Politics

Matt's right on in his last post on the platform. I wanted to highlight a particularly important pair of sentences in the part he excerpts:

We recognize that Social Security is not in crisis .... The real long-run fiscal challenge is rooted in the rising spending on health care ....

That's exactly right (they could have been more explicit about the nature of the rising spending on health care, but that's pretty much covered in the earlier section on health care).

It's also worth contrasting the '08 fiscal language with the same section of the 2004 Dem platform. In general, the '04 platform is more Rubinesque, with little recognition of the importance of long-term investments as core component of fiscal responsibility. The '04 platform also committed to cutting the deficit in half over four years and a line-item veto, items I don't see in the '08 platform.

As Dean Baker has noted, the housing bill now on its way to becoming law would do relatively little to prevent foreclosures—CBO projects the bill would help only about 260,000 homeowners keep their homes (the media has more widely reported 400,000, but that doesn't take into account the 140,000 that would get help, but go on to default anyway).

The housing bill doesn't include a reform that would make give bankruptcy judges the power to reduce mortgage debt. A new NBER working paper suggests that such a provision would do much more over time to reduce foreclosures:

.... Filing under Chapter 13 stops lenders from foreclosing and gives debtors extra time to repay mortgage arrears, but does not reduce the total amount owed. We develop a model of debtors' decisions to default on their mortgages and file for bankruptcy and we evaluate it using a new dataset of debtors who filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 13 in 2006. We also examine the effect of allowing "strip-down" of residential mortgages in Chapter 13, so that bankruptcy judges could reduce the total amount owed.

The paper documents that 96% of Chapter 13 filers are homeowners and that more than 90% of Chapter 13 plans involve repayment of mortgages or car loans. The model predicts that introducing strip-down would allow an additional 100,000 debtors to save their homes each year.

The recent passing of former Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC) has prompted reflection upon Helms’ life, the rise of the New Right and Southern conservatism, and the polarizing use of race in campaigns. The general narrative that seems to have emerged is that Helms was a dangerous politician who manipulated race to win close elections and then proceeded to use his position to block progressive change. Although an accurate one in many ways, the standard telling obscures two aspects of Helms’ legacy that should not be overlooked by progressives.

Without defending Helms' normally indefensible positions, it is fair to say that he represented the views of a significant segment of the electorate, both in North Carolina and across America. He may never have won more than 55 percent of the vote in any of his five races, but he never won less than 52 percent of the vote either. Helms’ message and stances obviously resonated with people. Were the people who voted for Helms narrow-minded and reactionary? Perhaps. Does that mean that they and their views should be excluded from the public square? Absolutely not. What it does point to is the existence of a significant number of citizens who are, at best, dubious of progressivism.

Helms’ career also showed how the general views of disorganized voters could be harnessed into a politically potent force through the use of technology. The Helms-aligned National Congressional Club created sophisticated techniques for targeting direct mail to overlooked voters and donors, using television, packaging political donations to ideological allies, building interlocking groups capable of coordinating a message, and developing media tools that circumvented traditional gatekeepers. Those tools have managed to outlive both the Club, which disbanded years ago, and Helms himself.

In an odd turnabout, Helms’ signature accomplishment – finding ways to use technology to mobilize unorganized political sentiments – is manifesting itself in a progressive form during the current election. The rise of on-line technologies has permitted the mobilization of individuals with progressive views that would have been ignored in past elections. And in a bit of irony, Sen. Barack Obama, the first African-American candidate with a serious chance to win the presidency, has innovated upon tools first developed by Helms’ operatives to build a dynamic political community that managed to defeat the powerful political organization built by Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Hopefully, the recent mobilization of progressive-leaning individuals will bring about an opportunity to enact and sustain many overdue policy reforms. If a new progressive moment forms, progressives should be so lucky to have their moment last as long as Helms’ did.

Tom Schaller on the latest obstructionism by the conservative Dem bloc in the House:

... [a} story in The Hill about the obstinate-yet-conflicted House “Blue Dog” coalition is exactly the sort of problem that ought to frustrate liberals. Here you have (some) conservative Democrats who have repeatedly voted to fund a war without worrying about how to pay for it, and now all of sudden they show pangs of fiscal responsibility about not coming up with the monies to fund one program in the new war spending bill. Blue Dogs finally getting with the program: Sounds great, right?

