November 06, 2014
It’s too bad that the Post’s political columnist Dana Milbank does not have a very good memory. He devoted his column to complaining that President Obama didn’t offer any change in course yesterday, unlike President Bush after the Republicans lost Congress in 2006. Milbank points out that Obama offered no changes in policy or even in the structure of his cabinet, unlike Bush who dumped Donald Rumsfeld as Defense secretary.
There is an obvious difference between 2006 and 2014. It was clear in 2006 that the war in Iraq was the main issue contributing to the Republican defeat. Therefore it was reasonable for Bush to offer some change in this policy. What issue would Milbank highlight as causing the Democrats’ defeat in 2014 that would warrant a change in course?
Should Obama abandon the push for a higher minimum wage, even though initiatives on this issue won overwhelmingly even in red states? Should he propose repeal of the Affordable Care Act, a position that even Republicans have abandoned? Should he do another push for cuts to Medicare and Social Security, in spite of the fact that most of the Democrats who had pushed cuts got handed their heads on Tuesday? How about getting into a full-fledged land war against ISIS? Perhaps a quarantine on health care workers across the country just in case one of them treated someone with Ebola?
The reality is that the Republicans didn’t win by pushing any issues that appeal in a big way to the public, therefore there is nothing that Obama could take away from their victory to bring his administration more in line with public opinion. Certainly if he could advance policies that would do more to bring the economy to full employment and to reverse the upward redistribution of income over the last three decades it would likely garner popular support. However this would almost certainly mean working against the Republicans elected this week rather than with them.
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