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Mmm...Vacuity
For the record, I wasn't trying to bash John Edwards here, I was saying that even though voting for a one-term Senator who left the congress four years ago and has no other experience in politics seems a little ridiculous, it'd be better than voting for candidates who suck. There's a vacuity problem, and Edwards does better (so far) than anyone I've seen at addressing it. What vacuity problem? Well, there's liberalism as upper-middle class self-indulgence and there's what Brad Plumer flags as a lack of an economic vision. Underlying it all is the dark side of The Emerging Democratic Majority's promise -- the chance that the Democratic Party becomes little more than the class mobilization tool of the professionals.
April 12, 2005 | Permalink
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I love the story of what Bill Clinton said after Robert Rubin and other aides explained the economy to him: "You mean to tell me that the success of my program and my reelection hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of fucking bond traders?" But... [Read More]
Tracked on Apr 12, 2005 5:17:05 AM
Comments
I wouldn't say there's a lack of economic vision in Democratic circles. It's not a sophisticated vision, mind you, or a logically consistent one, but it's there alright.
1. Wealth causes poverty.
2. The poor get poorer every year, while the rich somehow manage to get richer every year by stealing from the poor.
3. The rich will always make lots of money no matter what we do.
4. We can always get more money by taking it from the rich. They always have plenty.
All Mr. Drum's post demonstrates is that the operational Democratic definition of "rich" is someone who makes more than I do.
Other than that, it's the usual private-sector-as-perpetual-pinata worldview - anytime we want more money, we just beat it with a stick.
Posted by: Dick Eagleson | Apr 12, 2005 1:00:08 AM
i guess everybody else vented their spleens on the other thread. but let me echo your sentiment: i wanted to dismiss Edwards as a lightweight in the primaries, but his stump speech was the first time since Clinton that i heard a democrat who actually connected the dots. i was disappointed by most of what i saw from him in the general election, but on some level i'm hooked. he seems to be the only guy at the top tier of the party who has the ability to tie issue positions into a larger, coherent and broadly appealing vision of where democrats should want to lead the country. and when you come down to it, is there any more relevant qualification for the presidency than that?
the one thing i'd take issue with you on is that his scant Senate experience is somehow a liability. i think being in the senate may the worst possible preparation for the presidency. not just winning the job (who do you like as a candidate, JFK or LBJ? Clinton or Dole?), but also doing the job (the list of 20th century presidents w/ senate experience: Truman (good), JFK (pretty good), LBJ (highest highs, lowest lows), Nixon (okay, he had the lowest lows) and Harding (disastrous) - not a stand-out cast, and there's no obvious correlation between effectiveness and longevity in the senate and success in the presidency). Edwards was smart to get out of there, and Obama should take a lesson.
Posted by: Tom | Apr 12, 2005 1:22:36 AM
What Eagleson said, without irony or sarcasm.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | Apr 12, 2005 1:53:13 AM
Dick Eagleson,
I think there is an economic justice argument to be made, but the more compelling one for you may be simple self-interest. Thinking in the long run, it is cheaper for the country to educate than to incarcerate. It is cheaper to expand health coverage than to have poor people showing up at the emergency room for everything. In general, it is cheaper to prevent than fix. And in the meantime, prosperity is increased, not just in terms of economic growth, but in the general feeling of well-being among our fellow citizens. It is true that Democratic economic arguments are often couched in terms that make conservatives wince, but they are also more objectively effective at achieving the goal of growth and prosperity, even if the rhetoric is distasteful to you.
Posted by: Kiril | Apr 12, 2005 2:25:39 AM
That means it's good for rich people, too, but rich people in general, not just insiders with connections to whoever happens to be in power now.
Posted by: Kiril | Apr 12, 2005 2:27:38 AM
In a sense, you are right that "voting for a one-term Senator who left the congress four years ago and has no other experience in politics seems a little ridiculous". It IS ridiculous. But..don't you live in Washington?! 'Ridiculous' is too mild a word for what's been going on there in recent years, and people (the vaunted 'American People') know it. They don't like Bush very much, they HATE congress, and they hate Washington in general. You and I can point out that Gingrich and then this current crop are mostly to blame for the degradation, etc. but the franchisees out in the country don't care. They just think it stinks and - no matter how inchoate - they're absolutely right. You and I pine for rationality and coherence, but...there is no 'ought to be', there is only what is. What's the best way to respond to absurdity? To deny it or to digest and master it?