Not so fast, because the part they are raising fiscal responsibility objectives about is…wait for it, because it’s really going to infuriate you…education benefits for veterans. Where was this sort of ethic from Blue Dogs when the Bush administration was asking for billions to be handed over to venal, wasteful, no-bid contract-winning war profiteers?

“Some of us oppose creating a new entitlement program in an emergency spending bill, whether it’s butchers, bakers or candlestick-makers,” said Rep. John Tanner (D-Tenn.), a founding member of the Blue Dog Coalition who serves on the House leadership team as a deputy whip. The so-called GI Bill of Rights, authored by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), would give veterans money for college and cost $720 million in its first two years. But critics say that could grow to billions in future years.”

No! Not billions spent without funds to pay for it -- that just never happens in defense spending!

Two comments: First, thank goodness for Webb. Second, I’m going to keep saying this until it starts to sink in: Since Reconstruction, the Blue Dog element within the Democratic Party has gone from dominant majority, to significant minority to what it is today -- a declining coalition of conflicted complainers. Among the blessings of building a non-southern Democratic majority is that there is greater intraparty ideological cohesion, thus marginalizing Blue Dogs and their hand-wringing interference with emerging liberal project.

I really like Matt's "transcendent enemy" formula. Some nominations for that role: 1) "Wall Street predators", from last night's Obama speech; and 2) the "superclass", from David Rothkopf's new book, or some variation on it. The extremely wealthy or corporate CEO or similar categories by themselves aren't sufficient as transcendent enemies—it's the nexus of wealth, power, and actions driven by conservative ideology that needs to be the target.

Jared Bernstein is discussing his new book at TPM Cafe this week, and he's been getting into it with a conservative economist over the concept of merit and how much people are paid.

Alan found principle #1 ambiguous, and since it’s central to a) the book, and b) my understanding of the economy, let me repeat the principle and try to clarify.

#1: Economic outcomes are generally thought to be fair, in the sense that market forces dole out rewards to those who merit them. But that’s not always the case. Power, whether it’s based on political clout, wealth, class, race, or gender, is also a key determinant of who gets what.

This seems crystal clear to me, but maybe that’s because I view many of the economy’s outcomes through this lens. Simply put, I see evidence of large and growing gap between overall economic growth and the living standards of working families. And I see disproportionate power—not merit, not marginal product, not efficient resource allocation—as one driving force behind it.

Probably the best indirect evidence that pay doesn't reward productivity is this chart showing income growth under Republican and Democratic presidents. The party of the president has a profound influence on who gets what, and unless higher wage earners become more productive than anyone else under Republican presidents, or unless everyone gets more productive under Democrats, politics and power has a lot to do with how much you're paid.

That said, is this a good argument for progressives to get into? If I had to answer, without much direct evidence, I'd say no, just because you're swimming against such a strong current. People, especially Americans, tend to believe in a just world, that people generally get what they deserve. Maybe with elites who buy conservative economics it's a good idea to have at it, but I doubt it'd play in Peoria. Conservatives will probably win, and it's better to talk about job quality and inequality on more favorable grounds.

Why can't politicians come together and find common ground? Why are our politics so polarized? A new book, Polarized America, proposes an intuitive explanation: rich people want it that way.

The growth in income inequality and political polarization, both beginning in 1975, are highly correlated. Indeed, the authors find that as the better-off have been getting richer, they've moved further to the right, and taken the Republican party with them. From a review in The Independent (by a conservative academic who seems shocked by how persuasive the book is):

Chapter 3 and parts of chapter 2 focus on the relationship between constituency income and legislative behavior. The most important finding here is that since 1975 legislators have become increasingly responsive to their constituents’ income-based preferences. Put another way, constituency income has become an increasingly important variable in explaining legislators’ voting. Furthermore, McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal run a series of tests in which they regress a voter’s party identification against income, sex, education, race, church attendance, and so on. Again, they find that the coefficient on income has increased over time.

