The Dems: Simply saying you're better for the working poor don't make it so.

Here’s an article from the New Left Review, another post-mortem of the election featuring regurgitated musings from Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas? Frank finds it odd that so many of the working poor in Kansas vote GOP when the GOP is royally screwing them.

It’s really not so strange, as I shall explain.

Here’s a pithy quote from the article (which is in turn quoting Frank):

Oh, balderdash. I’m a leftist, I think Bush is just about the crappiest president we could ever hope to have, but I’m also a pragmatist. And here’s the crux of the matter, summed up neatly:

The Dems claim to be for the working man, but blabbing about it doesn’t make it so. What great plans, what likely solutions to the problems that ordinary Americans face, do they have to offer? None, actually.*

Kerry was justly guffawed at for his “plan, plan, I have a plan” blather. He had no plan. The Dems never do.

Don’t bother bringing up Clinton. Clinton was about as liberal as Coolidge. A lot of his ideas were great, a lot of them worked, but very few were about helping the working poor. The one that comes to mind was HillaryCare. I grant them that fully; would that it had succeeded.

Obviously, I am simplifying and reducing here. If you add up the total of what Dems in Congress and at the local level have done for the working class, undoubtedly it would be marginally better than what the Republicans have done. How could it not be?

The point, however, is that the Dems are not rhetorically free to leverage their marginal superiority in this area to claim outright virtue. It’s like washing your hands after taking a piss when your friend doesn’t and acting like you’re a paragon of sanitation despite your nose-picking. Indeed, the Dems have a mighty poor pitch and are getting called on it in the worst way: it’s called losing elections bigtime.

Bush won because he and the GOP in general have a better, consistent pitch. They praise Jesus, harp on the glories of laissez-faire capitalism, nod vaguely in the direction of anti-abortion, and–well, that’s about it. The Dems (and that execrable mummy, Kerry) chirp about “nuance,” but their idea of nuance is beige. Not quite so exciting as the GOP’s Red, White, and Blue.

I voted for Kerry because Bush is a reckless disaster who’s done incalculabe damage to the country and who undoubtedly is fixin’ (as they say in Texas) to do more. But his marketing is strong, and his party will continue on victorious until the Dems get themselves a clue.

America is doing OK. It badly needs a safety-net overhaul (esp. medical care for all) and needs to reduce the burden it places on its individual citizens (get rid of all the tax forms and rigamorole that people have to go through). We need to curb the power of the ultra-rich and protect the environment better through intelligent regulation. The GOP, of course, will do none of this. The Dems, unfortunateley, while vaguely nodding in the direction of positive change, ring their hands about generalities. They need some real leaders.

Well, obviously the dems need to be pushing issues like universal health care and social security reform that isn’t privatization. The problem is that any leftist plans announced by the dems would immediately be called socialist by the GOP, and this would scare away the average voter. Most of them are short-sighted enough that a slight tax break wins their loyalty over any mention of health care.

It’s not that simple. Congress vs. the Presidency, that’s simple. The Dems haven’t had very much of a chance to do anything even remotely radical in their more recent presidencies. And Kerry’s running mate was pretty clear and outspoken, if you ask me.

What the U.S. needs, is a parliamentary democracy. :smiley:

What the US needs in an educated electorate. * Then * we’ll see which way the chips fall, Mr. Bush.

I dunno. I liked Mr. Kerry’s proposal to let me buy into a government healthcare system. It was my only hope for having healthcare insurance in the forseeable future, and was one of the reasons I cried when he lost. I also liked the tax credits for education he was proposing, as I really want to go back to school but won’t put myself in crushing debt to do it, and it would’ve given me a chance to go back sooner than I thought.

I think people get that $300 tax cut cheque and just think, “hey, he’s doing something for me!” even though the deficit is out of control and their kids will be the ones paying the price umpteen years from now. :frowning:

This excellent article about $1500 hot dogs highlights the mind-boggling inconsistency in US politics described by the OP which is not seen anywhere else in the industrialised democratic world. The economic elitists have succesfully cast those advocating more economic equality as cultural elitists. It is not what you say that matters, be it raising the minimum wage or providing millions of uninsured Americans with access to healthcare, it is how you say it.

