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Centrism Is Not Corporatism

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Most politicians from the Democratic Party still don’t get it. Hillary Clinton’s unexpected 2016 defeat and the party’s ever-decreasing ability to win elections has left it in a state of confusion. As Clare Malone pointed out for the FiveThirtyEight blog:

At the beginning of Obama’s term, Democrats controlled 59 percent of state legislatures, while now they control only 31 percent, the lowest percentage for the party since the turn of the 20th century. They held 29 governor’s offices and now have only 16, the party’s lowest number since 1920.

Despite the party’s efforts to win the hearts and minds of more voters, it has no real message. Clare Foran’s recent article for The Atlantic analyzed the consequences of the Democrats’ 2017 losing streak in the year’s four special elections and the party’s failure to develop an effective response strategy:

“The national brand is toxic,” said Democratic Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio, who unsuccessfully challenged Pelosi for the title of House minority leader last year, in an interview. “There’s just no doubt about it. We are not connecting with people the way we need to connect with them.”

At the heart of the Democratic Party’s troubles is its refusal to take a stand in favor of populism. Instead, it allows the forces of corporatism to direct the party’s agenda. There has been a persistent infection afflicting the party since the days of the Democratic Leadership Council. Michael Corcoran explained how the DLC, which ascended with the success of Bill Clinton, became a tainted brand after revelations of sponsorship from such corporatist forces as the Koch brothers. Worse yet, the DLC agenda has been reincarnated through a “center-left” think tank known as Third Way. By late 2013, many astute commentators noted that Third Way’s board was heavily populated by Wall Street executives and other investment bankers.

Donald Trump was able to win the 2016 election with a false portrayal of himself as a “populist”, while Hillary Clinton’s close ties to Goldman Sachs and her outright refusal to support single-payer healthcare cemented her reputation as a corporatist. Nevertheless, the Democratic Party has failed to learn anything from this experience. The party refuses to identify itself as a standard bearer for populism, leaving a void to be filled by those right-wing voices who recast the struggle as populism against the power of the federal government, rather than populism vs. corporatism. Instead, there is an ever-increasing effort by Third Way to keep the party tied to a corporatist agenda:

They are attempting to convince the party to shun its base and further embrace the so-called “vital center,” and the corporatism that has long defined these groups.

According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted on July 13, 2017, only 37% of respondents agreed that the Democratic Party actually stood for something beyond merely opposing Donald Trump. A national poll conducted by Bloomberg News from July 8-12, 2017, indicated that the net favorable rating of the Democratic Party has remained unchanged at 42% since before the 2016 election (specifically August of that year). The poll found the party’s unfavorability rating at a more-significant 48%. Donald Trump’s dismal approval ratings are obviously doing nothing to help the Democratic Party. On August 3, 2017, Quinnipiac University published results of a poll indicating 51% support for replacing the current health care system with a single payer system in which Medicare would cover every American citizen. Only 38% of the respondents opposed that idea.

Too many venal Democratic politicians hide behind the excuse of “tacking to the center” while betraying their constituents in service of their own masters on K Street. Centrism involves the flexibility to embrace either liberal or conservative ideas, depending on the circumstances of the particular situation. In contrast, the Independent Voter Network provided an interesting explanation of how corporatism works. Back in 2010, the IVN served-up Ron Paul’s retort to the wingnut claim that President Obama was a socialist:

Corporatism is a system where businesses are nominally in private hands, but are in fact controlled by the government. In a corporatist state, government officials often act in collusion with their favored business interests to design polices that give those interests a monopoly position, to the detriment of both competitors and consumers.

Democrats would be wise to avoid the mistaken belief in supporting Republican objectives as the only route to victory in “red” states. For example, many conservative pundits argue that Democrat candidates would be foolish to support single-payer healthcare when seeking office in Republican strongholds. However, Trump’s victory demonstrated that populist causes could resonate with Republican-leaning voters. The Democratic Party needs to develop the courage to become a champion of populism instead of corporatism.

How The Democrats Self-Destruct

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June 29, 2009

For the past few days, we have been inundated with news reports detailing the self-destructive behavior of the late singing sensation, Michael Jackson.  Perhaps it is this heightened awareness of self-destruction that is causing people to take a closer look at the self-destructive behavior taking place within the Democratic Party.

Most notable is the behavior of President Obama.  As his Inauguration approached, many people were surprised to learn that some principal players selected for Obama’s economic team were the same people responsible for creating this mess during the Clinton years.  The most prominent of these is Larry Summers, who is expected to replace Ben Bernanke as Chairman of the Federal Reserve in January.  On June 24, Robert Scheer, on his Truthdig website, bemoaned the fact that Obama is following the “trickle down” strategy of bailing out the big banks, while doing nothing to really solve the mortgage crisis:

It’s not working.  The Bush-Obama strategy of throwing trillions at the banks to solve the mortgage crisis is a huge bust.  The financial moguls, while tickled pink to have $1.25 trillion in toxic assets covered by the feds, along with hundreds of billions in direct handouts, are not using that money to turn around the free fall in housing foreclosures.

