What was learned from the Democratic National Convention?

   By Donna Cole


 Thursday night, President Obama delivered his less than awe inspiring pitch for re-election and the 2012 Democratic National Convention came to an end. The liberal pundits were certainly for the most part let down with the President's speech, their reactions to it went from the speech was a dud, to the president was modest in his goals and didn't want to over promise, to it was adequate and this was a safe speech by a man confident he has re-election in the bag. But by all accounts, this speech will probably not be on Obama's greatest hits album, if it is, maybe the ninth tune on the B side.


 The central theme of the convention was not on the most pressing issue of this election cycle, the economy, instead it was on social issues which played to women and the Democrat base, and it was we need to re-elect Obama so he can finish the job he started. He just needs some more time and you will see the promises of Hope and Change actually come true. As the New York Times' David Brooks, who is not a conservative but is a moderate Republican, notes the Democrats offered no new ideas;

"What I was mostly looking for were big proposals, big as health care was four years ago. I had spent the three previous days watching more than 80 convention speeches without hearing a single major policy proposal in any of them. I asked governors, mayors and legislators to name a significant law that they’d like to see President Obama pass in a second term. Not one could."

 Here is The Washington Post's Ezra Klein's, a liberal Democrat, take on the President's speech;

'This was a modest speech. It was a more humble vision. What President Obama offered the country on the final night of the Democratic convention was reminiscent of what Warren G. Harding offered almost a century ago: A return to normalcy after a long period of emergency...This has not been a normal time. And it’s not been a normal time for a long time…But the time of politics being about abnormal solutions and awe-inspiring goals does appear to be over, at least in Obama’s agenda.”

 But what is Obama's idea of normal ? Mid 1990's normal ? Early 2000's normal ? Or is it what have long been accepted levels in Europe of unemployment and stagnant private sector growth ? Is where we are now the new normal ? The Obama normal ? Is this the message from the convention ? Or was there more to be learned from it ?  Again to David Brooks, this time quoted by WonkBlog;

"The Democratic Party is inert. The party spent the years from the New Deal until Obamacare constructing a welfare state. That project is now finished, and today the party is dedicated to defending government in all its forms. This is a party with a protective agenda, not a change agenda.”

 While Brooks is partly right, I couldn't disagree with him more on one point, the welfare state project by the left is far from over. In fact, it is just beginning. Here, Ezra Klein begins to look at what a second Obama term will look like, even though he has no chance at passing anything significant through a Republican Congress;

"The policies that are most important to Obama and the Democrats don’t actually require compromise with Republicans. Health care, financial regulation and tax increases are on autopilot. If Obama wins reelection, Americans are going to see a lot of change even if Republicans don’t offer much cooperation. If he loses, much of the change he signed into law in his first term will never actually happen.”

 This is why the Democrats were so focused on social issues, such as abortion and gay marriage, instead of the big policy ideas. They are happy for now with the status quo, they just want to keep it in place and see it through. The cement hasn't hardened on Obamacare yet, but by 2016 it will be set in stone and then there is no undoing it. The same can be said for the Dodd-Frank onerous financial regulations.


 The most frightening thing, if there is something more frightening than Obamacare destroying health care as we now know it, is that Klein notes tax increases are on "autopilot". The Bush era tax rates, which have been extended and extended by both parties and signed by Obama, are set to expire. The looming fiscal cliff as it is being called. This summer, the Democrats wanted to let them expire on the so-called rich, but extend them again for the middle class. The Republicans turned the deal down, which was the right thing to do given the dismal state of the Obama economy. In reality, the Democrats only offered this deal as a tool to use in the election.


 A second term Obama not having to face the voters again can half hearted offer this same deal to Republicans knowing they will turn it down, or not even bother to pretend to make an offer, and allow the Bush rates to expire on everyone, the so-called rich and the middle class. Which by the way is what the Democrats want to do anyway. Then the President, and Democrats, can simply blame the massive tax hikes on the Republicans. What happens when the public gets angry with government ? Remember the 2010 midterms when the public was angry with Obamacare and stimulus spending ? They took it out on the Democrat controlled Congress.


 Now, imagine an angry public blaming the Republicans for tax hikes (of all things) and giving them the boot in 2014. Take this a step further and imagine what that Democrat Congress would do. First would be the only big thing Obama didn't get in his first term, the cap and trade carbon tax legislation, which would be a total disaster for the energy sector of our economy. We would see more stimulus, because with the tax hikes the nation would be driven back into recession. Even though the first stimulus was a failure, they would use the recession as their excuse for more. The first stimulus had nothing to do with helping the economy. It was all about vastly increasing the federal budgetary baseline, so these greatly heightened levels of spending couldn't be reversed.


 The welfare state would grow far beyond 50% of the population with the removal of any limits on food and energy subsidies. The increase in these already overblown subsides would be necessary to cover for the skyrocketing prices of food and energy caused by the Democrat's cap and trade legislation. The President might even wave his magic wand and forgive all college loan debt. He would do this with no care for the damage it causes lenders, Obama would do it for the same reason he did any of the other things, to create life long Democrat constituents. It is clear what all this would do to the national debt, but the left has no concern for this in their quest for ultimate power. Beyond the first term Obama policies that would remain in place, he would actually end up causing much more damage in a second term than the first. Which is almost unimaginable, but damage to one is success for another.


 For Obama, this would be the gravy on his leftist legacy plate. He will have achieved his and every other liberal's dream, by leaving behind a country whose traditional and established system is irreparably broken. A private sector economy punished for it's imagined sins by crushing it under the weight of a centralized government, a population dependent on that government literally for it's daily bread, a society of false economic equality made by reducing the sum of it's parts to the lowest common denominator, and creating a permanent political majority with those dependents who give away their liberty for government blankets. Social justice will have been achieved by destroying the dreams of our Founding Fathers and replacing them with the dreams of the President's own father.


 Unrestrained by having to worry with re-election and left wing radicals given the chance to make their progressive changes to America irreversible they will lock in the course for the destruction of the foundations of this nation, those being self reliance, free enterprise and personal liberty. This is what four more years of President Obama will look like and why the Democrats offered no new big policy ideas. They don't want the public to honestly know what another Obama term will look like. But that is what Hope, Change, and now Forward really mean to the political left, and their desire to achieve it is what I learned from the 2012 Democratic National Convention.