Semi-Daily Journal

I've tried and tried, but I can't parse this sentence:

"Nobody seems to remember who near-run a lot of what we regard as the good policy calls were within the Clinton Administration."

Is "near-run" a verb?

This sounds like one of those examples linguists like to play with: "The horses run past the red barn fell down.".

Parsing:

I think "who" was supposed to be "how."

Brad, who are you quoting, BTW?

I think "who" in that sentence is supposed to be "how".

Parsing:

I think "who" was supposed to be "how."

Brad, who are you quoting, BTW?

So, to sum it up, if a future Dem administration does business as the Bush II admin has, we're screwed.

Brad,

I agree that if Democrats pursue stupid policies, that would be a bad thing. But I think you are leaving out the most obvious difference between Bush and Clinton, and that is that Bush is creating a class of individuals that are effectively above the law. The nightmare scenario would be that a Democrat gets into office, and the Republicans retain Congress, and an impeachment starts. Or another one is that the Democrats take it all, but don't go after the criminals for fear of seeming too partisan.

This is why you should endorse Wesley Clark, by the way.

Whoever said it, amen to that. I hope that the next democratic administration (here's hoping it's close at hand) will not see the utter policy bankruptcy of this white house as license for the same.

I've tried and tried, but I can't parse this sentence:

"Nobody seems to remember who near-run a lot of what we regard as the good policy calls were within the Clinton Administration."

Is "near-run" a verb?

This sounds like one of those examples linguists like to play with: "The horses run past the red barn fell down.".

I worry the next Democrat elected will not be partisan enough. In order to move the country back to the center A Dem President has to strenghten Unions and weaken the centers of corporate power that currently support the readical right agenda. Even though many of us Dems who are moderate on policy questions may not like the Union agenda, we have to do everything in our power to strenghten them to even the playing field. We also need to simply sink Brown and Root and Haliburton, I'd like to put an OSHA inspector on them every time a worker gets a paper cut. This is the only way to avoid a repeat of the Bushco fiasco. No time for Berkeley and Harvard wimpiness about politics-if we don't learn to fight back we wil truly go the way of Argentina.

It's "how near-run ... the good policy calls were"; "who" is the typo.

CalDem,

Using OSHA that way is a great strategy for electing more Republicans. Brilliant.

The real danger-- one that we already see-- is that people will cease to believe that government represents them, drop out of the political system and let interest groups of whatever kind (probably corporate but perhaps some popular demagogue) take over.

Indeed, the reason that Clinton had Republican Congresses is that so many Democrats stayed home in 1994. Gingrich's victory was based on a few tens of thousands of votes in key districts. Had Clinton passed NAFTA in a form that was palatable to labor, had he passed welfare reform in a form that eased middle class anger at the poor without alienating the FDR generation, had he passed campaign finance reform to lock the barn door against the corrupt practices that funded Gingrich's rise to power-- ALMOST ANYTHING that kept voters going to the polls would have preserved his Democratic majority. But especially some form of health care reform that wasn't a cave-in to every special interest group and that wasn't so complex that it tied the Congress in knots would have done it.

The republican form of government can survive many things. Frayed foreign relations can be mended. Wars can be ended. Deficits, as ruinous as they are, can be paid down if the nation is committed to that goal. But once people become disillusioned with the proposition that their representatives represent their interests, the nation is on a slippery slope to totalitarianism.

So, Professor DeLong should amend his history of the successes of Clinton with some rueful memory of exactly how the Democrats became the minority party in Congress.

Will our current unsustainable fiscal and current account deficits produce a hard landing and if so, when? Probably not before 2005 at the earliest. If Bush is reelected and the Reps retain control of Congress and then hard landing happens, they can't escape blame. The "deficits don't matter" fantasy is finally exposed. But if a Dem is elected in 2004, the Dems will get blamed for the bad economy by the public, even if Reps retain control of Congress. Not to mention the policy gridlock that will likely ensue. (Remember the one-vote margin on the 1993 budget?)That's MY nightmare scenario.

Charles:
Right on!

I would add that Prof. Delong's post tacitly admits that the sound fiscal policy and its growth effects that the clintonoids crow about as their chief accomplishment were more than what was expected and intended by them. Though it was a real achievement, however brief and however much due to to extrinsic developments in the economy, including an unrestrained stock market bubble, one shouldn't forget how trivial, if not downright concessionary, so much of the Clintonoids' policy was.

At any rate, it has long been the burden of the rightwing/corporate hegemony to delegitimate the public sphere, the public sector and public policy action as in any way contributory to the collective public good. And, as if to demonstrate the evils of government, bad government was duly proffered and instituted. Unless a new coalition can be formed around broad and widespread popular interests, the pervading atmosphere of disillusion, surly selfishness and alienated resentment will continue to be determinative in politics and policy.

