For the first time in…well, forever, Fred Hiatt has written a column I largely agree with. Of course, I quibble with the false equivalency he levels at the Democrats, and I don’t think the Democrats are wrong to adopt a populist tone. But Hiatt is right about this:
There is widespread agreement that the pillars of past U.S. growth, such as cheap credit and taxpayer-subsidized housing, will have to be replaced. But by what? And how will the transformation take place? You might have hoped to hear such questions debated this year.
It’s not that President Obama, for one, hasn’t tried. For the past two years he has propounded, frequently and at length, a theory of the economic transformation America needs, built on the reform of health care, education and energy. He’s even told Americans they will have to “consume less and produce more,” as the Post’s Charles Lane noted earlier this year.
And he hasn’t stopped during the campaign. “This is what we stand for,” Obama told a town hall meeting last week. “Innovation, research and development, skilled workers, lifelong learning — all the things that are required to make sure that this is a competitive 21st-century America that is playing for number one on the global stage.”
But the vision hasn’t caught hold.
We should have seen a bunch of positive ads with windmills and optimism about a green-energy future with America pioneering the innovations of the 21st-Century. But what Hiatt is missing is that Democrats are being deluged by undisclosed sources of corporate money made legal by the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court ruling.
At this point in 2006 (the last midterm), the Democratic and Republican party committees accounted for 82 percent of all outside spending on express advocacy. Outside groups accounted for only 18 percent. Fast forward to 2010, the numbers have flipped dramatically. As of the end of last week, outside groups have spent more money on independent expenditures than have the party committees — 59 percent to 41 percent.
It’s indisputable that the Republican Party is the party of Wall Street and that they are the overwhelming beneficiaries of this undisclosed largesse. Maybe Hiatt would like to see the Democrats just roll over and take it, but it seems to me like a better route is to offer the voters a choice. Fighting back against the offshoring of jobs, fighting back against fraud in the mortgage industry, fighting back against unaccountable campaign contributions…all of this is smart and just. So, yes, the positive vision gets lost in the process, but it’s hard to stay positive when your opponent is benefitting from millions of dollars of corporate money that is being used to call you ‘the taxman’ or a ‘Marxist.’
Meanwhile, even Hiatt knows that it isn’t just O’Donnell who is nuts. Maybe he ought to pick a side.
We’re up by five in the AP’s generic, and the people agree with us on most issues (at least, more than with the Republicans), but too many of us are still not planning on voting.
“Fighting back against the offshoring of jobs, fighting back against fraud in the mortgage industry, fighting back against unaccountable campaign contributions…all of this is smart and just.”
I don’t know, Boo. It’s true that Reagan touched off the cascade of production jobs from our shores. But it’s also true that the Democratic Party from Clinton down to almost every leader of the Party with the exception of Dick Gephardt bought into the whole “offshoring of jobs will create more jobs here in the US” nonsense. You will recall that opposition to NAFTA came from the Halloween Coalition of Nader-Perot-Buchanan, mocked by all “responsible” Democrats. The House took a step to discourage offshoring of jobs, and good for them. But I don’t see that Obama does much beyond dream the usual neo-liberal high-tech dreams, which our venture capitalists are turning into a nightmare of US R&D investment leading to Chinese production jobs.
Fifty attorneys general of both parties are ‘fighting back against fraud in the mortgage industry,’ or at least looking into it. What is the national Democratic Party doing about it again?
Where was the legislation to overturn Citizens United in this Congress? The last bill to curb ‘unaccountable campaign contributions’ was McCain-Feingold – i.e. bipartisan.
I think the record is pretty clear that Democrats’ fighting back against these things is largely rhetorical.
The American democracy is succumbing to the oldest addiction of all – money. As the Republican Party and Wall Street (are they not synonymous ?) flood the electoral process with campaign funds and as Fox News and the Tea Party together with the mass media clowns Beck and Limbaugh inflame the masses with the false issue of taxes, the real culprits escape unscathed. I mean that top one or two percent of the financial elite who once again have confused the electorate and so preserved their enormous wealth from public scrutiny. Will things never change and must this entrenched plutocracy always have its way at the expense of ordinary rank and file? How many depressions will it take before the average voter wakes up and demands significant political and economic change?