It remains to be seen whether or not Edwards is the answer, but there's no doubt in my mind that he's on the right track. It's only people inside the beltway who are made nervous by 'citizen-politicians'. George W. Bush, of all people, was just elected to a second term. I rest my case.
Thanks for providing the forum for discussion about how lame the Democrats really are. It's definitely salutary.
Posted by: jonnybutter | Apr 12, 2005 2:31:14 AM
Wolcott:Politics of Denial
I am not the only one who believes we are headed for catastrophe. I say to Eagleson that his point #2 is a fact, that when Bush declared the SS Trust Fund to be worthless pieces of paper full scale class-war was openly declared...a class war that one side has been fighting since the early eighties. I don't know that there is an opposing side anymore. The bankruptcy bill was not encouraging.
So we have one rich people's party with the lumpenproletariat as shock troops; and another rich people's party with the intelligentsia/professionals as shock troops. And conditions comparable to 1930-35 or at very best 1976-80 fast approaching.
I am no commie, an economy looking similar to France would satisfy, but I see no incremental, moderate path to getting there. Perhaps Edwards or Hilary as stealth candidate is best, as FDR ran on balancing the budget.
And maybe the very best possible outcome will look like Singapore or Red China. But I am trying to think of a political strategy to deal with 5-20 years of flat or negative GDP, and to counter the advantages the right-wing will gain from the consequent disappointment and resentment.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | Apr 12, 2005 3:09:10 AM
Kiril - I've heard the "justice" argument. It's crap. The left likes to pretend that the only difference between the poor and the rich is that the poor, for some unaccountable reason, have no money. Maybe their piggybanks all got hit by meteors or something. Horse hockey. Some people are poor because they just swam the Rio Grande or got off the boat from Bumfuckistan. Most of them will be doing better than we native-born in 20 years. Some people are poor because they've had a longer than usual run of bad luck. Down and out may be what they temporarily are, but it's not often what they stay because it's not how they see themselves. The vast majority of the poor are poor because they have dysfunctional values and beliefs and act on them in inevitably dysfunctional ways. Dysfunctional people who suddenly win the lottery tend to piss it all away in short order and go back to being what they've always been. This isn't nice, maybe, but it is justice - the undeserving get the shortest rations - not Bizarro World "justice" in which the undeserving get open-ended mooching rights against the deserving.
We started putting an end to this kind of nonsense when we broke Clinton's arms and passed welfare reform in 1996 and whaddaya know, a lot of longtime slackers actually got off their duffs and got jobs. No Democrat except Mickey Kaus thought this was a good idea, either at the time or since.
As for educating vs. incarcerating, how about both? I'd like to see all felony sentences made indeterminate. A felon would have to do whatever time was assessed for the crime and also pass the GED before being released. Ought to do wonders for the recidivism rate and keep the hardest of the hardcore knuckleheads off the streets on voluntary LWOPs.
Bob - Well, gee, which is it going to be? A wicked deflation, ala 1930-35, or rampant inflation, ala the 70's? Can't very well be both at once.
an economy looking similar to France would satisfy
Bob, it doesn't even satisfy the French.
trying to think of a political strategy to deal with 5-20 years of flat or negative GDP
Maybe we can ask France what they're planning to do? They are, after all, several years ahead of us in that race to 20 consecutive years of doldrums.
maybe the very best possible outcome will look like Singapore or Red China
So we're going to transform America from its current state of plutocratic savagery into a worker's paradise where the bosses get rich by shooting you and selling your giblets?
Posted by: Dick Eagleson | Apr 12, 2005 5:51:03 AM
Thinking in the long run, it is cheaper for the country to educate than to incarcerate.
The problem is that they are not thinking 'in the long run'. They are thinking what any super-rich parasitic decadent aristocrat is thinking: apres moi, le deluge. Liberalism doesn't work here: they can't be reasoned with, only dealt with.
Posted by: abb1 | Apr 12, 2005 6:54:51 AM
Liberalism doesn't work here
Yeah. I've noticed it doesn't seem to work very well anywhere else either.