If you use down-home, folksy language to advocate policies which increase inequality, widens holes in the already threadbare safety net and benefit the richest few vastly disproportionately to everyone else, you are not seen as an elitist. However, if you advocate polices which address such social issues in clear and articulate English (in, heaven forbid, an East Coast accent), you are.
The solutions are pretty simple: extended Medicare, stronger employment laws, childcare provision, raised minimum wage, all the things Kerry and Clinton would have liked to do but ultimately could not, because the population had been so successfully conditioned against them.

I think it is rather naive to simply blame a lack of leadership in the Democratic party. What the hell kind of electorate re-elects a president like Bush after the events of the last two years? One wonders exactly what would convince the US population to vote for the policies in the OP’s last paragraph.

It’s not naive. The Democratic party suffers from the same problem that plagued Bush Senior: they are perceived as wimps.

Not necessarily on terrorism, but on everything else, they just flat out refuse to stand up and deal with something. Or at least, that’s how it seems.

As an example, I’ll point to some cruddy plan that a friend recently dropped into my inbox-- which essentially says that democrats have to spend the next four years talking to average americans, and educating them about what their party stands for.

Newsflash for people who care about other people: Nobody respects those who are full of hot air. Start doing things instead, then get press coverage for what you’re actually doing.

I love how sentiments like this can just be thrown out, on a board supposedly dedicated to skeptical inquiry, and pass by nearly always unchallenged. (Of course, this instance has not passed that test, because (a) I’m challenging it, and (b) I am doing so without waiting to see if it would otherwise pass unmolested. But enough similar statements have made it here without question that I’m reasonably solid in my belief about this one.)

Does the Left believ that these changes come without consequence? Raising the minimum wage, for example, does not simply guarantee that everyone working at minimum wage will make more money. It causes job losses, especially for minorities and younger workers, and especially for those employed by small businesses… which, in turn, causes economic hardship for those small businesses. (It also hurts large businesses; I don’t bring up their plight because, quite frankly, I fear that those on the left are not particularly concerned with the plight of large businesses).

To suggest, as the OP’s reference did, that “working-class guys in midwestern cities” delievred a landslide “for a candidate whose policies will end their way of life” is blind - and not just, as the OP suggests, because the Democrats had no crystal clear plans, but because those plans are in many ways themselves inimical to the working-class way of life.

It doesn’t do any good to repeat, like a mantra, core principles like “stronger employment laws” and “raise minimum wage” anymore. Many people, working class Americans, small business owners, even small business EMPLOYEES, realize that these proposals come with a price, and it’s a price they’re not willing to pay.

  • Rick

You can, of course, provide substantiation for your claim that raises in the minimum wage destroys job growth. We await with calm aplomb.

This wasn’t directed to me, but perhaps I can help.

A 1999 article summarizing studies on the minimum wage (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco | Distribution and Employment Impacts of Raising the Minimum Wage) states, in part:

It also states:

Raising the minimum wage is a job killer and it doesn’t benefit those in poverty all that much. Those who advocate in favor of it do not comprehend the economic realities that it involves. They simply think that by mandating that employers pay everyone at least so much money (regardless of whether or not their labor is worth that amount) will somehow help people in poverty (it doesn’t) and will not involve any tradeoffs. This is short-sighted economic thinking.

Actually, the solutions aren’t simple, nor will your “solutions” work. Your calls to extend Medicare and (presumably) have government further subsidize child care would have to be paid for by someone. That means more taxes. Where do taxes come from? People who work and people who are out there creating wealth. You take money away from them, that’s less wealth that’s created. That means less jobs. Then you add on stronger employment laws and a higher minimum wage, both of which mean more burdens on business, and you’re going to create a climate that kills jobs. In your plan to “solve” the problems of poor people, you’re doing no such thing. In fact, you’re making it much harder for poor people who want to climb out of poverty to access the only realistic way to do so – a job.

That’s what boggles my mind about all the liberals screaming that the poor and middle class are stupid if they vote Republican and not voting for Democrats who will provide them with a myriad of government programs. These people are not, in fact, voting against their interests as all the liberals patronizingly believe. These folks understand how businesses work. They understand that with more government programs means more taxes and more red tape. They understand that the way to succeed in the U.S. is to get a job, not rely on government. And they understand that Democratic ideas will kill jobs. These folks are a lot smarter than liberals give them credit for.

