Josh Kraushaar thinks that the Democrats’ most effective campaign message in this cycle has been to go after Republicans for being rich businessmen who outsource American jobs or who otherwise flaunt their conspicuous wealth. This may be true in individual races where the shoe fits, like Georgia’s senatorial race or the governor’s match-ups in Illinois and Massachusetts. I don’t know how well it works when the Republican opponent doesn’t neatly match the stereotype.
Regardless, anti-businessmen messages are not what Will Marshall recommends. Economic populism is supposed to be a sure loser for the Democrats. But I just don’t see it.
If you are a white male “electrical engineer [who] is now doing software support because [your] line of work was shifted overseas,” you have a choice of supporting the Republicans because you believe their policies will promote economic growth and eventually bring your job back, or supporting Democratic policies aimed at limiting that kind of job loss in the first place and helping people who find themselves in your situation.
Ultimately, you may find both sides unconvincing, but siding with the outsourcers seems like an obvious bad bet. You can find the following to be the basest bullshit and still wind up convinced that the Democrat is clearly the better choice:
[Illinois Governor] “Pat Quinn running a populist campaign against a billionaire is like asking a dog to lick its balls. That’s just nature taking over,” said Democratic strategist Tom Bowen, a former political director for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. “Because voters expect something different from their governors, these issues are particularly potent.”
When it comes to good-paying American jobs, there are a lot of people in the Republican base demographic who behave like battered spouses. Their livelihood has been taken away to line the pockets of outsourcers and yet they still believe that their only hope is to rely on those outsourcers to restore them to their previous condition.
For Democrats to break through into this demographic, they need to make sure voters understand that the Republican Party is and has been the main culprit in destroying jobs for middle class Americans.
Overall, the Democrats do not excel at convincing people of this, but when actual outsourcers run for office it makes it quite a bit easier to sell the idea.
is the economic issue of our times. It, along with automation, is primarily responsible for the decline in labor’s share of total income.
I have no idea what the Democratic Agenda is on the issue. Obama doesn’t have one that I can see – other than to offer worker retraining – which sounds great at a cocktail party in DC but is a nightmare to a family trying to raise children.
Elizabeth Warren is a Democratic, and sher is not the only “Elizabeth Warren” out there.
Economic populism is supposed to be a sure loser for the Democrats. But I just don’t see it.
Democratic Underground gives the following list for a start:
Sherrod Brown, Howard Dean, Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden, Jeff Merkley, Alan Grayson, Marcy Kaptur, John Lewis, Jim McGovern, and Bernie Sanders.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023225092
The Obama administration is pushing trade deals that will make the effects of globalization much worse and allow corporations to strip governments of their powers. There are some Democrats opposed to fast-tracking the ability of the President to shove those trade deals through Congress.
Democrats are divided; there is no Democratic agenda.
of the new trade deals is pretty minimal as I read them. The single biggest decision, to allow China into the WTO – was over 10 years ago. Usually people wind up arguing about NAFTA, but the consequences of China and the WTO dwarf Nafta.
Of course, that happened in the Clinton Administration.
In any event, even this discussion shows how globalization has outrun the political discussion. These trade deals are about goods, not services. Offshoring services doesn’t need a trade deal – just a telephone and the Internet.
These trade deals are about goods, not services. Offshoring services doesn’t need a trade deal – just a telephone and the Internet.
They’re only about goods in as much as they can make the .01% even richer. Look at the trade deals like the TPP. They put in place a world run by, and for, corporations.
The trade deals are about the rules governing intellectual property, limitations on export of services, and relief measures for non-tariff restraint of trade that send cases to an arbitration court that has the power to strike down national laws.
And that’s just from the parts that have leaked out from the secret negotiations.
These trade deals with Asia-Pacific and Europe are going to give transnational corporations even more power over the governments involved.
The arbitration section as last reported would permit a US health insurance company to have Canada’s health care laws invalidated as a non-tariff restraint of trade, forcing a corporate-driven race to the bottom in health care.
Progressives need to take this response to globalization a little more seriously.
” Economic populism is supposed to be a sure loser for the Democrats. But I just don’t see it.”
