I like nearly every word of Bill Curry’s op-ed in Salon on the key lessons of the 2016 presidential campaign to date. I’ll restrain myself and just quote two paragraphs:
The fault lines of the new politics are not cultural issues like guns, abortion and same-sex marriage that divide the Democratic and Republican bases. They are issues of political reform and economic justice that divide both party’s elites from both parties’ bases, and the American people from their government. On these issues we find the elites of both parties shockingly alike. Among them: global trade; financial deregulation and prosecution of financial crimes; the social safety net including Social Security, Medicare, a living wage and health care for all; above all, the “soft corruption†of pay to play politics.
There’s a name for the bipartisan consensus of party elites: neoliberalism. It is an inconvenient name for many reasons but mostly because it seems odd that the worldview of the Republican elite would be an ideology with the root word ‘liberal’ in its name but it is true, nonetheless. and may even shed a little light on the open, bitter breach between GOP elites and the party base. Democrats stayed loyal longer to their elites for two reasons. One is their love of two very talented politicians, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, whose charm and verbal dexterity masked deep differences with the base. The other is their fear of Republicans.
His three key points are:
- The old politics is over.
- Hillary Clinton has neither their deft personal touch nor protean verbal skills [ed. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s].
- The performance of the press has been abysmal.
Whether we see what some of the Founding Fathers, particularly Jefferson, wanted in a sort of peaceful permanent revolution in this election or an actual violent revolution may depend on how the elites in power react to events. I’m afraid the first shots are being fired even as I type.
I’m not sure Democrats love Bill Clinton, like they do Obama. I found these exit poll results from the Michigan Democratic primary interesting:
Who do you trust to handle race relations?
Sanders: 78%
Clinton: 69%
Race relations have gotten worse
58% of Sanders supporters agreed
38% of Clinton supporters agreed
The next President should continue Obama’s policies:
68% of Clinton supporters agreed
32% of Sanders supporters agreed
These were not broken down by race, but still suggest to me that there is a strong core of African-Americans that at least for this election, are supportive of neoliberal policies because they were Obama’s policies. How long that continues will probably make the difference.
That was a good op ed. The GoP elite deluded themselves for a long time that Trump was just a passing fancy – the Dem elites seem to be doing the same thing with Clinton’s inevitability.
Black voters stick with Hillary because vulnerable populations are wiser about signing up for ‘revolutions.’ College kids love to proclaim revolutions because college kids know dick about history and care less.
Is Bernie going to take back the House of Representatives? No? Then there’s not going to be a democratic socialist revolution. There’s going to be another 4 years of grinding it out in the ground game. Who do Democrats want to take on Paul Ryan, Bernie or Hillary? Bernie’s life has been as a gadfly, he’s never been under serious political pressure. Hillary has taken every punch the Republicans know how to throw.
The odds are that this race will be between the fascist demagogue Trump and the triangulating, paranoid, secretive Mrs. Clinton. Am I less than thrilled with Hillary lately? Yep. But these are the choices we get in reality.
Michael,
I think that’s the core problem. The two choices the Democrats are putting up to represent their party have significant…downsides. Is this really the best the party has to offer? And, actually, the Democrats only put up one serious candidate – Clinton – since Sanders has long been an independent. That Sanders has come from the outside to seriously challenge the anointed Clinton juggernaut is remarkable. The argument that people should accept this in order to take on the GoP is exactly the kind of thinking which is losing relevance. Clinton may well win the nomination and the Presidency but I think it will be a Pyrrhic victory.
I think Andy makes a good point about both the democrat and republican parties underestimating the populist appeal of Bernie and Donald to their respective party members. It has been said that 2016 is less about conventional ideology and more about frustration and disappointment mounting towards the political elite within the right and left populations at large. This tends to create emotional choices rather than reasoned ones.
Consequently, I think Sanders has a real chance at being the dems nominee, versus Trump representing the GOP. And, IMO, if that happens, I predict that Sanders, being the most revolutionary of the two dems running, has more potential than Hillary to win a POTUS contest should the GOP nominee be Trump.
…very sad.
Yes, it will be a pyrrhic victory, but so would a Trump win or a Cruz win or a Sanders win be. None of these people have any capacity to unite the country. (It’s no coincidence that Mr. Obama’s approval rating has been going up now that we have alternatives for comparison.) The idea that the world’s sole superpower can do no better than a fascist demagogue, a moralistic creep, a woman with no discernible rationale for her candidacy, and an old crank who thinks every issue involves billionaiahs, is appalling.
