Democrats in 2010

Here is an interesting article from the Huffington Post regarding the Democrats' chances in the 2010 elections.

Democrats Do Not Need to Become More "Moderate" to Win in 2010 - Four Rules for Victory in November

[T]he Democratic agenda needs to become more "moderate" or "centrist" and that this would somehow be more attractive to Independent voters.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

"Moderating" our goals is not a recipe for victory. It is a recipe for failure. Last fall, voters overwhelming voted for change, and they knew then -- and still know now -- the kind of change they wanted.

They wanted to end the stranglehold of the private insurance companies that continues to put every American a single illness -- or one layoff -- away from financial catastrophe. They want to take bold, clear action to assure that America is in the forefront of creating the clean energy jobs of the future -- and leave a thriving healthy planet to our children. They wanted to fundamentally change the bull-in-the-china shop foreign policy of the Bush years and re-establish American leadership in the world. Most importantly, they rejected the failed economic policies that allowed the recklessness of huge Wall Street banks to plunge the economy into free fall -- and cost millions their livelihoods. They desperately want leadership that will lay the foundation for long term, bottom-up, widely shared prosperity.

In other words they wanted... and still want... fundamental change.

The author then outlines four steps Democrats need to take to make victory possible:

1). Democrats need to demonstrate to the voters that we are fighting tooth and nail for the goals they support
2). Democrats need to deliver.
3). Not only do we need to forcefully rein in the power of Wall Street and the Big Banks -- we need to frame the political dialogue in decidedly populist terms.
4). We must continue to forcefully and proudly stand up for progressive values.

My reaction:

I think the author is spot-on correct in his advice to the Democratic Party on what they need to do to be victorious in the upcoming elections and how watering down a populist and progressive approach in favor of appearing more "moderate" and "centrist" is a recipe for disaster. But I just can't get fired up about this article although I basically agree with much of what the author had to say.

(1) Appearing to be progressive and populist and sounding like one on the campaign trail is very different from actually being progressive and populist once you are in office and in a position to influence the creation of and vote for legislation. Much of the national Democratic Party is heavily influenced and beholden to corporate and Wall Street interests. Progressives like Dennis Kucinich play at best a marginal role in national Democratic politics. I don't see any of that changing anytime soon with the election of more Democrats into office in 2010.

(2) Democrats had a historic opportunity -- by being the majority in Congress and holding the Executive branch -- to make fundamental changes that would rein in the power of Wall Street, deliver real and comprehensive healthcare reform, draw down the costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and make fundamental changes in the way the US conducts foreign policy, etc. Today we are still on the same boat as when we started in regards to the issues above. When push comes to shove the Democrats have shown themselves to be unwilling, uninterested, or unable to deliver actual, fundamental change or to represent a progressive and populist perspective. Why should electing more Democrats into office change that?

(3) People will say if you don't support the Democrats despite the misgivings above this creates an opportunity for the Republican Party to take back power. I say I am tired of being politically held hostage by the Democratic Party. They rely on my and the vote of Progressives to win elections but don't deliver on any of the issues I care about once in power. That's no reason for someone to vote and retain their loyalty. That's just politically blackmailing progressive and independent voters.


I applaud the author for his ideas. As an independent I see myself supporting Democrats in elections if they run campaigns and govern the way the author is describing. But I just don't see the Democratic Party taking on any of his sensible advice except on the symbolic level to use in speeches and in campaign advertising. Beyond the rhetorical level I don't see the national Democratic party willingly representing a more progressive and populist direction.

Which begs the question -- if you care about progressive values and see issues from a populist perspective, what do you do politically? Where do you turn to if neither major party is interested in representing your interests?

Getting Out the Vote and the Myth of the Stupid Voter

An important, highly intelligent and well-argued blog post at Open Left discusses the myth of "stupid voters" and the weaknesses of the Democratic Party in getting out the vote in elections. This is highly recommended reading. I would love to hear a response from an official Democratic Party official on it.

Key points made in the article:

Year in and year out, voter-discouragement is an important part of the ongoing Republican campaign.

The Democratic Party seems to fall asleep between elections, and it has been historically very poor at the kind of message development and dissemination done by think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Foundation, the Heritage Foundation

Democratic voter-registration and get-out-the-vote efforts have been spotty at best, and it’s notable that the individuals and groups doing the best job of this (ACORN recently and Jesse Jackson a couple of decades ago) have been very little appreciated by the ruling group in the party.

