Trying to get re-elected in a country where most people still see big government and high taxes as evils to be avoided is a big problem for Barack Obama. But it’s not a dilemma that interests the New York Times. Obama’s recent turn to class warfare encourages the newspaper, but as far as they are concerned, Obama’s soak-the-rich rhetoric pales beside the advocacy of Elizabeth Warren.
For the Times, the former Harvard Law professor isn’t just a viable Democratic alternative to Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown. As the paper editorialized yesterday, Warren’s collectivist battle cry ought to serve as the model for Obama and his party in 2012. The Times editorial page’s crush on Warren is such that they have proclaimed a YouTube video of one of her campaign speeches as exactly what every Democrat ought to be saying. But before Democrats go down this road, they should think clearly about whether they really want to go to the American people next year running on a platform that channels the Great Society liberalism of the 1960s as reimagined by the Occupy Wall Street crowd.
While the paper describes her position as “informed and measured populism,” Warren’s full-throated defense of the idea that every citizen ought to consider themselves thralls of the state is remarkable chiefly for the way it assumes voters will ignore the results of what a half-century of liberal governance wrought in this country.
Warren’s basic premise is every individual owes the state for the right to conduct economic activity. While all but the most extreme libertarians would agree basic government services must be paid for with taxes, Warren goes further than that in her belief a “big chunk” of an individual’s income belongs to the state that can then “pay it forward” to help others. But the paying forward isn’t to help children, as she asserts. It is to the government and its public worker unions and other structures that exist to hinder the ability of businesses to create wealth. This is the same mindset that drove American governance from the New Deal until the collapse of the welfare state in the late 20th century. But like all bad ideas, this collectivist blueprint is resurfacing. The Times is absolutely correct when it characterizes Warren’s speeches as a cleaned-up version of the same socialist claptrap spouted at Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.
If Democrats really want to contest the next election by demanding a bigger government with its hands in the taxpayers’ pockets, they are free to listen to Warren and the Times. The idea that Americans want to go back to this unabashed liberalism is one that has no basis but the political prejudices of leftists who long for Obama to stop trying to appeal to mainstream opinion. It is unlikely to deceive a public that understands the Democrats have taken a bad situation and made it much worse with a trillion dollar stimulus and Obamacare. But it is amusing to see a newspaper that so often chides Republicans for appealing to their right-wing base urging Democrats to walk off the cliff while reciting liberal talking points of the past.
