I do think I sense a prevailing wind leftward among the Dems, or at least a light breeze, but to say it has already captured a “majority” – that’s a bigger claim than Moulitsas seems to appreciate, making it so off-handedly as he does with no supporting stats. Is he right?
I’d say the answer is no. The thing maintaining our position in split government is the ability to bring a certain number of rational centrists with us.
Any form of litmus test will do to us what it’s doing to the Republicans. And that’s not where we want to be.
Now, if it’s just a matter of shaving the Blue Dogs and the Boll Weevils/Dixiecrats out of the coalition and letting the GOP have them and their voters forever, I think the Dems could do that and still mostly and consistently win. But they can’t so safely read out or write off the New Democrats, those need to be dealt with, at least as credible enemies.
Calling someone a “centrist” is a reference to their position in relation to the elite consensus. On economics a lot of Americans are to the left of what elites consider acceptable policy alternatives ( the Overton window if you will). 40% of Americans oppose free trade. 44% have a negative view of capitalism. (cite) These are mainstream positions. Yet no politician who espoused them would be called a centrist.
This I think is the issue with the Democratic Party. They need to move outside of the straight jacket of being the other corporate party. Half of Americans don’t vote at all. If the Dems could inspire 1 out of 5 of them with populist rhetoric then they wouldn’t have to cater to the moderate conservatives we call “centrists”. An extra 10% support would put the Democratic Party into the permanent majority and finally force the GOP to moderate their monomaniacal drive toward complete plutocracy.
Of course, just because I want that to happen doesn’t mean it will or even could.
Yes, the democratic party could move significantly left. Anti-corporate positions could gather significant interest and some media attention.
It would, however, all but eliminate fundraiser among large donors, both for candidates and PACs. And that means losing elections.
Remember, it was as recently as 2000 where we were astonished - I was, and I was covering it - that GWB raised and spent $100MM on a Presidential campaign. Now that’s cheap openers. According to Opensecrets - a site which should be on everyone’s bookmarks - Obama raised about $280MM from individual donations and half of that was in $2500 or greater contributions. That ain’t grass roots fundraising.
Combine that with the fact that he spent $684MM during the campaign and that’s a LOT of extra - non-individual - contributions that could have gone away. Toss in PAC money and other corporate spending and it’s those donations that control who has the money to get the message out.
Without real finance reform you should get used to the two corporate party system.
I think Jonathan Chance raises a good point. This is why campaign finance reform is so crucial. It’s not just that it’s the right thing to do (bribing politicians shouldn’t be legal) but it also is the key to reducing the stranglehold of elite opinion over policy. A government can’t succeed entirely in opposition to the most wealthy and powerful segments of society. That shouldn’t be the goal. Instead it should be to achieve the type of understanding that underlay the New Deal. Smart aristocrats like FDR realized that it was in everyone’s interest, including their own, for the government to respond to the desperate popular demands to Do Something.
I expect to see incremental policy initiatives from the Dems. Things like increasing the minimum wage which even Walmart has come out in favor of in the past. Policies that will appeal to people struggling economically but won’t scare off big donors in hopes that we can take baby steps toward a more economically secure future. The current paradigm doesn’t allow for more.
Can it? I’m no expert but I doubt there has been a revolution without significant elite support that ended up with a better government. The Russian Revolution succeeded in overthrowing the czars but only at the cost of reestablishing a new totalitarian rule but with different buzzwords. I think it is likely to eventually require a revolution in America to shed our foolishly antiquated constitutional arrangements. But I would much prefer a tidy coup d’état such as 1787 America rather than the long bloody struggle of France a few years later.
I suspect all revolutions have elite support: at the very least the leaders tend to have college educations. At any rate after the speeches are over you need technocrats to run things.
Of course he’s wrong, otherwise he’d have supporting stats. This is pure wishful thinking. You are correct about the prevailing winds though. Michael Tomasky: There exists these days, among Washington policy intellectuals and advocates who tilt toward the left end of the accepted political spectrum, a certain measured optimism. It’s not about Obama, or any feeling that he might somehow, with his sagging poll numbers, be able to persuade congressional Republicans to fund, say, an infrastructure investment bank. Confidence is appropriately near zero on matters like that. Rather, it’s about the widely held perception that the Democratic Party, after years of, in the argot, “moving to the right,” is finally soft-shoeing its way leftward, away from economic centrism and toward a populism that the party as a whole has not embraced for years or even decades.
Exactly. And campaign finance reform sufficient to move the needle that much won’t happen. If we had 1950s levels of unionization it would be different, then we’d have both funds and enough leverage to pass middling campaign finance reform. That might be enough.
Two corporate parties aren’t the end of the world. Recall that Rubin opposed welfare reform for example. And the Democrats have a lot to offer corporate America. Health care reform grappled seriously with our long run budget challenges and the Democrats can deliver sound policy in exchange for somewhat higher taxes on the 1%. They can still run terrific companies: crackpot economics and warmongering foreign policy are bad for most businesses, though not all.
Attacks on the silver-spooned Koch brothers therefore make perfect sense, as citizens of all income brackets can unite in opposition to their fanaticism, lunacy and corporate welfare.
I agree that there’s scope for creativity. You could have an anti-abortion, pro-gun, pro-regulation, anti-fatcat populist Democrat that could win in certain regions. Given existing demographic trends, a Democratic senator from Texas wouldn’t surprise me.
This. 2 corporate parties in the most powerful nation on Earth could well lead to the end of humanity as our corporate overlords happily burn up our habitat. (Though the world will continue on without us, of course.) We need politicians to stand up and say that the survival of the species tomorrow is more important than the ephemeral profits of today.
Our choices are to develop financially sufficient countervailing institutions or to get in bed with the rationalist corporatists. Or some combination of the preceding.
A Koch link doesn’t demonstrate my point. Remember that Rubin of Goldman Sachs opposed welfare reform under Clinton. We’re discussing the reality of 2 corporate parties: under such a scheme Koch would fall under the GOP category. But they aren’t especially representative of corporate America. Nor are the rationalist: they are big supporters of supply side jihaders such as Americans for Prosperity, notorious for putting false claims in their political advertising. And advocating the end of public schooling puts them in the crackpot fringe even by the standards of the 1800s.
Of course they never debate these issues: they just fund mouthpieces.
Now you’re messing around with the nexus between corporate and labor interests. Labor likes energy jobs. There’s no political will to deal with climate change in any meaningful way, and it’s not because of corporations, it’s because corporations and labor and many very important swing states are of one mind on this issue.