The polling business is far more of an art than a science, is easily manipulated, and is open to as many interpretations as there are people looking at the polls. I have never known a pollster who didn't walk in the door with a set of assumptions and biases in how to interpret the data. And everyone in the business knows that the way you phrase the questions, the way you sequence the questions, the way you draw the sample of who you are asking, and a bunch of other little tricks those of us in the political biz know can dramatically impact outcomes.
The other huge factor in the polling business is who the client is, and what the purpose of the poll is. If the poll is designed for internal analysis, you get one kind of results (and generally more honest data). If the poll is designed to be released to the public to prove a point (our candidate is winning, our issue is popular, our spin is best being the usual things clients use these kinds of polls for), you want to be really careful about accepting the analysis on its face, because that is where the little (and big) things that can be done to manipulate the findings really come into play.
I say this by way of introduction to my central discussion: the internal debate within the Democratic party for what the central narrative of our party ought to be. Over the short term, that fight centers on how to save us from getting crushed in the 2010 elections, but it is of course a very long term fight that has been going on in our party since the New Deal coalition came unraveled in the late 1960s.
As I said, everyone comes to this debate with certain biases, and I will admit mine upfront. Just in case you haven't read my stuff much, I am - by history, sentiment, ideology, and instinct - naturally drawn to progressive populism: fighting for the "little guy", standing up to wealthy corporate interests. My political role models in history are people like FDR, Truman, and Bobby Kennedy, people who figured out how to appeal to a multi-racial coalition and the idealism of the young while still winning over working class white folks. In the modern era, my favorite political leaders are people like Paul Wellstone, Sherrod Brown, Dave Obey, Tom Perriello, and Brian Schweitzer, candidates who have won in purple or even red states/districts not by becoming more like Republicans but by raising the populist progressive flag unapologetically.
Now, having admitting my biases, I will also say that progressive populism (like every other messaging frame) has some limits as a political strategy. There are some districts it doesn't work in. There have been elections where it hasn't been as salient, or runs into a moment where it is overwhelmed by a certain mood in the electorate or a particular candidate's magic touch (Reagan's Morning in America theme in 1984, combined with Reagan's charm and a surging economy, was a classic example, although Mondale's kind of populism wasn't exactly stirring). Certain candidates can't pull populism off credibly, and probably shouldn't try (John Kerry comes to mind).
I also firmly believe that an angry populism all by itself isn't convincing to a majority of voters, that you have to combine the justifiable anger at the abuses of corporate power with compelling positive policy ideas on how you will deliver jobs and other benefits to voters. I don't think a purely anti-business populism usually works, for example: I think candidates need to show how they support small business and manufacturers and companies that are really contributing jobs and useful products to our country and communities. Finally, I would say this: I would never recommend a purely pro-government kind of populism to candidates. Voters, for very good reasons, are deeply cynical that government is really on their side, and will really deliver for them. Progressives have to make clear that part of our mission is to clean up the corporate corruption of government, and that we understand that government in recent years (outside of old stand-bys like Social Security and Medicare and Head Start and the minimum wage) has not always done a good job in making most people's lives better. We also have to be clear that we do want to cut wasteful government spending, and that most of that wastefulness comes from corporate subsidies and sweetheart deals: contracting practices that overwhelmingly favor the contractors rather than the taxpayers, agribusiness subsidies that have no merit, sweetheart deals in health care reform that don't allow for negotiations with drug manufacturers or public sector competition with insurance companies, tax loopholes that have no rational basis for existing besides a really good lobbying operation.
On the other side of the populist argument are Democrats who argue that it is bad political strategy to be too aggressive in taking on corporate America. Since we're all admitting our biases here, I would urge the pollsters and groups who generally make this argument to admit their own: almost all of them get most of their client or contributor list from the ranks of corporate America. The leading pollster who has been making this argument for the last couple of decades is Mark Penn, who heads a firm that does far, far more work in corporate PR and lobbying than it does for candidates. The leading politicians making this argument have been the Blue Dog and New Democrat caucuses, whose members receive far more corporate money than the rest of the Democratic party. And the leading groups making these arguments are the DLC and Third Way, both of which have as a (probably the, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt) leading source of contributions big corporations and their executives.
