It's over a decade since I last heard Ralph Nader speak in Charlottesville, Va., and I was curious to see what kind of crowd would greet him Monday evening. The answer was one of the biggest rooms on campus packed, and mostly with students, enthusiastic students who gave standing ovations, and laughed and responded throughout a 90-minute speech.
Hello again. Well yesterday we took a look at laws seven and eight, of The 48 Laws Of Power. Today we look at the next two laws, one of which is incredibly important for Progressives to start following.
The economy is still getting worse. Foreclosures are surging above last year's epic highs and the unemployment rate marches upwards every month. As the misery grinds on, Wall Street lobbyists and their allies in Congress are pushing hard to distract the public from the real causes of the current global economic crisis. Corporate America is trying to pin the blame for our empty pocketbooks on President Barack Obama and the phantom socialist menace, and cable news pundits are taking the bait.
As David Korten explains in a blog post for Yes!, this surge of distractions is a conscious political strategy designed to sabotage reform. "Wall Street's greatest fear is that the public might demand Congress and the president shut down the casino," Korten writes. "Any issue that shifts attention away from Wall Street and pins the blame for job loss and mortgage foreclosures on President Obama works in its favor."
The banking lobby is kicking and screaming over President Obama's plan to overhaul consumer protection in finance. As a result, the battle over the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) has become the most heated economic controversy in the nation's capital, even though the issue isn't controversial where ordinary citizens are concerned.
The existing hodgepodge of bank regulators completely failed to stand up for consumers as the housing bubble grew and burst. Our current bank regulators are charged not only with consumer protection, but safety and soundness regulation, which basically means making sure that banks don't fail. Preventing bank failures often means protecting bank profits, even when those profits come at the expense of communities. Instead of relying on the same inept and conflicted agencies, consumer regulation of credit cards, mortgages, student loans, payday loans should be funneled into a single, new agency with no other priorities: The CFPA.
As Greg Kaufmann details for The Nation, recent economic history isn't stopping Wall Street's favorite lawmakers from pushing against the CFPA. Kaufmann highlights some of the most outrageous comments from a hearing on the CFPA last week. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) claimed that if the CFPA had existed a few years ago, there would be no ATMs or frequent flyer miles. David John, a researcher from the Heritage Foundation, said that employees of the new agency would spend too much time trying to find their new desks to actually do any regulating. Bank lobbyist Ed Yingling tried to erase the last ten years with his claim that "no real case has been made" for better enforcement of consumer protection in banking.
These are not serious arguments. They are intentional distractions designed to kill an obviously productive policy. Kaufmann's headline says it all: "Do They Take us for Schmucks?"
But loudmouth Republicans like Hensarling aren't the only politicians we need to keep tabs on. Plenty of lawmakers on the Financial Services Committee won't stand up and make crazy speeches about ATMs, but will still go to bat for Wall Street behind the scenes. As I emphasize in a piece for AlterNet, with outsized Democratic majorities in both chambers of commerce, conservative, pro-Wall Street Democrats pose just as great a threat to our economic security as loony Republicans.
If you think that sounds pessimistic, consider Ralph Nader, who Matthew Rothschild profiles in The Progressive. Nader knows corporate America has its hands on nearly every lever in the U.S. political system. Lobbyists don't just hurl money at lawmakers, they spend tremendous sums on misleading advertisements to sway public opinion. Rothschild quotes from a recent speech Nader gave on his current book tour. He argues that progressives don't just need concerned citizens on our side. They need concerned citizens with money to counter the flood of corporate cash in the political system.
"There is a poignance in listening to Ralph Nader these days," Rothschild writes. "Here is a man who, for the last 45 years, has hurled his body at the engine of corporate power. He's dented it more than anyone else in America. But he knows it's still chugging, even more strongly than ever."
