[blind-democracy] FW: Stopping the next wave
- From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2020 12:25:55 -0500
From: Ryan Grim <badnews@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 2020 11:20 AM
To: miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Stopping the next wave
Looking at the state of the political map, there are plenty of reasons for
Democrats to feel down. Failing to take the Senate would badly hobble a
Biden administration’s legislative agenda. A 6-3 Supreme Court is likely to
be hostile to executive action and regulation. Both Jon Ossoff and Raphael
Warnock are trailing slightly in Georgia polls for the January runoffs. The
pandemic is surging and the economy is slowing -- and without the ability to
legislate, the capacity of the government to respond to economic damage will
be in the hands of Mitch McConnell, who has repeatedly shown a willingness
to scorch the earth and every norm on it if it means a relative increase in
his own power and the power of the right. Republicans are salivating at the
prospect of a gerrymandered 2022 midterm wipeout. Republican Leader Kevin
McCarthy has already promised the GOP will take the House. That leaves two
years of investigations into Biden between then and the 2024 election.
Stopping the next wave
<https://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJxVkEtuwzAMRE8T7WJIsvxbaNFNr2HIEpMQ1Q8Snc
a3r9x0U4ALghhw5o01BPdUDp1TJbZXKCs6PQ4L5wtzWjkxDzPDut4KQDDoNZUdWN43j9YQpnjqxS
QEe-jNDOPIB2Fg6AHc2Ctjp5vks3Oq7yfHTpPV7A4hWtDwhHKkCMzrB1Gul_7jIj_bbMZF-K5d3b
dKxn51NoV2zpCyh7bIWXA-Xsth4vVeMDDUkksuRMsxikUtnehmNb-sGeTrhhfFw13--8aKDljQhG
eLcgpSphQ9Rugi0Im3NlXYI9KxQjSbB_cmp3dTvyR0ZNBnUg9EUN7Hs46lxRCTYs3SpdZa1H9IP0
2_fZI> Ryan Grim
Nov 17
Looking at the state of the political map, there are plenty of reasons for
Democrats to feel down. Failing to take the Senate would badly hobble a
Biden administration’s legislative agenda. A 6-3 Supreme Court is likely to
be hostile to executive action and regulation. Both Jon Ossoff and Raphael
Warnock are trailing slightly in Georgia polls for the January runoffs. The
pandemic is surging and the economy is slowing -- and without the ability to
legislate, the capacity of the government to respond to economic damage will
be in the hands of Mitch McConnell, who has repeatedly shown a willingness
to scorch the earth and every norm on it if it means a relative increase in
his own power and the power of the right. Republicans are salivating at the
prospect of a gerrymandered 2022 midterm wipeout. Republican Leader Kevin
McCarthy has already promised the GOP will take the House. That leaves two
years of investigations into Biden between then and the 2024 election.
Republicans have shown a complete disregard for democracy in the wake of the
November 3 elections -- or, at minimum, are fine with dispensing with it for
partisan gain. The next time Republicans consolidate power, the onslaught on
voting will be fierce in a lunge to lockdown minority rule. It’s all
happening amid a backdrop of ecological and climate collapse, fueling a rise
of ethnonationalism and reactionary politics around the globe, which itself
is further fueled by mass migrations precipitated by, and precipitating, the
crisis. The world is falling apart, and the right’s authoritarianism is an
attractive response to a frightened and divided public.
The good news is that we’re not there yet, the Democrats have agency and
power if they choose to use it, and the country still believes in the
cultural norms of democracy, which are far more important than laws on
paper. The public has decided that Trump has lost the election, so he has to
go. Democrats need to harness that belief and push forward.
One person who seems to get that is Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer,
but without Georgia, he’ll merely be Senate minority leader, limited in what
he can do. Yet even though the stakes of the contest couldn’t possibly be
higher, paradoxically, small moves one way or another can be decisive. Both
parties can expect at least around 47 percent of the vote each cycle in this
sharply divided country, meaning control goes to the party that can win
those few extra points, through a combination of mobilizing its base,
organizing new voters, and persuading people to switch. And so small wins by
Biden on behalf of the public, if they move just a few percent, can have
huge ramifications.
