With no sign of chagrin, President Obama and Vice-President Biden paused briefly in Kokomo, Indiana on Tuesday, November 23, 2010 to magnify the success of the Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This visit is likely to further aggravate the un- and under-employed throughout the Rust Belt. Obama's administration appears to have learned little since its demoralizing election defeat.
However, Obama and Biden do have something to brag about. With the aid of $89 million from a Recovery Act grant, Chrysler has diverted $300 million dollars to retain more than 1000 workers this year at a Kokomo transmission plant. Unemployment in this Indiana town has fallen from a high of 20.4 percent in June 2009 to a vastly improved, but still not praiseworthy, 12.7 percent.
The Understandably Wary Working Class
Many Americans are suspicious of positive economic news. To Indiana's working class, Obama and Biden seem like students drawing attention to the lone A on a report card otherwise littered with Fs. Residents in towns from Gary to Evansville hesitate to cheer for jobs that can vanish without notice. They became victims when corporations shuttered factories and shuttled jobs to Mexico in the wake of NAFTA. Today, the state is a veritable wasteland of low-paying retail and service sector jobs.
Somehow, America's eviscerated working class hobbles onward. The first decade of this century saw the culmination of trade and economic policies that led to wholesale rape and pillage: The gap between the wealthiest and the poorest Americans grew substantially while the growing financialization of America's economy catapulted consumer debt from $355 billion in 1980 to a staggering $2.5 trillion in 2009.
That said, Obama's policies have spurred economic growth, and Americans have begun to dig themselves out of this mountain of consumer debt. However, the tangible results of Obama's policies will not be felt in American homes for some time. Meanwhile, Republicans garner public support by complaining that the recovery is a fiction and that the administration's economic policies are dangerous. How can Obama and progressives overcome these talking points and reconnect with embittered Rust Belt voters who are integral to a 2012 victory?
A New Narrative and Symbolic Acts
For two years, the administration and progressives have tried to foment populist outrage against corporations, wealthy Americans, and Wall Street. Republicans seized on this to cast Democrats' populism as anti-Capitalist, and hence, a root cause of the economic malaise. Consequently, Republicans have been able to convincingly argue that the Obama administration is a direct threat to working families.
To combat this, Progressives must acknowledge, appreciate, and appeal to the experiences and motivations of these voters.
First, class arguments are ineffective -- even destructive -- because most Americans want to become "rich." To tax or criticize the wealthy is to tax and criticize the daydreams of the working class.
Second, vilifying corporations and Wall Street alienates voters. Most Americans work for corporations and know that Wall Street success could one day enable their retirement.
Third, cultural and religious beliefs are sacrosanct to those who hold them. Many feel that government intrusion threatens their beliefs and cultural practices. As the Tea Party's victories demonstrate, today's spurned and excluded constituency becomes the demographic vital to tomorrow's electoral success.
If they wish to remain in power, Democrats and their progressive supporters must visibly demonstrate a shift in tone and tact.
Step 1: Admit Mistakes and Indict Culprits
Narrative: Publicly admit that the federal government has been complicit and short-sighted by allowing irresponsible corporations to exploit and abuse the American family and undermine the American economy.
Symbolic Act: Fire Goldman Sach's employees from key positions at the Federal Reserve and indict corporate officials who brought America's economy to the brink of a Depression. Americans want to see individuals held accountable for the suffering of their families.
Step 2: Ask Citizens to Help Police Corporations and the Government
Narrative: Explain that corporations, like children, must learn how to become good citizens. The government has behaved like a parent who fails to discipline his/her child, and as a result, the nation's corporate children have run wild--making credit default swaps, destroying our coasts with oil, et cetera. Remind the American people that they have a duty and an obligation to help the government become better parents so that our corporations can become better citizens.
Symbolic Act: Progressives should provide and promote outlets where all citizens can publicly shame corporations and the government when necessary.
