Voices
ANDREW BURTON/GETTY IMAGES
fast enough to keep us afloat. That
era is now over. We have to make
painful choices, but aren’t willing
to confront them frankly.
3. OBAMACARE
The U.S. was the only major industrial country without national
heath care, and even though Obamacare relies on the typical American mix of private-sector profit and
government regulation, it remains
a bone in the throat of American
politics. No entitlement program
ever passed with so little bipartisan
support (though Social Security
was close). President Barack Obama
assumed that a favorable Supreme
Court ruling and his own reelection
in 2012 would settle the issue. He
was wrong. Whether he could have
HOWARD
FINEMAN
done anything else to soothe the tea
party fear and anger is doubtful, but
he didn’t really try.
4. SCORECARDS
The AFL-CIO invented a rating system for “pro-labor” voting records;
Christian conservatives adopted
it. But anti-tax activist Grover
Norquist and Heritage Foundation
President Jim DeMint amped up
the volume. Republican members of
Congress live in mortal fear of a bad
rating and vote accordingly.
5. TWO CULTURES
Americans used to inhabit a world
of shared social mores, even if
millions of people were coerced
into accepting them. Now voters
now live in two barely overlapping
moral worlds: Secular Metropolitan America and Biblical Traditional America. And that separa-
HUFFINGTON
10.27.13
Tea party
activists,
veterans and
Republicans
gather at the
World War II
Memorial in
Washington,
D.C., to
express
frustrations
over closed
national
memorials
due to the
government
shutdown.