Is There A Plan for That?

It's long been understood that the Democrats have a brand problem.  But it seems like before they can go about solving it, they need to answer this deceptively simple question:

What does it mean to represent the working and middle classes today?

I think when there was a larger unionized manufacturing sector the Democrats were an ally for their interests in Washington. But now that that's dwindled so much, Democrats are seen to be picking winners and losers when they advocate for what remains - certain specific sectors like autoworkers, or public sector employes. Now the question is not, "Who will protect our pensions?", but - as Governor Christie dismayingly put it, "Who gets pensions anymore?" What once was an expression of solidarity, albeit self-interested, has now become a liability among the economic nihilists.

And the rightwing noise machine, cheerleaders for the big business race to sell out working class Americans in favor of profits, has been successful in selling the idea that what is good for big business is good for the working class. Pensions hurt the bottom line, which costs jobs - no matter that the savings have simply been funneled upwards and never trickled down.

To hear them tell it, the trickle down has all been taxed away. Yet this is clearly untrue. The working class surely isn't being taxed to death, and upper income rates have stayed low. Yet with all this savings in productivity, why is it that "no one gets pensions anymore?". Maybe much of it is the structural reality of a shift in manufacturing. But while those savings have trickled up, people are now forced to depend on fragile 401ks or social security - the latter there no longer exist tax revenues to pay for (or so we are told).

So the question remains: what is the Democratic response? And why is the Republican response seem to get so much traction?

Maybe the Republican response is simply to leverage people's sense of frustration and nihilism, running a platform of no one cares about you so get yours too. It seems that Republican populist success is largely based in class-resentment of liberals, who appear to be doing well, certainly with their decadent values, while Rome burns.

I'm loathe to tempt Godwin's law, but I'm struck by the dynamic of liberal-as-jew, seen to be in conspiracy with the levers of power (media, academia, government) to bring about the downfall of tradition and economic strength. The idea may be absurd, but it doesn't have to make sense. It just needs to feel like it does. The idea of tax increases seems almost as a back-door way to pad liberal coffers while loading the progressive cultural cannons and aiming them at main street.

So the Democrats can play into this caricature by showing they are on the right side of this image. They can ignore it entirely and push on with their limited agenda of gay rights, regulation and protecting the old and sick.

But the question remains: what are the Democrats offering the working class, aside from appearing culturally insensitive, redistributive to everyone but them, and making their employers seemingly miserable? They can talk until they are blue in the face about "creating jobs", but this just seems like bullshit. At the end of the day, jobs really do "trickle down", even if they're fragile, low-paying, non-union, with poor or non-existent benefits and retirement. Do Democrats have a plan for that?

Dining With the Enemy

In this age of political polarization and partisan rancor, I often worry about the fact that I have no real Republican friends.  I did have one.  But when he began spouting Tea Party craziness seemingly overnight, we briefly dialogued and haven't seen each other since.  One wonders whether such profound disagreement on the very nature of society, and such unwillingness to understand the other side, can be overcome by old bonds.

Yet this sort of dialogue almost seems like the one thing that really matters anymore.  Large portions of the population have completely tuned out of all major media and are getting their news and views exclusive from a handful of right wing media sources which arguably cannot even really be considered to present actual journalism.  But if we aren't engaging these people, how else to bring reason back into politics?

Mark Kleiman (heroically!) sat down with a couple.

I just had dinner with.... an old and trusted friend with a sophisticated knowledge of public policy [and] a relative stranger with limited information – both of whom plan to vote for Carly Fiorina over Barbara Boxer this fall. For each of them, the Access to Care Act is an important reason. Their concerns were opposite; the stranger loves Medicare and fears that ACA will cut into Medicare spending, the friend has caught Peterson-itis and is convinced that Medicare is going to eat the GDP, and hates ACA for not cutting Medicare enough.

Similarly, the stranger thinks that extending the Social Security retirement age would be a crime, while the friend regards it as an obvious response to increased longevity.

The fact that they were voting for Fionina for opposite reasons didn’t bother either of them; the stranger has decided that all incumbents ought to replaced, and indeed offered John Boehner’s proposal to raise the retirement age as a reason to vote against Boxer. (All this while railing against “socialism.”)

Anecdote isn’t data, but the hint here is that the Repubilican strategy of obstruction plus obfuscation is, so far, working pretty well.

I can see this happening because while they both professed to care greatly about the ACA, it was really just a sort of partisan bludgeon: the opposition to Boxer stems more from a larger disgust with what she represents on many levels. So the obstructionist strategy creates a scenario in which everything the Democrats do is terrible and almost fascist (“ram it down our throats”). So the good in even something as conservative as the ACA – similar to historical Republican proposals – is denied out of hand, and fodder for further political anger.


