as the Marseillaise burst from a thousand throats."

Once again, it's about avoiding a disinclination to, as Douglas Adams suggests, “learn from the experience of others.” Let me suggest three lessons for those who would “tip” America away from its current progressive rule:

• expose the corruption of Democratic crony capitalism at the top;
• fight for control of American popular culture while retaining one’s values, and; 
• run female and minority candidates for higher office, including president.

You Saw It Here First: Obamacare Deliberately Subsidized Only State Exchanges

MIT's Jonathan Gruber and Friend

We earlier argued that the reason Obamacare by law provided subsidies only to people signing up on state exchanges--and not to those signing up on federal exchanges--was to encourage the states to operate the exchanges, in conjunction with the Medicaid bonuses the feds were at the same time providing the states to expand Medicaid coverage. For people lacking employer-based health insurance, Obamacare means either joining an exchange or signing up under expanded Medicaid coverage. So it made sense for states to handle both.

We suggested that after the Supreme Court in 2012 ruled the feds no longer could threaten states with cutting off all Medicaid coverage unless states expanded Medicaid as the feds wanted, states then lost interest both in expanding their Medicaid programs and in running the exchanges, leaving Obamacare’s operation entirely in the feds' hands--an unanticipated event when Democrats first created Obamacare.

We made our argument based upon logic, but without supporting evidence.

Now evidence is in that supports our position. Political guru Michael Barone has found that in 2012, Obamacare proponent and MIT health care expert Jonathan Gruber stated that “all or most states would create their own exchanges because they wouldn't get subsidies if they let the federal government run their exchanges.” As Barone added, “Gruber in 2012 evidently really believed that almost all states would set up their own exchanges because their residents would get more money than if the feds ran the exchange.”

Barone explained, as we had tried to explain,

That's how federal powers have increased over the years. Congress can't order states to adopt policies, but it can dangle money in front of them if they meet certain conditions. That's how we got the 21-year-old drinking age even though the 22nd Amendment recognizes states' powers to regulate alcohol. [It’s] how Medicaid, passed in 1965, worked, too. Forty-nine states signed on by 1972. Only Arizona held out until 1982.

Barone continued, along the lines we earlier argued,

Obamacare required states to expand Medicaid or lose all Medicaid funds. In June 2012, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that that violates the Constitution. Once they had a choice. . . 21 states . . . said no thanks to the extra funds, and three are debating the issue. Only 54% of Americans are receiving Medicaid programs Obamacare promised to give -- or impose on -- everyone. This is not what Obamacare boosters like Gruber . . . expected. They thought Obamacare money would be too tantalizing to resist. But for many or most states it wasn't.

States opted out of the Medicaid expansion. And they also let the feds set up their own Obamacare exchanges. That posed a problem for the feds they rectified--in my view--by illegally allowing the fed-run exchanges to pay out subsidies originally intended only for state exchange use.

We’ll see, someday, whether or not the Supreme Court agrees with Barone (and me).

The Worst Hell: The Great War 100 Years On

Why did a prosperous continent, at the height of its success as a source and agent of global wealth and power and at one of the peaks of its intellectual and cultural achievement, choose to risk all it had won for itself and all it offered to the world in the lottery of a vicious and local internecine conflict?

--Sir John Keegan, British military historian

For nearly a century after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo (1815), Europe reaped the benefits of peace. Until the first weekend of August 100 years ago, that is, when it all exploded away, forever.

We know how the horrors of the Great War led directly to World War II. The two are of a piece; Germany punished by the Versailles Treaty but left still whole, rose again to tear Europe apart in 1939, just 21 years after the World War I armistice. When I first saw German cities in 1955, another 16 years on, great blocks of buildings remained in ruin, while war-ravaged Naples was still a poverty-ridden mess. Yet Western European recovery by 1955 had crossed over to early prosperity, the year of the Brussels Treaty which gave birth to the Common Market.

That was Western Europe. The Cold War, a legacy of World War II and World War I’s grandson, did not end for Eastern Europe until 1991. Europe wreaked for nearly a century, by its own hand.

Better leaders could have avoided the Great War and its subsequent European and worldwide disasters. Empires by 1914 had become too unwieldy to hold together, but fearful aristocrats residing in Berlin, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Paris, Rome, London, and Constantinople were far too unsure of their own rising middle and working classes (as well as their women) to relinquish the power of nationalism, the power that united all classes against a common enemy. Europe needed internal democracy, and Europe needed to accept the break-up of empires that would have accompanied democracy. Instead, Europe got war, along with internal democracy and empire disintegration anyway.

We have already noted Harvard political science professor Graham Allison’s insightful examination of why leaders are so unable to correct a wrong course of action until well after the “turning point,” why they persist even as the damage of their misguided actions rolls through their nations. Of such a nightmare, World War I is Example #1.

World Wars I and II formed a single, unrepaired disaster. That means no group of leaders ever did more damage to the world’s people than the small men who took us into the Great War. . . exactly 100 years ago.

