Over at the American Prospect, David Dayen argues that Democrats need to deliver the goods if we want people to vote for us. That is, we need to adopt a deliberate and sustained policy of "deliverism." The problem is that we think too small. Take Obamacare, for example:
First, the goal of Obamacare was to insure more people, and it did. Roughly 85 percent of Americans had health insurance in 2008. Today, it’s about 90 percent.
....In 2009, the average medical cost for a family of four was $15,609. Today, it’s $30,260. That’s almost the cost of a new car in health care costs, every single year. In other words, 85 percent of potential voters have the same or a worse experience with health care today, versus 5 percent who gained insurance. It’s hard to call that a net economic improvement in the lives of most voters.
This isn't quite fair. David is right about the uninsurance rate but off by quite a bit when it comes to how much people spend on health insurance:
The uninsured rate has dropped about six points under Obamacare, which represents something like 15 million people. But when you analyze overall health care spending, what matters isn't the total cost of health care but how much you have to personally shell out from your own paycheck. That's out-of-pocket deductibles plus your share of premiums, and it comes to about $3,000 these days. As you can see, Obamacare really did help to push this down. Most people are having a better experience with health care.
Nonetheless, there's no denying it: six points in the uninsurance rate isn't a lot. And while the growth of health care costs has slowed for the average person, actual costs are still going up. Hardly anyone is going to notice that, and they certainly aren't going to base their vote on it.
The other problem, as David says, is that even if a program is big enough to be noticeable it isn't much good if it's temporary. Here's a fascinating bit of polling about the Child Tax Credit included in the American Rescue Act, which was quite large and noticeable:
I'd be cautious about inferring causality from a very few data points like this, but what it suggests is that people who received the CTC liked it and gave Democrats credit for it. In late 2021, 49% planned to vote for a Democrat for Congress. A month later the CTC expired and the Democratic vote went down to 44%. A couple of months later it was a point further down. It's hard to say if Democrats got any credit for this. It's quite possible that they lost more support for "taking it away" than they got in the first place for starting it up.
So what to do? The problem, I think, is that there aren't any programs left that are big enough to really get people's attention. Big early economic programs—Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare, Medicaid—as well as big early social programs—the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Americans with Disabilities—got people's attention because they started from nothing and then kept growing in importance year after year. Aside from genuine national health care, there's really nothing left like that. Here are David's suggestions:
Democrats could reverse their toxic image in many parts of the country by reversing policy choices on subjects like NAFTA, deregulation, and banking consolidation, which have helped hollow out the middle class for decades.¹
Well. Maybe. But those don't frankly seem like things that most people even care much about, let alone things that would move the voting needle much. As for "hollowing out" the middle class, it just ain't so:
Over the past half century, middle-class incomes have grown 40%. That's more than working-class incomes and less than upper-middle incomes. To the extent that people have moved around, it's mostly working-class folks moving up into the middle class and middle-class folks moving up into the upper middle.
This is the problem right now—if you want to call it a problem at all. The typical middle-class household earns about $70,000 per year, and it's hard to get the torches and pitchforks going among a populace so comfortable.
To an extent, the problem here is less one of "deliverism" and more one of catastrophism. We Democrats insist on an endless message of economic doom and gloom even though all the evidence in the world suggests that most Americans are fairly well off, fairly satisfied with life, and certainly not ready to revolt. Sure, deliverism works only if it's big and noticeable, but it also works only if voters feel a desperate need for it. Right now very few do. This is why social issues dominate the political landscape and probably will for quite a while.
¹As an aside, I'd add long-term nursing care to this list. It's pretty sizeable and it's a very noticeable problem for a lot of people. Aside from national health care, I'd guess that it's about second on the list of things Democrats could deliver that would really make an impression—assuming of course, that we're able to pass something simple, blunt, and comprehensive. That's what it takes.
"Democrats need to deliver. But what?"
Deliver control and direction of the commanding heights of the economy into the hands of the workers, of course.
Have you not got Twitter?
