The latest slogan from the DCCC:
A member of Congress told me Democrats big 2018 slogan, which is set to be released Monday. It's: "Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages"
— Jeff Stein (@JStein_Vox) July 20, 2017
Now everyone on twitter is noting this is essentially Michael Dukakis’s 1988 campaign slogan.
Except this is worse. You could read it as: want better wages, get better skills.
Here is the thing: in my mind I think back to the meetings I have had in DC and I can imagine rooms full of earnest and highly paid people coming up with slogans.
And this is what the come up with.
Duncan FTW:
focus on education is wrong but "FREE COLLEGE" would be better than "BETTER SKILLS YOU LOSER"
— Atrios (@Atrios) July 20, 2017
The slogan has changed. Whether it was changed because of the reaction to it, or whether the report was wrong is unclear.
The slogan is:
““A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future,” and Schumer vows that it’s an expression “that everyone will use – a better deal for workers, a better deal for women, a better deal for prescription-drug buyers.”
So this is better: but dammit this is closer to Dukakis’s ’88 slogan. Make no mistake, this is BETTER, as indeed the ’88 slogan was better.
It is still amazing this is the best they can come up with.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/343337-schumer-dems-not-russia-are-to-blame-for-loss-to-trump
Schumer also said:
“When you lose to somebody who has 40 percent popularity, you don’t blame other things – [James] Comey, Russia – you blame yourself,” Schumer said in an interview Saturday with The Washington Post.”
That’s the way I read it. “Come you worthless deplorables! If you want a job, get an education!”
More Eastern snobs. Screw them all.
Plus it reached its expiration date in 2013. Obama did a good job selling it for five years (picking up where Bill Clinton left off). Since then it has been perceived as BS by all but the Democratic Party faithful.
You could argue it expired about mid-way through the 1988 GOP convention.
Or I could argue that the accent point of the new one was absent from Dukakis’s. The new one adds what both Clinton and Obama stressed — retraining (on your own time and own dime). The original was awful on several levels (and why it failed to launch). The new one takes a weak slogan and makes it much worse.
On the plus side, at least they’re looking further back than 1992 since that one didn’t sell in 2016. At their pace, expect they’ll get to 1936 by about 2036. Or if they don’t want to deviate from their neoliberalcon policies, they could go with “Democrats: the Better GOP.”
The new one is worse – no doubt.
Where going to help you fill the skills gap.
Except there really isn’t a skill gap.
It’s wrong on so many different levels it is hard to know where to begin.
What the base wants is listening and a conversation.
What we get is another hired-out tacky slogan.
The addiction continues.
The Hillary special? Again?
actually doing them would be good, but those are two more words to keep out of the slogan.
another complication is: who is “the base”, and who gets listened to?
Instead what we get is focus-group tested (?) slogans.
That’s as insincere as “We would like to welcome you aboard Delta Flight 27 for New York City.”
We would like to, but we’re not going to.
nice
How should it be said though? The Democrats are aiming for the Nordic/German models and extensive and top-notch worker training, supported by the state, is an essential feature of those models.
Maybe “Better Work, Better Jobs, Better Wages”?
your version is much better than the original.
“Skills” is a code word, it sounds like they’ve been listening to the Silicon Valley business interests. It’s always the worker’s responsibility to correctly guess what skills will be desired, and learn them at their own expense. God forbid the employer would ever spend a nickel on training.
So if you talk to millennials, they will tell you story after story of their friends who got training and didn’t get a job.
It’s a misdiagnosis of the fundamental problem.
I trying hard not to use the neo word – but focus on training is a classic prescription of a certain type of Democrat.
implied also is uprooting ppl from their land and context where they’ve lived for generations [including, a lot of disdain for ppl who are attached to their way of life], for nothing – that’s a really selling point. not
Yes – this too. People just don’t uproot their families often enough.
How to say it?
“We will deliver a $15/hour minimum wage and a restoration of work hours and overtime pay.”
Then if you win, do it, cleanly and without clawback gimmicks. In straightforward intelligible legislative language without buzzwords, terms of art, or jargon.
Even “Better work. Better jobs. Better wages.” is much too vague.
