You did? Sorry, I missed it.
Bill Maher is on * Fresh Air * right now, promoting his new book, * When You Ride Alone, You Ride With Bin Laden. * He just said something about the election that reminded me of this thread. “When the choice is between a real Republican and a fake Republican, why not just vote for the real one?”
And now that I’ve seen your 2000 survey cite, I have to tell you I’m not impressed. Respondents were asked to rate their health plans on a scale of 0-10. The results are abysmally presented, breaking down responses into categories of 0-6, 7-8, and 9-10. No distinction is made between HMOs, PPOs, and other types of private plans. Nevertheless, it indicates that people on commercial health care plans are significantly less pleased with them than people on Medicare and Medicaid. (Good lord, they can’t even do as well as the government’s system? That’s weak.)
It also indicates that people are significantly happier with their personal doctors and specialists than they are with their health plans. That fits in precisely with my observations. It’s not the doctors they’re pissed off at–it’s insurers and the people who administer the plans, with all their mountains of paperwork, that infuriate many health care consumers.
minty green:
Please get this straight - they are not pissed off at their health plans. To the tune of 75%, they are satisfied with them. The fact that they have a higher level of satisfaction with their doctors or with Medicare or with Medicaid ignores the point, which is: perhaps it’s true that a better job can be done, but it’s not an issue which will mobilize voters. People who are satisfied do not cry out for change.
Chaim Mattis Keller
You know what, Chaim? I’ve already addressed that. You don’t buy my interpretation, and I don’t buy yours. That’s fine–I’m writing a Democratic Statement of Principle, and I’m convinced that health care is, properly presented, one hell of a good issue for Democrats. You are free to vote to the contrary. See you in 2004.
<sigh>
minty green, obviously you fail to understand the lesson of the last several elections. If anything can be learned from the election cycles of, oh, say, 1984 and 2002, it’s that the Democrats cannot win an election with liberal principles as the primary point of attack, but are damn close to winning with a more centrist approach. Of course, to students of politics, this is no surprise; both parties are quite aware that wing revolts lead to death in the center, and slaughter at the polls. See 1964.
What RTFirefly and others are positing in the wake of Tuesday’s results is that the Democrats don’t have a coherent set of basic principles they are articulating to energize their wing while simultaneously captivating the center. When the Republicans say, “Let’s cut taxes,” they are playing to both the wing and the middle. Who the hell in this day and age would dare say, “Let’s raise taxes!” The fact that we might well HAVE to do that, especially at the state level, is of no importance; if you don’t understand that fact, talk to Jeanne Shaheen (sp.?). Who, by the way, is NOT a Senator come January because she dared suggest a new tax. So the Republicans get lots and lots of great milage out of a simple slogan.
There are lots of great slogans out there for the Democrats. Contrary to what one might think from the recent election, many Democrats firmly believe in several principles articulated here, including protection of the environment, provision of universal medical care, protection of workers from employer abuses, etc. The trouble is that most of these positions only energize liberals; they don’t excite middle-of-the-road voters. If you want to continue to rant and rave about old traditional liberal positions, feel free to do so, but any Democrat who attempts it can’t even win their primary election, let alone a general election in November.
Which brings me back to RTFirefly. Who, while putting his finger squarely on the difficulty with the OP, fails in musings thereafter to understand the true answer to the problem. Yes, it’s important that the Democrats continue to protect the environment, watch out for the downtrodden poor, and try hard to make sure that we don’t become a Christian republic (any more than we already are). But the point is that those issues won’t win the pie in November. If they would, Republicans would be squatting on them instead of the ones they ARE squatting on. Republicans aren’t traditionally tax cutters any more this century than the Democrats are; not that they had a lot of chance to control the Congress, but you didn’t hear them in stemwinding speeches about it during the 60’s or 70’s. It was in the early 80’s that they discovered that people had had it up to their eyeballs with paying money to government and getting no visible return on their investment. When California passed Proposition 13 in 1978, everyone went, “What?? Lower taxes?? Wow, maybe that would work as a rallying cry…” Six years later, we have massive tax “reform” and lots and lots of people happy that their checks don’t have quite as large a bite out of them. And as minty green accurately points out, sometimes it doesn’t take much of a tax cut to make everyone happy; sometimes even $300 a year will do the trick. Republicans know this, understand it, and have exploited it with only rare exception for the last 22 years now, and when they fail to exploit it, they have troubles (see George Bush I).
