Everyone is talking about what are the Democrats to do. I have been in meetings with a bunch of big donors this week where primarying Obama was an open topic of discussion. I have in front of me a memo from the Third Way arguing that all the President has to do is move to the center, although they don't choose to define what they mean by that in this particular memo- I guess that definition is to come later. I have been hearing from Democrats all over a rising panic that the President will never stand up to Republicans, and we are doomed, doomed, doomed. Well, sit back and relax, friends and neighbors, because it is way too early to panic. Besides, I have thought up the solution to everything.
Before I get to that moment of illumination, though, let me focus first on this new Third Way memo, because as usual, their message is fun to deconstruct. Third Way's entire mission in life is to argue that "the center" is all in American politics, that turning to "the left" is always a mistake, that moderates and independents rule. Virtually every memo they write and every poll they take starts and ends with that premise, and is carefully constructed to drive that point home. In this latest poll/memo, they look at what they call the droppers (the people who voted for Obama but didn't vote this time) and the switchers (the people who say they voted for Obama last time but voted Republican this time). They argue that the droppers are more than the base, and the switchers didn't just switch because of the economy but because they thought Democrats are too liberal.
I want to make a few specific points about the poll before getting to my underlying premise of this post:
1. There are some quirky things about this poll. Unless I looked in depth at the crosstabs and methodology, I can't account for what explains this, but I do know there are some anomalies here. The first is that people frequently misreport who they voted for in the last election, and generally over-report voting for the winner. That could explain some odd data points. For example, 24% of the switchers say they are Republicans who voted for Obama last time and didn't this time. Given that only 9% of Republicans voted for Obama, and 5% of Republicans voted for Democrats this time- that 4% total swing being one of the smallest in any demographic group in this election- to have that big a number of their switchers be Republicans strikes me as hard to believe. Here's another oddity: they say that most of the switchers weren't personally effected much by the economy, but the exit polls said that of the people hardest hit by the economy, Obama had a 42% margin in 2008, while the Republicans captured that group by 29% in 2010. That 71% swing accounted for an overwhelming majority of the swing vote in the exit polls, but the switchers in the Third Way poll seemed to be pretty economically comfortable. I can't account for anomalies like these, other than to suggest that if your entire mission going into a poll is to say Democrats need to move to the center, maybe the methodology and way you phrase the questions makes the numbers a little funky.
2. Here's a classic example of writing the question in a way to achieve a certain result: Third Way asked droppers whether Obama/Democrats "tried to have government do too much" vs. whether they "should have tried to have government do more". I was actually surprised that a plurality of the droppers, 45-39, opted for the latter statement, because it is written to maximize a negative answer. Government as a generic term has a negative cast in American life, and wanting government to do more will always invoke a negative response. Having government invest in, help, have oversight over, create a level playing field, make sure businesses don't cheat, work to create jobs: all of those phrases are automatically more likely to invoke a more positive response than "having government do more" in general. What a plurality in favor of that idea means the droppers really are pretty liberal.
3. Another thing I would note when you are trying so hard to make a certain point is that you tend to blow by inconvenient statistics. For example, in their paragraph on youth voting, the memo points out that youth vote was 12% of the electorate both in 2006 and 2010- therefore, they say, droppers are not disproportionately young. But in everything else, they were comparing droppers and switchers to 2008. The problem for them is that in 2008, young people were 18% of the electorate, so the droppers- as defined the way Third way originally defined them, as the people who voted for Obama in 2008 but did not vote this time- were actually very disproportionately young. I guess that got in the way of their bigger argument, which was that droppers weren't all that progressive, since young people are in fact more progressive on most issues. They also conveniently ignored the big drop as a percentage of the electorate in union members, which are normally almost a quarter of the electorate in midterm elections and were 20% in 2008, but were just 17% this time.
4. A final point: Third Way makes a lot of the independent numbers, including the fact that independents are 40% of the droppers. But when the independents that are coming out are more senior citizens and less young people, who tend to register to vote as indies, the Independents who do vote will be more conservative independents, and the ones who don't vote- your droppers- will be more progressive. There are lots of progressive indies who tend to align with base Democrats on issues, and they include many young people and union members, precisely the indies who didn't vote in this election.
