Brad DeLong for White House Chief of Staff

The situation is grim. So why isn't everybody running around with their hair on fire?

Why aren't there irresistible political demands for more government action to steer us toward a better economic recovery --or at least to hedge against a double-dip in what seems likely to be called not a "recession" but a "depression" when historians get around to writing about it?

I have my theories:

1. widening wealth inequality and an upgrading of the class position of reporters and pundits, who are no longer ink-stained wretches immersed in mainstream America;
2. the collapse of union power, which ensures that nobody who sees real workers on a daily basis sits at the table when the deals are made;
3. increasing job security for the powerful in Washington, aided by the growth of the lobbying apparatus that envelops the mixed-economy government;
4. the collapse of professional integrity among the Washington press corps, which no longer dares to call balls and strikes as it sees them, preferring to say only that the Democrats say it was a strike and the Republicans say it was a ball, and that opinions on the shape of the earth differ.

I don't know which theories are right. But the situation does leave me feeling like one crying in the wilderness. (Say not "we are children of the market!") I cry out to boost aggregate demand -- by banking policy, by monetary policy, by fiscal policy, by spending increases, by tax cuts, by anything -- I don't care what! (Well, I do, but not by much)

This really gets at the heart of things. The American leadership (in government and the press) are failing their fellow citizens.

1. The President needs to pull himself together (cough fire Rahm cough) and address the country's suffering with that famous eloquence of his -- and then follow up with effective policies, or else risk destabilizing the country.

2. We on the left need to make ourselves way, way more active and visible to those who lead the country. We no longer have the luxury of self-indulgent despair. We need to get busy.

Some Thoughts on Middle Age

I think back to me at 18, and for all the tumult of being that age, my life stretched before me with seemingly limitless, even frightening, promise. I had not yet known failure of any significant scope. I had yet to have my heart broken. I was going to change the world, dammit, and I wanted answers, and clear ones at that.

Things seemed simpler, or maybe it was easier to convince myself they were. Men in my peer group typically did a stint in the armed forces, and I enlisted in the Army with scarcely a thought to the justice of my country’s causes, or the effects of propaganda on my decision-making.

If my body ached, it was my own damned fault (well, mine and rum’s, anyway...). Time had yet to start insisting on its supremacy, had yet to supply me with the pains of its passage – pains of both body and mind. I understand the temptation in men my age to vainly try to hold on to a mercilessly vanishing youth — but that would require me to surrender wisdom, too, and more; being 18 again would mean the erasure of some memories by which I mark the years, experiences which have softened and mellowed the fabric of my soul.

I would lose the morning I got up before dawn, walked out into a meadow and watched the sun come up over the Vermont mountains and frosted-blue grass and fiery autumn woods. I would lose my first real love, and the way her face looked that one night as the moon lit its contours with blue and sacred light; I would lose the moment, praying the Stations, when Christ showed me His pain with such tenderness that I wept and gave Him some of mine.

Bob Seger once said in a song, "I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then."

Me? Nah. For all the melancholy and aches and increasing limitations, I’ll keep the lessons I’ve learned.

A Gun is Not a Penis

I mean, here's the thing: I hunt deer. I am a gun owner (well, technically not currently, but you know what I mean...). Guns are not Magical Totems Of Manly Power. They are a means of getting venison and wild turkey, both of which are delicious.

Lots (most?) of my fellow lefties are against hunting, and there's a lot to be said for that. Me, I think that, if I'm going to eat meat, it's more moral to kill an animal myself - one who's had a nice life roaming the woods munching on leaves and mating with does - as opposed to eating a cow that was raised in a pen, and spent the last few weeks of its life knee-deep in its own shit in a stockyard someplace. And, of course, not eating meat at all is something I can totally respect.

A lot of American gun-fetishism just seems childish to me.

The Chattering Class Club

DougJ has an amusing rant over at Balloon Juice - "meta" talk on the left blogosphere can get tiresome, but this is right on:

And things aren’t getting any better. I spent the last week with too weak a WiFi signal to post, comment, or do much of anything internet-related besides read the RSS feed on my phone. Obviously, it’s my fault for what I’ve chosen to put on my Google reader, but the entire fucking thing was Kevin Drum congratulating Matt Yglesias on how well he countered Ezra Klein’s point about Megan McArdle. And half the time the topic was how clubby SCOTUS had become.

