"Some loser like me will be out there making the point that it doesn’t actually help women to replace Senator Popularist with a replacement-level Republican who supports much more severe abortion restrictions and also makes it impossible for Democratic presidents to get federal judges confirmed. "
I've thought a lot about why this reality seems so unintuitive to leftists, how people will tell me without blinking an eye that "Joe Manchin is the same as (insert Republican)", and I'm slowly realizing that this sentiment is partially coming from an ugly place of privilege.
The young left-leaning college grads (including myself) may have felt the mental and emotional exhaustion from the Trump years, but the reality is that most of us were not materially worse off in 2020 than 2016. We are not the demographic that heavily relies on Social Security, or Medicare, or unemployment benefits, or abortion clinics, so a lot of us can really afford to not care if Joe Manchin loses his seat to an actual Republican, as long as we can pat ourselves on the back that we sufficiently harassed the moderate Dems and stuck to our values. And that is sad, because for the vast majority of people who actually need social safety nets and government support, the difference between Manchin and an actual Republican is very, very real...
I think a lot of this is true, and we also can't underestimate the impact that social media has had on the way in which a certain kind of leftist politics has metastasized. How much of the issues that animate Twitter - and thus a lot of political discussion - come down specifically to the challenges that struggling journalists have? I support Medicare for All but it's not lost on me how much of the momentum that picked up in elite circles was driven basically by freelancers finding dealing with the exchanges annoying. Whenever the topic of student debt comes up the conversation shifts from 'eat the rich' to 'Pete Buttigieg is literally a Republican if he's only going to focus canceling student debt on low-income people instead of wiping away the $200k in debt I have from getting an English BA at Oberlin.'
These people center themselves and their anxieties in the American political experience and it poisons the discourse entirely. Think of how they told everyone the CARES Act was nothing but one stimulus check - because they were well-off enough not to need to access any of its other benefits - and tried to do the same thing with Biden's follow-up stimulus.
At a baseline level, Twitter plays such an outsized role in shaping the views of media and policymakers and so much of 'leftist' advocacy on those platforms and shaping the conversation are coming from a specific kind of self-loathing upper middle class 'PMC' types. The ones who work in media are lashing out because they work in a largely dying industry but they're laundering their specific class concerns through language about helping the most distressed people in America. And especially for the elite media people driving a lot of leftist conversation, a combination of not REALLY being all that economically vulnerable, combined with the fact that their own professional incentives in regards to building their personal brand push them in the direction of rejecting any sort political pragmatism to prove they are the One True Leftist, makes for a basically broken media ecosystem in which hopelessness sells and compromise is always betrayal.
In modern American political discourse it has sort of become a useless meta-term because the only people who know what it means are themselves members of the PMC but they nonetheless use the term as an epithet to try and assert their own leftist bonafides.
Having people on your team not advancing a given goal of the team feels shitty; it’s easy to overlook that politics is often zero-sum so *just having people on the team* helps the overall goals. This led Republicans to purge a bunch of people and lose some races they didn’t have to lose; we’re now catching up with them.
yup, in many ways GOP is far more ruthless to its non-team players. That ruthlessness is why they never crack 55 senate seats despite a map that is insanely biased in their direction.
Important to crystalize here that an obstacle among others to John Bel Edwards for Red State Senate Races model is that for all the scornful invocation of the term, the revealed preference is many Democrats (including many of the "above the fray" types) genuinely care about the culture war, think the culture war is important, and would like to use politics to argue about cultural values and how they should be reflected in political leaders.
I am not sure it's fair to say the failures of 2009-2010 and the 2010 defeat were universally attributed to a lack of ideological purity by Democrats. I think some thought that, as radicals of any stripe will attribute failure to lack of purity, but I recall a mixed bag of takes ranging from "our relief efforts weren't obvious or effective enough" to an eerily similar to 2016 "the media focused on dumb things like death panels and incoherent town hall shouting". It seems obvious to me that the Biden administration is, in general, composed of those who see the 2010 defeat the result of not making it obvious they were "helping the shit out of people", and I would generally classify their major efforts so far as popularist.
The problem as I see it is less that there are zero popularist Democrats, but that those popularist Democrats really suck at getting attention. The media will always focus on the exciting radicals (AOC) or those willing to buck the party (Manchin now), and to your point, the donor/wonk/activist class fund their favorite pets and consistently fail to realize how badly they suck at politics.
I wish the media would cover and the general public could name the moderate Dems through which their (slim) majority was originally won and now rests. How can we shift the spotlight? Is it even possible?
The media attention point is totally fair, but if Rep Spanberger and Jon Tester teamed up to introduce a bill to cap interest rates that would get plenty of attention.
I think the type of media is sort of important as well. Bennet had a child allowance bill with Brown that was, in my eyes, very good and got great write ups on many sites including Vox. But when he joined the presidential race he had 11% name recognition. He had been a senator for 8 years at this point. Tulsi had twice that, Stacy Abrams was at 41%, Beto was at 56% and Warren was in the 70s.
Small sample size obviously but becoming a big name seems to have more to do with getting involved in election horse-race stories than becoming a wonk favorite.
Joe Manchun build a brand by taking the 800 page climate change bill and shorting it. That is a clear headline grabbing way to say your pro gun and pro coal
To get attention it helps to have an identifiable, consistent brand. And it's hard to have a strong brand that just says, I support whatever is popular at the moment.
A focus on ideological purity at least has the benefit of providing a strong brand. But purely adhering to orthodox leftist thinking repels too many Americans (and for good reason) to be a viable option to a political party that wants to hold power.
Re: Biden admin being generally popularist, I think the removal of troops from Afghanistan is an obviously popularist move. He even set the deadline on 9/11/21! Sure he's taking fire from Congress and the national security Blob, but overwhelming public opinion is we need to be out of Afghanistan. Biden is gonna reap public opinion on this.
I don't think leaving Afghanistan is a popularist move, though it almost certainly is a necessary one. Americans don't like to be associated with failure, and this will indeed be seen as a failure.
The image of the Taliban seizing Kabul and herding liberated women into burqas won't be a very good look. I'm not saying we should stay for that reason, just that the American people -- especially I suspect many women -- won't be greeting these events with hosannas.
