Can Democrats make lemons into lemonade?

Unable to prevent embracing the left, Democrats will seek to revise America’s perception of it. This lemons-into-lemonade course is the Democratic Party’s only alternative, as a 2020 nominee from their left appears increasingly certain. Next year, the party will essentially challenge the nation: Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?

The preponderance of Democratic 2020 field is on the left; already it is collectively attracting the preponderance of Democratic supporters. The field’s fragmentation and the base’s enthusiasm will ensure a competitive and spirited contest that will push the eventual nominee still further left. Even before this process really begins, the contest has started more to the left than any Democrat nominee has ever finished. 

The extreme to which their nominee is most likely to go will foreclose their usual approach of claiming to be centrists but governing to the left. Obama mastered this strategy. America’s most liberal president, he assiduously avoided campaigning as one. Instead, he cast his Republican opponents as off-center, hard conservatives — despite neither being so.

Obama’s strategy won him two terms and made him the first Democrat to win twice with over 50 percent of the popular vote since FDR. Repeatedly on policy though — ObamaCare being the highest-profile example — he was to America’s left. Yet, because he personally posed as a centrist, he politically escaped the consequences. 

This time Democrats will not have Obama’s luxury. Virtually assured to end up so far left that they cannot conceal its content, they must try to change its context. They will seek to make their decidedly left policies the updated version of their past policies. 

They will cast their demands — increased entitlements and massive new government spending —as akin to FDR’s New Deal and creation of Social Security. Expect to hear JFK’s national call to land a man on the moon and LBJ’s Great Society also trotted out as cover. Likely even ObamaCare will be dressed up to look as an appealing precursor to their 2020 plans. 

In short, they will liken what we are seeing to what we have seen before; it will not be true, but it must be tried. Paraphrasing the boxer Joe Louis: They can run but they cannot hide. 

The federal government of FDR’s day was small; today it is massive. When Roosevelt won in 1932, federal spending equaled 6.8 percent of GDP and federal taxes, 2.8 percent; when he sought reelection in 1936, they were 10.3 percent and 4.9 percent, respectively. In 2018, the federal government spent 20.3 percent, and taxed away 17.3 percent of GDP. 

FDR’s Social Security was a limited program funded by individuals’ contributions throughout their working years. Greatly altered since, it is financially unsustainable in its current form. Its 2019 Trustees’ report stated: “total cost is projected to be less than its total income in 2019 . ..and all later years.” 

LBJ’s creation of Medicare — medical care for the aged who had contributed during their working years — is a fraction of Medicare for All. Even so, Medicare is less financially viable than Social Security. According to its Trustees’ 2019 report, the program ran a deficit in 2018 and “the estimated depletion date for the HI trust fund is 2026.”

Likely, the same extension will be attempted for ObamaCare too. Its failed policies and broken promises will be attributed to the current administration rather than the previous one’s implementation. Instead, America will be asked to believe that if just attempted on a more massive scale it will work this time. 

What will not be mentioned will be the giants of the party’s past — Jefferson, Jackson and Wilson — who no longer pass its present muster. While the social policies of FDR, JFK and LBJ will be highlighted, other aspects will be conveniently forgotten. 

Mention will not be made that FDR kept a tight rein on the left in his day. That JFK attempted to topple the Cuban communists, who many in Milwaukee will be unable to bring themselves to denounce today. That LBJ expanded the Vietnam War, a trauma from which Democrats have still not recovered. 

Expect to be notably absent from any focal roles Carter or the Clintons. It will interesting, too, how they handle Obama. On one hand, he is the acme of governing to the left — yet, equally clear: His 2008 and 2012 campaign policies could not win over the party in 2020. As a personality and legacy he is needed; as policies, he is passé.  

Democrats are soon to be stuck with making a wholesale revision of their past and their future for the sake of their present — or more accurately, their choice for president. They must try to convince that what is a dramatic break from America’s, and their own, past is no more than just a benign extension of it. Likely they will be unsuccessful in convincing America that “shooting the moon” on spending is the same as JFK’s call to land a man on it. Still, the attempt is coming, just as surely as Democrats’ nominee is coming from their left.

J.T. Young served under President George W. Bush as the director of communications in the Office of Management and Budget and as deputy assistant secretary in legislative affairs for tax and budget at the Treasury Department. He served as a congressional staffer from 1987 through 2000.