“Thinking Small”: Liberals, If You Really Want Your Activism To Have Impact, Set Your Sights Lower And Be In It For The Long Haul
There’s a discussion starting to bubble up in some corners, one that will grow in intensity as we approach 2016, asking where the left should go as Barack Obama heads for the exits a couple of years hence. In the latest issue of Harper’s, Adolph Reed offers a critique from the left of not just Obama but the liberals who support him. Our own Harold Meyerson offered a typically thoughtful criticism, to which Reed responded, but I’ll just add briefly that one of the many things I didn’t like about Reed’s piece was the way he poses a dichotomy for liberals between investing too much in winning presidential elections even if the Democrat is imperfect (not a complete waste of time, but close) and building a movement (much better), but doesn’t say what, specifically, this movement-building should consist of.
That’s a common problem. Movements are great, but creating and sustaining them is hard work, work most of us would rather not do. It also takes skill, timing, and a bit of luck. Most of us would agree that the decline of labor unions has been disastrous for the country in many ways, and I sometimes hear people say that what the left needs is a revival of the labor movement. That’d be great! If you have any ideas about how to do it, we’d all like to know.
Eight years ago I wrote a manifesto for liberals, and though not very many people read it, whenever I would speak to an audience about it, someone would always ask, “So what should we do? This isn’t an easy question to answer, but since the theme of the book was that liberals should learn from what conservatives had done right over the prior couple of decades, my best answer was to think nationally and act locally, in the same way conservatives do. Get a couple of friends together and stage a coup of your local Democratic committee. Run for school board, or dog catcher, or whatever office you think you can win. If you want to push the Democratic party to the left, trying to get Bernie Sanders to run for president isn’t going to do it. (Remember what a profound and lasting impact Kucinich for President had? Yeah.)
Reed would object that that sees activism only in relation to the Democratic party, which is true. It’s not the only kind of movement-building, but it’s a kind that works. Think about it this way: Mitch McConnell isn’t scared of the National Right To Life Committee; he knows that if they think he isn’t doing enough to outlaw abortion, there isn’t much they’re going to do about it. But over the last five years, he and every other national Republican have been absolutely terrified of the Tea Party. Why? Because the Tea Party has actually gotten Republican scalps.
Now the Tea Party is a unique case in the speed with which it accumulated power. But the principle of starting electorally at a low level still holds. The trouble is, the state rep race just isn’t as glamorous as the presidential race. Andrew Sabl gives an excellent account of why that is. He was responding to Markos Moulitsas’s argument that since Hillary Clinton is all but unbeatable, there’s no point in getting behind some kind of challenge to her from the left, and instead liberals should accept that Clinton is going to be the 2016 presidential nominee and focus on getting strong progressives elected in down-ballot races. I’ve weighed in on the presidential primary question (short version: HRC might be beaten by somebody, but not by an ideological crusade), but Sabl hits the nail on the head:
… the larger problem, not unique to progressives, lies in the incentives and capabilities of presidential campaigns, in their systematic, structural (and rational) attempts to obscure the above lessons in the service of driving donations and turnout. National campaigns, through the best technology and psychology money can buy, persuade us that giving them our money and time means becoming part of something important. (True! But it’s a small part.) They portray the consequences of every election as more epic and final than they are likely to be. They encourage the Hollywood fantasy that the presidential speeches that inspire partisans have the potential to sway huge numbers of moderate, and inattentive, voters. They crowd out our background awareness of how much policy that really matters—regarding taxes, roads, public transportation, schools, colleges, policing and public safety, public health, Medicaid coverage, and now health exchanges—is set by states, counties, and cities, not primarily by the President, nor by Congress. And the media, desperate to attract mass readers and viewers whose attention is drawn to the excitement and pageantry of national campaigns, have an interest in reinforcing these distorted impressions.
