In January of 1998, the news about Monica Lewinsky exploded in the Washington media world. It was 24-7, and red hot intense. Within 72 hours, Republicans were calling for Clinton's resignation or impeachment, and some Democrats -- even some liberal ones like Paul Wellstone -- were on the verge of doing the same. Clinton survived the first barrage of calls for him to step down, but as that long year wore on, and more and more salacious news came out -- topped off by the stained dress in August -- it looked worse and worse for both Clinton and the Democratic Party.
Republicans were salivating at their prospects in the November elections, and Democrats were running scared. Pundits were predicting big losses for the Democrats in Congress: 30 plus seats in the House and five or six in the Senate. It didn't turn out that way, though. For the first time in 176 years, the party with a president in office in his 6th year actually picked up seats in the Congress (we picked up 5 in the House, while staying even in the Senate.) Without going into detail as to why (if you want to know more about that, you can go here), the bottom line is that progressives outside the party structure helped chart a bold strategy for winning that made all the difference.
Instead of avoiding the president's problems, we made the case that it was time for the country to move on, that all the Republicans wanted to do was wallow in the mud, and instead the country needed to focus on solving our problems. After initially resisting this approach, Democrats ended up embracing it, and we shocked the political world by picking up five seats instead of losing 30.
2010 is a very different kind of year, but it also looks bad for Democrats right now. It feels a lot like 1994 right now, with a weak economy, an impassioned right wing movement, and a discouraged Democratic base. We didn't do very well in the 2009 elections, and forecasts of ugly job numbers for a long time to come are making a lot of voters feel angry and discouraged. But I am convinced that there is a strategy that can turn the 2010 election around. That strategy needs to be built around health care, jobs, and taking on the big banks. None of these things are easy, but I am convinced that they are by far the best hope Democrats have.
On health care, they simply have to pass a strong bill where at least some important and tangible benefits kick in right away. They just have to if there is any hope in the 2010 elections. To have worked on this issue for a year and come away with nothing of significance to show for it is a political disaster for the entire party. God help any Democrat from a tough district or state on the ballot in 2010, because nothing short of divine intervention will save them.
On jobs the politics are complicated. I think many voters understand the depth of damage to this economy, and don't expect miracles. But can I just make some suggestions to my Democratic friends regarding how NOT to talk about jobs in 2010:
My personal preference would be to fire every Democrat on the White House staff or on Capitol Hill who talks like a macroeconomist. Macroeconomists like Summers and Geithner are thrilled with the 3.5% GDP growth, and thrilled that the banking sector is showing "more health" (read: big profits)- they show about as much political sensitivity as George HW Bush when he looked at his watch in the middle of the debate, or said "Message: I care." Bragging about an improving GDP and explaining how jobs are lagging indicators which will someday trickle down to the unemployed is political death at a time like this. What Democrats should be doing is fighting like cats and dogs for every job that they can deliver, to their districts and to the country. Show that they are moving on this urgent need: get a new jobs bill passed, get a roads/infrastructure bill passed. Show more toughness when the most protectionist country on earth, China, lectures us on being protectionists (they liked us being saps for all those years.) Fight like crazy for new jobs in every venue, every forum, every chance you get- and tell people no matter how many jobs you produce that it is never enough, that you will keep fighting for more. The message has to go beyond the Obama White House mantra that "we won't be satisfied until everyone has a job"- it has to be that we will fight like tigers to produce every job we can now, not in some distant future. Voters understand the deep hole our economy is in, and that things won't be solved overnight, but they want to know that their political leaders are as passionate about solving unemployment problems as the people struggling are to find jobs.
Finally, in terms of the big banks, as I have written before, voters are mad as hell at Wall Street, and they want to know that politicians are not only mad too, but are willing to do something to take them on. Bernie Sanders' two-page bill to break up the big banks was a stroke of political genius, and is great economic policy besides. Based on private polling I've seen, about 85% of the American public would agree with Bernie's statement that if you are too big to fail, you are too big to exist- and they believe it passionately: in every speech I have given over the last year, my single biggest applause line, easily, was that statement. Bernie's simple, straightforward two-page bill is a masterstroke, as it cuts through all the financial gobbledygook of the financial barons, and lays bare a simple way to get done what the public is demanding. I hope Bernie files it as an amendment on the floor to any bill coming up for debate, and forces other Senators to vote up or down on it. The Democrats who are smart will champion the idea and fight for it.