Polarization has been a one way street- mostly, the Republican party has moved to the right, while Democrats have become only modestly more liberal. Why no backlash to income inequality? In part because of political inequality.

Chapter 4 begins with a puzzle. In democracies, rapid increases in income inequality typically manifest themselves in an expansion of the welfare state. The reason for this outcome is simple: when the median voter sees his economic position falling relative to wealthier individuals, he demands policies that redistribute income and wealth downward. Why didn’t such redistribution happen in the United States? The answer, the authors argue, is that the median voter’s income is much higher than and has not fallen as much as the median nonvoter’s income. Furthermore, the bottom of the U.S. income distribution today consists in large part of relatively poor immigrants who are not citizens and have no voting rights.

You wonder if the authors also mention the legions of ex-cons who don't have the right to vote. In any case, economic inequality, political inequality, and conservative politics seem to go hand in hand. Just another reason why income inequality is worth fighting.

Unlike Margy, I think there are sound strategic reasons for Hillary to put forward a poverty reduction plan, at least if she wants to have a shot at winning the Democratic nomination. Going back to the distinction between transactional and transformative politics, any sound strategy to win the Democratic nomination this year will require both kinds of politics. Having a poverty-reduction plan is part of transactional politics this year for Democratic candidates.

One may wish this wasn't the case—that some other more effective and transformational frame for issues of economic deprivation had the same relevance and resonance as the poverty frame does for the part of the Democratic Party base that prioritizes these issues. But for right now poverty is the dominant frame among this group of Democrats. As a result, not having a plan that is framed as a poverty reduction plan has almost certainly hurt Hillary because it allows her to be easily characterized as someone who cares less about poverty than Barack Obama. As an example, take a look at this Huffington Post blog by former Edwards and Move-On staffer Ben Brandzel.

The latest from Kuttner on how Dems and allies mis-messaged the stimulus:

In addition, the Democrats were (and still are) hobbled by the fiscal conservatives in their own ranks. In the negotiations with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the House Blue Dog Caucus insisted that the overall size of the stimulus be held down. The Clintonian idea that the Democrats should first and foremost be the parsimony party still has substantial support. The Democrats actually entered the negotiations proposing a smaller stimulus number than the administration.

The Democrats also bought the centrist mantra, repeated endlessly by a chorus that included former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and countless others, that the stimulus should be "timely, targeted, and temporary." Why this tepid trilogy of weak T's? Democrats were fearful that the economic downturn, absent these caveats, would become an excuse for another round of permanent Republican tax cuts. So instead of looking toward the fall election and the real economic plight of the electorate, they kept looking over their shoulders at the Republicans.

The conventional wisdom among centrist economists is that stimulus bills are very risky. By the time they get through Congress, the recession is often over (hence, timely); Congress is tempted to turn them into Christmas-tree, special-interest bills (hence, targeted); and tax cuts, once enacted, tend to become permanent holes in the tax code (hence, temporary). This wisdom is accurate as far as it goes, but in a structural economic crisis, it doesn't go very far. So instead of coming out of the box with a recovery program that offered at least a down payment on reversing 30 years of economic insecurity, and beginning a serious effort to repair the financial crisis, Democrats yet again were enablers of President Bush.

They were rewarded with a photo op beside a hugely unpopular and failed president bringing Democrats to heel. In the larger context of the general election, Timely, Targeted, and Temporary signaled nothing so much as Think Small.

Paul Krugman idealizes the democratic process in Clinton, Obama, Insurance (Feb 4, 2008). If Congress adopted policy on merit alone, we would already have guaranteed, quality, affordable health care in this country. And gun control too.

There’s every reason to conclude that proposals sounding like they limit choice --by including something called a “mandate”, for example — will trigger public concerns about government interference and administrative competence. Indeed, even focusing on the “universal” aspect of health care proposals makes people who already have it think about what they would have to give up for others to get it.

We’ve recently had a brief debate about whether words matter in campaigns. Careful consideration about the public conversation that can create the space and public support for guaranteed health care in the future is exactly what’s called for now.