Cokie is dead, long live Ana Marie Cox.

Johnny Reb They Ain't

Hunter, as usual, is hilarious:

And I admit, a small bit of me almost hopes they manage pull off their own little Beer Belly Rebellion, just so the New Oklahoma Drunken Asshole Redneck Wolvereeeeenes Coors Light Freedom Brigade could finally go up against the U.S. Army like they want and get a nice, barrel-end view of all the pretty gadgets our tax dollars have been buying to use against crazy people waving guns around.

FDR Populism

If, for some strange reason, you really want your heart broken some time, read FDR's first or second second inaugural addresses or virtually any utterance of Harry S Truman (the ones about economics, anyway) and then compare and contrast with the current Thing That Used To Be Liberalism.

FDR:

Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and have abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

I suspect a lot of this goes back to the way the left split in the late sixties, over Vietnam and (to a lesser extent, civil rights); blue collar and union guys vs. the "New Left" college radicals. That split has consistently and only served one constituency well, really; the rich. It is worth remembering that the central, core, consensus issues that have united the left's most dominant constituency (the New Deal coalition) were economic in character.

The consensus left position, the set of beliefs that really distinguished you as "left," used to be very simple, and went like this:

It is legitimate and necessary to use the power of the central government (through progressive taxation, income redistribution and support for labor) to restrain the tendency of big business to concentrate wealth in the hands of an elite few, and thus provide social and economic stability.

See? Simple.

Everything else needs to flow from that crucial, central, distinctive-to-the-left premise - and when it does, suddenly the national conversation starts to change.

FDR again:

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.

When the Republican Party says we need tax cuts to stimulate the economy, I'd love it if the Democrats countered that by pointing out that the Republicans have been trying that for years, and really just want to give more money to their rich friends and weaken the government's ability to stick up for working folks. They might also say that we Democrats want to pass a big jobs bill to give our constituency, ordinary Joes and Janes, a chance to practice their legendary work ethic and provide a future for their children.

Like that.

In short, I and Digby and (to some extent) Paul Krugman and others have been calling for the Democratic Party to take the golden opportunity of the current crisis to break out the economic populist rhetoric to sell economic populist policies.

This would seem to be an obvious and winning strategy that could plausibly lead to a couple generations of electoral and ideological dominance.

More Like This Please

Funniest Facebook Status Update in, Like, Ever

Well, that didn’t take long---a death panel showed up in my living room this morning. They have no idea what they're supposed to be doing. At the moment I have 'em repainting the rumpus room. This could work out well, I'm thinking.

It IS Waterloo, Alright...

One of Life's Enduring Mysteries

Here’s the thing I’ve never understood. If I walk into a club looking like a nice, respectable guy who is likely to be considerate, caring and a good provider, women will ignore me in droves; but if I walk into a club with tattoos on both arms, a scar on my face and generally create the impression that I’m a likely to be little tardy calling my parole officer, I’ll be freakin’ mobbed. WTF is up with that, anyway? Can someone of the female persuasion just explain this to me, please??

To the American Right: Get a Pair, Okay??

"Freedom was attacked today, and freedom will be defended."
So said George W. Bush on September 11th, 2001. It struck me then, and still strikes me today, as fundamentally wrong.
"Freedom" was not attacked that day; symbols of American economic and military dominance were attacked. Power was attacked that day, not "freedom."

Bush's War on Terror was and is a huge mistake, and needs to be
declared null and void. Responding to the attacks of September 11th as
if they were an act of war, and not a criminal act, is giving Al Qaeda
and Osama bin Laden  precisely what they want; legitimacy as "holy
warriors" when they only deserve infamy as brutal criminals. They need
to be opposed with skilled international policing, not a big, stupid,
endless "war."

