The Democrats, on the other hand, have taken the easy way out. Desperate to recoup their position after a disastrous election, they decided to refuse all cooperation to the president on Social Security. Their plan was to electrocute the president by juicing up the third rail with AARP-sponsored televised biographies of Franklin Roosevelt and such. With feet firmly planted in the 1930’s, the Democrats keep denying that there is any problem here at all. For all his grudging acknowledgments, Kinsley is still under this political delusion. He thinks the Democrats can now safely join in a reform for which the president will take the political fall. Well, the president’s faith in the rightness of his action–and in the good sense of the American people–is going to be rewarded. Social Security is in trouble, and the public knows it. The president has the courage to fix it, and for that he’s going to get credit, not blame. The Democrats are trapped now. Their obstructionism is exposed, and the president stands to gain his rightful political reward when this problem finally gets fixed. I have never seen anything like the swift, massive, and unified Democratic effort to kill the president’s Social Security plan. It put the far more divided and unenthusiastic Republicans to shame. Trouble is, for all that effort, the Democrats have been digging their own political grave.