The alternative would have been to work out a bi-partisan agreement, and been more honest about elements of legislation that their ideology is actually comfortable with (“government keeping its hands off medicare”). But that would have cost political capital. Republicans would have had to tone down their rhetoric considerably, and admit that they too believe in some government, some of the time. Of course, the right-wing media-fueled tea party has largely tied them into this sort of craziness, but at some point you need to have principles.

Denial in California

A new Field poll has come out with numbers on what kind of spending cuts Californians would like to see.  It is no surprise really, but a majority of voters favor barely any cuts at all.  Out of 14 categories, the only two to eke out a narrow majority of votes are parks & prisons.

More interestingly however, is how it breaks down along party lines. 

Democrats unsurprisingly only agree to cut one major category

• prisons (by 61%).  

 Also no surprise is the GOP's endorsement of cuts in

• environmental regulation (70%)
• state parks and recreation (56%)
• public transportation (56%)
• public assistance programs for low-income families with dependent children (55%)
• child care programs (52%)
• state prisons and correctional facilities (51%)

Everyone agrees that the last thing to cut is education (20% all voters, 13% Democrats, 34% GOP).

But when you look at the state budget, many of these categories represent a very slight percentage of the budget.

Obviously these sorts of attitudes aren't sustainable, for either party, without an increase in taxes.  For Democrats, who would only like to see cuts in prisons, the only area of savings is going to have to come out of the prison budget, which is only around 7% of total spending.  As it exists today, it is faced with a number of problems, not the least of which is overcrowding. 

For the GOP, much more willing to make cuts, the overwhelmingly desired cut is to environmental regulation, which barely makes up 1% of the budget.  It's about evenly tied on whether to cut prisons, parks, public transportation, and child and family services, which do take up a considerable portion of the budget.

All of which spells out pretty well why we are a state in such dire financial straits.  The public is massively polarized over what types of services the government should be performing.  The Democrats and GOP are locked in a bitter struggle with deep roots in very different views of human nature and social development.

But with climbing deficits, and no other option than emergency program cuts, the state is literally being forced to follow the GOP's world view of what role the government should play in a modern capitalist society - with the possible exception of prisons being forced to release convicts early.  If Democrats want to see their vision of a government more actively involved in ameliorating what they view as a struggle for basic rights and equal opportunities, they must demand that Californians embrace higher levels of taxation.

Finger Pointing

My prospects for getting health insurance are pretty good in the future, considering I’m an experienced teacher with a Master’s degree; unemployed now but as soon a the local market opens up I’ll no doubt find employment. I also have chronic pre-existing conditions, which makes me uninsurable. So I feel like I have a dog in this fight.

And so while the president's agenda has a pretty big direct impact on my life, I’m still not clear as to why all the finger pointing at Obama. If politically feasable, he would have supported single-payer. But he’s stuck with where the Dems are at. As far as I can tell, the main complaint is that he isn’t “fighting” hard enough. But what the heck does that even mean? It seems like a straw man to assume he has so much theoretical power over congress.

I mean, look what it took to get Ben Nelson on board. What could Obama possibly do that would top that pay off?!! I’m all for arguing that he be more aggressive. But what is being argued is that Obama’s lack of aggressive influence on the process is largely what has kept the process not only from resolving but being less liberal to boot. This is simply not true.

What troubles me most is that this rhetoric feeds right into the ignorance of independents who don’t appreciate the real underlying liberalism of Obama, and so right him off as “another politician” in their reductionist and misguided understanding of American politics – and who thus end up voting for the Scott Browns of the world out of spite.

The Real Harry Reid Gaffe

So apparently in 2008 Harry Reid

"thought that Barack Obama could win the presidency because he was "light-skinned" and did not use a "Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

