Well, good question. If Happy Days aren’t here again, and they aren’t, life is better, definitely. To have the House of Representatives back in Democratic hands after eight long years is definitely a pleasure if not a treasure. As one representative put it “Being in the majority is a thousand times better.” Furthermore, the party’s position at the state level, particularly in the Midwest, except for Ohio, has improved from Obama disaster levels to “not terrible”.
The fantasized “blue wave” failed to materialize, of course, but the thirty-plus seat gain in the House is more than gratifying. It was beginning to seem that Republicans had a lock on the House similar to the Democratic lock that prevailed, with only two interruptions, from 1932 until 1994. But now it appears that the Democrats can win the House without both a hurricane and a war. And it also appears that the party has made significant, though still limited, progress from the woeful downticket performance of the Obama years, to which, as I’ve frequently complained, Obama himself contributed himself to a painful degree, both in terms of policy and administration. Now we’re starting to look like a normal party again.
So what’s next? I recently opined that Old Lady Pelosi held most of the cards, if not the answers, in the upcoming power struggles. It’s true that a number of new reps made it a talking point that they wouldn’t vote for Pelosi, but luckily for Pelosi if no one else, she faces divided forces. A lot of the talk against Pelosi is that she’s “too California” and that we need some Midwestern blue-collar muscle rather than Silicon Valley slickness to win in Trump’s America. But there’s another big batch of energy coming against Pelosi from the new kids, saying she ain’t woke, or at least she’s so old you can’t tell if she’s woke or dead. I confess I’m not up on which wave of feminism we’re up to these days, but obviously Nancy ain’t current with the current current, you know what I’m sayin’? So some are sayin’ she’s too coastal, and others are sayin’, not enough. And if you give an old war horse like Nancy an opening like that, she’s liable to run right through it, which is precisely what she is doing.
As I also previously opined, Nancy’s strongest card is the one she never flourishes in public, money. Decades of successful politicking have given her a whatever it is the kids call a Rolodex these days to die for. Nancy knows moolah, and she knows how to dish it out, but will her cash “moderate” the Democratic Party enough to keep Neoliberal Nancy in control? And even if it does, how much can Nancy do as a mere faute de mieux (aka “lack of a better”)? I think the big issue for the Democrats to address is income inequality, but the “answers” suggested by Bernie Sanders in 2016, and very popular with both the “blue collar” and “woke” wings of the Democratic Party, strike Neoliberal Alan as absolutely the wrong way to go.
The “unifying factor” for Democrats on the campaign trail in 2016 largely seemed to be “Medicare for All,” the original Bernie riff, which appeals to old Paleolibs like Thomas Frank and Michael Moore, who think they’re helping the party return to its New Deal roots, as well as the new kids, like the famously famous (and no doubt privately envied and resented) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who would be rockin’ that socialism, if they knew what it was. The problem is, as representatives who actually represent blue-collar districts know, real blue-collar folks don’t want Medicare for All. They want Medicare for themselves, for those who have “earned it” and not for those who haven’t—you know, the “Government, hands off my Medicare” crowd, who love “white socialism” but hate “welfare”.1
“White socialism” includes employer-provided health insurance, which is, of course, highly subsidized, because it’s effectively tax free income, though most people tend to think of it as entirely free—at least it ought to be.2 I think, when push comes to shove, that voters with employer-provided health insurance will not be enthusiastic about either giving up what they have for whatever “Medicare for all” would be, nor do I think that those on the current Medicare program will be interested in “sharing”. Certainly, the Republican “war” on the Affordable Care Act should be reversed, and the Act itself strengthened, but the Democrats need to address the broader issue of income inequality, and income stagnation, beyond health care alone, if the Democrats are going to reclaim a respectable share of the “less than college” white vote. But how?
The Democrats’ dilemma is discussed, not too intelligently, in a recent post appearing in Slate, written by an unenthusiastic Jordan Weissmann, “Kamala Harris’ Big Policy Idea Is Even Worse Than I Thought”, going after the “LIFT The Middle Class Act” being pushed by California Senator Kamala Harris. Okay, the name’s not catchy, and it’s scarcely more than an expanded version of the Earned Income Tax Credit, and it’s too generous, providing as much as $6,000 a year to couples with an income of less than $100,000 a year, but, to my mind, it’s very much a step in the right direction.
Weissmann’s first complaint–and his take is not nearly as “outraged” as the headline would suggest–is that too many U.S. households–almost 30% of them–are above the $100,000 a year figure to make this a winner. Bernie Sanders, he says, was smarter, promising free college tuition for everyone, even if your daddy is a billionaire. My reaction is just the other way–that we shouldn’t be boosting the income of households who are making more than the national average. Catering to kids who think that socialism means that everything is free isn’t going to win back blue-collar workers in the Midwest.
A bit surprisingly–and showing how the Democratic Party has “drifted”–Weissman doesn’t emphasize what would be an “old Democrat’s” immediate complaint–that the bill wouldn’t do anything to help the non-working poor, the group that so many liberals insist on always going to bat for–see, for example, the recent “outrage” over proposed changes in the food stamp program voiced by Paul Krugman.
