Tweet
Here’s an important point from Matt Yglesias that I think most people here would agree with. He riffs off a line from Paul Ryan’s convention speech – “None of us have to settle for the best this administration offers — a dull, adventureless journey from one entitlement to the next, a government-planned life, a country where everything is free but us.” This Hungary circa 1956 vision of America just bears no resemblance to the truth. And that’s because of Matt’s real point, that the differences between the parties are actually much smaller than that.
…post-1970 American politics basically always gives you the same choice. In Column A the market liberalism of the Republican Party and in Column B the social liberalism of the Democratic Party [...]
In essence Ryan wants to run against Communism. And what better thing for a young man with a taste for Ayn Rand novels to aspire to than to some day be able to deliver the basic case for market capitalism before a live national television audience? But as Ryan somewhat awkwardly reminded us with talk of his iPod playlist, he’s far too young to make a career as a cold warrior. So rather than calming down, he’s arbitrarily decided to imbue the debate between spending at 18 percent of GDP and spending at 22 percent of GDP with the moral weight of the Berlin Wall.
The issues just won’t bear that weight. The system that prevailed in the Cold War isn’t pure type libertarianism out of Atlas Shrugged. It’s regulated welfare state capitalism. When the U.S. auto industry is on the verge of collapse, House members who have GM plants in their district vote for the bailout to try to save the company. When the President of the United States implements the bailout in a way that doesn’t happen to lead to the reopening of some specific plants, the House members whose districts lose out get upset. When the elderly overwhelmingly favor one political party over its stances on social issues, that party tends to stand up especially tall for the aspects of the social insurance state that benefit that cohort of people. Earlier in the evening we were introduced to Steve Cohen, a small businessman from Ohio, who thundered on behalf of free markets and against Obama’s overweening regulation before calling for stronger patent protections. Republicans favor large systematic bailouts for farmers afflicted by bad weather.
I would actually argue that Yglesias is exaggerating the differences here, at least as they’ve played out on the big issues. Paul Ryan and his confreres voted for the bailout, which Barack Obama whipped to get his side to support. When Obama put together a $787 billion stimulus, with substantial amounts focused on tax cuts, Paul Ryan voted for an alternative, a $715 billion stimulus (basically the same in size except for the inclusion of the alternative minimum tax patch, which is not stimulative) that was entirely focused on tax cuts. Obama’s goal for Medicare spending and Paul Ryan’s goal for Medicare spending is exactly the same, GDP +0.5%.
I don’t necessarily take this to Gush-Bore proportions, but it’s a simple fact that when it matters, on the big issues, politics in America is about trying your best to distinguish differences between you and your opponent that essentially don’t exist. They exist on some issues, of course. But consider the words you didn’t hear yesterday. Words like “the banks.” You won’t hear it much next week either. Paul Ryan had a correct statement yesterday when he said that Obama came in with a housing crisis, and then did nothing to fix it. But the housing plank of the GOP platform has basically nothing to offer, either.
If the GOP wasn’t so radically anti-tax, there would be a general consensus on fiscal policy right now, with cuts to the social insurance state, some modest tax increases on the wealthy, and severe reductions in spending in most areas except for the military. Obviously the national security state has a high degree of continuity. Social issues actually have a larger cleaving than normal at the moment, which is why politics so often plays out on cultural and racial lines.
On economics there is, in theory, a great debate to be had, even if it’s not on the level of communism versus libertarianism, as Ryan wants to pretend. We’re just not going to have that great debate. We’re having a debate between two sides of a ledger, one at 60% of a continuum and the other at 100%. There’s a substantial percentage of that playing field left out of the discussion.
That’s politics in America circa 2012. You can be angry about it, and you can work to push who you think will listen into generating an actual debate. But that’s the baseline.
15 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL News Desk
Fuck you Paul Ryan.
My wife just left a job interview, probably got the job, working 30 hours a week for $8.25 an hour. She would be taking a pay cut from her unemployment insurance benefit, and commuting to do it. We have $21,784 in student loan debt so she can earn less than $1,000 a month.
Fuck you Paul Ryan, and all your happy horseshit about entitlements.
I think this is fundamentally off base. What it ignores is the suffocating effect of obamas limited notions on a party that could easily have been led in a better direction.
Obama is a moderate, balance the budget republican, who ran as a Dem to get elected. He fooled a lot of people. But his moderate republican leanings not only define what he accepts but limits how far any of the Dems can go for fear of the crazies. They let his limited views define the party. Obama thinks he can bargain with the other part of the GOP. He believes the grand bargain is not only achievable. It’s also the right thing to do.
There are parts of the Dem party that realize they are not represented in this moderate vs conservative turned crazy GOP construct. They are silenced. But we should not assume they are all the same.
x2 Wa-a-a-ay off base. It’s not that the difference between the folks who voted for Obama and the folks who voted for McCain are small. It’s that the differences between the way Obama governed and the way McCain might have governed are small.