The good news for Biden when he pulls out and bad things follow is that the American people really don't give a damn about Afghanistan after twenty years. It will be ugly, but I respect him for ripping the band-aid off.
This is probably more of an Open Thread discussion, but since it’s on my mind...what harm is being done being in Afghanistan? Obviously it’s costing a lot of money, but is it killing people or otherwise making things worse? Because I think a lot of stuff we don’t like is going to happen once we leave and I’d like to know what the benefits are.
Apart from the risk (however low) of having American personnel being killed in Afghanistan for no good reason, I would say that the major cost of it is the attention and energy of Administration personnel it sucks up, including that of the President. As is well known, that time and energy is the most precious commodity of any presidency.
Well, your other comment suggests that American troops are preventing the Taliban from seizing power and subjugating women, etc. One can debate whether that’s worth the cost but I certainly wouldn’t call it no good reason.
I would need to know more about the opportunity cost of attention and energy, which seems hard to speak to with any precision. Do we have examples of how our troop presence in Afghanistan has prevented American presidents from achieving other priorities?
My comment on "no good reason" was really rhetorical. Obviously, our presence is very good for the Afghans who would/will suffer horribly under the Taliban. That's just not enough reason for us to stay, especially after 20 years of such effort.
I'd love to know how much White House time is taken up by Afghanistan discussions, but I don't know. Ditto for the Pentagon. It certainly took up a lot of time all through Obama's eight years (e.g., https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/01/world/asia/obama-afghanistan-war.html, plus read his memoir) But given the huge challenges facing the US and the world, almost any minute Biden devotes to Afghanistan is one minute too much.
One thing missing here is that I think the moderate Democrats sincerely believe in what they're doing. I don't understand what motivates Manchin, but I have no doubt that he's sincere when he says that he thinks a $15 minimum wage would be a bad idea, or that raising the corporate tax rate all the way to Biden's proposed level would be less good policy then his proposal.
I think the question of sincerity is overrated in politics.
Take Joe Biden. He is a kind of median Democrat. And I think he's very sincerely a median Democrat! But the specific content of what it means to be a median Democrat has changed a lot over the course of his career, so the specific content of his policy views has also changed.
Joe Manchin is a sincere and authentic Red State Democrat. But I'm arguing we would be better off if we could shift the meaning of Red State Democrat identity somewhat.
I think the reason why Manchin & Sinema are acting the way they are is the issues are high profile enough people will notice them opposing their party (which is what people will really notice) in a way that some of the issues you mentioned simply are not salient. It's also a lower risk way to show 'moderate' credentials and avoid a primary challenge AND avoid losing out on a cushy post-senate job.
Perhaps we need reform on what public servants can do after they leave office, and this changes.
Completely agree. I think most people here and who follow politics are constantly overestimating just how much the average person follows politics. They don't know what policies any particular politician follows. They understand who is a moderate by who publicly agrees with the other party some of the time and gets rebuked by their party for it.
What identity does a Red State Democrat have outside of what Manchin or Tester does? The way you shift what the identity is, is to shift what they do, which shifts what it means to be a Red State Democrat, which means they can shift what they do?
Admittedly, the corporate tax rate should be 0. Remember what Matt said about explicit costs being unpopular, but regulatory mandates which obfuscate the real total (even if it’s far more!) as being popular? It’s the exact same way with corporate income tax. We should tax money as it goes to people as income, and not have our current system where the costs are passed on to the poor.
Business taxes are passed on to capital, labor, and consumers. We already have ways of targeting each of those directly (income, employment, and sales taxes), but maybe one could argue the proper distribution among these three will vary based on the business?
I mean, with another Republican from WV, Biden's cabinet appointees wouldn't have gotten confirmed and the recovery plan wouldn't have been passed, so those are pretty great helps. But yeah, it would be much better if he made some proposals rather than waiting for others to do it so he can arbitrarily make the proposals more moderate.
Manchin (and Sinema) would help accomplish increasing the minimum wage to $11 - why can't the rest of the party just settle for that now and push for an additional increase later?
Manchin has “anchored” on the acceptable corporate tax rate. In 2012, he supported Obama dropping it to 28%. Now he opposes raising it to 28%.
It seems to me that’s a case of context affecting what you think the right number is, rather than any careful consideration of the number. Not sure how many lawmakers have opinions based on much beyond “higher / lower than it is now.”
Absolutely. I don't know exactly what he's done with the pharmaceutical industry that you have in mind, but I think it's very unlikely he thought "this is bad for the country but good for my daughter." I'm sure he's extremely proud of his daughter, he likely believes that a robust pharmaceutical industry is good for the country, and it's not hard to see how those things might contribute to his judgement.
For sure. Other than advances in surgical techniques and medical devices, the lion's share of meaningful advances in medicine have been driven by the pharmaceutical industry.
Is there any data showing that defeated dems with moderate DW nominate scores get better gigs than defeated dems with more progressive scores? If not, perhaps the solution is as simple as shouting from the rooftops “you don’t have to sell out to cash in.”
“That doesn’t make much sense as a popularist stance, but it’s helpful to pave the way for a soft landing at Akin Gump, the highest-grossing lobbying firm in DC.”
Is the theory here that if Donnelly had the voting record of say Chuck Schumer or Dick Durbin he would not be able to score a plum lobbying job? Color me skeptical.
No I'm saying that if Donnelly took significantly more right-wing positions on several cultural issues (thus alienating a lot of upscale liberals) while simultaneously pounding the table for interest rate caps and a wealth tax then he would've had a lot of trouble landing at Akin Gump.
The problem is what gets coded as ‘opposing abortion’. 65-70% of people think it should be mostly illegal in the second trimester and similar numbers think it should be legal during the first trimester. This is the position of all sorts of progressive European countries. But it is coded as pro-life, and disallowed.
I wonder about this too. If AOC retired and then said she wanted a job in lobbying or a corporate job of some kind it feels like their would be a line of organizations that would excited to hire her.
Are there examples of congress people not getting being able to find jobs because they pissed off the monied interests?