Indeed. And like Sabl, I’ll admit that I’m part of the problem—in 2016, I’m going to spend a lot more time writing about the presidential race than I will about anything else. But if you really want your activism to have impact, you have to set your sights lower, and be in it for the long haul. There’s a not-very-old saying that Republicans fear their base, while Democrats hate theirs. If you’re a liberal and you want to change that, the answer is to make high-ranking Democrats fear you. The reason they don’t isn’t that there haven’t been enough left-wing populist presidential campaigns. It’s that, unlike the right, the left hasn’t taken over the grass roots and started climbing up the tree, hurling off those who displease them along the way until the people at the top look down and conclude they have no choice but to give the base at least part of what they want.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, March 13, 2014
“The Real Victims”: Sincerest Sympathy To The Filthy Rich
Dear Tom Perkins:
I’m writing to apologize. I do this on behalf of the 99 percent of us who are not multimillionaires. You, of course, are, having made a pile as a venture capitalist and co-founder of the firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
I admit, I’d have thought a guy like you had little to complain about. But that was before you wrote that tear-jerking Jan. 24 letter to The Wall Street Journal revealing the pain, the oppression, the abject sense of vulnerability and fear that go with having a net worth equal to the GNP of some developing nations.
In your letter, you decried the “rising tide of hatred” you’ve experienced at the hands of progressives waging “war” against your people. Your examples were heart-rending. You mentioned popular anger over rising real-estate prices. And “outraged” public reaction to dedicated buses ferrying tech workers to their San Francisco-area jobs. And the people who have called your ex-wife, novelist Danielle Steel, a “snob.”
Oh, the humanity.
There are, you said, parallels to Nazi Germany and its treatment of another oppressed minority, the Jews. “This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking,” you warned. “Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendant ‘progressive’ radicalism unthinkable now?”
You’re right. How could we have missed it? Calling Danielle Steel a snob is exactly like that turning point on the road to Holocaust when anti-Jewish riots broke out across Germany, 7,500 Jewish homes and businesses were vandalized, 30,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps, 91 Jews were killed and the Nazis, blaming the Jews themselves for the carnage, fined them about $400 million in 1938 U.S. dollars.
You’ve been criticized for what you wrote, but we both know the only thing wrong with it is, you didn’t go far enough. You didn’t mention how one day the rich may be forced to stitch yellow dollar signs to their clothing or have their net worth tattooed on their forearms.
Being forced to pay taxes for the upkeep of schools your children wouldn’t be caught dead attending? That’s exactly like slavery.
Zoning laws that limit you to one measly helipad on your very own land? No difference between that and the Trail of Tears.
Where will it end? Will they make you fly commercial? Buy off the rack? Golf on a public course? Might as well hitch up the boxcars and pack you in.
I confess to having been blind to the suffering of the Affluent-American community. But you’ve opened my eyes. How awful it must be, forced to live in segregated neighborhoods like Brentwood and Star Island in constant fear of metaphorical beatings and rhetorical lynching if you dare get out of your place and whine about the travails of your life of vulgar excess.
Well, sir, thanks to great Affluent-American leaders like you, I have a dream that one day your children will not be judged by the content of their offshore accounts.
You are as human as anyone else. Your manservant puts your pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us. So I apologize to you on behalf of the 40-year-old man with a college degree struggling to raise his son on a McSalary, the little girl trying to concentrate on algebra while her stomach growls with missed-meal cramps, the Walmart employees collecting food for co-workers, the homeless family praying the social worker will find them shelter for the night as temperature and snow fall steadily.
You know, until I read your letter, I thought they were the ones most deserving of my empathy and concern, these victims of wealth inequality, a tilted playing field and the sheer greed of rapacious money pigs. But you’ve set me straight, and I want you to know I’m with you all the way.
I mean, now that I know who the real victims are.
By: Leonard Pitts, The National Memo, February 3, 2014
“Paranoia Of The Plutocrats”: A Class Of People Who Are Alarmingly Detached From Reality
Rising inequality has obvious economic costs: stagnant wages despite rising productivity, rising debt that makes us more vulnerable to financial crisis. It also has big social and human costs. There is, for example, strong evidence that high inequality leads to worse health and higher mortality.
But there’s more. Extreme inequality, it turns out, creates a class of people who are alarmingly detached from reality — and simultaneously gives these people great power.
The example many are buzzing about right now is the billionaire investor Tom Perkins, a founding member of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. In a letter to the editor of The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Perkins lamented public criticism of the “one percent” — and compared such criticism to Nazi attacks on the Jews, suggesting that we are on the road to another Kristallnacht.
