Obama took a State of the Union address that began as a critique of economic inequality and turned it into case for restoring opportunity. Anyone who saw class warfare here is spending too much time with Rush Limbaugh or Fox News.
Yes, mention of a moderate Democratic governor kindles memories of Bill Clinton. His State of the Union productions consisted of thick catalogues of proposals that pundits often panned but listeners usually liked. Most voters do not have an ideological view of government. They simply want it to solve some problems. Most Americans also reject a theological faith in the market. They think it’s a fine system until it acts unfairly.
So consider Obama’s speech as a set of confidence-building measures. It’s a bid to move the national conversation back to the economic basics: to “opportunity for everybody,” as he said in a follow-up speech on Wednesday at a Costco store in Maryland, and to the idea that “treating workers well is not just the right thing to do, it’s an investment.”
Obama hopes to show government can take sensible steps — on wages, job training and income supplements, on savings, pensions and education — and encourage voters to ask Republicans why they would prevent such initiatives from being enacted.
After years of hoping in vain that he could break Washington’s “fever,” the president is responding to a systematic disconnect between the politics of the executive branch and those of the legislative branch.
Nationally, the country is moving steadilycenter-left. Democrats have won the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. Generational change will reinforce this — conservatives are older as a group than the country as a whole — and the non-white share of the electorate will continue to grow.
But the legislative branch tilts rightward structurally, even when the national vote goes the other way. Republicans lost the popular vote in House races in 2012 by 1.7 million, but held the House because the GOP had disproportionate control over how congressional district lines were drawn. Democrats, for now, have a majority in the Senate. But the upper chamber over-represents conservative and rural interests.
All of this means that initiatives such as an increase in the minimum wage, background checks for gun purchases, expanded pre-kindergarten programs and the extension of unemployment insurance can be foiled even when they enjoy broad national support. Obama pushed for them all again. But absent legislative action, he said he would accomplish what he could in each area on his own.
It’s natural to contrast Obama’s soaring legislative ambitions of a year ago with this week’s less adventurous “I’ll do it myself” speech. But he has to deal with the Congress he has, not the Congress he wishes he had. The path forward is a lot more crooked than Obama once imagined it would be, and realism in pursuit of a degree of social justice is no vice.
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