At some point, Matt Stoller lost his damn mind. I don’t know how you can spend long enough on the Harvard campus to earn a degree and still have such weird ideas about our elites. Peggy Noonan writes less meandering columns than Stoller. He wants us all to know that one man, Barack Obama, has ruined the institutions of the American left. To prove this, he uses a chart that covers 65 years of history, 40 of which are relevant. As further proof that Obama is the devil, he blames Wisconsin Democrats for doing everything wrong. Then, after offering no proof and no explanation for why Obama is at fault, he proceeds to blame everyone else:
But it’s not complete to say this is just Obama’s doing. Obama has done everything he’s done with the support of labor leaders, Democratic supportive groups like Moveon, foundations, liberal pundits, African-American church networks, feminist groups, LGBT groups, and technology interests. Any of these could have stopped him by withdrawing support and overtly attacking him, but only the LBGT community fought for their rights. This American labor bureaucracy, which simply does not strike and therefore has no leverage against capital, operates largely as a group of fragmented business unionists.
Yes, everyone of the left is doing it wrong because they haven’t, like Matt Stoller, taken leave of their senses and attacked the most brilliant and decent and politically talented president we’ve had in decades.
He concludes with some nonsense about interfering with the flow of commerce, which sounds a little Unibomberish. Maybe Stoller would be happier as a Somali pirate.
Oh, but we know how the president deals with those folks.
Townhouse must be a ghost town these days. What a freak show.
Here is where Stoller lost me:
I know enough about Wisconsin and its people to know that the idea of a general strike being effective is ludicrous. Stoller has been hitting the bong a little too hard.
By the way, none of the strikes in Stoller’s chart were general strikes because general strikes were made illegal by Taft-Hartley. The decline shows the decline in the labor movement overall.
By the way, none of the strikes in Stoller’s chart were general strikes because general strikes were made illegal by Taft-Hartley.
Which just goes to show why labor shouldn’t support Democrats. Have they ever said they’d repeal Taft-Hartley, or its more onerous provisions?
Every time they get close to talking about labor issues, Republicans beat Democrats around the head with the “socialist” label. Or the “communist” label. Imagine the shitstorm if there were a Repeal Taft-Hartley plank in a Democratic platform.
So what? Obama gets called a Socialist now when he’s pretty damn banker-friendly. Besides, pretty soon people will get immune to the Socialist label so it’s won’t carry any dirty meaning.
Here is the key driver of Stoller’s diatribe.
Unfortunately, the debt crisis last summer shows that his second sentence is correct. But that is independent of what President Obama has done. In fact, it predates the President’s rise to national prominence.
Then, after offering no proof and no explanation for why Obama is at fault, he proceeds to blame everyone else: …
That’s interesting, when he RT’d a reply I sent to him on Twitter that stated thus: Regardless of how much you are right, the institutional left bares plenty of fault on their own. They stood down when they should have stood up. Basically the problem was is that they didn’t act as Huey Long to Obama’s FDR. If anyone knows the history of the 1930’s, they’ll know what I mean. And it has nothing to do with Obama coddling, or taking on, the banksters.
He concludes with some nonsense about interfering with the flow of commerce, which sounds a little Unibomberish.
Boo:
You damn well know what Stoller means. He means for labor to reassert itself. Whether by strikes or work stoppages. Since power will not give up power with out a demand. Trying to play footsie with the oligarchs isn’t going to work. Did Moses get the Pharaoh to let the Israelites(is that what they were called?) go by asking pretty please? Rosa Parks didn’t get to sit on the bus where she wanted by asking pretty please, did she?
that’s not what he means at all, Calvin.
He talks about strikes up above that. And not in the context of neo-liberalism or interfering with the flow of commerce and profits.
So how does labor become a real player in the years to come? And not just an ignored part of the Democratic Party? Why do they contribute so much in the way of money and get nothing in return? If unions were run like a corporation, people would be asking what the ROI has been? And what has it been? 1%? 2%? If that! That’s really damn weak. I don’t think even Walmart has ROI that low.