Yglesias, whom I despise, is once again carrying Obama’s water. The folks who voted for him did not expect the differences to be small. They were SOLD OUT.
I don’t think this is at all that different from what I wrote. But Democrats have to own that the leader of their party generally controls the debate, and has for four years. Those who disagree are silenced, but it’s not like they’ve tried to speak up or speak out. I’m focusing on the rank and file politicians here, not the constituents, who are sadly an inconvenient detail.
People need to speak out. Period.
http://freewayblogger.blogspot.com/2012/08/more-los-angeles.html
Would love to see some campaign signs from the left.
Agree with all you say and will be clearer in my conscience when I vote Green in Nov. Obama IS the party of the status quo (bipartisanship) which I stated earlier is the staus quo of the Titanic after it hit the iceberg; while Rmoney is the party of “rich people in the lifeboats and screw the people in steerage.”
Might as well complete the analysis and admit that all Democratic politicians aspire to being moderate, balance the budget republicans, who run as Democrats to get elected, because that is the career path that promises the smoothest access to future wealth and social status.
Democrats, long ago gave up opposing Republicans because they were sick of losing elections due to being out-spent by corporate-backed opponents.
All of this has made life much easier for the folks who employ ‘K’ street because their lobbying model has now become one-size-fits-all.
Paul Wellstone was the last ‘real’ Democrat and, I’m afraid, a very real object lesson for those who can’t bring themselves to ‘get with the program’.
There are no more ‘real’ democrats, so we could save some energy by retiring that whole meme.
There are only ‘duly-elected’ representatives of the people, and by people, I mean corporations of course.
Everyone knows that.
You could argue that social issues have provided both parties a crutch over the last forty-odd years, helping to mask development of the national security state and rise of neoliberalism.
Neoliberalism and the militarism that reinforces it (see Pinochet, read forward through Grenada to Iraq and militarization of Africa) are recognized by progressives in Latin America and Europe as our number one enemy; neoliberalism is a word barely recognized here.
You have to work from such a deficit in order to even start the conversation, partly because liberals are so naively complicit. I continue to believe that the obsession with national bread and circuses to the almost wholesale exclusion of the international arena, is a serious failing–feeds into the general myopia. I blame TV, in part. All of the monkeys are trained to watch it the livelong day. High blood pressures sell soap, CNN gravitates to the redlines, and the bleeding in Haiti, Nigeria, Pakistan, etcetera goes largely unnoticed.
Provocative if not fully-baked piece by Matt Stoller at Naked Capitalism about how the Washington aparatchik–political consultants, etc.–lead the political process around by the nose, gravitating toward the center in a dynamic that keeps them in their jobs, the money train whistle blowing through the night:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/08/the-real-rationale-for-the-romney-campaign-a-consultant-money-grab.html
Piece tends to omit the deeper productive relations (the military-industrial complex) that underlie the process, staying–as part of the larger tacit agreement–outside the lines of debate at all.
“It’s regulated welfare state capitalism. When the U.S. auto industry is on the verge of collapse, House members who have GM plants in their district vote for the bailout to try to save the company. When the President of the United States implements the bailout in a way that doesn’t happen to lead to the reopening of some specific plants..”
Another newspeak word for fascism
Republicans vs Democrats = Christian Fascist vs Secular Fascist
“Social issues actually have a larger cleaving than normal at the moment, which is why politics so often plays out on cultural and racial lines.”
This has been the driving dynamic of American politics since the beginning of the U.S. empire
Divide and conquer.
“Draw them in with prospect of gain, take them by confusion.” Sun Tzu
It is possible that Ayn Rand would have appreciated today’s neoliberals more than today’s Republicans.
She said that Reagan was very dangerous because he combined religion and politics, but Reagan was weak sauce in that respect, compared with Ryan and Romney.
This is the Ayn Rand who died poor, alone and collecting SS right?
Yes, it’s called “liberty”.
I should add–I too interviewed for a job last week. It is a federal part-time job at the GS-2 pay level. The requirements are 1. a HS diploma or GED and 2. a 1 yr. work history of dealing with the public, e.g., a clerk at a convenience store.
Twelve people made it to the interview. Five of those have college degrees and/or graduate degrees and are 55 plus. I have a grad degree and am 61.
Will I get the job? Who knows, the competition is stiff.
Thankfully, my kids are raised, I have no student debt, and my home is paid for. I need work after a year of unemployment in order to stop raiding my savings, and to increase my ss benefits once I can draw it in 5 yrs.
I don’t know how folks your age make it.
I’m not that worried about me, but the future for my 23 yr. old son and my 2 grandkids looks bleak.