Pride, compensation, and dignity but mostly compensation is what is needed. An end to being jerked around in multiple part-time jobs with no negotiation of schedules.
And politicians who can clearly say what they are in fact going to do.
Vague is okay IF it resonates with 60% or more of the electorate. As the electorate skews older and thus more established in their work or retired, it leaves out 60%. “Hope and Change” captured the 60% (although approx 7% went with McCain anyway).
I’d describe this one as techno-speak. That only sells when people are feeling okay emotionally. Not the case since about 2011.
If you want to emphasize employment, I’d start with something emphasizing the right to a job.
Its a slogan, thus about aspirational goals, not something necessarily 100% achievable. Winning Democrats typically have aspirational and commoner-oriented goals, while winning Republicans often have tribal/patriotic I’m with X messages.
We have gone from “yes we can” and various forms of “change” to “get training you unemployed loser”.
It reminds me of the lesson they teach about writing.
The sign starts with “Fresh fish for sale”
By the end of the lesson the sign says simply “fish”
With middle class and/or rural voters. Increasing the minimum wage is a policy we should support (although I would argue New York state’s law where it is $15 in the city and $12.50 in rural areas is a much better policy) but it is not a policy that wins over the disaffected middle class we need to reach.
Why? Because they see themselves as people who should be earning more than minimum wage and therefore they want to hear about what the Democratic party is going to do to make sure they have access to those kinds of wages and those kinds of jobs.
And they don’t have the sense God gave them to figure out that if the minimum doubles, their wages and salaries will actually go up in part because of the structure of formal salary schedules and in part because of the increase in aggregate demand.
Well, what are the Democrats going to do to raise wages and salaries of the $40,000-$100,000 crowd? Raising the floor has a record of working in the past.
Uh, actually, no. I’ve had several skilled workers tell me that they worked long and hard for their skill, so why should the unskilled make the same as them? I tried the “rising tide” argument but it doesn’t cut any ice.
When lesser skilled workers gain higher wages, this allows higher skilled workers to successfully demand higher wages.
When workers gain higher wages, it gives them more spending money which helps the revenue side of the ledger for businesses. This allows employers the ability to afford higher pay for their employees.
I know, but many do not and won’t take my word for it. They don’t understand that in a closed system, every change produces other changes. Most Republicans are like that. Unfortunately, so are many democrats. I think the edge goes to Republicans in the thick head sweepstakes, but it’s close to photo finish.
Well, minimum wage ballot measure campaigns have swept in recent elections; the voters in about eight States, both blue and red states, have voted to increase their minimum wages. So your experiences may not reflect the general electorate.
Yoiu write:
See my reply below for more on that subject.
AG
And the end result of this system…or perhaps better, one of parts of this system, cause and result?
Inflation.
It’s a feedback system.
Have you ever heard feedback on a sound system?
A sound…it can be quite small originally…enters a microphone. That microphone sends it to an amplifier and it comes out out of a speaker louder than the original sound. That louder sound enters the microphone and is again amplified. Very quickly, this system amplifies the original sound to the point of massive feedback. If the amplifier is strong enough and the speaker weak enough, eventually that speaker is blown out.
End of feedback problem, beginning of another problem.
You write:
This leaves out the root problem. As consumers spend more money, it is the corporate system that must limit itself in terms of massive profit. We are reaching a point where the .01%’s profits are dooming the workers’ ability to lead a useful life. Prices rise and rise and rise…as do wages, but not nearly at the same rate as prices. Result? The workers are always a day late and a dollar short.
This particular feedback system shows no signs of self-regulation. It’s just a dumb machine, run by viciously stupid, selfish people. Only action from the government can halt this feedback system, just as only action from the sound engineer can halt a sound feedback system.
But…the government is almost totally owned by the corporate interests whose only real goal is increasing profits by any means necessary.
End result?
The system blows out.
It almost blew out in 2007/2008.
It is going to happen again, sooner or later. The Obama regime applied only stopgap measures to halt the feedback system. It did not punish the people who are running that machine, and they are still in power now. Democrat, Republican, Alt. Right (the Trumpists), potentially Alt. Left…all must run the gantlet of corporate money in order to have a chance at winning elections.
The next blowout will be bigger.