So the reason I attack the various ideals proposed by RTFirefly isn’t because I don’t think they are things a good liberal should believe in. It’s because a good moderate won’t VOTE for them. The Republicans have God, Family, and apple pie on their side (small slices, please). The Dems need some equally pithy, simple, and effective imagery, or they will have to wait for some external event that catalyzes a sea change in American politics.
minty green:
Will doing so put me outside the mainstream by definition?
Chaim Mattis Keller
Of course not. I encourage you to vote. Democracy is best experienced in person.
Shodan, thanks but no-thanks for all your advice. The point is, however, that some of us Democrats actually don’t want to just win elections for the Democrats for the sake of it, but rather because of ideals and policies we believe in. Even if, by chance, by perfectly imitating the Republicans could get Democrats elected, that is hardly a solution.
Of course, your whole view on things is colored by your warped perspective on reality which is not worth going into here. Suffice to give one example: the Democrats get more money from business than they get from labor. It is thus a bit hard to see how they could be as beholden to labor as you seem to believe.
At any rate, I think the argument is not “move to the right” or “move to the left”. There is not a single dimension. The Democrats have to figure out to come up with policies and articulate them better. Although I think that Chumpsky’s analysis is too simplistic, I do think that his point about where the electorate is is not that crazy…If you put questions to people in certain ways, you can find the public giving you answers that are surprisingly “left” relative to both the Reps and the Dems. [I wish I could dig up the link to such polls.] The Democrats have to learn how to explain these views, which may be characterized as left wing, in ways that resonate with what voters think.
I agree that one way to do this is indeed to propose an alternative tax cut that focuses on the majority rather than the small minority at the top. Take away that cut to the top bracket (if not the top two) and apply it lower down.
Of course, noone can say that this will be easy. The fact is that the wealthy and economically powerful have an inordinate amount of control over the political system. The task ahead is not easy, but I refuse to believe it is impossible.
The flaw in this argument is that business is not a single entity. Democrats are supported by pretty much all labor. OTOH they are supported by particular businesses or business groups, such as law firms and the movie industry. So, Democrats are indeed beholded to labor and beholden to particular businesses. There’s no contradiction.
P.S.—I meant to join in the congratulations of RTFirefly for starting a really great thread that is a real enlightening “read”.
Note added in preview—Well, december, if I could dig up the link I found last time we got into this subject, I think you would be surprised to find how beholden the Dems are to lots of industries in terms of donations. I know the Wall Street Journal editorial page believes the Dems to be beholden to labor, environmental groups, trial lawyers, and the movie industry…But that doesn’t necessarily make it so. [What the WSJ editorial page staff “knows” that just ain’t so could fill a really big book. I just wrote them a letter-to-the-editor on one of their most recent distortions.]
DSYoung,
You are making the mistake of accepting the GOP framing of the tax cuts issue. The fact is that the average voter isn’t interested in tax cuts in general but how much of a tax cut he gets. From this point of view the Bush tax cuts do a rather poor job for the average tax-payer ,despite the rhetoric , for the simple reason that they focus on the top income-tax brackets (and the repeal of the estate tax most of which goes to the super-rich)
As I argued earlier the Dems could easily give a bigger tax cut for most people than the GOP while keeping the total tax cut significantly lower simply by sharply reducing the cut for top brackets.
In other words they could be for a big middle (and lower) class tax cut while simultaneously attacking big GOP tax cuts for the wealthy. Why they don’t do this is a big mystery to me.
Incidentally I had started a thread on this a long time back at the time of the Bush tax cut last year.
For december, here is a breakdown of contributions to the Dems: http://www.opensecrets.org/parties/sector.asp?Cmte=DPC&Cycle=2002
You can also go to the analogous chart for the Republicans and compare. There are certainly some differences (one of the most dramatic being labor, not surprisingly)…But, I was quite surprised at how similar the “demographics” are.
