Yesterday a fellow Democratic Town Committee member sent out a link to Progressive Policy Institute President Will Marshall‘s recent essay, “How to Save the Democratic Party from Itself.” PPI is basically a mill for “New Democrat”/Democratic Leadership Council ideas, i.e., the type of policies that Bill Clinton pushed. (If you read this blog on a regular basis you’ve probably picked up on the fact that I’m not a fan of New Democrat/DLC types. I’m not a big fan of neoliberalism.) Anyhow, I read Marshall’s essay. Suffice it to say I was not favorably impressed. My comments on his essay follow below but I’ll summarize in the event you don’t have the inclination or the patience to read to the end.
What bothered me so much about Marshall’s essay was not the ideas presented but the lack thereof. Take, for example, the debate amongst Democrats on the merits of free trade arguments. (Recall the Bill Clinton signed NAFTA into law over the objection of a significant number of Democrats.) If you want people to support free trade agreements then argue the merits of free trade agreements. Jeff Faux and Brad DeLong recently engaged in a sharp exchange on the merits of NAFTA. (Faux with the more traditional liberal position and DeLong with the neoliberal view.) Read their arguments here:
- Jeff Faux, NAFTA, Twenty Years After: A Disaster
- Brad DeLong, Was NAFTA a Disasta?: Wednesday Focus for July 30, 2014
- Jeff Faux, The Neoliberal Mind at Work: Brad DeLong’s Muddled Defense of NAFTA
I believe Faux’s argument carries the day but DeLong’s arguments can’t be dismissed. Contrast the Faux-DeLong exchange with Marshall’s implicit support of free trade agreements in his essay. There are no arguments in favor of free trade agreements in Marshall’s essay. The extent of Marshall’s argument is “All the cool kids support free trade agreements so if Democrats want to get elected then they should too.” That’s it. There’s no substantive argument for why you should adopt Marshall’s preferred position. It’s a recurring theme. And it’s a variant of argument by authority – which happens to drive me nuts. The bottom line is I’d rather argue with sane and honest conservatives and Republican sympathizers (e.g., Reihan Salam, James Pethokoukis, Josh Barro, Bruce Bartlett, or the occasional writer at Reason.) than with a weasely neoliberal like Marshall. The former argue their positions on their merits. They invite you to debate them. I respect that. In contrast, Marshall has no arguments. He’s just trying to pick your pocket. I do not respect him.
[UPDATE: See also Luke Brinker’s comments in Salon, The progressives are coming!: Why the latest attempt to “save” Democrats from populism is so pathetic.]
Without further ado, here’s my paragraph-by-paragraph critique of Marshall’s essay:
Marshall’s essay is a load of crap.
It’s not just any old load of crap – like the flaming bag of dogshit you left on your annoying neighbor’s doorstep that Halloween when you were a kid. It’s a huge fetid steaming pile – one whose vile vapors kill every living thing for 5.7 km downwind and then scorches the lungs and sinuses of all creatures in its path for the next 23 km. It’s a pile so large that you can see it with the naked eye from the International Space Station.
The fundamental problem is not finding common cause with centrists or those on the center-right. (I’m all for finding common cause when doing so improves upon the status quo.) The fundamental problem with Marshall’s essay is that Will Marshall is a mendacious bastard.
You get indications of this early on. While Marshall harps on the “left”, he doesn’t call out specific policy positions which define “left” or “populist”. To the extent that he insinuates what constitutes “left”/”populist” he fails identify significant constituencies – let alone people in positions in power – who hold such positions. Failure to define the characteristics of the group he’s criticizing is the first of many problems with his essay. In the spirit of magnanimity, let me suggest some criteria which constitute a left or liberal political philosophy in the present day:
- Do you support single-payer health care?
- Do you support taxing capital gains and other unearned income at the same rate as earned income?
- Do you support increasing the highest Federal income tax rate to 70%?
- Did you oppose the Bowles-Simpson committee’s recommendations? (Whether you supported or opposed, what was the basis for your position?)
- Back during the 2008/2009 financial crisis did you advocate for banks to be nationalized? (If so, why do believe that was the best course of action?)
- Do you believe that repealing Glass-Stegall was an awful idea?
- Do you believe that the US should withdraw from NAFTA?
- Do you oppose the TPP?
- Do you believe the $106k income cap on paying Social Security tax should be eliminated?
- Do you believe that the DoD budget should be cut by 50% and re-allocated to other endeavors?
- Do you oppose US military intervention in Syria?
- Do you believe that most, if not all, of the Bush administration should have been tried for war crimes?
- Do you oppose the administration’s drone-based bombing campaigns?
- Do you oppose construction of the Keystone XL pipeline?
- Do you believe that the US must cut CO2 emissions by 60% (relative to 2005 levels) by 2030?
