Why Bill Daley Never Had a Chance

The former Commerce Secretary and Chicago machine politician has never been sufficiently leftist as far as Beltway Democrats are concerned, so the fact that he has been in essence forced out of his White House chief of staff position sooner than expected should surprise no one.

Here are two paragraphs from a late-2009 op-ed in the Washington Post that gets to the essence of the problem:

All that is required for the Democratic Party to recover its political footing is to acknowledge that the agenda of the party’s most liberal supporters has not won the support of a majority of Americans — and, based on that recognition, to steer a more moderate course on the key issues of the day, from health care to the economy to the environment to Afghanistan.

For liberals to accept that inescapable reality is not to concede permanent defeat. Rather, let them take it as a sign that they must continue the hard work of slowly and steadily persuading their fellow citizens to embrace their perspective. In the meantime, liberals — and, indeed, all of us — should have the humility to recognize that there is no monopoly on good ideas, as well as the long-term perspective to know that intraparty warfare will only relegate the Democrats to minority status, which would be disastrous for the very constituents they seek to represent.

Bill didn’t understand — maybe he does now — that the left doesn’t give a damn about “the hard work of slowly and steadily persuading” anyone. Instead of persuasion, their goal is to impose their will on the rest of us. They do this by serially misrepresenting themselves and what they really believe while packing the courts with sympaticos and engaging in ruthless regulation and litigation. When all of that fails, as Barack Obama has shown since the first of the year, they go to Constitution-violating executive fiat.

No wonder he was so out of place.