Yes, the Democratic Pary Needs to Go Full Populist

As I and others have said, it's because populist ideas are, uh, popular! Here Ryan Cooper of The Week weighs in:

It's fast becoming a consensus in center-left circles that the future of the Democratic Party will rise or fall depending on the economic well-being of the masses. In the wake of the midterms, top-shelf commentators like Josh Marshall and David Leonhardt have correctly identified a decades-long trend of stagnant incomes as the major problem for the Democrats. If the party of the left cannot provide material security to the people, then it simply has no business being in power.

Luckily, this is actually an easy problem to solve. If markets aren't producing enough money through wages, then the government should step in and provide it. It is really that simple.

But tellingly, Marshall, Leonhardt, and other center-left liberals make it seem as if this problem is hellishly difficult. Education policy is hard. Climate policy is really hard. Handing out checks is stone simple by contrast. All you need is paper and a pen.
To become the party of the people, the Democrats will have to let go of an ineffective, neoliberal policy that has been baked into their economic platform for years now. Then they will have to overcome the skepticism of voters, who are unused to the idea of income transfers, even though it's part of a populist legacy that reaches back to the New Deal and the Great Society. This, more than anything, will be the crucial question for the American left over the next several election cycles.

It's not hard to realize that Social Security, Medicare, and the underlying policies of Obamacare are terrifically popular, as is increasing the minimum wage and raising, in general, the wages and salaries of the middle class after years of stagnation. Tying income transfers into the solutions of income inequality should be easy. Tell people over and over that rich corporations don't share the wealth downward to its employees. Period. Pay more, rich cats!

Why did Mitt Romney lose? It was because he seemed like a dick
who didn't care about working stiffs. More elections like that one!

The U.S. Has Allies, but, Generally Speaking, It's at Odds With Most of the World

The statement in the title is, at first glance, an absurdity. How many countries don't like or admire the U.S.? I mean, seriously, who wouldn't want the U.S. as its friend?

The Dutch might swallow the random herring, but they have
trouble swallowing the way America does its business...

It's complicated, but, generally speaking, we've been a very bad country from an international perspective.

Why? It's because we don't just act like a bully, we are in effect the very definition of a bully. Also, we have very, very bad habits. Let me count the ways:

1. We bomb the crap out of a lot of people, and not just Muslims, though we do like to bomb us some Muslims.
2. Yes, we tortured people, in every sense of the word torture. It is a huge violation of international law and treaties and conventions the U.S. has signed, not to mention a violation of our very own federal laws. Signing treaties and then ignoring them -- with a certain evil glee, a la Dick Cheney -- is frowned on by fellow signatories to said treaties. Not a great confidence builder, but quite the contrary. Uh, who trusts us now? (Answer: nobody.) And we held none of our own citizens accountable, except for a couple of fall guys at Abu Ghraib. (Remember that? I almost didn't either.)
3. Guantanamo Bay is a major violation of our own laws, let alone international law and human rights principles, and is a huge embarrassment to all Americans. Watch Obama close it somehow, yes, with one of his commander-in-chief orders. The conservatives and even some chicken-hawk Democrats will sprout heads on fire. But the U.S. maintaining prisons away from the mainland and pretending law doesn't apply there is an abomination of everything we stand for (er, stood for).
4. When the whole world learns -- yes, from Edward Snowden, among others -- that we bug EVERYBODY WHEN WE FUCKING FEEL LIKE IT, it's hard to keep our allies on our side. And, yes, the UN has determined that this violates U.S. treaty obligations, as well.
5. It might be obvious to all of us, but much of the world thinks we're freaking crazy -- yes, especially the Republicans -- when it comes to our behavior. Not having universal healthcare like the rest of the developed world, having a clear obsession with guns and being heavily armed and having the statistics reflecting pervasive gun violence throughout much of society, having a drug habit that has corrupted much of Latin America, well, it has much of the world wondering what the hell has gone to hell here in the U.S. Does any American think that "stand your ground" is a principle that lights up the heart of citizens of other countries across the globe? Yeah, maybe in Yemen, which is second to the U.S. in gun ownership.
6. It's a common meme that we need more guns than, say, Europe or Japan because we're not "homogenous." Two facts that intersect bitterly: Young black men are 21 times more likely to be shot dead by police than young white men, and the white gun ownership rate is 41%, compared with the black gun ownership rate, which is 19%. The rest of the world looks at these statistics and begins to wonder if it's safe even to visit the U.S.

