The lengths to which pundits, analysts, and establishment political leaders have always gone to avoid using dreaded populism in their political strategies for Democrats has always been remarkable to me. From Republicans since Richard Nixon, appeals to a moralist and angry middle class are all politically brilliant, but Democrats, so it is said, should avoid it as a political tactic because it doesn't work. When Lee Atwater observes that "the swing vote in every Presidential election is populist in nature", he is a genius. When Democrats start sounding like populists, we are told it just doesn't work.
From the DLC to the New Democrats to the folks at Third Way to columnists like David Broder and David Brooks to authors and analysts like Matt Bai, the advice is to be careful about seeming too angry and too anti-business. Some argue that a democratic, progressive populism has never worked in American politics, that it was at its highest point under William Jennings Bryan and he was still a loser. Some will deign to admit that FDR showed a populist streak, but then say that no one else with a similar message has won a Presidential election. The more thoughtful of these analysts, such as Bai, point to demographic and economic changes as the reason. Bai believes that "the only potent grass-roots movement to emerge from this moment of dissatisfaction with America's economic elite exists not in support of the president or his party, but far to the right instead, in the form of the so-called Tea Party rebellions that are injecting new energy into the Republican cause." He goes on to argue:
But there is something more fundamental going on here, too, an underlying shift in the meaning of American populism. Most Democrats, after all, persist in embracing populism as it existed in the early part of the last century - that is, strictly as a function of economic inequality. In this worldview, the oppressed are the poor, and the oppressors are the corporate interests who exploit them.
That made sense 75 years ago, when a relatively small number of corporations - oil and coal companies, steel producers, car makers - controlled a vast segment of the work force and when government was a comparatively anemic enterprise. In recent decades, however, as technology has reshaped the economy, more and more Americans have gone to work for smaller or more decentralized employers, or even for themselves, while government has exploded in size and influence. (It's not incidental that the old manufacturing unions, like the autoworkers and steelworkers, have been eclipsed in membership and political influence by those that represent large numbers of government workers.)
Since this transformation took place, a succession of liberal politicians - Jesse Jackson, Jerry Brown, John Edwards - have tried to run for president on a traditionally populist, anti-corporate platform, with little success. That is because today's only viable brand of populism, the same strain that Ross Perot expertly tapped as an independent presidential candidate in 1992, is not principally about the struggling worker versus his corporate master. It is about the individual versus the institution - not only business, but also government and large media and elite universities, too.
And yet, and yet...
We just saw a financial reform bill get steadily better over a two-week debate on the floor of the Senate, because politicians lived in mortal fear of appearing to kow-tow to the big banks. We just saw a health care debate where the only time Democrats got any message traction at all was in a frontal assault on the insurance industry. We've seen a massive outpouring of anger at BP over the oil spill, with Republicans scurrying for cover when their ranking member on the Energy and Commerce Committee apologized to BP over Obama's mistreatment of them. We've seen a spring of big rallies all over the country against the big banks- in Chicago, in San Francisco, in Denver, in Kansas City, in North Carolina, on Wall Street itself and on K Street in Washington, DC.
Is the "only potent grassroots" populist movement on the right? Is populism for Democrats a dead strategy?
I've never had a drink with a billionaire. Probably because I tend to hang out in bars short on billionaires and heavy on cheap beer, free hot dogs and political palaver.
I have, however, had plenty to drink with bloggers. From the Blogger Alley we hosted during the 2004 RNC at The Tank (encapsulated by The New York Times description of Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos and Duncan Black, aka Atrios, sharing a broken down dorm-reject couch with a paper plate of cold crudite between them) to the happy hours at the recent YearlyKos conference, social bonds are a core part of the emerging progressive movement.
Yesterday, Don Hazen at Alternet and Mike Lux at OpenLeft both reviewed Matt Bai's The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics (which I have not yet read), and both identified what they saw as Bai's insider, Beltway bias as the source of his dim view of certain netroots leaders. While Bai has his opinion, my gut says: while there are some very good billionaires (and even pretty good Beltwayers) and there are some very bad bloggers, overall it has been the activists more than the investors or insiders that have energized this this people-powered movement...and bloggers more than billionaires that have emerged as our movement's leaders as they have helped propel Drinking Liberally (and now Living Liberally) -- and dozens of other innovative organizations and initiatives -- to national scope and successful sustainability.
Look, the internet is a big idea, it's the big infrastructure system of the 21st century, rivaled only by the new energy system we'll need to build in the next thirty years. Protecting the internet through laws like net neutrality and open access is a manifestation of believing in that big idea. Most of us work on behalf of Democrats through the electoral process because we believe in structures like this that promote social justice and creativity, not out of some weird sense of partisan pride or thirst for power.
So when I read things like this about Matt Bai's new book, where progressives are criticized for not believing in ideas, I'm kind of annoyed and kind of amused.
Bai then sets Clinton up with the soft-ball pitch that will make his book. He tells Clinton that "he hears a lot of skepticism in D.C. and online about the power of ideas in politics. Most of the new progressives seemed to think that winning elections is more about machinery and political dexterity." Clinton responds forcefully: "They're not right about that. I still think that ideas matter. We still have to be the party of ideas, because otherwise there is no reason to buy us."
Close read that last sentence. Clinton thinks Democrats have to be 'the party of ideas' or else no one will 'buy us'. What about caring about ideas because ideas are, you know, good things to care about? What about caring about ideas because good ideas can promote justice, tolerance, and a better world? What about caring about ideas because bad ideas promote stupid wars and lots of death and destruction and whatnot? And what about the notion that each party has different ideas, and voters get to choose? Why does one party have to be 'the' party of ideas? Republicans have shitty and crazy ideas, liberal Democrats have good ones.
No, for Bill Clinton, ideas are important because without them no one will buy Clinton. Most people meet Clinton and think he's an amazing charmer. I met him and saw a very detail oriented narcissist file me away in his head for possible later use.
The Clinton years were years of systematic underinvestment in critical infrastructure, where the prosperity came from government research from the 1960s and 1970s. Clinton harvested, but did not plant new seed corn. And that's because he didn't care about anything that couldn't sell Bill Clinton, and that includes 'ideas'. Then again, maybe I'm wrong, and maybe that V-chip and those school uniforms will pay off yet.
I've been looking forward to reading Matt Bai's book, The Argument, for months now. In the circles I run- which include Democracy Alliance donors, netroots activists, and Clinton administration folks, all of which are central characters in the book- everybody was buzzing about it, and more than a few people were more than a little nervous about what he would have to say.
I have to say, from a pure reading pleasure point of view, it was worth the wait. I feared that it would be one of those books that, since I already knew most of the stories told in it, that it would be pretty boring- one of those books that I had to read to know what nasty thing he said about whom, but not something I would enjoy slogging through. I turned out to be wrong, because Bai is an engaging writer who can be very funny in his writing a lot of the time.
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