You may say that this is just one crazy guy and wonder why The Journal would publish such a thing. But Mr. Perkins isn’t that much of an outlier. He isn’t even the first finance titan to compare advocates of progressive taxation to Nazis. Back in 2010 Stephen Schwarzman, the chairman and chief executive of the Blackstone Group, declared that proposals to eliminate tax loopholes for hedge fund and private-equity managers were “like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.”
And there are a number of other plutocrats who manage to keep Hitler out of their remarks but who nonetheless hold, and loudly express, political and economic views that combine paranoia and megalomania in equal measure.
I know that sounds strong. But look at all the speeches and opinion pieces by Wall Streeters accusing President Obama — who has never done anything more than say the obvious, that some bankers behaved badly — of demonizing and persecuting the rich. And look at how many of those making these accusations also made the ludicrously self-centered claim that their hurt feelings (as opposed to things like household debt and premature fiscal austerity) were the main thing holding the economy back.
Now, just to be clear, the very rich, and those on Wall Street in particular, are in fact doing worse under Mr. Obama than they would have if Mitt Romney had won in 2012. Between the partial rollback of the Bush tax cuts and the tax hike that partly pays for health reform, tax rates on the 1 percent have gone more or less back to pre-Reagan levels. Also, financial reformers have won some surprising victories over the past year, and this is bad news for wheeler-dealers whose wealth comes largely from exploiting weak regulation. So you can make the case that the 1 percent have lost some important policy battles.
But every group finds itself facing criticism, and ends up on the losing side of policy disputes, somewhere along the way; that’s democracy. The question is what happens next. Normal people take it in stride; even if they’re angry and bitter over political setbacks, they don’t cry persecution, compare their critics to Nazis and insist that the world revolves around their hurt feelings. But the rich are different from you and me.
And yes, that’s partly because they have more money, and the power that goes with it. They can and all too often do surround themselves with courtiers who tell them what they want to hear and never, ever, tell them they’re being foolish. They’re accustomed to being treated with deference, not just by the people they hire but by politicians who want their campaign contributions. And so they are shocked to discover that money can’t buy everything, can’t insulate them from all adversity.
I also suspect that today’s Masters of the Universe are insecure about the nature of their success. We’re not talking captains of industry here, men who make stuff. We are, instead, talking about wheeler-dealers, men who push money around and get rich by skimming some off the top as it sloshes by. They may boast that they are job creators, the people who make the economy work, but are they really adding value? Many of us doubt it — and so, I suspect, do some of the wealthy themselves, a form of self-doubt that causes them to lash out even more furiously at their critics.
Anyway, we’ve been here before. It’s impossible to read screeds like those of Mr. Perkins or Mr. Schwarzman without thinking of F.D.R.’s famous 1936 Madison Square Garden speech, in which he spoke of the hatred he faced from the forces of “organized money,” and declared, “I welcome their hatred.”
President Obama has not, unfortunately, done nearly as much as F.D.R. to earn the hatred of the undeserving rich. But he has done more than many progressives give him credit for — and like F.D.R., both he and progressives in general should welcome that hatred, because it’s a sign that they’re doing something right.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, January 26, 2014
“Who Is For Growth And Job Creation And Who Isn’t”: The Biggest Thing Centrists Miss About The Inequality Debate
With the electoral victory of Bill de Blasio in New York City, an unabashed economic progressive, and the rising star of Elizabeth Warren, the issue of inequality has come to occupy center stage in lefty policy discussions. As Greg has been writing, it’s popular — something we see in reports today that Democrats are planning to use a near-certain GOP vote against a bill hiking the minimum wage against them in 2014.
But this has brought about a reaction from center-left types, who insist that the progressives have their priorities wrong. In the process, they mischaracterize the progressive view, and set up a false dichotomy between that and establishment positions. Progressives see inequality as a fundamental part of why our economy is not working as it once did, not a problem to be placed above job creation.