More on all that in my next post.
But there is one other thing I want to say, regardless of the above.
May I be blunt, here? The American right seriously needs to get a pair.
Begging the government to torture people who frighten you doesn't make
you a tough, clear-eyed realist; it makes you a bed-wetting, sniveling
coward who dishonors every brave American who fought to obliterate and
bring to justice Hitler's torture brigades and the rapists of Nanking.
Look -- It used to be that Americans defined their enemies as Those Who Torture:



I mean, really: What is the big, unprecedented deal about Al Qaeda
anyway? Yes, 9/11/01 sucked, and I'd definitely rather not go through
that again. That said: the extremist criminals killed just under 3000
people that day, and destroyed or damaged under 20 buildings and 4
aircraft. That was bad, no argument there...but "an enemy unlike any
other"??! Pull yourselves together.
Worse than the Civil War (a million killed and wounded)??
Worse than World War II? (Somewhere between 45 and 60 million total
killed, including up to 11 million gassed, hanged and machine-gunned by
the Nazis and Japanese, and virtually every city in central Europe and
East Asia reduced to lego-sized, smoldering fragments?)
Worse than The Cold War? I mean, think about this for a second: the
United States spent 40-odd years under the constant threat of having the entire country vaporized by ruthless, amoral totalitarians who had publicly and repeatedly vowed our destruction.
And now you're begging the government to torture people whose most recent attack amounted to some pathetic, deluded criminal failing to detonate his own underwear??
Your childish, pants-wetting cowardice would be funny in a pitiable
sort of way, except for the fact that you've convinced so many of my
fellow Americans that Torturing People Is The Only Way To Defeat The
Magically Powerful Terrorists. No, that's not funny at all: it fills me
with  shame, but also righteous rage. Osama is laughing in whatever
cave he's holed up in.

Oh - and the "Greatest Generation" you fetishize? You dishonor them
and the sacrifices they made with your pitiful cowardice. The ghosts of those who fell on a thousand battlefields (who, by the way, were really, actually Defending Freedom) have every reason to be ashamed of you.
</rant off>

We need "More and Better **Leadership**"

Digby, yesterday:

I also think that Democrats really don't like to govern because it makes them feel exposed. They have prostituted themselves to business and adopted neo-liberal principles, but they have to pretend that they are representing working people and the poor.

Well, there's your problem right there.

If you really want your heart broken, read FDR's first or second second inaugural addresses or virtually any utterance of Harry S Truman (the ones about economics, anyway) and then compare and contrast with the current Clusterfuck That Is The Democratic Party.

I suspect a lot of this goes back to the way the left split in the late sixties; blue collar and union guys vs. the "New Left" college radicals. That split has consistently and only served one constituency well, really; the rich. It is worth remembering that the central, core, consensus issues that have united the left's most dominant constituency (the New Deal coalition) were economic in character.

The consensus left position was simple, and went like this: It is legitimate and necessary to use the power of the central government (through progressive taxation, income redistribution and support for labor) to restrain the tendency of big business to concentrate wealth in the hands of the elite few, and thus provide social and economic stability.

See? Simple.

Everything else needs to flow from that crucial, central, distictive-to-the-left premise - and when it does, suddenly the national conversation starts to change. The Republican Party says we need tax cuts to stimulate the economy; the Democrats point out that the Republicans have been trying that for years, and really just want to give more money to their rich friends and weaken the government's ability to stick up for working folks, but we Democrats want to pass a big jobs bill to give our constituency, ordinary Joes and Janes, a chance to practice their legendary work ethic and provide a nice life for their children.

Like that.

In short, I and Digby and (to some extent) Paul Kruigman and others have been calling for the Democratic Party to take the golden opportunity of the current crisis to break out the economic populist rhetoric to sell economic populist policies.

This would seem to be an obvious and winning strategy that could plausibly lead to a couple generations of electoral and ideological dominance. So, why are we not seeing it?

What has happened is that the Democratic Party leadership has become corrupted by proximity and fealty to the wealth and power of our economic elites. Incrementalism and pressuring the current bunch has not worked, because they are too corrupted; we need new and better leadership. It's time to clean house. The leadership has failed us. It's time to acknowledge that and replace them.