Eventually, no amount of fixing will be able to put Humpty Dumpty together again.
i have no answers to this puzzlement. The system will do what it must. Fasten your safety belts if you have them. It promises to be a rough ride. We approach the state in which the U.S.S.R. found itself just before its collapse. Too much money for the oligarchy, not enough for the common people.
So it goes.
AG
Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test:
“Kesey leans into the
microphone–
There’s only one thing to do . .. there’s only one thing’s gonna do any good at all…
And that’s everybody just look at it, look at the war, and turn your backs and say …
Fuck it…
–hawonkawonkawonkawonka–
–They hear that all right. The sound of the phrase–Fuck it–sounds so weird, so
shocking, even here in Free Speech citadel, just coming out that way over a public
loudspeaker, rolling over the heads of 15,000 souls–
–Home, home on the range hawonkawonkawonka, and the Pranksters beginning
to build up most madly on their instruments now, behind the harmonica, sounding like
an insane honky-tonk version of Juan Carrillo who devised 96 tones on the back seat
of a Willys Jeep, saved pennies all through the war to buy it, you understand, zinc
pennies until the blue pustules formed under his zither finger nether there, you
understand .. .
–Just look at it and turn away and say … Fuck it
–say … Fuck it …
hawonkawonkawonka blam
–Fuck it–
Hawonkafuckit. . .friends . . .”
Increasing the minimum wage as the message that will win over those middle class voters the D party has lost show those progressives are just as out of touch as they claim those in Washington are.
What people basically want is to replicate the economy under President Clinton, but without the hangover we are experiencing now (which would mean cutting down in income disparity). That economy saw wages grow for everyone. It also saw income disparity grow which people didn’t really mind at that time because everyone was doing better.
They do mind now, though, and that is the nut we need to crack – how to bring back the Clinton economic growth without the associated growth in income disparity.
The economy grew then because of the new technology of the PC and internet. It ended with “the tech wreck” caused by unbridled capitalism and removing the “chains on innovation” like Glass-Steagal. You can look at American Economic history (one of my Liberal arts electives in the hoary past) and see the economic boom that followed tech innovations like canal-building, the cotton gin and McCormick reaper, railroads (a real biggie), the automobile, electronics).
In the history museum of Geneva IL they have two black and white photographs taken showing the same view down Main street. The first, taken before WW I, shows the street lined with horses and wagons. The second, taken in the 1920’s, shows the same street choked with Model T’s, not a horse in sight. That was technological revolution.
Engineers make prosperity. Financial Engineers make collapse and ruin. Don’t believe me, believe Hyman Minksy. (Minsky didn’t talk about engineers and technology, just how finance causes collapse.)
Also not to be neglected was that “Detroit” was booming as the SUV craze kicked in — in part by federal tax credits and in part by cheap oil. The hangover from that that we’ll all pay for has been kicking in, but the deniability bubble is yet to pop.
“Increasing the minimum wage as the message that will win over those middle class voters the D party has lost show those progressives are just as out of touch as they claim those in Washington are.”
By itself a 15 minimum wage is not enough, I agree. This is not close to the left’s economic message, however.
“What people basically want is to replicate the economy under President Clinton, but without the hangover we are experiencing now (which would mean cutting down in income disparity). That economy saw wages grow for everyone. It also saw income disparity grow which people didn’t really mind at that time because everyone was doing better. “
The best evidence for the bubble is the NASDAQ, which went from 800 to 5,000 in the space of four years. It then collapsed.
Median Household income peaked in ’99. The Budget Act of ’93 certainly had a role in reducing the deficit (the CBO attributes 30% of the decline to the tax increases in it). It is hard to argue it was responsible though for the growth in ’97 to ’99.
3. What I DO think one should learn from ’97 to ’99 is how important it is to focus in the demand for labor. The only way to generate income growth WITH equality is to stimulate demand for labor at the lower end of the income scale.
For generations labor had one message: full employment.
I believe that means subsidizing employment to create demand for labor sufficient to make the labor market tightened.
For the internet boom. Specifically the “High Performance Computing Act of 1991.” Ds need to push a policy like that for 21st technology advances, most likely in green energy.
All of that said my original point was that people would like a replay of the internet boom economy, truly the only time in our economic history that came closest to a rising tide lifting all boats.
