President Obama was smart enough to move Overton’s window incrementally, instead of in giant fell swoops. He knew, and knows, that the populace isn’t on board with crazy swings in our culture and our policy. Obama didn’t want the party to go #TooFarLeft too fast. Hence, Obamacare – it mandated you buy insurance, and slowly jacked up the costs with crazy regulations and taxes – in the hopes that one day the populace would demand single-payer healthcare as a replacement.
Enter 2020 Democrats and their Single-Payer healthcare. It is one of the least crazy proposals they have given the voters. Freedom dividends, healing crystals, outright confiscation on AR-15’s, and a ban on Christianity (sorta.)
The former president encouraged Democrats to think practically about policies that will appeal to regular voters. “I think it is very important for all the candidates who are running at every level to pay some attention to where voters actually are and how they can actually think about their lives,” Obama said.
Politico
The key to policy is that you understand it’s downstream of culture. If society isn’t there, you can’t accomplish it. Therefore, the Dem primary candidates for POTUS either wildly misjudge American Culture, or they don’t care and are just trying to placate the #TooFarLeft base.
Related: Sorta like ObamaCare, Have to Buy It and Can’t Use it
President Obama understood perfectly how to use Alinsky tactics, Overton’s Window, and other strategies to coerce and move a discussion in his direction. His hopeful successors don’t.
Obama said he’s cognizant his “name comes up and stuff” during the primary, but he told the crowd: “I wouldn’t run the same campaign today in this environment as I ran in 2008 in part because we made enough progress since 2008, of which I am very proud.”
In other words, he won. He won the Oval Office twice, and he moved Overton’s Window to the left. 12 years ago single payer healthcare would have cost him the election, but it wouldn’t today. But, our culture isn’t quite to the Sander’s Socialism level, yet. Or the Warren Wealth Tax. And that’s the good news. The Dems are out ahead of their skis. The voters won’t have any of that it in a matchup against Trump.
The key, for us, is to remember the same in 2024. Let’s not try to radically move the window back to the right. Progress doesn’t happen overnight. Politics has to be downstream of culture.