Here is where I do agree with Third Way: the swing voters in the last two elections, the "switchers", tend to be middle and working class voters. They do instinctively worry about government being too big and about deficit spending in general. But as I noted in a post shortly after the election, these working and middle class swing voters are also strongly populist:
• Swing voters supported a message about challenging China on trade, ending subsidies to corporations that send jobs overseas, and stopping NAFTA-like trade deals over a message about increasing exports, passing more trade agreements, and getting government out of the way by 59-28
• Swing voters supported a message about ending tax cuts for those making over $250,0000 a year, adding a bank tax to curb speculative trading, cutting wasteful military spending and ending subsidies to oil companies over a message about cutting 100 billion dollars from domestic programs, raising the Social Security retirement age, and turning Medicare into a voucher program by 51-37
• Swing voters supported a statement about politicians keeping their hands off Social Security and Medicare over a statement about raising the retirement age by 62-36
• 89% of swing voters supported a statement about full disclosure of campaign donations and limiting the power of lobbyists
• 90% of swing voters supported a statement about cracking down on outsourcing and creating jobs by fixing schools, sewers, and roads in disrepair
• Even when framed in direct opposition to a statement about stopping increasing government spending and tax increases, swing voters said they were more worried that we will fail to make the investments we need to create jobs and strengthen the economy by 54-44
Which brings me to the solution all of you have been waiting: how can Obama and the Democrats regain the mystical center? How can the President accomplish that while avoiding a primary? How can he show strength when so many Democrats are worried about how strong he is? It really is quite easy: the mystical center is also where the disaffected base resides. Obama doesn't have to choose. Both swing voters and the Democratic base want the President to stand up to Wall Street on behalf of main street. They both want him to fight to create new jobs, especially manufacturing jobs. They both want him to say yes to middle class tax cuts and no to tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. They want him to say no raising the retirement age and cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits.
I don't know what Third Way will say the center is when their next memo comes out, but I can say right now: the center has nothing to do with what Washington elites say it is. The center and progressives want exactly the same thing: for the president to focus on helping the middle class weather this economic storm. The answer to the President's political problems is really pretty simple: he just has to say no to the DC establishment, to the bank lobbyists and pundits yammering at him to just give in to the Republican demands. He has to stand tall for the middle class, and his political problems will resolve themselves.
I have had my share of disagreements on political analysis with Third Way over the past few months, but they have come out with a new memo on the 2010 races that is hard to argue with. Its message is that moderates and swing voters still matter in winning elections, and that we can't do well in the competitive 2010 elections without both appealing to the base and to those swing voters.
Like I said, tough to disagree with that. I do have some friends in progressive politics who believe that most elections can be won by focusing totally on registering and turning out Democratic base voters, but no matter how much money, effort, and message you focus on that goal, it is not enough to win most elections. The best example I know of is 2004, where the combination of America Coming Together, unions, ACORN, Project Vote, America Votes, many other non-profit groups, plus all the Democratic party campaigns and committees spent literally several hundred million dollars on black, Hispanic, youth, unmarried women, and other base Democratic groups' turnout. It was several times more than had ever been spent before on such efforts, turnout was very high with those demographic groups, and we still didn't win. We still needed a higher percentage of swing voters, we didn't get it, and we lost. Getting the base vote to turn out in higher numbers is just as important, but you have to win a solid percentage of the voters in the middle to win close races.
The key question the memo raises but then leaves unaddressed is how Democrats in a tough cycle can win over those folks in the middle. It is not an easy task, not with voters this cynical and disillusioned, not with the economy hurting this badly. And unfortunately, what passes for appealing to the middle in Washington, DC has no resemblance to what actually appeals to swing voters out there in the real world beyond the beltway. In Washington, being a moderate means being for raising the retirement age and cutting benefits for Social Security. In the rest of America, fighting to preserve Social Security is a huge plus for voters. In Washington, being a moderate means being for "free trade" deals. In the rest of America, working class swing voters hate the trade deals that they know are shipping their jobs overseas. In Washington, being a moderate means being for extending all of the Bush tax cuts even those for millionaires. In the rest of America, it is those working class swing voters who don't like those kinds of tax cuts.
Most of all, being a moderate in Washington means getting along nicely with all those corporate lobbyists who keep coming to see you (and dropping off checks). In the rest of America, swing voters and base voters are completely united that Washington is too controlled by wealthy and powerful special interests, and that their power needs to be rolled back. The polling numbers on strict new lobby reforms, on rolling back the Citizens United decision, on public financing so that candidates aren't dependent on special interests for campaign cash are incredibly strong. Voters are disgusted by the kind of business as usual described in this article from Roll Call. If Democratic candidates spent their time attacking that kind of special interest funding and the attack ads being generated by corporate cash, they would have swing as well as Democratic base vote standing up and cheering.