Key quote:

The Democratic Party is a business like any other, and just as newspapers get their money from advertisers, and not from readers, the Democratic Party gets its money from donors rather than from voters. Bringing new voters from the lower orders into the party would almost certainly require policy proposals which would negatively impact the big-money people, and even if the Democratic Party started winning elections that way, the boodle coming in would be reduced, and boodle is what pays the mercenary pros at the party headquarters.

In large part this explains the constant refrain from the Democratic leadership: we’d like to do the right thing, but political realities make it impossible. The truth is that the Democratic leaders are very happy with the political realities and don’t want to change them. If it were "politically possible" to pass single-payer, for example, the Democratic Party would lose incredible amounts of money from key donors in the medical biz. Single-payer might make the voters ecstatically happy, but these happy voters are not at all likely to replace the money the party lost.

Some food for thought the next time you hear someone invoke the theme of "we agree with what you say in principle but what you want is politically impossible."

What a Left-Wing Presidency Looks Like

Hat tip to the Open Left blog for first alerting me to this item.

The American right wing’s accusations of President Barack Obama and his policies as Socialist has always baffled me. Because Obama has demonstrated through his Cabinet appointments, attempts at bipartisanship with obstructionist Republicans, and actual policies that he is no Socialist – nor even a leftist. He is very much a traditional American Democrat with strong free-marketer, corporate leanings.

For a portrait of what a strong, Left-leaning presidency of a large country and major economy might look like it would be much better to set one’s sights overseas towards someone like President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil.

From Spiegel Online:

Brazil's President Lula: 'Father of the Poor' Has Triggered Economic Miracle

His supporters liken him to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who dammed the Tennessee River in the 1930s to provide electricity to the region and who launched the New Deal, a massive investment program to overcome the Great Depression. But critics see the undertaking as a massive money pit…

Now he is both the darling of bankers and the idol of the poor. With the so-called worker-president at its helm, Brazil is attracting investors from around the world. Jim O'Neill, the chief economist at Goldman Sachs, invented the acronym BRIC, for the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, and predicted a bright future for the South American giant. But his colleagues derided him. China and India certainly had prospects, but Brazil? For decades, the country was seen as a shackled giant, plagued by never-ending crises and inflation…

The country has repaid its foreign debt, and it has even become a lender to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The government has accumulated more than $200 billion in reserves, and the Real is considered one of the world's strongest currencies. International experts foresee a decade of prosperity and growth for the country. Lula predicts that Brazil will be one of the five biggest economies on Earth by 2016, the year Rio de Janeiro hosts the Olympic Games. It will host the soccer World Cup in 2014…

All of Brazil is basking in the fame of its president who, less than seven years after coming into office, now enjoys an approval rating above 80 percent. The opposition has all but disappeared and the national congress has become submissive. Lula runs the country like a patriarch, so much so that his predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, is already accusing him of "authoritarianism" and warning that Brazil is on the road to state capitalism.

There is a kernel of truth to Cardoso's claims. Lula has never had any confidence in the market's ability to heal itself, and he sees the state as the framer of a new social order. He loves impressive projects and nationalistic gestures. He is a pragmatist, but he despises speculators. "White people with blue eyes" brought the world to the brink of financial ruin, he said recently. He meant bankers.

The financial crisis has only confirmed Lula's skepticism toward capitalism. Lula believes that Brazil coped with the crisis more effectively than other countries because the government took corrective action early on. According to Lula, fighting poverty and the equitable distribution of income cannot be left up to the market.

Full article at Spiegel Online.

This is my response to American free-market worshipping conservatives whenever they invoke “Socialism” in their accusations of the Obama administration. If they want to see what a leftist does once he has attained power they shouldn’t look to Obama. They should, instead, look at Lula and see what he has done for Brazil. And to see that perhaps a little bit of Socialism -- and I mean Socialism for real instead of pretend boogeyman Socialism that the American right likes to invoke -- would do the USA a lot of good.

Lula’s Brazilian success story is what real reform looks like and a portrait what real reformers do. It is what pushing through and delivering on a populist agenda looks like without compromising on one’s beliefs and commitment to ordinary people as one’s primary constituency. Lula is an example of how an unabashed leftist skeptical of capitalism and its potential to spread wealth evenly among the population rules as President. His success is a shining example of the power of government and the economy harnessed for the interests of ordinary people primarily rather than speculators and bankers.