Posted by: Dick Eagleson | Apr 12, 2005 7:22:26 AM
Mr. Yglesias's worry about "the chance that the Democratic Party becomes little more than the class mobilization tool of the professionals" is amusing. For one thing, the tense is wrong.
The working poor and lower-middle class, simply because they are employed in a great variety of industries, have a kind of economic perspective that the Democratic leadership has lost. They cannot be made to think of capitalists as the enemy, because their employers are not their enemies. The employer-as-enemy meme can take hold only among people who do not actually need to work at any particular job.
You can create wealth through work, or redistribute it through subsidies of various types, but there is no significant overlap between these two programs. Thankfully, people appear to understand this, and to prefer the opportunity to improve themselves over the hope of having their boats floated for them by redistribution.
Posted by: sammler | Apr 12, 2005 7:49:07 AM
Matt writes: "For the record, I wasn't trying to bash John Edwards here"
Like everyone else, I missed the rather obvious point of your previous post, which is nicely summed up with this:
Nevertheless, for those of us who feel that the Democrats have been ludicrously unable to devise a persuasive, accurate, and potentially effective rhetorical critique of the contemporary Republican Party and tie it to a reasonable account of what values would motivate a decent governing party, I think there can be little disagreement that Edwards has done much, much better than the rest.
I guess I'd address the "prima facie ridiculous" problem as others did by pointing out the previous examples of George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Jimmy Carter. In other words, "prima facie ridiculous" is not a stumbling block in the Presidential arena.
As to the vacuity problem, I think that's another way of restating Carville's "lack of a narrative" problem. And the way to solve that is to push forward leaders who can tell a coherent narrative - which is exactly why Edwards seems the best solution.
Posted by: Petey | Apr 12, 2005 7:53:33 AM
"and there's what Brad Plumer flags as a lack of an economic vision."
Hence "valuing work over wealth" as an organizing philosophy...
Posted by: Petey | Apr 12, 2005 8:14:02 AM
How many of you watched his speech where he announced he was a candidate for president? I suggest you do, before you offer a final opinion of Edwards.
That said, the idea that liberalism is vacuous is interesting, but I think politics is about personality (want to have beer with) and/or hatred (hate fags, hate smart person)
Posted by: MattB | Apr 12, 2005 9:22:17 AM
"Bob - Well, gee, which is it going to be? A wicked deflation, ala 1930-35, or rampant inflation, ala the 70's? Can't very well be both at once."
No economist here, of course. Commodity inflation, rising import prices except the Fed has nearly committed to a targeted rate of 2%, which implies pretty steep interest rate hikes. Devalued dollar, drop in asset values, decline in consumption limits pricing power. Asia, seeing there is no longer any market to export to, stop buying the T-bills. Dollar drops further, oil prices rise and then decline as economy grinds to a halt.
There are neither Keynesian or Supply-side tools available, and Volkeresque tightening would flat out bankrupt us. Devalued dollar won't help much, we no longer have a manufacturing base for exports. Energy cost will keep us from rebuilding.
My guess is resource war. Oops....
Posted by: bob mcmanus | Apr 12, 2005 9:23:57 AM
I'm with Petey on the ridiculous-ness of ALL successful presidential candidates. Since Nixon, only 1 president (Bush I) has had anything close to approximating the bio people expect the President to have. What's more, the candidate with the more "presidential" bio almost always loses (cf. Kerry, Gore, Dole, Bush in '92...).
But yet no one seems to realize this, and in fact concludes the opposite when choosing a candidate. Why did Kerry, who no one really liked, get the nomination? He was the most "Presidential" candidate. The thing to note should have been precisely that Edwards (as well as Dean and to some extent Clark) did not have the typical bio, and thus had other things going for him that got him into the discussion to begin with. It seems that these non-biographical advantages (personality, for example) are the things that win you elections in the end.
Posted by: right | Apr 12, 2005 9:57:53 AM
> i wanted to dismiss Edwards as a lightweight in the
> primaries, but his stump speech was the first time since
> Clinton that i heard a democrat who actually connected
> the dots.
Then came the debate against Cheney, where he looked like a lightweight.
