The electoral success of the Republican Party in recent decades has been built in part through a fusion of disparate groups, free-marketeers, foreign policy hawks, and Christian religious conservatives.
In a recent column, GOP “Fusionism” Comes Un-Fused, Robert Tracinski notes an important difference in the dilemmas facing Democratic and Republican voters in the ongoing primary season. For Democrats, while there are minor and subtle differences of substance among the front-running candidates, voters are left trying to choose between candidates who differ largely in style (especially for Clinton and Obama; arguably less so with Edwards). Many Republican voters are left trying to discern which candidate they dislike least (something long familiar to progressive Democrats).
Tracinski writes:
“So consider the line-up: if you're a pro-free-marketer, you've got Rudy--but you can't trust Romney, you know McCain is dangerous, and Huckabee denounces you as a member of the "Club for Greed." If you're a hawk, you've got Rudy and McCain and maybe Romney--but Huckabee sounds too much like Jimmy Carter. And if you're a religious conservative, you're thrilled with Huckabee, but you're suspicious of McCain, you don't trust Romney, and Rudy is at best barely tolerable. There's no fusion here. There is certainly an intersection between the hawks and the pro-free-marketers--but there is no intersection that joins them to the religionists. This is not an accident. There is no such intersection in this election because the secular and religious concerns of the right are, in fact, incompatible. Fusionism is failing because its basic premise--that the moral foundations of free markets and Americanism can be left to the religious traditionalists--is false.”
Showing posts with label Democrats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Democrats. Show all posts
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Income Inequality Isn't The Problem - Stagnating Affluence At The Bottom and Middle Is
In his June 10 column, “Democrats’ Prosperity Problem” (this link may require you to sign in, though it should be free to do so if you’re willing to give your email address to the Washington Post), George Will takes the various Democratic presidential candidates to task for their concerns over income inequality in the U.S.
Will points out that there has been continued, sustained economic growth over the past several years. This is true – the economy is in grand health, or it would be if the economy were the sort of thing that could be healthy. Will brushes aside concern with growing economic inequality in two ways. First, he questions the concern with fairness, asking when wealth has ever been distributed evenly or fairly (which is to say that since things have never been fair, we shouldn’t now be concerned with fairness). Second, here and elsewhere, he and other fiscal conservatives have argued that so long as everyone benefits from an expanding economy, it shouldn’t matter that some benefit more than others, especially since it is through the investment of capital by the wealthy that great wealth is produced for everyone.
In theory, that’s all well and good. At certain times in the past and for certain places (mainly the industrialized world in the post-WWII decades) this has actually happened to some extent. The middle classes, and to some extent the working classes, of the industrialized world did see a significant expansion in affluence over several decades. (I addressed some of the effects of this in popular culture in an earlier post, "Generation Gaps, Popular Music, and Affluence," and in relation to sushi in "Sushi and Globalization.")
The extent of both the growth of economic inequality and the stagnation of the expansion of affluence are made clear in an article in The New York Times from June 10 by Roger Lowenstein, “The Way we live now: the inequality conundrum.” The article includes these striking figures. First, the top 1 percent of the U.S. population collected 9 percent of national income in 1979 and 16 percent in 2004. While striking, this alone doesn’t bother me. If everyone were doing significantly better, it wouldn’t bother me that the richest are sucking up an increasing proportion of total wealth, but that’s not the case. The real problem is with stagnation of affluence for the rest. Lowenstein also points out, for example, that the incomes of the bottom 20 percent of Americans, adjusted for inflation, have increased only 2 percent, which is to say not significantly at all. Many in the middle class feel increasingly insecure as well.
I find myself stirred by the concluding paragraphs of Will’s column, though I read them differently than he intends:
“Democrats need not confine themselves to their ritual tropes about how "the middle class is under assault" (Clinton again). They control Congress; they can act. The unemployed John Edwards, who has the luxury of irresponsibility, challenges Democrats to repeal the Bush tax cuts they disapprove of rather than wait for them to expire.
“Democrats cannot end the war (actually, they can but won't), but they can send their tax agenda to the president and dare him to veto it. They can, but they won't. Do you wonder why?”
Given everything else he’s said, Will clearly thinks the Democrats will remain inactive on this front because of a disjuncture between their theory and reality. To me, the inaction of congressional Democrats seems to be the result of other factors. First, though slightly less spineless than during most of the Bush Administration, the Democrats in general are still mostly spineless in standing up to Bush, even though they control Congress. Second, while I don’t at all think that Democrats and Republicans are all the same (the Republican party is much more beholden to the interests of large corporations and the wealthy, and this does make a difference), they are more alike than I’d like (See my earlier post "The 'Sameness' of Republicans and Democrats"). Talking about economic inequality is the Democratic equivalent of Republicans talking about the perils of gay marriage or abortion – it’s a way of drumming up support from the party’s voting base. Actually doing something about economic inequality would require bucking the interests of the wealthy and the corporations who provide most of the campaign funding for the Democrats as well as Republicans (even while the Democrats do get more money in small sums from large numbers of middle and working class people, and Democrats receive less corporate money than Republicans).