Bill Keller recently provided a representative sample:
The left-left sees economic inequality as mainly a problem of distribution — the accumulation of vast wealth that never really trickles down from on high. Their prescription is to tax the 1 percent and close corporate loopholes, using the new revenues to subsidize the needs of the poor and middle class…
The center-left — and that includes President Obama, most of the time — sees the problem and the solutions as more complicated. Yes, you want to provide greater security for those without independent means (see Obamacare), but you also need to create opportunity, which means, first and foremost, jobs. … The center-left … agrees on the menace of inequality, but places equal or greater emphasis on the fact that the economy is not growing the way it did for most of the last century.
First of all, this is a bit rich to hear from the center. The left has been howling about jobs and growth for five years now, for so long and so loud that our collective tonsils have about come unglued — and who were we arguing against? The centrists, who were a major bloc of support behind the premature turn to austerity back in 2010. Better late than never, I guess. Welcome to the party, guys!
In fact, this longstanding hair-on-fire panic about mass unemployment, which until now has been met with near-total indifference from the elite, is a big part of what motivates the inequality focus today. Because I have never met or even heard of someone concerned with inequality who is not also a fervent supporter of immediate monetary and fiscal stimulus to restore full employment as fast as possible. (That’s Item One in the inequality-reduction handbook!) The problem isn’t just mass unemployment — it’s the fact that we haven’t done anything about it since 2009. As Steve Randy Waldman has written, there are many economic strategies to create jobs now, of which we are trying none whatsoever. Inequality-driven discrepancies in political influence are a probable factor here.
What’s more, there is a compelling case that inequality is a major reason why our economy seems so prone to bubbles and why traditional policy remedies no longer have much purchase on job creation. A full recounting is beyond the scope of this post, but such arguments are worth taking seriously.
In any case, Keller is right to say that Republicans are now the major obstacle to any job creation agenda, so if centrists are now aboard the jobs train, I welcome them with open arms. They just shouldn’t kid themselves about who is for growth and job creation, and who isn’t.
By: Ryan Cooper, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, December 24, 2013
“When Liberals Enable Tyrants”: Can A Liberal Oppose Tyranny And Support Military Intervention At The Same Time?
What is liberalism supposed to be about on the world stage? What values and goals do American liberals wish to promote around the world? I’m pretty certain most would say free democratic societies; full political rights for ethnic minorities; equal rights for women and, with any luck, gay people; a free press; an independent judiciary; and so forth. And, where those cannot be achieved, at least a base-level opposition to tyranny, reaction, religious fundamentalism, and so on.
Most would name these things. But, I have to say, most rank-and-file liberals don’t seem to me to be very passionate about them. What most liberals are passionate about is one thing: opposition to U.S. militarism. That’s what really roils the loins. Ever since Vietnam, there’s been this template, this governing notion that every military action the United States undertakes is by definition both immoral and bound inevitably to lead to a quagmire; that the U.S. military can do only bad in the world. Lord knows, there’s plenty of evidence to back up the claim, and a posture of deep skepticism about all military plans and promises is the only serious posture (abandoned by most of the “serious” people back in 2003).
I’ve described here two impulses: the desire to do good in the world, or at least to prevent the bad; and opposition to American force. Often these desires can exist in harmony. But what if they conflict? Why is opposition to any projection of force always the deciding factor? At times it can lead people into some very illiberal little corners.
I say this is one of those times. Taking no action now, after what Assad did, strengthens the hand of murderers, theocrats, and some of the most illiberal people on the planet. Yes, I have concerns about what might happen. You’ve read many columns, I’m sure, and heard many Democratic members of Congress on cable television talking about the potential catastrophic effects of a strike. I don’t deny them. I worry about them daily.
But I bet you haven’t heard many people talk about the potential harmful effects in the region of not striking the Assad regime. Yes, you probably saw Lindsey Graham and John McCain talk about how Iran would be emboldened in its nuclear ambitions, but that’s not even the half of it. Here are six consequences of not launching a strike against Syria, all of which could harm small-d democratic hopes in the region and, indeed, potentially increase the carnage.
(1) An Emboldened Assad
If the U.S. doesn’t strike, Assad would be emboldened to intensify the fighting in rebel-held areas. Rebel groups of different kinds hold a large number of cities and towns, as this map will show you. What if, concluding that the war-weary West doesn’t really care what he does and isn’t going to lift a finger to stop him, Assad (with Iran’s help) launches savage campaigns in these areas?