 

 Bolivia's socialist president Evo Morales. Why would he not like the U.S.?
Could it have anything to do with forcing his plane down over Europe
looking for Edward Snowden? Yeah, maybe for starters.

I've traveled extensively in Europe and Asia, and by and large people there seem to like Americans individually. Though, ask a Dane, a Japanese, or a Spaniard what they think of Republicans, and they quickly and cheerfully offer how absolutely whacky they think Republicans are. That belief is widely held. Yes, they think what's wrong with America is the Republican world view. Their notion, not mine (well, mine, too).

I've met Republicans -- even played golf with them! -- and they can be charming and lots of fun. That's not the problem. It's the ramifications of their policy choices. Of course, I'm a European-style social democrat. Needless to say, Europeans like me better than Republicans. Of course, one of my favorite acquaintances in Europe was a bar/restaurant owner in the heart of Copenhagen named Hubert. He was such a libertarian, he made the average American Republican seem, I don't know, positively Swedish! Hubert, needless to say, was not a socialist.

But I made a habit of dropping into his place from time to time during three visits to Denmark in the past year. Our conversations were lively, intellectually relevant, and stimulating. We convinced each other of nothing except, possibly, our mutual humanity.

You can't judge a book by its cover. But when it comes to content, the U.S. doesn't fare that well these days. Here's to change, and plenty of it.

Copenhagen's Nytorv Square: Hubert's restaurant was two minutes from this fountain.
But it was ten parsecs from our American conservative view. Danes are for the people.
which is, yes, socialism. BTW, huge Muslim population. Seemed to all get along. Weird.

More Training for the Iraqi Army?

Whaa?

Yeah, that's the ticket! More training!

Atrios flags this Balloon Juice item about the new troops we're sending to train the Iraqis, presumably to fight ISIS. They were so great the first time! So they'll be great after we're through with them, again, I mean. They'll be super because:

Haven’t we been training the Iraqi military for 10 years now, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars? They’ve got to be the most trained motherfuckers in the world by now.

Oh yeah, back to the future.

Wall Street Has the DOJ in its Pocket

Yes, Matt Taibbi is back at it. Read this to get the serious creeps.

Chase's serious creep Jaime Dimon: Our crimes weren't that big. They were
more like this big. My raise for helping us get away with it?
Oh yeah, it was that big. Well, okay, bigger.

How Did the Republicans Win So Big?

Running away from Barack Obama didn't work. So run towards him? Maybe shoulda.

This is not rocket science, but it is science, in as much as there is a logical explanation for the midterm successes of the Republican Party. Here's why they won:

• The Democratic Party, as is characteristic of it, ran away from Barack Obama the way they ran away from Bill Clinton in 2000 -- thus losing the opportunity to tout the successes of Barack Obama -- yes, there are many -- and the continuously improving economy.
• The Democratic Party is afraid to wear, proudly and loudly, the mantle of populism. So they lose the great issues like income inequality, minimum wage, safety net, social justice, women's rights, etc. that could, taken as a package, be the policy position that appeals to the great bulk of the citizenry.
• The Democratic Party cannot attract the voters in their coalition -- all the minorities, including women, and the millennials, plus, potentially, the white poor and working class -- for off-year elections unless they can galvanize their coalition behind issues that excite them to come to the polls.
• Yes, the Republicans have successfully gerrymandered districts across the country and continue to use voter ID laws and other tactics to limit access to the polls for members of the Democratic coalition.
• Simply put, the Republicans won not because they're right on the issues but because their base is totally freaked out by Barack Obama. After years of the conservative media jumping up and down and telling their audience that Obama is the anti-Christ on all levels and that he's going to take their guns, their religion, their children, their jobs, their healthcare, their money, their very future as the freedom-loving Greatest Nation on the Face of the Earth, these gullible freaked-out white people would vote for an ax murderer as long as he said Obummer hates you.
• Bonus point: Obama-freaked-out whites were never going to vote for the Dems. But the Dems could have excited their own coalition, at least a little, by running as a united team that wasn't afraid of its shadow, even if that shadow was Barack Obama.

