Time's Klein Has a Dream: 'Liberal' No Longer Being 4-Letter Word

Time's Joe Klein is giddy. Convinced Sen. Barack Obama is barreling down the straightaway towards the electoral finish line with Sen. McCain choking on his dust, Mr. Anonymous is cheering the promise of big government and wealth redistribution, seeing an Obama victory as a mandate for LBJ-like big government activism.

From his October 16 "Swampland" blog entry (emphasis mine):

[McCain] spoke in Reagan-era shorthand. He thought that merely invoking the magic words "spread the wealth" and "class warfare" he could neutralize Obama.

But those words and phrases seem anachronistic, almost vestigial now. Indeed, they have become every bit as toxic as Democratic social activist proposals--government-regulated and subsidized health care, for example--used to be. We have had 30 years of class warfare, in which the wealthy strip-mined the middle class.... Barack Obama is the most unapologetic advocate of government activism since Lyndon Johnson--which is not to say that his brand of activism will be the same as Johnson's (we've learned a lot about the perils of bureacracy and the value of market incentives since then)--and he seems to be giving the public exactly what it wants this year. Who knows? Maybe even the word "liberal" can now be uttered in mixed company again.

[...]

[B]y the way, if government activism is now back on the table, we can begin to talk about the real answers to our entitlement problems: Medicare and medicaid can only be solved when they're included in a comprehensive, regulated and managed universal health insurance system.

The point is, this is a very good year to be Senator Government. Ronald Reagan used to say that the most frightening nine words in the English language were "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." That is no longer true. This year, the most frightening eight words are "I'm John McCain and I approved this message."

Klein caricature via socialmedia.biz