It is not the job of the Democratic party to strengthen the Unions. Unions face a lot of challenges, not the least of which is that they are still set up to deal with 1950's industrial America and not the real economy. The Unions may be the only organized force in support of the working man or woman, but the party needs to directly advance the interests of working Americans, NOT assume that whatever Union lobbyists want reflects those interests.

I also disagree with Charles' take on the 1994 election. If people stayed out in 1994 because of dissatisfaction with Clinton, wouldn't they have come back and voted the GOP out in 1996 or 1998 or 2000 or 2002? Maybe they're still on extended strike?

The truth is that the Democrats have not been the party of FDR since 1968. Cultural liberals took over in that year and have steadily alienated the culturally moderate/conservative working & middle class voters who provided Democratic victories from 1932 to 1968. Disillusionment with the Democrats did not begin with Clinton, but in 1972 with McGovern. The Democrats have been hemorraging voters ever since. Perhaps Charles is right that tactical mistakes in Clinton's first two years finally pushed the party over the edge, but it's been in decline for much longer and his analysis overlooks the long term strategic reasons of Democratic decline.

It is not the job of the Democratic party to strengthen the Unions. Unions face a lot of challenges, not the least of which is that they are still set up to deal with 1950's industrial America and not the real economy. The Unions may be the only organized force in support of the working man or woman, but the party needs to directly advance the interests of working Americans, NOT assume that whatever Union lobbyists want reflects those interests.

I also disagree with Charles' take on the 1994 election. If people stayed out in 1994 because of dissatisfaction with Clinton, wouldn't they have come back and voted the GOP out in 1996 or 1998 or 2000 or 2002? Maybe they're still on extended strike?

The truth is that the Democrats have not been the party of FDR since 1968. Cultural liberals took over in that year and have steadily alienated the culturally moderate/conservative working & middle class voters who provided Democratic victories from 1932 to 1968. Disillusionment with the Democrats did not begin with Clinton, but in 1972 with McGovern. The Democrats have been hemorraging voters ever since. Perhaps Charles is right that tactical mistakes in Clinton's first two years finally pushed the party over the edge, but it's been in decline for much longer and his analysis overlooks the long term strategic reasons of Democratic decline.

FDR died in the forties, Chris. I think it's time to let go.

while I'm not a practitioner of any sort of political analysis, I know enough real ones to recognize your attempt (and previous ones; you just happen to be the latest) at retrospective electoral analysis to be very far from rigorous. I'm not sure what I believe, but I know I don't believe you folks.

to you and others who want to do this sort of work, let me give you a recommendation from the field where I am a practitioner: start with the data. who used to vote Democrat that doesn't anymore? how much have those numbers changed since 1945? 1965? 1985?

once you have the data, you can try forming a thesis that is at least plausible given the hard facts. until you do -- and I submit that anyone using amorphous phrases like "culturally moderate/conservative working & middle class" is probably working without a net -- no one else will believe you, either.

Phil P says that if the Republicans engineer a hard landing without any Democratic assistance, "The 'deficits don't matter' fantasy is finally exposed."

But they accomplished this in the 1980s, with the Democrats holding only one house of Congress, and-- given the problem of "Boll Weevil" Democrats, really not that for the critical years of 1981-3. Supply side economics was thoroughly debunked-- and it doesn't matter. The Republicans shamelessly resurrect the same lies and the country, misled by a media far more effective at its work than that of communist countries, bites the same hook, again and again.

John Halasz, I give Clinton credit for staving off disaster in the 1994-2001 period. Much of the work done then was brilliant, and done in a political crucible that became uncomfortably hot. Remember that Administration officials were spending as much time answering subpoenas as working. But in those first two years, Clinton failed to see how dangerous the Republican machine had become.

Chris Durnell is entirely wrong in thinking that it isn't "the job" of the Democratic Party to strengthen the unions. The principle of strengthening the unions fits in seamlessly with the Founding Father's vision of checks and balances. Since corporations were not a significant economic force at the time of the writing of the Constitution, proper checks on the power of money were not included. It's clear from his writings that if Abraham Lincoln had lived, he would have imposed some form of control on corporations including perhaps strengthening unions. Democratic legislation, notably the Wagner Act, is the reason that as much as 13% of the American population *is* unionized. Sans legal support for the right to assemble, it's all too possible for employers to turn the workplace into a gulag (as, in fact, contractors of American businesses do in Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia and China)

Mr. Durnell asks if the electorate has been on extended strike, and the answer is yes. Participation in elections has been falling steadily. The lower third of incomes are only *half* as likely to vote as the upper third of incomes, meaning that the slender majorities the Republicans hold are the result of disenfranchising an increasing number of the electorate. Furthermore, 1994 was a high-water mark for the Republican "Revolution", at least until 2002. The electorate steadily swung Democratic, ultimately electing Al Gore in 2000.