If you answered “Yes.” to all of those questions – even to 2/3 of them – then you’re a liberal. That stated, what fraction of the Democratic party leadership would answer “Yes.” to even half of those questions? I doubt they’d go on record as saying “Yes” to even 1/3 of them. The Democratic party is not run by liberals. It is run by centrists. Centrists have veto power over policy positions. The party is well to the right of Nixon on economic issues for chrissakes. It takes some serious mental gymnastics to believe that liberals run the show.
Marshall’s essay is a lot of “concern trolling”, strawman arguments, and bullshit. He leads with a truism
If you hate government, you probably don’t mind that Washington has degenerated into Fight Club
but that’s pretty much where the truth ends. Read shortly thereafter
Don’t bore us with intellectual honesty, nuance or shades of grey
Wow, talk about ironic…
Let’s evaluate his statements for intellectual honesty, nuance and shades of gray, shall we?
Many liberals, for example, are just as theologically opposed to modernizing entitlements as conservatives are to raising taxes.
Hmm… what exactly do you mean by “modernizing entitlements”, Mr. Marshall. Could it be a euphamism for “cutting Social Security benefits”? (Social Security is an earned benefit not an entitlement but somehow I suspect that nuance escaped his notice.) “Raising taxes” is unambiguous but just what does it mean to “modernize entitlements”? Let’s hear it. What are you proposing and what are the merits?
Next up, let’s consider the following:
In any case, Democrats have been moving steadily to the left, about as fast but not nearly as far as Republicans have shifted rightwards.
I’d be curious to hear Marshall’s criteria for what constitutes “moving steadily to the left”. (How does his list compare with mine above?) I’ll stipulate that the Democratic party has drifted left on social issues over the past few decades but I’d say they’ve moved significantly to the right on economic issues.
It gets even better though
An array of powerful interest groups, plus self-appointed ideological minders like MoveOn and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, are quick to pounce on Democrats who deviate from leftish orthodoxy by, say, supporting trade agreements, real accountability in education, changes in entitlements, development of America’s shale-gas windfall and efforts to lower regulatory obstacles to entrepreneurship.
MoveOn and PCCC “pounc[ing] on Democrats who deviate from leftish orthodoxy”? Really? How many centrist Democrats have been primaried from the left in oh, say, the past twenty years? One. That’s it. One. (Joe Lieberman lost his primary to Ned Lamont. And Lamont wasn’t an economic liberal. He beat Lieberman up for supporting the Iraq War.) Beyond Marshall’s bizarre insinuations about the power of MoveOn and the PCCC though, what’s his argument for supporting trade agreements? What trade agreements does he have in mind? Any old trade agreement? The Trans-Pacific Partnership? Is the TPP all good? Are there provisions in the TPP which someone with an interest in – say – economic growth and environmental protections might find objectionable? (See for example http://www.citizen.org/TPP) And what exactly does he mean by “real accountability in education”? It just sounds so… so… responsible that I’m sure it must be something good. And how about those “changes in entitlements”? Ah, and “development of America’s shale-gas windfall” and “efforts to lower regulatory obstacles to entrepreneurship”? They just sound so wonderful… but what exactly do they mean in practice? Are we not supposed to ask that? If you say I should support something then I damn well expect that you’ll explain why I should. Marshall appears to feel no such obligation.
Moving on to Marshall’s precious centrists:
The pragmatic center, meanwhile, is shrinking. Over the past 20 years, the share of Americans with consistently conservative or liberal views has more than doubled, from 10 to 21 percent, while those professing mixed political views declined from 49 to 39 percent.
Yeah, and that’s definitely not because the operational definition of “liberal” and “conservative” have changed over the past twenty years. (Note to Mr. Marshall: Bite me, you disingenuous sack of shit.)
Next:
Among other things, our political leaders are failing to provide modern transport and other infrastructure to keep pace with population growth; overhaul an absurdly complex, unfair and inefficient tax code; fix our broken immigration system; get Washington’s long-term debts under control; improve the regulatory climate for innovation and entrepreneurship; empower the poor; and, adopt energy policies that balance economic growth and environmental health.
Yup. And that would be 100% a result of Republican obstructionism.
It’s not inconceivable that Republicans, if they win full control of Congress, will sober up and shoulder the responsibilities of governing jointly with a Democratic president.
Not inconceivable? Really? In what parallel universe is it conceivable?
Some Democratic operatives are hoping for just that, on the Leninist logic of “the worse the better.”
The linked article in that sentence? If you bother to read it then you learn that the Democratic operative in question is not by any means advocating for “the worse the better.” I’d say the title is offered in the spirit of something between sarcasm and gallows humor.
Back to Mr. Marshall’s pragmatism:
Republicans can’t attract enough minority voters to win the White House and Democrats can’t win enough white voters to control Congress.