The brain-dead DC establishment still doesn't get this, of course. My favorite recent example was the hand-wringing by the "moderates" in DC over the appointment of Elizabeth Warren. Somehow the logic went that because progressives liked her, appointing her would be a political disaster with the middle. Dana Milbank, in one of his classic diatribes no doubt fed to him by a White House insider fearful of losing his influence, did a long piece full of nasty innuendo from unnamed sources about how Valerie Jarrett was leading the President to disaster, and his leading example was that Jarrett was one of the people in favor of the "politically radioactive" Warren getting her job. Having seen focus groups where working-class swing voters react to clips of Elizabeth talking about the financial industry, with them applauding and talking about how they would support her for President if she ran, I can assure Dana: you can stop worrying about Elizabeth's political radioactivity. Swing voters love her for the same reason progressives do: because she pulls no punches and takes on the powers that be. The only folks that she is radioactive with are the Wall Street execs and their friends in Congress.
Democrats need moderate swing voters to win elections: there is no doubt about that. The question is how best we get them. Some Democrats' theory is that they get them by distancing themselves from Obama and Pelosi, and perhaps a few Democrats from very conservative districts will survive by doing that. But what is clear to me from the polling and focus groups I am looking at is that instead democratic candidates should take on the causes that unite and motivate both Democratic base voters and swing voters: rolling back the power of corporate special interests, standing up to the big banks and energy and insurance industries, fighting the outsourcing of jobs. The path toward a winning electoral coalition in most swing districts and states is to reject Washington centrism and embrace the values of working families in the real America.
Barack Obama has never been easy to characterize or categorize: the nation's first African-American President raised in Hawaii by his white mother and white grandparents from Kansas; the community organizer who headed the Harvard Law Review; the Chicago pol who may be our most intellectual President ever; the President who finally passed a bill to provide health coverage for nearly all our citizens and yet managed to tick off progressives while he did it.
Add in the whole populist thing to this list of contradictory things. Obama has not been a populist President in either style or policy substance. But now at his moment of greatest political peril (so far, at least- we'll see where things are in the fall of 2012), he turns to a populist tone and rhetoric that is heartening for an old Midwestern populist like me to see. Starting with the little-noticed radio address in August taking on big corporate special interests and the Citizens United decision, then continuing this week with the Milwaukee Labor Day speech, the Cleveland economic speech on Wednesday, and the press conference this morning, Obama is aggressively taking on the bad actor big business special interests, taking on tax cuts for millionaires, taking on trickle-down economics.
Welcome to the barricades, Mr. President. I know that you and us old school populists still don't agree on some specific economic policies or appointees, but it is good to see that you get what the polls have been showing for a long time now: voters are frustrated with corporate s special interests running things, and are tired of the wealthy and powerful getting inside deals even while the economy is hurting.
This is the only path for Democrats to have a chance at surviving the fall elections. Take on the Wall Street marauders who took down our economy, and who are giving themselves bonuses while refusing to help homeowners save their homes or small businesses invest in new jobs. Take on the health insurers who are still jacking up rates and trying to deny people coverage. Take on the big oil companies who are working to stop any efforts to create more green jobs. These are the guys who have been running Washington for too long, and who, truth be told, are still way too powerful.
It is ironic that groups like Third Way and pundits like Matt Bai still deride populism when every Democratic pollster and committee staffer and campaign manager I talk to agree that economic populism like the President has been displaying this week are the only hope us Democrats desperately trying to win races in the real America have left. I loved Third Way leader Jim Kessler's quote in the Sunday WaPo: "[Democrats] must resist the temptation to succumb to a populism that portrays members of the middle class as weak, powerless victims." Hard to disagree with that- I have never found that whole weak, powerless victim thing very helpful in my political messaging. Fortunately, the kind of populism the President and other Democrats are finally rallying around has nothing to do with weak, powerful victimhood. Quite the opposite, in fact: what we are arguing for is the other 98% of us taking on the powerful so that we can restore our democracy and rebuild our economy from the bottom-up.
This message strategy can work if we stick to it and make it believable by proposing policies that really do help the middle class.
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:
Back on July 8, Eliot Spitzer and William Black co-authored a brief piece at HuffPo that I meant to comment on, but then failed to because of the shift to weekday blogging. Better late than never, I supposed. Here's a key part of SEC and MMS: A Tale of Two Failures:
The SEC and the Minerals Management Service's (MMS) share a number of characteristics we can't help but notice in the wake of the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, which followed the second-worst financial disaster in same....Both agencies have been failures for at least a decade.
In both instances, the regulators accepted industry assertions about the reliability of their safety mechanisms while failing to acknowledge -- much less investigate -- the darker, more complex reality. In each crisis, we had the same story of a belief in the reporting done by corporations, and in each case, we had a failure to recognize the enormous potential for fraud and the lack of incentives these corporate entities have in ascertaining and measuring potential risks to the public. The regulators continued to believe the lies fed them by CEOs even when the lies had become absurd. Both times, the agencies charged with regulating ignored the advice of their own experts, neglected to enforce rules, and engaged in an alarmingly cozy relationship with the industry they were supposed to be monitoring.