(I was led to both Lowenstein’s and Will’s pieces via a summary in the June 22 print issue of The Week magazine.)
Will points out that there has been continued, sustained economic growth over the past several years. This is true – the economy is in grand health, or it would be if the economy were the sort of thing that could be healthy. Will brushes aside concern with growing economic inequality in two ways. First, he questions the concern with fairness, asking when wealth has ever been distributed evenly or fairly (which is to say that since things have never been fair, we shouldn’t now be concerned with fairness). Second, here and elsewhere, he and other fiscal conservatives have argued that so long as everyone benefits from an expanding economy, it shouldn’t matter that some benefit more than others, especially since it is through the investment of capital by the wealthy that great wealth is produced for everyone.
In theory, that’s all well and good. At certain times in the past and for certain places (mainly the industrialized world in the post-WWII decades) this has actually happened to some extent. The middle classes, and to some extent the working classes, of the industrialized world did see a significant expansion in affluence over several decades. (I addressed some of the effects of this in popular culture in an earlier post, "Generation Gaps, Popular Music, and Affluence," and in relation to sushi in "Sushi and Globalization.")
The extent of both the growth of economic inequality and the stagnation of the expansion of affluence are made clear in an article in The New York Times from June 10 by Roger Lowenstein, “The Way we live now: the inequality conundrum.” The article includes these striking figures. First, the top 1 percent of the U.S. population collected 9 percent of national income in 1979 and 16 percent in 2004. While striking, this alone doesn’t bother me. If everyone were doing significantly better, it wouldn’t bother me that the richest are sucking up an increasing proportion of total wealth, but that’s not the case. The real problem is with stagnation of affluence for the rest. Lowenstein also points out, for example, that the incomes of the bottom 20 percent of Americans, adjusted for inflation, have increased only 2 percent, which is to say not significantly at all. Many in the middle class feel increasingly insecure as well.
I find myself stirred by the concluding paragraphs of Will’s column, though I read them differently than he intends:
“Democrats need not confine themselves to their ritual tropes about how "the middle class is under assault" (Clinton again). They control Congress; they can act. The unemployed John Edwards, who has the luxury of irresponsibility, challenges Democrats to repeal the Bush tax cuts they disapprove of rather than wait for them to expire.
“Democrats cannot end the war (actually, they can but won't), but they can send their tax agenda to the president and dare him to veto it. They can, but they won't. Do you wonder why?”
Given everything else he’s said, Will clearly thinks the Democrats will remain inactive on this front because of a disjuncture between their theory and reality. To me, the inaction of congressional Democrats seems to be the result of other factors. First, though slightly less spineless than during most of the Bush Administration, the Democrats in general are still mostly spineless in standing up to Bush, even though they control Congress. Second, while I don’t at all think that Democrats and Republicans are all the same (the Republican party is much more beholden to the interests of large corporations and the wealthy, and this does make a difference), they are more alike than I’d like (See my earlier post "The 'Sameness' of Republicans and Democrats"). Talking about economic inequality is the Democratic equivalent of Republicans talking about the perils of gay marriage or abortion – it’s a way of drumming up support from the party’s voting base. Actually doing something about economic inequality would require bucking the interests of the wealthy and the corporations who provide most of the campaign funding for the Democrats as well as Republicans (even while the Democrats do get more money in small sums from large numbers of middle and working class people, and Democrats receive less corporate money than Republicans).
(I was led to both Lowenstein’s and Will’s pieces via a summary in the June 22 print issue of The Week magazine.)
Monday, April 30, 2007
2006 and 1930
In the April 30, 2007 issue of The Nation (pp. 16 – 20), Lawrence Cooper argues for what he calls “The Coming Party Realignment.” He bases this on a historical parallel with the early 1930s. In 1930, with voters newly disaffected from the effects of the Great Depression and seeing President Hoover seeming to do nothing to help, Democrats picked up a substantial number of seats in Congress. In 1932, the slight realignment of Congress was followed by a sort of political tidal wave, with Democrats gaining overwhelming control of Congress and picking up the presidency with FDR’s first term. Cooper sees 2006’s slight realignment of Congress to the Democrats as parallel to 1930, to be followed in 2008 by a parallel to 1932. He sees the causes of the 1930 and 2006 shifts as parallel as well – public anxiety over economic crisis. “For generations to come, American historians will doubtless be comparing the period 1930 – 1936 to 2006 – 2012 as years of crisis for capitalism.”