It’s certainly “arguable” that the food stamp proposal, if it had passed, which it did not, could have been administered in a punitive manner at the state level, but the main criticism voiced by Krugman and others was the mere idea that poor people should be forced to do anything, that cutting benefits to an able-bodied person simply on the grounds that they refused to look for a job3 was the ultimate in Republican villainy. Many Democrats continue to insist on throwing themselves into the “welfare trap” that Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan dug for them so long ago, while Weissman wants to dig a new welfare trap–welfare for the upper-middle-class. Harris, at least, is trying to craft something that will reach the “real” middle class.
Working to expand the notion, and respectability, of outright income redistribution should be a major Democratic endeavor over the next two years. The Earned Income Tax Credit, because it’s tied to employment, because it provides people with cash, because it’s “invisible” (unlike food stamps), and because it “travels” across state lines, unlike eligibility for most assistance programs, all make the EITC a near perfect vehicle for addressing the “shocking” fact that the free enterprise system, while the only system capable of creating the kind of economic growth that can actually provide a decent standard of living for all people, is not in any sense of the word “fair”. I subscribe, at least in part, to the various theories floating around arguing that the “happy times” of declining income inequality following the two world wars until recently were the product of a variety of factors extraneous to capitalism itself. Today capitalism is continuing to better the lives of millions, and even billions, around the globe, but while the globalizing of capitalism is great for the Third World folks,4 it’s “disruptive” here, now that U.S. corporations can no longer get away with charging monopoly (or at least oligopoly) prices and thus can no longer afford to pay monopoly wages.
The decline in wages for many Americans is popularly regarded as the result of imports, but in fact it’s the decline in bargaining power for American workers now that they are competing with a global work force almost as skilled and ten times larger. Automation, not imports, is destroying the old manufacturing jobs that paid union wages—wages that were high because of the unions, not because there is some magic to manufacturing jobs that lets blue-collar workers earn white-collar salaries. As the manufacturing jobs disappear, workers find new ones, but they aren’t joining unions. Unions have nothing to offer private-sector workers these days because they can’t protect them from international competition.
Hatred of international competition and immigrants drove the Bernie boom in the Democratic primaries in 2016.5 Pelosi’s California money, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s New York money, won’t fund a Democratic Party that runs on Bernie’s issues. If Democrats are going to be competitive in the big Midwestern states that they lost to Trump in 2016, they have to address the issue of income inequality, and a massive expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, so that it pushes millions into the middle class, is the most direct and effective way to do it, a way that is politically acceptable to lower- and middle-income whites, and a way that is compatible with coastal priorities—i.e., a globally competitive economy, which, if you actually care about reducing poverty worldwide, instead of engaging in moral posturing, is absolutely the only way to go. Unfortunately, “the left” is much more inclined to posture.
Income stagnation and growing inequality strike me as the great domestic issue that the Democrats need to address to recover some ground in the Midwest, particularly the rural areas, where we’ve been losing by massive margins, as I’ve discussed earlier. I obviously don’t think the party can win by going further left, which would only increase our margins where we’re already winning. Health care is closely related to income stagnation, since people are paying more and more for it. Whether cutting the rate of increase for health care costs—correctly identified by President Obama as the “real” crisis, rather than the increases in entitlement costs—can be dealt with in a politically palatable is a (very) open question. But at least proposing a meaningful plan of income redistribution tied to employment would put the Democrats in good position for a decent shot at unseating President Trump. And, barring nothing but good luck as a result of well-deserved investigations into this grossly corrupt presidency, we’re going to need all the good positioning we can get.
Afterwords
I’m going to skip moaning about the dangers of getting into fights over impeachment (a terrible idea no matter what, because the Republican Party is as corrupt as Trump is, or rather as corrupt as Trump needs it to be) and engaging in excessive “wokeness”, since I have a general aversion to culture wars. There are a variety of other policies for increasing incomes for lower and middle income folks, which I’ve discussed here, and here. A particular policy, to be pursued at both the federal and state level, is the diminution and (dream on) eventual end to the “War on Drugs”, which gives hundreds of thousands of young black and Hispanic men criminal records while wasting billions on police, prisons, courts, etc. This is the best thing Democrats can do to improve the situation of blacks and Hispanics in this country.
1. I discuss “white socialism”—the deliberate tailoring of all the major New Deal programs to exclude as many blacks as possible—here in the course of a beatdown administered to poor, pitiful Paulie Ryan and here, in the course of an extended beatdown administered to the poor, pitiful Democratic Party.
2. AARP has an ad showing old folks talking about the issues, and what this country “really” needs, and the closer is provided by an old broad who says in a grandly self-satisfied voice “affordable health care!”, as though the viewer is supposed to exclaim “Affordable health care! Affordable health care! Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?” Because of course what people mean by “affordable health care” is free health care.
3. The bill, which passed the House but never would have passed the Senate, had a number of waivers that made the bill sound much more “reasonable” (though, again, the impact of these provisions would likely depend on administration at the state level). But what enraged Krugman et al. was the notion that self-sufficient employment was considered a more desirable outcome that unrestricted welfare dependency. Because for Krugman et al. the real purpose of these programs is to allow “us” to prove how generous “we” are, not to improve people’s lives.
4. Great, but, uh, massively destabilizing, for both First and Third World countries, which is why virtually everyone is seeking protection of some sort from global economic forces, often with strong nativist overtones.
5. Sanders was, of course, not at all racist, but he did originally advocate shutting off immigration—an easy position to take in Vermont, one of the whitest states in the union, and very few immigrants, legal or no. Pressure from Hillary drove Bernie to the left on immigration.
