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.

Why? Why won't the Democrats do the populist thing?

I'm really not getting this: it would seem to me that the best way to insure a new era of Democratic domination would be to:

1. Enact real, actual health care reform, along European lines. This will be popular, and would show the Republicans to be fear-mongering assholes;

2. Some combination of banking reform (revive Glass-Steagal, say) and way high taxes on banking industry bonuses to impose consequences on the banking industry for being reckless and for nearly destroying our economy

3. Populist tax increases on the wealthy and near-wealthy;

4. The EFCA, to give workers more of a chance to bargain for a larger piece of the economic pie.

This would seem to be obvious to me; the fact that nothing the administration is doing even faintly echoes any of this does not fill me with optimism about our chances in 2010 and 2012.

Howard Dean quoted Truman back in the '04 campaign: "If you run a fake Republican against a real Republican, the real Republican will win every time." The Obama administration does not seem to get that this is an absolutely essential insight.

WTF happened to the Party of the Common Man?

To answer my own question: once they were purchased by the money powers, it was all pretty much over for the Common Man. Republicans: "Yeah, we'll fuck you. Hard." Democrats: "So will we, but we'll feel real bad about it, and besides, we'll use Vaseline."

I am sick to fucking death of political parties that stand up for oligarchs and plutocrats, while letting working people die from a thousand cuts. I mean, fuck these people.

It's time to look at other options in terms of political strategies, folks.

Given the Supreme Court's more or less formal establishment of a plutocracy, they (the plutocrats) have too much money to be opposed through conventional, "inside the box" methods. They will attempt to bury Obama in a tsunami of slick, expensive propaganda that will get the (slickly re-branded between now and 2012) Republicans into power.

Well, fuck that.

A strong progressive movement will lead Obama and the Democrats where we need him and them to be.

It has become clear to me that progressives need to build a movement, a strong one, that is populist in character. A strong enough movement will not be ignorable by Obama and the chickenshit, kowtowing-to-plutocrats Democratic leadership in the House and Senate.

"We want the Wall Street Fatcats to pay a price for messing up our country; we want the greedy rich to start paying their fair share again; we want our government to work for us again, rather than for a few rich puppeteers who currently pull the strings. WE WANT OUR COUNTRY BACK."

...like that. Not conciliatory, but scrappy. Not Bill Clinton, but Harry S Truman.

Not covered in plutocrat pocket lint, but making it clear that their only "owners" are the concerns and interests of ordinary working people - the heroes who built this country, and whose labor and virtue keeps it strong. The people whose sons and daughters do the actual fighting in our nation's wars, while plutocrats profiteer and plunder and won't send their kids off to defend this country.

The Democrat's fundamental problem is not so much what they stand for or how they explain it or not being clear enough about their "values" - No. It is that they have become foggy about who they stand with: working people. The working and middle classes. The Republicans have been able to present themselves as populists(!) because the Democrats forgot their role in society; It is the job of Democrats to use the government to help balance society by (through progressive taxation and income re-distribution) reining in the tendency of capitalism to concentrate incomes and wealth at the top and thus provide stability. See how simple that is? We defend working people from the worst tendencies of greedy plutocrats. THAT is our core mission. THAT's who we stand with.

Successful Politics is way more about "Who" than it is about "What".

New New Deal

When the left was most ascendant, the issues they rode to that success were economic in character. Think of the decades-long dominance of the New Deal coalition.

The premise of those economics were clear: one of the important roles of the central government is to counter-balance the power of big business and the rich - through things like:

1. Steeply progressive tax rates (the top marginal tax rate (the rate charged in the highest portion of rich folks' income) during even the administration of that notorious Leninist, Ike, was between 91 and 94 percent)

2. Support for Unions in the Wagner Act and other initiatives, to give bargaining power to labor, either directly (for union members) or indirectly (for other workers in unionized industries whose wages rose to match the union workers')

3. Public Works to take up slack in the labor market during recessions (the interstate highway system, the TVA, and much else.

4. Strong support for a minimum wage, to exert pressure "from the bottom" on wages further up the income scale

...and much, much else.

The Democratic Party would do well to build a new identity whose foundation is economic and strongly populist. There are too many people who call themselves "liberal" because they are pro-choice, eat organic food and drive a Prius - while opposing things like Single-Payer Healthcare, raising the minimum wage, ensuring a supply of affordable housing for everyone, the Employee Free Choice Act and much else. You know, the kinds of things New Dealers would do (and benefit electorally from.)

I sometimes wonder whether Harry Truman would even recognize the Democratic Party today.