The “New Democrats” Confront a New Reality
By Richard Eskow
New DemocratsSeveral recent news articles have suggested that, in the words of
a Washington Post headline, “there’s … a big economic fight happening in the
Democratic Party.”
It’s true. The corporate-friendly policies of the party’s more conservative
wing have fared poorly, both as policy and as politics, and as a result the
party has moved to the left. The insurgent candidacy of Bernie Sanders is the
most conspicuous sign of this shift. It’s a major setback for the so-called
“New Democrats” who have dominated the party since the election of Bill Clinton
in 1992.
Nearly twenty-five years after they rose to power, the ideas of the “New
Democrats” don’t seem so new. Hence, the phenomenon that The Huffington Post’s
Sam Stein describes as “the panic of Democratic centrists.”
Now they’re fighting back. A Wall Street-funded Democratic think tank called
Third Way has released a lengthy report that argues an inequality-based,
populist theme will doom Democrats. Its board member, former White House Chief
of Staff (and JPMorgan Chase executive) Bill Daley, even insisted to HuffPo’s
Stein that Sanders’ political positions are “a recipe for disaster.”
The Third Way report is available online. It introduces a number of
catchphrases, often paired in threes: the Hopscotch Workforce, the
Nickel-and-Dimed Workforce, and the Asset-Starved Workforce; Stalling Schools,
the College Well, and Adult Atrophy; the Upside-Down Economy, the Anywhere
Economy, and the Malnourished Economy.
Sadly, most of the content amounts to Misleading Minutiae, Gimmicky
Wordplay, and Downright Deception.
Third Way’s argument against inequality as a leading source of our current
economic woes puts them directly at odds with leading economists, including
Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz.
Here’s an example of the latter: The paper’s authors use a poorly sourced Wall
Street Journal article, rather than solid economic data, as a citation for
their claim that Bernie Sanders’ Medicare For All plan would cost the economy
$15 trillion over 10 years. This figure is flatly false, and that article’s
gross inaccuracies have been documented by a number of economists and
commentators (including Robert Reich, among many, many others). It is
surprising that any policy group, much less one comprised of self-professed
Democrats, would use it as a citation.
In an attempt to dismiss the harm caused by inequality – and by its own
preferred policies – the Third Way paper dwells at length with the story of
Kodak’s “disruption” into bankruptcy by new technologies. The Kodak story is a
familiar one to readers of popular business magazines and Silicon Valley
websites. (It is sometimes accompanied by the observation that Kodak, which
once employed 145,000 people, has largely been replaced by Instagram, which
employs 13.)
In telling this story, the authors are suggesting that technology, not trade or
unequal wealth, is killing American jobs. Unfortunately, Kodak’s anecdotal
evidence is not borne out by solid economic data. As the Economic Policy
Institute (EPI) reported in August of this year:
“The United States lost 5 million manufacturing jobs between January 2000 and
December 2014. There is a widespread misperception that rapid productivity
growth is the primary cause of continuing manufacturing job losses over the
past 15 years. Instead, as this report shows, job losses can be traced to
growing trade deficits in manufacturing products prior to the Great Recession
and then the massive output collapse during the Great Recession.”
This directly refutes the “Kodak argument.” What’s more, both of the
job-destroying events cited by EPI can be directly traced back to New
Democratic policies. The trade deficits in manufacturing products was spurred
by NAFTA and other trade deals, while the financial crisis that triggered the
Great Recession was the product of a fraud-riddled Wall Street left
unsupervised by deregulation.
Third Way’s argument against inequality as a leading source of our current
economic woes puts them directly at odds with leading economists, including
Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz. “Politicians typically talk about rising
inequality and the sluggish recovery as separate phenomena,” Stiglitz wrote in
2013, “when they are in fact intertwined. Inequality stifles, restrains and
holds back our growth.”
The evidence is in, and the key economic policies of the “New Democrats’” have
failed. Consider:
•Wall Street deregulation. When Bill Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill
in 1999 he said it would “enhance the stability of our financial services
system.” We now know better.Estimates for the total amount of national wealth
lost as a result of that crisis range from $12.8 trillion to $25 trillion – or,
by another measure, from $20,000 to $120,000 for every man, woman, and child in
the United States.
•Trade. The “free trade” deals they have promoted have led to the loss of
American jobs, as the EPI and others have demonstrated. One deal alone, NAFTA
(the North American Free Trade Agreement), is estimated to have caused the loss
of one million jobs in this country.
•Austerity. “New Democrats” urged cuts in government spending, especially in
the wake of the 2008 crisis. The result, as Paul Krugman puts it, has been
“catastrophic … going far beyond the jobs and income lost in the first few
years.” As Krugman notes, the long-run damage could easily “make austerity a
self-defeating policy even in purely fiscal terms.”
•Welfare reform. When he signed the “welfare reform” bill in 1996, President
Clinton said that it would “end welfare as we know it and transform our broken
welfare system by promoting the fundamental values of work, responsibility, and
families.” We now know that poverty increased as a result of this bill, and
there is compelling new evidence which shows that welfare undermines neither
the work ethic nor the personal values of its recipients.
The Third Way authors are as misguided on politics as they are on policy. They
argue that “the narrative of fairness and inequality has, to put it mildly,
failed to excite voters.” This is precisely backward. As the polls make clear,
populism is popular.
President Obama was foundering in the polls after embracing the “New Democrat”
agenda for much of his first term. His political fortunes were restored when he
tacked somewhat further left rhetorically – in response to, among other things,
the rise of the Occupy movement.