The latest example is a poll recently released by Third Way. Before I get to criticizing it, let me stop for a minute and say that I thought it had some useful insights for Democrats. The idea of tying Republican policies in congress closer to Bush, for example, is certainly a solid idea (although I fear that it is harder said than done.) The idea that Democrats should speak to the future and be aspirational in their language is something that makes sense to me. I even like the fiscal discipline thing, though I would redirect it to where the real waste in the budget is (corporate sweetheart deals, see above).
Having said that, though, it was really clear that this poll's questions, and the interpretation in the memo they wrote about the poll, were designed to try and talk Democrats out of using populist rhetoric. Let me take you through a couple of examples:
Is it already too late for America? I'm starting to think that the anti-tax, anti-government conservative movement that started in the mid-70s, elected Reagan and led to the terrible Bush Presidency may have effectively destroyed the country, leaving it bankrupt, corrupt,ungovernable, ruled by a wealthy elite -- and we're only now just starting to realize it. To cover tax cuts we stopped maintaining the infrastructure and started borrowing. To satisfy their hatred of government we increasingly stripped away rule of law, regulation, and belief in one-person-one-vote. We are seeing the consequences of all of that coming back to roost now.
Reagan left us with massive debt and ever-increasing interest payments. Bush left us with $1.3 trillion deficits and a destroyed economy that would force further increases in the borrowing for years - to be blamed on Obama. The "free marketers" gave away our manufacturing base that will take decades and massive capital investment to recover. Obama can try, but it may just be too late to do anything about the borrowing. We need massive investment in jobs and infrastructure, and a national economic/industrial plan. But, with their own Reagan/Bush debt as ammunition, conservative ideologues continue to block every effort at investment to get out of the mess we are in.
Today is our celebration of the Labor Movement and the value of the workers who built and continue to maintain America. As a holiday, it has an interesting political history and looking at the 127 years it has been celebrated we see stark changes that have been made in the relationship between the government and labor.
As President Barack Obama was assuming office in January, 93% of Americans said that restoring public trust in government should be a top priority (63%) or an important but lower priority (30%) for the new President. Take it as an absolute value, this is a stunningly high percentage; put it in comparison with the other seventeen (widely discussed) issues tested in an AP-Gfk survey, and you will find out that only improving the economy, creating more jobs, making the government more efficient and increasing the country’s independence scored higher.
It’s good to be reminded that people crave trust in government — despite well coordinated efforts that tell a different story. I won’t debate here the relationship of the individual to the “state” (an Aristotelian term in loan) but, in my bi-weekly visits to The Opportunity Agenda blog, I will translate the latest findings on public attitudes on public policy issues, voting patterns and trends, elections and elected officials.
Without an ideological lens, I will help understand Americans’ opinions on issues of public interest such as health care, immigration, the economy, and human rights; and explore how these opinions relate to people’s experience of a deeply held American value: the promise of opportunity. People’s outlook to the President's economic stimulus package can tell a true story about their perception of security,equality, mobility, voice, redemption, or community which make up opportunity, as explained in our newly released report The State of Opportunity in America.
One of the main pillars of Republican thought is that LBJ's spending on social programs and his relatively modest federal deficits caused the hyperinflation and economic stagnation of the 1970s and early 1980s. The problem with this theory which largely goes unopposed is that the much larger deficits of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and Georhe W. Bush stubbornly failed to cause inflation. LBJ managed to produce a b udget surplus in his last year in office, as well. I f federal deficits cause inflation, this record makes no sense.
In fact, I patiently waited for Regan's deficits to run into hyper inflation and lo and behold, we never had it. The same thing held with George W. Bush. Were larger Republican deficits kept in check by complicit bankers and Wall Street types or was there something else at work here. Well, it turns out that price inflation remarkably correlates with rise in oil prices rather than with federal deficits. Following the Arab-Israeli War OPEC applied an oil embargo to countries considered friendly to Israel. prices zoomed from $3 a barrel in 1971 to over $12 a barrel and the prices at the gas station went above $1 per gallon. A scond shock followed with the Iranian Revolution (1979-80) and the Iraq-Iran War which mostly cut off Iranian exports until Iran started winning in late 1981 or 1982. By 1981, oil prices rose to $35 a barrel.