That's what people *really* want, and if it weren't for all the false consciousness out there, it's what they'd be in the streets demanding, too.
Les neolibs a la lanterne!
Oh, so deliver the Marxist utopia. That worked out so well for so many people in the 20th century,
If by 'Marxist Utopia' you mean 'Great Society programs funded by Eisenhower-era levels of taxation with business and corporate power held firmly in check by muscular government oversight agencies', you'd be correct.
Otherwise, don't be an even bigger idiot than you're already widely known to be.
The Eisenhower era would have been 1953 through 1960. Per https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highest-marginal-income-tax-rates the top marginal tax rates then were 91%.
Great Society started circa 1965.
By then the top marginal tax rate had been cut to 70%. Starting in 1964.
1962 91%
1963 91%
1964 77%
1965 70%
1966 70%
1967 70%
There was a brief increase:
1968 75%
1969 77%
1970 71.75%
Similar though not identical changes were made to corporate tax rates starting in 1964.
So, no, Great Society programs were not funded by Eisenhower-era levels of taxation.
I believe the comment was intended to mean let's have the Great Society again but fund it at Eisenhower tax rates. So your criticism might be unwarranted.
Congratulations! You've demonstrated perfectly ordinary reading comprehnsion!
You don't suppose there's another reading of what I said, do you 😉
"Deliver control and direction of the commanding heights of the economy into the hands of the workers, of course." is straight from Marx and led to the Soviet Union and Mao's China. The worker's paradise.
I am not a fan of the Great Society programs, but was not referring to them.
LOL! The quote is Marx, but neither Stalin nor Mao were Marxists. Marxism stipulates that the worker's revolution and the beginning of socialism occurs in an industrialized society, which neither 1917 Russia nor 1949 China were. Neither the USSR nor China were worker's paradises, they were dictator's state paradises.
You're obviously not a fan of facts and history, either.
Smarter trolls, please.
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So, pay no attention to that money coming from another’s pocket…
As a populist thing, sure. As a foundation for a sustainable public policy? Not so much.
You do know the history of employer-provided health care, right?
It was one of the few ways companies could compete for workers during WWII.
So if you knew this, why did you say that?
Because when a company is paying for someone's healthcare, it is part of compensation, not entitlement, and it is funded because that company is able to sell something others wish to purchase rather than by taxation.
Oh, really? That simply doesn't square with this:
_Another's_ pocket. Not their own. Care to try again? You're developing what I'll euphemistically call a credibility gap.
I think the point he's trying to make is that employers consider the cost of insurance part of someone's compensation, which impacts employees' actual monetary compensation - so ignoring it entirely doesn't make total sense.
That may be the point he's trying to make, but he's specifically talking about the employee side of the equation. And what the employee cares about are their deductibles and co-pays. Does anyone think that a company that offered insurance coverage of up to $10 million with the stipulation the employee is liable for everything up to the first million dollars is really offering ten million dollars worth of benefits as part of the compensation package? Of course not. Even the people who are playing word games to pretend otherwise know they're just playing word games, else they'd take that offer in a heartbeat. No pun intended.
Not a populist thing, a risk-pooling thing, the way every insurance plan works. Costs don’t disappear, of course, but the large majority of us* are willing to pay to avoid the risk that we might incur massive costs in the unknowable future.
*along with over half a billion citizens of developed countries in Europe and the Asia/Pacific region.
Arguably the Age of Exploration/Commerce could not have happened until the invention of insurance (risk pooling.) Or so one of my professors claimed back in the day.
I think there are a few basic problems.
1) more than delivering big new programs what Democrats need to do is constantly fight off Republican attacks on the programs we already have,
2) make incremental improvements to the programs we have.
Neither of those are “sexy”
3) People don’t believe Republicans will actually do the things they say they are going to do. Focus groups regularly show this, the things Republicans propose are so insane people can’t believe they are real.
Dobbs and all the state abortion bans they are proposing have been opening a lot of eyes, people who are generally Pro Coice but voted for Republicans because they didn’t think they’d actually ever ban abortion have been voting Dem.