Of course, apologies for lazy syntax: I should have said that the solutions are not complicated in terms of their presentation, not that they were simple to actually acheive given the current US situation.

As for whether those policies really would improve the lot of the working poor, well, I would venture that their plight in the rest of the industrialised democratic world is not quite so desperate. Clearly, a nation can provide a better quality of life for its working poor: whether such policies would work in the US is indeed debatable, but here we are discussing why they are not even voted for.

Contrary to what some may think, the plight of the working poor is not all that desperate here, either. Most “poor” people live pretty well.

As for the poor in other industrialized democracies, I’d venture to say that there is more of a demand for services there because the economies aren’t as good as the U.S.'s. If you have a state that provides a comfortable safety net, you’re not going to have a state that has a great economy. Sure, it may be OK, but if the state has to pay for all those services, tax rates will be crushing. And if the state mandates numerous benefits and perks, that will also deter business. Furthermore, if the state subsidizes laziness (as many European countries do), then that’s what you’ll get. The U.S. has decided to go down a different path. We have a generous safety net, but we also still value work. The fact that our economy is the biggest in the world is no accident. Neither is the fact that the U.S. is a leader in innovation.

Memo to the OP: rants belong in the Pit. Do you have any specific criticisms of the Dems, in terms of things that they should be campaigning on (since they can’t actually pass legislation, campaign platforms will have to do) to help the working poor, but aren’t? Or evidence that the things they support (minimum wage hike, increased access to affordable health care, reduced barriers to union organizing) wouldn’t actually help workers? Or evidence that assorted Bush policies (Social Security, tax, and tort deform) wouldn’t actually hurt workers, thereby making the Dems better for the working poor if they were in power, but did nothing at all?

Your OP is not a worthwhile starting point for debate, because there isn’t anything there that’s solid enough to be rebuttable.

Well, I don’t know anywhere else where the working poor have to contend with this, and I’d struggle to see how the economies of, say, the UK, Japan or Australia could be considered ‘not great’ compared to most US states (and that universal healthcare is acheived by similar government spending as in the US, which is simply vastly more ineffeicient in that sense).

But I appreciate the idea that the working poor are voting for the rich “unselfishly” because they perceive that it is how the US might be richer overall. The simple fact seems to be that they don’t vote very much at all.

The working poor have a pretty serious income instability problem:

(Registration is required to read the story, but it’s free.)

Among the working poor, there’s a lot of earning decent money on the upswings, then getting their cars repossessed on the downswings. Didn’t used to be so up-and-down, and even upper-middle-class people aren’t exactly adept at dealing with the much greater income instability of these times. Especially when the whole notion really hasn’t sunk in yet.

Interesting article, RT. I was struck by this quote in it:

That sums it up for me in a nutshell. This Jencks guy makes it sound like it’s hard not to get fired or splurge on a big screen TV. It may be hard for to find poor people who do this because if you do these things and you’re poor, you’re going to end up in the middle class. Keeping a job and spending money responsibly is just common sense. I am amazed that Jencks somehow thinks it’s a hard thing to do.

Your cite doesn’t back that up. All it says is approximately how many jobs their economic model says would be cost by the minimum wage hikes of the mid to late 1990s. You don’t cite data that show how many jobs actually were lost as a result of those hikes.

According to economist Brad DeLong, writing in 1997, the lower the real value of the minimum wage, the smaller the negative effect of raising it on employment:

And here’s what he says the consensus was then:

Very little has changed since then, really: even by early 1997, the boom was just beginning to make a difference for workers. We’ve still got an economy with a lot of money sloshing around at the top, and now we’ve got fewer people employed than there were four years ago, which means workers - especially those at the bottom - aren’t in a good position to ask for more pay than is being offered. Some jobs would undoubtedly be lost if the minimum wage were to be raised to, say, $6/hour, but what DeLong’s numbers suggest is that employers are paying less than what they feel employees are worth, simply because they can. Why would they do otherwise?

I’ll say the same thing to you as to the OP: nice rant, but can you support any of this?

Now this surely ought to be provable (or at least supportable), if it were true. Go for it.