*    *    *

Here again the administration, continuing the Bush strategy, is working the wrong end of the problem.  Although President Obama was wise enough to at least launch a job stimulus program, a far greater amount of federal funding benefits Wall Street as opposed to Main Street.

*    *    *

Why was I so naive as to have expected this Democratic president to not do the bidding of the banks when the last president from that party joined the Republicans in giving the moguls everything they wanted?  Please, Obama, prove me wrong.

If President Obama doesn’t prove Robert Scheer wrong, Obama might find himself facing some hostile crowds at the “town hall” meetings as 2012 approaches.

The President might also be surprised to encounter large-scale Democratic grassroots disappointment over his proposed “overhaul” of the financial regulatory system.  As I pointed out on June 18, President Obama’s financial reform proposal, released on that date, drew immediate criticism for the expanded powers granted to the Federal Reserve.  On June 24, The Nation (which prides itself on having a liberal bias) ran a harshly critical piece by William Greider, entitled:  “Obama’s False Reform”.  In addition to criticizing the expanded powers granted to the Federal Reserve, Greider emphasized that the proposal did not contain any significant measures, or “hard rules”, to reform the financial system.  Beyond that, Greider took Obama to task for the false claim that the regulatory system was overwhelmed by “the speed, scope and sophistication of a 21st century global economy”.  The article emphasized the need to “slow down the rush to weak solutions” by taking the time to find out about the root causes of the breakdown and then to address those causes:

Give subpoena power to Elizabeth Warren the Congressional Oversight Board she chairs.  Hire some of those investigative reporters who have no political investment in digging deeper into the mulch.  What exactly went wrong?  Who has bloody hands?  Where are the fundamental reforms?  If the economy returns to “normal’ rather soon, the ardor for serious reform might dissipate with much left undone.  That is a small risk to take, especially if the alternative is enacting the bankers’ pallid version of reform.

President Obama is now taking pride for the passage in the House of Representatives of the “climate change bill” (H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009).  Despite the claim of House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) that the bill’s passage in the House was “a transformative moment”, 44 Democrats voted against the bill.  One harsh critic of the bill is Democrat Dennis Kucinich.  Here’s some of what Mr. Kucinich had to say:

It won’t address the problem.  In fact, it might make the problem worse.  It sets targets that are too weak, especially in the short term, and sets about meeting those targets through Enron-style accounting methods.  It gives new life to one of the primary sources of the problem that should be on its way out — coal — by giving it record subsidies.  And it is rounded out with massive corporate giveaways at taxpayer expense.

*   *   *

.  .  .  the bill does not require any greenhouse gas reductions beyond current levels until 2030.

Worse yet is the Democrats’ fumbling and bumbling with their efforts at healthcare reform legislation.  Polling wiz Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com, did a meta-analysis of the polls conducted to assess public support for the so-called “public option”in healthcare coverage, wherein people have the option to buy health insurance from the government.  The insurance companies obviously aren’t interested in that sort of competition and they have launched advertising campaigns portraying it as controversial and flawed.  Nevertheless, Nate Silver’s report revealed that five of the six polls analyzed, demonstrated lopsided support for the public option, exceeding 60 percent.  Despite the strong popular support for the public option, Mr. Silver pointed out in another posting, how there is a great risk that Democrats might oppose the measure due to payoffs from lobbyists:

Lobbying contributions appear to have the largest marginal impact on middle-of-the-road Democrats.  Liberal Democrats are likely to hold firm to the public option unless they receive a lot of remuneration from healthcare PACs.  Conservative Democrats may not support the public option in the first place for ideological reasons, although money can certainly push them more firmly against it.  But the impact on mainline Democrats appears to be quite large:  if a mainline Democrat has received $60,000 from insurance PACs over the past six years, his likelihood of supporting the public option is cut roughly in half from 80 percent to 40 percent.

Awareness of this venality obviously has many commentators expressing outrage.  On June 23, Joe Conason wrote such an article for The New York Observer:

If Congress fails to enact health care reform this year –or if it enacts a sham reform designed to bail out corporate medicine while excluding the “public option” — then the public will rightly blame Democrats, who have no excuse for failure except their own cowardice and corruption.  The punishment inflicted by angry voters is likely to be reduced majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives — or even the restoration of Republican rule on Capitol Hill.