I don't know for sure but I suspect the phenomenon Matt is describing has as much to do with the professional staff advising the electeds as it does with the elected itself. These offices are not just about the public face but about the many different actors working to make that public face vote and act in a certain way.
Joe Donnelly could probably find a plum lobbying gig no matter how he voted on Dodd-Frank, although certainly voting the way he did - and more broadly, being the kind of Democrat who would vote to gut Dodd-Frank - almost certainly expanded his professional networks in ways that made landing at Akin Gump easier.
But the staffers working for Donnelly both have a lot of power behind the scenes to shape Donnelly's political positions and also know they don't have the same kind of name brand recognition to call their shot when their bosses lose re-election. They need to form relationships that prepare them for that eventuality, and pushing their bosses in certain directions certainly helps around the edges on that.
Joe Donnelly's former Chief of Staff, for example, served a short stint advising a different Midwestern moderate Abigail Finkenhauer before leveraging his business-friendly Democratic resume into a gig as the head lobbyist for Salesforce. Would the legislative staff for Ilhan Omar be able to do the same? I doubt it. How much of this plays an explicit role as opposed to an implicit role is hard to say, but the extent to which the behind-the-scenes staffers are building their own careers even as they are advising their bosses can't be underestimated.
There would be a line of organizations to hire AOC that intend to raise money through her fanbase, not so many of the organizations that earn money from corporations. But as usual with The Squad, I think they're exceptions to any useful rule. I think if you're progressive and aren't a socialist media phenom, you'd do fine.
A caveat: I'm from, and live in, Montana. But it sounds like the closest thing to a popularist would be Jon Tester. Voted for Manchin-Toomey, left-wing on campaign finance reform, focuses his energy on veterans and local concerns like agriculture and state & tribal water compacts.
While I may not understand Sen Manchin's motives completely, I'm concerned with portraying them as fallback positions so he can go work on K Street if he looses. Taxing business income is really NOT the best idea in the world. Should we maybe do it now and try to trade off a future reduction for higher personal taxes rather than not invest in projects with high economic return at all?
Maybe, although it would help if we had higher confidence that the investment WOULD have high economic returns. I wish we were funding an infrastructure bank that could apply strict tests (including anti-NIMBY decision making on local recipients of funding).
I agree taxing business income is not the best idea on the world, though I think they went too far with the rate deduction and it could go up a little without any real harm.
The problem is Manchin appears to be against everything. I can't point to anything he's in favor of EXCEPT bills passing with bipartisan majorities. So while raising the corporate tax rate may not be the best idea, he's offering no alternatives. That's what's driving me crazy.
Indeed ... but the dream would be to have John Bel Edwards run in North Carolina or Florida where he might plausibly win rather than just overperforming a normal Democrat by six points in Louisiana and lose anyway.
That raises the question: Who is the closest thing to John Bel Edwards in Florida? Any rough-around-the-edges ex-military Democrats with chops?
If not, maybe ex-police chief Val Demings is the closest thing? If she leaned hard into the police part of her bio during the campaign, maybe she'd have a shot.
I think a somewhat more standard Democrat could win in North Carolina.
I'd prefer the Democrats not constantly go to ex-military types for these seats... not that it's bad experience, but it limits the candidate pool and IMO contributes to a perception that Democrats are naturally weak on national security issues (see also Obama and Biden both picking someone besides a Democratic politician as their first Secretary of Defense). Jon Tester and Joe Manchin are both successful red-state Democrats without military experience.
I voted for Gwen Graham in Florida's 2018 gubernatorial primary. She probably would have won and prevented a lot of COVID-related disasters under DeSantis, as well as the legislature's gutting of Amendment 4 (the felon re-enfranchisement initiative). Perhaps Florida has moved to the right since 2018 but at that time, I think she could have won just by not being a super-progressive like Andrew Gillum.
Cassidy got 59 percent in 2020. Perhaps JBE could hold Kennedy below 50 percent and force a runoff but yeah, Louisiana is a tough state. I don't see much downside to JBE running though... they have gubernatorial elections in odd-numbered years so if he loses he can just finish his term.
After Kennedy's bowing out from MAGAism, I honestly wonder if it would be better for JBE to run against Cassidy rather than Kennedy. I only have anecdotal evidence, but haven't noticed as many Liberal folks talking up Graves or Cassidy for their "compromise", especially after the insurrection....and Cassidy definitely lost some support from the Far Right for his vote on impeachment....
Cassidy was re-elected in 2020 though. Kennedy is one of eight senators who voted to reject valid electoral votes for Joe Biden, so I think it's important for the Dems to run the one candidate who might have a chance against him in 2022.
Well yeah. This has been obvious to me for decades. I watch the rurall county where I grew up go from mixed voting to 85 % Republican as the Dems took on more far-left policies and ignored economic issues. Regan and Clinton started the push that ignored unions and went for the college crowd, and it is worse now.
Clinton did pretty well in areas that are now unthinkably red... I think that working-class people are generally fairly moderate across the board. I think it is wise to emphasize economic issues because Democrats have more popular views overall there, but the shift in rural voters from the Left/Labor party toward conservative parties is a 60-year long trend that spans the entire world. We can possibly slow that down but realistically the idea of remaking the Democratic party into a party that is primarily run by and for the working class is probably not going to happen.
Well, assuming the trend continues, something is going to have to give or the US will be perpetually governed by the GOP. Only 30% of US adults have a college degree.
As a small dollar donor myself, giving Manchin money doesn't thrill me but if I felt like it was useful I'd do it. I gave McCaskill money, I gave Sinema money, Tester. Usually in an election year I look up the closest Senate races on 538 and spread it around.
But if Manchin and Sinema just steadfastly refuse to do anything that McConnell doesn't agree to, I don't know. I mean...I know we said at least witha Democratic Senate Biden could at least get nominees confirmed, but then Manchin opposed Tanden! Would a 50-50 split in the next Congress make Manchin more likely to deal or less? Indications are: less.
Surely there are lots of people out there in reddish states who (a) have the right package of views, (b) are politically talented, and (c) aren't interested in becoming DC lobbyists. Why can't those people rise to the top with greater frequency? It's a big country, there ought to be multiple John Bel Edwardses out there.