The Democratic Party and the progressives who support it will be in the wilderness until the Party decides to fully embrace its values and trumpet them far and wide.

Apparently, the Democrats need a White Knight -- or a white woman? -- to ride to the rescue to get them to the polls. Hopefully, for better or worse, that can be Hillary Clinton. I'd rather it be Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, frankly, but that ain't gonna happen.

Stuck with Hillary? Yep, and it's time we hitched our myriad causes -- all of them very popular! -- to her wagon. Remember, she can bring white women and blacks together into the same tent. Oops, that didn't come out right, but you know what I mean. Don't tell Southern whites, it'll freak them out. Wait, they're already freaked out, so... Here comes 2016, and it starts, oh, it's already started.
 

 Okay, she's a hawk. So, America is going to elect a Gandhi?
Not on your life. So take her for the rest of the good stuff...

Final thought: Barack Obama might not be popular right now, but he's smarter than the Republican leaders. Remember the Grand Bargain we were afraid Obama was going to allow to happen? Never happened. Why? Because he got the Republicans to kill it. Dude might have some skills. And that will come in handy in the next two years. Let's hope so. Get the popcorn ready.

We're Supposed to Share, Right? Okay, Here's Daily Kos!

Actual Vice-Presidential Candidate. Wow.

Hunter over at Daily Kos attempts to consume some Sarah Palin word salad, with patchy results. But funny!

Why Winning the Midterms Might Not Help Conservatives

Fine, Mitch, you won. Now whaddya gonna do?

For a progressive like me, the midterm elections weren't very much fun. I'll have more to say later about why I think things happened as they did (I have a definite idea). But I was struck by the matching press conferences where Mitch McConnell said he could work with Barack Obama where "they share common ground." Ha, as in hahahahahahahaha. Obama echoed McConnell's remarks in his presser. Ha, as in hahahahahahahaha.

There is no common ground.

Beyond that fact lies the big problem victorious Republicans face: They don't have any clear, straight-forward policy agenda except "GOVERNMENT BAD" and "LET THE RICH PEOPLE KEEP THEIR MONEY, YOU IGNORANT LAZY SLOBS." I might be summarized crudely, but let's face it, that's about it.

More to the point, please tell me the program conservatives can sell to the people that 1) works, and 2) doesn't take away from the people conservatives purport to want to help.

Privatize Social Security? Doesn't help the people. That's why it was rejected back in 2005.

Privatize Medicare? That's Paul Ryan's voucher scheme. Problem? Doesn't help the people. If the tea partiers ever strap a brain on underneath their tri-corners, they'd pull their guns out and start shooting at the Republican caucus. That's why nothing has happened to reduce Medicare benefits. Because, as an idea, it sucks. Why? More people will die, and people won't like that.

Fire bad teachers? Fine, go ahead. Michelle Rhee did that in the hundreds in DC. Big whoop. That sure worked. She promised high pay for qualified teachers. Great. Where's the money? Oops, no money. Want good teachers? pay more, like, you know, what they do in the private sector. Otherwise, you get what you pay for.

Want to let everybody make up their mind which law they're going to follow based on their religious beliefs, regardless of whether their beliefs are sound? (Yes, Samuel Alito said in his Hobby Lobby decision that making sense is not a requirement of religious belief.) Great. Now how are you going to stuff that genie back in the bottle? Après Hobby Lobby, le déluge.

