Quick pick-me-up Sunday post, now going wide in the pixelverse. Greg Sargent reports that “David Axelrod goes there: GOP may be trying to destroy economy on purpose“:
… As you know, Obama’s newly aggressive populism and (gasp) partisan rhetoric has sparked a good deal of handwringing and complaining from centrist columists (see Brooks, David) and leading GOP officials (see Ryan, Paul), who have been arguing that the new approach is somehow out of bounds or that it risks alienating the middle of the country. Axelrod’s amplification of the charge that the GOP may be tanking the economy on purpose suggests the Obama campaign isn’t taking these objections too seriously.
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Indeed, it’s worth asking whether we’re seeing a fundamental shift in the thinking of the Obama team and some Dems — a basic recognition that the old rules don’t apply anymore, that the unprecedented tactics being employed by the opposition require a new kind of response. As Dana Milbank notes, you can see the evidence of this in the unapologetic populism driving Elizabeth Warren’s Senate candidacy, which suggests that “Democrats will no longer play by Marquess of Queensbury rules while their opponents disembowel them.”
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But this may be about something broader than just a new approach to Republicans. The Occupy Wall Street protests; our political conversation’s intense new focus on inequality and economic justice; and the extraordinary levels of voter anxiety and dissatisafaction with our institutions all seem to suggest that the political landscape is shifting in ways we can’t really appreciate yet. It looks like the Obama campaign is placing its bet on what kind of political response these big changes are demanding.
More at the link. This is good news for Democrats — to hell with the “centrist” fetish for imaginary moderates in search of the perfectly tepid non-response; it’s only the One Percenters (and their deluded supporters among the Twenty-Seven Percenters) who believe “All Is for the Best, in This Best of All Possible Worlds” is a workable political philosophy.