Generally Pro Choice means within the first trimester.
Your words have been read and duly given the weight they deserve. Please proceed.
Generally it doesn't mean whatever a random mansplainer says on the internet. Choice means MY choice not yours.
And no choice is given to the life that was conceived.
LOL! Your blood doesn't get a choice when you donate it. Your limb doesn't get a choice if you need an amputation. Organs removed for transplantation don't get a choice. These are all human and all alive.
Spare us the tired sophistry.
Smarter trolls, please.
The potential life not yet realized so yes MY CHOICE NOT YOURS!
_You_ don't get to decide who makes the decision, bub. I'll echo the common sentifment here and ask for smarter trolls, please.
Democrats also need to work the refs — i.e. the mainstream “liberal” media that constantly harp on what isn’t good about Democrats’ programs but mostly ignore the real improvements they make. I was so frustrated last year that the media harped on high gas prices but mostly ignored those prices when the dropped significantly. Instead they switched to harping on food prices.
The mainstream media also lets rightwing lies about Democrats’ healthcare reform efforts go unchallenged. Worse they sometimes have adopted them. I will never forget hearing Peter Jennings talk about how people in Canada had to wait for surgeries — non-critical surgeries, not that he made that clear. At that time my husband had waited several painful months for badly needed knee surgery — and we had really good insurance.
This article, “A Triumph of Misinformation” by James Fallows detailed the rampant, dishonest propaganda that tanked the Clintons’ effort to enact badly needed healthcare reform, lies that the mainstream media did little to rebut.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1995/01/a-triumph-of-misinformation/306231/
The coverage of Obamacare wasn’t much better.
People say they want these things, but they really don’t need them. And when they get these benefits, they don’t notice. Poor people don’t vote.
I really wish that, instead of adjusting for inflation on things like this, you just looked at percentage of income spent on housing, which is the single biggest expense for essentially every household. Here are some links!
For the median household, prices are more than 50% higher as a proportion of income than they were in 1973: https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/price-to-income-ratios-are-nearing-historic-highs . Only for the top 10% of people has the price to income ratio stayed relatively flat; even for the 75th percentile it's gone up by about 25% (Mk-I eyeball says 1.7 to 2.1).
PS: shout out to economics blog posts that use 1973 as a starting point in their charts. It's the best year to start all modern charts unless there is a very good reason to do otherwise.
Home price to median income ratio looks like a double-hockeystick: https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-income-ratio/
The median renter is now housing burdened, with the median cost ratio rising above 30% in 2021: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/03/low-income-renters-spent-larger-share-of-income-on-rent.html
We're a bifurcated country. There are those who make enough money where the rapidly rising housing costs aren't that worrisome, and the other half of the country where those rapidly rising costs are existential in nature.
I'll bite. Why?
I'll bite. Why?
That year (1973) does appear to be an inflection point in the economic history of the United States. Median real wages had been increasing at a pretty nice clip since the war. And then the energy crisis hit, oil prices quintupled, and the economy changed. I reckon the years 73-82 were one long and painful adjustment to much more expensive energy. Once we got over the hump, reasonable growth with moderate inflation returned, but both per capita GDP growth and real wage growth were not as strong thereafter. Indeed, for the the non-college educated, wages since 1973 have mostly been stagnant or declining. We also began to see growing economic inequality (in the former period, gains were more widely shared, aka Krugman's "the Great Contraction.").
In terms of political economy, I reckon what basically happened is that the years of economic trouble from 73-82 were seized upon by the right to discredit the postwar Keynesian-New Deal consensus. And we've been paying the price ever since.
I'd go with the final collapse of the Bretton Woods accords myself. They're the proximate cause of 73-82 time of troubles after all. That's when the effects of elites' god-given sense of entitlement to their cut off the top became manifest. The same sense of entitlement that's been driving our increasingly toxic politics for the last forty years
It's this!