Even when lawmakers talk tough about Wall Street, it's not obvious what's really going on. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) recently rolled out an extremely ambitious plan to overhaul the bank regulatory system. It has very little common ground with Obama's plan, and in some respects would be an improvement. Obama's plan is very strong on consumer protection and not much else. But Dodd's plan is so ambitious, it seems like a politically impossible waste of time, one that could easily delay reforms into next year. Dodd wants to consolidate all four bank regulators into a single agency to prevent a race to the bottom and strip the Federal Reserve of all of its regulatory responsibilities. They aren't bad ideas, but they have absolutely no political momentum. Dodd has been holding hearings on the financial crisis since 2007-- he could have started pushing for this plan a long time ago. By introducing it so late in the process, major legislative delays seem inevitable. The longer it takes to pass a regulatory bill, the more time the bank lobby has to water it down. Writing for Mother Jones, Nick Baumann suggests this may be exactly what Dodd intends.
"Maybe getting it done by 2010 isn't the point. Dodd is up for reelection that November. If he manages to win by talking populist while raising money from Wall Street, he'll have plenty of time afterward to figure out what to do next."
For now, the economy is still absolutely horrible. Writing for In These Times, David Moberg translates the statistics from the government's most recent unemployment report and deciphers some recent polling on the economy. Things are bad, and people know it. Many economists believe the recession may have technically already ended. The Gross Domestic Product, a statistical measure of the country's economic output, may no longer be declining. But the unemployment rate keeps going up. It was 9.8% at the end of September.
Moberg notes that if the rate counted the long-term unemployed who have given up looking and people who want full-time jobs but settled for part-time work, the unemployment rate is a staggering 17%. Over one-third of the 15.1 million would-be workers encompassed by the 9.8% unemployment rate have been out of a job for at least six months. Voters overwhelmingly believe that government policies have helped Wall Street, while just 13% think the government has given a lot of help to the average working person.
Economics and politics are inextricably linked. To strengthen our economic foundation, we need policymakers who are willing to stand up to corporate America and corporate media and serve the citizens who elect them.
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I'm sure you're dying to know who finished in third behind Barack Obama and John McCain. Well it's close enough we'll have to wait until all the votes are counted, but here are the rounded totals so far, according to state-by-state data from Wikipedia and added by me:
530,200 votes: Ralph Nader
519,800 votes: Bob Barr
179,900 votes: Chuck Baldwin
147,600 votes: Cynthia McKinney
30,800 votes: Alan Keyes (in CA)
28,300 votes: Write-in/other
10,500 votes: Ron Paul (in MT)
Nader! Feel the momentum. The total number of people who looked at Barack Obama and John McCain and said "nope" is approaching 1.5 million, an increase from 2004. Nader's total this year exceeds his total from 2004 which was about 464,000 but far below his 2000 showing of nearly 3 million.
Write-in votes will affect the final totals and I'm sure there are a significant number of Hillary Clinton, Ron Paul (only on the ballot in MT) and Zombie Reagan votes in there.
We're under no illusions about Barack Obama being a progressive messiah. We hear Republicans call him the most liberal senator-even a socialist with plans to soak the rich and spread the wealth! Don't you wish! Obama has learned to sublimate his progressive instincts and seek moderate consensus. His legislative record shows he will reach across the aisle to seek bipartisan deals. We expect him to operate in a centrist manner similar to that of Bill Clinton and we're sure he'll frustrate us in the process. We don't like that his economic advisers include Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, but his circle also includes progressives such as economist Joseph Stiglitz.
Democratic voters passed over more populist candidates Dennis Kucinich and John Edwards during the primaries. But after eight years of Bush and Cheney messing things up, it is worth the fight to get Obama elected.
Running for office is incredible tough, and something that is difficult to imagine unless you've done it. So one interesting phenomenon we see is that credible people who run as fringe-y third party candidates tend to have interesting insights into what's wrong with the political system, but no actual willingness to subordinate their egos to actual solve the problems they cite. In 2000, though Gore and Bush weren't identical, there was definitely a reasonable critique of both parties as militaristic and excessively corporate; the next eight years have seen a vicious intra-party fight within the Democratic Party to expel the DLC. We are far from winning, but Nader was a good signal that such a fight was on the horizon.