Mr. Durnell is also totally ignorant of what happened in the 1960s. Ever since the Republican Party abandoned African Americans in Reconstruction, the Democratic Party has always been the proud home of cultural liberals. Remember what cultural liberals have accomplished: they helped end the system of legal apartheid against African Americans, Latinos and Indians; they helped women gain access to high-paying professions and get (more) equal pay for the same work; they helped expose and end the existence of widespread physical abuse of women and children.

What really happened in the 1960s: those who were determined to maintain discrimination and racial division started leaving the Democratic Party and joining the Republican Party. Otherwise, it's the same coalition of working people/small business that it has been since William Jennings Bryan.

Ironically, the morally debauched, which is what I suspect Mr. Durnell means by the vague and often-misused phrase "cultural liberal", tend to be Republicans. Most liberals are cloth-coat people-- extravagant extramarital affairs, multiple divorces and so on are just too expensive for the budget.

Consider: which party chose to run Arnold Schwarzenegger? Which party had as the Speaker of the House a man who has now been divorced three times (and had sex in his congressional office) and then nominated a man who had to resign because (apparently) there were credit card slips showing he had been using S&M services? Which party nominated for president the first man to be convicted for a crime, the first deserter to serve as president, the first publicly known ex (maybe)-alcoholic to serve as president? (And which party concocted the most phantasmagorical melange of lies regarding the sexual conduct of their presidential opponent, even as their own congressional members were adulterously screwing their aides in their government offices?)

One guess, Mr. Durnell. "Cultural liberals" are often more moral people than those who preach but do not practice.

WCW says, sensibly, "start with the data. who used to vote Democrat that doesn't anymore? "

The answer is white racists. They had briefly bolted in the 1940s, with FDR and Harry Truman's determination that there would not be discrimination in the defense industry and in the armed services. But the major flight started after LBJ passed laws guaranteeing the right to vote and the right to equal treatment under the law to African Americans. Seven generations after the Civil War, the Republicans *still* tinge their campaigns with racialism of the Willie Horton variety. Look where George Bush began his South Carolina campaign: at Bob Jones University, which was until recently segregated, and which still preaches that Catholics and Mormons are lesser human beings. Look what the Bushies did to John McCain, whispering that he had fathered a black child out of wedlock. The Republican party may or may not be racist, but it certainly *sells* racial politics.

To be fair, there have been other demographic shifts. For example, a generation ago, there were many in business who had seen the Great Depression up close. They knew that Democratic economic policies were better for business in the long run, even if the regulations and taxes grated in the short run. Now, that generation is dead, or at least gone from business. The people in business now are the sort who believed Enron's business plan, even though it was always a Rumpelstiltskin skit.

There have been some favorable demographic shifts. Elderly people-- about 80% of whom are totally dependent on Medicare and Social Security because wages have stagnated for 25 years-- many more of them vote Democratic now than in earlier generations. Though, sadly, too many are taken in by Republican rhetoric on privatization, despite the fact that it has been totally debunked by, e.g. Mike McNamee of Business Week.

But the biggest shift away from the Democratic Party is from people who vote the color of the skin rather than the content of the character.

Joe Conason's - BIG LIES

In the list of revelations of falsehoods and misrepresentations by the Right, is his chapter on big-spending liberals and the fiscally conservative republicans.

He states evidence from the turn of the century till now - that during Democratic administrations economic growth grew at a higher rate (maybe this is an example of big-government; but I think that overall economic growth would not go up in deficit spending?? IANAE 'I Am Not An Economist')

AND

He shows how the largest deficits in history have come from republican administrations. He shows the largest tax INCREASES have also come from republican administrations.

He states that the Right uses distortionssuch as the left being against war - when more democrats have served in the military than republicans. That's his whole book - an expose of how and what the right has done to mislead and deceive average people to march in step with them.

He also eloquently and clearly shows that Unions - the creator of the weekend, paid vacations, medical leave, 40 hour work week and minimum wage - have been slandered and attacked for a few corrupt individuals (look at enron, tyco, global crossing, worldcom, etc.)

He shows how the republicans were AGAINST the inceptions of: social security, medicare, homeland security, etc. Almost every good and fair government program that we take for granted today.

There is Right - it is LEFT
There is Wrong - it is Right