Matthew Yglesias claims to adopt a "nuanced position" on the question of Barbara Ehrenreich:
matthew: Either A Defense Or Else An Attack On Barbara Ehrenreich: I'm not sure whether my thoughts on this controversy constitute a defense or an attack, but here they are. The 2000 Nation piece Brad quotes from is by far the most coherent case for Ralph Nader that I've ever read. Her point is that if you think the US political system is fundamentally broken, which she does, then it makes no real sense to be voting for the Democrats just because they're better in some ways. If a system is broken, the system needs to be fixed, and the Democratic Party as an institution is one of the system's key pillars and isn't going to do it. The would-be system-fixers need to start a new movement somewhere out there on the grassroots and they're more likely to do it with the Republicans in power. This is correct as a general analysis, and her empirical predictions have been largely born out -- the Bush administration has led to a resurgence of interest in organization and institution-building on the left. In particular, Bush's proclivity for taking the imperial tendencies in American foreign policy to extremes has started to give fundamental criticism of the entire post-Coldwar national security posture its first mainstream hearing ever, as far-left critics find that they have unexpected friends in the CATO Institute and can make hit documentary films. (Lenin -- an absolutely brilliant political strategist if someone lacking in morals and capacity for good governance -- had this all figured out long ago).
So that's the defense. The attack, though, is this: What on earth could have led a person to believe in the late 1990s that something was fundamentally broken with the American political system? This is the same system that was for a long time marred by chattel slavery, after all, and for a hundred years after that by a period in which one major region was groaning under the yoke of a one-party apartheid state (to say nothing of racial problems in the north). That system proved amenable to incremental reform from within by major stakeholders. And despite much moaning by folks on the left, it simply isn't the case that since 1981 the United States has moved backwards to its pre-Great Society state. Instead, a rising tide of conservatism has succeeded in rolling back a few of the Great Society's innovations, while leaving its most important monuments (Medicare, Medicaid, Civil Rights) untouched and allowing a few further steps forward (gay rights, EITC, the Americans with Disabilities Act, CHIP and S-CHIP, and some new environmental rules, to name a few). Ehrenreich's big complaint seems to be that Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Restoration Act (PWORA, a.k.a. "welfare reform") in 1996, abolishing Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and establishing instead Temporary Assistance to Needy Familiies (TANF). I would say that TANF, for all its flaws, is something of an improvement over AFDC, but if people want to disagree I'll respect that. What is not at all a respectable belief, however, is the notion that AFDC was either so fabulous (the poor weren't actually doing so hot in the Reagan years, as you'll recall) or, frankly, so important (both are very small programs) that its abandonment in favor of TANF is reasonable grounds for this sort of radical disillusionment with conventional politics.
You had people in contemporary Iran who thought for a while that they could pursue reform from within the existing system and who have now mostly concluded that this was wrong -- the system was too resistant to change -- and it was time to take a radical stance. That's a fine and proper thing to do -- radicalism has its place -- but it's Iran. I don't want to be too rose-tinted here, but to look back across the breadth of American history and then look again at the past ten years and decide that now -- now -- is the time to abandon our faith in the slow-but-steady gruntwork of two-party politics and incremental reform is just perverse.
But Ehrenreich should be praised for having a much better understanding (or, at least, a much better capacity to articulate her understanding) of what the purpose of a Nader vote is and for appreciating the general logic of her views. But where did she come by these views? The reporting in Nickle and Dimed struck me as an excellent case for sticking to it, and realizing that little things like a small boost in the EITC or the minimum wage or minor decreases in housing hosts or slightly better enforcement of the Fair Labor Standards Act or somewhat more energetic union organizing campaigns could make a big difference in the lives of people who have things pretty rough right now. Ehrenreich thinks they'll have to wait until after the Revolution. But why would she think that?
Matt's question can be largely answered by quoting at length from another essay* by Barbara Ehrenreich. The answer has two parts: (1) the 1996 welfare reform (which I deplore) was indeed the trigger for Ehrenreich, but more important is the fact that the accomplishments of American social democracy which Matt sees as worthwhile and worth defending--Medicare, Medicaid, EPA, EITC, labor standards, unemployment insurance, et cetera--rarely show up on Ehrenreich's radar screen as worth defending at all. To be preferred are forms of politics that have next to no effect on a nation of hundreds of millions, but that allow activists to assume a correct attitudinal stance:
organiz[ing]... 90 percent of American workers... are unorganized, including... the former recipients of welfare.... [D]emonstrations at the retail outlets of sweatshop-dependent corporations like Nike, Guess, and Disney.... [S]quats, cooperatives of various kinds, community currency projects, and some of the less costly types of "alternative services," like those offering information, contacts, referrals, and a place for people to gather...
But let's roll the videotape:
[W]e can no longer let progressivism be understood as the defense of government--this government anyway--against the antigovernment forces of the right.... By setting ourselves up as the defenders of government.... progressives have boxed themselves into a pragmatically and morally untenable position.... Pragmatically, the problem is that hardly anyone out there wants to hear about more government or bigger government.... Believe me, I have tried, and found again and again that the enthusiasm for, say, national health insurance or stricter environmental regulation quickly ebbs when I point out that the only source of such improvements is likely to be the federal government....
[M]iddle-class, non-elderly Americans encounter their government chiefly in the form of petty-minded bureaucracies, like the I.R.S. and the D.M.V.... The result has been a near-total ideological roadblock for the left. We say "Child care! Health care!" and all the rest, and they say, "Aha, you mean more government!" End of discussion....
[T]here is another reason... a moral one... the proportion of its citizenry who are incarcerated... the United States leads the world.... We don't, in other words, have a soft, cuddly government of the kind that could be derided as a "nanny state." We havea huge and heavily armed cop....
Our entire outlook has to change... we can no longer allow ourselves to be seen as mere cheerleaders for government.... The power to levy taxes, for example, is increasingly deployed to tithe low- and middle-income people to subsidize the state functions--such as corporate welfare and the military--favored by the corporate elite. Even the few remaining services for the poor are tainted by the repressive agenda of the right, which has budgeted funds for "chastity education" for welfare recipients and favors ever more intimate monitoring of the life-styles of public housing occupants.... We can... try... electing progressive to office... [but] progressive elected officials only rarely remain so, being quickly absorbed into an insiders' world of corruption and compromise....
There are plenty of things we can do... [First,] support efforts to organize the 90 percent of American workers who are unorganized.... A major obstacle, sadly, is union leadership itself.... [O]ngoing efforts to organize workfare recipients... by groups like ACORN and the recipients themselves; once the hard work of organizing has been done, the unions will no doubt be happy to incorporate the new members. Second, we can launch a citizen initiative against corporate crime... dozens of demonstrations... sweatshop-dependent corporations like Nike, Guess, and Disney. In the absence of effective regulation against abusive corporations, we have no choice but to pressure them ourselves.... [Third] squats, cooperatives of various kinds, community currency projects, and some of the less costly types of "alternative services," like those offering information, contacts, referrals, and a place for people to gather. Such projects... serve as a "cultural core"... of a movement....
Successful projects might inspire the kind of can-do spirit that is so lacking today: If government won't do it, then let government get out of the way, because we're not waiting around!... Tragic realities impel us to move beyond our emotional co-dependency on government.... We cannot let ourselves be defined or perceived as the defenders of a government... outrageously corrupt, loathsomely repressive, and socially callous. Our goal is, as it has always been, full freedom and economic security for all. At one point it looked like our government might help us achieve this. But that government is no longer "ours," nor will it be anything we would want to claim as ours without a massive downward transfer of power. For now, it looks like we are on our own, although--if you count the world's oppressed and underpaid majority--we are hardly alone.