Are you nuts, Calvin?
Without the Democratic Party, the unions wouldn’t even exist. Their ROI is that they are alive instead of dead, like the public service unions in Wisconsin.
And what would the Democratic Party be with out unions? Yet unions are shit on all the time by Democratic politicians.
Unions barely exist now!! And where has union management been? Asleep at the switch, that’s what!!
“Without the Democratic Party, the unions wouldn’t even exist.”
I’m not strong on history, but don’t you have the causation backwards? The unions were closer to what are now called ‘Democrats’ than the Democratic Party was, back when the union movement won its victories, no?
I think it’s fairer to say that without the unions, the Democratic Party wouldn’t’ exist (as we know it).
Hm. Well, which made a greater contribution to more progressive victories in the 20th century, the labor movement or the Democratic Party? (Hard to separate the two entirely, of course.)
Find the source of this: “”Employees shall have the right to organize and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and shall be free from the interference, restraint, or coercion of employers.”
That’s FDR, right? Except unions were around before FDR. Hell, Republicans were once unions supporters too(Fightin’ Bob LaFollette!).
Do ya have to scream!
It’s key language from a bill that FDR signed that created the golden age of unions in this country.
But that’s the question, isn’t it? What is the source of that? Not necessarily just the person who said it. I mean, we’re into speculation–what would the Democratic Party look like absent a labor movement, what would the US look like absent a labor movement–but I still think that ‘without the Democratic Party, the unions wouldn’t exist’ probably has it backwards.
I mean, maybe the unions would’ve faded away by now without the Democrats. But I’m trying to picture a Democratic Party that is not heir to the labor movement and the unions, and failing.
What would that look like?
It isn’t something someone said.
It’s language from the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933. Passed by an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress and signed by good ole Franklin Delano.
Oh. Interesting. Thanks.
That doesn’t really address the question, though. Would the Democratic Party’s National Industrial Recovery Act have included that language without the labor movement?
Well, no.
In much the same way as the Lily Ledbetter Act wouldn’t help women if there were not women.
I think that what is more important in what Stoller says is that the interruption of commerce must be international. Even if you grant he’s talking about a general strike, the state of unity of labor is not anywhere at a beginning to go down that road.
Rosa Parks did not spontaneously challenge bus segregation; that direct action was carefully planned and occurred after 35 years of organization against segregation.
Stoller is getting way ahead of where the situation is. But he is correct in thinking that an international effort is required in order to shut down the labor arbitrage that corporations have been practicing. The way that happened in the 1930s on a national level was through the passage wage and hour laws. Popular empowerment of the International Labor Organization would go a long way to moving this forward, but so far it is captive of reticent labor leadership that has been losing ground globally for decades.
At some point, Matt Stoller lost his damn mind
hilarious, but true
It was at the point of personalizing the situation with Obama. This is a trend that was present during the Carter and Clinton administrations, and suddenly Matt wakes up. Yes, hilarious.
Yes, exactly.
I mean, look at Clinton’s legislative record after 1994. It’s pure neo-liberalism, and you can add the ongoing privatization of our military and intelligence service during his presidency, as well as NAFTA pre-1994.
When the GOP took over, Clinton immediately moved to do Welfare Reform in a ridiculous way, and totally deregulated Wall Street with three major bills in 1998, 1999, and 2000. He was just lucky the economy was booming almost to the very end.
And how has Obama reacted to the Republican takeover? He’s giving them nothing. He’s made overtures. But he’s known full-well that the GOP will never accept anything remotely reasonable, so he can offer what ever he wants without worrying he’ll have to deliver. It makes him took reasonable. Which, by the way, he is.
The only thing he’s done is finalize the free trade deals with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea, and I don’t personally have any problem with those deals. The first two are two small to cost us any jobs and the last one is actually a good deal for us.