So far, the Obama administration has failed to fully grapple with the weaknesses and corruption of the regulatory agencies meant to guard the public from harm. Across the entire spectrum of regulatory agencies, there exists a dangerous atrophy of infrastructure which may lead to disasters we cannot yet imagine. Maybe now, as the oil slicks spread across the Gulf, killing wildlife and wrecking lives, our false sense of security is dissolving. We hope so, because if we don't learn from these horrific experiences, we can expect more of them. Where will the next disaster occur? At the Food and Drug Administration? At the National Transportation Safety Board? At the Nuclear Regulatory Commission?
There are two points I want to make: First, that this is just the tip of the iceberg of a sweeping conservative attack on regulatory and scientific integrity. Second, that Obama's demonstrable indifference gives the lie to the Third "Third Way" claim that their approach--using private entities and 'strict regulation'--can do the job as well as public ownership. The theory just might be plausible, but the practice gives the game away: They are much more partners with conservatives in re-purposing the welfare (and regulatory) state for conservative ends than they allies with true progressives in preserving the welfare state's public-serving ethos.
Back in mid-December, Ed Kilgore wrote a piece "Taking Ideological Differences Seriously". The piece was useful in that it argued that differences among "progressives" were not simply differences over political strategy, but also over ideology. It's a pretty basic idea, but one it seems that most folks have paid far too little attention to.
However, the piece ran into trouble when trying to describe the ideological differences. Indeed, it never even attempted to describe both sides of the divide. Rather it focused on the so-called "Third Way" and on distinguishing it from conservative approaches. Chris linked to it precisely for this reason. But because it fails to even attempt to describe both sides, this approach is more justificatory than explanatory--though it certainly does explain how Third Way types would like to be seen. The explanation itself is presented in terms of policy mechanisms--specifically, the Third Way "strategy of deploying regulated and subsidized private sector entities to achieve progressive policy results" But this completely avoids the more fundamental question: what about differences in ends, not just means? What if one person's "progressive policy results" are another person's "not so much"?
I first tried to do that myself, by responded to Kilgore's piece with a diary "What's Wrong With The Third Third Way" which described how historically this was the third such "compromise" between naked capitalism and an oppositional alternative. The first "Third Way" was democratic socialism, the second "Third Way" was the market-supporting "liberal" welfare state in the typology of Gosta Epsing-Anderson's The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, and the third "Third Way" is--despite frequent disavowals--largely a repurposing of the market-supporting welfare state for politically conservative ends, but with
"competent" centrist Democrats in charge. I'm afraid that this analysis was too far-flung for some. So I want to take another stab, first at providing a more down-to-earth set of test-points, and only after that by presenting yet another grand vision sort of overview.
Here, again is Kilgore's central presentation of Obama's "Third Way":
To put it simply, and perhaps over-simply, on a variety of fronts (most notably financial restructuring and health care reform, but arguably on climate change as well), the Obama administration has chosen the strategy of deploying regulated and subsidized private sector entities to achieve progressive policy results. This approach was a hallmark of the so-called Clintonian, "New Democrat" movement, and the broader international movement sometimes referred to as "the Third Way," which often defended the use of private means for public ends. (It's also arguably central to the American liberal tradition going back to Woodrow Wilson, and is even evident in parts of the New Deal and Great Society initiatives alongside elements of the "social democratic" tradition, which is characterized by support for publicly operated programs in key areas).
Does It Work?
The problem here, as I see it, is that Kilgore is avoiding the central concern for populist (as opposed to, say, corporatist) progressives: Does it get the job done? I'm sure that Obamaphiles would say, "Yes it does!" but that only brings us down to the real bottom line: what exactly is the job? When it comes to healthcare reform, there's plenty of room for disagreement, but a fairly good starting point might be "reducing overall system costs to something close to the OECD median while improving overall health outcomes to something close to the OECD media." There's nothing particularly ideological about this formulation, at least in the commonplace meaning of the word, which Third Way types like to use in dismissing populist progressives. It's just (a) quite commonsensical, and (b) rendered in measurable terms that ought to appeal to the purported wonkiness of Third Way types.
The New Deal [Fifth] Party System (1932-1968) built the American welfare state. The Sixth Party System (1968-2008) saw conservatives fail to destroy it, and turn to repurposing it instead--doing more and more for the wealthy and powerful, and less and less for the rest of us. At the dawn of the Seventh Party System, Barack Obama is potentially headed toward cutting the welfare state far more seriously than conservatives ever managed to during the Sixth Party System. This comes out of his de facto acceptance of the Versailles status quo, despite all his superficial talk of change.