*Barbara Ehrenreich (1997), "When Government Gets Mean: Confessions of a Recovering Statist," The Nation (November 17), p. 52 ff.
And since some have noted my coquetting with the mode of expression of the younger of the brothers Ulyanov, here is the original and a reply.
The full text:
Posted by DeLong at July 11, 2004 06:33 PM | TrackBack | | Other weblogs commenting on this postBarbara Ehrenreich (1997), "When Government Gets Mean: Confessions of a Recovering Statist," The Nation (November 17), p. 52 ff.
Call this the confessions of a recovering statist--at least that's how the right will probably view it. In the past fifteen or so years, I've ended hundreds of speeches with the words "cut military spending and expand social spending," or some euphonious version thereof, implicitly identifying government as the only appropriate focus for activism. In these predilections I have hardly been alone: Progressivism is almost defined, in our times, by its advocacy of an "activist government."
A couple of decades ago, it made sense to pin our hopes on the federal government as a positive instrument for social change. In the sixties and seventies--pressured by the civil rights movement, the nascent feminist movement and a still-muscular labor movement--the federal government expanded both its economic protections and its guarantees of civil liberties. We gained, in little more than a decade, Medicare and Medicaid, workplace safety and environmental regulations, cost-of-living increases in Social Security and laws against race- and sec-based discrimination, as well as the right to birth control and abortion. To many of us who came together in the early eighties to form the Democratic Socialists of America, for instance, it seemed possible that we would achieve our goal of an economically socialist and socially libertarian society by building on the programs and guarantees already offered by the federal government. At the very least, that government seemed to embody, in however imperfect a form, some defense against corporate banditry.
So when a populist right emerged to challenge "big government" and the legitimacy of government-based reforms in general, we valiantly leaped to its defense. At the time, this seemed like the only reasonable and principled response: We knew the right was not so much "against government" as it was against the meager protections government provides for the low- and middle-income majority. But ineluctably we, the erstwhile radicals, became far better defenders of government than any of its elected functionaries. As the right escalated its attacks, we escalated our defense, to the point, all too often, or seeming to abandon our own antistatist tradition and critiques of existing government programs. I realized how much our image had changed--from "radical" to "defenders of government--in discussions with some of the rural right-wingers I regularly talk to. To my surprise, they were surprised to discover that I share their outrage over random drug searches and similar intrusions: It was their impression that "liberals" thought the government could do no wrong!
I'm not sure whether we should have responded differently to the right's antigovernment rhetoric from the start. But surely today, after nearly two decades of conservative national governance, Reagan through Clinton, we can no longer let progressivism be understood as the defense of government--this government anyway--against the antigovernment forces of the right. The federal government of 1997 is a very different creature from that of, say, 1977--more egregiously corrupt and sycophantic toward wealth, more glaringly repressive and even less responsive to the needs of low- and middle-income people. By setting ourselves up as the defenders of government (of, colloquially speaking, "big government") against the neo-anarchists of the right, progressives have boxed themselves into a pragmatically and morally untenable position.
Pragmatically, the problem is that hardly anyone out there wants to hear about more government or bigger government. Even the constituency for better government is tepid: Witness the non-response to our current campaign finance scandals. It is, unfortunately, the federal government--long favored by the left because of its relative ability to rise above the racism and corporate caprices that typically dominate the statehouses--that has been the most thoroughly discredited as a potential agency of positive change. Maybe that will change--as, for example, people notice that it is the federal government and not the Chamber of Commerce that tends to organize disaster relief and that has brought us such innovations as the Internet. But for the time being, we're not going to get anywhere with a progressive agenda consisting of wonderful new government initiatives. Believe me, I have tried, and found again and again that the enthusiasm for, say, national health insurance or stricter environmental regulation quickly ebbs when I point out that the only source of such improvements is likely to be the federal government. Socialism is, of course, completely out of the question as long as it is conceived as a hypertrophied version of the government we now have, or, in the paranoid fantasy of the populist right, Hillary running everything.
Americans did not always hate their government. The proportion who say they "trust the government in Washington" only "some of the time" or "none of the time" has shot up only recently, rising from 30 percent to 70 percent just in the years between 1966 and 1992. We usually explain this shift in outlook as a brilliant propaganda coup for the right, which, by the mid-seventies, was raking in enough corporate money to create a lush intellectual infrastructure of think tanks and new media outlets. We understand that racism also played its part in the turn against the government, helping foster the peculiar perception that people of color have been the chief, if not the sole, beneficiaries of government activism. But we also should understand that the discrediting of government was not accomplished solely through propaganda and prejudice: There are legitimate grounds for distrusting government, and these grounds have been expanding. Through its power over the government it professes to hate, the right has put itself in a position to create a government that is ever more deserving of hatred.
It is, first of all, a government that offers far too little to its average citizens. Thanks to the efforts of the right over the past several decades and especially over the past decade and a half, we have a government that does not provide the kinds of services that, in other nations, have helped create a mass constituency for government activism--things like universal health insurance, child care, college tuition, paid parental leave, and a reliable safety net. In fact, middle-class, non-elderly Americans encounter their government chiefly in the form of petty-minded bureaucracies, like the I.R.S. and the D.M.V. hence the vicious cycle that has been powering the rightward march of U.S. politics: The less the government does for us, the easier it is to believe the right's antigovernment propaganda; and the more we believe it, the less likely we are to vote for anyone who might use government to actually improve our lives.
The result has been a near-total ideological roadblock for the left. We say "Child care! Health care!" and all the rest, and they say, "Aha, you mean more government!" End of discussion. We have no trouble imagining the kind of polity and social protections we would like, but one of the most venerable instruments for achieving them--government--has been ruled out of order by the ideologues of the right. Now we could of course doggedly continue our defense of government activism against the celebrants of the "free market" economy--pointing out, for example, that government still offers some useful things like Medicare and Head Start, that taxes are actually quite low here compared with other nations, that it is still, despite the ever-tightening rule of wealth, in some vague sense "our" government.
But there is another reason we can no longer let progressivism be defined as the defense of government activism, and this is a moral one. While government does less and less for us, it does more and more to us. The right points to the appalling firebombing at Waco; we should be just as noisily indignant about the ongoing police war against low-income Americans of color, not to mention teenagers, immigrants, and other designated misfits. If there is any handy measure of a government's repressiveness, it is the proportion of its citizenry who are incarcerated, and at least by this measure the United States leads the world. Furthermore, prison condition sin this country are steadily worsening: Children are incarcerated with adults; efforts at rehabilitation are being discarded as overly indulgent amenities; arbitrary brutality and systematic deprivation are common. We don't, in other words, have a soft, cuddly government of the kind that could be derided as a "nanny state." We havea huge and heavily armed cop.
So government has not been shrinking, as promised, on the Clinton-Gingrich watch. Only the helpful functions of government are shrinking, while the repressive ones are expanding without foreseeable limit and increasingly threaten all Americans. Clinton, in particular, has revealed a boundless appetite for surveillance in the name of the drug war and antiterrorism--proposing, at various times, drug tests for young people seeking driver's licenses, government-accessible "clipper chips" within our PCs, and the examination of air travelers' life histories for "suspicious travel patterns." Anthony Lewis has concluded that Bill Clinton "has the worst civil liberties record of any President in at least sixty years." He also has the most flamboyant record--surpassing even Reagan's--for the destruction of government services.
We are not yet a police state, of course. You may disagree with me as to how far we have gone in that direction, but you will surely agree that there is some point when the ratio of the repressive to the helpful functions of government will become so top-heavy that it will be masochistic to regard government as a potential ally and friend. Maybe for you that will be when Social Security is abolished (or privatized) and when 10 million, instead of a mere 5 million, Americans are trapped in the criminal justice system. For me that point was passed with the repeal of welfare in 1996, after which I could no longer imagine that my federal taxes served any compassionate function--or, more generally, that the government plays any redistributive role other than to promote the ongoing upward redistribution of wealth.