One possibility, other than lack of funding, is that it's a pipeline problem. Even *within* red states, there aren't many smaller jurisdictions with suitable electorates to cultivate candidates like this. For instance, there aren't many Democratic state legislators in Tennessee, but the few that exist are either corporate types or far left. There are few places where this talent can be developed.
I'm also reminded of the 2020 Senate race in Tennessee, where the state Dems wanted to run a "man of faith & Army officer" (description from his campaign website). No doubt he would have gotten stomped in the general election, but it was a candidacy that made sense for taking a longshot in a very red state. But he lost in the primary to a Sunrise endorsed Sierra Club activist.
My acid test for this is Jon Tester. If, upon leaving the Senate, he became a DC lobbyist, all my naive optimism for the kind of people you describe would evaporate.
"That spirit of pragmatism was born out of defeat in 2004 and it delivered successes in 2006 and 2008. Then there were some significant governance and political failures in 2009-10 that were wrongly attributed to a lack of ideological purity."
Dead on. Lack of ideological purity isn't a problem, but standing for something and having an identifiable agenda and worldview that people can wrap their heads around and are drawn too is important. That's muddled for a lot of Democrats.
Modest proposal: rich lefty activists should direct some of their resources to post-loss sinecures for moderate Democrats in purple electorates/states.
Tough post for me, as someone who is sincerely more economically conservative than the public. In particular, "a lot of the absolute most popular stuff you can do on economics is proposals that obscure costs with regulatory mandates" seems pretty scary, since it making means you're making decisions without counting the true costs (indeed, willfully blinding yourself to the true costs). Seems like a recipe for making a lot of bad decisions. Especially since IMO the natural endpoint of "lawyer-brain" is "no one is allowed to do anything, since doing something means you might do something wrong".
But I suppose the usual advice applies; politicians should just try and get elected, and people like me with unpopular views should try and make them more popular. Seems tough. Especially since plausibly the only reason libertarianism is even as popular as it is is the questionable anti-tax stuff and not the good pro-freedom stuff.
To give a concrete example: "The Loan Shark Prevention Act, which would cap interest rates on consumer loans, tests extremely well even with rigorous pro and con arguments. This would get a lot of people a better deal on their credit cards and basically eliminate the payday lending industry — an industry that is not admired or liked."
My understanding is that payday loans, while unpopular, are actually a valuable service to low-income people who would be worse off if they were gone. The interest rates are absurdly high, but that mostly reflects that the loans are very short-term and the non-interest costs of making loans to low-income people are very high (lots of in-person assistance required; relatively low repayment rates), and in fact the actual profits of these companies are not exorbitant.
'payday loans, while unpopular, are actually a valuable service to low-income people . . . in fact the actual profits of these companies are not exorbitant.'
If they provided a valuable service, then they would be extremely profitable, because they would get repeat custom while demanding a huge vig. In fact, they are mostly low-profit businesses, precisely because there is no repeat custom and their balance sheet is full of garbage liabilities. The basic problem is that people who have a realistic chance of making the short-term repayment have little reason to use the service, and the people who need the service have little chance of making the short-term repayment. You essentially noted this in your comment ('relatively low repayment rates'), so I don't understand why you think it's 'actually a valuable service'.
My guess is "relatively low" is more like 90% (vs. a normal loan being like 99%), not like 50% (those are all made up numbers). My guess is there are lots of repeat customers.
It seems valuable to me because sometimes money now is a lot better than money in two weeks (e.g. it'll stop you from being evicted), and sometimes there is no other good source of "money now".
There are not many customers who have no access to 'money now', ie a credit card, an overdraft, in the worst case anything to pawn, who are also a good credit risk.
Right, so the point of payday loans is for people who are bad credit risks. And the high fees are partially to make up for the extra risk.
Is your theory that everyone who uses payday loans is being duped and has a negative experience? That seems very implausible and paternalistic to me; I'd guess the people who use them are doing a good job looking out for their own interests and are actually benefiting from them (in general I think it's true and respectful to assume people are better at making choices for themselves than outsiders would be, and this is a strong argument for not banning things)
Do you have any evidence that states that more stringently regulate payday lenders have worse outcomes for impoverished people? This paper suggests that banning payday loans causes people to find less expensive ways of raising cash:
Yes! This! Trying to ban payday loans is typical upper middle class bullshit, harming the poor while trying to help them. It won’t mean cheaper loans, it’ll just mean no loans - so uh, good luck to you if your car breaks and you can’t get cash for a repair! We can do better than opposing payday loans just because they are tacky.
"Some loser like me will be out there making the point that it doesn’t actually help women to replace Senator Popularist with a replacement-level Republican who supports much more severe abortion restrictions and also makes it impossible for Democratic presidents to get federal judges confirmed. "
I've thought a lot about why this reality seems so unintuitive to leftists, how people will tell me without blinking an eye that "Joe Manchin is the same as (insert Republican)", and I'm slowly realizing that this sentiment is partially coming from an ugly place of privilege.
The young left-leaning college grads (including myself) may have felt the mental and emotional exhaustion from the Trump years, but the reality is that most of us were not materially worse off in 2020 than 2016. We are not the demographic that heavily relies on Social Security, or Medicare, or unemployment benefits, or abortion clinics, so a lot of us can really afford to not care if Joe Manchin loses his seat to an actual Republican, as long as we can pat ourselves on the back that we sufficiently harassed the moderate Dems and stuck to our values. And that is sad, because for the vast majority of people who actually need social safety nets and government support, the difference between Manchin and an actual Republican is very, very real...
I think a lot of this is true, and we also can't underestimate the impact that social media has had on the way in which a certain kind of leftist politics has metastasized. How much of the issues that animate Twitter - and thus a lot of political discussion - come down specifically to the challenges that struggling journalists have? I support Medicare for All but it's not lost on me how much of the momentum that picked up in elite circles was driven basically by freelancers finding dealing with the exchanges annoying. Whenever the topic of student debt comes up the conversation shifts from 'eat the rich' to 'Pete Buttigieg is literally a Republican if he's only going to focus canceling student debt on low-income people instead of wiping away the $200k in debt I have from getting an English BA at Oberlin.'