I could go on, but instead I'll point you to a conservative writer, Reihan Salam of Slate, who I usually don't prefer, him being a conservative whose notions I don't cotton to, but in the case of his take on "Now what are you victorious Republicans gonna do?", he ends up with a very strong case. (Hint, the GOP is not going to do much.) Why? Salam's on to something here:

The beauty of the way Democrats approach politics is that their willingness to accept half a loaf means that they can keep making incremental gains even when they appear to be “losing.” Lane Kenworthy, a sociologist at the University of California–San Diego and the author of Social Democratic America, puts it beautifully: “Small steps and the occasional big leap, coupled with limited backsliding, will have the cumulative effect of significantly increasing the breadth and generosity of government social programs.” That is, conservatives can try to nibble at the edges of new social programs, but they'll rarely succeed in rolling them back completely.

Another way of saying that is Democratic policies tend to give half a loaf, while Republican policies tend to take away half a loaf. (Except on Defense because who doesn't love war?)

Where am I wrong? Ever since Barack Obama became president, the GOP has been in a constant battle to take away the safety net from the people. The fact is they haven't succeeded because they wanted the WHOLE LOAF, full stop. Obama, much to his discredit in the eyes of the progressive left, was willing to give away half a loaf here and there, the so-called Grand Bargain.

Bargains made in the Congress require the half-a-loaf deal, so no Grand Bargain. Whew! We progressives really, really had to thank the GOPers for their whole-loaf demands.

Reading the comments to the Salam article, I found a couple that ring true. Here's one:

When they give credence and respectability to the likes of Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich (admittedly, Gingrich was once a pol capable of setting aside ideology, however briefly, for legislative achievement; today however, Gingrich is pure distilled bats**t), Ron and Rand Paul, Louie Gohmert, Darrell Issa, and Ted Cruz, the GOP ceases to have any claim to an agenda of responsible governance.

Yeah, McConnell, what are you going to do -- legislatively -- given that on-going legacy? Are your new senators, Joni Ernst and Thom Tillis, going to help you craft half-a-loaf-Obama-will-sign legislation? Ha, as in hahahahahahahahaha.

Another Salam commenter:

Some of us see interconnections. For example, the profit a business makes comes, in part, from those who serve in the military to protect the business. The business owner may say, "I made this," but in fact he was just part of a team where one team member risked his life, and the other one stayed home to build a business. Both are worthy activities, but I think the soldier does not get his fair share in his paycheck. So we tax the business to provide both for the soldier and then Veteran benefits. It would be nice if the John Galts of the world acknowledged the contributions from those who support them, maybe even thanked them by not labeling the sharing as income redistribution.

That from a Thom H. It's dead-on and unleashes the whole "They didn't build that" conservative meme. A reply to Thom H. summed up the problem with the conservative "personal responsibility" narrative:

That would be nice, wouldn't it?  Every Republican I know has an extremely inflated sense of self, though.  They are where they are completely because of their own hard work.  It's an utterly ridiculous notion but they are so in love the "pull-yourself-up-by-your-boostraps" metaphor, they just can't see how dumb it looks from the outside.

Some people do succeed on their own terms through their own determination. That's great. But the idea that we succeed in isolation through our own independent means is hogwash, but it's at the heart of the libertarian dream. It is the John Galt mentality built on an extremely false premise.

It's that false premise -- that we deserve to keep everything because we "built that" -- that undermines conservative and/or libertarian thought. But, boy, does it ever appeal to the masses who want to blame someone else for what they didn't get in life. "If those bastards weren't living off the government teat, I'd have such a better life!"

It's hard to build a decent policy agenda by firing up your base with that one. The sad thing is that the Republicans just won a huge victory by firing up the base with that exact message. Everything else you heard this election cycle was just white noise.

Govern on that, Republicans. Good luck.

Love the quotes around "poor." How dare the poor have a safe place to keep
their food! Lazy ingrates. Just want a place to hide their food-stamp lobster.

And conservatives would buy this? It's not because they watch Fox News, is it?

Sheesh.