Hispanics in target-state Colorado were turned off by gentry liberal priorities — abortion absolutism, gun control, opposition to fracking. Asians in California were repelled by attempts to re-institute racial quotas and preferences in higher education that directly harm them. Millennials were socked with high health-insurance premiums even as they searched for jobs from their parents’ basements. Israel supporters have been dismayed by Obama’s Middle East policies.
Even if they haven’t achieved permanent majorities, American parties have had enduring public-policy successes. Social Security (passed 1935) and the Taft-Hartley labor law (passed 1947) are examples.
But it’s not clear the Obama Democrats accomplished that. The 2009 stimulus package’s steep increases in spending were cut back by the 2013 sequester. Tax increases may be pulled back. The administration has had to make dozens of revisions to the still-unpopular Obamacare and may have to accept serious rollbacks if it loses King v. Burwell in the Supreme Court in June.