If you want to make a neo-liberalism argument against Obama, it really amounts to blaming him for stabilizing the banking sector without doing enough on foreclosures. But that’s a stretch. There’s a difference between doing triage in a way that helps the rich more than the poor and, say, having a New Democrat ideology.
The only thing he’s done is finalize the free trade deals with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea, and I don’t personally have any problem with those deals.
Glad to know you are okay with the murder of union members, or organizers, in Colombia.
That’s a cheap shot, Calvin, although I did let my guard down. So, my fault.
How is it a cheap shot? Those trade deals are corporate giveaways. They don’t do anything for unions, except hurt them. And need I remind you about Honduras?
I don’t recall Stoller writing in glowing terms about Clinton: quite the contrary, in fact. But if he doesn’t object to Clinton’s policies and legacies, you’re right. Pretty sure you’re wrong, though.
How else do you get to “Barack Obama is personally responsible for killing the left, even though he isn’t because the left did it to themselves by how they reacted to Obama,” without absolving Bill Clinton and the Republicans of all wrong-doing?
Well, you can blame Clinton for wounding the left, and Obama for killing it. (Even though the left did it to ourselves by how we reacted to Obama.)
I don’t see anything more sinister there than imagining that the current moment is of overriding importance, whereas what came before is mere preface.
Here is something else to chew on:
http://lbo-news.com/2012/06/06/walkers-victory-un-sugar-coated/
Except for the fact that the popular movement…”is not leaving.”
What do you mean? Just so I understand clearly.
The popular movement in Madison and Wisconsin is not going to fold just because the electoral strategy did not work. There were folks who understood this was a gamble. It’s summer and not as many students are there, but there is continuity in the movement.
Sure, but there is one definite takeaway. We need Presidential level turn out in mid-terms as well. Or else we’ll never move forward. Turn out yesterday was higher than 2010, but still lower than 2008.
Ultimately, yes. But that level of turnout without a change in political culture could equally well be the result of manipulated media campaigns that create hollow victories. Until there is a culture of accountability, there won’t be accountability.
You know what that culture of accountability would entail, right? I’m sure I don’t know all of it, but I know some and that’s an awfully big haul.
Indeed it is an awfully big haul. That’s where our options are. Choose which big haul to haul. No more easy politics.
And what can it actually do?
I guess we’ll have to wait and see in the case of Wisconsin.
This is about how I feel. I wouldn’t paint with such a broad brush, but it’s basically accurate.
The thing is, I’ve thought about it a lot and I don’t think the Left can think pragmatically. It has too much of a hangover from the Sixties, and once it lost power in 1994, it began morphing into a different variety of the-government-is-bad-and-evil party.
There’s no sense anymore that this is a country worth governing and that we’re the right people to govern it.
It’s all my-way-or-the-highway and I-wouldn’t-belong-to-a-club-that-would-have-me.
It figures you’d link to a site that only permits fawning over the President, and no criticism whatsoever.
I linked to an article, not a site.
It’s still at that site, and by an author that has an axe to grind. An author that can’t take any criticism no matter how factually based it is. An author who expects a “Shut up and clap louder!!” attitude. An for an author who thinks we should get off Obama’s back and proclaim him “The Best President Evah!!” .. he sure has some hobby horses of his own that blinds him to facts. And what does blaming Ed Schultz do? Or blaming people who never turn out for mid-terms do? Doesn’t Deaniac understand that turn out for mid-terms is usually half(maybe a little more .. but there is a big drop off of course) of what it is during Presidential years? Instead of beating on people who don’t vote, for what ever reason, maybe he should ask why they don’t vote. Is it because they only think their vote matters for President? Are there other factors? Instead of ripping people all the time for not having Obama’s back .. maybe he should ask why they don’t. Maybe students don’t vote because no one will help them discharge their onerous student debt? Who knows! Maybe someone should ask!!