Step 3: Praise Good Corporations and Reward Them Financially
Narrative: Underscore how corporations (small businesses, local, national, multi-national) have created an era of prosperity for the American people unparalleled in human history. Rather than characterizing corporations as inherently bad and voicing outrage at inequities present throughout our system, hold up particular corporations as model citizens.
Symbolic Act: Legislate benefits to those corporations that keep jobs in America, pay adequate wages, offer good benefits, and serve their local communities. Praise the good. Shame and regulate the bad.
Republicans may have temporarily articulated the frustration of Americans better than Progressives have. However, McConnell and Boehnner's daily rhetorical gymnastics underscore that they are long on platitudes and short on solutions.
If nothing changes in the tenor of American political discourse, Rust Belt Americans will quickly become disillusioned and their fury will live on. A century ago, a similar passion as that which has propelled Tea Party candidates to power was effectively channeled by American Socialist leaders to lobby for an eight-hour work day, higher wages, and protections for all laborers. Today, it remains unclear who will ultimately harness this fury and to what end will it be harnessed.
Follow Mark Cassello on Twitter: www.twitter.com/markcassello
I would only add support for unions representing the workers rights to participate in deciding how economic and commerce stimuli are to be applied for the best benefit to All citizens.
To follow the advices -those I managed to keep down-- of this fellow is to become a milquetoast-change nothing-good for wall street -good for nothing-blue dog-"democrat".
This is he road map to nothingness, for a progressive to become and armchair soft republican.
We need more clear attacks and ACTIONS on what is wrong with the rich rigging the game in favor of their pockets and how that destroyed America. Period. "Get Rich Americans but follow the rules and leave our and others nations democracy and principles (there are none left really) alone": how hard is it to say it?
The rest will follow.
And you say we're not even supposed to TAX the rich because that would be too offensive to common Americans who identify with them? That's just crazy.
And while "most Americans work for corporations," many Americans have had experiences showing them that the corporation they work for may not be their best friend. And where is this great national identification with Wall Street? You think Americans have not figured out how Wall Street has screwed them?
Basically, your strategy is that whatever voters don't understand well enough yet, no one should try to tell them about. That's intellectual defeatism. There's a message to get out; we have to do it.
One immediately has a sinking feeling upon reading this, so one might decide not to read the article as it will be too depressing. Then you DO read the article and find that Kokomo unemployment falls from 20% to 12.7%, and there are other good signs as well. Yes it's a small step, but let's stop with the downer headlines on a story that has a good bit of hope. Say the POSITIVE thing.
The suggestions about how to move forward are all pretty reasonable, but again, I almost did not read the article because of the downer headline.
- Campaign finance reform. Stop the sale of law-makers to the highest
bidder.ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ
- Eliminate corporation person-hood. Corporations aren't people.
- Eliminate computerized voting without a paper trail.
- Stop Wall Street's gambling with public money.
- Reinstate Glass Steagall. Separate banks from investment firms.
- Eliminate Credit Default Swaps which are investments without vested interest.
- Heavily tax day trading. Goldman Sachs scams manipulated with high
speed computers.
- Eliminate certain Hedge Funds. Betting on failure = Hoping for
failure. This is NOT capitalism.
- Eliminate short selling.
- Eliminate derivatives selling.
- Eliminate put options.
- Tax rates that don't cater to the rich.
- Eliminate tax shelters for the rich.
- Strengthen and enforce the Sherman Anti-Trust Act
- Eliminate the cap on Social security withholding. (which stands now
at only $106,800)
- Fully Nationalize and audit the Fed. As it is now, the Fed is a
consortium of private banks.
- Create banking regulatory agency separate from the Fed.
- Consumer protection laws with teeth_. No more weak legislation full
of loopholes.
- Break up the too big to fail banks.They have proven they are
dangerous_ to our economy when they fail.
- Create National Banks and National Health Insurance. Redirect profit
to the people.
- Close down our imperialistic military bases which create more
resentment than security.
- Stop supporting warlords and wars.
- Redirect public funding towards infrastructure, education, health
care, job creation, and green energy.