Cenk Uygur provides us with this very much to the point post-election rant.
I couldn’t agree more. But the question is the messaging on it. People who want to change things, whether Dems or otherwise, need to frame things as solutions to problems, while only voting for solutions that will really work. For example, the main concern of the public is “jobs.” At this juncture jobs can only be created by Government spending, and will be most efficiently created by Federal Job programs, payroll tax cuts, revenue sharing for the States, reductions in the standard work week, and increases in the mini-wage. The private sector will keep sitting on its trillions until there’s demand out there, and the Federal Government is the only actor that can create demand in the private sector in the short run. When demand is great enough, the private sector will begin to participate, but only when they know that sufficient demand is there to reward investments with sales.
Further, Government job creating efforts must be proposed without accepting counter-balancing cuts in Federal spending, or tax increases (other than expiration of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, a matter of social justice). This is because Government deficits create non-Government sector financial assets dollar-for-dollar and therefore increase aggregate demand. Government surpluses destroy such financial assets dollar-for dollar and reduce aggregate demand. And Government spending paid for by counter-balancing cuts neither creates nor destroys such assets, other things being equal. Since there is too little demand out there now because consumers have too little in financial assets, job creation efforts that “are paid for” by spending cuts or tax increases, won’t address the problem of creating additional aggregate demand, and therefore must be fought by Democrats and “progressives,” who must not compromise on this point, if they want to create more net jobs.
I could say a lot more, but I want this short. So I’ll end with the idea that Democrats and progressives have to avoid all compromises producing “solutions” that pull in opposite directions. For example, they shouldn’t do what they did in health care reform in trading increased coverage for a juicy bailout for the insurance companies. Instead, they should have gone in strong for Medicare for All and then traded votes for an incremental approach to getting more age ranges covered. That kind of incremental approach is OK, because at least they get a solution to the part of the problem their legislation addresses.
Will the Democrats be able to pass anything like the above with a Republican House? Probably not, unless a sudden mass movement scares the crap out of the Republican establishment in the House. But they can lay down markers for what they will do in 2012, and develop a concrete mandate, promising that there will be no compromise on it.
If a third party isn’t ready to go by then, they may still win in 2012, but only if people come to hate the GOP as much as they probably will, and if they themselves don’t make the mistake of supporting the President’s Catfood Commission recommendations or make other compromises involving giveaways to Wall Street. If they do win, they will know it is because people approve of their mandate, in addition, to hating the Republicans.
(Cross-posted at All Life Is Problem Solving and Fiscal Sustainability).