Doomed Democrats

Never ones to let a preachable moment go to waste, triumphant Democrats are in full lecture mode, jazzed by Obama's reelection. I say let them have their fun. They are in trouble and they don't even know it.

It's Liberty versus Tyranny

Rand Paul gets it right. The old Left-Right paradigm no longer explains our nation's politics. Personal Liberty - Big Statism more accurately frames the argument.

SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): I think we have a confusing spectrum, this left-right spectrum doesn't always work for people [...]  There are all kinds of issues that don't neatly fit in the left-right paradigm that I think would help, because we're not doing very well in a lot of these states, these purple and blue states.   (RCP - Rand Paul)

Progressive Tories

Joel Kotkin rightly pegs progressives as America's Tories.  Obama supporters such as Andrew Sullivan have said as much.  It also jibes nicely with Walter Russell Mead's observation that progressives are now the entrenched, dogmatic conservatives.

Progressives are hidebound and bereft of new ideas. Their stock answer to any and all problems is more restrictions on personal liberty and higher taxes. They bitterly cling to 100-year-old ideas as they fight radical liberals like Paul Ryan and Rand Paul, who compete with one another to see who can take the biggest wrecking ball to the FDR Fortress that the progressive Long Marchers have constructed over the past century.

Democrats are the Party of the 1%

Despite its opportunistic use of populist rhetoric, the Obama administration has presided over widespread economic distress – with the average household now earning considerably less than it did four years ago. This trend has worsened during the current "recovery," even as the Federal Reserve's policies have generated record profits for corporate and Wall Street grandees.

It has been a particular boon time for a new rising class of oligarchs from Silicon Valley, which has embraced Obama with money and technical expertise. Not surprisingly, the ultra-affluent coastal areas have become primary supporters of the administration, which in November won eight of the nation's 10 wealthiest counties, many of them handily. (Joel Kotkin)

Democrats are the Enemy of the Poor and Middle Class

Please don't skip these next three paragraphs.  They are damning.

The growing gaps between the "1 percent" and everyone else have been particularly marked in those regions under the most complete progressive control. The Holy Places of urbanism, such as New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., also suffer some of the worst income inequality.

In these regions, the so-called "creative class" is courted by politicians, developers and corporate big-wigs. Meanwhile their putative political allies, in places like Oakland and parts of New York's the outer boroughs, experience seemingly irrepressible permanent unemployment and, increasingly, rising crime.

Perhaps the most outrageous example of the dual nature of the new progressive economy, notes Walter Russell Mead, can be seen in Detroit, where a shrinking, debt-ridden and dysfunctional city that fails its largely poor residents has generated $474 million since 2005 for well-connected Wall Street bond issuers.  (Joel Kotkin)

Democrat Ideas have Failed

"We have created a regulatory framework that is reducing employment prospects in the very sectors that huge shares of our population need if they are to reach the middle class," notes economist John Husing.

A onetime Democratic activist, Husing laments how, in progressive California, green energy policies have driven up electricity costs to twice as high as those in competitor states, such as Utah, Texas and Washington, and considerably above those of neighboring Arizona and Nevada.

These and other regulatory policies, he suggests, are largely responsible for the Golden State missing out on the country's manufacturing rebound, losing jobs, while others, not only Texas but also in the Great Lakes, have expanded jobs in this sector.  (Joel Kotkin)

The Democrat Party's only hope is that the 99% doesn't wake up and smell the coffee.