I think that the dynamics at work in the two parties are slightly different. There are plenty of better candidates on both sides. In the case of the Republicans, Republican voters won’t vote for them on the grounds that they’re RINOs.
The situation with the Democrats is different. None of the likely contenders wanted to go up against the Clinton organization.
Jan:
The question for Sanders is whether he can effectively preach his economic message to white working class voters. Demographics favor the Democrats long-term, but as of 2012 whites cast 72% of the vote and they went 59-39 for Mitt. If Bernie could get to 40+ with white voters he’d coast to victory. Democrats are misreading the numbers a bit, ignoring the fact that black voters are already all-in – 13% of the population, 13% of the vote. Latinos make up 17% of the population but just 10% of the electorate, so there’s a great potential there for Democrats, but that 72% white vote is still the mother-lode.
He is correct about the press and Hillary, but the old politics is still there, just under the surface. Granted, the populism is real, but a lot of this just tribalism by another name. Also, he is way off base on so many of his claims. The elites of both parties disagree on health care, living wages, Medicare and financial regulation. The elites in the GOP would be quite happy to eliminate Medicare and the ACA. They keep voting to do so, they just don’t have enough votes. Their voters support Medicare, but they don’t. I also have to really question the idea that there were enough votes to increase the minimum wage.
Steve
“There are plenty of better candidates on both sides.”
This is where I would insert the name —> Kasich.
“The question for Sanders is whether he can effectively preach his economic message to white working class voters.”
This is where Sanders and Trump cross paths, as blue collar workers seem to be considering both candidates — hence people talking about crossing party lines to vote for either one or the other. I think this cross-over may also apply not only to class demographics but also ethic ones, as I’ve heard Latinos and African Americans alluding to notions about voting for a candidate who best represents their grievances, rather than their previous party affiliations.
Steve,
Your comments about “the other political side” (GOP) are consumed by, and consequently distorted, by your hatred of it. Yes, the GOP does not endorse the ACA. It also had no votes in passing it! However, if you’ve done any apolitical reading and analysis of the ACA, it’s flaws, economical and sign-up miscalculations, co-op failures, you might be more likely to see the need for, if not it’s repeal, than a heavy dose of reform directed at how it’s viewed by and serving all the people.
The same holds true for medicare, as well as SS, in needing to be reformed in order to be sustainable and viable for future generations. However, whenever some soul from the right suggests raising ages by a mere year — hardly unrealistic considering the life extensions we are witnessing — you describe it as eliminating it! IMO, those are disingenuous talking points coming from a physician!
I don’t think you can conclude what someone would do if they had the power to do it with what they do in the full knowledge that they don’t have the power. Democrats have voted against, for example, defense spending bills when they knew the bill would be passed anyway. From that I don’t conclude that Democrats want to shut down the DoD. What I conclude is that they wanted to signal something or other to some of their supporters.
This.
I have no truck with Trump. However, I do worry about the possibility of stirring up anti-immigrant violence which is what is being set up when large numbers of Hispanics shout down a political rally.
In the case of the Republicans, Republican voters won’t vote for them on the grounds that they’re RINOs.
No, they don’t want to vote for them because they’re sick of the same old same old. Call them RINOs or Establishment or the Elite, it all amounts to the same thing. The people you would consider reasonable aren’t planning on doing a goddamned thing differently than what’s been done for the last 25 to 30 years, and people are tired of that. If you think that all that needs to be done is to tweak things a little bit here and there, and maybe apply some better management, then go ahead and vote for a Kasich, or an O’Malley, or what have you.
Schuler, you think there are big problems with the country. How is doing more of the same thing that got the country in its current state going to lead to a course change on any of the myriad issues you’ve been writing about here for well over a decade?
So you don’t like Trump or Sanders. Fine. None of the other candidates are any better if the country is facing the problems you believe it faces. But you’re going to go out and vote for more of it anyway. Just who are you waiting on to lead the country out of this mess?
However, I do worry about the possibility of stirring up anti-immigrant violence which is what is being set up when large numbers of Hispanics shout down a political rally.