With regard to latter, Democrats can’t win Congress because of very effective Republican gerrymandering. Democratic Congressional candidates won a majority of votes in 2012 but yet the GOP holds a significant majority in the House. That’s a gerrymandering not a white people problem.
To break the political stalemate in Washington, one party will have to enlarge its electoral coalition at the expense of the other… For Democrats, it means cutting into the GOP’s sizeable margins among both blue-collar and college whites, especially men.
Actually, I agree with that. I think the proper approach though is to get white guys to wake the @#$% up, not for the Democratic party to adopt policies which appeal to willfully-ignorant bros.
More love for centrism and “moderates”:
The immutable fact that Democrats depend on moderates to build majorities distresses the party’s left. They want to amp the populist message up, not down, even if that means blowing out moderate ear drums.
With the qualification that Marshall’s has not offered a working definition of “left” and may not even have one, I believe it’s true that we lefty liberals need to amp up the populist message. Perhaps the country will go hell in a more genteel way if a Democratic party headed by Marshall followers is in charge than if the GOP is at the helm but… so what? If things go to hell then they go to hell. I take the political positions I do because I don’t want things to go to hell. Compromise is great if it moves things in a positive direction. Compromise for sake of compromise is just @#$%ing off.
He continues
…solid majorities of moderates take positions that occupy the middle ground between liberals and conservatives on most big questions.
Ah, and just what are those positions? Are they positions worth holding? If they’re sensible positions then great, let’s see what kind of policies we can develop around them. On the flip side “If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.” Nothing good will ever come of adopting foolish positions in order to be popular. Oh, while I’m thinking of it, how worried about being popular do you think Goldwater was in 1964? (Pardon me for a second while I look up “leadership” in the dictionary. I feel like I should know what it means but the definition escapes me at the moment.)
Surveys show [moderates] have attitudes and policy preferences that often differ in kind and degree from those of liberals. For example, moderates give higher priority to economic growth than redistribution to achieve equality.
No kidding? Really? Here’s the thing, you ain’t going to get economic growth until you start making a dent in inequality. I realize that after nearly 40 years of pro-“Free Market” propaganda that’s hard for many to accept – see also “Stockholm Syndrome” – but the “Free Market” is the core of the problem. We need people to step up and advocate for “capitalism with a human face.” That may not be a winning position in the near term but it needs to be done. (And I think Sen. Warren is doing a pretty good job of it.)
Continuing on with the mentality of moderates…
Although they take climate change seriously, they are more supportive than liberals of domestic oil and gas production.
Well, if you take climate change seriously then you really can’t be very supportive of increased oil and gas production. It’s pretty much an either/or thing. (In fairness, if you go to the PPI website, Marshall actually has a reasonable energy policy paper posted there. So why doesn’t he mention it? Or at least the substance of it?)
And continuing on some more…
They support a strong social safety net, but are more likely to emphasize personal responsibility and work as prerequisites for escaping poverty.
Personal responsibility and work are necessary conditions but they are nearly sufficient. The job market stinks. Until we address the slack labor market – and that will require “redistributionist” policies – escaping poverty will require a lot of luck in addition to personal responsibility. See posts by Jared Bernstein here and here.
Moving on the deficits and the national debt:
Liberals don’t see a problem with “borrow and spend” policies; moderates worry a lot about saddling the next generation with big debts.
Is there any rational basis for this worry? Seriously, show me a reality based argument that we’re screwing the next generation with big debts? Worrying over a potentially big govt debt 20-30 years from now? Please, spare me. Let’s jump in the wayback machine and look at the economic predictions for 2015 from 1985 and 1990. How do those look? Prescient? Maybe not so much? A lot is going happen over the next 20-30 years – big things that none of us foresee. Getting one’s panties in a wad of potentially high govt debt hardly seems justified. Oh, and by the way, did you know the deficit is down? No? No surprise. It hasn’t exactly been big news out of DC.
On the utility of government:
Unlike conservatives, moderates don’t despise government but they do have serious doubts about its efficacy. This skepticism is particularly evident on economic questions. Sixty-four percent of moderates think government is often an obstacle to economic growth and opportunity; liberals strongly disagree.
Again I ask, Is that belief rational? Is believing that govt is an obstacle to growth and opportunity any more rational than believing in angels? (Full disclosure: I do not believe in angels. Neither do I believe in unicorns or the Easter bunny.) Let’s work to educate people on the opportunities govt enables and work to improve govt so that it’s more effective in creating opportunity.
Since 2000, the [Democratic] party’s center of gravity has shifted to the left.
