The keening on the left about President Obama’s budget proposal this week suggests that large portions of the Democratic base still don’t understand the political and economic dynamics of the party’s changing electoral coalition.
Much of this year’s Washington story is about Obama aligning the Democratic agenda with the priorities of the “coalition of the ascendant”—minorities, the millennial generation, and college-educated whites, especially women—that powered his 2008 and 2012 victories. …
The Obama fiscal blueprint released this week cautiously dips into this same current by seeking to restrain entitlement spending while invigorating public investment (through initiatives such as expanded preschool, an infrastructure bank, and more college aid). That combination would challenge the federal budget’s hardening tendency to favor the old over the young. [cont.]
Ron Brownstein, National Journal