As Chris noted Monday, over at Think Progress, Jamelle Bouie singled me out as a stand-in for all progressives who "understate or dismiss most of the work Congress and President Obama have done over the past sixteen months". He said " I need help understanding this strange impulse," and Chris-ever the gentleman-gladly obliged. He helpfully quoted from a post by Yglesias himself from February, listing "the mainstream liberal policy agenda for the 111th Senate" and then noting that "None of these things have happened. And it's worth emphasizing that the White House hasn't even seriously attempted to do the vast majority of these things."
So, case closed on one point. But there was a broader point Bouie began with, and it's a point worth examining more carefully, precisely because it's not so easily answered. And for this, I think it's worth quoting the whole passage that Chris quoted from Bouie's post:
I need help understanding how OpenLeft's Paul Rosenberg can credibly argue that Barack Obama has manically embraced "discredited conservative ideas" and "helped enormously in extended the hegemonic continuity of [the] Nixon-Reagan Eara. [Emphasis his]" More specifically, I need help understanding this strange impulse among liberals of Rosenberg's ilk to understate or dismiss most of the work Congress and President Obama have done over the past sixteen months, especially when - as David Leonhardt noted in yesterday's New York Times - it's been a burst of activity that "rivals any other since the New Deal in scope or ambition."
The broader point is about Obama's approach in general, about what one might call the context of his governance, as opposed to the content, which was dealt by Chris with via the Yglesias list. And to begin discussing the question of Obama's context of governance, it's helpful to start by looking at the context of what I said that started all this. To wit:
I like Jon Cowan personally, and think his Third Way organization has done some interesting and thoughtful framing of the issues over the years, although I have disagreed with them sometimes on the positions they have taken. With his and Anne Kim's latest post, though, I feel like Third Way has decided on the old DLC strategy: go out of your way to gratuitously insult the progressive community. Cowan and Kim set up the ultimate straw man stereotype: that progressives want to make "expanding the entitlement state the defining goal in the 21st century as well." The "as well" at the end of that sentence references their lead in the article, which suggests that progressives in the 20th century were defined by, put all of our political capital into, a cradle to grave safety net.
After building that big straw man, Cowen/Kim suggest what we ought to be able to do instead is "policies that build national and individual wealth." They then make three points:
With the passage of health care, the safety net project is completed- we really don't need to worry about poor people anymore, or working-class folks who might fall through the cracks.
Second, we have to grow the economy or deficits will overwhelm the safety net.
Third, "a more generous safety net is not what our nation needs to win in the 21st century."
The temptation on a piece like this is to react defensively, or just write if off as another example of conservative Democrats reflexively stereotyping the progressive movement, but I think a piece like this is a great opportunity to say what progressives really do stand for. This tired old caricature of what progressives care about doesn't understand the entire history of the American progressives tradition from Tom Paine and Thomas Jefferson through Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth and Abraham Lincoln; from the (real) populists of the 1880s and 1890s to the Progressives of the Teddy Roosevelt era to the New Deal; from Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy to progressive champions today. We have never cared only about the poor and safety nets, although we do care about lifting them up and expanding the middle class. What we have cared about and fought for is an economy built from the bottom up. Our view is that prosperity is best built for the long-term not by helping the wealthy get wealthier, but by investing in poor and middle-class folks so that they get good education and jobs with good wages and benefits. We believe in a safety net and higher wages for the poor and working people not only because it is compassionate, but because people with a decent standard of living can buy products, and that makes the economy hum.
One other rather important thing to note when comparing a progressive philosophy to one that espouses as its central goal creating wealth: it's that old pluralist thing. From Jefferson and Madison talking about the importance of widely distributed political and economic power to Andrew Jackson, the populists, Teddy Roosevelt and FDR taking on corporations they thought were too powerful, progressives have believed that wealth and power should not be concentrated in the hands of an oligarchy. When six banks control assets worth more than 63% of our country's GDP, that is too much market power. When one or two insurers dominate an entire state's health care market, that's too much market power. Progressives believe that a free market economy only works when there is real competition among a wide array of competitors. When Jefferson was opposed to Hamilton's sweetheart deals with a handful of big banks, progressives believed in competition. When Teddy Roosevelt took on the big trusts, progressives believed in competition. When FDR got Glass-Steagall passed to break apart the big banks, progressives believed in competition. And we still do today. Core to the progressive worldview is the idea that both the economy and democracy work better when power and wealth are less concentrated, and that citizens and their government need to provide a check on big corporate power.