No strike is a green light for Assad to take over all the liberated areas by any means necessary, maybe including, again, chemical weapons. The CWs weren’t used last month just because he’s a big meanie. They were used to ferret rebel fighters out of their strongholds. Why wouldn’t he do it again if no one does a thing to stop him? And again?
(2) More Radicalized Rebels
Also within Syria itself, it’s possible that a failure to strike will radicalize more rebels and turn more of them against the United States and send them into the waiting arms of ISIS and al-Nusra, the al Qaeda affiliates. It certainly seems safe to say that the “good” elements of the anti-regime forces, the people looking to the West for help, would be the losers if we don’t strike. Both the regime and the rebel Islamists have been killing members of the better rebel factions, and both groups would get the message from no U.S. strike that those factions have no protector.
(3) A Win for Hezbollah
Hezbollah, Assad’s ally and Iran’s terrorist proxy army, could more easily take over in Lebanon if the U.S. holds back. Right now in Lebanon, there is no government. I don’t want to drag you too deeply into Lebanese politics, but Hezbollah wants one of two things: either to be in the government, or at least to have what is called the “obstructing third” privilege that permitted it in the last government to block anything the government wants to do. On the other side are pro-Western politicians who have sought to reduce Hezbollah’s influence. No strike would only embolden Hezbollah, which could then decide on key military and security appointments in the next government.
(4) A Strengthened Iran in Iraq
Why? Because of the ongoing competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia for Iraqi influence, no strike would probably make Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki tilt more toward Iran (Saudi Arabia supports a U.S. strike, albeit not quite openly). Lately, according to Ken Pollack, Washington and Tehran have been in a kind of unexpected entente in Iraq. And Tehran probably has enough on its plate in Syria to prevent it from starting to make power moves in Iraq. But it’s possible, if the U.S. stands down over Syria, that Iran could start doing just that in Iraq, even as the country seems to be sliding back into civil war.
(5) A Blow to Israel
And there’s Israel to think about it. If Nos. 2 and 3 above come to pass—a strengthened al Qaeda and Hezbollah—well, that can’t be very good news for Israel. There are now “resistance brigades” affiliated with the Syrian regime operating in the long-disputed Golan. These brigades, too, will take note if the United States does nothing here.
(6) A Nuclear-Trigger-Happy Iran
There is, yes, the ultimate question of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. I think it’s hard to argue that a U.S. strike would delay those ambitions. But it is not hard to argue the opposite—that the lack of American action against Syria would make Tehran feel that much freer to proceed with that much more impunity.
Looking back over my list, who could benefit from the U.S. not taking action here? Assad, the dictator with the blood of 100,000 on his hands. Iran, one of the world’s most reactionary regimes. Hezbollah, a terrorist force that crushes the democratic aspirations of the Lebanese people. And al Qaeda, the extremist fanatics behind 9/11. Are those the kinds of people liberals want to help? I’m sure liberal members of Congress who’ve announced they’re voting no—Raúl Grijalva, Alan Grayson, Charlie Rangel, Barbara Lee, and about 17 others—have spent a heck of a lot of time thinking about what could go wrong if we do strike. I bet they haven’t given a moment’s thought to what could go wrong if we don’t.
I say that’s worth thinking about. Also worth thinking about is the fact that many liberal-minded people from the region, and certainly many or virtually all of the nonextremist rebels, want the United States to act. From their point of view, without the United States’ engagement, the region is buried in slaughter, theocracy, and darkness. I would expect American liberals at least to stop and think about that.
Again, no one is talking about 130,000 ground troops. That was a qualitatively different thing, and I opposed it from the start. Yes, an American attack might escalate matters. But it also might not. We got in and out of Libya. It’s not clear what that one accomplished yet, although we did presumably prevent a slaughter of many thousands in Benghazi. It is clear what we accomplished in Kosovo, where another murderer was removed from office and hauled to the Hague (without one American life lost). So it doesn’t always end badly. And it isn’t always immoral. This is one of those cases where, if the scale of the action is appropriate and if it works, a military incursion can actually serve liberal ends. No, that’s not for sure. But it is for sure that doing nothing helps the reactionaries.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, September 6, 2013
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 