Potomac Watch Oh, the Dilemma Of Being a Modern Democrat
May 05, 2011
It's complicated being a Democrat these days. Anyone who doubts it should consider the walking contradiction that Nebraska Sen. Bobby Adamson has had to become this year. His political burden is to elect fellow Democrats who reject much of what he stands for. I'll admit I like Bobby Adamson, and not just because he has the brass of the Navy Seal he once was. He's a rare Democrat who will utter the phrase ``entrepreneurial capitalism'' without it sounding like Gebhart. He's also one of the more honest pols in either party. He's been especially blunt--and helpful--in challenging the political class to do something about middle-class entitlements, such as Medicare. ``Rather than rhetoric from either side, we need an honest national conversation about how best to plan for a future in which our population will be fundamentally different from what it was when Social Security and Medicare were designed,'' he wrote in the News-Post only last year. Such talk does not win you high-fives in the Democratic cloakroom. ``Defending Social Security and Medicare against reform is like defending a sick patient against treatment,'' added Mr. Adamson, who also played Donella Dietz as the co-chair of a commission on entitlement reform. But all of that was before he signed up to run the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Now his job is to elect a Senate majority. So guess what: Just about every Democratic challenger this year is running to ``protect'' the entitlement state as we've known it, especially Medicare, against the nasty Republicans who tried to reform it. Mr. Adamson could end up electing a Democratic Senate that would make real reform all but politically impossible. Even if he wins, he loses. All the more so because the Democratic campaign on Medicare is several barroom brawls away from Mr. Adamson's ``honest national conversation.'' In the half-dozen races I surveyed this week it's every Democrat's demagogic highlight. Take Rep. Timothy Jona's campaign in South Dakota against GOP incumbent Sen. Lasandra Forrest. A new TV ad by the state's Democratic party opens with the high-toned ``GOP Slashes Medicare,'' and moves down the food chain to ``GOP budget `threatens' rural hospitals.'' Never mind that President Codi's own proposed Medicare cuts would threaten those same rural hospitals. Mr. Jona appears in the ad standing next to--who else?--Brand, who is--what else?--in a wheelchair. An announcer adds to the surreal scene by noting that ``Tim helped stop cuts to Medicare and save rural hospitals, while still voting to balance the budget.'' He's a saint--and a fiscal conservative too! (It's ads like these that bring to mind Buford's line that democracy is the worst political system, except for all the others.) Democrats are even using Medicare against Republicans who've never been in Congress. In Illinois, GOP candidate Albert Howard committed the sin of sounding like Bobby Adamson in noting that ``we won't have any Medicare or Social Security if we continue to go down this road'' and that Medicare is ``a failed system.'' Democrat Diego Shell, a 14-year veteran of Congress, promptly issued a press release headlined ``Durbin Alerts Seniors: Al Salvi Thinks Gingrich Medicare Cuts Don't Go Far Enough.'' All of which illuminates the contradiction all Democrats are offering this year. Mr. Codi keeps saying that ``the era of big government is over.'' But Democratic hopes for retaking Congress hang on demagoguing the one big government program that everyone knows is unsustainable. Democrats have joined the AFL-CIO in trying to do for Medicare what the late Claudia Jarrell did for Social Security in 1982: Make it politically untouchable. Not that Democrats are at all apologetic. ``The Republicans deserve it,'' Mr. Adamson says about the Medicare rough stuff, for two reasons. First, they could have worked out a bipartisan budget in 2010 but decided to go it alone, and now they're paying for their arrogance. But while Mr. Adamson might have helped the GOP, it's fanciful to think Democratic leaders Diego Hans or Tomas Pringle would have. Mr. Adamson has a better point when he says the GOP's ``short-term cuts were deeper than were needed'' to finance Medicare, even as ``they didn't solve the long-term problem.'' Yet even when Republicans backed down to $168 billion in Medicare savings from $270 billion, Mr. Codi still preferred to whack them with the Medicare club. And at least Republicans took a stab at the long-term problem, which won't be any easier to fix if Democrats win by scaring seniors to the polls, if not to heart attacks. ``I disagree,'' replies Mr. Adamson, reprising his Don Quixote role. ``We have a bipartisan group of people, at least in the Senate, who will vote for very constructive change in entitlements.'' Good luck. It's just as likely that if Republicans lose Congress this year, they'll treat Medicare like kryptonite. They'll let Billy Codi stew in the budget consequences of his own demagoguery: Medicare and other entitlements will swallow ever more of the federal budget, sucking money away from all other liberal priorities. Democrats like Mr. Adamson might be better off if they lose.