Our entire outlook has to change. Most fundamentally, given the nature of our real and existing government, we can no longer allow ourselves to be seen as mere cheerleaders for government activism. The power to levy taxes, for example, is increasingly deployed to tithe low- and middle-income people to subsidize the state functions--such as corporate welfare and the military--favored by the corporate elite. Even the few remaining services for the poor are tainted by the repressive agenda of the right, which has budgeted funds for "chastity education" for welfare recipients and favors ever more intimate monitoring of the life-styles of public housing occupants. When this government gets "active," it may very well act against us.
Yes, we should continue to defend the idea, meaning really the vision, of a truly progressive and robustly democratic form of governance. My point is that we can no longer advance that vision by acting as if the existing government prefigures it in any serious way. We can, of course, continue to try to reform the existing government: by electing progressive to office, for example, and by working to change the rules that make it almost impossible to do so. But these efforts have so far been both arduous and disappointing. Procedural tinkering, such as campaign finance reform and the New Party's unsuccessful effort to legalize fusion tickets, is usually too abstract and complex to generate much excitement. And progressive elected officials only rarely remain so, being quickly absorbed into an insiders' world of corruption and compromise.
In the meantime, though, the progressive agenda cannot be put on hold until we have a government that is worthy and capable of carrying it out. There are plenty of things we can do, right now and even with the existing rules and cast of miscreants. We have to begin, though, by acknowledging that the struggle for economic justice can no longer be conceived simply as a campaign to build support for our wish list of government services. We need a greater emphasis on strategies and approaches that do not depend on the existing government, that in fact bypass it as irrelevant or downright obstructionist.
Some of these approaches are obvious and uncontroversial. First, we can support efforts to organize the 90 percent of American workers who are unorganized, including, historically, the former recipients of welfare. Historically, there have been two approaches to economic justice: (1) demanding services and income support from government, and (2) directly confronting private capital by organizing unions. Since the first option has been foreclosed for the time being, there must be an all-out emphasis on the second. A major obstacle, sadly, is union leadership itself, which, even in its recently reinvigorated form, has insisted on funneling millions to Democratic candidates (or, worse, their own re-election campaigns) while strike funds go lacking. Fortunately, though, union organizing does not have to wait for the existing union leadership. The ongoing efforts to organize workfare recipients, for example, are being led by groups like ACORN and the recipients themselves; once the hard work of organizing has been done, the unions will no doubt be happy to incorporate the new members.
Second, we can launch a citizen initiative against corporate crime. In the past couple of years, there have been dozens of demonstrations at the retail outlets of sweatshop-dependent corporations like Nike, Guess, and Disney. In the absence of effective regulation against abusive corporations, we have no choice but to pressure them ourselves.
More controversially, I propose that we put greater emphasis on projects that both give people concrete assistance and serve as springboards for further political activism. Examples might include squats, cooperatives of various kinds, community currency projects, and some of the less costly types of "alternative services," like those offering information, contacts, referrals, and a place for people to gather. Such projects can't provide a substitute for government services since, numerically speaking, their impact is only a drop in the bucket, but they can serve as a "cultural core," in Frances Fox Piven's phrase, of a movement that may eventually be strong enough to win services that are tax-funded and distributed as a matter of right. The feminist health centers, for example, that flourished in the seventies and are still in operation in a number of cities around the country cannot make up for the lack of national health insurance. But they have given many thousands of women the subversive idea that low-cost, high-quality health care is a right--while at the same time serving as organizing centers for the defense of reproductive rights.
There are several reasons for an emphasis on projects that create alternatives. First, they may be necessary for organizing low-income workers, who are often dispersed among many small employment sites that are almost impossible to organize one by one. Such workers may be easier to reach through neighborhood-based centers offering, for example, employment counseling along with information on workers' rights and unions--as some organizers of workfare recipients are currently proposing. Second and more generally, bold and visible alternatives may help break through the hopelessness and passivity engendered by years of right-wing campaigning against public services. Successful projects might inspire the kind of can-do spirit that is so lacking today: If government won't do it, then let government get out of the way, because we're not waiting around!
But for me, the most powerful argument for projects that create alternatives is, ultimately, the scary fact that there is less and less for them to be alternative to. Consider the plight of the people who are being tossed off welfare. Do we simply wait around until the government changes its mind? Applaud the efforts of the Ford Foundation to track the fate of former welfare recipients as they stumble through low-wage jobs and perhaps into homelessness, all the while trying to publicize the horror stories as they unfold. Better to do something that actually helps a few people, or gets them started helping themselves--while at the same time dramatically underscoring the need for economic justice for all. And if our activism is bold and visible enough, it may help prod the existing government in a progressive direction: banning the products of sweatshops, for example, or replacing workfare with the option of adequately paid public-sector jobs.
But economic justice is not the only thing on our agenda. We have to be ready to defy a government that has become an active repressor, and this means putting a greater emphasis on civil libertarian issues. Some progressives have responded to the right's successes with a narrowing focus on economic justice, arguing that the "social issues"--like gay rights, abortion, drug-law reform, even police brutality--are just too divisive. True, most Americans are far more amenable to economic goals like national health insurance than to drug-law reform (which would empty out most of the prison cells overnight). Morally, though, we have no choice but to oppose the steady erosion of individual liberties and the growth of the punishment industry. It might even improve, or at least clarify, our image if we were more forthright and militant about our own brand of libertarianism.
Tragic realities impel us to move beyond our emotional co-dependency on government as the only available instrument for social change, but there are opportunities beckoning us in that direction; one is the need to develop a meaningful internationalism. Rhetorically, most progressives agree that it is the transnational corporations, far more than the nation-states, that rule the world, and that the future depends on our ability to build transnational forms of resistance. In practice, though, it's hard to do this when almost all our efforts are addressed to our own particular nation-state. We might free our imaginations to conceive of truly international strategies if our mission were no longer defined so provincially in terms of our immediate impact on the existing national government.
Finally, there is the opportunity to clarify to the American public what we stand for. We cannot let ourselves be defined or perceived as the defenders of a government that has become, under the tutelage of right-wing Republicans and Democrats alike, outrageously corrupt, loathsomely repressive, and socially callous. Our goal is, as it has always been, full freedom and economic security for all. At one point it looked like our government might help us achieve this. But that government is no longer "ours," nor will it be anything we would want to claim as ours without a massive downward transfer of power. For now, it looks like we are on our own, although--if you count the world's oppressed and underpaid majority--we are hardly alone.
Well exactly. People who think the System is fundamentally broken just don't want to try hard. Or don't enjoy a challenge.
Posted by: Lee A. on July 11, 2004 07:03 PMExchanging the palpably corrupt political duopoly in D.C. (and elsewhere) for a "multi-party" political process DOES NOT, it seems to me, constitute a particularly "radical" reform of our Republic OR our "polical process".
Getting rid of the Electoral College, it seems to me, is the most "elegant" AND efficient way to do it.
http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/unitedstates/democracy/electoralCollege.html
Posted by: Mike on July 11, 2004 07:19 PMMy unnuanced position is that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush. You can't get much less progressive than that. Duh!
Posted by: Dubblblind on July 11, 2004 08:09 PMBrad writes: To be preferred are forms of politics that have next to no effect on a nation of hundreds of millions, but that allow activists to assume a correct attitudinal stance:
organiz[ing]... 90 percent of American workers...
You got a problem with that?
Posted by: a on July 11, 2004 08:42 PMRailing against the Naderites is one of the more pointless activities that one can think of.