I saw a number of adds like that in the summer of 2009. I guess they were gearing up for a bush at the climate bill but that broke down.
I’ve been calling in the MN 6th, where we’re trying to beat Michelle Bachman, and it is so disheartening to listen to people tell me over and over that they just don’t know who to trust anymore because everyone is so negative. The effect of all of this nastiness brought about by the right wing in this country is to depress turnout by anyone who doesn’t already passionately identify with a faction. Politics seems like a toxic swamp to the average citizen, and they want less and less to do with it.
You and I may know that the other side has brought all of this negativity, but to many people it seems like just a part of the environment. “A pox on both their houses” is a common attitude.
The real problem is probably that the R’s never get called out for it by the “impartial” media, so the Dems are left to fight on their own. Add in the fact that about a third of Dem Congressional members and Senators are just corporate whores who divide the caucus and make us look confused and incompetent, and why should anyone vote Democratic?
I have the benefit when calling in the 6th to try to canvass people into viewing their vote as a rejection of negative politics and a return to politics of substance, but that will only wash for a cycle at most, and it doesn’t help anybody trying to hold a seat or in a race with no incumbent. Furthermore, it’s not like if the Dems won resoundingly that there would suddenly be a decrease in rancor and vitriol.
It’s a bad time, and I don’t know if it can get anything but worse, or if it was avoidable.
Citizens United sucks, and it’s a part of the issue right now, but this is an overdetermined situation, and it’s just one factor. These scales have a lot of fingers on them and they’re all on one side. Citizens United is just the latest. If that ruling had never happened this electorate would still be angry and afraid, the Dems would still look weak in the face of circumstances, and the angry right would still not get called out by the mainstream press.
I try to sell optimism on the phones, and it works sometimes, but I am really worried about the viciousness of the anger on the right. We need someone to call it out for the danger it is, and for that person to get some validation from unaffiliated sources, and for it to echo. We need that badly, and I don’t see it happening.
what do people think about Bachman?
In my experience, Minnesotans are a friendly, polite, and earnest type of people. They don’t seem a good fit for Bachman’s style of politics.
The 6th has a large population of waiting-for-the-rapture Christians. They love her. There is also a lot of fear of the city. (Read this endorsement of Clark for a clear example of that.)
There’s a lot of people who don’t like her, but they also don’t trust Democrats, and don’t want to talk about the fact that they’re not comfortable with black people, and gay marriage and abortion are waaay too out there.
This is the stoic, hard-bitten version of Minnesota, with lots of hunting and fishing and distrust of others. Michele Bachman may be nuts, but they’re not sure she’s not right.
Where we’ve been able to get traction is with the fact that she doesn’t focus on the district. That endorsement is particularly scathing on this point.
One thing for sure about the Hiatt piece is that he’s right about nostalgia. I get a lot of traction talking with people about how Congress worked together in the 80’s and how we had a boom in the 90’s after a big tax increase for the top earners. People don’t like today’s political environment, but they have to be convinced that it’s the Republicans’ fault! It’s pretty crazy.
yeah, I figured her district was basically like Sensenbrenner’s over in the Milwaukee burbs. A lot of religious conservatives and a lot of fear of the big, bad city. But, that doesn’t mean they value shrillness, impoliteness, nuttiness, or grandstanding.
I’d think combining Bachman’s tone with her clear love of the spotlight and inattention to local issues would be the best approach.
Apparently, the St. Cloud newspaper (generally conservative) had endorsed Tarryl Clark, the Democratic challenger to Bachmann.
Yes, good overall, and yes, he misses a part of it. But it’s not Citizen’s United. It’s the decades of right wing hate radio and the institutional support that the Tea Bag movement received, and the naieve coverage they received from places like the Washington Post. It’s the fundamentally undermining presence of violent anger that is encouraged every day on the FOX cable stations that play in the Washington Post offices.
It is very difficult to have a rational discussion about the issues when people are bringing guns to rallies and claiming the President is a Muslim from another country.
Fred Hiatt is shocked, shocked! that there is a negative campaign environment. How ironic.
ThinkProgress has a story that hints that the US Chamber might be laundering money from the Saudi royal family to support “drill, baby, drill” GOP candidates.
Obama’s vision is anathema to the GOP; it’s their worst nightmare because if honestly debated they will lose and lose big.