Reagan exacerabated hyperinflation and stagnation by secretly supporting Iraq as retaliation of the hostage crisis. It was Dick Cheney who first armed Saddam Hussein while working for reagan. But Reagan got the politically credit by deliberately engineering a steep recession (10 straight months with unemployment over 10%) which broke the back of both our own economy and oil demand. Future deficits, which were huge, were paired with falling oil prices (and therefore) falling or stable cost of living stats. This economic malpractice tranferred the blame from the Nixon-Ford era to LBJ and "social programs." Social programs were tarred and feathered semi permanently while the Reagan and George W. Bush tax cuts were deified. Only the tax cuts really didn't produce much growth and the social spending does not appear to be the real cause of infalation. Nonetheless, this is politically effective and has seeped into conventional wisdom.
The theory behind this diary is that the experiences of being amember of Congress are fundamentally different from the experiences of being an ordinary citizen. When I was born, Harry Truman was President. I have no memory of him as President except the films or books that I read much later. Truman was gone while I was still an infant (age 1). The memories of Ike are far more distinct but certainly not those of an adult. I actually saw the man in the early 60s when I was a child. Kennedy is more distinct but Johnson and Nixon were real.
The working memories of those who served in Congress are different from those who merely watched on TV or even donated or worked in campaigns. Those memories, I would strongly suspect, shape the concept of what it is to be in power or to be in opposition.
For House Republicans, the notion of opposition is pretty much shaped and exemplified by their experience when Bill Clinton was President. Only five current Republican House mebers served while Jimmy Carter was President (Bill Young of FL-10; Don Young of Alaska; Jerry Lewis of California; Jim Sensenbrenner of WI-5; and Tom Petri of WI-6). Three of the five served one term or less (2 years) under Carter. None are now in Republican leadership although both Sensenbrenner and Lewis were committe chairs as recently as 2006 and are now ranking members but the two Youngs and Petri have no official leadership roles and the Youngs seem to have been put out to pasture.
Over the last two weeks I've been documenting the abuses endured by workers and residents within the Atria assisted living chain, while Bruce Wasserstein, CEO of the Lazard investment house (and controller of Atria through an affiliated real estate fund) makes millions in bonuses even as the investment itself tanks. You can read my collected posts here.
What's happening at Atria--the gouging of seniors' meager disposable income to ensure profit margins are met, even while services and benefits are cut and rents are increased dramatically--is an extreme, but all-too-real example of what's happening all over the globe...the systematic transfer of wealth and the power to create wealth from the larger mass of the human community to a select class of uber-wealthy players at the top of the social scale. It's worth looking at the issue in a larger context, if only to reiterate what I think most of us already know...that we're being robbed, cheated, gouged, and nickel-and-dimed to death to make others rich.
How did Ronald Reagan win the 1980 election, by an effective landslide, effectively instituting the winger dominance of American politics for 25 years?
While there are many causes, a look at Carter's political staff gives us a clue: Shrum, Caddell, MacAuliff and Chris Matthews all were in the list. Caddell's was instrumental in Carter's famous "malaise" speech. Results were spectacular. American morale and confidence in the future have plummeted to the lowest point since Yankelovich began charting these elements in 1974. The number of people who think that the U.S. is in serious trouble has swelled to 81%, from 74% of those interviewed in January. At the same time, Carter's image as a strong leader has diminished sharply. A full 70% of the voters think that it is time for a change in the Oval Office. http://www.time.com/...
There is a comforting liberal myth that Reagan won by appealing to racists and it is certainly true that Reagan appealed to racists, but that was not enough for him to win the election or to dominate politics after the election. It is time for progressives to dump the myth that the public let us down. The fact is that Carter's "centrist" politics were deeply unpopular.