Un-pegging the dollar from gold in 1971 was a paradigm shift in how the economy functioned. There are some other things that were occurring, but it's all connected, and the abolition of the Bretton Woods system greased the skids for everything that came after.
Kevins obsession with adjusting for inflation often leads to charts that provide less information or mislead the reader.
Two areas the Dems could concentrate on are affordable childcare and (not a specific program but an increasing social problem) increasing early deaths that is lowering life expectancy significantly. Drugs, guns and driving deaths are killing far more young and middle aged people in the US than any other G20 country.
I would say that affordable child care should be _the_ national priority were it not for the fact that are so many urgent priorities that need addressing.
That Democrats don't sufficiently brag about what they've done for people and a lot of people don't credit them for it, or even credit Republicans, is true --but there's a more important point,
Democrats don't run against Republicans.
The primary problem everyone has with everything is Republicans.
There is no other issue.
If you're not running against Republicans you're doing nothing. You're pissing in the wind.
You have to run against Republicans because of who they are. They have no place in public life.
Everything wrong with all things is the conservative agenda. If anything of value happened it would harm them, Democrats need to run against the existence of Republicans as an existential threat.
When they don't do that no one really takes them seriously, even when voting for them.
Could not agree more, sir or madam.
Like +10. I don't know why Democrats feel they need to be so decorous, so polite as to not mention the great big elephant that's stinking up the room. Probably some (highly paid, therefore probably Republican) consultant telling them that "People HATE negative campaigning!"
No, we love it. That's all that MAGA is.
Yes, that and 'stick to kitchen table issues' which opens the door to the wingnut's faux populism and culture war.
And that the structural difficulty of the Democrats as a party is that they're the only real national political party and have to tie themselves in knots to accommodate everyone all at once, where the Republicans have always been nothing but the instrument of keeping corruption legal, a circumstance Democrats seem incapable of addressing or acknowledging.
"deliverism." Sounds like a religion to me.
Maybe, instead of what politicians should be delivering, the question should be about what voters should be delivering. My suggestion: politicians that say they care about their whole constituency and back their words with deeds.
That implies not voting for "divide and conquer" politicians even if it looks like "I'm the one going to benefit." The down side is we'd have to find something other than politicians to complain about. The up side is we won't have to worry about finding ourselves on the outside looking in with the next "divide and conquer" cycle.
Good luck with that the conservatives are my way or the highway so by definition there's no credible way to unify with them short of unconditional surrender. I dare you to go on NextDoor and see what your wacky wingnut neighbors are saying.
Our system makes it very difficult to do big things.
FDR and LBJ had large majorities of Democrats: Obama briefly had 60 in the Senate but that was very short lived. Generally, Democrats have not had filibuster proof majorities. Further, the divide with the GOP is so broad, seldom can we find bipartisan legislation.
Thus, we get reconciliation bills, executive orders, Supreme Court rulings, and administrative guidance. Nothing large, in terms of lasting policy, will likely come from the aforementioned.
When we talk about the Affordable Care Act it is only to indicate the number of uninsured who are now insured. But it seems to me that there were other features of the act that benefited everyone. For instance, there used to be a lot of stories about people who had insurance who thought a necessary procedure would be covered but had their insurance company deny their claim based on the disease being, the insurance company claimed, a pre-existing condition. This was a real fear that many people had. But, as I understand it, that was eliminated by the Affordable Care Act. Democrats absolutely need to point out these things, but also, as cold said, point them out in a way that demonizes Republicans for their opposition.
Not “cold”, as cld said.
Agree -- it's not just making coverage more accessible. For most Americans on employer plans, it got rid of pre-existing conditions, lifetime coverage caps, mandated mental health coverage, and a whole slew of other benefits that make our health insurance now way better than it was 20 years ago.
Restrictions on pre-existing conditions in employer provided group policies were banned in the 1996 HIPAA law, as long as the insured did not have a lengthy coverage gap. The ACA got rid of that for everyone in all situations.
> there's really nothing left like that
omg.
College education
Climate change
Homelessness
Mental health care
and that's just 5 seconds worth.