These people center themselves and their anxieties in the American political experience and it poisons the discourse entirely. Think of how they told everyone the CARES Act was nothing but one stimulus check - because they were well-off enough not to need to access any of its other benefits - and tried to do the same thing with Biden's follow-up stimulus.
At a baseline level, Twitter plays such an outsized role in shaping the views of media and policymakers and so much of 'leftist' advocacy on those platforms and shaping the conversation are coming from a specific kind of self-loathing upper middle class 'PMC' types. The ones who work in media are lashing out because they work in a largely dying industry but they're laundering their specific class concerns through language about helping the most distressed people in America. And especially for the elite media people driving a lot of leftist conversation, a combination of not REALLY being all that economically vulnerable, combined with the fact that their own professional incentives in regards to building their personal brand push them in the direction of rejecting any sort political pragmatism to prove they are the One True Leftist, makes for a basically broken media ecosystem in which hopelessness sells and compromise is always betrayal.
I shared this link elsewhere in this comment section but whatever, it fits here too (re the Twitter left being animated by PMC concerns): https://tinkzorg.wordpress.com/2020/05/07/on-strasserism-and-the-decay-of-the-left/
"PMC"?
Professional managerial class.
In modern American political discourse it has sort of become a useless meta-term because the only people who know what it means are themselves members of the PMC but they nonetheless use the term as an epithet to try and assert their own leftist bonafides.
Having people on your team not advancing a given goal of the team feels shitty; it’s easy to overlook that politics is often zero-sum so *just having people on the team* helps the overall goals. This led Republicans to purge a bunch of people and lose some races they didn’t have to lose; we’re now catching up with them.
yup, in many ways GOP is far more ruthless to its non-team players. That ruthlessness is why they never crack 55 senate seats despite a map that is insanely biased in their direction.
It's political hobbyism, and I say that as a political hobbyist. I'm reading a book now, Politics is for Power, about exactly that.
Important to crystalize here that an obstacle among others to John Bel Edwards for Red State Senate Races model is that for all the scornful invocation of the term, the revealed preference is many Democrats (including many of the "above the fray" types) genuinely care about the culture war, think the culture war is important, and would like to use politics to argue about cultural values and how they should be reflected in political leaders.
Yeah, agree
If there was a populist party, I would be in it.
I own guns, including AR’s and AKs, but support FREE mandatory universal background checks.
I want to text the fuck out of the rich.
I think we should be giving more people money.
Hell yeah to a wealth tax.
The child tax credit should not only be permanent, it should be raised significantly.
I believe in dialing back qualified immunity, and reforming police, but I want a lot more of them.
We need subsidized healthcare. I don’t know the details, but we need better.
Raise that minimum wage.
Stop woke speak. I cringe when I read the word “LatinX”
But I live in Boise, Idaho. Red state, blue city.
Spam texting the rich would be a fun way to get even.
Little known fact. I am behind all the car warranty robocalls for exactly this reason. I had to include everyone else to hide my tracks.
Lol. Just saw my error.
I am not sure it's fair to say the failures of 2009-2010 and the 2010 defeat were universally attributed to a lack of ideological purity by Democrats. I think some thought that, as radicals of any stripe will attribute failure to lack of purity, but I recall a mixed bag of takes ranging from "our relief efforts weren't obvious or effective enough" to an eerily similar to 2016 "the media focused on dumb things like death panels and incoherent town hall shouting". It seems obvious to me that the Biden administration is, in general, composed of those who see the 2010 defeat the result of not making it obvious they were "helping the shit out of people", and I would generally classify their major efforts so far as popularist.
The problem as I see it is less that there are zero popularist Democrats, but that those popularist Democrats really suck at getting attention. The media will always focus on the exciting radicals (AOC) or those willing to buck the party (Manchin now), and to your point, the donor/wonk/activist class fund their favorite pets and consistently fail to realize how badly they suck at politics.
I wish the media would cover and the general public could name the moderate Dems through which their (slim) majority was originally won and now rests. How can we shift the spotlight? Is it even possible?
The media attention point is totally fair, but if Rep Spanberger and Jon Tester teamed up to introduce a bill to cap interest rates that would get plenty of attention.
I think the type of media is sort of important as well. Bennet had a child allowance bill with Brown that was, in my eyes, very good and got great write ups on many sites including Vox. But when he joined the presidential race he had 11% name recognition. He had been a senator for 8 years at this point. Tulsi had twice that, Stacy Abrams was at 41%, Beto was at 56% and Warren was in the 70s.
Small sample size obviously but becoming a big name seems to have more to do with getting involved in election horse-race stories than becoming a wonk favorite.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/26/16552200/child-allowance-tax-credit-bill-michael-bennet-sherrod-brown
https://www.businessinsider.com/most-least-well-known-democratic-candidates-among-democratic-voters-2019-5#rep-eric-swalwell-of-california-is-also-known-by-15-of-democratic-voters-5
Joe Manchun build a brand by taking the 800 page climate change bill and shorting it. That is a clear headline grabbing way to say your pro gun and pro coal
To get attention it helps to have an identifiable, consistent brand. And it's hard to have a strong brand that just says, I support whatever is popular at the moment.
A focus on ideological purity at least has the benefit of providing a strong brand. But purely adhering to orthodox leftist thinking repels too many Americans (and for good reason) to be a viable option to a political party that wants to hold power.
Re: Biden admin being generally popularist, I think the removal of troops from Afghanistan is an obviously popularist move. He even set the deadline on 9/11/21! Sure he's taking fire from Congress and the national security Blob, but overwhelming public opinion is we need to be out of Afghanistan. Biden is gonna reap public opinion on this.
I don't think leaving Afghanistan is a popularist move, though it almost certainly is a necessary one. Americans don't like to be associated with failure, and this will indeed be seen as a failure.
The image of the Taliban seizing Kabul and herding liberated women into burqas won't be a very good look. I'm not saying we should stay for that reason, just that the American people -- especially I suspect many women -- won't be greeting these events with hosannas.
The good news for Biden when he pulls out and bad things follow is that the American people really don't give a damn about Afghanistan after twenty years. It will be ugly, but I respect him for ripping the band-aid off.
