Voters Approve Big Government in Ballot Initiatives

Over at The Washington Post, columnist E. J. Dionne notices something almost no one else has: that voters in Maine and Washington state resoundingly rejected ballot initiatives meant to limit taxes and spending. Says Dionne:

In Maine, voters rejected a tax-limitation measure by a walloping 60 percent to 40 percent. In Washington state, a similar measure went down, 57 percent to 43 percent.

They lost in part because opponents of the so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights measures (known as TABOR) did something that happens too rarely in the national debate: they made a case for what government does, why it's important, and why cutbacks in public services can be harmful to citizens and the common good.

Of course, Maine and Washington are not conservative states. But they aren't Rhode Island either. Maine, which is largely rural, approved an antigay marriage initiative on the same day, and it's known for having an idiosyncratic political culture. Dionne argues that the TABOR measures were defeated by ad campaigns that featured a forthright defense of government, arguing that tax limits would weaken schools and health care, to the detriment of the individual who depends on them, and the state as a whole. He notes, as I did back in September, that this is an almost unheard-of approach for liberals, but that President Obama took a stab at it in his health-care speech.

I'm not as convinced as Dionne that these results prove voters are embracing increases in social spending, beyond the consensus that something must be done about the vast number of uninsured and underinsured Americans. Didn't New Jersey and Virginia just elect governors on antitax platforms? Didn't previously blue-trending suburbs in Westchester, Long Island and Connecticut go Republican last Tuesday? Maybe it's possible, though, that while the era of big government may not yet be here, that the tax revolt is over.