For december, here is a breakdown of contributions to the Dems: http://www.opensecrets.org/parties/sector.asp?Cmte=DPC&Cycle=2002
You can also go to the analogous chart for the Republicans and compare. There are certainly some differences (one of the most dramatic being labor, not surprisingly)…But, I was quite surprised at how similar the “demographics” are.
Don’t worry guys, help is on the way!
The Liberal Democrats. Which took the view that it wasn’t that people didn’t want to pay a reasonable amount of tax; it was that people wanted guarantees that their tax funds were being used for the things they wanted them used for (health, education, police, etc.). Which was a good message, but which didn’t help them much because while the national party has been making good use of the Tories floundering, the local candidates are still a bunch of flapping idiots.
I’m not convinced that Americans would accept the same message, however, with or without the guarantees.
(And for the record, I’m very satisfied with my health care.)
Seems like we have two clear positions in this thread. Either the Democrats need to move to the left and emphasize their core liberal positions so as to energize their base and have something to “sell” to the voters. Or, the Democrats need to move to the right so as to become more palatable to the center. Unsurprisingly, liberals tend to support the former option, both because it strengthens their hand and because they tend to believe that a huge number of Americans would see the virtue of the liberal positions if only they were packaged correctly.
The first indication - and a major determinant - of how the Party will go will be the vote for the new minority leader next week. It is apparently shaping up as a battle between the liberal Pelosi and the moderate Frost, and arguments in favor of the two candidates mirror those outlined above.
I’m not sure exactly what you mean to bring out with this. But in general, the same could be said of many government programs. In theory, I am all for unlimited welfare for everyone, for example. It’s only stubborn practical considerations - someone has to actually create enough wealth to pay for it - that keeps me from actually supporting it.
This does not follow. And it’s not even that there are not all sorts of businesses giving money to the Democrats - there are, as you later note. The issue is the agenda of these businesses. Most of these businesses are not giving money as part of an organized “business” lobby, designed to push general business interests against labor unions, environmentalists et al. Generally the payback they expect for their money is more specifically related to their company and industry, in the form of favorable legislation and regulation in their field, government contracts and the like. In this area, the Dems are as guilty as the Repubs in supporting these business special interests. But when business as a whole is pitted against these other organized groups as a whole, Dems will almost invariably support the other groups. (This really deserves its own thread - thought about starting one but never got around to it).
IMHO, anyone who thinks the Democrats are not beholden to labor has either a “warped perspective on reality” or has not been following politics all that closely. This does not mean that they cannot occasionally buck labor’s demands (NAFTA would be one example). But labor certainly has an enormous influence.
Thank you, jshore.
On preview, I see IzzyR has beaten me, but here’s an alternative statement of his point (which was written before reading his post.): What labor wants is not in opposition to what specific businesses was. Their goals are in different directions, but not in opposite directions. E.g., [ul][]Labor wants union rules to apply to the Dept. of Homeland Security.[]Disney wants extended copyright periods.[]Record companies want to retain control of music distribution and prevent it from being done freely on the Web. []Farmers want higher government support.Insurance companies want government terrorism insurance.[/ul]
I don’t know where on earth you’re getting that, Izzy. The point of the thread has merely been that Democrats need to define themselves. Although some of us have described particular positions, nobody except the resident conservatives–who seem to be drawn to this thread like moths to a flame–has said diddly squat about moving to the center or moving to the left or moving anywhere at all. That’s your obsession, not ours.
All we’re doing here is saying that the party should take a stand and announce its principles on X, Y, and Z. You can call that whatever you want, but remember, we’re not after your vote.
And it’s a good thing, too. 
I don’t think anyone called outright for a move to the left. But generally a call for the Democrats to stand up for core Democratic principles instead of muted opposition to the Republicans is going to be perceived as (and its execution will involve) a move to the left. YMMV, but I suspect the country will perceive it the way I do. Time will tell.
You may be on the wrong message board.