Karl's Math Way Wrong

A perfect storm of bad news for Republicans over the last couple of months has finally convinced the country, two years too late, that GOP rule has been a disaster.  My basic emotion is relief. I have no illusions that Democrats are now going to make things better--only not as bad, but I am relieved to learn that there is a limit to the abuses the American electorate was willing to tolerate. I was beginning to wonder after 2004. I was beginning to lose faith in the common sense and common decency of the American people. I expected the American electorate to repudiate Bush and his party in 2004 in the way they finally did it yesterday. They didn't do it then, but better late than never. I feel better about being an American this morning.

All the Dems sites are giddy at the scope of the blue victory, but the Democrats' taking control doesn't alter some of the fundamental structural elements that have been driving the regressive social and economic changes that we've seen in the last twenty-five years.  In other words, the Dems are deeply complicit in a system where money and well-healed special interests drive policy.  And let's not forget, twelve of them in the Senate voted for the MIlitary Commissions Act.

There are exceptions, but I think it's fair to say that individual politicians, whether they are Democrat or Republican, are motivated by what is in their political self-interests, and do what their consultants tell them to do. And consultants are interested only in doing what will keep their clients in office. The will of the people or public opinion, of course, is a factor, but too often is dealt with as something to be manipulated or worked around. These politicians tell their mostly inattentive constituents what they want to hear, and then do what they have to in order to advance their careers, which requires playing ball according to Beltway rules--a game they need consultants to understand. And so those careers depend more on what well organized and well financed interest groups and their lobbyists want than what is in the best interest of the country.

Liberal Democrats are wrong if they think this election is magnificent validation of their progressivism.  The Republicans lost not because the American electorate rejected GOP political philosophy, but because of the Iraq fiasco and because Republicans overreached in their venality.  GOP venality is at the heart of the matter.  It was more than ususal the tail wagging the policy dog for the past six years. And it was the chief reason for the incompetent management of everything this administration has touched, both domestically and in Iraq. 

Politics is for this group not about effective governance but about providing a feeding trough for GOP cronies.  Political philosophy has nothing to do with the way they operated except to provide an ideological smokescreen to hide their crimes. That's what has the principled, small-government conservatives up in arms, and I don't blame them. They began to catch on that they've been used. They recongized that their agenda has  a fairly narrow power base, and calculated that an alliance with the venality wing of the party would enable them to implement their agenda, but they found out how little real influence they have.  The venality wing could care less about the agenda of principled conservatives.

But while the Dems take more seriously than the Republicans the challenge of governing competently and effectively, at least at the national level, the Clintonista, center/right DLC wing has proven time and time again that it is basically ok with an agenda that is dictated by the already rich and already powerful.  Why?  Because the power is where the money is, not where the unorganized people are, and if you're in politics you care mostly about where the power is.  And  the traditional middle- and lower-income groups don't have a strong institutional or organizational voice or power base.  The unions used to be the great counterweight to traditional wealth and power interests, but they are now confused, weak, and ineffective.  Democrats who are interested in advancing their careers understand which side of the bread is buttered. The definition of "moderate" for such Democrats has come to mean being comfortable with the agenda of the already rich and powerful.

A more progressively oriented political agenda embraces a wider swath of the American public opinion than the culturally conservative one does, but real progressives will not be able to enact anything until they develop a organized power base.  They don't have one now. This is why I find facetious all this fretting from moderates and conservatives about the threat posed by the "left."  What power base does the left have at this time?  There is no left in this country except a toothless fringe that rants in the blogosphere, but has little influence in shaping policy. But there is a vigorous, well-organized, and well-financed alliance between the cultural and corporate right, and it will continue to put enormous pressure the system. 

Democracies like ours respond more to the agendas of well organized minorities than they do to the amorphous opinions of unorganized majorities. Most normal Americans oppose the agenda of the cultural and corporate right, if we've thought about it at all.  But we are divided and effectively conquered.  We comprise a complacent, easily manipulable, fragmented chaos of conflicting values and opinions from the center leftward that is incapable of developing a united front to achieve a positive agenda.  We have little effect in shaping policy except to register our disgust, as we did yesterday, when the power and wealth elites become too blatant in their grabfest. We congratulate ourselves that the system works, and then go back to sleep.  But the minorities on a mission stay awake, and they keep plugging away.