I don’t see it either, never did. I think it’s nothing but leftover DLC propaganda. Plus it leaves the the monopoly on economic populism ro the Republicans, who love to complain about the economy while never doing a thing to improve it, and plenty of things to make it worse.
Here’s one. (Probably shouldn’t post it again because I seem to be the only one that likes it, but…)
Excellent analysis.
Which is why Republican-imposed gridlock works so well for reinforcing the Republican sentiments of these people. Democrats never get to show their policy works; Republicans are never shown up for their policies failing. And economy that is the result of a generation of failed policies all around get reported as if its the weather. Because Republicans successfully convince people that government policy doesn’t matter.
What the public does not yet grasp is that businessmen like Rick Snyder, Rick Scott and Bruce Rauner, have the sole purpose of reducing government to the point they pay no taxes at all at the same time they and their cronies are sucking the expenses of government as revenues and profits into their and their cronies bank accounts. It is a 35-year-long ripoff that the public has not completely caught on to yet.
None are more striking in this behavior than the employees of Cisco and other companies that as matter of policy under the supposed 85%-15% rule conduct an annual purge of supposed “low-performing” employees and then either have a job freeze or hire new employees as the business demand requires. The anxiety that creates for all of their employees every year is a clear example of employer abuse of employees. The fact that layoff means drastic salary reductions or possible permanent age-discriminatory unemployment creates a culture of workaholism, families effectively abandoned in place, and collapsing civic engagement. The cognitive dissonance of being a well-paid slave fearing for your freedom.
Exactly! People are simply not able to make the correlation or to parse out the actual factors that are directly affecting their well being. Even if the Democrats make a case, the Republicans have been successful in creating the mindset that all of this is simply a zero sum game and that it is impossible to ever change it. I keep hearing reporting about “the new normal” when it comes to employment, retail sales and other aspects that direct impact people’s lives. And I think this is a conscious effort to convince people to timidly accept that there is simply nothing they can do to change the direction that things seem to be going.
And we also have a national media that is largely incapable and unwilling to bare the reality of the GOP obstructions and the severe deleterious effect their actions have had on the economic well being of 90% of country. This situation did not develop in a vacuum. Unfortunately, it seems that people have become so inculcated by the “government is the problem” mantra that they are simply incapable of even seeing something as obvious as the connection between the current ebola crisis and the drastic cuts in funding to the CDC, or the relationship between Bush era spending and the current economic situation that is facing the country. We have become a country largely populated by consciously ignorant lemmings, responding to life shattering events with nothing more than grunts and shrieks among their fellow tribe members.
I am not feeling real optimistic today.
It is pretty clear from the way that Chuck Todd handled Allison Lundergran Grimes that the media has gone from bias to just being corrupt. They will do what it takes to put the Republicans back in absolute power.
Let your pessimism concentrate on the fact that the DSCC this year put a huge effort into getting good GOTV operations in 10 states. As local momentum builds in some states, those resources are being redeployed to states like Colorado, where Udall is running against a Republican and the local media.
I’ve seen snippets of information that some of these efforts might appear to be bearing some fruit. I guess we will have to wait and see. I hope it is the case. I have not had a lot of time to follow all the various happenings in all the states. Been trying to focus here locally, but it’s been a very disheartening slog around here.
Yes, when you can chant “Gub’mint is the problem!” while contemplating the enveloping ebola plague, you can only be described as a “willfully ignorant lemming”. A dead loss as a citizen and ripe for cheering on an authoritarian dictatorship—as long as it installs a “conservative” white male leader, of course.
As the lemmings prepare to pad even more Repubs into a completely braindead and useless Congress, optimism is impossible.
Unfortunately, it seems that people have become so inculcated by the “government is the problem” mantra that they are simply incapable of even seeing something as obvious as the connection between the current ebola crisis and the drastic cuts in funding to the CDC, or the relationship between Bush era spending and the current economic situation that is facing the country.
Who is going to educate them? The TradMed and the GOP won’t. Most elected Democrats are corrupt or scared of their own shadow, or both.
If the Republicans fan the hysteria too much, the President could call Congress into emergency session to:
Nice little kabuki performance for the people right before the election.