Why Must the Trump Alternative be Self-Satisfied, Complacent Democrats?
Published on
Wednesday, May 04, 2016
by
The Guardian
Why Must the Trump Alternative be Self-Satisfied, Complacent Democrats?
Convinced that the country's ongoing demographic shifts will bring victory
for years to come, the party establishment acts like its candidates need do
nothing differently
by
Thomas Frank
'What the Democrats have in mind for 2016 is what we might call a campaign
of militant complacency. They are dissociated from the mood of the nation,
and they do not care.' (Photo: Charles Dharapak/AP)
The year of our discontent rolls on, and now it is Indiana that hands
victory to the insurgent Senator Bernie Sanders and the protectionist
demagogue Donald Trump.
Seven years have passed now since the last recession officially ended and
yet the country's fury has scarcely cooled. To this day we remain angry at
Wall Street; we rage against career politicians; and we are incandescent
that the economic system seems to have been permanently "rigged" against
working people. Median household income has still not recovered the levels
of 2007. Wages are going nowhere. Elite bankers are probably never going to
be held accountable for what they did. America is burning.
Listening to the leading figures of the Democratic Party establishment,
however, you'd never know it. Cool contentment is the governing emotion in
these circles. What they have in mind for 2016 is what we might call a
campaign of militant complacency. They are dissociated from the mood of the
nation, and they do not care.
"What [the establishment Democrats] have in mind for 2016 is what we might
call a campaign of militant complacency."
I mean this in ways both great and small. The party's leadership is largely
drawn from a satisfied cohort that has done quite well in the aftermath of
the Great Recession. They've got a good thing going. Convinced that the
country's ongoing demographic shifts will bring Democratic victory for years
to come, they seem to believe the party's candidates need do nothing
differently to harvest future electoral bumper crops. The seeds are already
planted. All that is required is patience.
Hillary Clinton is more or less openly offering herself as the complacency
candidate. The least inspiring frontrunner in many years, she is a dynastic
heir who stands to receive the Democratic nomination largely because it's
her turn - the logic that made Bob Dole the GOP leader in 1996. Clinton has
scolded her rival for wanting to break up Wall Street banks since such a
policy, by itself, would not also end racism and sexism. (In point of fact,
the black middle class was disproportionately damaged by the detonation of
the housing bubble.) Clinton's unofficial slogan, "America never stopped
being great" - supposedly a searing riposte to Trump's "make America great
again" - sounds like the kind of thing you'd see inscribed in a country club
logo. In her words we can hear the call of contentment, a would-be
catchphrase for a generation of satisfied people.
President Obama offered his own variation on the complacency theme during a
meeting in March, in which he announced that "America's pretty darn great
right now." Unemployment was down from the awful heights of a few years
prior, the president reported, and businesses were hiring. Any residual
economic complaints, he suggested, arose from "an alternative reality . . .
that America's down in the dumps."
Obama has said similar things often in these waning months of his
presidency. In a recent interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York
Times, he went even farther, brushing off criticism of his administration as
cranky griping by people who had been left behind by history. He had helped
institute "hard changes," he recollected, that made the economy more
"nimble" and "dynamic". Unfortunately, he continued:
[T]hat then feeds, both on the left and the right, a temptation to say, 'If
we could just go back to an era in which our borders were closed,' or 'If we
could just go back to a time when everybody had a defined-benefit plan,' or
'We could just go back to a time when there wasn't any immigrant that was
taking my job, things would be OK.'
Perhaps you noticed something peculiar about that statement, reader: that
President Obama has here lumped together two complaints that sound absurd
and vaguely racist with a third impulse - a longing for defined-benefit
pension plans - that is legitimate and quite real. As it happens, we know
who wants to get everybody into a defined-benefit pension plan: organized
labor, a big Democratic constituency for whom such plans, in which benefits
do not fluctuate like stocks, are a common demand. Social Security is
another example of such a plan.
Defined-benefit plans really exist. Millions of people count on them as a
bulwark of middle-class security. Yes, Republicans have attacked
defined-benefit plans for years, and such plans have become increasingly
rare for younger workers, but instead of fighting back, here's our liberal
president brushing it all off as pie-in-the-sky whining by soreheads.
"[Candidate Trump] frees the Democratic leadership to do whatever they want,
to cast themselves in any role they choose. They do not need to move to 'the
center' this time. They do not need to come up with some ingenious way to
get Wall Street off the hook. They do not need to beat up on working
people's organizations."
This is the flip side to the complacency chorus: resentment of people who
can't see that all the skies are blue in our nimble and dynamic world. In
Monday's New York Times, for example, columnist Charles Blow scolded those
who believe that "life in America has gotten worse . . . compared with 50
years ago," suggesting that such a view was associated with an "implicit, or
even explicit, critique" of the achievements of the Obama Administration. He
continued: "This view of the Obama presidency as, at best, a disappointment,
or at worst, a failure, is a pernicious and unsupportable lie that did quite
a bit to sour minorities on Sanders and to rally opposition to Trump."
In reality, Donald Trump is a bigot of such pungent vileness that the
victory of the Democratic candidate this fall is virtually assured. Absent
some terrorist attack... or some FBI action on the Clinton email scandal...
or some outrageous act of reasonableness by Trump himself, the blowhard is
going to lose.
This, in turn, frees the Democratic leadership to do whatever they want, to
cast themselves in any role they choose. They do not need to move to "the
center" this time. They do not need to come up with some ingenious way to
get Wall Street off the hook. They do not need to beat up on working
people's organizations.
That they seem to want to do all these things anyway tells us everything we
need to know about who they really are: a party of the high-achieving
professional class that is always looking for a way to dismiss the economic
concerns of ordinary people.