Again, let’s review what policies which Marshall believes constitute a leftward shift. (Well, he hasn’t shared his list but if he did we could review them.) I’ll stipulate that there’s been a leftward shift on social issues. I believe that they party has drifted right on economic issues. While we have a liberal wing, conservative economic policies rule the day. To wit, Bowles-Simpson was treated very seriously but the powers that be within the party. Similarly, Paul Ryan’s budget proposals generated a lot of debate. Compare those proposals – conservative and rightwing, respectively – with the debate that the House Progressive Caucus’ budget proposal generated last year. It was a good budget proposal but it was a fringe proposal. It was not taken seriously by Democratic leadership and it didn’t have a chance in hell of passing.
From the late 1980s through 2000, Bill Clinton and the New Democrats reinvigorated their party with a wave of fresh ideas for progressive reform, including voluntary national service, reinventing government, making work pay, public charter schools, community policing and more.
And passing NAFTA and doing away with Glass-Steagall and just so much more great stuff. Good times, good times. (Did I ever mention that I never liked Bill Clinton?)
Many of those ideas migrated abroad through the Clinton-Blair “third way” dialogues with center-left leaders around the world.
Or that I found Tony Blair particularly loathsome.
In a similar vein, the party’s pragmatic wing should develop alternatives to an angry populism centered on top-down redistribution, knee-jerk hostility to the private sector, protectionism, innovation-stifling regulation and resistance to public sector reform.
?!?!? AYFKM? Top-down redistribution? Knee-jerk hostility to the private sector? Protectionism? Innovation-stifling regulation? Resistance to public sector reform? Please provide examples of the above, Mr. Marshall. I see two possibilities here: 1) He pulled the aforemented offenses out of his ass or 2) His definitions are so perverse so as to be unrecognizable next to the Merriam-Webster’s versions.
Even so, the populist agenda, with its dominant motif of outrage, class grievance and victimhood, aims mainly at core partisans. It repels many moderate swing voters.
Could there perhaps be facts on the ground to justify outrage and class grievance? See, for example, http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/9/25/6843509/income-distribution-recoveries-pavlina-tcherneva. Sorry to repeat myself there but “Hey, Marshall! Bite me, you disingenuous sack of shit.”
A survey by the Global Strategy Group, a public affairs firm, that asked the public to rank its priorities found that 78 percent thought Congress should embrace a pro-growth agenda that benefits everyone.
Awesome. And did those polled also believe that everyone should get a pony and ice cream? The challenge is coming up with the details of that “pro-growth agenda that benefits everyone.” The Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic party is the only group with anything resembling a pro-growth agenda that could benefit everyone. Marshall’s precious moderates cling to the delusion that Republicanism works. It doesn’t. If the 60’s and 70’s taught us that proposing a govt program for every social ill was not constructive then the 80’s and the decades that followed should have taught that tax cuts are not a panacea and that a “government is the problem” attitude is a big problem. That reality has yet to gain widespread acceptance. Let’s take it upon ourselves to help people come to terms with it.
An aside: For all their talk of small government, when was the last time you heard a Republican arguing forcefully for something that small government needs to do well? If you believe in small government, fine, what do you believe that small government needs to do well? What’s your plan for ensure that function is done well? What resources do you propose to put behind that effort?
Back to Marshall’s essay:
By pursuing pro-growth policies that worked for all, [FDR] and his Democratic successors were able to forge a broad, cross-class coalition that included blue-collar workers, farmers and college-educated professionals. In other words, the progressive tradition in America, as opposed to the populist tradition, seeks to transcend class politics and sees a dynamic market economy, properly refereed, as the primary engine for social mobility and mass prosperity.
Jeezus @#$%ing christ, Marshall. Have you no shame? You and your pig@#$%er fellow travellers are all about undoing the accomplishments of the New Deal and yet you have the audacity to write those two sentences. Have you no shame? Rhetorical question. Obviously you don’t.
On to energy and environmental issues
… Democrats should put the nation’s shale gas and oil windfall to productive use within a balanced national energy strategy that steadily reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
[Guffaw] And how exactly is that going work? Seriously, I want to see that plan. Is everyone going to get a pony and an ice cream with it too?
Even if polarization in Washington evaporated overnight, the public would still have doubts about the federal government’s basic competence and ability to deliver on its promises. They would still feel that the central government has grown too large, intrusive and costly.
Yeah, the central government is growing out of control… http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/government-employment/
The rest of his essay is a @#$% off exercise. I’ve already spent more time than I should have addressing his points. Fini.
Actually, let me conclude by noting Matt Taibbi’s thoughts on the Democratic party from a few years ago:
I simply don’t believe the Democrats would really be worse off with voters if they committed themselves to putting people back to work, policing Wall Street, throwing their weight behind a real public option in health care, making hedge fund managers pay the same tax rates as ordinary people, ending the pointless wars abroad, etc. That they won’t do these things because they’re afraid of public criticism, and “responding to pressure,” is an increasingly transparent lie. This “Please, Br’er Fox, don’t throw me into dat dere briar patch” deal isn’t going to work for much longer. Just about everybody knows now that they want to go into that briar patch.