You might want to look at the data from ’46 to the mid-70’s. It created wealth for all for decades.
People of color were not lifted out of poverty like they were during the internet boom. I said back during the campaign when posters here were wondering why the Clintons were so popular with people of color given welfare reform and the criminal justice reform act of 1994 that it was because of the economic growth those demos experienced under his presidency. Median income for African American families grew by a third. Poverty was at historical low rates.
Now I agree that Clinton himself should not be given the vast majority of the credit for that boom but that doesn’t change it happened while he was president and historically any president reaps the benefits of an economic boom or suffers the consequences of a bust, no matter how much a part they played in either.
“Pro-Dessert, Anti-Crime!”
“Flaccid But Hopeful!”
OK – the second one is pretty funny.
Complaining about the current neocentrist Dem Party is useless. It is not going to change because it is totally owned by the corporate middle, and that corporate middle is trying as hard as it canto keep things just as they are. Why wouldn’t it? Profit rules. It fights real, progressive liberalism, it fights libertarianism and it is presently in the fight of its life with what is essentially a Trump-fronted new gang that wants to take over or at least share in the profits..
Profit rules.
Until of course it doesn’t.
When the center no longer holds, when too many people are shunted to the edges of the system and various forms of rebellion…the “surprise” Trump win only even bigger…start to happen.
I don’t know how to begin a real change. We need a new party, but without corporate money? Just another fringe group. Maybe there is no solution, or maybe the U.S. is going to have to pay some heavy dues…moral reparations…before it can straighten itself out.
Back in the U.S.S.R., one more time once.
Later…
AG
P.S. A good friend just sent me a text about conditions in a moderately third-world country in which she is working. In it she said:
That’s a good idea to remember.
Shit happens; we react.
So it goes.
So far? So good.
We still here, still trying.
Think on it.
Later…
AG
The Dirtbag Left and the Problem of Dominance Politics
How much is there to win by bending the knee to that non-dominance politics? 🙂
I am not sure where Chapo Trap House came from.
Corbyn ran a very positive campaign in the UK, and traditionally Bernie has as well, though I guess you can argue about 2016.
But there is among some of the Sanders activists I talk to a desire to return fire that is being aimed at us. The reaction among some of the DC establishment to Sanders has been hysterical.
Something else: not talked about nearly enough.
This is the first time in my lifetime where the left believes it has a better sense of how to gain power than the center.
I have yet to find a Sanders person who does not believe he would have won. Chapo may reflect that sense of confidence.
You have now.
I thought that any remotely decent D would have beaten Trump in a 2 way but I also believed that if the election were a Sanders-Trump one, there would have been a major 3rd party effort. Possible forms include:
A “unity ticket” with Hillary and Jeb? Ha! No. If Sanders had won the nomination, in spite of HER shenanigans, and if he survived HER attempt to “Vincent Foster” him, SHE would have campaigned vigorously for him to defeat Trump because that’s what grown ups do.
Then why was Doug Band, who for a number of years was Bill’s equivalent to Huma, writing op-eds saying that Bloomberg was going to run if the general election was Sanders vs. Trump?
Cool non-sequitur bro.
Obviously to promote Hillary over Bernie.
LOL! Sanders would have smoked Bloomberg and Trump in a 3-way contest. Running against 2 billionaires when economic inequality is a big issue?
Yeah with the right wing split, a MASSIVE landslide.
Not a landslide. My guesstimate is that it would have looked something like 1992 — 43/38/20 (Sanders, Trump, Bloomie resspectively). However, the voters in each of those groupings would be different from 1992. The Perot faction would have split between Sanders and Trump, on the order of 60/40. The ‘country club’ Republicans (including the larger group of aspirational CCs) would have split to Bloomie and the neolibs would have split from the Democratic side. The primary contests in places like Indiana and West Virginia informed us as to what those referred as ‘conserv-dems’ would have done. Racism in the absence of socialism wins, but socialism does trump racism.
Correction: Massive Electoral College landslide.
As you say, Bloomberg would draw more Republicans (with Trump as nominee) than Democrats. It was the Year of the Revolt of the Common Man. Unfortunately the choices were a corrupt Wall Street shill and a narcissistic faux populist. Lose-lose.