So the Democrats have won, and now normal, sane Americans can forget everything they've learned about how the right in this country operates, and look at this horrible six years as an historical aberration.  And when the organized right makes its next assault in '08 or '10, there will be a huge chunk from this amorphous mass of disorganized Americans that will by and large believe its propaganda just as it did for the best part of the last six years.  And so it goes.

I could be wrong, but here are some of the things that would have to happen to change my mind:  I want to see the new congress repeal the Military Commissions Act.  I don't hear Pelosi or anyone else talking about that.  I want to see serious campaign reform to restrict the influence of big money driving the system.  I want to see very serious election reforms that de-politicize the redistricting process and the secretary-of-state system that oversees elections. I want to see serious restrictions on the influence of lobbyists.  And along those lines I want to see some effort to develop sane health care an energy policies that serve the common good and not corporate interests. 

There are a bunch of other things, too.  But these are the litmus-test issues for me, and I doubt that we're going to see much happen on any of them in the next two years or if someone like Hillary is elected in '08. It's possible that some progress can be made on one or two of these issues, but I have my doubts. I just don't see the leadership or a power base strong enough to counteract the special interest powers that will viciously fight to defeat any legislation that will affect them negatively.  American public opinion is irrelevant.  The opinions of the disorganized don't matter. 

I'm not optimistic about the long-term effectiveness of netroots organizing.  It's not nothing, but it's not enough.  I hope I'm wrong about that, and I'm interested to hear anyone make the case that I am.  But the problem is not Dems or Republicans; it's the system as it's structured.  And I just don't see any plausible fix for it because there is no power base to drive the changes that have to be made. 

Comments

[Matt Zemek]

Jack,

No, you're not wrong at all.

This analysis is all too accurate.

It's all such a parlor game in the Beltway, and your phrasings hit the nail on the head.

These are power operators who couldn't give a ---- about the working poor and various cross sections of marginalized Americans.

The one thing I'm encouraged by is that Pelosi, for all the things she isn't talking about (but should), has put ethical reforms and congressional oversight at the center of what she wants to get done.

That would really help, and in many ways, it should be the first overarching priority. Multiple systemic cleanings will one day bear fruit if they are sound enough and professionally advanced through this Democratic congress, and then sustained by the actions of all congressional members, AND then sold effectively by future candidates in 2008, 2010, and 2012.

Corruption was a big mover in this election, and Democrats--if they play their cards right in both the legislative maneuverings and public phrasings they put forth--could achieve change.

We voters/constituents need to press our congresspeople and senators for ethics reform and like issues in the coming years. It's probably the one area where things can get done before the 2008 primary campaign essentially begins in the summer of '07. The only thing that can get achieved other than ethics reform before '08 is immigration.

[Jason]

"Here are some of the things that would have to happen to change my mind: .... I want to see serious restrictions on the influence of lobbyists."

This is Day One of the new House's first 100 Hours in office. Agree that repealing the MCA should be on the agenda, but can understand why locking horns with the president is not on the first day's agenda.

[Sir Francis]

Jack,

Much as it causes me almost physical pain to quote Tom DeLay -- let alone agree with him regarding *anything* -- I have no choice: DeLay said the Democrats didn't win this election, the Republicans lost it.

Be that as it may, at least we now have a toolkit to repair the ship of state. Whether we use it remains to be seen. Go well.

[Jason]

"DeLay said the Democrats didn't win this election, the Republicans lost it."

I'm sure this gives some cold comfort to the loser, but it's a meaningless statement and can be applied to just about any election. 2004: Bush didn't win, Kerry lost because they were unable to articulate a compelling message that would differentiate his presidency. (See also 2002.) Bush didn't win in 2000, Gore lost because the nation had Clinton-scandal fatigue. Clinton didn't win in 1996, Republicans lost because they failed to field a compelling candidate. Republicans didn't win in 1994, Dems lost because the country was fed up with a calcified majority.

So inasmuch as DeLay et al.'s statement is true, it's true because it reveals a broader point: the American public is not ideologically driven, so to that extent, you can never look at any election as an embrace of the winning party's ideology. Americans are pragmatic, and cast utilitarian votes for utilitarian leaders.

[Jack Whelan]

". . .so to that extent, you can never look at any election as an embrace of the winning party's ideology. Americans are pragmatic, and cast utilitarian votes for utilitarian leader.

Maybe "tribal" is a better word than "ideological." Because if there's one thing that the divisive politics of Karl Rove taught us, it's that when poltics is framed as either you're for us or against us, you have to pick tribes. Rove has bet the farm on his belief that most Americans are inclined to pick conservative if he can frame an election in black and white terms between liberals and conservatives.

