The Joy of Federalism [liberal government in these times]

[Inland]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/books/review/006FOERL.html?pagewanted=all
By FRANKLIN FOER

Essay reviews liberal attitudes towards federalism and the possibility of keeping the captured fed government out of the state's business as we work on the blue states.:


"Liberal energies once devoted to expanding the national government are being redirected toward the states. New York's attorney general Eliot Spitzer, declaring himself a ''fervent federalist,'' is using state regulations to prosecute corporate abuses that George W. Bush's Department of Justice won't touch. While the federal minimum wage hasn't budged since the middle of the Clinton era, 13 (mostly blue) states and the District of Columbia have hiked their local wage floors in the intervening years. After Bush severely restricted federal stem cell research, California's voters passed an initiative pouring $3 billion into laboratories for that very purpose, and initiatives are under way in at least a dozen other states.

"Instead of retreating to Vancouver, liberal federalists would retreat from national politics and focus on effecting change in their own blue states -- passing health care reforms, expanding gay rights. At the height of the liberals' postelection angst, The Stranger, a Seattle alternative weekly, declared: ''We can secede emotionally, however, by turning our backs on the heartland. We can focus on our issues, our urban issues, and promote our shared urban values.'' It's like the path evangelicals beat after the Scopes trial, when the religious right took a 50-year break from mainstream political activity and quietly tended their own institutions. "

The essay concludes:

"Some Democratic political strategists are also guiding liberals in this direction. In election postmortems, they have urged the party to follow in the Truman-Reagan-Gingrich tradition and rail against the corrupt interests ruling Washington -- ''an aggressively reform, anti-Washington, anti-business-as-usual party,'' as James Carville described it at a Democratic hand-wringing session last November. Proponents of this strategy now reside in nearly every corner of the party -- from Howard Dean, the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, to the Democratic Leadership Council. Positioning the Democratic Party as the great modern-day defender of states' rights against imperial Washington jibes neatly with this strategy. Progressives once championed states as laboratories of democracy. Now many of them are hoping these laboratories will produce the Democratic electoral cure. "

How many posts have noted that it is the red states that use bankruptcy, red states that don't get the tax breaks that are slanted for the rich, red states that live with toxic waste dumps and hog farms. Does it make sense to let them stew in their own problems and insulate ourselves in the blue states, creating model societies ready to go when the national insanity passes?

[kevsand]

1. Red or blue state, our focus needs to be local.

Illinois has passed a number of reforms since Dems took back the reins in 2002, but we still have a long way to go. The mid-term elections in 2006 are vitally important, and there are also any number of governorships and other state constitutional offices coming up across the country.

We need to force the issue in all states, red or blue, and put state pols on the spot this year and next. This time, we need to pick the defining issues that drive turnout and opinion for the 2006 election.

If we do it right, we will rebuild the party from the ground up, and build on successes in 2006 to retake the nation in 2008. And even if we fail in 2008, we will have moved society forward in every state, red and blue.

[bemildred]

2. Yes. nt