Obama Has Wrecked Liberalism

Member Group : Jerry Shenk

History will record Barack Obama’s presidency as the high-water mark of American progressivism, the period during which liberal governance briefly flared, then flamed out.

A few more elections may be necessary to make it fully apparent, but because of its failures and, especially, Obama’s excesses, overreach, prevarications and lawlessness, American political liberalism has fallen politically moribund.

It may take rallies in left-leaning jurisdictions and their inevitable collapses to persuade everyone who remains persuadable, although, for years, observant Americans have witnessed the failures of governments controlled by liberal elected officials in Washington, in states and in municipalities.
Any objective appraisal of the November election results should convince the American left that the party’s over.

Liberals disappointed, bewildered, even angered by the devastating midterms must face some fundamental truths.

Among the strongest political indicators entering the final quarter of Obama’s presidency is that the Tea Party movement inspired by his policies is still alive, and Occupy Wall Street is dead.

More than six years after the breathless appearance of "Hope and Change," practical Democrats no longer promote Obamacare; none are embracing Obama’s disastrous foreign policy outcomes; few speak favorably of executive amnesty; and cap-and-trade legislation is a vague memory.

Democrats avoid discussing the massive national debt, the slowest and poorest economic recovery since World War II, and none mention Obama’s broken promises of a transparent administration and federal bureaucracy.
Despite delays of the worst provisions of Obamacare, Obama’s signature program remains unpopular. Obamacare will become even more reviled if it survives court challenges.

Ironically, more than 1400 Obamacare exemptions were granted by the Obama administration, mostly to liberal allies in labor and among special interests. Liberals have effectively discredited themselves if they don’t want or trust a program they’ve sought to impose on America for decades.

No matter how diligently the left exploits random, senseless mass killings, most Americans oppose gun control. In the same way the Kyoto Protocol couldn’t attract even Democratic support, climate treaties remain Senate non-starters.

A significant majority of Americans understands that, when federal law is ignored as Obama has ignored immigration law, sovereignty is lost and chaos results.

Started on a falsehood, "hands up, don’t shoot" protests won’t persuade Americans to refuse police departments broad discretion in the use of force. And a majority of Americans still accepts that enhanced interrogations may be justifiable under some circumstances.

Most Americans haven’t reached the conclusions liberals expected on any of these issues, because liberal media, higher education and other sources of left-wing indoctrination are gradually losing their power to influence public opinion.

None of the "evidence" the left accepts as irrefutable confirmation of their long-cherished liberal policies has been embraced by the nation at large.
Obama squandered his and fellow liberals’ future political capital on programs they coveted but which traditional Americans dislike or with which they disagree.

Bench-thinning losses to conservative candidates at state and local levels should be even more distressing to the left than their national electoral and policy failures.

A wave of Republican governors in blue Midwestern and Northeastern states (Snyder in Michigan, Walker in Wisconsin, Kasich in Ohio, Baker in Massachusetts) and large GOP gains in state legislatures nationwide suggest an almost comprehensive rejection of liberal policies, that the country as a whole is becoming more conservative.

The anti-liberal backlash will worsen as the self-styled imperial Obama obstinately presses on domestically and the malign effects of his foreign policy develop.

Democratic politicians are beginning to distance themselves from a president who lies to and misleads Americans, who has overseen numerous bureaucratic scandals, and who pursued policies that not only failed, but some of which, like Obamacare, were imposed on America knowing they would never work as advertised.

Conservatives will have help in dismantling the policies of the Obama years. In order to advance or, in some cases, simply preserve their careers and resurrect the party after (or before) Obama leaves office, ambitious Democrats will have no options other than denying, ignoring or rebuking the unpopular, destructive policies they enabled or defended during Obama’s two terms.
Practically speaking, it’s difficult to imagine another candidate as liberal as Obama being elected president anytime soon.

America’s experience with Barack Obama has ensured that, for years, American presidents will most likely emerge from the political right.

Sorry, Hillary.

http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2015/01/how_long_will_it_take_liberals.html#incart_river