Pollster.com national regression line with third-party candidates Obama: 49.6%
McCain: 38.1%
Barr: 2.6%
Nader: 2.3%
That is not a competitive campaign. Including third-party options in polls right now clearly benefits Obama. An 11.5% victory for Obama would put him over 400 electoral votes, and put a whole swatch of red states either in play, or in his column. So, the question is, how can Obama go about raising the national numbers for third party candidates like Nader and Barr?
The answer, I think, is just to debate them. Next month, Obama should propose including Barr, Nader and McKinney in one of the presidential debates. This seems like a no-brainer that would benefit Obama no matter what McCain said in response:
Obama could frame the proposal as looking for discussion and solutions from all parties. Given that both he and McCain are trying to look bi- / post- / non-partisan, making this proposal is any easy way to back up that narrative.
If McCain accepts, then he is once again following Obama's lead. If he declines, then he looks chicken, not to mention unwilling to debate people with a wide range of viewpoints.
The third-party candidates will be the undoubted beneficiaries of a debate where they are included. Neither of the major party candidates can hope to gain as much from the debates as the third-party candidates. For example, consider how Perot's numbers shot way up after he first appeared in a debate back in 1992. Further, they will all probably receive a large influx in donations, thus helping them maintain their gains in the debates.
Even if the debate ends up only being Obama and the third-party candidates, it will still receive an enormous amount of coverage that will improve the standing of Nader, Barr and McKinney. The cable news nets will carry it live, even if the networks don't. Even news organization will run a top story on the debates.
In short, whether or not McCain accepts the debate, it will still receive a wave of free media that will help Nader and Barr (and maybe McKinney) in the polls. And, as the above numbers indicate, this election simply isn't close when Nader and Barr have decent showings in the polls. Further, just proposing the debate will make Obama look open to discussion from all quarters. There is nothing to be lost here, and a lot to gain.
So, I hope that Obama comes out with a proposal to include third-party candidates in at least one debate this cycle. Rarely would something so simple and easy provide so much potential gain in a presidential election.
It is interesting, though probably easily explained, that people who say they are supporting Ralph Nader in public opinion surveys overwhelmingly prefer John McCain to Barack Obama. Looking through the entire history of polls that ask both a two-person Obama vs. McCain trial heat, and also a four-way trial heat with Ralph Nader and Bob Barr, McCain is clearly hurt by the presence of both candidates in the campaign:
Comparing Two-Way and Four-Way National Polls
Poll
Date
Two-Way Margin
Four-Way Margin
Difference
NBC / WSJ
Jul 21
Obama +6
Obama +12
Obama +6
ABC / WaPo
Jul 13
Obama +3
Obama +10
Obama +7
Zogby
Jul 13
Obama +7
Obama +10
Obama +3
CNN
Jun 29
Obama +5
Obama +3
McCain +2
LA Times
Jun 23
Obama +12
Obama +15
Obama +3
Fox
Jun 18
Obama +4
Obama +3
McCain +1
Zogby
Jun 14
Obama +5
Obama +5
No Change
CNN
Jun 05
Obama +3
Obama +4
Obama +1
Zogby
May 15
Obama +8
Obama +10
Obama +2
Rasmussen
May 15
McCain +1
Obama +4
Obama +5
Zogby
Apr 12
Even
Obama +2
Obama +2
Average
Obama +2.4
As I explain in the extended entry, this chart is could contain a key to winning the election.
Let me first say that I'm not actually one of those Democrats who thinks that third party challenges need to be squashed, or that the people who vote for leftist third party candidates are somehow actually supporting Republicans. My feelings on the matter are as follows:
A vote for a third party candidate is not the same as voting for a Republican. Instead, it is effectively the same as not voting at all. While no analogy is perfect (the truth is that voting for a third party candidate is the same as voting for a third party candidate), this one holds up much better to logical scrutiny. Other than the extremely rare situations where third-party candidates have a shot at winning, voting for a third party candidate ultimately impacts the outcome of the election in the same manner as not voting at all.
