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According to the New York Times, the most recent election proves that the Working Families Party "is now the pre-eminent political force in New York City politics." The WFP has achieved this status not through the usual celebritized/glamorized channels of big money television ads and endorsements, but through old-fashioned grassroots work that too much of the much-ballyhooed Washinton-based progressive "infrastructure" ignores/laughs at. The result is that not only have they built power, but they've built durable power - and that scares the bejesus out of both major parties in the Empire State.
As I showed in my latest book, conservatives, led by Rudy Giuliani, have long vilified the WFP. But a few has-been washouts in the old Democratic machine are freaking out as well. What's so hilarious, of course, is that because these washouts are so overcome with rage, they've forgotten some of the most basic lessons of Economics 101. Specifically, check out this op-ed by former New York Mayor Ed Koch (who endorsed George W. Bush) and former city comptroller candidate David Yassky (whose candidacy just got crushed by the WFP's candidate) using McCarthyist "threat" language - and more specifically, check out the crux of their argument about why the WFP is supposedly a "threat":
"We see danger when narrow agendas overwhelm the public good. That happened this spring in Albany, when the WFP masterminded a whopping 9% increase in state spending in a year when the state's economy is actually contracting."
The danger? Really? I mean...really? Are you out of your friggin' mind?
Recall that when economies contract, economists of all political and ideological stripes agree that that's exactly when governments should increase their spending. In fact, this was why economists of both parties backed the federal stimulus bill earlier this year: Because government spending is supposed to be used as a countercyclical force in the face of a contraction. The alternative - which Koch and Yassky seem to endorse - is exremist lunacy: massive spending cuts in the face of the recession, which, of course, is exactly what famously exacerbated the Great Depression in 1937.
Again, this isn't an ideological position (though it is notable that it was best proven by that famed New York politician, Franklin Roosevelt) - it's basic Economics 101 for obvious reasons, and the idea that increasing spending to counter the recession is somehow a "narrow agenda" is just straight-up psycho talk. But evidently, the washout has-beens in New York's Democratic machine are so blinded by a grassroots challenge to their dwindling power that they aren't interested in even the most staid laws of economics.
This tells us a two things: First and foremost, it's very good that Yassky was destroyed and humiliated in his bid to become a major economic policymaker in a major economic hub like New York because clearly he has a weak grasp of, ya know, economics. More importantly, it shows that the WFP has built very real progressive power - so real that it is being dishonestly attacked from all sides.
Indeed, being attacked - and in particular, being attacked so dishonestly and spastically in such hysterically McCarthyist terms - is the tell tale sign that something has built the kind of genuine power that is feared by the status quo. That's what the WFP has done - and it should serve as a model and inspiration to all of us working in progressive politics.
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