The Colbert Democrats

Leftward veers, comedians' sneers — the electorate is unamused.

(By Charles Krauthammer, National Review Online) - A president’s first midterm election is inevitably a referendum on his two years in office. The bad news for Democrats is that President Obama’s “re-elect” number is 38 percent — precisely Bill Clinton’s in October 1994, the eve of the wave election that gave Republicans control of the House for the first time in 40 years.

Yet this same poll found that 65 percent view Obama favorably “as a person.” The current Democratic crisis is not about the man — his alleged lack of empathy, ability to emote, etc., requiring remediation with backyard, shirt-sleeved shoulder rubbing with the folks — but about the policies.

And the problem with the policies is twofold: ideology and effectiveness. First, Obama — abetted by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid — tried to take a center-right country to the left. They grossly misread the 2008 election. It was a mandate to fix the economy and restore American confidence. Obama read it as a mandate to change the American social contract, giving it a more European social-democratic stamp, by fundamentally extending the reach and power of government in health care, energy, education, finance, and industrial policy.