And the good news is there are a few things Biden can do unilaterally that
would both engender good will and grow the economy and drive up wages. The
most important is making sure he has a Fed chair who will not choke off the
economy in the name of fighting a phantom inflation, and instead putting the
body to work on behalf of creating jobs and growing the economy. After that,
Schumer is urging Biden to forgive the first $50,000 of everyone’s student
debt, which he can do by executive order. The average debt load is around
$30,000, meaning millions of people would see their debt wiped out. The
average monthly payment is around $400, which means that people making that
payment would now have an extra $400 every month to spend. That’s a serious
economic stimulus, and it’s one that voters would reward Democrats for --
both as the economy and wages rise as a result, and in direct appreciation
for the bold action.
Biden can also direct the Department of Labor to block companies from
screwing workers out of overtime, which they do by misclassifying them as
managers. Companies like Dollar General are the worst offenders. The people
in those stores stocking shelves and working the register are often called
managers by the company, which allows them to pay no overtime on top of
their low salary. By ending that practice, millions of people could see
increases in their paychecks.
Matthew Cunningham-Cook
<https://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJwlkMmOwyAMhp-m3BIFSrYDh17mNSICTmoNS0RM27
z9wFRCRrI-61-MJthjutQRT2L5hLSgVUM_d93MrJKWT_3E8Fy2BOA1OkUpAzvy6tBowhgqz0fO2V
MN6ypHrtexs2Mv7uPAxbjNYEAKCfd5Y1Vk0dkiBAMKXpCuGIA59SQ6ztv9cRM_5dETMBAkAwe1Jv
qyEp3oysd5HUMZVr_QNgckm6Gx0Tmdmh0CJO0ajwF99s1b71BQhqqec15sDnyWc8vbSU4fo3vx2f
AmO7-L9szrSdr8VkGWlMeE2r-K0wrEg2JwGKANQDX9UiifA9K1QNCrA_sthr5F_gel6wAV4H06oJ
Lmu6xtzcUGHyUrkjaWUoNata3gH-vqhzI> has a new story about how Georgia Sen.
David Perdue got rich exploiting just that loophole, and how beating him in
the January runoff could drive everybody’s wages up.
Schumer has also suggested descheduling marijuana, which means that as far
as the federal government is concerned, it would no longer be illegal. That
would trigger another economic jolt, as pot shops in states where it’s legal
would finally have legal access to the banking system, accountants, creating
good paying jobs up and down the industry. At the federal level and in
states controlled by Democrats, drug-related records could be expunged,
voting rights restored.
None of this might be enough under normal circumstances to fend off the
typical wave that strikes an incoming administration during its first
midterm. But Democrats might have a Covid-19 ace up their sleeve: If a
vaccine does begin to be deployed to frontline workers in December and
gradually to the rest of the population throughout 2021, the economy could
begin fully opening up in 2022. The one piece of legislation Republicans
have consistently shown themselves unable to resist passing is a tax cut,
which gives Democrats a chance to win some extra stimulus -- money for clean
energy projects, for instance -- and further juice the economy in exchange
for dumping a few more piles of cash onto the stacks of the already very
rich. And the Senate map in 2022 is actually pretty good for Democrats.
