Scarcely two years ago, the Democratic Party was in the driver’s seat.
Or so it seemed.
Barack Obama had just won the biggest victory by a Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and the party had rolled up huge margins in both the House and Senate (eventually gaining the all-important 60 seats in the upper body).
Who’d have thought that, 24 months later, Obama would be signing an extension of the Bush-era tax cuts that he had demonized in 2008 — and spinning the humiliation as a win?
Who could have imagined that — despite still controlling Congress — Democrats would be forced to yank a $1.1 trillion pork-laden spending bill off the Senate floor?
Instead, they’ll have to pass a smaller, interim measure — leaving it to the in coming Republicans to present a more restrained version.
Meanwhile, Democrats are marshaling their depleted forces this weekend in an effort to rescue what remains of their once-ambitious agenda — the DREAM Act that many see as quasi-amnesty for illegal aliens; a repeal of the ban on gays serving openly in the armed services, and START, a ’70s-style nuclear-arms-con trol treaty.
What the hell happened?
ObamaCare, for one thing.
Sure, it became law — but not before enraging the swath of America between the west bank of the Hudson River and the Pacific Coast Ranges.
You know: The part that pretty much glowed cherry-red on Election Day.
The mountains of debt created by Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid didn’t help the Democrats either — nor did the multitrillion-dollar deficit increases projected for the years immediately ahead.
For their pains, Pelosi will presently assume the leadership of the House minority; Reid has a cabal of Democrats so spooked by the election that they might just as well be Republicans — and Obama is channeling Triangulator-in-Chief Bill Clinton.
That may work for the president. The American electorate is nothing if not mercurial.
But, as it stands, the party enters the next federal election cycle having taken a horrific drubbing on taxation and spending — and having to defend a record that includes advocating limited amnesty for illegal aliens, open homosexuality in the military and substantial nuclear disarmament.
Plus ObamaCare.
Hardly a happy place, we think.