What number was it I saw from the Census Bureau the other day? 61,000,000 foreign born residents and their under-18 children living in the country. And that’s no doubt an under-count.
Yeah, this is going to be one big fucking hoot of an election year. But remember, kids, this isn’t a revolution year at the polls, because there’s only one guy running against the trends. This is a voter-riot year. The revolution, if it comes, will be a few years out yet.
jan-I read more health care policy and economics in a week than most people do all year. I read right, left, libertarian and an occasional socialist. And, I live with the consequences of the ACA every day. It needs reform, but that is not what you see the GOP voting for, just trying to eliminate it or sabotage it. Note that they still have no plan of their own.
As to Medicare there is no shortage of GOP elites calling for Medicare to be eliminated. Nope, calling for the age of eligibility to be raised by one year is not calling for elimination, but that is not what has been suggested. I actually read Ryan’s proposal, did you? And there is absolutely no doubt the GOP elite want to eliminate Medicaid. To be clear, this does not mean 100% of the GOP elites, but it is prevalent.
Steve
Steve,
I genuinely take your word about reading journals and keeping up to date in the medical field. However, I do question how readily you dismiss other people’s data and claims concerning how poorly the ACA is serving those not in a medicaid expansion program or receiving big healthcare subsidies.
It’s as if other peoples’ angst or criticism simply doesn’t register in your analysis of how fairly this legislation is actually working out for the greater majority. In fact most of your responses are to pass off criticism or negative assessments of the ACA as a partisan “thing,” followed by immediately vilifying the GOP for not producing plans which pass your own medical scrutiny or political POV.
Partially, you are right. There have been far too few substantial reform ideas addressing our long term problems from both the right and the left — on almost everything. But, to be absolutely fair, the lack of acknowledging the partisan beginnings of the ACA, the misinformation given by the President and his operatives as to the actual perimeters/benefits of medical care under the ACA, the hypocrisy of his implementation delays — many of which were earlier called for by the GOP, leading to the infamous govt. shutdown causing Obama to call republicans “terrorists” — aren’t these legitimate “sticking points” rather than mere partisan blather? Then we have the incredible amount of money irresponsibly spent on an ineptly constructed, erratic govt web site, co-op and multiple state exchange failures, shrinking of providers, reported fraud in the granting of subsidy relief …on and on.
To many like me these are some of the reasons the ACA is viewed as a deeply flawed, highly partisan travesty which, while helping to medically insure some, has only deepen the woes and confusion of a great many others in either obtaining or sustaining once reliable medical care. These side effects, IMO, of the ACA does not make it a piece of legislation that was deserving of passage in the first place.
” the lack of acknowledging the partisan beginnings of the ACA”
You do realize that it was based upon Romney care. That would be the same Romney you guys chose as your POTUS nominee. Being based upon Romney care, it is full of many things that conservative health care writers like Avik Roy, John Goodman, Mark Pauly and others have advocated for years. Even the death panel clause that Palin caused to be eliminated (and which means we now still get to torture old people to death, that stupid bit%h) was put in the ACA by a Republican. Many, if not most of the ideas in the ACA have been advocated for by conservative health care people. So, it was incredibly bi=partisan in terms of its content. It was incredibly partisan in that only the Democrats voted for it.
Steve
Steve:
Exactly.
The GOP offered absolutely nothing but obstruction and lies, despite the fact that it was at its core a Republican plan. Followed up by 8 years of lies.
Steve,
Romney forged the health care plan for MA on a bipartisan consult, as 85% of the legislation were democrats. The dial, though, was already set to enact some kind of health care plan to address the uninsured when he first took office as governor of that state. He either became a part of the plan or there were petitions set to do it without him, Nonetheless, Romneycare was created for a blue state, and was passed in a bipartisan fashion — although some of Romney’s stipulations were vetoed. So, although Romneycare was somewhat of a blueprint for the ACA, most of the circumstances surrounding it’s creation and passage were far different — something you tend to either ignore or dismiss in your argument.
Furthermore, some of the concepts disputed in the ACA, mandates etc., were considered, discussed and then discarded, early on, by republican think tanks. Again, all you ever do is a half story on the history of all the various healthcare promotions since the 1990’s, emphasizing how republicans mulled over similar ideas, but not including how they were summarily rejected, or only considered for the demographics of a certain state, not the entire country.
Big difference….