I know you comment at a lot of sites and so the comment policy is important to you. I respect that. But honestly, I don’t read that site on a regular basis and I don’t know anything about their comments policy. And I don’t much care because I am responding to one specific article. The content of that one specific article is all I care about. And I largely agree with it.
That’s just the thing. I disagree. How many people are actually inspired by Ed Schultz and withheld their vote in ’10? Does anyone seriously think Ed Schultz could tilt an election for dog catcher, much less a mid-term Congressional race? Deaniac has it out for Schultz(and those supposed Obama-haters) so that’s who he blames everything on. Maybe he should look at why it really failed. Why did 17%(or around that) of voters who voted for for Walker say they are going to vote for Obama? Was it because they think the recall is illegitimate, unless he was actually indicted for a crime? Do people forget the Gray Davis recall so soon? Speaking of that, you might like to read this:
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/06/06/lock-and-load-not-you-hippie/
Your liberal media at work!!
Yes, Calvin, because you’re all about the conversation…
I am. You obviously don’t know me well enough. I’m always asking questions. Just look up thread. I don’t portend to know the all the answers. But I’m willing to listen if they have data to back up theirs. Like I’m sure someone has done studies as to why Presidential year turn out is much higher than mid-terms, especially for Democrats. Or why people decide it isn’t worth it to vote.
why do more people watch the Stanley Cup than a game in October between the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Carolina Hurricanes? Because the stakes are higher.
Why do people watch pro sports more than college sports? Because the competition level is higher.
Turnout is highest when the president is on the ballot. It’s lowest when neither the president or the governor are on the ballot.
A high-profile Senate race can help, but doesn’t do a whole lot by itself.
Because the Democrats attract people at the lowest end of the economic spectrum, their voters are the least reliable. Because the Republicans excel among the elderly (who can remember a time before the Pill and school busing, and are also the most religious) the Republicans have the most reliable voters.
It’s baked into the cake. The Democrats did very well in 2006, but they would have done much better if a president had been on the ballot. They would have done in 2006 what they actually did in 2006 and 2008 combined.
Our best midterms are always when there is Republican president, too. In 1974, 1982, 1986, and 2006, we did very well. Only 1990 and 2002 stand out as exceptions. And 1990 was a net positive, even though nothing much changed.
In 1978, 1994, and 2010 we did very badly. In 1998, we did better than expected due to backlash against the impeachment.
Basically, our weakest elections are historically in the first midterm after a Democrat is elected. I think Republican tend to do worse in the sixth year rather than the second, although the impact of 9/11 makes the sample size too small to be sure.
Because the Democrats attract people at the lowest end of the economic spectrum, their voters are the least reliable.
Haven’t incomes stayed flat, when figured for inflation, for the past 30 years? Don’t you think people notice that? Don’t people tend to ask: What can he/she do for them? I mean when voting? Someone said that plays into things. It could have been Digby, or someone else, I am not sure. I just know I’ve read it in the past month. I guess what I am saying is that policy matters. If you are going to screw over your voters with stuff like NAFTA, or wait 3 or years after passing for the the totality of the new health care law to kick in, then you should be able to figure out why people who should vote for you won’t. That’s not all obviously, but that is part of it.
Let’s start off slow.
In general, the greater the interest in an election, the more non-politically minded people will vote in it.
Presidential elections always create the most interest, so they always have the most non-politically minded people participating.
Most non-politically minded people are on the left.
Therefore, Democrats do best in presidential elections.
But…
We have been killed in presidential elections in 1972, 1980, 1984, and 1988. Obviously there is more to it than the general level of interest.
So, let’s look at that.
Richard Nixon (Watergate), Ronald Reagan (Iran-Contra), and George W. Bush (Iraq, Katrina, etc.) had all proved to be catastrophic failures by the second midterms of their time in office. Their party got spanked in those elections in 1974, 1986, and 2006. Sucking at governing matters more than the generic level of interest.
