Excerpted from a Huffington Post article (read it here):
“The last time Democrats were able to make far-reaching changes to the regulatory and welfare states was in the 1960s, under President Lyndon Johnson. The last two Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, had aspirations to enact similarly sweeping reforms. But the politics of the time wouldn’t allow it.
“Enacting their agendas … meant creating new programs, raising spending and the taxes to pay for it, and writing new regulations. In other words, their plans required more government. Faith in government had plummeted after the 1960s, when more than three in four Americans said they trusted the government ‘to do what is right’ most or all of the time, according to polling from Pew Research. During both the Clinton and Obama presidencies, the figure hovered around one in four.
“Scholars debate exactly why trust in government collapsed, but the list of contributing factors is clear enough. High-profile failures of policy or politicians, from Vietnam to Watergate, played a role. So did a lengthy, patient campaign to discredit the public sector by conservative financiers who wanted to roll back the taxes and regulations that limited corporate activity and used some of their personal wealth to finance government programs.
“Race was also part of the story. The loss of faith in government corresponded with a shift of white voters away from the Democratic Party, following the Civil Rights revolution, with many saying they believed government programs helped African Americans at their expense. Ronald Reagan tapped into this sentiment, by using mythical ‘welfare queens’ to justify his agenda of cutting federal programs. …
“Democrats have mostly been on the defensive since then, trying desperately to enact their agenda in a hostile political environment. Clinton’s solution was to proclaim himself a ‘new Democrat’ who blended the goals of the left with the means of the right, only to have most of his initiatives die in Congress. He largely retreated, focusing on incremental legislative victories ….
“Obama … vowed to think big again. And he saw more success, most notably with the Affordable Care Act. But Obama’s election triggered a new wave of racial panic among white voters …. Obama spent most of his later presidency on the defensive ….
“Then came Donald Trump’s presidency, and two episodes that blew up the conservative narrative about government. The first was the GOP’s failed attempt to repeal ‘Obamacare,’ which demonstrated public support for the program and provoked a backlash …. The second episode is still playing out: COVID-19. The pandemic simultaneously revealed the consequences of inadequate or incompetent government …. [and] what happens when the government when the government acts … with a series of relief measures … these programs provided critical financial lifelines for Americans ….
“But the politics could change once the crisis and the crisis mentality pass ….”
The Democrats reclaimed power in the 2020 elections, despite violent Republican efforts to cling to power, but only just barely. Biden has an ambitious agenda, and the progressive wing of his party has even larger ambitions. “The question, as always, is whether Biden and the Democrats can find the votes” for their legislative poriorities, the Huffington Post article says.
They have “a more unified Senate caucus than Democrats have had in a long time, with relatively few of the conservative members from conservative states that limited what Clinton and … Obama could do even with their party in control,” but will “either need to modify the filibuster … or to keep using the budget reconciliation process, where a simple majority can pass legislation but complex rules limit what a bill can include,” to overcome Republican opposition — especially on such hotly contested issues as voting rights.
“There’s no way to know right now how these debates will turn out,” Huffington Post says, and “no reason to think the outcome is predetermined.”
Where America’s political dynamics go now will depend on the political skill of those now in charge; whether a better-managed Covid-19 response than Trump’s will have the side effect of restoring trust in government among broad swaths of the public; and, as always, luck. A bad break, such as an unexpected foreign crisis, could derail everything. Or rally Americans behind their government and a new cause.
For the reality is all presidents come into office hoping to fix things they think are wrong with American society, but all too often get diverted away from those aims by events you might call the aimless wanderings of history. For LBJ it was Vietnam, for Jimmy Carter the Iran hostage crisis, for George W. Bush the terror attacks, for Trump the Covid-19 pandemic. For three of these four presidents, the exogenous crises made them one-term presidents.
History also teaches us that progress occurs in fits and starts, not on a smooth path. There is backsliding, and interruptions, along the way. But the trend of U.S. politics since the 1930s has been unmistakable: Government has assumed an ever-increasing role in our lives, and Americans increasingly rely on government safety nets for everything from retirement security to health care, and on government intervention for the protection of the environment and racial and social justice, as life has grown ever more complex and uncertain, and the private sector has failed to deliver the security that all Americans crave.