This is probably more of an Open Thread discussion, but since it’s on my mind...what harm is being done being in Afghanistan? Obviously it’s costing a lot of money, but is it killing people or otherwise making things worse? Because I think a lot of stuff we don’t like is going to happen once we leave and I’d like to know what the benefits are.
Apart from the risk (however low) of having American personnel being killed in Afghanistan for no good reason, I would say that the major cost of it is the attention and energy of Administration personnel it sucks up, including that of the President. As is well known, that time and energy is the most precious commodity of any presidency.
Well, your other comment suggests that American troops are preventing the Taliban from seizing power and subjugating women, etc. One can debate whether that’s worth the cost but I certainly wouldn’t call it no good reason.
I would need to know more about the opportunity cost of attention and energy, which seems hard to speak to with any precision. Do we have examples of how our troop presence in Afghanistan has prevented American presidents from achieving other priorities?
My comment on "no good reason" was really rhetorical. Obviously, our presence is very good for the Afghans who would/will suffer horribly under the Taliban. That's just not enough reason for us to stay, especially after 20 years of such effort.
I'd love to know how much White House time is taken up by Afghanistan discussions, but I don't know. Ditto for the Pentagon. It certainly took up a lot of time all through Obama's eight years (e.g., https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/01/world/asia/obama-afghanistan-war.html, plus read his memoir) But given the huge challenges facing the US and the world, almost any minute Biden devotes to Afghanistan is one minute too much.
One thing missing here is that I think the moderate Democrats sincerely believe in what they're doing. I don't understand what motivates Manchin, but I have no doubt that he's sincere when he says that he thinks a $15 minimum wage would be a bad idea, or that raising the corporate tax rate all the way to Biden's proposed level would be less good policy then his proposal.
I think the question of sincerity is overrated in politics.
Take Joe Biden. He is a kind of median Democrat. And I think he's very sincerely a median Democrat! But the specific content of what it means to be a median Democrat has changed a lot over the course of his career, so the specific content of his policy views has also changed.
Joe Manchin is a sincere and authentic Red State Democrat. But I'm arguing we would be better off if we could shift the meaning of Red State Democrat identity somewhat.
I think the reason why Manchin & Sinema are acting the way they are is the issues are high profile enough people will notice them opposing their party (which is what people will really notice) in a way that some of the issues you mentioned simply are not salient. It's also a lower risk way to show 'moderate' credentials and avoid a primary challenge AND avoid losing out on a cushy post-senate job.
Perhaps we need reform on what public servants can do after they leave office, and this changes.
Completely agree. I think most people here and who follow politics are constantly overestimating just how much the average person follows politics. They don't know what policies any particular politician follows. They understand who is a moderate by who publicly agrees with the other party some of the time and gets rebuked by their party for it.
Sincerity is the most important thing in politics. If you can fake that, you've got it made.
What identity does a Red State Democrat have outside of what Manchin or Tester does? The way you shift what the identity is, is to shift what they do, which shifts what it means to be a Red State Democrat, which means they can shift what they do?
Admittedly, the corporate tax rate should be 0. Remember what Matt said about explicit costs being unpopular, but regulatory mandates which obfuscate the real total (even if it’s far more!) as being popular? It’s the exact same way with corporate income tax. We should tax money as it goes to people as income, and not have our current system where the costs are passed on to the poor.
Business taxes are passed on to capital, labor, and consumers. We already have ways of targeting each of those directly (income, employment, and sales taxes), but maybe one could argue the proper distribution among these three will vary based on the business?
I really hope somebody important is trying to figure out what makes Manchin tick, because he certainly isn't helping anyone accomplish anything.
He's accomplishing keeping the $15 minimum wage from damaging West Virgina's economy.
I mean, with another Republican from WV, Biden's cabinet appointees wouldn't have gotten confirmed and the recovery plan wouldn't have been passed, so those are pretty great helps. But yeah, it would be much better if he made some proposals rather than waiting for others to do it so he can arbitrarily make the proposals more moderate.
Manchin (and Sinema) would help accomplish increasing the minimum wage to $11 - why can't the rest of the party just settle for that now and push for an additional increase later?
https://www.newsweek.com/joe-manchin-kyrsten-sinema-open-11-minimum-wage-other-dems-less-willing-compromise-1578443
Manchin has “anchored” on the acceptable corporate tax rate. In 2012, he supported Obama dropping it to 28%. Now he opposes raising it to 28%.
It seems to me that’s a case of context affecting what you think the right number is, rather than any careful consideration of the number. Not sure how many lawmakers have opinions based on much beyond “higher / lower than it is now.”
Corporate tax rates in EU countries have dropped since 2012.
Do you think he is sincere when he protects the pharmaceutical industry? (An industry where his daughter is a CEO)
Pharma people are extremely sincere!
All the pharma industry people I know right now are like “you’re welcome!”
And they should be thanking all the basic scientists for laying the groundwork. :D
Absolutely. I don't know exactly what he's done with the pharmaceutical industry that you have in mind, but I think it's very unlikely he thought "this is bad for the country but good for my daughter." I'm sure he's extremely proud of his daughter, he likely believes that a robust pharmaceutical industry is good for the country, and it's not hard to see how those things might contribute to his judgement.
Probably? I assume all the pharma people believe in what they are doing.
For sure. Other than advances in surgical techniques and medical devices, the lion's share of meaningful advances in medicine have been driven by the pharmaceutical industry.
Is there any data showing that defeated dems with moderate DW nominate scores get better gigs than defeated dems with more progressive scores? If not, perhaps the solution is as simple as shouting from the rooftops “you don’t have to sell out to cash in.”
“That doesn’t make much sense as a popularist stance, but it’s helpful to pave the way for a soft landing at Akin Gump, the highest-grossing lobbying firm in DC.”
Is the theory here that if Donnelly had the voting record of say Chuck Schumer or Dick Durbin he would not be able to score a plum lobbying job? Color me skeptical.
No I'm saying that if Donnelly took significantly more right-wing positions on several cultural issues (thus alienating a lot of upscale liberals) while simultaneously pounding the table for interest rate caps and a wealth tax then he would've had a lot of trouble landing at Akin Gump.
