Turning Points

One great consolation of senescence is that the memory of hard times past survives.  While younger people think of Tr*mpism as unprecedented, I have not forgotten "the Reagan Revolution."

Reagan conspicuously inaugurated his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers had been murdered in 1964.  He went on to slash taxes on the rich, decimate the labor movement, deregulate banking and industry, cripple environmental regulation, demean feminism, ignore the AIDS epidemic, shred the social safety net, double the military budget, finance third-world despots and their death squads, and preside over the glorification of greed.  His "base" was virtually indistinguishable from Tr*mp's: working class whites threatened by socioeconomic change.  Tr*mpian appeals to nationalism and the restoration of an imagined golden age — once known as "Morning in America" — inspire in this old man a powerful sense of déjà vu.

Reagan did immense damage; and one institution that suffered spectacularly was the Democratic Party.  Democrats responded to America's rightward lurch by empowering the Democratic Leadership Council, so-called "centrists" who led the party's stampede to the right during the Clinton years.  Only by comparison with Bill Clinton can Barack Obama be considered "progressive."  Obama came to power surrounded by the same Robert Rubin acolytes who guided Clinton era economics, and his social policy echoed rather than led cultural change that already was underway.  In the meanwhile, Republicans crippled Democratic power in Congress and in the States.

Right now, Democrats are confronting an existential choice: either continue the disastrous course of the Clintonian establishment, or line up behind populist progressives like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Keith Ellison.  The next Chair of the Democratic National Committee will be elected at the DNC's winter meeting, February 23–26.  The leading candidates are the progressive wing's Keith Ellison and the establishment's Thomas Perez.

Only a genuinely progressive agenda can reclaim the support of the "Reagan Democrats" and revitalize the Democratic Party.  I encourage serious activists to put aside their Sharpies and poster board long enough to make personal contact with Democratic leaders in their localities, and demand support for Ellison.  "More of the same" no longer is a viable option.

Regarding excess

To those who think the public mourning for Michael Jackson is excessive, let me say two words:

Ronald Reagan.

.....

The money from the Obama stimulus package finally is finding its way into the economy, and some economists are saying that it won't be enough. It won't, but don't hold your breath while waiting for more. It seems that a substantial majority of Democrats in the Senate actually are Republicans, while a dozen or so actually are Whigs. As for those who nominally are Republicans, well... Does anybody remember a guy named Mussolini?

I'm too lazy to look up the specific posts, but I'm sure that when the stimulus was under discussion last year I was pushing direct aid to the states. The states, remember, tend to have balanced budget provisions in their constitutions, and when a whopping economic meltdown comes along and tax revenues are way down, the states have to enact whopping budget cuts.

Those who worry that the current stimulus spending is inflationary might bear in mind that cuts in state spending significantly outweigh the increase in federal spending. The overall impact of combined government spending right now is deflationary. Lost decade, anyone?

The chance for another stimulus bill right now is nil, but just in case somebody in Washington decides to act rationally, let me reiterate: give the goddamned money to the states, to restore the jobs and programs they're cutting even as we speak. Money used to restore cuts gets into the economy a lot more efficiently than money for new spending.

Dereaganizing America

Can they do it? Can Obama & Co. actually manage to undo close to three decades of damage? Can they they, at long last, end the Age of Reagan?

Needless to say, I'm hoping the answer is "yes." I have especially high hopes for tax restructuring, bringing back some of the progressivity lost over the years. If it were my call, the restructuring would be considerably more aggressive, with a top marginal rate somewhere around 45%, but just getting back to Clinton era taxation is a step in the right direction.

Frankly, however, I think the middle class cuts may be a mistake. It's always a lot easier to cut taxes than to raise them, and one of the main reasons we have the deficit problems we do today is because every politician is a Keynesian in rough times, happy to slice taxes and increase spending. The real problem comes in periods of rapid growth, when Keynes would have us increase taxes and cut government spending. There's no real incentive to do it, because tax collections are going up with increased incomes and business activity. Government is flush with cash -- so why would a politician even consider raising taxes or bringing home a bit less pork?

As a matter of fact, in good times politicians are inclined to cut taxes even more than in bad times -- because government seems to be able to afford it -- but that's always a really bad idea. The Keynesian model is to build a surplus in the good times, to offset the deficits incurred when growth is off and stimulus is needed. Putting on the brakes when growth is accelerating also reduces the likelihood of bubbles -- and we've all come to know what those can do.