The Democratic congressional debacles of 2010 and 2014, on the other hand, can
be directly attributed to the reluctance of many candidates to embrace a
populist agenda. Many insisted that they needed to lean right in order to reach
“swing voters.” But that’s a demographic that, by and large, doesn’t exist.
(From political scientist Corwin D. Smidt: “The observed rate of Americans
voting for a different party across successive presidential elections has never
been lower.”)
The Democrats’ shift to the right suppressed turnout among the base and failed
to reach disaffected unaffiliated voters. As a result, they lost the House in
2010 and were routed again in 2014. Under the tutelage of Third Way and their
fellow New Dems, those disasters are likely to be repeated again and again.
Fortunately, fewer Democrats seem to be listening.
rj-eskowToday’s real “New Democrats” can be found among the many thousands of
people who have turned out for Bernie Sanders’ rallies, many excited by the
political process – and the Democratic Party – for the first time. Other
potential “New Democrats” can be found in the nation’s minority communities,
and among the non-college-educated white Americans whose lives are being cut
short by despair and self-destruction.
But Democrats won’t win these voters with a Third Way agenda. It will take a
platform that speaks directly to them – to their needs, their hopes, and their
pain.
There are grains of truth to be found in the Third Way’s report. Automation is
a legitimate concern, even though it is not yet a major driver of unemployment.
Several of their minor proposals could be useful, even though they would not
offer significant relief to large numbers of Americans.
rj eskowThat does not change the fact that, once again, Third Way and its
allies are gravely misreading the economic and political moment. If their
influence continues to wane, perhaps one day Americans can stop paying the
price for their ill-conceived, corporation- and billionaire-friendly agenda.
RJ Eskow
Campaign for America’s Future
Posted on November 14, 2015
Third Way’s argument against inequality as a leading source of our current
economic woes puts them directly at odds with leading economists, including
Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz. “Politicians typically talk about rising
inequality and the sluggish recovery as separate phenomena,” Stiglitz wrote in
2013, “when they are in fact intertwined. Inequality stifles, restrains and
holds back our growth.”
The evidence is in, and the key economic policies of the “New Democrats’” have
failed. Consider:
•Wall Street deregulation. When Bill Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill
in 1999 he said it would “enhance the stability of our financial services
system.” We now know better.Estimates for the total amount of national wealth
lost as a result of that crisis range from $12.8 trillion to $25 trillion – or,
by another measure, from $20,000 to $120,000 for every man, woman, and child in
the United States.
•Trade. The “free trade” deals they have promoted have led to the loss of
American jobs, as the EPI and others have demonstrated. One deal alone, NAFTA
(the North American Free Trade Agreement), is estimated to have caused the loss
of one million jobs in this country.
•Austerity. “New Democrats” urged cuts in government spending, especially in
the wake of the 2008 crisis. The result, as Paul Krugman puts it, has been
“catastrophic … going far beyond the jobs and income lost in the first few
years.” As Krugman notes, the long-run damage could easily “make austerity a
self-defeating policy even in purely fiscal terms.”
•Welfare reform. When he signed the “welfare reform” bill in 1996, President
Clinton said that it would “end welfare as we know it and transform our broken
welfare system by promoting the fundamental values of work, responsibility, and
families.” We now know that poverty increased as a result of this bill, and
there is compelling new evidence which shows that welfare undermines neither
the work ethic nor the personal values of its recipients.
The Third Way authors are as misguided on politics as they are on policy. They
argue that “the narrative of fairness and inequality has, to put it mildly,
failed to excite voters.” This is precisely backward. As the polls make clear,
populism is popular.
President Obama was foundering in the polls after embracing the “New Democrat”
agenda for much of his first term. His political fortunes were restored when he
tacked somewhat further left rhetorically – in response to, among other things,
the rise of the Occupy movement.
The Democratic congressional debacles of 2010 and 2014, on the other hand, can
be directly attributed to the reluctance of many candidates to embrace a
populist agenda. Many insisted that they needed to lean right in order to reach
“swing voters.” But that’s a demographic that, by and large, doesn’t exist.
(From political scientist Corwin D. Smidt: “The observed rate of Americans
voting for a different party across successive presidential elections has never
been lower.”)
The Democrats’ shift to the right suppressed turnout among the base and failed
to reach disaffected unaffiliated voters. As a result, they lost the House in
2010 and were routed again in 2014. Under the tutelage of Third Way and their
fellow New Dems, those disasters are likely to be repeated again and again.
Fortunately, fewer Democrats seem to be listening.
rj-eskowToday’s real “New Democrats” can be found among the many thousands of
people who have turned out for Bernie Sanders’ rallies, many excited by the
political process – and the Democratic Party – for the first time. Other
potential “New Democrats” can be found in the nation’s minority communities,
and among the non-college-educated white Americans whose lives are being cut
short by despair and self-destruction.
But Democrats won’t win these voters with a Third Way agenda. It will take a
platform that speaks directly to them – to their needs, their hopes, and their
pain.
There are grains of truth to be found in the Third Way’s report. Automation is
a legitimate concern, even though it is not yet a major driver of unemployment.
Several of their minor proposals could be useful, even though they would not
offer significant r
https://www.laprogressive.com/new-democrats/?utm_source=LA+Progressive+Newsletter&utm_campaign=97d37106ec-LAP_News_17April12&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_9f184a8aad-97d37106ec-265727073