Some evocative observations from Matthew Yglesias:

Donna Edwards takes the nomination from Al Wynn. The significance is three-fold. On the one hand, Wynn was a bad rep and now he's gone, which is good. On the other hand, this is a very safe seat for Democrats, so a talented, principled representative like Edwards has the opportunity to use it as a base of operations to be a major progressive leader. It's very desirable to get these seats into the hands of people who'll be more than just reliable votes, but actually go the extra mile to really advance important causes. There's no telling if Edwards will live up to that promise, but she's an extremely impressive individual who certainly has the potential.

Last, the tree of progressive politics must be watered with the metaphorical blood of sellouts ever now and again. Some people seem to me to walk around in their head with a model in which politicians are very principled ideologues who then divert from their default status due to electoral fears. In a more plausible schematic, they have a natural tendency to drift in the direction of utter corruption and only electoral fear keeps them doing their jobs in a somewhat responsible manner. The demonstration effect of even a narrow win is large, and that of a substantial defeat like the one Wynn suffered can be very big indeed. Elected officials across the country are taking note.

Despite representing one of the more progressive Congressional districts in the United States, Maryland's Rep. Al Wynn (D) voted for both the Iraq War and the atrocious credit-card-industry-written bankruptcy bill.

In last night's primary, Wynn lost in a rout to Donna Edwards. Open Left has more on Edwards, and why this is a great victory for progressives.

From the NYT, how many times GWB used the following words in the SOTU:

Iraq/Iraqis: 38
Terror/terrorists(s): 23
Taxes: 15
Al Qaeda: 10
Freedom: 10

Economy: 6
Jobs: 5

Proponents of Third-Way style moderation often argue that their views better represent typical voters, voters whose views are supposedly less ideological and more moderate than Democratic party activists. Turns out, however, that the public isn't all that moderate, as Emory University's Alan Abramowitz finds in a new paper:

In recent years, a number of media commentators and scholars have blamed primary voters for the rise of polarization in American politics. According to this argument, primary electorates are dominated by strong partisans whose views are more extreme than those of rank-and-file party supporters. This article uses data from recent exit polls of primary and general election voters as well as the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Study to test the primary election polarization theory. The evidence does not support the theory. In fact there appears to be very little difference between the ideologies of each party's primary voters and the ideologies of its general election voters. These findings suggest that the polarized state of American politics today reflects the polarized state of the overall American electorate rather than any peculiar characteristics of primary voters. The findings also suggest that even after they secure their party's nomination, it may be risky for candidates to adopt more moderate policy positions in order to appeal to swing voters, because any such move toward the center would risk alienating a large proportion of their party's electoral base.

Among the consequences: the call that Michael Bloomberg and various has-been politicians have made for a "government of national unity" that would "get government back to the center" will fail, as it should.

E.J. Dionne on what Congressional Dems need to do to get back on track:

Congressional Democrats need a Plan B. Republicans chortle as they block Democratic initiatives -- and accuse the majority of being unable to govern. Rank-and-filers are furious their leaders can't end the Iraq War. President Bush sits back and vetoes at will.

....

The Democrats' core problem is that they have been unable to place blame for gridlock where it largely belongs, on the Republican minority and the president.

....

... What's the alternative to the internecine Democratic finger-pointing of the sort that made the front page of Thursday's Washington Post? The party's congressional leaders need to do whatever they must to put this year behind them. Then they need to stop whining. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid should put aside any ill feelings and use the Christmas break to come up with a joint program for 2008.

They could start with the best ideas from their presidential candidates in areas such as health care, education, cures for the ailing economy and poverty-reduction. Agree to bring the same bills to a vote in both houses. Try one more time to change the direction of Iraq policy. If Bush and the Republicans block their efforts, bring all these issues into the campaign. Let the voters break the gridlock.

If Democrats don't make the 2008 election about the Do-Nothing Republicans, the GOP has its own ideas about whom to hold responsible for Washington's paralysis. And if House and Senate Democrats waste their time attacking each other, they will deserve any blame they get next fall.

E.J.'s right on. Next year in Congress needs to be about big, defining issues that lots of people care about.