Not everybody has bought into it, but an awul lot of people have. It's certainly a strategy that worked in Texas, and it worked remarkably well on the national scene after 9/11. He framed things so that you either vote for the strong, masculine big Daddy party or the wimpy party of peaceniks, feminists, and gays. If you're not ideological--ie, if you're an American who hasn't thought things through and don't know where where you stand, which tribe do you think you'd be most likely to identify with?

As a branding strategy I think it worked brilliantly well, and it probably would have continued to work if these guys were half way competent as a governing party. That's why I think it's correct to say that GOP incompetence and corruption lost them their stranglehold on the government. And yes Americans voted pragmatically this time, but only because things got so godawful bad. The Rove tribal strategy probably would have kept working if things had gone halfway decently.

I suppose on one level those of us who care about preserving democracy and American ideasls should be grateful that they have been such screw-ups. But next time we might not be so lucky. Because if shrewder, more competent men on the right use the same big-Daddy scare tactics, who's to say the American electorate won't greet them with as much enthusiasm as the country once felt for George Bush or Ronald Reagan, another foolish, empty suit who succeeded only because he played the grandest daddy of them all?

It amazes me that the country was so easily beguiled by both men, and it does not bode well for the future. Because sooner or later we're going to get a smiling tyrant who is not a fool.

[Charles]

Jack,

I think you unfairly insult the blogosphere by calling it a "toothless fringe that rants." Although they are by no means the only reason that the Democrats did so well in this election, what happened Tuesday night wouldn't have occurred without the bloggers. Look and see how many of the House victories came because "netroots"-supported candidates running in places like North Carolina and Kansas, in what the experts considered solid-red districts, gained enough traction running populist campaigns within the last several weeks of the election to encourage the party mechanism to send a lot of money to beef up their races and enable them to win.

I think the liberal blogosphere IS the organized grassroots power base that you yearn for. As I said in an entry on anoher blog, these people have been "unionized" and now can do "collective bargaining" with the moneyed base of the Democratice Party. If you don't believe me, how else would you explain how Howard Dean became chair of the DNC -- which, by the way, precipitated the so-called 50-state strategy, also without which the Democratic Party would not have succeeded last Tuesday.

By no means monolithic in their outlook, nevertheless there are certain key desires in the liberal blogosphere that unites most of the participants: accountability, honesty in the sense of straight talking, abhorrence of corruption, and a fighting spirit. This is the heart of the party, and the party big-shots tread on them at their peril. Mark my words: this fringe that you disparage is the hook you'll be hanging your hopes on in the presidential election of 2008

[Jack Whelan]

Charles--

I've got nothing against ranting, since I do it myself often enough, but it's importent. So I respectfully disagree. I don't see the liberal blogosphere as a potent counterforce to aggressive assualts from the right in the future. And I don't think the blogosphere defeated the Republicans. The Republicans were so over the top that nobody, even those who wanted to support them, couldn't in good conscience do so. All those evangelicals who voted Democrat didn't do so because they were reading liberal blogs. Even Rush Limbaught was at the end of his rope.

I am not convinced that the blogosphere contributes anything significant to changing people's minds. People read left or right wing blogs just like they listen to left or right wing talk radio--to have their own point of view reaffirmed. There are, as with anything, exceptions, but they are not a significant factor.

[Matt Zemek]

Charles -

As a former blogger and a columnist with varying levels of success and exposure across multiple arenas, I've been made aware of the limitations of blogs.

Television still calls the shots in presidential campaigns.

Yes, the bloggers made better selections of candidates than did the DLC and the campaign committees (not a shock there), but in terms of candidates winning elections, this was primarily a spectacular Republican implosion helped along by October scandals, the worst kind of October surprise (or, for us, the best).

Allow me to amplify Jack's point a bit: there is such tremendous diversity in the media universe, and such a multiplicity of voices, that blogs are just part of a larger media infrastructure. In the political world, we have not yet reached a time when blogs have overtaken face-to-face contact in the realm of retail politics, and TV ads in the world of wholesale politics.

The ultimate solution for the Dems--and accordingly, the country--is for candidates to do their jobs on the campaign trail and, much more importantly, when in the halls of power. More specifically, newly elected Dems must weed money and influence peddling out of politics.