I find Cooper’s article interesting – and I’d like to think he’s right that a political tidal wave will largely sweep the Republicans away in 2008, though I’m not confident that will happen, and while he does point out some interesting parallels, I’m skeptical of his totalizing comparison of the two eras.
In both the 1930 and 2006 mid-term elections, the shift of seats in Congress from Republicans to Democrats represented a sort of informal referendum on Presidents Hoover and Bush, indicating voter dissatisfaction with them. But the causes of voter displeasure are not so parallel as Cooper presents (and the consequences in 2008 likewise need not parallel 1932). The election of 1930 represented displeasure and anxiety over the Depression as Cooper argues. While economic anxiety (and perhaps some disgust over the handling of things like Hurricane Katrina) may have been part of the backdrop for voters’ motivations in voting as they did (and more on economic anxiety in a moment), the primary issue in the 2006 election was clearly the Iraq War. Barring an extreme downturn in the economy, Iraq will probably be the main issue again in 2008, with economic anxiety, health care, and the Bush Administration’s various scandals as important, but distinctly secondary campaign issues. If things in Iraq continue as they are now, 2008 may see major victories for Democrats, but not really for the reasons Cooper argues.
1930 and 2006 are both periods of economic anxiety for many middle class Americans, and Americans in general. They have that in common, but 1930 and 2006 aren’t otherwise particularly comparable. Today, we see crisis and much anxiety for some workers, but capitalism is not in crisis, whereas in 1930 both workers and capitalism were in crisis.
Further the degree of crisis and anxiety, even for workers, is quite different in degree and kind. Middle class workers are rightly anxious today, about not going deeply into debt, about paying for a top college education for their children, about their job being outsourced and having to take a lower paying job, about their home losing value in a housing bubble, in some cases about having to shift from owning a home to renting. In 1930, many middle class workers were worried about having any sort of job and about whether there would be food in the short or long term. Things are serious for the American middle class today (and even more serious for those below the middle class), and that will likely have political repercussions, but it’s no Great Depression.
I find Cooper’s article interesting – and I’d like to think he’s right that a political tidal wave will largely sweep the Republicans away in 2008, though I’m not confident that will happen, and while he does point out some interesting parallels, I’m skeptical of his totalizing comparison of the two eras.
In both the 1930 and 2006 mid-term elections, the shift of seats in Congress from Republicans to Democrats represented a sort of informal referendum on Presidents Hoover and Bush, indicating voter dissatisfaction with them. But the causes of voter displeasure are not so parallel as Cooper presents (and the consequences in 2008 likewise need not parallel 1932). The election of 1930 represented displeasure and anxiety over the Depression as Cooper argues. While economic anxiety (and perhaps some disgust over the handling of things like Hurricane Katrina) may have been part of the backdrop for voters’ motivations in voting as they did (and more on economic anxiety in a moment), the primary issue in the 2006 election was clearly the Iraq War. Barring an extreme downturn in the economy, Iraq will probably be the main issue again in 2008, with economic anxiety, health care, and the Bush Administration’s various scandals as important, but distinctly secondary campaign issues. If things in Iraq continue as they are now, 2008 may see major victories for Democrats, but not really for the reasons Cooper argues.
1930 and 2006 are both periods of economic anxiety for many middle class Americans, and Americans in general. They have that in common, but 1930 and 2006 aren’t otherwise particularly comparable. Today, we see crisis and much anxiety for some workers, but capitalism is not in crisis, whereas in 1930 both workers and capitalism were in crisis.
Further the degree of crisis and anxiety, even for workers, is quite different in degree and kind. Middle class workers are rightly anxious today, about not going deeply into debt, about paying for a top college education for their children, about their job being outsourced and having to take a lower paying job, about their home losing value in a housing bubble, in some cases about having to shift from owning a home to renting. In 1930, many middle class workers were worried about having any sort of job and about whether there would be food in the short or long term. Things are serious for the American middle class today (and even more serious for those below the middle class), and that will likely have political repercussions, but it’s no Great Depression.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Not the War of 1812
In a recent column in Time magazine (March 26, 2007, pp. 55 – 56), Richard Brookhiser makes a problematic comparison between current opposition to the war in Iraq by Democrats in Congress and opposition to war with Britain during the War of 1812 by Federalists in Congress.
