Running the Clock out on the Welfare State

Ross Douthat peers into the soul of the left and finds vice and fear in his New York Times column. (Are they allowed to write stuff like that at the Gray Lady?) He echoes KT in saying that the welfare state's days may be numbered because they are unsustainable.

But it’s here, with the looming fiscal crisis, that the more legitimate liberal fear comes in. Liberals had hoped that Obama’s election marked the beginning of a long progressive era — a new New Deal, a greater Great Society. Instead, from the West Coast to Western Europe, the welfare state is in crisis everywhere they look. The future suddenly seems to belong to austerity and retrenchment — and even, perhaps, to conservatism.

[Ed. note: This blog does not use the term liberal to denote the left, unlike Douthat above, preferring the terms leftist or progressive.]

Exit question, as the deficits become unsustainable, can that be leveraged to repeal Obamacare? We are already seeing the first push back, with the "doc fix" for medicare put on life support for just six months. What new financial calamity will it take for the people to rise up in wrath against the ballooning debt?