The progressive worldview from Paine and Jefferson to today has always been more broad in scope than just caring about the safety net. In the Cowan/Kim straw man world, they feel a need to lecture progressives on the importance of clean energy, innovation, modernizing infrastructure, intellectual property rights, immigration reform, and education policy. We have never needed such lectures, as our movement has provided the leadership and the troops to put all of those issues front and center. We have always been on the front lines for building a strong economy, but based on middle-class prosperity, not trickle-down economics that begin (and all too frequently end) with helping the already wealthy and already powerful.
That, I guess, is the defining difference between progressives and Third Way folks (and conservative Republicans for that matter): we are not going to define our mission as policies that help build individual wealth. Building our nation's prosperity? Yes, absolutely. But us old-fashioned progressives still don't think that folks with individual wealth need any help from us in building it or growing it. In the which side are you on question, we believe that our loyalties lie with those in the middle class and yes, those struggling to make it at all. We believe in helping those folks get more political power and more prosperity, and we're happy to let those who already have wealth and power fend for themselves.
To put it simply, and perhaps over-simply, on a variety of fronts (most notably financial restructuring and health care reform, but arguably on climate change as well), the Obama administration has chosen the strategy of deploying regulated and subsidized private sector entities to achieve progressive policy results. This approach was a hallmark of the so-called Clintonian, "New Democrat" movement, and the broader international movement sometimes referred to as "the Third Way," which often defended the use of private means for public ends. (It's also arguably central to the American liberal tradition going back to Woodrow Wilson, and is even evident in parts of the New Deal and Great Society initiatives alongside elements of the "social democratic" tradition, which is characterized by support for publicly operated programs in key areas).
To be clear, this is not the same as the conservative "privatization" strategy, which simply devolves public responsibilities to private entities without much in the way of regulation. In education policy, to cite one example, New Democrats (and the Obama administration) have championed charter public schools, which are highly regulated but privately operated schools that receive public funds in exchange for successful performance of publicly-defined tasks. Conservatives have typically called for private-school vouchers, which simply shift public funds to private schools more or less unconditionally, on the theory that they know best how to educate children.
The First "Third Way"--Social Democracy, Was A GOOD THING.
In a comment, I raised the point that there often wasn't that much difference between conservative privatization and neoliberal "Third Way" privatization--see how little has changed since Bush in our use of mercenaries, for example. In this diary, I'd like to lay out a framework for understanding what I meant by this and why it must be so. The framework is that of the three "Third Ways". The first "Third Way" was social democracy, as exemplified by the German Social Democratic Party. It was a "Third Way" between naked capitalism and revolutionary socialism. Their main policy for gaining broad public support was universal health care-in the 1870s. It was a very popular idea-so popular, in fact, that conservative mastermind Otto Van Bismark decided to co-opt the idea, thereby depriving the social democrats of their signature issue, and implementing it in such a way that it furthered elite nationalist goals by giving German manufacturers a healthier, more secure, more productive and more loyal workforce to aid in their international competition with Britain and other industrial powers.
In my opinion the first "Third Way" was a good thing. The revolutionary socialists basically had the economics right, compared to the laissez-faire capitalists. It wasn't anything that indiividual capitalists did that was responsible for the enormous increase in wealth brought about by Industrial Revolution--they were simply positioned to capture a vastly disproportionate share of the proceeds--even as the working class, transformed from rural peasants into an urben proletariat, suffered a tremendous mass immiseration in the process. But the revolutionary socialists had most everything else wrong--especially the complete rejection of democracy, except for purely tactical purpose. By combining a socialist economic view with a democratic political view, this was a "Third Way" you could believe in. The others, not so much.
There are a lot of folks in the conventional wisdom, establishment-oriented Democratic circles that are trying the sell the argument that reform without a public option is still big, important, transformational health care reform. I totally get why they are doing it, and even have some sympathy for what they are trying to achieve: worried that we can't get a public option bill out of the Senate, they are scrambling to make it seem like whatever passes isn't a failure or disappointment.
The latest example is Third Way's Roll Call op-ed, "Don't Pass on the 'Next New Deal'". The folks at Third Way know how to make an argument, and what they say sounds reasonable enough, that if we regulate insurers to stop the worst things about our current system, that will still be a big improvement in health insurance rules.
What I fear instead is another bill like Kennedy-Kassebaum which, as I have written before, was supposed to solve some of the same insurance problems like people losing their insurance when they switched jobs, or being deprived of pre-existing conditions- all of which continues to happen.
