This diary will probably not make me popular - so be it.
The simple fact of the matter regarding Sen. Chuck Schumer's (D-NY) comments on the strategic mistakes that the Democrats made from 2009 to 2011 is this:
He. Was. Right. The Democrats f--ked it up big, after being swept to office in the Great Blue Wave of 2008.
This is not to say that I don't fault Schumer as much as anyone for that f--king up, but his hindsight is actually spot on.
(More below the orange fleur-de-lis)
Recall 2008 - specifically, the 2008 election. Tired of war and reeling from the Wall Street Meltdown, Americans turned to a visionary leader who promised to fix the problems with America and won in a landslide, also propelling his party to decisive wins in both Houses of Congress at the same time.
And make no mistake: it was the economy, far more than any other issue, that pushed Obama into office. The two candidates were running more or less even until the meltdown happened in September - and McCain tried to breeze it off. McCain's missteps cost him any chance at the Oval Office, at least partly because (depending on the pollster you believe) the economy was the most important issue for either 62 percent, 55 percent or 49 percent of voters in 2008. And those voters broke heavily for Barack Obama, giving Democrats a one-in-a-generation opportunity to rewrite the narrative about which party is better on economic matters.
This opportunity, not to put too fine a point on it, was squandered. Between an inadequate stimulus - a stimulus the President was advised to be inadequate - and the over-abundance of tax cuts in the package that was passed, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was very much a case of "too little, too late" when it came to the economy. And - more importantly - when it came to peoples' perceptions of the economy. I don't think that anyone will be able to seriously contest the statement that the 2010 elections would have turned out much differently if the economy (and specifically Main Street) had been doing better than it was in reality.
Consider the possibility: After taking office, Obama and the Senate Democrats (the House was certainly no problem, under Nancy Pelosi's capable leadership and superior caucus-whipping skills) get together and work out a $2.5 trillion stimulus, heavily biased toward spending on infrastructure - repairing and rebuilding the trillions' worth of decayed or obsolete infrastructure ($2.2 trillion, as of the American Society of Civil Engineers' 2009 report card), and undertaking such new infrastructure as trial high-speed rail lines.
The Republicans block it. They try to filibuster it, but it's passed via reconciliation (being entirely a spending bill). Having failed to stop it, Republicans start loudly bitching and moaning about the "abuse of Congressional processes", yadda yadda yadda.
Perfect.
Because that was a stimulus that would have had a much more salutary effect on the economy, that wasn't subject to sabotage from Republican state-level officials, that would have saved or created quite literally millions of jobs, and the entire - unified - Republican Party would be on record as opposing it at every turn. Imagine how Election Day 2010 would have turned out then. Every person who got a job from the stimulus would turn out to vote against the Party that said that they didn't deserve to work. Every African-American whose finances were rescued by the chance to work for a non-discriminating employer. Every Latino and Latina. Every Asian - and even many and more poorer and working-class whites. All voting Democratic, because it was the Democrats who visibly, publicly rescued the economy and them personally, against constant, vocal opposition from Republicans.
Obama would have been greeted by cheering crowds wherever he went, Democrats would have swept the ballot from coast to coast and the stage would be set to tackle healthcare reform after the midterms, in the leadup to the 2012 Presidential Election - a task that would have been easier, given that a multitasking White House would have spent the intervening period quietly building Congressional support for a more carefully-drafted plan.
Instead, what America got was a stimulus entirely inadequate for the task of restoring the economy, to make way for the full-circus view of How To Make Legislative Sausage. This isn't knocking the Affordable Care Act - given the influence the medical lobbies hold in DC, the ACA was probably about as good as it was going to get. But the timing was wrong, wrong, wrong - completely tone-deaf to the priorities of the public who had just swept Democrats into office to fix the economy, too rushed and just generally bad timing, bad tactics and bad strategy.
Schumer is as much to blame for this as anyone else in the Democratic Party's leadership at that time, and more than most - his well-documented ties to Wall Street would almost certainly have inclined him to push against this kind of stimulus package for Main St. He's no angel, and his sanctimony is annoying (as well as being damned inconvenient in timing).
But I actually think that it's a good thing that he realizes at least part of the giant, huge mistake that was made then. Hopefully, he can draw the other parts of the lesson, too - or if he can't, other Senate Democrats can. The lesson is this:
People care about their pocketbooks. Look after that, and you'll get much more electoral leeway on other matters.
If that lesson is learned - strongly enough, by enough Democratic officeholders - the New Deal Coalition may just come back from the dead. Yes, there will be many racists who just plain won't vote for the Party putting nonwhite candidates up - but there will be many more people who just want a decent, secure job that pays enough for them to meet the bills and put a little aside for the future, and who will be grateful to a politician who they see as fighting for them to get access to such jobs.