C 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited
Thomas Frank
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Why Must the Trump Alternative be Self-Satisfied, Complacent Democrats?
Published on
Wednesday, May 04, 2016
by
The Guardian
Why Must the Trump Alternative be Self-Satisfied, Complacent Democrats?
Convinced that the country's ongoing demographic shifts will bring victory
for years to come, the party establishment acts like its candidates need do
nothing differently
by
Thomas Frank
. 21 Comments
.
. 'What the Democrats have in mind for 2016 is what we might call a
campaign of militant complacency. They are dissociated from the mood of the
nation, and they do not care.' (Photo: Charles Dharapak/AP)
. The year of our discontent rolls on, and now it is Indiana that
hands victory to the insurgent Senator Bernie Sanders and the protectionist
demagogue Donald Trump.
. Seven years have passed now since the last recession officially
ended and yet the country's fury has scarcely cooled. To this day we remain
angry at Wall Street; we rage against career politicians; and we are
incandescent that the economic system seems to have been permanently
"rigged" against working people. Median household income has still not
recovered the levels of 2007. Wages are going nowhere. Elite bankers are
probably never going to be held accountable for what they did. America is
burning.
. Listening to the leading figures of the Democratic Party
establishment, however, you'd never know it. Cool contentment is the
governing emotion in these circles. What they have in mind for 2016 is what
we might call a campaign of militant complacency. They are dissociated from
the mood of the nation, and they do not care.
. "What [the establishment Democrats] have in mind for 2016 is what we
might call a campaign of militant complacency."
I mean this in ways both great and small. The party's leadership is largely
drawn from a satisfied cohort that has done quite well in the aftermath of
the Great Recession. They've got a good thing going. Convinced that the
country's ongoing demographic shifts will bring Democratic victory for years
to come, they seem to believe the party's candidates need do nothing
differently to harvest future electoral bumper crops. The seeds are already
planted. All that is required is patience.
Hillary Clinton is more or less openly offering herself as the complacency
candidate. The least inspiring frontrunner in many years, she is a dynastic
heir who stands to receive the Democratic nomination largely because it's
her turn - the logic that made Bob Dole the GOP leader in 1996. Clinton has
scolded her rival for wanting to break up Wall Street banks since such a
policy, by itself, would not also end racism and sexism. (In point of fact,
the black middle class was disproportionately damaged by the detonation of
the housing bubble.) Clinton's unofficial slogan, "America never stopped
being great" - supposedly a searing riposte to Trump's "make America great
again" - sounds like the kind of thing you'd see inscribed in a country club
logo. In her words we can hear the call of contentment, a would-be
catchphrase for a generation of satisfied people.
President Obama offered his own variation on the complacency theme during a
meeting in March, in which he announced that "America's pretty darn great
right now." Unemployment was down from the awful heights of a few years
prior, the president reported, and businesses were hiring. Any residual
economic complaints, he suggested, arose from "an alternative reality . . .
that America's down in the dumps."
Obama has said similar things often in these waning months of his
presidency. In a recent interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York
Times, he went even farther, brushing off criticism of his administration as
cranky griping by people who had been left behind by history. He had helped
institute "hard changes," he recollected, that made the economy more
"nimble" and "dynamic". Unfortunately, he continued:
[T]hat then feeds, both on the left and the right, a temptation to say, 'If
we could just go back to an era in which our borders were closed,' or 'If we
could just go back to a time when everybody had a defined-benefit plan,' or
'We could just go back to a time when there wasn't any immigrant that was
taking my job, things would be OK.'
Perhaps you noticed something peculiar about that statement, reader: that
President Obama has here lumped together two complaints that sound absurd
and vaguely racist with a third impulse - a longing for defined-benefit
pension plans - that is legitimate and quite real. As it happens, we know
who wants to get everybody into a defined-benefit pension plan: organized
labor, a big Democratic constituency for whom such plans, in which benefits
do not fluctuate like stocks, are a common demand. Social Security is
another example of such a plan.
Defined-benefit plans really exist. Millions of people count on them as a
bulwark of middle-class security. Yes, Republicans have attacked
defined-benefit plans for years, and such plans have become increasingly
rare for younger workers, but instead of fighting back, here's our liberal
president brushing it all off as pie-in-the-sky whining by soreheads.
"[Candidate Trump] frees the Democratic leadership to do whatever they want,
to cast themselves in any role they choose. They do not need to move to 'the
center' this time. They do not need to come up with some ingenious way to
get Wall Street off the hook. They do not need to beat up on working
people's organizations."
This is the flip side to the complacency chorus: resentment of people who
can't see that all the skies are blue in our nimble and dynamic world. In
Monday's New York Times, for example, columnist Charles Blow scolded those
who believe that "life in America has gotten worse . . . compared with 50
years ago," suggesting that such a view was associated with an "implicit, or
even explicit, critique" of the achievements of the Obama Administration. He
continued: "This view of the Obama presidency as, at best, a disappointment,
or at worst, a failure, is a pernicious and unsupportable lie that did quite
a bit to sour minorities on Sanders and to rally opposition to Trump."
In reality, Donald Trump is a bigot of such pungent vileness that the
victory of the Democratic candidate this fall is virtually assured. Absent
some terrorist attack... or some FBI action on the Clinton email scandal...
or some outrageous act of reasonableness by Trump himself, the blowhard is
going to lose.
This, in turn, frees the Democratic leadership to do whatever they want, to
cast themselves in any role they choose. They do not need to move to "the
center" this time. They do not need to come up with some ingenious way to
get Wall Street off the hook. They do not need to beat up on working
people's organizations.
That they seem to want to do all these things anyway tells us everything we
need to know about who they really are: a party of the high-achieving
professional class that is always looking for a way to dismiss the economic
concerns of ordinary people.
C 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited
