What’s Good For The Middle Class Is Good For America

This article, Here Comes the Anti-Government Left, gets to the heart of what makes Elizabeth Warren so popular, and feared – by the elites in both parties – at the same time.  Warren is taking aim at the soft underbelly that supports both parties – corporations, Wall Street, and the banks.  While also being the sole advocate for a group neither party wants to overtly offend – the middle class.

Warren spends much less time fulminating against the rich per se. Though she has an interest in inequality, she talks far more about the middle-class than the poor. Her signal preoccupation is the way financial institutions have amassed enormous economic and political advantages at the expense of everyone else. She has co-sponsored a bill that would break up the megabanks. She has labored to expose why it is that federal regulators never take big banks to court. She decries the way reform battles in Congress pit a few dozen activists against thousands of industry lobbyists, an asymmetry that virtually guarantees victory for the status quo.

[…]

But the substance of Warren’s agenda is far more radical. She wants to upend a fundamentally corrupt system, one in which big banks and other interests have co-opted the apparatus of government.

Co-opted government, means that we’ve morphed into an oligarchy and our democracy is no longer.

Warren questions the very legitimacy of their wealth and power. “I’ve been in the Senate for nearly a year and believe as strongly as ever that the system is rigged,” she said in a recent speech.

We don’t have a free market, we have a rigged market. Rigged in favor of the wealthy and powerful. And in order for the middle class to get back to prominence and power, and for our government to again resemble something similar to democracy, those in power now must lose some of their power. And that’s why Warren is more favored and feared.

Warren-style populism, on the other hand, goes right to the source of the cynicism. In the same way that Middle America believed government was mostly benefiting the undeserving poor in the 1980s and early 90s, today they believe it mostly benefits undeserving rich and powerful. And, just as Democrats had to dispel the former belief before they could advance the rest of their agenda, today they must dispel the latter. Warren’s approach does that.

Warren is all about putting those responsible for our rigged system on the spot.

Here’s what she had to say about the GOP killing unemployment insurance, This is just wrong.

Millions of families are hanging on by their fingernails to their place in the middle class – and the United States Senate just voted to let them fall.

I’m ashamed that the Senate didn’t extend unemployment benefits yesterday. I’m sickened that my colleagues went home last night knowing that they just cut off a little help for millions of people who have worked hard and who can’t find a job.

And I’m appalled that so many Senators cannot admit the simple reality: we are still in the middle of a jobs crisis. People have been looking for work for months or even years. Many are starting to give up entirely. Young people are beginning to think that there isn’t a future out there for them. Long-term unemployment isn’t just about money; it’s also about losing hope.

These people – our friends, our families, our neighbors – they weren’t the ones who broke our economy. So many people worked hard, played by the rules, and did everything we told them to – and now struggle to find work. They need our help.

We help because we care about people, but we also help because it is good for the economy. The numbers show money put into unemployment goes right back into the economy to help stimulate more demand and more business activity. According to a new Congressional report, in just one week after unemployment benefits expired, our state economies lost $400 million. Extending unemployment makes good business sense.

There’s so much we should be doing to strengthen our economy and rebuild our middle class, and yesterday we took a step backwards. Washington needs to get back to work solving problems – not making them worse – so families can get back to work.

I really don’t get why the Republicans would stand in the way on this issue. I don’t get it, but I’m taking stock – and like many of my colleagues who voted to help people yesterday, I’m not giving up

Congress didn’t haggle over “pay-fors” when the big banks needed a bail out. American working families deserve, at the least, the same respect the banks got.  What’s good for the middle class is good for America, is the new slogan.

Further Reading:
Meet the people who are so rich they`ve already paid their 2014 Social Security tax (more here).

No, it’s evidence employers don’t care for people

I’m sure you’ve heard about Wal Mart’s latest despicable move, Wal-Mart Asks Workers To Donate Food To Its Needy Employees.

“That Wal-Mart would have the audacity to ask low-wage workers to donate food to other low-wage workers — to me, it is a moral outrage,” Norma Mills, a customer at the store, told the Plain Dealer.

A company spokesman defended the food drive, telling the Plain Dealer that it is evidence that employees care about each other.

“This store has been doing this for several years and is for associates that have faced an extreme hardship recently,” spokesman Kory Lundberg told us.

I guess souls go for cheap these days at Wal Mart headquarters. More from Lawyers, Guns, and Money, Leaders of the New Gilded Age, do you know who Henry Clay Fricks.

Of course there’s a way around this, Elizabeth Warren: Don’t cut Social Security. Expand it!

By planting a flag on the need to expand Social Security, Warren may have just added this issue to the pantheon of preoccupations that are driving those who want to see the party embrace a more economically populist posture going forward. Liberal bloggers such as Atrios and liberal groups like the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, have been pushing for a Social Security expansion, arguing that Democratic priorities should be centered on the idea that declining pensions and wages (and savings) are undermining retirement security, and that the party should above all stand against undermining the social insurance system.

