Democrats just got mugged by voters in Massachusetts. What will the party learn from the beating?
Already, the conventional wisdom in congealing. Democrats, says the benighted Joe Lieberman, should move to the "center." Voters "don't like partisanship and deal-making." Their "loud message?" "Get together and get some things done."
Obama got it wrong, argues lobbyist Vin Weber, consummate Republican insider. "They thought the country was at a very different place ideologically."
Swing voters, conservative commentator Gloria Borger tells us, are against "big government," like the intrusive health care plan. The deficits are too large, and voters doubt whether "all this new government is actually good for them." And of course, the perpetually gaseous David Brooks warns against the president's "voracious pragmatism," suggesting that he spend the next year showing how "government can serve a humble, helpful and supportive role to the central institutions of American life."
And no doubt, Blue Dogs and New Dems like Evan Bayh and Kent Conrad are gearing up to use the defeat to rail about deficits, and demand the creation of a bipartisan commission to provide cover for an assault on Social Security and Medicare.
Stuff and nonsense. Republicans have profited too much from moving to the right and opposing Obama to join in bipartisan cooperation. And if they did, then there would be more backroom deal making, not less. Voters who don't want big government shouldn't want Congress to "get together and get things done." Yet polls suggest voters are disappointed that Obama has been unable to get more things done rather than that he's done too much.
Unlike Republicans, Obama actually believes in bipartisanship, to a fault. Yet the most bipartisan of his policies - the Wall Street bailout which in policy and personnel is virtually indistinguishable from the Bush administration - is by far the least popular.
Democrats are in trouble, but moving to a mythical "center," focusing on deficit reduction, abandoning health care won't help. Consider the three fundamental factors in the up-coming elections.
1. "The angry, the organized and the old"
Bi-elections are low turnout affairs. They are dominated by the angry, the organized, and the old, the seniors who vote in larger numbers. Clearly, the Republican right is angry - and mobilized, while the Democratic base is discouraged by the entrenched resistance to change, particularly by members of the President's own party.
The right is getting more organized, while the most potent organizations in the Democratic base, the labor unions, just watched the president push to tax their members' health care benefits. Union leaders were forced into concessionary negotiations with the president to try to limit the damage, a scene sadly evocative of union negotiations with corporations over the last decades. But that puts the president in the role of the corporate CEO trying to roll back worker benefits - not exactly the way to excite folks to get out and work.
Seniors weren't big supporters of Obama in 2008, and now they're worried about the so-called "cuts in Medicare" that they've heard about in the health care bill. Already enjoying America's largest single payer health care program, they are the least enthusiastic about reform that might sap funding from their coverage.
So Democrats are in trouble. But moving to the center won't placate the Republican right, nor mobilize the Democratic base. Deficit reduction won't excite workers who are concerned about jobs and health care, nor calm seniors worried about Medicare. Bipartisan support for the intervention in Afghanistan will cost Democrats more votes than it gains them.
2. Big government, big banks, big business
Voters are skeptical about big government - but they are furious at big banks and big business. And the growing populist anger on both right and left sees all in one stew. Washington has run up deficits to bail out the banks, while nothing has been done to create jobs. Credit card companies are abusing customers, while Congress and regulatory agencies sit on their hands. Big business ships jobs abroad, and enjoy a tax break for doing it. Big government is suspicious less because it is big, then because it is captured, controlled by the banks, the insurance companies, the corporate lobbies.
Moving to the "center" would only reinforce the sense that money rents both parties, and people get left in the cold. What is dangerous for Democrats isn't that the administration and Congress are seen as too left, but too establishment. People still want to have hope in Obama, but increasingly the right is framing him effectively as a Wall Street liberal, using taxpayer dollars to bailout Wall Street and to help "those people," [the poor, the Haitians, the minorities] while nothing is done for Main Street taxpayers.
3. 20 million unemployed
Jobs, jobs, jobs. Obama inherited the Great Recession. But with twenty million people unemployed or underemployed, by far the biggest worry for voters is about jobs. And jobs and the economy will be the biggest factors by far in driving votes in the fall elections. If the economy were creating jobs, the president's popularity would be soaring and Democrats would be rewarded this fall, no matter how big the deficit. If the economy stalls or the "recovery" comes without jobs, Democrats will face a far more difficult terrain - and cutting the deficit won't make a wit of difference.
So what are Democrats to do? Spike Lee had the best advice: Do the Right Thing.
To survive in this election year, Democrats have to get it right on the banks and on jobs.