If Democrats follow the safe conventional wisdom formula in the 2010 elections, they will get their butts handed to them. Voters are not happy with incumbents, base Democratic voters feel like no one is fighting for them, independents feel like nobody cares what they think. But if Democrats shed their caution and become fighters, for jobs and health care and the middle class and against insurers and Wall Street, they can pull off the same kind of surprise in 2010 that we pulled off in 1998.
Two suggestions: First, use the remaining stimulus money to create real jobs for people out of work. Not to give raises to those who have jobs, or to reward community organizations for helping to elect Democrats. Second, spend a couple of years to truly study the health care system and its problems, and come up with a rational, affordable alternative. We've spend two hundred years getting into this mess; it's going to take more than a few months and a pitifully contrived bill to devise a solution.
We have studied health care since NIXON!!!. Direct Job creation during difficult finanical times has always proven to be problematic.
The health care bill is far from perfect, but it is a VAST improvement over the current system. Nearly ALL government programs go through an evolutionary period of refinement and improvement after first coming into existance. Health care will be no different.
That was all just political posturing to collect votes and win the primary against Hillary Clinton. Obama's just another DLC type. (NOT saying Hillary wasn't also a DLC'er!)
CHARGE #1. Business good.... government bad. False. A high percentage of businesses fail. The Tennessee Valley Authority, land-grant universities, and the interstate highway system.are
successful Federal government programs that were beyond the ability or desire of business to make the huge up front investment .
CHARGE #2 The anti-government crowd’s cries of “socialism”. In a Socialist System, government owns the means of production, decides what’s produced, and how it’s distributed. Our economy has 27 million small businesses Capitalism is deeply ingrained in our economy … conversion to socialism is virtually impossible.
CHARGE#3 Free markets are better than socialism. The debate has never been about one versus the other ... it’s about where the boundaries of free market economics are. Unfettered free markets are unrestrained and favor business interests at the expense of the public interest. Our government has been hijacked in broad daylight by four oligarchies ... the financial, pharmaceutical, energy (oil), and insurance industries ... The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Far too many members of Congress are on their payroll.
Joke: What do Sen. Feinstein and I have in common?
neither one of us are Democrats
By coiincidence just today I talked to a young businesswoman about this very subject and made (what I now realize was) the mistake of telling her that it could have been a lot worse, economy is growing, market is rebounding. Oops, hadn't read your article yet! It must have sounded like nails on a blackboard to her.
What she said to me was interesting. She has had a successful business for the last several years. As all small business people, she depends on occasional credit from banks to invest in growth. She says that in our whole town of about 85,000 there is only one bank that will disburse small business stimulus funds and that bank is limiting it to customers of a year or more. It is not her bank so she found that another bank might come through. It turned out the second bank, a national presence, routes all seekers to a central phone number; when she called it she got a recording that said it might take up to three months just to get back to her, the demand was so big.
THIS HAS GOT TO STOP, and Lux is so correct in saying that the financial gurus in the Aministration are, for the most part, absolutely tone-deaf. How to get through to them?
This is a flawed premise. It is flawed wishful thinking to assume the recession is over.
A present 10.2 % unemployment rate that is rising each month is not an indicator of a recession that is over with.
Lux.....Your article is a dream based on more dreams.
By the time either side gets into office, their advisers 'tell them what to do,' so 'my ideas are better than the next persons' just doesn't cut it anymore. Sorry. I lost faith in politicians years ago.
Thanks.
Get on with it - and while you're at it - get the Banks to give a full account of what they've done with the MONEY - before & after the bailout.. and hold the culprits accountable.
Wall Street - next etc... Enough already.