When Do We Reassess The Past?

The Democratic governor of a deep blue state is confronting reality, just like Jerry Brown is in California.

Andrew Cuomo, the newly elected governor of New York, seems determined to build a career as a budget hawk. His campaign platform included admirably detailed promises on how to end the state’s budget imbalance, including a pledge to not raise taxes. Even before he was sworn in, the governor-elect was sending a blunt message to the state legislature. This is “about numbers,” Cuomo said. “There’s no Democratic or Republican philosophical dispute here. The numbers have to balance, and the numbers now don’t balance … It’s painful, but it is also undeniable.”

Now that it's become obvious that the progressive agenda of massive government spending, entitlements, benefits, regulations and wealth redistribution has failed, when do we reexamine the arguments of the past and put a stake through the heart of this particular vampire?

40 years and $14T of FAIL and that's just at the Federal level.
Whatever the goals of the Great Society and its ideological brethren were, a static poverty rate wasn't one of them. So when do we go back and review the rhetoric and logical arguments made by Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer and all the rest and conclude that they were wrong? Not just mistaken, but flat-out, mathematically wrong. For 40 years we've fought poverty with government spending and it's now clear that strategy was totally wrong. That needs to be stated clearly, openly and loudly.

Is anyone out there saying that? I can't think of any pundit or politician who has made that his or her central theme.