There are plenty of things we can deliver on. If you want to put money in people's pockets and have them see things getting better, invest in infrastructure and research that improve productivity, in education, and in international relations so that we feel safe paring down the size of the military.
Democrats were delivering in the New Deal and Great Society years. They delivered economically, but they also delivered the end of Jim Crow. They are still supporting the end of racial discrimination, as well as the end of discrimination on the basis of sexual preference. The racial/sexual part is why Republicans keep winning - they get votes from people for whom White Christian Supremacy is more important than their own economic welfare. And mostly because Republicans get these votes, Democrats are prevented from doing any more big things (although neoliberal Democrats basically took Republicans' side economically). Given the polarization, Republicans can convince many culture-warrior voters that Democrats are responsible for their economic problems.
The fact is that more big things will probably not happen unless there is another cataclysm like the Depression. Saying that Democrats need to do this or that, or that they have to communicate better, is not addressing the problem.
"The racial/sexual part is why Republicans keep winning -"
Not really. The Republicans keep winning because they are supported by rich people (because they support the rich people).
Also the racism and bigotry.
It’s more complicated than that. Republicans need the votes of a lot of people who aren’t rich. Yes, big donors give them the means to buy lots of campaign ads, but those ads have to have messages that will appeal to the non-rich. Many target single-issue voters: anti-tax, anti-abortion, anti-gun control, anti-immigration, anti-LGBTQ, supporters of ‘school-choice’/prayer in schools, the ‘Christian’ right wing. And of course the racists, misogynists and bigots. The result is an improbable coalition of the greedy and people who feel threatened by demographic and cultural changes.
Policies will have some impact, but not much. That's because the (mostly) unspoken factor is a clash of cultures due to the large and rapid demographic change over the last 50 year.
Neither side can change that trajectory. One side would like to reverse the change (impossible). The other wants to accelerate it while simultaneously promoting identity over assimilation.
Many of those voting Republican in recent years are not doing it because they like what the GOP has to offer. It's because they don't like what the Democrats stand for - an embrace of the demographic change. Policies are largely irrelevant.
Kevin's data-rich analysis is nice to explore but it's a case of missing the forest for the trees.
It's the last stand of the White Christian Male patriarchy. It's not just about multi-culturalism, it's also about gender and religion.
My own feeling is that this observation is at least somewhat inaccurate:
"We Democrats insist on an endless message of economic doom and gloom even though all the evidence in the world suggests that most Americans are fairly well off, fairly satisfied with life, and certainly not ready to revolt."
Certainly, there are politicians on the Left who talk effectively about economic issues. I recall that Obama would often repeat variations on the point that a secretary shouldn't be paying more in taxes (or a higher percentage) than her CEO (something like that). But I wouldn't refer to that kind of thing as "doom and gloom."
That being said; yes, there are factions on the Left that DO engage in economic doom and gloom. Bernie Sanders and his ilk come to mind as some fairly clear examples. But, in that case, I wouldn't classify such groups as "we democrats." Rather, they are their own political movement (Sanders himself is not a Democrat, nor are many of his followers).
So, in very broad terms, I would change Kevin's statement, at least in regard to our current moment. At this present time, it's the REPUBLICANS who are insisting on a message of economic doom and gloom. The reasons are obvious: a Democrat is president. Most of last year (before the midterms), for example, Kevin McCarthy (now the Republican House Speaker) kept insisting we were in a Biden recession (even though that recession STILL hasn't materialized).
But when it comes to the Democrats, instead of promoting economic doom and gloom, they mostly seem to be promoting some form of social justice doom and gloom. And, in general, it seems difficult to find Liberal/Left writers willing to point this out. So, here's a perspective on this topic from an NYT "conservative" columnist:
"It is also becoming more common to staple a highly controversial ideological superstructure onto the quest for racial justice. We’re all by now familiar with some of the ideas that constitute this ideological superstructure: History is mainly the story of power struggles between oppressor and oppressed groups; the history of Western civilization involves a uniquely brutal pattern of oppression; language is frequently a weapon in this oppression and must sometimes be regulated to ensure safety; actions and statements that do not explicitly challenge systems of oppression are racist; the way to address racism is to heighten white people’s awareness of their own toxic whiteness, so they can purge it."