It’s kind of interesting that you’d got way more flak in upscale liberal circles for opposing abortion than opposing Social Security.
The problem is what gets coded as ‘opposing abortion’. 65-70% of people think it should be mostly illegal in the second trimester and similar numbers think it should be legal during the first trimester. This is the position of all sorts of progressive European countries. But it is coded as pro-life, and disallowed.
I wonder about this too. If AOC retired and then said she wanted a job in lobbying or a corporate job of some kind it feels like their would be a line of organizations that would excited to hire her.
Are there examples of congress people not getting being able to find jobs because they pissed off the monied interests?
I don't know for sure but I suspect the phenomenon Matt is describing has as much to do with the professional staff advising the electeds as it does with the elected itself. These offices are not just about the public face but about the many different actors working to make that public face vote and act in a certain way.
Joe Donnelly could probably find a plum lobbying gig no matter how he voted on Dodd-Frank, although certainly voting the way he did - and more broadly, being the kind of Democrat who would vote to gut Dodd-Frank - almost certainly expanded his professional networks in ways that made landing at Akin Gump easier.
But the staffers working for Donnelly both have a lot of power behind the scenes to shape Donnelly's political positions and also know they don't have the same kind of name brand recognition to call their shot when their bosses lose re-election. They need to form relationships that prepare them for that eventuality, and pushing their bosses in certain directions certainly helps around the edges on that.
Joe Donnelly's former Chief of Staff, for example, served a short stint advising a different Midwestern moderate Abigail Finkenhauer before leveraging his business-friendly Democratic resume into a gig as the head lobbyist for Salesforce. Would the legislative staff for Ilhan Omar be able to do the same? I doubt it. How much of this plays an explicit role as opposed to an implicit role is hard to say, but the extent to which the behind-the-scenes staffers are building their own careers even as they are advising their bosses can't be underestimated.
There would be a line of organizations to hire AOC that intend to raise money through her fanbase, not so many of the organizations that earn money from corporations. But as usual with The Squad, I think they're exceptions to any useful rule. I think if you're progressive and aren't a socialist media phenom, you'd do fine.
A caveat: I'm from, and live in, Montana. But it sounds like the closest thing to a popularist would be Jon Tester. Voted for Manchin-Toomey, left-wing on campaign finance reform, focuses his energy on veterans and local concerns like agriculture and state & tribal water compacts.
Yes, Tester is the best model. Former Senator Byron Dorgan was also on the right track.
Possibly because Tester is the only one of the bunch who’d actually be just as happy to be back on his farm.
Heitkamp was also in this mold (mostly) and Begich. Feinstein is not too far off, honestly.
Steve Bullock was a good proof of concept. 2020 was just brutal for Montana Ds, though-- total R sweep the likes of which hadn't been seen in ages.
While I may not understand Sen Manchin's motives completely, I'm concerned with portraying them as fallback positions so he can go work on K Street if he looses. Taxing business income is really NOT the best idea in the world. Should we maybe do it now and try to trade off a future reduction for higher personal taxes rather than not invest in projects with high economic return at all?
Maybe, although it would help if we had higher confidence that the investment WOULD have high economic returns. I wish we were funding an infrastructure bank that could apply strict tests (including anti-NIMBY decision making on local recipients of funding).
I agree taxing business income is not the best idea on the world, though I think they went too far with the rate deduction and it could go up a little without any real harm.
The problem is Manchin appears to be against everything. I can't point to anything he's in favor of EXCEPT bills passing with bipartisan majorities. So while raising the corporate tax rate may not be the best idea, he's offering no alternatives. That's what's driving me crazy.
JOHN 👏 BEL 👏 EDWARDS 👏 FOR 👏 SENATE
Indeed ... but the dream would be to have John Bel Edwards run in North Carolina or Florida where he might plausibly win rather than just overperforming a normal Democrat by six points in Louisiana and lose anyway.
That raises the question: Who is the closest thing to John Bel Edwards in Florida? Any rough-around-the-edges ex-military Democrats with chops?
If not, maybe ex-police chief Val Demings is the closest thing? If she leaned hard into the police part of her bio during the campaign, maybe she'd have a shot.
I think a somewhat more standard Democrat could win in North Carolina.
I'd prefer the Democrats not constantly go to ex-military types for these seats... not that it's bad experience, but it limits the candidate pool and IMO contributes to a perception that Democrats are naturally weak on national security issues (see also Obama and Biden both picking someone besides a Democratic politician as their first Secretary of Defense). Jon Tester and Joe Manchin are both successful red-state Democrats without military experience.
I voted for Gwen Graham in Florida's 2018 gubernatorial primary. She probably would have won and prevented a lot of COVID-related disasters under DeSantis, as well as the legislature's gutting of Amendment 4 (the felon re-enfranchisement initiative). Perhaps Florida has moved to the right since 2018 but at that time, I think she could have won just by not being a super-progressive like Andrew Gillum.
Cassidy got 59 percent in 2020. Perhaps JBE could hold Kennedy below 50 percent and force a runoff but yeah, Louisiana is a tough state. I don't see much downside to JBE running though... they have gubernatorial elections in odd-numbered years so if he loses he can just finish his term.
After Kennedy's bowing out from MAGAism, I honestly wonder if it would be better for JBE to run against Cassidy rather than Kennedy. I only have anecdotal evidence, but haven't noticed as many Liberal folks talking up Graves or Cassidy for their "compromise", especially after the insurrection....and Cassidy definitely lost some support from the Far Right for his vote on impeachment....
Cassidy was re-elected in 2020 though. Kennedy is one of eight senators who voted to reject valid electoral votes for Joe Biden, so I think it's important for the Dems to run the one candidate who might have a chance against him in 2022.
Well yeah. This has been obvious to me for decades. I watch the rurall county where I grew up go from mixed voting to 85 % Republican as the Dems took on more far-left policies and ignored economic issues. Regan and Clinton started the push that ignored unions and went for the college crowd, and it is worse now.
