America’s Populist Turn – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast

Basically Americans don’t trust the government to fix the problems caused by the banks they don’t trust either. Hence our impasse. But a strategy that insisted on some revenue increases from those who can most afford it, as a means of debt reduction, not redistribution, together with deep structural reforms of the tax code, strikes me as a winning option for the president.

So where is his tax reform plan? Where is his plan for drastically simplifying our insane tax code and redressing the appalling generational imbalance, as the boomers suck every last drop of money out of their kids and grandkids? Here’s one thing I firmly believe: unless Obama proposes a bold reform plan for taxes, he is facing something worse than a one-term presidency. He is resisting he change he once promised to bring. Generationally, as he allows the Justice Dept to hound medical marijuana dispensaries and prevaricates on marriage equality and does little to redress the real distress of the twentysomethings who elected him, he is drifting into a de facto attack on his own coalition.

And that’s politically fatal. Safety is not an option in populist times. Reform is. Yes, his record needs to be critical in assessing him; but so too must be his platform going forward. If all it is is a second stimulus, he won’t get very far.

via America’s Populist Turn – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast.