Corey Robin on evaluating presidential candidates – emphasis mine:

I think a lot of the discussion of various candidates for the Democratic Party would be significantly advanced if, rather than focusing on some problematic or terrible policy they adopted in the past (which is going to be true of any viable presidential candidate; Bernie’s record was hardly perfect, after all), we focused on who is backing these candidates, pushing for them, and the money that is behind them: that really is much more central to the crux of the matter, it seems to me. When we focus on specific policies, we do sound like we’re adopting litmus tests and focusing too much on individual personalities. Much more important to attend to the coalition of interests behind these people, and who in those coalitions will have the upper hand.

I remember within days after Obama’s election, a very senior US historian sat me down and said, basically, it’s all over. He pointed to all the finance people Obama had installed either formally or informally as his advisers and cabinet. I didn’t pay attention, focusing instead on all the inspirational rhetoric and very real victories of representation (which I continue to believe were super important). He (the historian) was right, though. And it was a point anyone could have seen from the very beginning when so much of Wall Street rallied behind Obama.

The exchange itself is funny and more than a bit silly but there are some serious things to take away from it.   Robin has two posts describing and summarizing the exchange:

• Yesterday, I got into an argument with Chelsea Clinton. On Twitter. About Hannah Arendt.
• Chelsea and Me: On the politics—or non-politics or pseudo-politics—of engaging a power player on Twitter

Robin’s first post describes the exchange it.  Unless you’re actually interested in the details, you can skip it.   The significant takeaway from my perspective is in his second post (emphasis mine):

Continue reading →

I’m underwhelmed by the (rumored) new Democratic party slogan “A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future”.  Yes, I want a better future for my kids, my neighbors, and all of my fellow citizens and better jobs and wages will almost certainly be a key element of that but, taken in total, the slogan feels timid.  It sounds like something George Carlin would savage mercilessly.  Timidity has been the calling card of the Democratic Party for the past couple decades so I’m not surprised, but it’s still a let down.

The other week I was re-reading Letter from a Birmingham Jail.  In it King registers his disappointment with “white moderates” who “[are] more devoted to “order” than to justice; who [prefer] a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice”.   “A Better Deal” has ‘negative peace’ tattooed all over it. Think about it:  Not great deal but a better deal.  Nothing too drastic. Wouldn’t want to offend anyone…  Really, that’s the best we’ve got?  (Snark aside, “A Better Future:…” might be a workable starting point. That is, after all, the desired end state.)

For the past day or so I’ve been thinking we should go with

The Freedom Agenda:

Freedom of speech.

Freedom of worship.

Freedom from want.

Freedom from fear.

Think anyone would go for it?  Who doesn’t love freedom?

I go back to the first question from Heilmeier’s Catechism:

What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon. What is the problem? Why is it hard?

The Party slogan needs to address the first two sentences and should allude to the third and fourth.

UPDATE:

Get the details of A Better Deal here and here.  The substance of it is fine but the ‘branding’ is awful.

This evening I read the smartest critique of the Democratic Party in as long as I can recall:  “The New Working Class” by Gabriel Winant.   H/t to Corey Robin for linking to it on his FB page.  I’ll quote his summary of the essay:

What [the Democrats] offer, says Gabe, is reasonableness but no reason. And no matter what side of the “white working class” debate they take—go for it, don’t go for it—they all evade basic questions of both class and race. This is that rare thing: an article on a fraught topic that is utterly free of sentimentality, sanctimony, and cant.

And Winant is spot on in identifying our party’s blind spots.  Some excerpts from the essay itself (emphasis mine):

When I teach history classes, I often give students assignments that ask them to… “historicize” themselves. At a superficial level, it’s easy to absorb this fundamental insight of historical scholarship: that an individual’s ideology doesn’t come from inside them, but is an effect of time and place…

Elite Democrats seem not to remember where they came from, or what it was like when working-class people actually turned out for them. Today’s Democratic leadership and its strategy are the offspring of a process of social transformation in the late twentieth century. Yet they seem to be blissfully unaware of this historical process, and thus unable to grasp that it has become a trap—much less why it has, or how to escape it… Continue reading →

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.”

-Martin Luther King, Jr.,  Letter from a Birmingham Jail:

The following is the second of two commentaries I recently shared with the rest of our Democratic Town Committee.  Several people replied to my initial commentary.  Thoughtful replies but I disagreed with a couple points:

1. That there weren’t substantive differences between Sanders and Clinton on policy issues and
2. That we need to work appealing to “non-partisan”/”independent” voters

While there’s significant common ground between the Sanders and Clinton camps (e.g., strongly pro-choice, civil rights, voting rights) there are profound differences when it comes to what we want when it comes to legislation and public policy.   I’ll attempt to speak for the Sanders side (but emphasizing issues that are particularly important to me).   A short list of priorities and my perception of where Clinton stood/the Clinton wing stands:

• Priority:  End the state of perpetual war.   Look to diplomacy before war.  Perception:  While Clinton apologized for her Iraq War vote she appeared to have learned nothing from it.   She continued to advocate aggressive foreign policy positions while in government, see, e.g., Libya and Syria.
• Priority:  Rein in big banks and, more generally, the financialization of the US economy.  Perception:  Clinton and the institutional party are comfortable with top-down control of capital and it’s impact on people’s ability to control the course of their lives, so long as executives are progressive on social issues.   I don’t see the Clinton-wing ever getting behind a financial transactions tax or a 21st Glass-Steagall act or being aggressive on prosecuting white collar crime (e.g., people responsible for the 2008 crisis).
• Priority:  Affordable health care for all.  Single-payer looks like the best bet but open to other possibilities.  Perception:  ACA is good enough – very concerned about 23 mil who will lose coverage under AHCA but minimal concern for 28 mil who currently have no coverage as ACA didn’t work for them.
• Priority:  Trade agreements which prioritize workers and environment over capital.   Perception:  To her credit, she came around to oppose the TPP.   That stated, if left to their own devices I believe that wing of the party would support it with considerable enthusiasm.   The acid test:  “With the benefit of hindsight, do you believe that NAFTA was good or bad for the US and Mexico?  Why do you believe what you believe?“
• Priority:  Stop the devastation of our environment.  Perception:   At the leadership level (less so among rank-and-file I think) the Clinton wing of party pays lip service to environmental issues but when faced with a choice between making money and the environment will choose making money every time.

All:  I encourage you to rebut those perceptions if you believe they’re off-base.   If I’ve left off key Sanders (Sanders/Warren?) wing priorities or misstated them then please edit the list.   Also, I’d value a list like the above with Clinton-wing priorities with perceptions of the Sander-wing on those issues.   My intent is to get differences out in the open and to negotiate a mutually-agreeable path forward.   (And if you think it’s all water under the bridge then say so to.)

On to the merits of attempting to appeal to “non-partisan”/”independent” voters.   I would like for them to join us but I have no enthusiasm for making particular efforts to win them over.   Why?  Because they consistently demonstrate godawful judgment.   Let’s look back to the turn of the millennium…  A sizeable fraction of “non-partisan”/”independent” voters liked Bush because he’d be good to have a beer with.   How’d that work out?  Initial support for the Iraq War was what?  >90% ?   That despite the fact that the premise of it was based on lies, lies that were obvious to anyone who care to pay attention.   Beyond the specifics of the Iraq War, I’ll wager that most of those precious independents are entirely with our (for lack of a better word) imperialist foreign policy.   They’re fine with bombing the shit out of other countries so long as the bombs don’t fall on them.   Do we say, “Well, okay, I suppose we’ll go along.”?

How many non-partisans/independents lift a goddamn finger when it comes to doing something about gun violence?   How many of them consciously think about what legislation candidates will support for the sake of reducing gun violence when they (independent voters) pull the lever in the voting booth.   Second Amendment rights?  You bet!  Make it a bit more difficult to massacre schoolchildren?  No thanks, too pinko.  I look at the composition of Congress and state legislatures and I say to myself, “Independents don’t give a rat’s ass about actually reducing gun violence.  Lip service is enough for them.”

How many independents/non-partisans had Obama’s back when the fiscal stimulus bill was coming up?  How many said “Yeah, this is an appropriate time for government to spend more on goods and services people need in order to compensate for depressed private sector demand?”  How many said that as opposed to “We can’t increase the deficit!  That’d be irresponsible!   We’ll turn into Greece!”   (BTW, the two things we can do that would “turn us into Greece” are 1) giving up control of our currency, e.g., by adopting the gold standard, and 2) not collecting taxes, e.g., either by disempowering the IRS or by slashing tax rates.  Greece has high tax rates but only chumps actually pay their taxes.)

Bottom line:   I support engaging independents to try to win them over but history suggests that their judgment sucks shit.   Under no circumstances should we be deferential to other people’s awful judgment, even that’s what it would take to get them to like us.   We should engage them with the goal of helping them to develop better judgment.

My preferred path forward is to make forceful arguments for what we believe – e.g., end the state of perpetual war, affordable health care for all, unqualified support of a woman’s right to decide whether or not to have children, a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work (e.g., $15/hr minimum wage), phase out fossil fuels – and engage natural allies.   I hope we can win others over but I don’t think it makes sense to expend much time and energy trying to win over people who, history suggests, are unlikely to ever be more than fair weather friends.   Reach out to people who, if we do right by them, will stick with us even if we don’t always agree.   Let’s focus our efforts on winning over people who will make the Democratic party their party and try to make it more to their liking rather people who will leave the moment they encounter something which makes them uncomfortable.

Chris

The following is the first of two commentaries I recently shared with the rest of the Democratic Town Committee.  It’s been lightly edited for more general consumption.

The other night our Congressman, Seth Moulton, tweeted after Jon Ossoff’s loss in GA-06:

Ossoff race better be a wake up call for Democrats – business as usual isn’t working. Time to stop rehashing 2016 and talk about the future.