Almost everyone in the Democratic party, to one degree or another, is dissatisfied with it. Everyone should be. Example: Jane Harman just voted to let John Ashcroft go through your library records without a warrant or even probable cause. This should enrage her constituents. They should dump her, over that one Constitutionally-contemptuous vote. But, considering the political situation, it might better be done through the 2006 primary.
Harman is a hundred times better than many Democrats, notably Zell Miller. And Miller is marginally better than the average Republican.
When people get fed up beyond measure with politics, with the crookedness and the contempt that politicians nowadays have for the hoi polloi, they can do one of two things: stop voting or vote for third parties.
Half of Americans have stopped voting. Does it make sense to tell the Naderites to join them?
The truth is that this generation of Democratic leaders has betrayed us. The Republicans have gone beyond simple betrayal and are trying to bankrupt America, wreck its economy, and make it an international pariah.
The right solution is to find new people, especially in districts now controlled by Republicans, and elect Democrats (or Greens or Libertarians or whatever) not subservient to corporate money. In safe Democratic districts, challengers should run to get rid of the Marie Antoinette wing of the Democratic Party.
The toilet is full. We need to flush and keep on flushing.
Naderites are the least of our problems.
I don't agree with Ehrenreichs' solutions, although I think the work she's done bringing forgotten americans into notice is invaluable - I'd have to ask, though, anyone who supports a third party over getting rid of Bush: How is it that you imagine the religious right, who are not, clearly, the sharpest pencils in the cup, have managed to take over so very much of our public discourse and so very many of our school boards?
The answer (at least I think so) is that they organize to get unglamorous local positions and leverage them to the hilt.
Since we know for certain that's a successful tactic for insurgent political minorities, is there some reason that progressives can't give it a shot before deciding to make the contradictions any starker than they are?
Posted by: julia on July 11, 2004 09:19 PMThe reason why voting for Nader in a general election was always irresponsible idiocy is tremendously simpler than anything stated so far in this thread: if he really wanted to have some chance of gaining the power to achieve his goals, he should have run for the Democratic presidential nomination. If he can't get a majority of Democrats to support him, he sure as hell isn't going to get a majority -- or even one-third -- of the voters as a whole to do so. By running instead in the general election, he simply insures that the man finally elected President is even more right-wing than a majority of the voters actually want.
Anyone who doesn't recognize this is an idiot. Like Mark Kleiman, I've always found it hard to belive that Nader himlelf could be so idiotic -- and that he must therefore have some corrupt personal motive: namely, the desire to keep the GOP in power so the money will keep rolling in to Public Citizen (and therefore to his very well-padded personal pockt). But after seeing not only Ehrenreich but a fair number of other supposedly intelligent people spout the same drivel, I'm starting to wonder if Nader himself really MAY be such an idiot. A very Useful Idiot to the GOP.
Posted by: Bruce Moomaw on July 11, 2004 09:27 PMI agree with Dubblblind, but also with a. Brad, you simply don't admit that middle-of-the-road approaches are not solving the problems of good jobs disappearing. Ehrenreich may not have all the answers, but she's addressing the right questions. Brushing away the problems of the vanishing middle-class as you do by saying that someone mighta,oughta, coulda have a retraining program or two to help with the dislocation caused by jobs disappearing in America just isn't on target. Where's the evidence that that has ever worked? Organizing labor has worked and can again, if Democrats would stand up for strengthening labor rights, as is the case in most other developed countries.
Posted by: anon on July 11, 2004 09:31 PM"How is it that you imagine the religious right, who are not, clearly, the sharpest pencils in the cup, have managed to take over so very much of our public discourse and so very many of our school boards?"
Because half the adults in this country believe humans were put here 10,000 years ago in their current form by an omniscient creator. And we have a political party that is willing to stand up for the beliefs of that group of people...in return for support for socially destructive policies.
Posted by: Sammy on July 11, 2004 10:05 PMlet's devalue the dollar! that'll fix it!
Posted by: c, on July 11, 2004 10:40 PMWhy does brad deplore welfare reform?
Posted by: c, on July 11, 2004 10:42 PMBrad has launched a laser guided missile at the heart of what also troubles me about Ehrenreich. I know she has her heart in the right place but her anti-statist leftism is more than an oxymoron, it's fundamentally flawed.
It's fine and good to work for "projects" and to build 'transnational alliances' but at the end of the day, as Brad points out, 'projects' don't reach millions and they don't collect the garbage. More importantly, and to me this is the main point, governments are accountable to the public -- or can be made to be -- in ways that 'projects' and movements never will be.
The Bushes have all been for 'projects' and church based initiatives and '1000 points of light' not just because it hands cash to their constituents but perhaps also because they understand this point all too well.
I'm all for changing the electoral system, and shaking up the Democratic party. Ehrenreich seems to have concluded it's just too difficult to do from within. Hirschman used to speak of voice, loyalty, and exit. Ehrenreich is an eloquent and dedicated campaigner for justice, but her writing as of late seems to be saying the right solution is exit.
Posted by: Jonathan on July 11, 2004 10:53 PM"I don't agree with Ehrenreichs' solutions, although I think the work she's done bringing forgotten americans into notice is invaluable - I'd have to ask, though, anyone who supports a third party over getting rid of Bush: How is it that you imagine the religious right, who are not, clearly, the sharpest pencils in the cup, have managed to take over so very much of our public discourse and so very many of our school boards?
The answer (at least I think so) is that they organize to get unglamorous local positions and leverage them to the hilt.
Since we know for certain that's a successful tactic for insurgent political minorities, is there some reason that progressives can't give it a shot before deciding to make the contradictions any starker than they are?"
I'd just like to add to this: no shit.
Running presidential candidates is the absolute WORST thing for a left-wing reform movement to do. They'll simply never win and can only split the left, because there can only be exactly one president and the president has to be acceptable to mainstream voters. You absolutely cannot win the presidency without appealing to lots of moderates, which nobody in their right mind would think that Nader can do. Vote for Nader is a protest vote pure and simple - destructive rather than constructive. The ideas is that if you take enough votes away from the democrats, maybe they'll be tempted to swing back to the left a bit.
Workable progressivism is the Dean movement trying to get an antiwar candidate to win the Democratic primary. Workable progressivism is Kos using their website to target funds to progressively oriented democrats in tight races. Workable progressivism is MoveOn creating an organization to attack the Republicans directly. Workable progressivism is Air America trying to create a radio alternative to Rush. Workable progressivism would be the Greens or similar political groups making targeted efforts to run progressive candidates in democrat primaries, or even Green candidates in house constituencies or local/state governments where they could fight to win rather than fighting to be heard.
The right doesn't move the US rightward by arguing over which candidate is best to beat the democrats, they do it by using media, think-tanks, and grassroots (especially religious right) organizations to change public attitudes directly.
"Brad, you simply don't admit that middle-of-the-road approaches are not solving the problems of good jobs disappearing."
See the problem is, here on planet Earth (I don't know how it works on your world), the only way to get a non-middle-of-the-road approach is to actually convince a decisive portion of the people to go along with it. Saying "screw politics, I'm taking my toys and going home" gets you precisely nowhere (and protest votes that hand the other side a victory aren't even one step up from saying that). You have to present an alternative that has the potential of convincing people, and then work really hard to convince them.
Ehrenreich's basic idea as presented in this essay seems to be "US government solutions are mediocre, so let's forget the government and focus on local community initiatives that when you average them across the nation, will never even amount to mediocrity". It seems to me on the other hand that the rest of the western world provides pretty powerful examples that government programs can be much more egalitarian. And so does US public opinion - universal health care is actually a very popular idea (and the implication that people change their tune when you point out the obvious fact that this has to be a government program, strikes me as ridulous). We know the people want it and we know it can work. The only obstacles are getting an actual plan, mobilizing political will behind it, and working against right-wing ideological opposition and insurance industry lobbying. And the Democrats are in fact coming up with halfway-there plans such as Clinton's health plan and Kerry's health plan.
