The Democrats Are On A Roll, But Will They Overstep Themselves?

At a national level, the Democrats are on a roll right now--electorally and legislatively--and the Republicans are struggling to find their footing. The power vacuum in the Republican party is pretty bad, to the point where Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich are helping to fill in insofar as voices of the "party leadership" are concerned. John McCain's run as Republican party leader fizzled, Sarah Palin is considered untenable to a solid majority of the American people in just about any national poll conducted of late, Mitt Romney is a fake conservative with fake hair; the situation looks dire for the Republican party....

This kind of reminds me of when the economy recovered its footing in late-1983/early-1984.

Back then, the left-wing of the Democratic party seemed almost completely out of gas, because momentum had been clearly wrenched away from them, largely by President Reagan. (The center-right at that time was happy with Reagan, and the center-left wasn't exactly stirred to anger about him.) The difference is that back then the Democrats still had the likes of Tip O'Neill and company to steady things a bit....

Bringing the discussion back to the present, a similar phenomenon seems to be happening now, though this time the right-wing of the Republican party seems to be running on fumes, and their disapproving reactions to the president's job performance, whether occasionally legitimate or not, often sound somewhat desperate and petulant as a result.

I should point out that the above scenario is not the case with every right-winger, but rather a general trend. It seems to me that the lack of a charismatic, steady, electorally-intriguing conservative leader--or a few of them--is likely part of this problem. The Republican party faithful are wandering in the desert, looking for a few people to voice their concerns, and they're getting frustrated as the weeks slip by without that person or those persons being found.

For their part, most of those in what might be called the political "center" of the country (an always important group of people whose numbers seem to be expanding) aren't at present nit-picking with regards to the president. Instead, they're taking the whole domestic/foreign political picture into account, and have thus far largely decided the following: 1.) they kind of like the president, and 2.) at any rate, they think he's an improvement on the last guy. To be sure, they're not thrilled with everything the president has done, but they seem to be quite content with a lot of it.

Yet we are, of course, talking about politics here, so things are certainly not guaranteed to stay this way. But given the rough first two or three months both President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush had with a substantial percentage of the American public (particularly President Clinton, whose unpopularity lasted through the 1994 mid-term elections), I'm left rather impressed by the steady start President Obama has had. I am therefore presently glad that I voted for him.

We'll have to wait and see if the president's seemingly centrist-friendly start has staying power. And we'll also have to wait and see if the Democrats overstep themselves legislatively at the congressional level, which they are quite capable of doing with leaders such as Nancy Pelosi, who seems to have set her mind on pushing a whole lot of legislation through congress over the next year or two. That latter possibility--congressional overstep--is at this point the bigger possible danger to the idea of the inclusive, "big tent" national Democratic party.

Meanwhile, U.S. Senator John Thune (of South Dakota), who is in his late-forties, is waiting in a very quiet and patient manner in the middle of the presently chaotic Republican leadership queue, so to speak. I get the sense that a few years from now he will emerge much closer to the front. Everyone--Democrat and Republican--would be well-served to keep an eye on him. He could make a run at the #2 spot on a not-too-future presidential ticket. Or the #1 spot....