Gotcha. That strikes me as very plausible as well.
Doubt that as well. Too many states that went to Clinton in ’92 would have gone with Trump. Objectively those were low Perot states: AR, GA, KY, LA, TN, and WV. And I’d put the Clinton and high Perot states of AK, MO, and somewhat less so OH, in the same category. OTOH, several Clinton and high Perot states would have been less likely to flip: IA, MI, and WI, and probably PA that was highish for Perot. Plus, MN wouldn’t have been as uncomfortably close. Not many of the high Perot and GHW Bush states to pick up. Possible stretches would have been AZ, ND, and SD. FL (highish for Perot) would have remained a toss-up. The fundie and racist votes, both of which Trump was working, suggest to me that a Sanders electoral landslide would have been an implausible scenario.
Also suspect that Bloomie would have drawn somewhat equally from Republicans and Democrats.
Also: first time in my lifetime that the left has a sense of the importance of taking power, specifically taking power from the center. There’s a war going on right now to determine whose politics are going to drive the left-center coalition in the Democratic Party, similar to the war that went on in the Republican Party in the 1990’s.
I was and am a Sanders person, in spirit at least, but I never believed he could win the nomination much less the election. Consider that Clinton had been running full-out for President since at least 2008 (or 1992, depends on how you count). She had every institutional lever of power in the DP locked down, going into the campaign. Sanders decided to run in what, June of 2015? That was years behind the curve. To believe that Sanders could have won the nomination requires first that one believe that the Democratic Party is somehow democratic, which is patently absurd. The miraculous thing about Sanders is, in spite of all of that, he came as close as he did. That, among other things, is what has the left thinking in terms of power: Sanders proved that it’s actually within reach if we’re smart about how we go after it, because the politics and the vision of the center are dying.
You see the glass half full. I see it half empty. I see that despite a patently corrupt disdainful incompetent inside nominee and millions of small donors the insiders prevailed. I see the Sanders campaign as the last effort to restore the soul of the Democratic Party rather than as the first. If Bernie couldn’t defeat Hillary than the grassroots are dead. Wall Street won.
I’ve voted in my last Democratic primary. I have Demexited. Rahm Emanuel and J.B. Pritzker are the face of the Democratic Party in Illinois and I spit in its face. I tolerated Madigan and Cullerton for the support they gave to workers. These New Democrats are just the Old Republicans with a different set of prejudices, serving the rich and kicking workers in the teeth.
Disagree. But it does depend on whether other people with adequate skill sets pick up the ball from Sanders. Workers are waking up to having been economically shafted by both political parties. If there’s little to no difference on that measure, might as well vote based on status prejudices. That splits roughly 50/50, but the advantage goes to the GOP because more white people have the habit of voting.
I suppose we could view Jesse Jackson’s 1988 primary campaign (and to a lesser extent his 1984 campaign) as a precursor to Sanders in 2016. One huge difference is that a majority of Democrats back then thought it was ludicrous to nominate an individual with zero public office experience and viewed that as a sure-fire general election loss. I still agree with both of those assessments — Trump’s general election win notwithstanding because the bar is simply lower for Republican candidates. The odds still favor those that have held an office as Governor or Senator. Thankfully, we seem to be beyond the period of looking for war generals to promote. (Other than Ike, the varied background with time in public office but no time in elective office before running for POTUS was limited to Taft and Hoover in the 20th century. Other than Garfield, no one has made the direct leap from the House to the White House. Lincoln had the thinnest of non-military political resumes, but times were different.)
Sanders may not have been able to buck the institution but he was the first candidate to seriously challenge it since 1972. The major similarity between 1972 and 2016 is how pissed the elites were. However, as candidates, McGovern was more ‘New Democrat’ liberal and Sanders was more FDR Democrat. It took until 1992 for the party elites figured out how to hold the ’72 liberal base and add Carter’s economic anti-New Dealers, but it only works after a period of GOP screw-ups while in office because it’s not a natural alliance.