Why the Angry Right Can’t Be Dismissed So Easily

Check out this insightful blog post by Jeff Blodgett from the Wellstone Action website which details the rise of the conservative, populist Right. He makes several points which I will quote here:

The resurgence of organized conservative activity was written about in a recent New York Times piece about Dick Armey and his influential movement organization, FreedomWorks. There are three points that strike me about about the conservative movement now:

ECONOMIC CONSERVATIVES ARE IN ASCENDANCE -- growing in influence and setting strategy for the right. The social religious wing, dominant in the Bush administration, has become less effective and relevant. Their message is angry, populist, and economic: FreedomWorks' slogan is: Lower Taxes, Less Government, More Freedom. Government takeover is their bogeyman. In 2010, they will focus on exploiting the economic pain in the country, railing against spending and taxes, and blaming all government and certain incumbents.

CONSERVATIVES ARE BORROWING FROM THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT -- The NYT article quotes FreedomWorks staff saying that they are making close study of Saul Alinsky and other community organizers. Like progressives, the other side is increasing conservative candidate development (NY-23 and in GOP primaries all over the country), and improving their grassroots advocacy skills (like the impression made at August town halls).

THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT CONTINUES TO BE BETTER FUNDED -- FreedomWorks, just one of many groups, easily raised $7 million from donors in 2008, including single gifts of $1 million and $750,000. The Leadership Institute, the premier training center for the right, sustains an $8 million dollar annual budget--at least twice the budget of any of comparable groups (like Wellstone Action) on the progressive side. Americans for Prosperity, another key conservative economic group has 73 staff people nationally and in 20 states.

These People Are Not Joking

One thing in which conservatives have been successful -- and which I am still in a bit of a disbelief —- is to take on the mantle of economic populism and use that as a rallying cry against the Democratic administration. Who would have thought a few short years ago that the economic populists who would have the most political impact in hard economic times in the U.S. would be conservatives railing against Democrats?

I have always thought that in tough economic times, old-school Marxists, Socialists and Progressive populists would find a ready audience for their message and we’d have a working and middle class radicalized and mobilized en masse to fight for working peoples’ interests like in the 1930s. I have always thought that the Progressive Left had superior arguments in advocating for working peoples’ interests against free-market conservatives and that Progressive Populism will explode in popularity in times of economic crisis. After all, didn’t the economic policies which have caused this mess we are in based on radical, free-market ideology as espoused by economists like Milton Friedman and implemented as policy by his followers in government? And in finding someone to blame, that most people would naturally gravitate to its opposing viewpoint?

Boy was I wrong! Instead of resulting in an army of modern-day Eugene Debses, exploding into popular culture are the current heroes of conservative populism like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck who have massive followings among ordinary, working people. Sarah Palin’s book just came out today and is a huge bestseller drawing crowds of hundreds of people at her book signings.

Something is going on in American culture in this time of economic crisis and for some reason, the Right is tapping into the psyche of ordinary working Americans in a big way that I have never seen Progressives do in recent memory. Those who oppose these conservative populists and who laugh at, ridicule and dismiss them as irrelevant do so at their own peril. It is very easy to dismiss Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin and laugh them off as bad jokes. But these people and the movement they represent is no joke. They are organized, well-funded and, whether we like it or not, wildly popular and with a large constituency.

A New Approach for Progressives?

I have yet to see from Progressives wide discussion of innovative approaches in engaging this conservative populist movement. Jeff Blodgett frames the fight to be had along the lines of the 2010 Congressional Elections and that engagement would be defined as stopping the election of Republicans into Congressional seats—with the implication being electing Democrats into these seats or preventing Republican takeover of these Democratic seats will be the definition of victory.

For me that is not good enough. We’ve all seen this year how getting both a Democratic majority in Congress and a Democratic President in the White House doesn’t necessarily translate into getting Progressive agenda enacted into public policy. Helping make Congress a solidly Democratic turf in 2010, therefore, doesn’t necessarily translate into a victory for Progressives.

The discussion among Progressives should be centered on how to harness this society-wide anger and frustration with the tough economic times and channel them towards ends that are unmistakably Progressive—but without resorting to electing Democrats as the default position. Can it be done? I don’t know. But I can’t see any other way.