In other words, Democrats could have a real tailwind in 2022, but they need
to get their damn plane in the air to catch it. The ways to do that are
numerous, and I’ll be talking about it next week on our podcast,
<https://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJwlkE1uxCAMhU8TlhEwJJMsWHTTa0T8OBOrCSBwpp
PbFxrJC9t6sr_3nCF4xXzpFAuxs0Be0OtxmDmfmdfKi2mYGJZlzQCHwV1TPoGl0-7oDGEMTS-eQr
BNc2tX8xBuWB9SWc6VAz5ID47b0YxOsfZkMadHCA40vCFfMQDb9UaUSvf46uR3LdoAA0F2kKh38a
irFL0zhUpt670YSsVwBL7ODLXkkgtRKUYxq7kX_aSmjzOD_KzYKX68ZF9OW8i4n3aPZX1gRnO8K0
gTxEQx7BigD0DN3FJVxxmQrgWCsTv42zfdOf37oCuBDvBbdqAKey9bGHPFEE_F6ksfa2ZBW-Ob8A
-NTX5t> Deconstructed. In the meantime, our friends at The American Prospect
have a good rundown they
<https://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJwlkMtuxCAMRb8m7CaKM5DHgkU3_Y2Ih5NBTQCBmU
7-vqSRvLF1pON7jSLcQjplDJlYyZgWZ-Ug5q6bmZXcwiQm5vKyJsRDuV1SKshi0bszilzwFw8jAH
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w90pVlqdRRvKNzQa_0jvaOSXct_2_TGVF6_M07EmG6j1f2ub4BI2dVaUOtyMua9gL_AFwYd2E>
call the Day One Agenda.
<https://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJwlUEuOwyAMPU3ZNQqENMmCxWzmGhEBp0HDJwLTaW
4_ZipZNlgP3sdohGfKlzpTQVYL5NVZ9RiXvl-YVdLyeZyZK-ueAYJ2XmGuwM66eWc0uhQbnk-cs0
NJAcJK2GctzDTwfhwmgOkxzWIf5SgW1khWXa2DaEDBC_KVIjCvDsSz3Iavm_imwgNcRMgGTuxMCr
QSvehpcN7aQM2CSbGQGINg7xZCMlljuR-JTNwzlOrp1jB0cPFJT5hT7RvOSe6DL3LpeDfL-W30KN
67u8k-PEVX6lZQm59GzLIKLjsdXqS4AdKJKXoXoYuALYWVUKFGh9cKUW8e7Ccg_AT6bxivE1SE3-
IBydVn2VJbSAafJCNKmyjcqDZtG_APsfmK1A> The latest podcast
When all the votes are counted, Joe Biden may wind up winning the White
House by as many as five or six million votes. But everywhere else, the
performance of Democrats was abysmal. Republicans will control at least 50
Senate seats (pending a pair of runoffs in Georgia) and have made gains in
the House of Representatives. And as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez found out
quickly, Democratic leaders have already found the culprit: It was the left,
they argue, that scared voters with talk of socialism.
There are a few ways to take a deep look at that argument. One is to look at
each race, look at what each specific candidate ran on, look at what attacks
they faced, and how they fared. We’ll do a little of that, but it’s more
important to zoom way out if you want to see what’s going on. Too much
election analysis suffers from a focus on tactics and the most immediate
news cycle, so that analysts miss the big sweeping realignments underway
until it’s way too late. For this week’s
<https://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJwlUMtuwyAQ_JpwiwUYE3Pg0Et_w8KwSVAxIFjS-O
8LjbTalUazmoc1CI9UTp1TRdIqlM07LRdFqSJOC8fWZSW-bvcCcBgfNJYGJLc9eGvQpzj47MYYeW
oKXAq4ccWZkZK6Wa3C8VnI-c4XkIwMkc005yFa0PCCcqYIJOgnYq6X-evCv_vgE3xEKBYyTjYdHe
KU034YG2vuy4FNsXYzFsFdc8ot-HpcX_U68BbQRKydR7wev4x1j5IpoSY2rWJ9W7Pw991fBD0efK
ptr2jsz1AjRR--eHO8us1BSBlTDD7CFAFH9K2zjhY9nhtEswdwn1bw0-J_Sjwz6Ai_NQD2KB9wVK
W6DXYTpEu61BuNejduEP8A_eeGHQ> Deconstructed podcast, we talk to Pennsylvania
organizer Jonathan Smucker and Chuck Rocha, the head of Solidarity
Strategies, to get a sense of that.