Aside from the clunky use of the term negro – I think the analysis is spot on. Not to mention something that you’d find general agreement with in any Black Studies department. Americans are racist, white supremacists straight up.
Whether we’re conscious of it or not, and even as it is obviously not a good thing, it is understandable. The African American experience has, and continues to define us. It is an ethnicity that against all odds has persevered – holding on to its singular heritage, carrying with it both the dysfunction of genocidal brutality, and the wisdom and innovation of a people who have found ways to not only hold on to their identity but continually push the boundaries of what is culturally possible under centuries of oppression.
And America is what it is because of our racial history – both our greatest expressions of freedom and our worst savage excesses. Obama is an exemplar of this contradiction. He is what he is both because of and despite of who he is, and who we are. As a country we have been through so much, and from the beginning have reached for the highest rung despite it always being just beneath our grasp. As such our narrative has been one of epic triumph – and epic failure. The two define each other tragically. Even as we elect the first African American to highest public office, we have people casting the most vile and racist attacks – their seething hatred couched as it often is behind thin veils of humor.
As expressed in the words Obama himself reiterated, “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice”, humanity is searching for freedom, even as it is far from there yet. There is no evidence that any such objective morality exists, but as defined by the basic human impulse to apply one’s own aspirations to those of his fellow man, our biological predisposition is indeed toward empathy and fairness.
Harry Reid is a leader of the party that, although having not always done so in the past, currently spends much of its time seeking ways to redress the imperfections of our past, expressed as they are in the social and demographic stratifications we see at present. Where its opponents see equality and freedom, it sees inequality and struggle. So it would stand to reason that he would see the historic achievement of Obama’s election in the context of a society still struggling to attain what it would ultimately like to see but presently finds itself incapable of adequately fulfilling.
Reid's remarks have been portrayed as out-of-touch, if not racist. Republican chair Michael Steele responded that

It's an old mind-set when you're using language in 2008 that harkens back to the 1950s and '60s...

Yet his own party almost unanimously holds the view that there exists little racism in American society today, and the little that does is irrelevant to the equality of opportunity that exists for all races. This despite the fact that we see large gaps in achievement between whites and blacks. What his party fails to do is distinguish the difference between the opportunity that exists and the means with which one is able to attain it. Therefore they make no distinction between the young boy growing up in poverty and the boy growing up heir to a fortune. That the two should be allowed by society to grow up and suffer two distinct fates is not perceived as an injustice as all by Republicans. Democrats on the other hand, see this as a grave misfortune, especially as it is a direct result of the immoral social arrangement of past generations.

And so the real gaffe here is not that of Harry Reid, intent as he is on creating a more just and equitable society, where all men are truly free to achieve their dreams. Instead it is the continuing gaffe of Republican thought that speaks of a hollow freedom in which all men are purported to be free, yet who in reality are born to live out lives of desperation and pain. It is a smothering gaffe that seeks to rewrite history while absolving guilt or responsibility.

As a fellow Democrat, Obama's response highlighted the difference:

I accepted Harry's apology without question because I've known him for years, I've seen the passionate leadership he's shown on issues of social justice, and I know what's in his heart.

Where Are the Conservatives?

photo: Pieter Dirk

My thinking has been thus for a while now: Modern conservatism is about as far to the right as communism is on the left. To communists, all business is bad; To modern conservatives, all government is bad.
What’s fascinating is how we got here. Where did the intellectual right go? Did they sell their soul for populism? Did a sort of fuzzy, emotional relativism get the people to follow – but then turn on the Svengalis in a sort of headless blood lust?
I’m wondering where the Christian right is in all this? I thought it was kind of ironic when the Stupac amendment ended up showing that the quickest way to outlawing abortion might just be through a single-payer system. I know there are two misaligned sides to the modern conservative coin, with Jesus on one side, and Ayn Rand on the other – a match certainly headed for trouble. But what gives?
And now with Obama escalating the conflict in Afghanistan, the Democrats have a liberal president who believes in using military force preemptively – at least in as Al Queda doesn’t seem to have any active training camps in Afghan territory.
The Democrats are firmly planted in the center, while the Republicans seem incredibly off-kilter.

Miss Anthropic

No, Tom Friedman, the problem is not that someone "slipped .... Valium into Barack Obama’s coffee". The problem is that Americans are fucking stupid. OK, not just Americans, we just happen to be pretty good at it. How else to explain Sara Palin's energizing of the McCain campaign? Putting aside the fact that there is a HUGE difference between the Republican and Democratic parties - not to mention what they supposedly stand for, who the fuck are these people who are now voting Republican because of the Alaskan Governor? White women, mainly, according to polls. One was interviewed on the news last night, and admitted she didn't really know any of Palin's policy stances, but liked her. You know, she's "one of us".

Didn't we try that 8 years ago? We elected "one of us"? Fucking asshole. What kind of dipshit votes for people this way? Go back to American Idol.

And Maurice Sendak is gay. Good for him. I don't know why. But good for him.

I guess I'm just cranky because our nation is going to shit, Tillie was up half the night throwing up, I got my kids way too giddy after recreating a Rube Goldberg device after reading Lights Out, meanwhile one of them wouldn't stop crying for his Mommy, and all the colored paper I ordered was the wrong size. And Sara Palin makes me want to throw up.

If McCain is elected I'm going to move to Australia.