Offense

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 52 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

The difference between 2013 and every
year that has come before, for liberals, is offense.

Liberals have spent a generation
playing defense. We have spent over 40 years getting beaten by
conservatives, whenever push came to shove. We have considered it a
victory when some gain from the past was kept safe, if only for now.
And we have watched conservatives use those limited victories for us
to raise ever-more money and drive ever-deeper wedges between us, to
the point where “pissing off liberals” became a convenient excuse
for any policy, no matter how wrong-headed.

This should not surprise. Conservatives
felt just this way in the early years of the Nixon era – it's what
fed Nixon's paranoia, which was organic, and came from his followers.
They assumed that any policy victory might be taken away, or
co-opted, at any moment. They assumed they were the minority, and
acted like one, right into the Reagan Administration.

Liberals didn't exist in FDR's first
term. They were “progressives,” a word borrowed from the GOP. The
Mugwumps who became Progressives after McKinley's election believed
they were doing the will of business, and they were. Lincoln spent
all the years before his Presidency as part of a minority, as a Whig
or a Republican, under the assumptions of a Democratic majority whose
leaders feared objecting to the Slave Power – Pierce and Buchanan
were from New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, respectively.

A single election is not enough to
change this. It takes validation, a second election, a challenge to
the new assumptions into which the old assumptions use all their
power. That is what we have just experienced. Mitt Romney came closer
to victory that McGovern, or Landon, or Bryan, or McClellan, but all
the money in the world couldn't bring him victory. The 2012 election
was, in that way, the most important of my lifetime, or yours.

So now we go on offense. And
Republicans know this. It's why they've become so desperate to impose
their will, against unions, against women, against voters, never mind
the polls. Do it now because there will be no tomorrow, they figure.
They know they're returning to minority status, and they're right.

The Newtown Massacre offers the first
clear opportunity. This terrible event has been accompanied by the
usual liberal gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, the usual
liberal assumption that, despite everything, nothing significant is
going to happen.

Liberals are wrong. Something will
happen. Because something has changed. Newtown occurred against this
backdrop of deep political change within America, of small groups
switching side, by ones and twos, of a newly-energized “Obama
Coalition” and a newly chastened Nixon one.

The question becomes what will the
President do. In the wake of the tragedy he and his spokesman have
been reluctant, although the President's words have been leading
those of his spokespeople a little. He wants to be pressed, by the
new majority, before he acts. And he will be.

The same will happen regarding energy
and climate. The President wants to be pushed, and he will be. There
is a confluence here between fiscal policy and energy policy. Our
deficit must be addressed, Republicans have offered nothing
substantive, and a huge portion of the the current debt comes from
Wars fought for Oil, and the interest on that. It's a pressure point,
one that advocates for a carbon tax need to push on, especially with
a newly resurgent energy industry, and a renewable industry that is
finally ready to compete. A carbon tax can tip the scales, make
solar, wind and biomass the cheap energy. People are going to start
pushing for that.

It's normal, in the 5^th year
of a new Thesis, for things to go all pear-shaped. Lincoln and
McKinley didn't survive their 5^th year. Nixon had
Watergate in his 5^th year. Even FDR made his two biggest
mistakes in his 5^th year, a conservative budget that
caused a recession, and the “court-packing” incident that cost
him dearly. Republicans won the 1938 midterms, and after that FDR had
to act in a far more bi-partisan manner.

What's different this year? What's
different is that little has really been done, and the political
winds are only now truly at the President's back. What's different is
that the President knows his history, and his Secret Service knows
how to keep him safe. That's no guarantee we won't be praying for
President Biden in 2014, but while I pray that does not happen, just
as we all do, the momentum is clearly on our side now.

So 2013 will be a very big year in our
history. The economy will recover. Washington will change. We will
start to see a change in the axis of policy, many things the
“pundits” will find mysterious. Because they've lived through so
much history they can't see the bigger picture. They can't see change
when it hits them in the face.

But change is necessary. It is
absolutely necessary. So 2013 will be a year of momentous change. You
can be certain of that.