The focus on Warren’s championing of these issues has led to a lot of chatter to the effect that she will run in 2016 and mount a serious challenge to Hillary Clinton in the process. But she has adamantly denied any plans to run, and at any rate, the real story here may go beyond the question of whatever presidential ambitious Warren harbors, if any. Her popularity with the Democratic grass roots suggests that they will want to see these issues addressed no matter who enters the 2016 Democratic field. Indeed, as Ned Resnikoff notes, liberal groups are pushing her issues not necessarily out of a desire to see her run, but because they want to “demonstrate the popularity of her anti-austerity, pro-financial reform message in the hopes that other Democratic politicians will begin to emulate it.”

Add the push to expand Social Security to that list. With the possibility emerging that entitlement cuts could be on the table in coming budget talks, the existence of a small progressive bloc of Senators, backed by liberal groups, pushing in the other direction could make things more complicated for Democrats, both for those who have an eye on 2016 and for those who don’t.

Certainly it’s time for the super wealthy corporations, that are hoarding way too much cash, to start paying their fair share of taxes so the rest of us can afford to feed our families.

Further Reading:
Pope Francis weighs in, Pope Francis: a society that doesn’t care for its elderly has no future.

Clinton, Warren, Sanders

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the possibility of Elizabeth Warren running against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2016. Much of it stems from this recent article in the New Republic, Hillary’s Nightmare? A Democratic Party That Realizes Its Soul Lies With Elizabeth Warren.  Here’s how the article describes the two sides of the Democratic Party.

On one side is a majority of Democratic voters, who are angrier, more disaffected, and altogether more populist than they’ve been in years. They are more attuned to income inequality than before the Obama presidency and more supportive of Social Security and Medicare.¹ They’ve grown fonder of regulation and more skeptical of big business.² A recent Pew poll showed that voters under 30—who skew overwhelmingly Democratic—view socialism more favorably than capitalism. Above all, Democrats are increasingly hostile to Wall Street and believe the government should rein it in.

On the other side is a group of Democratic elites associated with the Clinton era who, though they may have moved somewhat leftward in response to the recession—happily supporting economic stimulus and generous unemployment benefits—still fundamentally believe the economy functions best with a large, powerful, highly complex financial sector. Many members of this group have either made or raised enormous amounts of cash on Wall Street. They were deeply influential in limiting the reach of Dodd-Frank, the financial reform measure Obama signed in July of 2010.

One thing to quibble with in the above excerpt is that it’s not just one side of the Democratic Party that’s angrier, disaffected, and more populist. It’s the American people as well. That’s the message Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is speaking about, Sanders wants progressive 2016 presence.

Still, Sanders says he is willing to consider making a run if no one else with progressive views similar to his ends up taking the plunge.

It is essential, he said, to have someone in the 2016 presidential campaign who is willing to take on Wall Street, address the “collapse” of the middle class, tackle the spread of poverty and fiercely oppose cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Also, addressing global warming needs to be a top priority, not an afterthought, Sanders said.

“Under normal times, it’s fine, you have a moderate Democrat running, a moderate Republican running,” Sanders said. “These are not normal times. The United States right now is in the middle of a severe crisis and you have to call it what it is.”

The reason these articles are appearing now is that it’s just what happens between elections in The Village. But it may be a welcomed debate for the populist side of the Democratic Party. They don’t want to get left out, again, if another corporate Democrat wins the White House. Being a populist Democrat, who knows our entire political system has been pulled way too far to the right, I know the only way to get back to sane politics is that the left must start pulling our country back. Which is where this comes in, How can progressives influence presidents.

That said, I do think the piece raises interesting questions about how progressives can gain and wield influence in the Democratic Party and over Democratic presidents. When does that process start? How does it work? What tactics will be successful?

Let’s start with a basic point—nominating and electing a progressive president is the ideal. But it doesn’t happen often. If Elizabeth Warren runs and can win the Democratic nomination and the general election, then the strategy is pretty straightforward—elect Elizabeth Warren as president of the United States. That’s why I would never denigrate anyone who is advocating for a Warren for President movement. I don’t think she would run, or win the nomination or win the presidency, but that’s just like, my opinion, man.

I note that Dave Weigel makes a good point that imbuing your favored presidential candidate with progressive bona fides is not a winning movement strategy:

[I]t’s risky, weak strategy to make a presidential primary the test kitchen for policy change. […] Over time, conservatives stopped expecting a president to get elected, lead, and solve all their problems. They built a grassroots machine and a litany of policy goals—the activists would speak, and the president would nod along. By 2012, Grover Norquist could tell a national conference that the next Republican president need only come to the job “with enough working digits to handle a pen.” That’s where progressives need to get, that un-glamorous and under-covered triumph of movement over party.

The only way we’re going to fix our corrupt political system is if we, the angry, disaffected, populists stand up and make our government do what we want. It won’t come easy and will take years and years of hard work.

Further Reading:
Rick Perlstein, The Grand Old Tea Party, Why today’s wacko birds are just like yesterday’s wingnuts.