Another bad outcome would be that we get something like the Massachusetts health plan, which passed with a lot of hype a few years ago. It's not working very well, though, as way too many people can't afford to sign up for coverage, and the costs are quickly spiraling out of control.
These two pieces of legislation are failing because of the same problem: neither one took on the power of the insurance industry. These two bills, both passed with great fanfare in the thoroughly bipartisan fashion, are not working because they provide no check on insurance industry power, no competition and no reason for insurers to control their costs- which, by the way, is exactly why they passed so easily with such big bipartisan support.
Remember, insurance companies are granted exemption from anti-trust laws by the McCarran-Ferguson Act. A very small number of them have overwhelmingly market power in huge parts of the country. Their rates are unregulated by the federal government. And they have enormous political power to go along with their massive market power.
What my friends at Third Way don't mention is that the insurance industry has happily signed off on all the regulatory changes mentioned above, just as they supported Kennedy-Kassebaum and the Massachusetts health bill. They know that with all the market and political power they have, without anti-trust or federal rate regulation to worry about, without competition from a public option, they can raise rates as much as they want and probably write loopholes into the regulations that they agreed to so that they will be easier to slide around.
This is the simple fact that has made progressives in the House draw a line in the sand in terms of keeping a public option in the final bill: without the public option check on private insurance, there will be no check on insurance company power to set whatever rates and rules they want to, and health reform will not work. A bill with no check on insurance company power, with no competition for insurers, will drive health care prices higher and will fail to solve the real problems we have in how insurance companies treat people.
So don't give up on a health care reform bill that keeps insurance companies honest, my friends at Third Way and my other friends in the DC establishment. In spite of all the doom and gloom of the conventional wisdom spinners, we have a path to victory, as long as we don't give up and decide we don't have the courage to do what needs to be done and take on the insurance industry. If we do what the President wants, and have competition and choice so that we keep them honest, we really will have accomplished something that can be compared to Medicare and Social Security.
Today, Third Way -- which claims to be the "moderate wing of the progressive movement" -- proved why they should rebrand themselves "the Think Tank arm of the insurance industry lobby." From an op-ed in Roll Call:
While many are fighting passionately for one particular policy proposal, such as a public plan, it would be tragic to allow the inclusion or exclusion of any single element to derail reform.
The reforms already agreed upon are by themselves historic — a fact obscured by the currently overheated debate....What’s already been agreed to in reform is the “next New Deal” for all Americans.
Really?
In other words, after the huge progressive mandate of 2008, we should just agree to whatever Chuck Grassley, Mitch McConnell, and other Republicans want our health care policy to be. Ironically, this op-ed by faux progressives Anne Kim, Jon Cowan, and Jim Kessler came on the same day the Los Angeles Times reported:
Lashed by liberals and threatened with more government regulation, the insurance industry nevertheless rallied its lobbying and grass-roots resources so successfully in the early stages of the healthcare overhaul deliberations that it is poised to reap a financial windfall.
The half-dozen leading overhaul proposals circulating in Congress would require all citizens to have health insurance, which would guarantee insurers tens of millions of new customers -- many of whom would get government subsidies to help pay the companies' premiums.
"It's a bonanza," said Robert Laszewski, a health insurance executive...
One of the Democratic proposals that most concerns insurers is the creation of a "public option" insurance plan. The industry launched a campaign on Capitol Hill against it, grounded in a study published by the Lewin Group, a health policy consulting firm that is owned by UnitedHealth Group.
Who else is the insurance industry paying off? Is it entirely coincidental that Third Way -- which has no grassroots membership and is fully reliant on big donors -- is going to bat for a proposal that would bring billions (trillions?) to the insurance industry?
If Third Way is anything other than a corporate shill, with ideas that are for sale to the highest corporate bidder, they have an obligation to make transparent how much money they get from the insurance industry.
(The petition is set up on Act.ly, the newfangled creation of progressive tech genius Jim Gilliam.)
Not on Twitter? You can kick it old-school with emails and phone calls to the relevant Third Way staffers.
Jonathan Cowan, President (photo) Matt Bennett, VP for Public Affairs Jim Kessler, VP for Policy David Kendall, Senior Fellow for Health Policy Anne Kim, Economic Program Director
Emails and calls have been rolling into the Third Way offices ever since word leaked that they plan to undermine President Obama's #1 domestic priority -- a public health care option that 73% of voters support.
I also know for a fact that some big funders are not happy with Third Way. It turns out that Third Way President Jon Cowan hiring two insurance-industry hacks to write his health care policy while claiming to run a progressive think tank is not a good thing...who could have guessed?
Let's keep the pressure up by emailing them...but with a twist. Let's pose the obvious question: Who supports Third Way?