We must learn from history.

National Journal’s Ron Brownstein: What Democratic Split?

Ron Brownstein

Our previous entry talked of a Democratic Party division between younger, social issue liberals and older liberals focused on economic issues. Ron Brownstein, National Journal political columnist, discusses surveys that more conventionally treat the main split as Democrats v. Republicans, while siding with the party’s future, the youth who believe it’s all about culture:

the parties are escalating their conflicts over a broad suite of issues that divide the electorate along cultural lines, including [contraception,immigration,] gun control, gay rights, abortion, and climate change (which politically pivots on trust in science). Combined, these confrontations are stamping the GOP as what I've called a "Coalition of Restoration" primarily representing older, white, religiously devout, and nonurban voters who fear that hurtling change is undermining traditional American values. Democrats in turn are championing a younger, more urbanized, diverse, and secular "Coalition of Transformation" that welcomes the evolution in America's racial composition and cultural mores.

Brownstein credits Barack Obama for “cementing the Democrats' connection with [the younger] coalition's cultural priorities.” Brownstein believes that even if Hillary Clinton embraces more centrist fiscal or foreign policies than the President, “on cultural issues Obama has led his party across a Rubicon.”

Brownstein points to Obama's

defiant recent pledges to act unilaterally if necessary to ensure equal workplace treatment of gays, protect undocumented immigrants, confront climate change, and overcome the Hobby Lobby decision allowing religious-based private companies to exclude contraception from their health insurance plans.

In contrast, Brownstein tells us, Republicans are solidifying against Obama policies that have solid Democratic support, praising Hobby Lobby as reaffirming religious freedom, blocking with little dissent immigration reform, workplace protections for gays, and universal background checks, while “uniformly” decrying Obama's climate initiatives.

Brownstein believes not only that on each of these conflicts, polls show Obama's position represents majority opinion today, but also that the majority will likely grow because the groups that generally support his views most are increasing as a share of voters.

He’s right about gay-related issues: more than three-fifths of Americans supported a ban on employers discriminating against gay workers, and support among millennials and college-educated white women is over 70%. And while just over half of all Americans support gay marriage, that number also reaches 70% among millennials and college-educated white women.

And it’s true that failing to support immigration reform will badly damage the GOP, because the country is increasingly non-white. But Brownstein glides over rising opposition to Democrats’ stand on what’s now called “climate change,” on abortion, and on gun control, while even he admits that Hispanics and African-Americans are more conservative than upscale whites on both gay rights and abortion.

Brownstein concludes that “cultural affinity has become the Democrats' most powerful electoral weapon,” one that “may make it tougher” to hold red-state House and Senate seats, but will improve the party’s position with “cosmopolitan” states, unmarried women, youth, and minorities, “a trade most Democrats would probably take in a heartbeat.”  

Comment: Readers of this blog already know that Obama’s strategy for dealing with a sick economy and a controversially isolationist foreign policy is to emphasize what Brownstein calls “cultural issues”--specific appeals to the party’s victimhood-based interest groups. So far, it works.

Lookie Here! Democrats Divided, Polls Say

Millennial Mark Zuckerberg

Thomas Edsall in the New York Times wrote about an important June Pew survey of more than 10,000 people. Pew has found a cohort of younger voters who are Democrats, but much less focused on economic redistribution than on personal and sexual autonomy.

Pew earlier noted that

huge generation gaps have opened up in our political and social values, our economic well-being, our family structure, our racial and ethnic identity, our gender norms, our religious affiliation, and our technology use, point[ing] toward a future marked by the most striking social, racial, and economic shifts the country has seen in a century.

Andrew Kohut, Pew founder, believes

There is a libertarian streak that is apparent among these left-of-center young people. Socially liberal but very wary of government. Why? They came of age in an anti-government era when government doesn’t work. They are very liberal on interpersonal racial dimension, but reject classic liberal notions about ways of achieving social progress for minorities.

The younger folks’ problems with government is surprising, given an earlier Pew survey that found youth less hostile to socialism than their elders.  Still another, non-Pew, study found that “the Millennial generation was less likely to recommend progressive taxation” than older generations.

Also, a Reason Foundation study on the views of younger voters showed that

Social and cultural issues are currently more central to millennials’ political judgments than economic policy. When asked to explain the reasons for their ideological identifications, social and cultural concerns largely defined their labels.

Edsall likes yet another study reporting that while younger Democrats are less committed to traditional economic liberalism, the partisan commitment these voters made to the Democratic Party will endure; that “political events of a voter’s [life] around the age of 18” are “enormously important” in fixing long-term partisan preferences.”  

The Surveys

Pew found major differences among two predominantly white core Democratic constituencies: “solid liberals” of the traditional left, 69% white, average age 46, deeply progressive on both economic and social issues; and younger voters, 68% white, average age 38, the “next generation left.”