On banks, nothing is more poisonous to the Democrats politically or the nation economically than the bailout that has left the big banks more concentrated, and still free to gamble with the now explicit promise that taxpayers cover their losses since they are "too big to fail." Democrats should be driving reform, restructuring and accountability. The president's tax to repay the funds spent on the TARP is a belated first step. And led by Michael Steele, the bumptious head of the Republican National Committee, Republicans seem stupid enough to oppose the demand to "get our money back."
Democrats should join the British and French governments and push for a windfall profits tax on bloated banker bonuses, and let Republicans complain about higher taxes. They should champion the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and let Republicans complain about regulation, supporting the big banks against consumers. Democrats should be pushing for a tax on speculation and for breaking up banks "too big to fail." They should be convening hearings publicly probing the frauds and abuses that contributed to the collapse. And the Justice Department should be rolling out "perp walks," prosecutions of the bankers and brokers who committed the frauds. Democrats would be smart to audit the Fed and block the nomination of Ben Bernanke for another term as chair of the Federal Reserve. Wall Street will respond by insuring that Republican candidates are well funded, but Massachusetts just demonstrated that Democrats are at risk against poorly funded Republican candidates, unless they get this right.
On jobs, barring a stunning turnaround, Democrats will head into the fall elections with unemployment in double digits. Republicans will argue that Obama has failed on jobs, even as he saved Wall Street and ran up massive deficits.
The only response to this is for Democrats to be actively, visibly and assertively pushing for jobs, making it clear that they will keep fighting until we dig our way out of the hole that conservatives left us in. A big jobs program - with spending on new energy and a modern 21st century infrastructure, with direct public service jobs for the young and the most impacted, with aid to states and localities to avoid debilitating lay-offs and much more - should be the lead initiative this year. Let Republicans rail about deficits; Democrats and the economy would benefit if the president and the Democratic Congress pushed hard for jobs.
Democrats won't benefit by blurring lines, or trimming their sails. They benefit if the election this fall is not simply a referendum on Obama's policies, but a choice of direction. And the country will benefit if Democrats frame that choice clearly. Obama and the Democrats inherited the full catastrophe - the Great Recession, two wars, broken health care and energy and education systems, Gilded Age inequality. In Obama's first year, against the resistance of the entrenched lobbies and the obstruction of the Republican Party, we've begun to dig ourselves out of the hole. Now voters have to decide - go back to the very policies and leaders that created this catastrophe, or continue to push for change, to keep trying until we build a new economy on the ruins of the old.
Republicans are now modeling ill-fitting populist garb. They will get away with the masquerade only if Democrats let them. In this case, good policy and good politics are the same. The country benefits if the administration and the Congress shackle Wall Street - and so will candidates running on that this fall. The country benefits if the administration and Democrats keep pushing to create jobs and build a new economy - and so will candidates this fall. Republicans will not doubt oppose these initiatives. And that will help make this fall's election a fight worth having.
Follow Robert L. Borosage on Twitter: www.twitter.com/borosage
They not only won the lower-income groups, but they also won in the higher-income groups that would have to pay the higher taxes. They did not do a back-door deal with business interests, which the business lobbies found extremely annoying, but appealed to the people on class grounds and on moral grounds: fairness, the rich aren't paying their share.
If the Democrats play this way, they energize their base and reap the votes of the discontented working-class and middle-class voters. If they move the center to placate their financial sponsors, they become "Lite Republicans" and the voters will say, "Why not choose the real thing?"
On the ballot were two referenda placed there by Democrats in the State Legislature. Measure 66 provided for an increase in the state income tax for individuals making over $125,000 or families making over $250,000. Measure 67 increased the corporate minimum tax from $10 to $150 dollars, and imposed a gross receipts tax of 0.1%. The purpose of the measure was to maintain the current level of needed services, such as education and public safety.
It was a straight class battle. The major funding for the YES campaign came from unions. The major funding for the NO campaign came from business groups. The YES campaign emphasized fairness; the rich were not paying their fair share. The NO campaign emphasized opposition to job-killing taxes. Polls showed the YES campaign slightly ahead, but with a deteriorating lead in the last week.
In fact, the YES campaign won rather easily. Both propositions got about 54% of the vote. Although Oregon has been getting increasingly more liberal in the last few election cycles, tax measures regularly go down to defeat. The difference in this case was that Democrats stuck to their guns. And they won!
Pray for a miracle? Like, for instance, the dullard American people might suddenly get smart.
This bill will pass the House. Let the Republicans in the Senate vote to filibuster it. Bingo! Every Democrat has a campaign issue. The same can be done with the bank fee, the public option, cap and trade, you name it. After a few weeks of this, Republican defections will start to appear. Because the Democrats held firm.