On the policy front, who do they think supports undermining the Obama public option? And financially, who supports Third Way? Since their motives are so obviously in doubt, let's challenge them to make details about their funders public.
Specifically, let's dare Third Way to state publicly, "No insurance interests fund our organization" and to release a breakdown of what type of groups or individuals do.
Email them today:
Jonathan Cowan, President (photo) Matt Bennett, VP for Public Affairs Jim Kessler, VP for Policy David Kendall, Senior Fellow for Health Policy Anne Kim, Economic Program Director
I can tell you who does NOT support Third Way...the public.
Comments have been rolling in from Texas, Georgia, Utah, Nebraska, California, Wisconsin, Vermont, Colorado, and the list goes on and on. Their message to Third Way: Don't you dare undermine the public option. Or we will work to defund you.
Here is just a sampling of folks who joined the DEFUND THIRD WAY campaign...
Picture it. Your name is Jon Cowan. You are President and Co-founder of Third Way, which claims to be a progressive think tank.
You are choosing two people to formulate smart progressive health care policy to be pushed after the progressive tidal wave year of 2008.
It's a time when President Obama has made health care his #1 domestic priority, and is publicly commited to a strong public option. It's a time when the right wing is on the ropes, with Democratic self-identification among voters standing at 150% of Republican identification -- revealing an increasingly progressive America.
Well, apparently you take your funders' money and hire insurance-industry hacks. From Huff Post:
Anne Kim and David Kendall. Kendall is a former consultant for the Blue Cross-Blue Shield Association, one of the most powerful insurers in the nation. He is on the board of directors for the Wye River Group on Healthcare, which is funded to the tune of a million dollars by CIGNA, a major health insurance player.
Kim is a former corporate attorney with Hogan and Hartson, a top health care industry lobby shop, and Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen and Hamilton. She also formerly helped write policy for the Blue Dog Coalition, which last week issued a statement of principles opposing a public option without a "trigger."
The result of Cowan's choice? A leaked memo from Kim and Kendall calling Obama's public option a "very real danger" of being "an overly intrusive public plan" and holding up fictional corporate characters Harry & Louise as real "middle-class Americas" that would be hurt if Obama has his way.
Seem like a questionable choice? Let's continue our emails from yesterday, and this time let's pose the question: "Why on earth would you hire two people in bed with the health insurance industry to formulate a progressive health care plan?? Are you actively asking people to sign up for a 'DEFUND THIRD WAY' campaign?"
In case your name actually is Jon Cowan, here's some encouraging news:
The "Right to Respond," is a standing promise on Open Left where any progressive activist, campaign, or organization we discuss in any front-page post is granted at least one front-page post in response. If we blog on the front-page about the group Third Way, for example, then Third Way will be allowed to post on the front-page in response to our piece.
Props to Matt and Chris for accurately predicting at the time of this blog's founding that Third Way would be the prototypical organization that lets down progressives.
That said, Jon Cowan, your response here would be welcome. It would be treated seriously and respectfully. Though a word to the wise: Posting a rote 1990's-style press release that speaks past the issue at hand would be treated with the level of seriousness it deserves. We're in the era of authenticity now...
Our institution has partnered with Third Way on a number of important projects - including a homeland security transition project - and have a great deal of respect for their critical thinking and excellent work product. They are key leaders in the progressive movement and we look forward to working with them in the future.
They are key leaders in the progressive movement? Really? What is this 'movement' of which she speaks? Third Way's 'honorary' Senate Chairs are Blanche Lincoln, Evan Bayh, Tom Carper, Mark Pryor, Ken Salazar, Claire McCaskill. The group's 'honorary' House Chairs are Jane Harman, Ellen Tauscher, Joseph Crowley, Artur Davis, Melissa Bean, and Gabrielle Giffords.
This is not, to put it mildly, a 'progressive' group of politicians. Blanche Lincoln is the only Democrat publicly wavering on the Employee Free Choice Act, Evan Bayh is starting a Blue Dog caucus in the Senate, Mark Pryor and Ken Salazar were in the 'Gang of 14', and all of these Senators voted for cloture for Alito, with the exception of Even Bayh who was running for President at the time and Clair McCaskill, who wasn't in the Senate yet. Every single one voted to immunize telecom companies against against unlawful behavior in warrantless wiretapping Americans. Every single one voted for the Iraq supplemental bill to fund the war in April, 2007. In other words, this is a group of conservative Democrats that have consistently voted for war funding, illegal wiretapping of Americans, a hyper-conservative Supreme Court, and broadly, a reactionary and extreme political agenda.
STATE BLOGS
Jonathan Cowan, President (photo)