The reasonable thing to do in such a situation is not to leave the Democrats to push this sort of thing alone, but to mobilize progressive effort behind a plan. And for crying out loud, to make some realistic compromises and common-cause with non-progressives in order to get it done, because politics is about compromise, not maintaining a weird sort of ideological purity by not supporting any imperfect-but-better-than-what-we've-got policy.
Simply by voting for Nader, when only 39% of eligible voters voted, suggests a more logical tactic would be to mobilize that segment of the population which the Bush Mob disenfranchised,
not just mobilize them, but standing witness at the polling places when blacks are turned away.
But that's not reality. We live in a time that has become increasingly polarized and surreal. When the absolute best we can hope for is that the two-party system even works in November, forget about a Populist or Green party.
My money is on a <35% voter turnout, 5:2 odds Bush to win. The large core of white Republicans who are disgusted by the Bush Mob will not, and simply cannot, vote Democrat. It's not in their blood. But a no vote is still a vote for Bush.
Nader will do what he did before, ineffectively perhaps, but he will bleed off the same share as newly mobilized Democrat voting in, thanks to Moore's and Ehrenreich's and Buchannon's third-rail putsch. An electrifyingly exciting election with a terrifying reactionary conclusion. Bushx2.
BushCo is a complete reconstruction of the model of American democracy. The Alamo on steroids, which, if you recall, were a bunch of Texican slave traders and range fencers fighting off the armies, and laws, of the great unwashed hordes.
BushCo are not simply going to brush off their clothes and ride nobly away into the sunset.
"Good show, old boy!" Uh-uh.
Barefisted no rules battle to the death.
Posted by: Cros Strees on July 11, 2004 11:23 PM>Anyone who doesn't recognize this is an idiot.
Ah, it does a body good to read that. But when you lose your temper and start insulting Greens, who are all rather nice people, its counter-productive. So Bad Bruce! Bad Bruce!
People don't vote Green / Nader for logical reasons, so attempting to reason logically on this issue is pointless, in my experience.
There are two current leftist issues where the the stakes are big enough, and the current Democrats are cowardly enough, to consider casting a protest vote: The War on Drugs, and Increased Foreign Aid. But if you look at the elected politicians who care *most* about the drug war and foreign aid, namely minority communities, they're the ones who are least likely to be seduced by Nader. The stakes are too big for them.
I think part of the problem is that we liberals spend too much time bashing Bush, and trying to scare Greens with the Bush Bogeyman, and not enought time speaking emotionally, from our heart, about what essentially good, decent, well-meaning people Kerry, Clinton, Bradley, Gore and other mainstream Dems are, and all the wonderful, emotionally satisfying things we can accomplish that can really improve lives, if Kerry gets the keys to the car. Obviously, Mainstream Dems have many flaws, but they are not corrupt, not controlled by corporate interests, not malign in motives, and we should defend them harder rather than just reflexively saying "yeah, they're bad, but Bush is worse."
Posted by: roublen vesseau on July 12, 2004 12:00 AMWhile I am not exited by Ehrenreich's pro-Nadarism, I am not certain Professor Delong really *gets* it.
Government has *not* been our friend in much of our direct interactions with it. My interactions with the government has mostly been negative, and for the most part deceptive. One of the thing that people like DeLong and Yglesias tends to do is underestimate apathy and what it really means. Not apathy in the sense of people not voting. Voting is meaningless in the particulars, while significant in that a lever exists to remove unsatisfactory political leaders. No, they underestimate the willingness of people to tolerate meaningless suffering whether that it be on themselves or unto others.
So when an absence of apathy occurs, they tend to ascribe the result to the successful navigation of normal political urges and will to a happy conclusion, rather than percieve the cause as an increase of shared linguistic and experience terms. This is not any kind of rational progression to or from any greater level. It does not demand that people be responsive to reality.
Gotta realize, things that progressives have fought for, have won, not because they calmly worked the system as Yglesias or Delong might do for getting grants or obtaining privileges, but because they threatened the system. For all that Lincoln freed my forefathers, those that were black, at any rate, he was perfectly willing to let the status quo continue. All he instisted on was a stop to the spread of slavery westward. All the efforts of abolitionists contributed little in terms of working the system. It was John Brown, the Osama of his day, the violence of Kansas, and ultimately, war, that ended slavery, even if the South had won. The system never was going to change as enlightened people are made aware of the issues and will eventually fix the problem. Brad Delong's point is, ironically, an analogue of "if only the Tsar knew what the Cossacks were doing!".
It is so because of the very nature of government. Compromise. Because no matter the intention of well meaning people, there will always be badheads who *insists* on compromise, the kind that leaves them better off and everyone worse off. And it should also not be underestimated how tireless many of these people are. They are the trolls of any governmental processional bridge. Over all passes they ask for their toll. And that toll is part and parcel of the corruption of well meaning people. The Tsar needs the Cossacks, Professor DeLong and part and parcel of their toll is their terror. Not because the Tsar approves of them in any moral terms, but because they can undermine or uphold his rule. The Tsar, even a wise and compassionate one, might out of his own limits or the limits of the circumstances be forced to use Cossacks.
Brad Delong and Matt Yglesias do not have to make such compromises at the very basic levels most people have to make, and I am not certain sometimes that they have a grasp on how the *side effects* of government action. To go along, your average Joe has to get along, and with many things that Joe may profoundly disagree with. Of course not everything is opaque to their perception of the effectiveness of action *by* the government. You'll see tirades against idiocies like the sugar subsidies and the focus on abstinence in sex ed. We see many topics on the corruption of the media as well. What we don't see are many discussions on the *perversities* of daily life, and how it impacts daily life as well as the role of government in *enforcing* the wrongness. And in this milieu, how can people trust the government to stop wrongness if they ask it to? How do they know how to interact with the government and pay off all the players that must be paid? Without a real analysis of why people accept things or not accept things, Professor Delong and Mr. Yglesias, two people who have had much more control over their environment and can go home and take their ball if they want to, may come to wrong conclusions about the ability of government to change tack and people's willingness to accept that change.
Americans tends to natively believe in a social contract, however, the messiness of government tends to breed a sort of cynicism. Not only are the more effective government programs taken for granted, but the many instances of perverse incentives that Americans and others have to deal with are held up as corrupting, and also as a reason not to participate whatsoever. What Barbara Ehrenreich is pushing, and what seems to be missing sometimes from the dialogue of the wonks, is an empowerment and self assertion, independent of the government and capable of challenging the authority of the government is not only the only way for government to change, it is also the only way for the people to accept the change as genuine!
Simply emancipating the slaves did not change anything, not really. What did change everything was the development of a black social conciousness that whites felt *very* threatened by, and not only that, it changed the *expectations* of blacks as well. And one of the biggest generators of that change in expectations was the first exposure to the concept that it could be different when black soldiers went off to fight in world wars. What came back were soldiers, not civilians, who went to school and while maybe they did or did not participate in the civil rights movement actively, they most certainly did so passively. And unlike in previous circumstances where whites had bequeathed benefits to blacks, the value of what the movement had won was appreciated, and this victory has been actively protected as best as black people could.