Recent Democratic presidents have created massive backlashes in their first two years in office. Each had to clean up a giant mess. And the right just is very good at freaking out when a Democrat is in the Oval Office. LBJ in 1966, Carter in 1978, Clinton in 1994, and Obama in 2010, all got killed in the first midterm election.
So, given this consistent pattern, should we assume that the Democrats got killed in 2010 because Obama structured his health care bill the wrong way?
I think we should look deeper.
And I kind of answered why we got spanked in 2010. Look at the health care/insurance bill. What do Axelrod and any other surrogate on TV trumpet, if anything? Letting kids stay on their parents policy till age 26, right? So part of the problem of Democrats is a messaging failure. And why is that?
Little things like that matter a little bit.
But we got killed because the other side took the outrage to eleven while the opinion leaders on the left decided to join the anti-Obama chorus.
No one was left to defend the Democrats, so we were destroyed.
Haha!! And blaming people like Ed Schultz, who hardly anyone listens to? That’s just stupid.
Yep.
Calvin is a perfect example–Calvin’s not actually interested in accomplishing anything; Calvin’s interested in making sure people know that he’s a better liberal/person/more politically pure than others in the center-left coalition that the left needs to govern. Call them the “Too clever by half” liberals, because they’re more interested in being clever than effective.
Jaywillie:
Is this who I think it is? Do you have the same name on Twitter? Anyway, I’m not interesting in being more clever. I’m more interesting in having an effective left. I just don’t think people understand what that takes. It is apparent to me that people forget history. They don’t understand what effective politics takes. Look at the relationship between FDR and Huey Long as an example. Why was Clinton able to pass crappy laws like NAFTA? Because the left was effectively neutered. Why? Where were the unions primary-ing any idiot who voted for that? Maybe I rub you the wrong way. I don’t know. I’m just a very opinionated person. Do I know everything? Of course I don’t. It’s just that I see examples all over of how liberals are ineffective, and it burns me up inside.
I’ll also say this. Has anyone posted here any research on why people vote? Or what would get people who only vote in Presidential elections, to turn out more regularly? Because I’d love to see it.
Deaniac does a good job making complex things simple.
Despite what Calvin says he does allow dissenting opinion as long as it isn’t personal and it’s about policy.
Despite what Calvin says he does allow dissenting opinion as long as it isn’t personal and it’s about policy.
You are 100% wrong. Show me a dissenting comment(that dissents from the blog poster’s view point) on that site. Just one!! I brought up the failure of HAMP once. Guess what? Ban hammer!!
given the way you comment on this site I’m sure your comment was “you know HAMP didn’t work” and for that you were banned.
You’re just a poor victim of Deaniac and his flying Obamabots.
Actually, I did quote stats about why it wasn’t working. And I also said something to the effect that HAMP not working isn’t the fault of Orange Julius or The Turtle.
Uh, no. I appreciate what TPV does, but it most certainly does not deviate from the company line. On the super rare (not even once a month) occasions where the site finds reason to be displeased with something that has the administration’s fingerprints on it, it’s always Somebody Else’s Fault.
The Republicans, or the Professional Left, or the Republicans, or Congress, or Hillary Clinton, or the Professional Left, or Republicans, or jealous black politicians, or the Senate, or the Professional Left…
Not once in 1000+ days has anybody tightly associated with the President (let alone the man himself) made a mistake, whether good intentioned or not.
They’re the anti-Calvin.
I guess I’ll just never agree that the correct response to the right’s desire to obliterate the country was to offer them capitulations. Neither the politics of it, nor the policy of it.
I will say that despite being right (almost always right actually) the article has a point. Being right gets you nothing but being right. If you want anything more than the ability to say “I was right” you have to do more.
What capitulations? Be specific.
