A New Book Review: A New Populism?

Reviewed By Michael Tomasky

The New York Review of Books – March 6, 2014
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/mar/06/new-populism/

Social Democratic America
By Lane Kenworthy Oxford University Press, 238 pp
http://global.oup.com/academic/product/social-democratic-america-9780199322510;jsessionid=CA47E66EA000F006CD9D6003C9C91A51?cc=us&lang=en&

Barack Obama’s fifth State of the Union address received the usual praise from Democrats and many cable news commentators, but the fact is the occasion was rather grim, and his approach in some ways frustrating. With all his talk of raising the minimum wage and other executive actions that would circumvent Congress, he implicitly admitted that progress on Capitol Hill is now all but impossible. At the same time, he couldn’t quite bring himself to invite direct confrontation with the Republicans, who control the House and will continue to block most of his programs. The general verdict on MSNBC was that he was successfully positioning himself above the fray. But is that really possible in today’s Washington? The city seems all fray, all the time.

When it came to policy, the speech highlighted the set of economic concerns that has risen to the forefront of Democratic politics these last couple of years: “Obama Vows to Act Alone on the Economy,” as The New York Times summarized matters the following day. The president spoke of unemployment insurance and similar issues related to the economic struggles of the middle class, emphasizing measures that could be carried out by executive orders. He did not, as many liberals had hoped, speak at length about inequality. Apparently he and his advisers decided that was a bit of a downer for a State of the Union address and chose instead to stress inequality’s sunnier flip side of expanding opportunity. But the point was made, perhaps as much by what wasn’t in the speech—no pleas for reducing the deficit and cutting entitlements, to name two inside-the-Beltway priorities that liberals loathe and that Obama had previously suggested he favored or would at least consider.

Read more.....