Pelosi is wanting to "drain the swamp." I remain unconvinced she will, given her immense wealth, which speaks of a person wedded to power and leverage. But if Pelosi makes good on her word, we'll have something nice on our hands.

[Jack Whelan]

"...blogs are just part of a larger media infrastructure."

That's a good way to put it, Matt. And that media infrastructure is very right of center. We have to remember what that media infrastructure did to Bill Clinton and Al Gore and the free pass it gave to Bush until things got so miserably bad they couldn't reflect the white house spin anymore.

The media infrastructure defines what is right and left, and it defines pretty much defines the agenda that bloggers blog about. The blogosphere is in this respect very reactive to the MSM--even when they are disagreeing with its spin. I personally don't pay attention to it anymore--I can't even read the NYTimes--but the vast majority of Americans do.

Why is it, for instance, that the Green Party is considered so lefty fringe? Who has defined it as such, and why can't most Americans bring themselves to take its analysis and agenda seriously? Who defines what's serious and unserious? This is something I'm going to take a look at in future posts, but it's astonishing to what degree the good sense of the Green Party is something most Americans are allergic to, and that's because it has been shunted off to the fringes of of the political sphere by the corporate media because the Greens understand in a way that the Dems don't what the real cause of our political impotence is, namely our subservience to an agenda that is set by corporate America. The "moderate" Dems are just as complicit in this as the GOP is. That's what it means to be a "moderate" Dem--to be a "realist" when it comes to dealing with the way the corporate agenda dominates American politics.

Maybe that will change over time, but not any time soon. And my fear is that as we sit here reading this blog, the "media infrastructure" is figuring out ways to get control over the internet. I wonder if it will be as free as it is now, five or six years hence.

But if things change for the better, and they could. Certainly the blogosphere and the Internet in general will be an important tool for helping a truly progressive resistance movement to coordinate and organize. It's just that I don't see the shape of that movement yet, especially within the Democratic Party and liberal blogosphere. I just see

[Charles]

Hi,

A few more sentences, and I'll shut up. First, I didn't say that the bloggers won the election. I just said that they were a part. And yes, the Republicans mostly brought it on themselves, but the Democratice Party of two or four years ago would have still messed things up. The blogs, along with others, helped change that.

Also, I think the blogs brought together a lot of small donors. What did that do? Well, to prove a point above, mostly it brought TV ads for a bunch of candidates. So to that extent not much has changed.

But, it's a start. Maybe I shouldn't oversell the blogs; but don't undersell them either. And Jack, here's what one of the campaign blogs has to say about reacting to traditional media. I hope you'll read it.

http://mydd.com/story/2006/11/12/131922/73

[Jack Whelan]

Charles--

I read the Chris Bowers piece and his point about how a new politics has to develop that is not reactive to insider Beltway politics is right on. And I'm hopeful that in time a movement develops that asserts itself against the cynicism and basic corruption of beltway culture. It's nauseating, but for now it defines "reality" in the national political sphere for Dems only a little less than for GOP. Chris Matthews, James Carville and Joe Klein are the supposedly liberal voices.

Another good article about the bancruptcy of "inside the beltway" inspired by Russ Feingold's decision not to run for the presidenccy in '08 can be found here: http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/11/why-beltway-class-cant-comprehend-russ.html

[Jason]

Moving back to the subject of the original post, i.e., Karl's "math," there's a short, interesting article at newsweek that "shows his work," so to speak. Bottom-line subtext is that after trying to convince people of a make-believe reality for so long, he started believing his own fiction.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15675318/site/newsweek

[forestwalker]

--"Why is it, for instance, that the Green Party is considered so lefty fringe? Who has defined it as such, and why can't most Americans bring themselves to take its analysis and agenda seriously? Who defines what's serious and unserious? This is something I'm going to take a look at in future posts, but it's astonishing to what degree the good sense of the Green Party is something most Americans are allergic to, and that's because it has been shunted off to the fringes of of the political sphere by the corporate media because the Greens understand in a way that the Dems don't what the real cause of our political impotence is, namely our subservience to an agenda that is set by corporate America."

A message that should be shouted from the rooftops! I look forward to that series of posts. And to put the Greens in wider context, why is populism a word unknown to most populists and so anathema to the System? There are definite stirrings that suggest that ideas in the populism/subsidiarism/distributism/communitarianism vein are likely candidates for post-Modern retrieval. Do you agree? What will have to happen for the country to wake up from and shake off the libertarian trance it has been lulled into and what will it look like when it happens? That's conjecture that would make good reading.