Clinton did pretty well in areas that are now unthinkably red... I think that working-class people are generally fairly moderate across the board. I think it is wise to emphasize economic issues because Democrats have more popular views overall there, but the shift in rural voters from the Left/Labor party toward conservative parties is a 60-year long trend that spans the entire world. We can possibly slow that down but realistically the idea of remaking the Democratic party into a party that is primarily run by and for the working class is probably not going to happen.
Well, assuming the trend continues, something is going to have to give or the US will be perpetually governed by the GOP. Only 30% of US adults have a college degree.
As a small dollar donor myself, giving Manchin money doesn't thrill me but if I felt like it was useful I'd do it. I gave McCaskill money, I gave Sinema money, Tester. Usually in an election year I look up the closest Senate races on 538 and spread it around.
But if Manchin and Sinema just steadfastly refuse to do anything that McConnell doesn't agree to, I don't know. I mean...I know we said at least witha Democratic Senate Biden could at least get nominees confirmed, but then Manchin opposed Tanden! Would a 50-50 split in the next Congress make Manchin more likely to deal or less? Indications are: less.
Is having Tanden direct OMB essential to the good of the Republic? She’ll do better than folks who can’t afford healthcare.
Surely there are lots of people out there in reddish states who (a) have the right package of views, (b) are politically talented, and (c) aren't interested in becoming DC lobbyists. Why can't those people rise to the top with greater frequency? It's a big country, there ought to be multiple John Bel Edwardses out there.
One possibility, other than lack of funding, is that it's a pipeline problem. Even *within* red states, there aren't many smaller jurisdictions with suitable electorates to cultivate candidates like this. For instance, there aren't many Democratic state legislators in Tennessee, but the few that exist are either corporate types or far left. There are few places where this talent can be developed.
I'm also reminded of the 2020 Senate race in Tennessee, where the state Dems wanted to run a "man of faith & Army officer" (description from his campaign website). No doubt he would have gotten stomped in the general election, but it was a candidacy that made sense for taking a longshot in a very red state. But he lost in the primary to a Sunrise endorsed Sierra Club activist.
My acid test for this is Jon Tester. If, upon leaving the Senate, he became a DC lobbyist, all my naive optimism for the kind of people you describe would evaporate.
"That spirit of pragmatism was born out of defeat in 2004 and it delivered successes in 2006 and 2008. Then there were some significant governance and political failures in 2009-10 that were wrongly attributed to a lack of ideological purity."
Dead on. Lack of ideological purity isn't a problem, but standing for something and having an identifiable agenda and worldview that people can wrap their heads around and are drawn too is important. That's muddled for a lot of Democrats.
Modest proposal: rich lefty activists should direct some of their resources to post-loss sinecures for moderate Democrats in purple electorates/states.
Tough post for me, as someone who is sincerely more economically conservative than the public. In particular, "a lot of the absolute most popular stuff you can do on economics is proposals that obscure costs with regulatory mandates" seems pretty scary, since it making means you're making decisions without counting the true costs (indeed, willfully blinding yourself to the true costs). Seems like a recipe for making a lot of bad decisions. Especially since IMO the natural endpoint of "lawyer-brain" is "no one is allowed to do anything, since doing something means you might do something wrong".
But I suppose the usual advice applies; politicians should just try and get elected, and people like me with unpopular views should try and make them more popular. Seems tough. Especially since plausibly the only reason libertarianism is even as popular as it is is the questionable anti-tax stuff and not the good pro-freedom stuff.
To give a concrete example: "The Loan Shark Prevention Act, which would cap interest rates on consumer loans, tests extremely well even with rigorous pro and con arguments. This would get a lot of people a better deal on their credit cards and basically eliminate the payday lending industry — an industry that is not admired or liked."
My understanding is that payday loans, while unpopular, are actually a valuable service to low-income people who would be worse off if they were gone. The interest rates are absurdly high, but that mostly reflects that the loans are very short-term and the non-interest costs of making loans to low-income people are very high (lots of in-person assistance required; relatively low repayment rates), and in fact the actual profits of these companies are not exorbitant.
'payday loans, while unpopular, are actually a valuable service to low-income people . . . in fact the actual profits of these companies are not exorbitant.'
If they provided a valuable service, then they would be extremely profitable, because they would get repeat custom while demanding a huge vig. In fact, they are mostly low-profit businesses, precisely because there is no repeat custom and their balance sheet is full of garbage liabilities. The basic problem is that people who have a realistic chance of making the short-term repayment have little reason to use the service, and the people who need the service have little chance of making the short-term repayment. You essentially noted this in your comment ('relatively low repayment rates'), so I don't understand why you think it's 'actually a valuable service'.
My guess is "relatively low" is more like 90% (vs. a normal loan being like 99%), not like 50% (those are all made up numbers). My guess is there are lots of repeat customers.
It seems valuable to me because sometimes money now is a lot better than money in two weeks (e.g. it'll stop you from being evicted), and sometimes there is no other good source of "money now".
There are not many customers who have no access to 'money now', ie a credit card, an overdraft, in the worst case anything to pawn, who are also a good credit risk.
Right, so the point of payday loans is for people who are bad credit risks. And the high fees are partially to make up for the extra risk.
Is your theory that everyone who uses payday loans is being duped and has a negative experience? That seems very implausible and paternalistic to me; I'd guess the people who use them are doing a good job looking out for their own interests and are actually benefiting from them (in general I think it's true and respectful to assume people are better at making choices for themselves than outsiders would be, and this is a strong argument for not banning things)
People clearly find value in it, no? If you took it away, you’d be harming the people who choose to use it.
What type of 'value' do you think it offers?
Do you have any evidence that states that more stringently regulate payday lenders have worse outcomes for impoverished people? This paper suggests that banning payday loans causes people to find less expensive ways of raising cash:
https://www.responsiblelending.org/sites/default/files/nodes/files/research-publication/crl-shark-free-waters-sep2017.pdf
Yes! This! Trying to ban payday loans is typical upper middle class bullshit, harming the poor while trying to help them. It won’t mean cheaper loans, it’ll just mean no loans - so uh, good luck to you if your car breaks and you can’t get cash for a repair! We can do better than opposing payday loans just because they are tacky.