No one is entitled to votes. If progressives or Independents or whoever end up voting for third-party candidates, then the Democratic nominee just didn't do a good enough job winning those votes. Period. It isn't the fault of the voters--it is the fault of the candidate.
We shouldn't expect, or even desire, consensus. We would indeed live in a disturbing version of a republic if no one voted for third parties, if everyone voted, and if everyone was enthusiastic about one of the two major party nominees. Dissent via third parties, via not voting, and via "holding one's nose" is healthy for any republic. While third parties and not voting tend to be just about the least effective forms of dissent available, it would still be a shame if the 1-3% of the country that voted third party every two years went away.
Now, with all of that said, as I explain in the extended entry, I still don't want anything to do with third-parties. While they should not be existentially scorned, for anyone who actually wants to change the American political system, the ineptitude of third-parties is indeed worthy of scorn.
Thanks again to Matt and Chris for letting me post here about this race, and for creating an Open Left for Fallon page at Act Blue that has raised $6,200 so far.
It's election day in Iowa, and the Democratic primary between Congressman Leonard Boswell and Ed Fallon is one of the highest-profile races in the state.
Cross posted on from DailyKos with a different poll
Rasmussen recently published results of their first (as far as I know) poll involving more than the two major party candidates. While I am glad to see some reality based polling going on (there will be 5 or 6 candidates on most of the ballot for Pres in most states in November), Rasmussen has some pretty serious flaws in methodology (shocking, I know).
Obama earns 42% of the vote, McCain 38%, Bob Barr 6% and Ralph Nader 4%. Given those options, 11% were undecided.Barr and Nader were mentioned as candidates of the Libertarian Party and the Green Party respectively.
By comparison, Sunday's 2-way numbers were Obama 45 McCain 44 - clearly this is good news for Obama, even if the real pull the lever November support of these two candidates is only half what is shown here. Details on the poll numbers, as well as analysis of both the results and Rasmussen's flawed methodology after the jump.
As the Obama-Clinton battle winds down and Obama's magic number gets lower, some national polls are out there for the general election that are actually polling some of the other names on the ballot, or at least 'other' as an option.
While the Libertarian and Green Party nominations are not wrapped up yet either (Cynthia McKinney will almost certainly be the Green candidate, the 17 candidate battle royale in the Libertarian Party continues), the Constitution Party has nominated unknown Chuck Baldwin over better known but equally irrelevant Alan Keyes.
Of course, the three major party candidates get all the press attention, but it is interesting to take a look at possible 3rd party impact on the GE. Poll numbers after the jump:
According to Google News Ralph Nader's announcement has generated a lot of press. Yesterday, it consistently ranked in Google's top three stories for U.S. news. In fact, the buzz is so great, that some of my friends who don't work in politics brought up to me yesterday without being prompted to do so. Considering all of the coverage it is receiving, I am left wondering at what point Meet the Press became Democracy Now. Since when do shows like Meet the Press give discussion roundtable slots, much less one on one interviews, to progressives? In fact, when do they give such interviews to extreme long shot progressives?
Nader is clearly not receiving coverage for his current ability to attract votes. In 2004, Nader received 0.38% of the national vote, compared to 0.32% for Libertarian Michael Peroutka Badnarik. While no one expects Michael Peroutka Badnarik to appear on Meet the Press if he announces a 2008 presidential bid, from a horserace perspective Peroutka would have an equal claim to such an interview. Also, whenever the several hundred news outlets covering Nader's announcement decided to become Pacifica Radio, it must have been after the point when Cynthia McKinney announced her campaign for President, which pretty much was only covered by Democracy Now. Given that Nader lost the Green Party nomination to David Cobb back in 2004, and that McKinney actually has demonstrated the ability to win elections in the past, McKinney would have to be favored do better than Nader in this election. While I do remember This Week covering McKinney's primary defeat back in 2002, and declaring it to be a sign that African-Americans were becoming more moderate, I also don't remember her presidential announcement interview with Tim Russert or George Stephanopoulos this election cycle.