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The excuses sound different, but all of these lawmakers have something in common — namely, their abject dependence on campaign contributions from the insurance and pharmaceutical corporations fighting against real reform.

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Whenever Democratic politicians are confronted with this conflict between the public interest and their private fund-raising, they take offense at the implied insult.  They protest, as a spokesman for Senator Landrieu did, that they make policy decisions based on what is best for the people of their states, “not campaign contributions.”  But when health reform fails — or turns into a trough for their contributors, who will believe them?  And who will vote for them?

Those Democrats inclined to oppose the public option don’t appear to be too concerned about public indignation over their behavior.  Take California Senator Dianne Feinstein for example.  Do you really believe she gives a damn about voter outrage?  She was re-elected in 2006, despite criticism that as chair of the Senate Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee, she helped her husband, Iraq war profiteer Richard C. Blum, benefit from decisions she made as chair of that subcommittee.  So what if MoveOn.org is targeting her for ambivalence about the issue of healthcare reform?  MoveOn.org is also targeting other Democrats who are attempting to eliminate the public option.  If these officials have so much hubris as to believe that they can get away with scoffing at the public will, they had better start looking for new jobs now  . . . because the market isn’t very good.

Silver’s Streak

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November 24, 2008

One of the most interesting characters to emerge from the 2008 election cycle is a young man named Nate Silver.  Not to be upstaged by Sarah Palin, once he caught the interest of the mainstream media, Nate immediately picked up a new, snappy-looking pair of eyeglasses.

Nate is a 30-year-old math wizard who turned the world of political polling on its ear by introducing said ear to some new sounds that make nearly perfect mathematical and sonic sense.  He graduated cum laude from the University of Chicago in 1980 with a major in Economics.  He then took a job for a few years, working for a consulting firm.  During that time, he developed a statistical system to forecast the performance of professional baseball players.  In 2003, he went to work for a group producing an annual book on professional baseball player performance analysis and performance forecasts, called Baseball Prospectus.  He then sold his statistical analysis system to that company and joined their staff.

In November of 2007, Nate began using his skills and systems to make forecasts of the Presidential primaries, using the pseudonym:  “Poblano” on the Daily Kos website.  On February 11, 2008, neocon William Kristol wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times, wherein he made note of “an interesting regression analysis at the Daily Kos Web site” done by Mr. Silver.  The next month, Nate started his blog, FiveThirtyEight.com, where he utilized his new system for analyzing and forecasting Presidential primary results, as well as the ultimate outcome the 2008 Presidential election.  As a consequence of this endeavor, the studios at CNN and MSNBC quickly became familiar surroundings to him.  By November 14, 2008, The New York Observer had this to say about Nate:

Mr. Silver’s statistical skills were ratified when the outcome of the presidential race aligned almost exactly with his final predictions both for the popular vote and the Electoral College breakdown  …

Later that day, Leon Neyfakh reported on The Observer website that Nate had inked a book deal with Penguin Group, USA including a $700,000 advance.  Although this advance is only ten percent of the amount allegedly offered as an advance to Sarah Palin for “her” “book”, you need to keep in mind that Nate is only 30 years old and Sarah will be a grandmother soon.

As the recount for Minnesota’s Senatorial election moves along, Nate’s November 23 posting on his FiveThirtyEight.com website has received quite a bit of attention.  The title alone says it all:  “Projection:  Franken to Win Recount by 27 Votes”.  Will Mr. Silver’s “streak” continue?  A reader, identified as “Max” posted the following comment on that blog:  “If you are right about this you should put all others out of business.”

Nate provided us with another interesting take on the 2008 election, with a particular focus on the state of California.  I was surprised at how Maureen Dowd’s article in the November 23 New York Times exhibited either an unfamiliarity with Nate’s California analysis or (less likely) a refusal to agree with it.  To my disappointment, I detected Ms. Dowd’s apparent acceptance of the “conventional wisdom” concerning California’s controversial ballot initiative:

This month, gays who supported Barack Obama had the bittersweet experience of seeing some of the black and Latino voters who surged to the polls to vote Democratic also vote for Proposition 8, which turned gay “I dos” into “You can’ts.”

She should have known better.  I would expect a pundit of her stature to be familiar with Nate’s November 11 posting on FiveThirtyEight.com:  “Prop 8 Myths”.  Here is some of what he had to say:

But the notion that Prop 8 passed because of the Obama turnout surge is silly.

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At the end of the day, Prop 8’s passage was more a generational matter than a racial one.  If nobody over the age of 65 had voted, Prop 8 would have failed by a point or two.  It appears that the generational splits may be larger within minority communities than among whites, although the data on this is sketchy.

Get with it, Maureen!  If Al Franken turns out to be Minnesota’s new junior Senator, you will no longer be justified in overlooking the observations of Nate Silver.