The Democratic Civil War

The Democratic uncivil war has begun. Pelosi’s minions are hypocritically blasting Obama off-the-record for leading them off a cliff, progressives are whining and pointing fingers, moderates are abandoning Obama’s agenda, and in Iowa the Democrats are even running ads attacking the Republican’s health care plan for being too much like ObamaCare. Oh my. Over the past few weeks, I’ve written various articles explaining why the left is falling out of love with Obama. Today it’s time to speculate what will happen next.

Falling out of love is never a smooth process. So expect the uncivil war to take place in fits and spurts.

The first thing you’re going to notice is that over the next couple months, you will read a lot of off-the-record finger pointing. Fall guys will be vetted, and a list of people will be compiled to be purged after the election, including White House people, political directors, party leaders, pollsters, and consultants.

As the election nears, one of two things will happen. If the polls get closer, look for everyone except the extreme left to close ranks until the election. The extreme left will continue to attack moderates (and now Obama) because they have come to realize that this crew will not deliver the socialist utopia they crave, but the rest will talk about a “Democratic resurgence” and how much they love each other. If the polls don’t get closer, look for a true blood bath, with moderates literally running against Obama/Pelosi and leftists openly threatening to purge their party. This will be so bad that even the MSM will need to take note.

Once the election happens, behaviors will depend on how badly things turn out for the Democrats. Obama has been trying to lower expectations. His spokespeople have gone from “we always knew we were going to lose a few seats, but we’ll maintain our majorities” to “people are angry and I can’t blame them (Republicans and weak Democrats betrayed us)” to “we might lose the House.” And in truth, this has been somewhat effective. At this point, expectations are so low that anything less than losing the House could conceivably be considered a victory within Democratic ranks, which is why Obama is stupid to let Biden try to raise expectations as he is doing now.

Yet, "win" or lose, the Democrats face a huge problem. The Democrats’ loss will be the result of their leftist talk and leftist actions. But the people most likely to lose their seats will be the moderates, because the leftists represent socialist ghettos and are immune from the American people. With the moderates gone, the remaining crew will be made up of the most lunatic and most angry members of the party. They will not accept any interpretation of the election other than: “we need to go as far left as possible.” And the words “lost opportunity” will be their battle cry.

That presents a recipe for chaos. The Senate is likely to be even more moderate than before (especially with the loss of reconciliation -- something I think was done intentionally to give Democrats an excuse to moderate (see below)), and Obama is one of the most indecisive Presidents we’ve ever had. So this could turn into a battle royale between the desperate and the crazy, with Bozo the Clown mediating.

If the election does turn out as badly as expected, then look for open warfare, with both on and off-the-record sniping, challenges to committee chairman and party leaders, sponsoring of primary opponents, typical leftist tactics like protests and disrupting speaking engagement, attack ads, withholding of money, and calls for purges based on purity, rather than just looking for a few fall guys.

The war (open or guerrilla) is likely to continue right up until the early part of 2012, when the presidential election season really begins. If a prominent leftist chooses to challenge Obama, which will happen if their losses are big enough, e.g. they lose the Senate and 100 seats in the House, then look for a truly bloody war of leftist versus Obama, with all the recriminations including “sell out” and “failure” being thrown at him. A weakened Obama still would win the primary and then go on to a landslide defeat in the general election, unless we choose an unelectable Republican, which is always possible.

If the losses are not big enough to bring out a challenger, then look for behind the scenes sniping at Obama, but few public attacks. Although, the wild card will be how Obama handles the House-Senate war. His best bet would actually be that the Republicans win both houses of Congress. That would let him talk big to the left, but simultaneously would keep him from having to enact anything leftist because the Republicans would never send him anything like that. But it looks unlikely that we will win the Senate, so expect that Obama will need to mediate between the two wings of his party, and look for that to lead to disaster.

After November 2012, which I can’t see Obama winning -- to win, he would need to move far to the right to meet the American people, but his instinct and his party will demand a strong move to the left -- look for the floodgates to open. That’s when they will abandon Obama and treat him like they treated Jimmy Carter in the 1980s, as an incompetent pariah. (We might even hear, as some on the left incredibly claimed about Carter during the later part of the 1980s, that he was really a right-wing President.)

Of course, by then, they will have their new Messiah, so odds are that the savaging of Obama will be short and nasty and that they’ll quickly move on to worshiping their new hero.

That’s how I see things over the next two years.


*** The reconciliation thing: By not passing an omnibus budget this year, the Democrats have lost the power to use reconciliation next year. This means they can't get around the filibuster with a 51-49 vote. Some have suggested this was a mistake by Harry Reid, but I think it was intentional. I think that Reid did this either (1) to prevent a possible Republican majority ramming things through -- which means Reid sees things as much worse for Democrats in November than others are saying, or (2) it means that Reid wants to ensure that the filibuster is there to allow them to argue that a far-left approach (the one that will be advocated in the House) is not possible in the Senate. Thus, he could protect moderate Democratic Senators from an out-of-control House minority or, even worse, a very small ideological-lockstep majority.