Federalists opposed the movement to war from the beginning, and in 1814 organized a convention to oppose the war. Before their positions could be presented, the news was in of U.S. victory in the Battle of New Orleans and of a peace treaty agreeable to both sides. The Federalists, tainted by “defeatism and treason,” quickly faded into irrelevancy. Brookhiser’s concluding lesson, “The antiwar Federalists had the courage of their convictions, playing a weak hand – they were always a congressional minority – boldly. But their overthrow was a lesson in practical politics. If you stick your neck out too far, it may get broken. Today’s Democrats are wise to debate and discuss.” In other words, Democrats need to beware of speaking too strongly on Iraq lest they go the way of the Federalists in 1815.
I thank Brookhiser for writing a provocative piece. The War of 1812 is not a comparative frame I would have likely thought of on my own. But that’s largely because the comparison doesn’t fit so well. There is some commonality – both involve parties opposite the president expressing some opposition to a war started on dubious pretexts. Beyond that, though, are all the differences. As Brookhiser himself writes, the Federalists were always a minority in this period, and, as he also writes, they had been waning in power (to a far greater extent than the Democrats in the 1990s I would add) for quite some time before the start of the War of 1812.
The two wars are quite different as well. The pretext for war in Iraq seems far more questionable to many Americans today that the pretext for war in 1812 had (there had actually been some British violations of American sovereignty on the seas in that case). Currently, there is not even the remote possibility that the war in Iraq might end in conquest of the U.S. (a less than remote possibility in the War of 1812), and so it hardly seems “treasonable” to simply be opposed to continued involvement in the quagmire of Iraq. Further, in the current Iraq war there is no realistic possibility of anything that could be reasonably termed “victory” anytime soon.
In short, the comparison of the current situation with the War of 1812 doesn’t indicate any clear lessons. Brookhiser’s arguments seem to me to be an attempt to dissuade strong critique of the war (which might not be all that necessary – another difference is that many Democrats don’t have the strength of their convictions that the Federalists did) at a time when no good arguments for continuing the war remain.
At the same time, Broohiser’s column is one of several writings and commentaries I’ve encountered recently that attempt to discern lessons for the present via comparison with supposedly comparable previous set of events. (I’ll discuss another example in my next post.) This seems to reflect a feeling by many that in our current context, we’re on the verge of some significant change, with a look towards history to try to discern what such change might be.
Federalists opposed the movement to war from the beginning, and in 1814 organized a convention to oppose the war. Before their positions could be presented, the news was in of U.S. victory in the Battle of New Orleans and of a peace treaty agreeable to both sides. The Federalists, tainted by “defeatism and treason,” quickly faded into irrelevancy. Brookhiser’s concluding lesson, “The antiwar Federalists had the courage of their convictions, playing a weak hand – they were always a congressional minority – boldly. But their overthrow was a lesson in practical politics. If you stick your neck out too far, it may get broken. Today’s Democrats are wise to debate and discuss.” In other words, Democrats need to beware of speaking too strongly on Iraq lest they go the way of the Federalists in 1815.
I thank Brookhiser for writing a provocative piece. The War of 1812 is not a comparative frame I would have likely thought of on my own. But that’s largely because the comparison doesn’t fit so well. There is some commonality – both involve parties opposite the president expressing some opposition to a war started on dubious pretexts. Beyond that, though, are all the differences. As Brookhiser himself writes, the Federalists were always a minority in this period, and, as he also writes, they had been waning in power (to a far greater extent than the Democrats in the 1990s I would add) for quite some time before the start of the War of 1812.
The two wars are quite different as well. The pretext for war in Iraq seems far more questionable to many Americans today that the pretext for war in 1812 had (there had actually been some British violations of American sovereignty on the seas in that case). Currently, there is not even the remote possibility that the war in Iraq might end in conquest of the U.S. (a less than remote possibility in the War of 1812), and so it hardly seems “treasonable” to simply be opposed to continued involvement in the quagmire of Iraq. Further, in the current Iraq war there is no realistic possibility of anything that could be reasonably termed “victory” anytime soon.
In short, the comparison of the current situation with the War of 1812 doesn’t indicate any clear lessons. Brookhiser’s arguments seem to me to be an attempt to dissuade strong critique of the war (which might not be all that necessary – another difference is that many Democrats don’t have the strength of their convictions that the Federalists did) at a time when no good arguments for continuing the war remain.
At the same time, Broohiser’s column is one of several writings and commentaries I’ve encountered recently that attempt to discern lessons for the present via comparison with supposedly comparable previous set of events. (I’ll discuss another example in my next post.) This seems to reflect a feeling by many that in our current context, we’re on the verge of some significant change, with a look towards history to try to discern what such change might be.
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