• Can “most people can get ahead if they’re willing to work hard,” or are “hard work and determination no guarantee of success for most people?” 
• “solid liberals”: 67%, said hard work is no guarantee of success. 
• “next generation left”: 77%, said you can get ahead if you work hard. 

• “Should government do more to solve problems,” or “Is government is trying to do too much?”
• “solid liberals”: 73-20%, said government should do more. 
• “next generation left”: 50-44%, said government doing too much. 

• Are “circumstances” to blame for poverty, or is it more “a lack of effort?” 
• “solid liberals”: 83-9%, said circumstances. 
• “next generation left”: only 47-42%, said circumstances. 

• “Should government do more to help needy Americans, even if it means more debt,” or is it that “government cannot afford to do much more?” 
• “solid liberals”: 83-12%, said to go into debt.
• “next generation left”: 56-39%, said cannot afford much more. 

• “Does Wall Street help the American economy more than it hurts?” 
• “solid liberals”: 56-36%, said Wall Street hurts. 
• “next generation left”: 56-36%, said Wall Street helps. 

• “Is racial discrimination the main reason blacks can’t get ahead” or “are blacks who can’t get ahead mostly responsible for their own condition?” 
• “solid liberals”: 80-10%, blamed discrimination. 
• “next generation left”: 68-19%, said blacks shape their own condition. 

• Does the “U.S. need to continue making changes to give blacks equal rights,” or has “U.S. has made the changes needed to give blacks equal rights?” 
• “solid liberals”: 91-6%, said continue making changes. 
• “next generation left”: 67-28%, said the country has done enough. 

Edsall, understating the obvious, concludes that while younger voters may lean Democratic, they “do not fit into traditional left-right categories.”

The Reason survey found that

while millennials see themselves as closer to Republican [] Chris Christie on economic issues, and closer to [Democrat] Hillary Clinton on social issues, they . . . are voting for Clinton.

Reason also found that every prospective Republican presidential candidate — Christie, Rand Paul, Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee, Jeb Bush and Bobby Jindal — received more noes than yeses from millennials, by margins ranging from two noes for every yes to four noes for every yes. And while young voters are more pro-business than anti-business, just 54% believe corporate profits are about right or too low, while 44% say corporate profits are too high.

In some respects, Reason’s millennial voters held orthodox liberal views: they support more spending to help the poor, even if it means higher taxes; government action to guarantee a living wage, enough for everyone to eat and have a place to sleep; and a government guarantee of health insurance.

Otherwise, millennials in the Reason survey sounded like Republicans. By a margin of 70-25%, they chose “competition is primarily good; it stimulates people to work hard and develop new ideas” over “competition is primarily harmful; it brings out the worst in people.” By 64-25%, they picked “profit is generally good because it encourages businesses to provide valued products to attract customers” over “profit is generally bad because it encourages businesses to take advantage of their customers and employees.” And majorities believe that wealth should be distributed according to achievement, not need; that “people should be allowed to keep what they produce, even if there are others with greater needs.”  

The Reaction

One commenter on the surveys’ results concluded, “The Democrats hold onto us only because of the Republic[an] obsession with religion, sexual repression and environmental denial.”

Similarly, Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg believes generational differences within the Democratic Party won’t damage the party’s prospects in the short-to-medium term:

differences within the Democratic Party. . . become irrelevant when confronted by a Republican Party determined to turn elections into cultural conflicts. These differences don’t matter in the context of a Republican party that brings out the commonality of the Democratic Party.”

David Leege, an emeritus professor at Notre Dame, thinks younger Democrats “are products of a totally different environment and culture than their grandparents;” leaving behind “the communitarianism of the elders” for “individualism.”  Leege argues that “the combination of unanchored and individualistic electorates and the post-Citizens United political arena,” i.e., big money, may make elections “perpetually close.”

Leege worries that if Democrats seek to gain strength by shifting from orthodox economic liberalism to an emphasis on protecting personal liberties from conservative moral constraint, they will erode remaining opposition to lower tax rates, help reduce social spending, and facilitate a paring back of commercial and financial regulation.

Edsall concludes that a divided Democratic Party, vulnerable to business elite lobbying pressures, may give Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce increased leverage “despite – or even because of – Democratic political success.”

Comment

History now teaches that moral rectitude in traditional, male-run, WASP America was designed to cement the old power structure in place. Rectitude, along with the supportive, GOP-based power elite, is gone. The new, elite university-bred power structure, is non-religious, sexually free, and fixed on an “environmental protection” replacement religion. Increasingly wealthy, it no longer rejects an alliance with its fellow elite institution achievers in the new age business (Google, Amazon, Apple, Verizon, Costco) and financial (Berkshire-Hathaway) world.

Today's America is right-side up, or upside-down, depending upon your politics. Republicans tend to be with the people outside this new power structure, less affluent, more religious, and more concerned about how moral decline has undermined the family that used to underpin the American working class.