And Professor Delong, this is the issue. The issues that matter to us, most of them have been slowely eroded away. The First Admendment, the Fourth and Fifth Admendment first, and then some of the latter admendments are being eroded away. The regulatory branches that assure the safety of our food and air and information, and the arms of the governments that procure taxes, information, and violence are being eroded away in effectiveness. We have a Democratic canidate, who for political expediencies, are advocating, for all intents and purposes, a better Bush Administration, because they have to satisfy all the suckling leeches that the Bushies do. The only difference will be that they will do the job better. But that still doesn't address the issues concerning the decreasing effectiveness of the state and the need for some kind of change. Even if Kerry is better, he isn't better *enough*, and we have learned to our sorrow that a good canidate who is tough enough to do some of the wiser things will get mauled in the political arena and in the bought-and-paid-for-by-those-selfsame-leeches media. And I have the niggling belief that if Kerry wins because people *hate* Bush, then we will see a Grey Davis redux, and after our bit of false dawn, it will get worse. Kerry is going to have a mother of a presidency, and he cannot afford not to have continous support from the man in the streets even if only to demostrate what the effect of gumming up the works will be...This requires the kind of progressive militancy that can offer an alliance, not as a vassal.
We have to hold the Tsar accountable for his Cossacks, and we cannot do that by government channels. What Ehrenreich is after is not the overthrowing of the state, but the ability to do so, even if it is without the intent of doing so. Worker's rights, civil rights, they all came to be from the fear of overthrow by commited activist. Not overthrow by war, but revolution by the likes of Eugene Debbs and the hint of something worse. And with the threat of militancy, people can be more assured that the government works for them, not the other way around, and can also *expect* quality governance.
Posted by: shah8 on July 12, 2004 01:29 AMOh and one last comment.
One of the key reasons Republicans have had this movement and a solid base was that they only focus on one or two true bases and they make an effort at clearing showing the empowerment of the people who follow these republicans. Whether that empowerment is real or not is immaterial, as I said, reality's got nothing to do with it. However, Democrats with so many alliances have a hard time selling clear messages and showing people that their activity will result in actions.
However, the point is to increase good governance...We *don't* want democrat to act like republican, showy of the little stuff and always having the big stuff just beyond the reach as if their base is Tantalaus in Hell.
Posted by: shah8 on July 12, 2004 01:41 AMI thought of an analogy, as I was reading these posts. The American constitution is like "Windows", patches have been installed to correct bugs, but still the system tends to crash. After 300 years, perhaps it is time to produce an entirely new constitution, with the knowledge learned of the centuries, and then start installing new patches.
Posted by: latibulum on July 12, 2004 04:03 AMInterestingly enough, these are the same discussions little 'l' libertarians are always having. We divide the faithful into ideological and consequentialist libertarians. The ideological types view the consequentialists as not only sell-outs, but more to the point as part of the problem, in the same way Ehrenreich would see someone like Brad. Consequentialists hold that human liberty works better than the alternatives for broad human happiness, and tend to see libertarian reform as an incremental process that shouldn't require a horrible revolution.
I don't suppose folks in this neck of the woods care at all about the factiousness of we The Uncaring, but it is interesting to me to see the parallels. It also makes me wonder how strong each of the sides are in the absence of NotBush.
Is it the sense of you guys on the left that, absent a unifying figure like Bush, most folks are Ehrenreichian or de Longite?
Posted by: Jason Ligon on July 12, 2004 05:44 AM1. Ehrenreich's observation that Americans are fed up with government is hardly unique. She's just recognized the result of Reaganism: that people across the spectrum have been convinced that government is the problem. (And since both sides of Congress have worked more for big business and especially big medicine for two decades, is it really wrong?) Against that, what else do you expect her to say: "Let's try compassionate conservatism."?
2. If the long-term trend for wages and benefits for working class Americans has been downward (or at least not upward) as has been discussed at this website often, then why shouldn't she be makng that argument? Medicare, Medicaid, EITC, and all the rest hasn't stopped the slide. By the end of the 1990s more doctors didn't want to take medicare patients. Drug costs were soaring (and actually have risen further since the Bush approach to prescription drugs). One could go on. It begs the question: if the bottom 60% are to see improving conditions, then who is working on it for them? Certainly not the Republicans, and -- in ref to the previous post on Ehrenreich -- certainly not the Clinton/Gore/Daschle democratic party of 2000.
So Ehrenreich's call for more popular, strident activism at that time isn't surprising. Only by 2003 did it seem the Democrats had woken up to the fact that the party's "far left" (those that voted for Nader in 2000) were not so far left, but in fact a lot of fed-up people barely to the left of center, but only far left to those who had taken the party far to the right and far into the hands of corporate America.
Posted by: paulo on July 12, 2004 06:08 AMBrad,
What do you have against civil society? Ehrenreich is overstating her point, but so are you. We need goverment, but government can't work without civil society behind it. As Ehrenreich accurately pointed out, their part of civil society--the corpuloids--is well organized, and can support their vision of government. Our part of civil society needs its own organization
Aside for her past Nader boosterism (and everyone is entitled to be flat-out wrong once in a while) I really don't see what is at all questionable about any of Ehrenreich's arguments in this essay. When the present government is in the process of eviscerating those programs that you believe are most beneficial, how can one demand more of the same? Does anyone think that we are any closer to say, national health insurance than we were ten years ago, or three years ago for that matter?
Her espousal of organizing the unorganized work force is also understandable. Without activism as a force for change, government will do nothing, economists' advice notwithstanding. Programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid did not spring fully formed all by themselves like Athena from the head of Zeus. WIthout decades of labor activism in the 20th century, I seriously doubt government would have initiated such programs at all, not to mention Child Labor laws, etc..
As to a more fully organized labor force, well, a national strike can focus the minds of bureaucrats wonderfully.
Posted by: R.Porrofatto on July 12, 2004 07:13 AMOnly by 2003 did it seem the Democrats had woken up to the fact that the party's "far left" (those that voted for Nader in 2000) were not so far left, but in fact a lot of fed-up people barely to the left of center, but only far left to those who had taken the party far to the right and far into the hands of corporate America.
This describes my position in the 2000 general. I voted for Ralph in a very Gore-safe state to send a message to the Democratic party that not every dem out there was going to vote with them no matter what they'd done in the previous four years.
If I had lived in a state that was less of home-run for Gore, I would've voted for Gore.
I'm not even considering voting for Ralph this time because I finally have an outlet for my reformist impluses... DFA.
Posted by: Sharon on July 12, 2004 07:39 AMWell if that don't beat all! When liberals call for big government programs, they're told that local efforts can do it better. When they call for local efforts.....Reminds me of a guy in the WH who said the feds should stay out of local decisions like marriage- before the election. After the election, the story changed.
Some of us Dems have been learning that without local people guiding and monitoring performance, ANY government agency goes off track. This also happens (surprise surprise) with 'private enterprise' that gets too big for government to regulate.
Without offering any evidence, Brad has set up a straw man hypothesis that Ehrenreich is supporting Nader this year. If so that is a mark against her but most of us learn that one bad grade is not a very strong predictor of performance.
Frankly, I've been watching bad government for 40+ years and the only real improvement has taken place at the local level, where the changes have been breathtaking. At the Federal level every bad policy that greeted my assumption of the franchise is still in place.
Brad has missed or forgotten the two most prominent facts about our form of government. The first is that the structure of the government discourages change. The two-party system, the bicameral legislatures, the seniority and committee systems, judicial review- all act against global change emerging from the legislature.
The second is that our government was formed on a radical principle, that the legitimacy of the government derives from the consent of the governed. Like a lot of the stuff that Paul Krassner or Ken Kesey did, this proposition appeared 'self-evident' to the people who formed our government, and the people around them. To the rest of the world, which had gone about 8000 years without having this 'self-evident' idea, it seemed like radical lunacy.
Put these two facts together, and it appears likely that, if the 'government' can't get its act together, the people will- possibly in a way that will surprise you.