The DP neolibs in Illinois, California, New York, etc. are dependent on the GOP being too repulsive for voters. Challenges from the left are only just beginning and have been surprisingly strong without significant pre-planning and money in the bank. Chuy wasn’t a total also ran in going up against the incumbent mayor, and this was after only four years as a Cook County Commission which was more than a decade after the Daley machine defeated his re-election bid to the Illinois Senate. Really tough to break through in locations where the party machine is strong. Yet, Sanders came damn close in IL and MA in spite of the Chicago and Boston machines. (I will always question the results in those two cities.)
What Sanders demonstrated is that the votes really are there for a first rate candidate. Entirely possible that his age, at 73-74 and being six years older than Clinton, was the margin of difference.
I hope you are right and I am wrong.
Ain’t that the truth! The IL gubernatorial race is shaping up like a Clinton-Trump rerun. However, we know what Rauner is. He’s shown his colors and can’t disown them. Trump was an unknown who promised much. So was Rauner but now he’s an incumbent with a record. I’d like to say “A pox on both your houses.” If late polls show Rauner losing by a good margin, I’ll vote third party. If it’s close, I’ll hold my nose and vote for Pritzker. Why do I dislike Pritzker?
a. I hate billionaires.
b. I hate phonies that beat their chest about how great they are.
c. He’s another guy with no political experience buying the office.
I don’t question them. I outright reject them!
I don’t know. We seem to have managed to survive (not well but survived) wealthy, vanity GOP dilettantes in high office. The Democratic version of that is more worrisome to me because they’re thoroughly committed neoliberals (and quasi-militarists) with an agenda and just smart and competent enough to tick off many of the boxes on their “to do” list.
Jerry Brown has definitely moved into the neoliberal faction, but at least he’d a decent administrator (his one talent combined with his years of experience). And won’t be much of a transition when Newsom succeeds him. (Same with Gray Davis.) The IL political talent pool for higher office appears to be more like that of the CA GOP; both parties moribund.
Zuckerberg is angling for a presidential run in 2020 or 2024 (if 2020 begins to shape up as a lost cause for a Democrat). A Pritzker win in IL will just encourage Zuckerberg. Is there nobody in IL that can take Pritzker out in the primary?
He’s got the bucks and is spending them. There’s also Chris Kennedy, son of RFK, but that’s his only political claim to fame. Managed the Merchandis Mart for the clan. Came to IL to work for ADM. Doesn’t look promising. Both of those front runners have never held office, elected or appointed.
There’s this guy who looks good on paper, but trying to stiff the retirees is the kiss of death for me.
Also this alderman. Lukewarm but where’s his power base? Going up against two big name rich guys is like spitting into the wind. I’m thinking he’s padding his resume for later. And I doubt he’d win the general election.
Lisa Madigan would be best. The Speaker and his stepdaughter are on good terms so the Speaker-Governor infighting should go away. But the public probably wouldn’t like the nepotism. She is well liked though and did a credible job of consumer protection while Attorney-General.
If Obama had stayed in the Illinois Senate he would have been a good choice. Off in the realms of fantasyland, Dick Durbin leaving the Senate to run? I wouldn’t vote for him, but he would probably win. He’d be smarter to stay in the Senate, though.
Those two guys are politically green, but at least they have some time in public office under their belts unlike the two wealthy neophytes.
What do you think Madigan is waiting for? She’s been AG since 2003 — that’s four statewide election victories. That’s a long record in her own right And at least she knows her way around state offices.
She may think the public won’t buy it. She has said publicly that she doesn’t think that the Speaker and Governor should come from the same family. That may be a ploy – “No no Don’t throw me into that briar patch!”
I, personally, think that she doesn’t want her relationship with her stepfather spoiled by inevitable political conflict. Or, she may fear that she may be seen as her dad’s puppet. She did leave the door open should he retire.
As a feminist, you may think that male and female brains are identical. I know that’s not true. I’m not saying inferior/superior. I’m just saying different. I’ve spent seven decades trying to understand how women think and I haven’t a clue. I do know how men think and was much better at raising teenage boys than a teenage girl. Teenage girls are from outer space. Only gradually, at class reunions did I glimpse that the female world has its own fears and rivalries, quite distinct from the male world.
Here’s a take on this subject from a non-political site. Democrats Propose Rules to Break-up Broadband Monopolies
The rubes ain’t buying it.