Now, I am perfectly well aware of Nader's influential position in forming numerous advocacy institutions. Hell, in 1994, like many young progressives, I had a summer job working for one of those (NYPIRG). Also, in 1996, during my far-left anti-Democratic days, I voted for Nader in New York. (While I have never voted for a Republican, during my younger days I did sometimes vote for third-party candidates. Hey, it was the 1990's, and ineffective rebellion of that sort was all the rage. I have long since learned the error of my ways.) During that campaign, I pointed out Nader's influential role as a citizen advocate and argued that he had done more for the public good than probably anyone who had run for President in a long, long time. Nader is, or at least was, an icon for a generation of progressives. In at least one poll conducted during the 1970's, Americans listed him as one of the ten most admired people in the country.
Even with all of that said, I do not think Nader's role as a citizen advocate is the reason why his announcement is receiving so much media attention. Nowadays, Nader receives press not because of his work in building up left-wing infrastructure, but rather because he has emerged as a figure who famously divided the left in 2000. If he did not have the ability to anger large numbers of Democrats with his very presence, he simply would not be receiving the coverage he is getting. At this point, it is his role in dividing progressives, not in building them up, that earns him any at all attention from the same pundits that drool over McCain and Bloomberg. The same media outlets that otherwise give scant platforms to progressive viewpoints on op-ed pages and in panel discussions would not be paying any attention to Nader without his newfound role as a destructive figure for the American left.
Progressives who advocate for the kind of things Nader advocates have long since been shut out of the corporate media. With few exceptions, they are only allowed back in when they serve non-progressive agendas. Nader is not receiving media deference for his political accomplishments in the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's, but rather for his "accomplishments" in the 2000 election. Nader's announcement buzz is a helpful reminder of how many media outlets, reporters, and pundits still find progressives most useful as part of a "Democrats divided" or "progressives in disarray" narrative. As the downfall of Nader has shown, we play along with that permanent media narrative at our own peril, and to the great overall detriment of the progressive movement. Casting yourself in the role of the media idiot progressive can seriously damage the life's work even of a one-time giant like Nader.
Nader created a good deal of the antipartisan organizational apparatus of the 1970s and 1980s. What he did in his career was remarkable, and yet, now on TV he's taking no responsibility for his lies during 2000. Watching him on TV, it's clear he hates the Democrats and just won't recognize that it's a different Democratic Party, one that is much more movement-based, than it is when he ran in 2000. Nader is part of the TV cult of personality model of politics, similar to Dennis Kucinich, and he sounds kind of pathetic.
Nader's not wrong on a lot of his charges, but he's also in his own increasingly irrelevant way part of the problem.
UPDATE: Perhaps some more pungency makes sense - I don't see Nader as particularly progressive, and I do see him as a pathologically dishonest diva. That shouldn't take away from his very real accomplishments, but his claims in 2000, that there were no differences between Al Gore and George Bush, were lies and he is appropriately held accountable for them. As for his ideological stripes, Nader was on the wrong side of the Schiavo controversy, and that suggests a basic lack of concern for how to treat human beings. Working with religious wackos to invade someone's privacy at their most vulnerable moment, and lying about the Democratic Party to put George Bush in charge and hewing to those lies are not ok in my book. I did enjoy this video.
NOVOTNY: Well, it is unusual, as you know, for a Democrat or an independent Democrat, as you call yourself, to endorse a Republican. Did you consider any of your Democratic colleagues?
LIEBERMAN: Well, I did. I mean, to have full disclosure, not one of the Democrats asked for my support, which may be a story in itself. John McCain and I are friends. He did ask for my support.
It is actually a pretty good sign that no Democrat even wanted Lieberman's support, as it demonstrates a significant decline in Lieberman's relative power within Democratic circles. Speaking of unsolicited endorsements from coalition splitters, Ralph Nader seems to prefer Edwards:
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