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January 2, 2008
Matthew Yglesias in an article inThe Guardian says that a year after the Democrats gaining control of Congress has not achieved much.
The hoped-for dramatic expansion of the child health insurance programme S-Chip? Didn't happen. Transformation of American energy policy? Didn't happen. The "carried interest" loophole that lets private equity billionaires pay lower tax rates than their secretaries? Still open. No Child Left Behind? Unchanged, despite the hubbub. Surveillance? Same as ever. And, of course, the war in Iraq continues despite its steady unpopularity.
Others agree with the not much judgement. The reason Yglesias puts forward for this is that the combination of George Bush's veto pen and the Republican party's unprecedented use of the filibuster has made it essentially impossible to pass much of anything that's worthwhile. The Republicans are playing movement loyalty.
Yglesias adds that this kind of Republican resistance is:
something worth keeping in mind as we look at the presidential race. Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama are all running on substantively similar domestic policy platforms, and primarily arguing about who has the best chance of getting things through. Looking back on 2007, one important thing to keep in mind is that tactics and "theories of change" can't overcome basic math - you either have the votes to pass your bills or you don't, and with all three candidates promising much, much, much more than the Democratic Congress ever did, there's real reason to doubt that the votes will be there.
Rather sobering isn't it. What I currently find most troubling about the US is the religious absolutism of a fundamentalist, and anti-intellectual Protestantism that is pitted against, and out to destroy, liberal modernity. Bush and Rove used this sectarianism to deepen the culture war, to Republican advantage. Consequently, I have little time for a Huckabee or a Romney.
Will the Democrats change this? In an interesting article in the New Atlantic Andrew Sullivan says yes, but only Barack Obama, as he alone is capable of bridging the religious secular divide:
You cannot confront the complex challenges of domestic or foreign policy today unless you understand this gulf and its seriousness. You cannot lead the United States without having a foot in both the religious and secular camps. This, surely, is where Bush has failed most profoundly. By aligning himself with the most extreme and basic of religious orientations, he has lost many moderate believers and alienated the secular and agnostic in the West. If you cannot bring the agnostics along in a campaign against religious terrorism, you have a problem. Here again, Obama, by virtue of generation and accident, bridges this deepening divide.
Obama has the capacity to uphold religious conviction without disturbing or alienating the secular voters, especially on the left.
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Gary
I just do not understand the Iowa caucas system. It is not just going down to the local community hall and voting as we do in an election. The rules for voting for the candidates in each of the two main parties are different! It's real odd.