The title of that column is "The Self-Isolation of the American Left." But the topics leading to that disconnect from the majority population aren't so much doom and gloom on economic issues as they are cynical and/or reductive beliefs that social progress in the USA is basically impossible.
"But when it comes to the Democrats, instead of promoting economic doom and gloom, they mostly seem to be promoting some form of social justice doom and gloom."
I think you need to differentiate between elected and party-official Democrats and "some people who vote for Democratic candidates".
The former group doesn't really spend much time on identity-based issues, though they generally nod in that direction. Most of them are much more concerned with infrastructure, jobs, healthcare, housing, etc.
There are examples of the latter group who do indeed focus on identity-based issues, and they are given outsize time by just about everyone because its juicier than potholes, daycare and insurance company bullshit.
I'd say the media gives outsized attention to those groups on the left who focus on identity-based issues because they want to promote the idea that 'both sides' are equally extreme. Note: If it's not blindingly obvious by now, I've long since come to the conclusion the that media -- that is, the owners and execs -- are actively hostile to large parts of the Democratic agenda.
Actually, I think there’s some truth to what you say. But perceptions matter. I do believe that a so-called silent majority (even among Democrats) is not as obsessed with identity issues as some very loud activists who capture so much of the attention. But if those vocal activists really are succeeding in defining the DEMs in the eyes of the public (as I believe they are): that’s a problem.
“There are examples of the latter group who do indeed focus on identity-based issues, and they are given outsize time by just about everyone because its juicier than potholes, daycare and insurance company bullshit.”
Sure: but in that case the Dem party needs to seriously step up in order to refocus the message coming from the Left. And I can’t say I see that happening. Instead, we have a variation on the old theme where the extremists are full of passionate intensity while those with a saner economic message seem to lack all conviction.
You have a lot to learn about History. History IS a story of power struggles whether it's against various dead European guys or the serfs against the vassals, the women against those who would accuse them of witchcraft or those brought to new lands against their will.
@ Hokie: I'm not sure what your point is. The question isn't one of injustice. Pretty much everyone (including plenty of conservatives) recognize injustice in our past and present.
The question is how to respond to that injustice. And what the modern Left seems to advocate is a heavy-handed approach whereby entire "systems" must be dismantled to achieve their social justice goals.
That approach leads us down several dark alleys for many reasons. For one thing, mandating "equity" will invariably lead to a loss of liberty. I don't see how there's any way around that conclusion.
Also, penalizing any and every perceived injustice, or micro-aggression, inevitably leads to the kind of "cancel culture" we've been putting up with for so many years. And free speech suffers as a consequence.
On top of all that, the insistence that entire "systems" must be overthrown to achieve our idealized utopia leaves us mired in a nihilistic struggle in which no gradual progress is ever recognized or even considered possible.
This is not a productive approach. Many, in fact, have pointed out the illiberal tendencies in this approach. So, if your concern really is social justice, you may want to focus on means as well as ends.
I think Progressivism needs to think big picture -- what's the vision of 2050?
All these single-issue special interest targets end up pitting one group against another, rather than selling the vision of what American society will be like in 2050, and using this as a guiding principle to sell those single issues.
Everyone should ask and answer the question: What kind of country should America 2050 be?
By 2050, resource wars driven by climate change will have overtaken all other agendas. The only hope we have of preventing that is some combination of global carbon capture and/or geoengineering. I don't hear any Democratic candidates talking about that, but it's the existential issue of our time.
Democrats should "deliver" policy results because why bother competing in elections if not to improve things?