But maybe Brad is just pulling our chain. At least we're not getting the usual string of troll comments on these posts.
Posted by: serial catowner on July 12, 2004 07:46 AMNational health insurance hasn't gone forward because it's an idea that isn't pushed except by Democratic presidential candidates who want a popular platform item. There are lots of popular political movements in this country but a health care reform movement isn't one of them. I've always found it noteworthy that the American left hasn't had much focus on health care lately despite its ballooning costs, the big entry into public awareness of high US prescription drug prices, the obscene profits of the drug industry, the mainstream popularity of universal health care, and its blatantly obvious workability and success as demonstrated by pretty much every single other country in the developed world.
For the past decade or so the US left has been obsessed with trade and "globalization", but in such a haphazard way that all that comes out of it politically is a generalized opposition to free trade deals and a heck of a lot of sympathy directed toward protectivist and nativist ideas. (The protectionism and nativism have now reached a fever pitch as it has become an article of faith among the left to bemoan "outsourcing", which now means "ANY transfer of a specific job out of the US, even if it actually becomes a high-paying, development-positive job in the third world country it's transferred to"). Not getting fired up about government programs like universal health care is a self-fulfilling prophecy. They don't get passed because they lack a hardcore activist "base" that is constantly pushing for them.
Instead we get pipe dreams like turning the US into a nation of strong unions and then letting the unions advocate for better government programs, or setting up a whole bunch of local community-based organizations and letting them agitate. Effective mass movements are built around major common issues. If you can't mobilize enough support to get lots of people to vote your way on a particular issue, then you've got to accept that you don't have a movement that will ever amount to anything no matter what tactic you use.
As I've said elsewhere, those of us with Nader sympathies who stay within the party are frequently reminded that we are not especially wanted there. If "Naderites" are wrong on almost all the issues, Democrats should learn to win without their (our) votes, and keep the insults coming; if they are right on many issues, the Democrats should deal with them.
This is not a defense of Nader, who really seems to have gone nuts. It's not even a defense of the Green Party, which seems to me to have no future nationally. But are there any good reasons why some people are dissatisfied with the Democrats?
Posted by: zizka / John Emerson on July 12, 2004 07:54 AM"Brad has missed or forgotten the two most prominent facts about our form of government. The first is that the structure of the government discourages change. The two-party system, the bicameral legislatures, the seniority and committee systems, judicial review- all act against global change emerging from the legislature."
"Put these two facts together, and it appears likely that, if the 'government' can't get its act together, the people will- possibly in a way that will surprise you."
I see this sort of lunatic assertion popping up a lot on leftist boards. Reality check: the US government is not some magically bad institution whose nature causes it to create programs that skew a lot more right-wing than those in the rest of the western world. American VOTERS, the American PEOPLE, are much more right-wing than most of the west, and have been becoming more so for decades. The American right has created very strong POPULAR MOVEMENTS to get out the vote for measures it supports. There will be no popular pseudo-revolutionary movements showing up to instill leftist ideas, because THOSE IDEAS ARE NOT POPULAR. If you want to look at the direction of change in the US, public opinion research during the 90s found that things like sexism, xenophobia, and acceptance of violence in society INCREASED.
The Republicans may have tremendous support from business interests, but you need to take a long, hard look at the fact that even after almost four years of George Bush, one of the worst US presidents ever, loathed around the world, having gotten the US into a military quagmire, having lied to the public about most major policies, having trampled on fundamental civil liberties... there are still about 1/3 of American voters who are absolutely guaranteed to vote for Bush in November because they absolutely will not ever vote for a "leftist" like John Kerry. THAT is the reason someone like Bush could get into power, THAT is the reason Democrats have been rushing to the center, THAT is the reason the government supports policies you don't like.
The right wing in the US didn't get its ideological influence by saying "well, the Republicans aren't right-wing enough for us, we're going to start making protest votes until they pay attention to us". They created a massive ideological/political machine to organize the far right around getting more political power within the Republican party. In contrast, the right wing in Canada essentially did try protest votes starting a decade ago - a lot of western right-wingers didn't like the country's main right-wing party, so they created their own (the Reform party). Because of the parliamentary system, they were able to get lots of the Canadian equivalent of House representatives, so it's not totally accurate to call it a "protest" vote. But it did count as a protest vote in constituencies outside the west where there wasn't enough support for a Reform candidate. The result was that they lost any chance of forming a national government. They have now wised up and formally unified the two parties, so that they're no longer presenting two different right-wing choices to voters and may actually be able to rebuild into something that can win a national election. Unfortunately for left wingers like me, who have been cackling in glee as the Canadian right constantly Nadered itself in eastern constituencies.
Brad, Lenin did not call leftism an "infantile disorder" because its policy proposals were not practical, but because it lacked an effective strategy for attaining real power. Whatever good things Democrats have (and they have a lot), an effective strategy for rolling back the conservative dominance (not just winning the election) does not seem to be one of them. If Bush is one of the most incompetent presidents ever and the next election looks pretty close ¿what does that say about the Democratic Party?
Interesting to see one of the most basic assumptions of our government- that the Senate would act as a check on the House- described as a 'lunatic assertion'.
Somebody spending a little too much time 'bowling alone'?
Posted by: serial catowner on July 12, 2004 09:00 AMAnd on the practical level, polls suggest Ian is simply wrong. If we trust the pollsters, well over half of the public support universal healthcare, environmental safeguards, legalization of marijuana, public education, safeguarding social security, civil unions for gay people....the list goes on and on, and the conclusion is plain- the American people are not on board for the Republican plans.
Posted by: serial catowner on July 12, 2004 09:05 AMI think a possible key to understanding the appeal of Nader to people like Ehrenreich is found in the recent debate between Nader and Dean. Nader suggests a binding "none of the above" on the presidential ballot. Dean responded that we live in a real world and have to make real choices. The appeal of Nader's position is that one's political expression is a clear reflection of one's conscience and values, not in the sociological sense in which conservatives like to speak of these things (as inferred from action and attributed), and a way of making the vote the supreme form of political expression. This is also probably why he runs for president rather than pursuing other means of political action and reform. That this is an important cultural issue, or even a shift perhaps, can be seen in the increasing sophsitication and organiziation of the global justice movement whose most public figures often invoke the sovreignty of their conscience (Roy), and similar appeal to values and their direct expression from the right. The real problem, in determing for example whether or not some policy change is suffecient to inform a disillusion, is the relation of objective descriptions of what is adequate and those found in one's conscience. How do we sort out which has the higher claim?
Posted by: William Stafford on July 12, 2004 09:56 AMIn re, "The appeal of Nader's position is that one's political expression is a clear reflection of one's conscience and values. . . and a way of making the vote the supreme form of political expression."
The whole thing echoes the frustrations of Max Weber when he contrasted the ethics of ultimate ends (I think he meant correct rules/principles rather than goals, since consequences are to be discounted) and the ethics of responsibility.
A secularize for of his "The Christian does rightly and leaves the results with the Lord." seems to capture the Nader spirit accurately.
But the question about Nader supporters is a different one. Certainly, there are those who do believe consequences are important, that the country, and especially its left wing, could use a 3rd party, and conclude that voting for Nader in a 'safe' state is a desirable thing to do, but not to do so in a contested state. This is not to suggest that a lot of people do not vote out of sentiment (though that does seem irrational to me, and not in the voting seems irrational way). . . like the 1/3 that'll vote for Bush.
Typo: "A secularized form of his "The Christian does rightly and leaves the results with the Lord." seems to capture the Nader spirit accurately.
Posted by: Robin on July 12, 2004 10:22 AMWhen I heard that the NY Times had selected Ehrenreich to subistute for Tom Friedman, I assumed that they selected her precisely because she is a Naderite and could be trusted to never say anything nice about Kerry or any other Democrat.
