Liberals' Inequality Pitch Falls Flat

From WSJ's Kimberley Strassel:

With his disapproval ratings at record highs, his health law flailing, President Obama decided 2014 would be the year for a new agenda. "Inequality has deepened," he warned in the State of the Union. "Upward mobility has stalled." He laid out a roster of populist proposals: more unemployment insurance, raising the federal minimum wage, giving women "equal pay for equal work." The White House and congressional Democrats have since spent every waking minute holding rallies, issuing reports, tweeting and giving interviews on all those issues.

The political calculus is that vulnerable Republicans can be bludgeoned into joining Democrats to support poll-tested and popular pocketbook issues—thereby changing the political subject and rallying the Democratic base. ...

It isn't working this time—at least not yet. The Republican response to date has been a united and calm refusal to fold.

True, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has five Republicans who will in the coming week likely vote to pass an extension of unemployment benefits, though only one of them is up for re-election (Maine's Susan Collins ).

The bill will then be DOA in the House. Republicans have turned the issue back on the White House, pointing out how unacceptable it is that so many Americans need "emergency" unemployment assistance six years into an Obama economy. House Speaker John Boehner is refocusing on the lack of jobs, and he has been resolute in his demand that any Senate bill contain some of the GOP's job-creation proposals (which Mr. Reid won't do).

Republicans also are geared up to spend the next week talking in particular about the administration's refusal to ease the path for more energy and drilling jobs, in light of the Ukraine crisis. ...

As for "equal pay for equal work," Republicans have been noting that the very first bill Mr. Obama ever signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which Democrats claimed guaranteed "equal pay" for women. The GOP would be happy to push the White House to admit it failed on the first go-round—not to mention that the law was never anything more than a trial-lawyer payout.

Democrats aren't backing off; they are all-in for inequality, and they're betting that a few more dedicated weeks of hammering Republicans as callous will force some movement. Maybe. But for now Americans seem unconvinced that any of their top concerns—a stalled economy, their health-care woes, the U.S.'s humiliation abroad, government dysfunction, soaring debt—are the result of "inequality." Their president is talking past them.