Kevin’s got a good question about the political maneuvering behind the President’s Social Security plans :

Bush has smart people advising him, and they must realize that the odds of getting Social Security privatization passed is virtually nil. My guess is that it can’t even pass the House, and there’s zero chance of it getting enough votes to cut off a filibuster in the senate. So why expend so much political capital on such a quixotic venture? There’s got to be something else going on.

First of all, I wouldn’t be so quick to pronounce privatization D.O.A. We still have a State of the Union address to look forward to in which Bush will be using his bully pulpit to scare the bejesus out of everyone. For all we know, we could be looking at a situation a month from now in which average Americans are saying to themselves “I hate the idea of privatization, so I’m glad the President met the Democrats halfway with a plan that uses personal accounts instead.”

Secondly, as much as I love the recent trend of senate unity, our coalition is one faux-compromise away from falling apart. Have we become so accustomed to failure that we’re ecstatic when our side is against something that’s obviously a horrible idea? Opposition in this case should be taken for granted. The real question will be whether or not the Dems have the foresight to look at the big picture and oppose this “reform” in any guise that it may take. It’s also still up in the air whether or not our semi-revitalized party members will have the cojones to refuse to compromise with a power-hungry GOP that wouldn’t give them the time of day.

But Kevin is mostly right when he says the writing is one the wall on this bit of “reform” and I share his suspicion that there’s more to this than meets the eye. If they really don’t have the votes for this right now, then my guess is that they’ll use the State of the Union address to switch gears and try to catch Democrats off-guard. I could easily see either tort “reform” and tax “simplification” replacing Social Security as the top domestic priority for the Republican elites.

If this happens, Democrats might too busy scratching their heads or patting themselves on the back to catch the GOP’s head start in convincing the public to gut the legal system or destroy any remaining vestiges of progressivity in the tax code. These two issues are just as important to the Republicans as privatizing Social Security in the sense that they both highlight fundamental differences between the parties. Any success by the GOP would be disastrous for the Democratic party (and the American people, for that matter), so it’s probably a good idea to prepare ourselves for a partisan war on multiple fronts.