Did Obama lose all his campaign speeches during the move to the White House ? What happened to all the ideas and promises ? The smart energy grid and alternative power to create jobs... What happened to that ? Why didn't the POTUS appoint some one to develop a plan due last summer, while the Dems were working on securing votes and funding... Why, after all the months of campaigning did the ideas and vision just apparently disappear, and the government return to business as usual ?
It's as though when he got to the White House, Obama was given the secret book of rules and realized he was pretty much powerless to do anything. Either that, or his Chief of Staff has been giving him pˆss poor advice and telling him to let the people on the Hill take the flak for health insurance and financial reform.
If Obama does not realize that he has let the people down big time, and that he is getting abysmal advice from his experts, then he is nowhere near as intelligent as I believed. If he does realize, then he had better wake up and start working for the people who put him in the WH, or he will spend the next 3 years as
Put forth a very strong jobs bill/payroll tax that monitors sub-contracting so money goes to American workers
Pour a lot of money into public college grants and loans
Prosecute financial criminals
Bang back hard on Republican and Faux Gnus lies
Pass incremental health care reform and tie it into the jobs bill
A majority of Americans (according to the polls) WANTED a public option health care reform bill.
The party proposing this reform occupies the presidency AND has a majority in both houses of Congress.
WHAT the F***?!!!!!!
The Republican MINORITY and Big Business are clearly the real power brokers here. And have apparently ALWAYS been. The concept of America as a representative democratic republic is a farce.
Why try to change anything, when the best, most hopeful and altruistic of efforts smash like insects on the windshield of a juggernaut called "corporate special interest married to theocratic fundamentalist oppressors determined to control every individual's personal choices in the name of a desert nomad god'.
We are f*****.
A whole country held hostage by reactionary Neanderthals determined to keep us mired in their fantasy vision of an America that never existed in the first place.
More years of deadlock.
More generations owned and kept chained up to minimum wage work without benefits as wage slaves to the corporations that very obviously and clearly are the REAL government.
I'm done.
Been fun talking with you all.
Goodbye.
I'm going home now to bunker down and entrench for the coming American Dark Ages.
and guess what...
it covers everyone in the state...
legal or not...
but guess what else...
IT'S BANKRUPTING THEM!
You complain about big business and republicans...
but wait until your real masters come to collect...
China.
Talking it away, or putting different clothes on the same passive messaging will not get them in office next election.
Time to stop focusing on self-serving politics, and focus on working on POLICY.
Next.
we are the majority. Obama has three years to stick it to
the party of no ideas & the time is now. I'm old, a vet &
a liberal. I listen to my old coot friends at the VFW whine
about the Democrats taking away their medicare. Where
do these boneheads think medicare came from? Did they
ever hear of LBJ? And who said Mass. was a liberal state?
Never was & never will be. Take off those stupid teabags
& stick up for your best interest. It doesn't relate to the
party of no.
Well, I CAN"T tell you why they voted for Brown because on the lips of nearly everyone who voted for Brown what you heard was "I voted against Obama.".
It was the expensive and ugly health care plan that they felt went too far and did too much damage to their own health care plans and wallet.
It was the massive spending. The massive spending. The massive spending.
It was a bailout for banks that the public did not want bailed out. Period.
And interestingly enough...not so much talk about jobs. in fact, no talk about jobs.
Obama seems to think it's Jobs Jobs Jobs because in his mind the left of left "progressive" agenda surely isn't what they are against.
He's drawing the wrong lessons, they are against the left of left progressive agenda and he has become the poster child for it.
At which point, the REPUBLICANS WIN THE DAY. All they need to do, is point out that the Union wage demands produce either HALF as many jobs, OR HALF and many projects OR, COST TWICE as much--and goodbye populist mandate.
If you are serious about adding jobs, follow the New Deal motif--pay enough for 3 hots and a cot, let the worker move to where the work is, and build FAST. No work rules beyond basic safety, no benefits, no high wages, no environmental review. JUST GET IT DONE.
THAT woud be a successful jobs program, produce maximum bang-for-the-buck, restore public confidence in Government AND garner my support.
ANY TAKERS?
You in?
But jobs is only the start. There are jobs and then there are jobs. We have to eliminate the trade deficit and rejuvenate American manufacturing and tech (they go together to a large extent). I haven't been hearing any plans to do that. Don't expect to as long as the financial types are in the Administration. Guys like Summers and Geithner don't get it and likely never will. Matter of fact, I don't recall the Treasury Department ever doing anything positive on trade, not since the '70s at least.