Various reasons have been suggested for the peculiar lameness of Obama's approach to health care reform, which perfectly fits a pattern of Democratic lameness going back at least two decades. None of these reasons is entirely wrong, but several are weak and useless ways of understanding of the problem and should just be dropped. I'll begin with the weak ones and move on to the stronger ones, which I'll discuss in more detail later. My overall conclusion will be, first, that we need to bypass the party organization and change the incentives working on elected Democrats, and second, that Democrats have to get rid of the corporate, anti-popular, expert-administrator model which has made it difficult or impossible for them to enlarge their base.
ONE
The Democrats aren't stupid, progressives are stupid. The Democratic leadership is following a wise strategic plan which will become clear if we're patient and don't fuck things up.
I don't see how anyone older than 25 could believe this one -- the leadership has let us down too many times. They've been keeping their powder dry for so long that most of it is past its expiration date.
TWO
The Democrats aren't stupid, progressives are stupid. The country's more conservative now, and so is the media, and progressives are going to have to get used to that and quit whining.
First, often the polls show wide support for a progressive position which then fails in Congress anyway -- without a fight and without any Democratic leadership support. But more important, the Democrats are horribly passive in the face of public opinion. Too little energy is spent on developing issues, getting progressive ideas out there, and changing people's minds, and too little energy is spent on recruiting new supporters among non-voters and independents. Instead, everything is dedicated to big media buys every two years - media buys which strengthen the network media, who are among our worst enemies. (By and large, Democratic electoral campaigns leave nothing behind; they're just money down the drain. The party has even devised tricks to systematically divert money legally earmarked for party-building activities into the campaign of the moment.)
THREE
Democrats are stupid.
The word "stupid" should be removed from the Democratic vocabulary. If the Republicans are so stupid, why did they beat us so many times? If we think the voters are stupid and they know that, how can we ever persuade them of anything? And as far as the big-time Democrats go, if a leader's words and actions seem stupid to you, it's probably because their goals are different than yours and they're just stringing you along. (There are a fair number of genuinely stupid people in the business, but they're just stooges. The real players -- e.g., Rahm Emmanuel -- are smarter than you and me, but they're not on our side and they aren't going to give us anything.)
FOUR
Democratic leaders are timid and cowardly.
There's some truth in this one, and I'll pick up on it again below: the Democratic Party does not seem to understand bargaining, bluffing, or fighting, and seems addicted to splitting the difference and finding ingenious win-win situations. But the problem is mostly just that the leadership's goals are different than ours, and mostly short-term and small-time. Political pros don't really care much whether they accomplish anything or not by our standards. Taking risks might upset their own little applecarts, so they rarely take any. They'll fight if their own interests are threatened, but they're not going to fight just for us.
FIVE
They're all really just conservatives.
In effect, that's often more or less true, but only because of their limited goals -- if there were an opportunistic advantage in being progressive or radical, they'd all be progressive or radical. It's true, however, that when a Democrat says "the people won't accept that, it's too liberal", what they usually mean is that their donors won't accept it. They don't necessarily know or care what "the people" will or won't accept.
SIX
They're all rich and don't care about ordinary people.
This's true of politicians in general and is a significant factor, but politicians who are not rich when they are elected can be among the worst -- they need the money. But in general by the time someone reaches power, they're far removed from ordinary people, about whom they often have stereotyped and mostly negative ideas.
SEVEN
They've all been bought.
This is pretty much it, and the what I'll say below will mostly just elaborate on that. The enormous amounts of money required to buy media time and pay for campaigns put everyone in Congress at the mercy of the donors and fundraisers, and this also puts most Congressmen, especially the new ones, at the mercy of the party machine. House members in particular are virtual peons until they get some seniority and a solid local power base. (Needless to say, as far as corruption and conservatism go, Republicans are worse than Democrats. But for them, what we call corruption is actually a good thing: privatization).
The best is yet to come:
CONCLUSIONS: WHAT CAN WE DO
So far I've just been clearing away obstacles standing in the way of a realistic understanding of how the politics biz works. I'll give more detailed explanations in later posts, but right now I'll just sketch the basics.
We need to figure out, and change, the incentives working on Democratic politicians. The reason why Democrats so often ignore and betray progressives is that we haven't given them incentives not to. Money, votes, and publicity are what count, and so far progressives have not leveraged these incentives effectively.
We especially need to look at the incentives working on the national party leaders, and the means they use to control the lesser Democrats. No one in the national party ever seems to be punished for losing - not Shrum, and not even the mercenary consultants on short-term contracts.
The party leaders have their own goals, with maintaining control of the party at the head of the list, and they don't need to win every election. They don't necessarily want a bunch of unruly new Congressmen, especially not if they threaten to mess up the leadership's corporate strategy. They don't necessarily want new blocks of enthusiastic voters, who might make demands inconveniencing their big donors.
By and large, the Democratic leadership is perfectly happy to use gerrymanding and local deals to cede 40%-45% of the country to the Republicans. This makes the future more predictable and makes the leadership's job easier, and as the safe Congressmen settle into their assigned roles, it makes the party more controllable. The party pros absolutely hated the fifty-state strategy, and Howard Dean was immediately banished when Obama took over.
We also have to look at the way Democrats think. Beyond the fact that the Democratic Party's real goals aren't very progressive, the party often seems inept even at fighting for the things they really care about. Democrats seems to recruit mostly among academics and other organization men from in situations where conflict is discouraged -- people addicted to institutional, administrative ways of thinking, whereby wise and farsighted managers coolly make everything right because they're smarter than everyone else.
Organization men dislike fighting and uncertainty and want to predict in advance how every fight will turn out, and for that reason they often passively accept what they think of as inevitable, rather than acknowledging uncertainty and fighting for the best possible outcome. (And not only are the party operatives wonkish and uncombative this way, a lot of rank and file voters have the passive wonk attitude, so that the Democratic Party can be rolled with astonishing ease.)
And Democrats especially don't seem to understand something that Gingrich and Rove understood very well -- that for a confident, growing party, a defeat this year can be used as a stepping stone toward a victory next year.
For a decade or so the Republicans very successfully dominated Congress with small and sometimes tiny majorities. Furthermore, the "majority of the majority" rule meant that the right wing of the Republican party dominated the rest, and in the end about 30% of the voters ended up controlling Congress and passing a major legislation. By contrast, the Democrats can't even get anything done with 60 Senators and solid control of the House. Democrats really need some leaders who are functional in the worlds of bluffing, bargaining, gambling, and fighting.
For us, the bottom line is that we have a tough row to hoe. We have to work against the party leadership and against the media to change the incentives for elected officials and party leaders. This can be done only by organized, labor-intensive campaigns involving large numbers of people. But more on that later.
ADDENDA
Yes, Rahm Emmanuel is effective at bluffing, bargaining, gambling, and fighting.
Unfortunately, he consistently fights against progressives rather than against Republicans. Bipartisanship is his baby.
And for the record, as I've said many times before, I'm not advocating a national third party at all. The cards are just too heavily stacked against third parties. We need to work within the party structure but against the leadership and against many of the incumbents.
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