“Time stop rehashing 2016” got my attention – “business as usual” did too but “rehashing” more so. I replied:

Yes, it’s a wake-up call but people in the Clinton and Sanders camps still haven’t hashed out the issues which were the source of tension in 2016. Until we reconcile our differences and are able to get behind a common vision – even if we aren’t personally enthusiastic about all the specifics – it’s going to be a challenge to win converts by convincing them that we have a compelling vision for the future.

That’s a big deal.   Winning hearts and minds will require that we have a compelling narrative – not just a bulletized list of good things we want to accomplish for the country but an actual story which draws people in and motivates them to be a part of it and to add to it.  Back to my reply to Seth though, I don’t believe that Clinton and Sanders supporters have argued out their differences and negotiated a mutually-agreeable path forward.   My impression is that each side is waiting for the other to either die off or slink away.   I don’t see that happening.  The first step towards actually talking about the future – as opposed to offering a trite cliché about the need to do so – is to acknowledge the need to hash out current points of disagreement. You can’t negotiate without first acknowledging difference and agreeing to sit down at the negotiating table.  We need to get there or Franklin’s adage “We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” will become a painful truth.

Hold that thought but I want to get back to Moulton.   He tweeted later, maybe the next day:

We need a genuinely new message, a serious jobs plan that reaches all Americans, and a bigger tent not a smaller one. Focus on the future.

I have a net favorable impression of Moulton but statements like that set off my bullshit detector. Say “new” and “serious” in the same breath without offering specifics and you’re pretty much guaranteed to set it off.  In searching for the specific text of the tweet above – I recalled the nature of it but wanted it verbatim – I came across this post from Jon Keller which summarizes my concern:

And inquiring minds want to know – what, exactly, does Moulton want this “new message” to say?

Go to the issues page on his website and you find the following: a call for more “investments” in government programs… higher pay for women and minimum wage workers… support for Obamacare, and so on, a fairly typical center-left Democratic agenda.

Not much help there.

Unemployment is low and employment-to-population ratio is respectable. There’s room for improvement but the economy isn’t in the tank. What problems will a “serious jobs plan” address and how will it do so?  Does higher pay for minimum wage workers mean $15/hr? $12/hr? Other? Is empowering unions part of a serious jobs plan?  (Workers wages generally go up when there’s union presence.) What about Medicare For All or single-payer health care? Either of those would help control rising health care costs, which would be good for both employees and employers, no? Is that part of looking to the future?   Bigger picture: GDP is growing steadily and corporations are making profits hand over fist.  Are the economic challenges the average American faces due more to lack of employment opportunities or to how corporate profits are distributed? What does Moulton think? I say a serious jobs plan will need to address income inequality and the fact that wage share of gross domestic income has been falling since ca 1970.  Does he agree?

What else is part of Moulton’s vision for the future? Does he propose to end the state of perpetual war?   Does he propose to prosecute white collar criminals?   How about war criminals?   (The Obama administration did neither, apparently preferring to look forward rather than back.)   Do we hold people accountable for their misdeeds or is that looking back not forward?  The 2008 financial crash put a lot of people out of work and subsequently forced them to drain their retirement savings.   Are current banking regulations too strict, too loose, about right?  How about a financial transaction tax, would that be a net benefit to people who work for a living?  More generally, if our goal is to create more decent-paying jobs do we continue to allow capital to flow more freely than people, thereby giving an advantage to capital over labor? (Hard for American workers to compete with workers overseas making $0.50/hr.  Should we enact barriers to capital flight?  Should we put tariffs on imports from low wage nations?) Do we invest in improving public transportation? Enact paid family leave? Will we need to raise additional revenue to make the elements of our “new message” a reality?

I want to hear what Moulton has in mind re the above.   I hope it’s good. I fear it’s empty rhetoric.

Along those lines of hopes and fears, in a recent memo about recruiting candidates for office the DCCC Chair, Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, wrote

“Let’s look outside of the traditional mold to keep recruiting local leaders, veterans, business owners, women, job creators, and health professionals [to run for Congress].”

People in those groups are part of our constituency, they can be good public servants and we should encourage them to run.  That stated, 1) Lujan’s list strikes me as straight up traditional mold not the least bit outside it and 2) it bugs me that’s the extent of the list. Perhaps I’m too cynical but I don’t feel like the list was inadvertently cut short.  What about teachers, nurses, construction workers, farmers, Black Lives Matter activists, environmental activists, neighborhood organizers, clergy, public defenders, home healthcare aides, stay-at-home parents and union organizers? To name just a few. (h/t to Corey Robin for much of that list.)  They’re part of our coalition too.   We need to support them to run for office. We need to be reaching out to and making common cause with them.

Bring a long commentary to an end. I know it’s only a couple day but I don’t like the vibe I’m getting from Party leadership since Ossoff bit the dust.  It feels like they’re planning to rebrand Third Way/Bill Clintonism – for which I have no enthusiasm. Am I off-base?  Too cynical?  What are your thoughts?

Chris

Two posts of particular note:

• What Is Today’s Democratic Party Offering The Working Class?

And some related charts