{"id":2060,"date":"2024-11-12T13:20:54","date_gmt":"2024-11-12T13:20:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/democrats-may-finally-get-their-overdue-political-reckoning\/"},"modified":"2024-11-12T13:20:54","modified_gmt":"2024-11-12T13:20:54","slug":"democrats-may-finally-get-their-overdue-political-reckoning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/democrats-may-finally-get-their-overdue-political-reckoning\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats may finally get their overdue political reckoning"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

This is an adapted excerpt from the <\/em>Nov. 11 <\/em><\/a>episode of “Morning Joe.”<\/em><\/p>\n

In every speech I’ve given over the past 20 years, I talk about the ebb and flow of American politics<\/a>: If a party gets voted into power and goes too far left or too far right, they’re corrected in the midterms and readjust for the next election.<\/p>\n

I learned this firsthand during President Bill Clinton’s<\/a> first administration. After he was elected in 1992, Clinton passed the Tax Reform Act of 1993, which increased the corporate tax rate and the top federal income tax rates.<\/p>\n

In 2022, Democrats didn’t have this usual “shellacking.”<\/p>\n

Clinton was quickly painted as a left-wing radical, and that reaction got people like me elected in 1994. <\/a>However, when we shut down the government trying to balance the budget, we were seen as going too far right, which helped Clinton get re-elected in 1996. <\/p>\n

In 2008, we saw the same thing with President Barack Obama. He won this massive, sweeping victory, but two years later the tea party <\/a>came in and said, “It’s our turn now.”<\/p>\n

The realignment in 1994 helped push Clinton to declare, “The era of big government is over,” during his 1996 State of the Union address<\/a>. That was Clinton readjusting to the actions of the American people. He realized he had to go to voters and say government wasn’t the answer.<\/p>\n

It’s the same thing that happened with Obama: He started talking to Republicans in 2011 and 2012 about the deficit and spending caps. He talked about welfare reform and balancing the budget after Democrats got a “shellacking,” as Obama would say<\/a>in the 2010 midterms. His base hated it, but he did it anyway — just like Clinton.<\/p>\n

But in 2022, Democrats didn’t have the usual incumbent party “shellacking.” Ezra Klein makes a very compelling argument in The New York Times<\/a> that since there wasn’t a reckoning two years ago — one that would have made President Joe Biden not run for re-election or make Democrats reconsider some of their policies — the party developed “political blindness” going into the 2024 election.<\/p>\n

After the Democrats’ defeat last week, it may finally be the time for the party to go through that political reckoning.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
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<\/span>Joe Scarborough<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Former Rep. Joe Scarborough, R-Fla., is co-host of BLN’s “Morning Joe” alongside Mika Brzezinski — a show that Time magazine calls “revolutionary.” In addition to his career in television, Joe is a two-time New York Times best-selling author. His most recent book is “The Right Path: From Ike to Reagan, How Republicans Once Mastered Politics — and Can Again.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Allison Detzel<\/p>\n

contributed<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is an adapted excerpt from the Nov. 11 episode of “Morning Joe.” In every speech I’ve given over the past 20 years, I talk about the ebb and flow of American politics: If a party gets voted into power and goes too far left or too far right, they’re corrected in the midterms and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}