And I am sorry, but I know a lot of Midwestern libruls who really wanted to like the K/E ticket but just couldn't get past the fact that Edwards is the last man in America still using a blow dryer. I know it is shallow, but we can't afford that kind of starting point.
Cranky
Posted by: Cranky Observer | Apr 12, 2005 10:09:22 AM
I'm personally inclined to buy all the adulation of Edwards, but I think the points on the other thread -- that he failed badly against Kerry in L.A., he didn't win in the primaries, that he couldn't get a clear, convincing CW win against lying Cheney, that he didn't do much for the ticket, if anything, that he doesn't have enough 'brawl' in him -- are well made.
I'd like to have a candidate, ala Santos, who only makes commercials of him looking right into the camera. E.g. -- "The U.S. is gaining a million dollars in debt every minute. It is wrong -- it is immoral -- for us to be doing this to our children, to mortgage their future to the Chinese." IMO.
Posted by: MattB | Apr 12, 2005 11:03:48 AM
The working poor and lower-middle class, simply because they are employed in a great variety of industries, have a kind of economic perspective that the Democratic leadership has lost. They cannot be made to think of capitalists as the enemy, because their employers are not their enemies. The employer-as-enemy meme can take hold only among people who do not actually need to work at any particular job.
This is one of the most elegant summaries of the history of labor relations in America that I have ever read. I remember reading how a few bored independently-wealthy dilettantes tried and failed to start something called "labor unions" in this country. Imagine the horror if the people who actually had to work at a particular job had had their love for their employers poisoned, and been convinced that they didn't like seven-day work weeks or child labor. Redistributionist policies and undreamt-of hostility between workers and employers would have snuffed out all economic growth in the twentieth century. Instead, we can all work at Wal-Mart (which inspires only love in its workforce) and get our health coverage from Medicaid. Whoops, Medicaid is redistributionist. What I meant was, we can all get our health coverage from the Fake Libertarian Fairy of Employer Love!
Posted by: mds | Apr 12, 2005 12:06:59 PM
Why is it that people like DickE still manage to surprise me with their ignorance?
Was it so long ago that the rich got richer, but the number of people in poverty went down, and the country went from record deficits to record surpluses? (And the number of abortions went down, etc.)
Change, median household income (2003 dollars)
Bush II: -$1,535
Clinton: +$5,489
Bush I: -$1,314
Change, number in poverty
Bush II: +4,280,000
Clinton: -6,433,000
Bush I: +6,269,000
As pointed out @ http://www.andrewtobias.com/
According to this in the L.A. Times, worker pay for the last 14 months has trailed inflation. In real dollars, workers have taken a tiny pay cut.
But not to worry: In the same time frame, corporate profits hit record highs . . . and the tax rate on dividends paid out of those profits has been slashed by 62% since President Bush took office. (I know some of you think relatively little cash is involved, but $441 billion was paid out in personal dividends in 2004, most of it to those already best off.)
The most outspokenly religious president in our history, Bush’s unique interpretation of Christ’s philosophy is to cut programs for the poor while slashing taxes for the rich.
Posted by: MattB | Apr 12, 2005 12:08:30 PM
Lol. I just imagined employees falling in love with their employers. Bend over, relax and try to enjoy it, Sammler.
Posted by: abb1 | Apr 12, 2005 12:19:02 PM
Dick,
You are absolutely clueless about what liberal justice really means. "The vast majority of the poor are poor because they have dysfunctional values and beliefs and act on them in inevitably dysfunctional ways." Liberals know that, but we don't a priori know that about individual poor people like conservatives do. Your argument is a convenience argument. A wash your hands argument.
And besides, they are dysfunctional for a reason. Most likely they had poor parents, poor schooling and poor community or like you say, they immigrated from a poor country. Why would you deny basic health care and education to people like this? How is this justice?
Liberal justice sees incentive and reward set at ridiculous exponential levels. If you work hard and succeed in this country you can conceivably make thousands of dollars per hour of work. That's not justice or incentive, that's ridiculous. I have no problem having that sort of ridiculous reward system so long as there is a guaranteed minimum standard of living for particpatory citizens and a guaranteed minimum standard of education for all children no matter their parent's participation.
It's simple. People are exploding with ridiculour wealth put to little good use. It's a sham and runs counter to our Christian tradition and the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independance. American has the ability to be better than it already is. I wish conservatives could figure that out.