Inflation The country is having its most serious economic threat since the great depression of the 1930's. Inflation soared from 4.8% in 1976 to over 18% in 1980. Forecasts of inflation of 18% and 20% are now considered reasonable.
Carter inflation is, in fact, the largest factor in the national urban crisis. Rising costs erode urban services and living standards. As inflation soars, the fiscal crisis has spread throughout the nation. City governments cut back on police, firemen, on sanitation workers, and on teachers. All over, union members - with 4% pay increases - have had to grapple with 13% increases while city governments have less real dollars for their own workers. And as tensions rise, municipal strikes multiply, and the cost is neither greed by unions nor callousness by city managers. The cause is Carter's inflation.
Candidate Carter called the present health system "a national disgrace." Yet, after three years, he has come up only with a proposal that is neither comprehensive nor systematic, but still manages to be highly inflationary.
Housing In 1976, Carter set a goal of two million new housing units a year; the present rate is 1.3 million and declining. In New York City, the housing stock has been reduced every single Carter year. The housing depression (the number of subsidized units for low and middle income families is less than in the last Republican years) means not only the end of the American families dream, but hundreds of thousands of men and women in the construction industry out of work as well - and, with 15% mortgages, slim work on the horizon.
In 1977, President Carter stood amid the rubble of Charlotte Street and described it as intolerable. He said that its revival would be a good test of his urban policy. It was. Today Charlotte Street is abandoned, deteriorating, and festering.
Energy Three years ago, the President called it "the moral equivalent of war." Today, the Carter strategy on the energy crisis has been called "timid ", "limp" and "disastrous".
The public, paying $1.30 a gallon for gas and $1.00 a gallon for heating oil and watching Exxon register the first $4,000,000,000 profit in industrial history, hardly knows what to call it. First, President Carter called for an end to foreign oil dependence. Than he set import quotas actually higher than our annual consumption.
Carter administration created a scale of unequal sacrifice based on unfair prices that would bring hardship to ordinary people.
"Crime stalks everyone, everywhere. No region of our nation is immune. It tarnishes the quality of life of all our citizens. We must take sound, practical, concrete steps to deal with the soaring increase in our crime rate."
Unemployment Unemployment continues to plague the nation. It now stands at 6.5%, it is 8.5% in New York, 20% of among minorities and 40% among minority youth. Economists generally agree that unemployment will shortly reach 8% nationally. This is not some abstract economic statistic. In the next few months an additional million and a half men and women are certain to lose their jobs.
What an opening, for any opponent, and Reagan (or Lee Atwater) took it.[ And it should go without saying, but apparently it needs saying that understanding Reagan's appeal is not approval of his reactionary policies.]
I added a comment to the discussion on Obama's praise of Ronald Reagan, but my concern is that it will be lost in all of the comments. I'm creating it into a diary in hopes it will get more attention and people who know more than I do can help answer my question.
I must admit that the seven-year reign of Bush & Company makes me yearn for the years of Ronald Reagan, when the term "conservative" merely meant right wing, rather than full-tilt, bull-goose loopy.
With George Bush's popularity battling the Grinch, Republican presidential candidates have been especially keen on burnishing their conservative credentials by seekying to associate themselves with Ronald Reagan. Steve Bennen had an interesting post about this over at the Carpetbagger Report the week before last, which is worth a peak if you haven't read it already.
Bennen takes off from a squable between Romney and Huckabee, and touches on Reagan's tax-raising record ("Reagan raised taxes a grand total of four times just between 1982-84") his amnesty for undocumented immigrants, his laxness as a budget-cutting firebrand ("By Reagan's second term, the idea of seriously diminishing the budget was, to quote Stockman, 'an institutionalized fantasy'"), and his big government ways:
In fact, the budget grew significantly under Reagan. All he managed to do was moderately slow its rate of growth. What's more, the number of workers on the federal payroll rose by 61,000 under Reagan. (By comparison, under Clinton, the number fell by 373,000.)
Bennen concludes:
This isn't really a defense of Huckabee, so much as it's a reminder to the GOP that Reagan's legacy is not quite what the party thinks it is.