As for aspects of tax policy other than income tax, where all Obama really has to do is wait for the Bush tax cuts to expire, some real effort will be required. The problem is not the Republicans, who are so closely identified as lackeys of the rich that they have virtually no legitimacy at this time. The problem will be Democrats with obligations to various special interests. If direct payments to agribusiness are substantially reduced, I'll be pleasantly surprised. There's a better chance, I think, of eliminating the subsidies for insurance companies providing Medicare Advantage, but it's certainly not a done deal.

The "experts" are finally coming around to the point of view that most Americans have held all along -- that the economy is in worse shape than government and business leaders have been willing to admit. I find it very hard to believe that the unemployment rate will stay below 10% for the remainder of this year, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it went higher still. Consider that employment levels are very slow to recover even when the economy starts expanding again, and you have to admit that America's problems are likely to be around longer than the Obama administration might like -- and possibly longer than the Obama administration.

I'm trying to look for the silver lining. The egalitarian economic opportunities of the 1950s and 1960s, a generation of real advances for average workers, were made possible by the vicissitudes or the Great Depression. If it takes hard times to re-establish social and economic justice, than hard times are just what we need.

Human memory is short, of course, and history (as my former students insisted) is "boring," so eventually the locusts will descend again. In the meanwhile, though, we should be spreading as much economic insecticide as possible.

To Barack Obama from an old white guy

A little while ago, I posted the video you can watch above to YouTube, as a response to a video from the Obama campaign which you can watch here. If you don't find my video in the "video responses" section, it means the Obama campaign didn't "accept" it -- that is, decided they'd rather not have it associated with their video.

If you didn't have the patience to listen to me go on for close to ten minutes, here's the gist of it -- I tell Obama that what I really want him to do is undo the Reagan Revolution. I tell him he should significantly raise taxation of the very rich, re-regulate a lot of what's been deregulated over the past quarter-century, and run a government that's actively pro-union. Beyond that, I want him to put government workers back on the payroll to do most of the work that's been contracted out, and I assert that the Iraq War was started specifically so the private sector could loot the Treasury.

Yes, it's one of my usual diatribes, and if it actually appears on YouTube as a response to Obama's video, I'll be flabbergasted -- but there's at least a chance that somebody in the Obama campaign will have looked at it.

The truth is that I don't expect Obama could accomplish what I think needs accomplishment even if he wanted to. The biggest problem I see with an Obama presidency has nothing to do with Obama. Rather, it has to do with the fractious nature of the Democratic Party. Will Democrats in Congress unite behind Obama if he wins? I'm guessing they'll give him all the stunning support they gave, say, Jimmy Carter. Thanks in part to Clinton pulling the party to the right, there are quite a few powerful Democrats who are quite conservative -- and the fact that Congress becomes more and more of a millionaire's club with each election cycle won't much help either.

By the way, I tried to make the video more visually interesting than just my talking head by adding a bunch of stills and animations, some of which are moderately amusing. If you haven't watched it yet, please give it a try.

And in this corner...

So, is that a foot in his mouth? Yup. Here's what he actually said:

"I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what’s different are the times. I do think that, for example, the 1980 election was different.

"I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not, and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.

"I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s, and government had grown and grown, but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling -- which was we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing."

Now, political candidates say some pretty stupid and self-destructive things from time to time, but this wasn't just a momentary lapse -- he went on and on and on. What was he thinking? Granted, he wasn't endorsing Reaganomics -- but what was all that crap about "dynamism" and "optimism" and "entrepreneurship?" We need policy, not feel-good pap, which is Obama's stock in trade.

In the meanwhile, it's starting to sound like the current economic crisis is moving Hillary a bit to the left -- which is to say, further from Bill. In the early years of the Clinton Administration, I always had a strong suspicion that Hillary was considerably more liberal than her husband. Maybe I was right. I hope so.

Anyway, I think it's time to push Bill off into the background. Push him far enough away, and she might be able to pick up some support from those of us planning to vote for John Edwards -- or, more important, from the delegates Edwards will be sending to the Democratic convention.

Most of America, these days, is too young to remember when conventions actually picked Presidential candidates. Wouldn't it be something if both parties wound up picking their candidates at their conventions this time around? How about some real negotiation over the party platforms, and candidates who actually run on those platforms instead of on the advice of public relations firms.

It's starting to look like politics out there. Wow!