Posted by: Alice Marshall on July 12, 2004 11:35 AMThird parties are a mathematical failure under our current election system. Fix that first if you are really concerned about a real power strategy.
Worrying about anything else beyond that point is trying to eat tomorrow's bread today.
Posted by: a lesser mongbat on July 12, 2004 01:02 PMWhat on earth could have led a person to believe in the late 1990s that something was fundamentally broken with the American political system?
Well, sure, things looked great in 1999. But that's like measuring economic growth from trough to peak.
In broad view, the last 30 or so years have not been so hot:
- High unemployment
- Rising poverty
- Stagnating incomes, especially for those at the bottom
- Enormous increase in income and wealth inequality
- Gutting of social programs and services targeted to the poor
- Willy-nilly deregulation and at least two or three major corporate crime waves
- De-unionization
- The utter economic and social destruction of urban and rural communities in the northeast and midwest
- The mainstreaming of questionable ideas like privatizing the public school system or social security or medicare
- Massive wasteful increases in defense spending in response to non-existent threats
- A vast increase in the role of money in politics
- More pork-barrel spending than ever before
- House elections with dictator-scale winning margins
- A stolen election
- The ridiculous impeachment theater of the absurd
- So-called free-trade agreements that seem like little more than corporate investment protection acts
And, last but not least, the "party of the people," the Democratic Party, has for the most part utterly sold out to this pro-business, anti-worker agenda.
But, gee, why would anyone think that our political system was broken?
Well, having chewed out Zizka in the Nader thread below, apparently I need to point out the obvious again: the very fact that Zizka is a "Naderite who stays in the Democratic Party" proves that he's not a Naderite -- he's a Kucinichite.
If Nader had done the elementarily sane thing and run for the Democratic nomination (like Kucinich and Dean), none of the liberals who now justifiably hate Nader's guts could utter a word against him. The action of his that has (correctly) led legions of Democrats to conclude that he is insane and/or immoral is simply that he has insisted on two cretinous runs for the White House as an independent -- although, if he couldn't get enough Democratic primary votes to win that party's nomination, he sure as hell can't win a general election, which means that the only possible remaining role he can play is to arrange the election of a right-winger whom a majority of the American people don't actually want as President. His only possible motives for doing what he's doing are sheer idiocy, pure petty personal spite, or (as Mark Kleiman suggests) a desire to keep his own personal gravy train (Public Citizen) rolling at top speed by making sure the GOP stays in power.
Posted by: Bruce Moomaw on July 13, 2004 01:05 AMPostscript: as for Nader's actual policy positions, I support a lot of what he's pushed domestically. However, judging from his statements on foreign policy (starting with his fervent opposition to even trying to run Bin Laden out of Afghanistan), I wouldn't trust him with a burnt-out match.
Posted by: Bruce Moomaw on July 13, 2004 01:08 AMHow can the Democrats simultaneously be a party of big welfare-state government and globalization? With globalization, international capital flows and currency traders have considerable power over national governments, especially poor ones, but increasingly all of them. The rich and the corporations can venue shop for that tax rates they like, leaving redistribution in the dust. And the WTO, the most important legacy of Clinton, IMO, institutionalizes this kind of power (as the IMF had to a fair degree already) in a way that clearly shows its anti-democratic character. Perhaps the disenchantment with government, regardless of whether justified fundamentally, is simply realistic; it's increasingly not going tobe there to help you. I don't know whether Ehrenreich's specific alternatives are going to fufill the needs better, but it seems the only way to create another approach will be to start.
I also want to second the person who observed that moderate liberals owe almost everything they have achieved to pressure from the radicals. One of the reasons the Republicans are so much more powerful is that they respect their extremists. Many on the right must be embarrassed by Coulter, but they rarely attack her or apologise for her. Compare to the liberal reaction to Moore. And, contrary to the prevailing myth, the extremists run the party largely because they are perfectly willing to betray its interests. The Republican right torpedoed Riordin in California and attempted to do so to Arnold because they were not pure enough.
I also have to wonder about what is considered "minor" here. Delong talks about the EITC and Ehrenreich about the incarceration rate. Is the EITC really a bigger deal? It may directly affect more people, but its effect is vastly less significant. The incarceration rate is destroying lives.
As for Nader running within the Democratic Party, well, that's what Jesse Jackson did. He brought lots of new voters to the party, campaigned hard for the eventual nominee, and what did he get for it? The nominee tried to run as a Republican - posing on a tank and blathering about competence - and lost. The next cycle, Clinton made a point of disregarding Jackson's support and insulting him - publicly refusing to let Jackson raise his hand, a simple, conventional gesture. To me, that was a message from the Democratic party that progressives were not welcome. So some of the progressives took the hint.
Posted by: Martin Bento on July 13, 2004 04:55 AMThe "system" will never be fixed. The only solution is to dissolve it totally. Since that is obviously not feasible, the best we can do is minimize the impact of the "system" on our lives: Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.
Posted by: Ironchef on July 13, 2004 06:38 AMBut if a central part of the Nader campaign is to reform voting, then clearly they care very much about consequences, in that they are trying to restore the link of consequences to political choice. Just becasue they project their goals into a future moment does not mean they are separated from consequecnes. God's judgement is final and it is this aspect of God which gives the Christian's conscience its sovreignty. There is never a question of the violation of conscience as a necessary or prudent practice, becasue God is necessary and his judgement is absolute in whatever sense 'absolute' has meaning. Perhaps this is why people criticize Nader, becasue his stance seems as indifferent to power as the Christian can be, while ignoring the fact that power is the necessary foundation of conscience. But there is still the difficulty or sorting out whether or not there are objecitve determinants of the validity of one's values. How are Naderites sentimental or irresponsible or immoral? Since we can't know whether or not their strategies would work in the future, or what effect they would have with any certainty, the focus has to fall on seizing the present moment and controlling social change. This too is not really an appeal to consequcnes specifically, but to a model of action which seeks an objective, or intersubjective really, way of managing progress, or even just movement. But there is a risk of the intersubjectivity becoming empty as subjective values are forced to submit to descriptions of rationality which support various policies, like those in economics. It is a common thing in the US to hear about how some policy is better for the American people, or is preferred by them, or is in their best interest; it is better for YOU even though you may not know it or believe it. What provides the basis for such claims?
Posted by: William Stafford on July 13, 2004 10:28 AMAnd so I ask you, Matthew Yglesias, how can Ehrenreich's fascinating Nation piece, be considered as any kind of 'endorsement' of Ralph Nader?
She grants the positive gains under Clinton, then excoriates him, and rightly, for escalating the war on drugs, Reagan's absolute worst legacy, and the one that indeed turns the Government into an "Armed Cop".
She points out that the correct strategy is to first fix what's broken in the government before trying to solve any more problems outside of it.
Whatever happened to Small Is Beautiful? Or maybe that has little appeal for the macro-economist...
2107 You can buy viagra from this site :http://www.ed.greatnow.com
Posted by: Viagra on August 8, 2004 04:13 AM5116 Why is Texas holdem so darn popular all the sudden?
http://www.texas-holdem.greatnow.com
7697 ok you can play online poker at this address : http://www.play-online-poker.greatnow.com
Posted by: online poker on August 10, 2004 01:36 PM3414 Get your online poker fix at http://www.onlinepoker-dot.com
Posted by: poker on August 15, 2004 02:52 PM7174 Get your online poker fix at http://www.onlinepoker-dot.com
Posted by: online poker on August 15, 2004 02:55 PM1130 black jack is hot hot hot! get your blackjack at http://www.blackjack-dot.com
Posted by: play blackjack on August 16, 2004 10:25 PM