This is all well and good. But the fact is, it only begins to scratch the surface. Reagan was far less religious than the Southern Democrats who came immeditately before and slightly after him. Also unlike them, he was divorced. He not only had gay friends, he opposed specific anti-gay legislation, the 1978 Briggs Initiative, a California measure that would have outlawed gay teachers in California's public schools. He cut the 1983 deal with Tip O'Neill that bailed out Social Security. On gun control, he backed the Brady Bill, and he even proposed eliminating nuclear weapons at the 1986 Reykjavik Summit.
In 2003, taking note of prepations to eulogize Reagan on his then-anticipated death-including a spate of new books-- Joshua Green wrote an article for the Washington Monthly, "Reagan's Liberal Legacy: What the new literature on the Gipper won't tell you,", which took note of some of the above, and some other things as well, and then concluded thus:
The great success of Reagan's 1980 campaign was that it united the disparate strands of the conservative movement: supply-siders, libertarians, religious conservatives, foreign policy hawks, and big business. The fact that Reagan's presidency didn't accomplish anything approaching its seismic promise--the size of government grew, abortion remained legal, and entitlements still abounded--is one that his partisan biographers elide by focusing on what Reagan believed and said rather than on what he actually did. The imaginary Reagan who inhabits these books embodies the ideas on which all these groups can agree. His shining example helps maintain the coalition while putting pressure on current GOP politicians to hew to the hard-right ideal.
The real Reagan, on the other hand, would bring discord to the current conservative agenda. If you believe, as conservatives now do, that raising taxes is always wrong, then it's hard to admit that Reagan himself did so repeatedly. If you argue that the relative tax burden on low-income workers is too light, as the Bush administration does, then it does not pay to dwell on the fact that Reagan himself helped lighten that burden. If you insist, as many hardliners now do, that America is dangerously soft on communist China, then it is best to ignore Reagan's own softening toward the Soviet Union. As with other conservative media efforts--Rush Limbaugh, Fox News Channel, The Washington Times--the purpose of the Reagan legacy project is not to deliver accuracy, but enhance political leverage.
But, as Reagan himself liked to cite from John Adams, facts are stubborn things. And the fact is that Reagan, whether out of wisdom or because he was forced, made significant compromises with the left. Had he not saved Social Security, relented on his tax cut, and negotiated with the Soviets, he'd have been a less popular, and lesser, president. An honest portrait of Reagan's presidency would not diminish his memory, but enlarge it.
In fact, it was not Reagan, but a far less popular figure-Newt Gingrich-who is primarily responsible for the straight jacket that conservative ideology has become. But this diary isn't about going to get into that-fun though that might be.
Rather, I'm after somewhat bigger game-I'm quetioning how radically so-called American conservatism differs from supposedly conservative principles. We've lived with these differences so long, we no longer notice them. But in fact, there is a huge chasm between what American conservatism stands for, and what conservatism itself is supposed to be all about. Some of that goes all the back to Hoover and his gang, who never stopped fighting the New Deal-in sharp contrast to European conservatives like Otto Van Bismark, who actually created Germany's welfare state in 1880-more than half a century before FDR. Some of it is due to William F. Buckley, and his project to reconstitute conservatism in the 1950s, some to the Goldwater campaign of 1964, and some to Reagan himself, a lifelong actor-an illusionist--who invoked an upbeat spirit and crackpot economic theories quite at odds with everything conservatism was supposed to be about. All this came about before Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh came along, adding their own special mixtures of alternative history, fanaticism and demonization.
The rise of the modern progressive movement has been a topic discussed a lot on the front page. There have been some comparison to the conservative movement; even the suggestion of a long term possibility for a progressive version of the DLC that would shift the GOP to the left. All this has encouraged me to put down some of my own thoughts and observations about the rise of conservatism. The traditional narrative of conservatism is that while the outbreak of the culture wars and polarization of politics based on ideology started in the late 1970s, the foundation was set by Nixon and Goldwater in their earlier presidential runs. I want to provide more nuanced thoughts on how what once started as a Republican attempt to split the South turned into the Southernization of the Party of Lincoln.
STATE BLOGS