Let’s start from the beginning, what major initiatives needed votes from the organized right in the senate? Or is Ben Nelson also of the right?
The stimulus needed GOP votes, and as such, it was diminished to win passage. Is that a “capitulation?” Or is that just being outmaneuvered? Could the administration have won the case in public that it really super duper needed $900B instead of the miserly total of $800B, in the wake of the bank bailout?
When Congress and the administration effectively bribed the pharmaceutical companies to lobby for the passage of HCR, instead of against, was that a capitulation to the right? The right wants the bill deemed unconstitutional altogether!
Did anybody “capitulate” to Olympia Snowe or Scott Brown in the crafting of financial sector reforms? What did Treasury have to give away that it cared about in the process? Anything?
Was trading a rolling extension of the Bush tax cuts for targeted tax relief and UI benefits for the working class a “capitulation,” or was it a last-ditch effort to prevent a double dip recession that surely would have resulted in the wake of the Japanese tsunami otherwise?
How is it that Obama “capitulated” to the right in the debt ceiling debacle when the only sector of the government guaranteed to be cut regardless of what happens this winter is defense?
There’s a difference between selling out and losing. Nobody bats 1.000. Nobody. The administration’s legislative management record is stellar, but it isn’t all-powerful and unbeaten. That’s an absurd standard of expectations.
“the most decent president we’ve had in decades”
What would you say is the most decent thing Obama has done? Is it locking people up without charges for indefinite lengths of time? Or firing missiles at funerals? Or maybe signing free-trade agreements with a country that murders labor organizers? I know–it was offering John Boehner cuts to Social Security and Medicare!
I know–it was offering John Boehner cuts to Social Security and Medicare!
But .. but … but .. he didn’t mean it .. since he knew Orange Julius would never accept it!!
And he killed your cat.
He then labelled my cat a “militant” since it was an adult male.
That bastard!
He’s still the most decent president we’ve had in decades. It’s not a very high bar.
Stoller’s mind will spend hours or days following tenuous strands of vague association while ignoring major relevant facts staring him in the face. I first noticed some weird thought processes from him around 2007. Yeah he can ramble. It helps to obfuscate what his readers should be noticing: he leaves many important relevant facts out of his analysis because they’re inconvenient to his preconceived conclusion.
I have found him worthy of a good chuckle from time to time. It was so bizarre to associate the Ilya Sheyman candidacy with this article for example. (And it’s clear that Stoller doesn’t get why Sheyman lost anyway.)
Months ago I also read with some interest the source material that he based his “inequality is worse because of Obama’s policies” conclusion. Stoller’s conclusion was a joke.
Matt Stoller is a moron, and I don’t know why Yves gave him posting authority on her blog that I used to regularly read up until late 2009.
While I liked Alan Grayson, he made a fool of himself whenever he questioned people about the Fed. Guess who was advising him on financial policy, especially dealing with the Fed? Matt Stoller. Grayson would regularly either get basic facts wrong, or ask questions that obviously the Fed Chairman wouldn’t know — yet when he wouldn’t know, morons like Stoller would see this as proof that they were right all along.
BTD at TalkLeft regularly lambasts his own readers in comments because he sees them as knee-jerk Obama-haters. Maybe he’d have that readership regardless; I see this website as the only one where there’s a variant amount of views, usually respectful when there’s disagreement, who (for the most part) take care into what they write. It’s why I like it here more than anywhere else. But BTD has a lot of blame to take for building such a readership. When readers usually agree with what you write, they come back. If they see a pattern in shit they disagree with, they leave. This site being the exception.
Also, I suspect that the good people of WI were not at all too pleased that outsiders were telling them what to do with their governor.
Walker might be a jerk, but he’s their jerk and more than a few will be happy to deal with him at the next election.
And it is not clear to me how strong a candidate Barrett was. I could imagine that a Milwaukee candidate might not be popular enough in the rest of the state. He did lose once already to Walker.