We arrived at this populist moment thanks to 30 or 40 years of wage
stagnation, a period in which the assets of the American middle class were
essentially stripped and sold overseas, with the rewards flowing to the very
top. This was a bipartisan project, and both voters and nonvoters have
punished political leaders either by disengaging from the political process
or backing people who challenged the status quo.
In this cycle, one party fully tapped into the fear, anger, and resentment
of the public. The other argued for a return to normalcy — which we could
achieve by rejecting Trump. The result was a Trump loss up top and
Republican wins down below.
Democrats ran on basically two themes. One, Trump is bad and must go. Two,
we’ll protect your health care by keeping down drug prices and protecting
people with preexisting conditions. Now, voters were indeed fed up with
Trump. They did indeed prefer lower drug prices to higher drug prices. And
they agreed that people shouldn’t be condemned to die for having a
preexisting medical condition. So far, so good. But those issues resonated
most with strong Democrats and people who leaned Democratic. The problem was
that they offered nothing to really inspire an independent voter, or a soft
Republican, or somebody who hadn’t voted before. (Mike Siegel explained this
in an
<https://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJwlkM1uwyAQhJ8m3GKxFDv4wKGXvobFzyZGtQHBOo
nfvtBIaJFmR5pvxxnCRyqnzqkSOyqWJXg9jTPnM_NaelCjYqEu94K4m7BpKgeyfNgtOEMhxe6HGw
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rUSozaGt-Nf3nMgAE> interview on Deconstructed last week.)
What’s interesting is that Republican strategists I spoke to this week
mostly agreed with Siegel, even if they might think that he’s a raging
commie. The problem was that Democrats didn’t have anything convincing to
offer people when it came to the issue so many cared about most: jobs and
the economy.
When you think about the Republican message on the economy, whether you
agree with it or not, you know what it is: Cut taxes, get rid of
regulations, get the government out of the way, and the economy will grow.
That’s their message, and so when the economy is growing under a Republican,
voters are quick to give Republicans credit for it, even if that
laissez-faire approach really just makes the economy unstable while
producing frequent crashes and mass inequality. That’s all beside the point;
their message is clear.
What’s the Democratic message on the economy? The first thing that comes to
mind is that Democrats believe the economy is unfair: The rich get richer
and everybody else falls behind. That happens to be true, and under Trump,
the
<https://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJwlkE1uwyAQhU8TdraA2jEsWGTTa1gYJgkqf4IhjW
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rCb_WAfa1Pc2CTPQbbFtItbep0ozq0HcI_QiKLIw> rich have
<https://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJwlkEluxCAQRU_T7NoCPOEFi2xyDQtDuRsFA4LCad
8-EEuIofTEH7RCeIV0yRgykpIhrdbIaVwoXYiRg2FiFMTmdU8Ah7JOYipAYtmc1Qpt8I1nM2PkLQ
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MPW19LtcHmgVRJE2qtXm7KNPAPzROIyQ> gotten quite a
<https://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJw9kMtuwyAQRb8m7GyBTQhesMimv2FhmMSovATjNP
77QiNVQoM0OuIertEIz1ROlVNFclQoq7NKXBdKF2IVt0xeJXF1fRSAoJ1XWA4g-di8Mxpdip1nN8
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GtJjrRdrE-JtbGPwB20AFKs4lDOHFPPj3PoVmGPOSSHg5rw4lT_QnGmqpgC19GNkou30Zfp_fDXT
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Bn2Rtbmga7cdIibWrFRrVp28FfKLGJ1w> bit richer. But wages have also gone up.
Retirement accounts have gone up. And so Trump won handily among voters
whose top concern was the economy, and that was the top issue for many
voters.
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- » [blind-democracy] FW: Stopping the next wave - Miriam Vieni