Posted by: kj | Apr 12, 2005 1:00:50 PM
Eagleson,
Have you been to a prison lately? It's pretty hard to get GED training and tutoring? Community College is available via correspondence course, but it cost $3,000. And there are very few in prison university programs, because the Republicans cut all the Pell Grants for felons, which is really dumb, because the recidivism rate for those who get a college education in prison is incredibly low.
Posted by: Abby (who longs for a cool blog posting name) | Apr 12, 2005 3:30:06 PM
Bob - What commodities are "inflating?" Oil prices are up and will probably go higher. This has also been true of building materials. This is not inflation, this is prices responding to demand increases exceeding supply increases - temporarily.
The demand increase, in turn, exists because the two most populous nations on Earth have decided to cease redistributing poverty in favor of creating wealth. The demand for building materials should, thus, remain permanently higher and current price spikes will be moderated by additional production capacity in due course.
This will even be true of oil in some fashion. The current price is not out of line with historical norms. If the price of found oil goes high enough, tar sands, oil shale and conversion of coal will - particularly here and in China - keep the price from spiralling endlessly.
What "rising import prices?" If you mean oil and building materials, we've already covered that. Did you have something else in mind. It certinly can't be computer components, clothing or the outputs of any other heavily globalized industry. Geez, even cars are cheaper than they used to be - sometimes even without inflation-adjusting the prices.
What has any of this got to do with interest rate hikes? Interest rates have rarely been lower in the last 50 years. The Fed doesn't seem to have any trouble selling T-bills. If they notch interest rates up a bit it would actually make that job easier.
As the dollar has no fixed exchange rate against anything else, I'm not sure what "devalued dollar" means. The value of the dollar has been both further up and further down relative to other currencies over the past 40 years. The "right" price for the dollar is whatever the market makes it - in Euros, Yen or Slobovian Pfoofniks.
Drop in asset values? Other than post-bubble Nasdaq stocks, I can't think of much else. Do you mean housing? Housing is, in most markets, about to hit a temporary ceiling, which it has always done when price appreciation has exceeded general economic growth for enough quarters. In a few bellwhether places, like Las Vegas, the peak has already come and prices are softening a bit. This will play out just like it did in the early 90's when the last housing bubble passed gas. Prices will spend a few years marking time and then rise again.
Decline in consumption? It's likely there will be another mild recession before 2010, but nothing major. I'd be fascinated to see the reasoning of anyone predicting a major collapse who is not also selling gold coins or freeze-dried lentils, or who isn't a clueless liberal who predicts disaster as a matter of reflex whenever his party is out of power.
Sorry Bob, I know the left has an apparently unshakable nostalgia for the good old days of breadlines and little Johnny Galbraith over at the Office of Price Administration deciding how much a can of baked beans should cost, but them days ain't a-comin' back.
Oh, and we do too have a manufacturing base for exports. The manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy has remained within a point or so of 25% of GDP for decades. It exports a lot too. The fact that we import even more manufactures than we export is simply a consequence of preferring bargains. It's true that said sector employs a smaller percentage of the U.S. workforce than it used to. But the same is even more true of farms and I presume that not even a liberal would be clueless enough to put a sentence like, "we no longer have an agricultural base for exports," out there in public.
We won't rebuild because we won't crash in the first place. Energy costs, as noted, have built-in limit switches. That also puts "resource war" firmly in the ranks of the non-starters.
Just as an exercise in consistency checking, though, I'm curious about who we would putatively be fighting for said resources? China? If we're all huddling around oil drum fires, too poor to buy anything from them, where the heck are they going to come up with an alternative market? Europe? If they can't sell to us, they go broke too. How do two pauper nations afford a war? Who'd promote the fight, so to speak? China ain't exactly next door. If we can't afford a pot to piss in, we sure can't afford the gas to go 10,000 miles and fight. Maybe the People's Liberation Army could be induced to come to Las Vegas and stage the war at Caesar's. Personally, I don't think even the pay-per-view rights would interest anyone in paying their way here.
We're okay, Bob. We're going to stay okay. Get thee to a pharmacy. Prozac is generic now.
Posted by: Dick Eagleson | Apr 12, 2005 7:16:16 PM
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