Way back when Obama was getting going, I could not help but notice that his platform was reactionary. Everything he talked about was in reaction to some slight or affront to liberalism over the last decades. It was if they were keeping a list starting in the Reagan years and were nursing a grudge over each and every one of them. Nothing Obama promised was rooted in sound public policy, but it was not rooted in traditional liberal orthodoxy either. Most was either the opposite of whatever Bush or Reagan had done or a promise to redress some failure to implement liberal dogma in the past.

Once he ascended the throne it became even more clear. The whole reset nonsense with the Russians was particularly strange. The Russians accepted the fact they lost the Cold War and were pretty happy about it. After all, Reagan made them rich beyond imagination. They were not nursing a grudge against The Gipper. On the other hand, the liberal fanatics now in charge of American foreign policy were holding a grudge. They still resented the fact Reagan threw them overboard and confronted the Soviets, eventually bringing about the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Watching bemused Russians handle that stupid prop as a grinning nitwit babbled about resetting relations was priceless.

The last five years have seen a series of such moves by this administration. In foreign policy, doing the opposite of Bush is the default policy. They threw away the peace deal in Iraq. They tripled up on the pointless Afghan campaign. They threw over every ally we had left in the Middle East and embraced the Arab Spring nonsense. In Europe, all of our traditional relationships were cast aside to the point where even the French hate Obama. The Iran policy, as best I can tell, is an attempt to vindicate Carter and repudiate the Reagan critique of Carter’s foreign policy.

On domestic policy, we see the same things. ObamaCare is just a re-do of the failed HillaryCare initiative the Left pushed in the 1990′s. You really see the irrationality here. The Left was convinced that they were tossed over the rail by the Clintons and they were wrongly blamed for the failure of HillaryCare. Here, the mythology gets weird. The Left argued that the failure to pass a bill loathed by the public was the cause of the 1994 election. If only they rammed it through, it would have been fine. That’s what motivated them to ram through ObamaCare, despite strong public opposition and serious misgivings within their own party.

For the last five years, Liberal policy has been driven by reaction to the past or simply doing the opposite of what a handful of current Republicans advocate. From the stimulus bill forward, if Republicans are for it, the left is against it. If liberals of a bygone era were thwarted in their past attempts, then now it is time to pass it, even when it made no sense at all. Undermining welfare reform, for example, is counterproductive. That was the one “reform” in the 1990′s that made any sense and was embraced by both parties and state government. Liberalism today is nothing more than a grab bag of slights and grudges. Liberals are today’s reactionaries.

Way back I had a correspondence with Jonah Goldberg about this. His contention, if I recall correctly, was that American Liberalism may be in a final stage and about to expire. The surge of liberal candidates was a rear guard action signaling the end. I was dismissive simply because liberals never change their minds. They remain as fanatical in failure as they do in success. No amount of facts and experience leaves an impression on the liberal mind. That’s because we’re dealing with a religion, not ignorance. Someone who says they don’t like seafood can change their mind upon having tried a seafood dish. People who think utopia is just around the corner and we just have to force things into the right boxes to achieve it are never dissuaded.

Now Charles Krauthammer is peddling the same idea, this time blaming ObamaCare. I think he has a better argument, simply because detonating a bomb into the middle of the health care system – just when the Boomers are engaging in that system in numbers – is going to have fallout. One thing you notice as people hit their fifties and sixties is they become obsessive about health care. They learn all of the rules and regulation and become students of the economics. There’s an emotional attachment to the process because their health is at stake. People in our culture are irrational about health and death. Threatening that system just when the biggest voting bloc in the country is engaging the system is bad politics.

We’re seeing some unraveling already. Obama is down to 39% in the polls. The floor is 40% for a president. Below that means your own guys are abandoning your cause. Bush saw this when the Right finally had enough of his nonsense with the Harriet Myers nomination. His numbers fell into the low 30′s by the end of his presidency. Liberalism has never had broad support so some portion of the democratic base that is sympathetic, but not zealous, could be up for grabs if ObamaCare continues to implode. When all reports point to a looming recession in 2014, the floor could very well fall out from under Obama in the coming year.

I’m not willing to buy into the end of liberalism. I think it will happen when there is a viable, statist alternative. We have to remember that social democracy replaced fascism as a governing philosophy. Fascism grew up as an alternative to Marxism, which was a replacement for hereditary constitutional monarchy. The lesson of history is that the old is only swept away when there is something new to replace it. I just don’t see an alternative to social democracy on the horizon so I think the American Left will be kicking around for a long time. They just won’t be winning elections for another century.