But as far as I know, there's more evidence that legislative wins hurt you with voters than help you. And that's because the vast majority of voters in the America of the 2020s are highly loyal to one of our two parties. The very modest sliver of the electorate that's up for grabs—so called "persuadable" or normie voters—tends to exhibit strong status quo bias. They don't like change. And remember, a piece of legislation could be the wisest enactment ever to pass both chambers of Congress, but it will inevitably be savaged and tarnished by our never-ending media warfare. Look at the temporary cash benefit for families with children passed two years ago by Democrats: its costs weren't huge; it was mostly funded by the affluent; and it cut child poverty in America like nothing seen in decades. What's not to love? And yet it polled quite badly.
You see this effect in even starker terms with the Affordable Care Act. Helped the country. Certainly helped the non-rich! Did its passage help Democrats win any elections? Just the opposite: three of the next four elections for Democrats were legitimate disasters.
By all means Democrats should try to get bills to Biden's desk. We all want the country to be better! Just don't kid yourself this is the path to big electoral wins.
Changing things for the better is its own reward.
Wise words.
Heroic Russian tank wins the war, and our hearts,
https://twitter.com/RussEmbSwe/status/1673696161926901761
Re: In 2009, the average medical cost for a family of four was $15,609. Today, it’s $30,260.
Does that include the total of all healthcare premiums including what employers pay (which workers never see and are usually unaware of)? I can't see how you get that high a number if it doesn't. I was paying c. 120$ per paycheck for my coinsurance premiums which works out to $3120 per year. And my total out of pocket healthcare spending, dental included, was about 1400$. So about $4500 a year for me in costs I actually know about.
All politics is local. Biden understands this: Deliver economic benefits to areas where they are most needed (and which will flip a state!).
Given the division and partisan hatred in his country, I don’t think it is a good time for any sort of of big policy initiative. As others point out, ACA was a big nothing burger and had a terrible political cost. It’s time to sit down, relax, and manage the status quo for a while. There’s plenty in the pipeline already and there is little prospect any of it will get done.
Democrats still have a lot of strikes to prevent with bipartisan legislation but there is not much else to squeeze from the working class for their corporate clients except increasing the war budget. The ruse of the 'debt ceiling' negotiations also worked pretty well to demonstrate Democrats concern with the national deficit.
Perhaps Dayen should get his magic wand out, cast a spell and turn Manchin and Synema into socialists like he is. At least then the CTC could have been renewed. Instead a certain West Virginia lawmaker didn't like the idea of extra money going to his constituents because they might spend it on hunting gear? Geez what a miserable fuck! Give me Bobby Byrd and bridges any old day of the week
First of all nothing Dayen writes or says should be taken seriously. Because he's a low down SOB snake-in-grass. This fellow ran Donna Shalala out of Congress because he viciously attacked her in the pages of The American Prospect for not dotting her "i's" on a stock-owning form members of Congress are supposed to fill out. Then he lets lets some pro-Russian "tankie" write fill the pages of the magazine with his drivel. In fact the whole magazine itself is filled with kind of frivolous leftists from Harold Meyerson to Robert Kuttner, veterans of Eugene McCarthy campaign which wrote the book on frivolous liberalism designed more to divide than govern or enlighten over 50 years ago and have been sticking to its ever since (Marty Perez being the worst of the bunch). When someone like Kuttner writes something "Biden has to earn my vote" on the same day Trump suggests we should all inject ourselves with bleach three years ago, then you know this is not a serious group of writers or editors nor a serious magazine of opinion. It could have been, it aspired to be, it chose not to because they decided they'd rather be contrarian assholes than contribute anything useful to the public debate (much Sen. McCarthy himself), which is why I no longer read it and neither should you.
Here's the bottom line: The Democratic Party remains the only party diverse enough to include in its rank a wide ranging groups of people of all races, creeds and backgrounds and regions in large numbers compared to the GOP. This makes them a competitive party with the GOP. The downside to that is that you get people like Joe Manchin within its ranks along with someone like Elizabeth Warren. This is what party has to deal with and quite frankly is cursed with. To get any legislation at all passed with this kind of coalition is a miracle but it's one the party pulled off time and again thanks to strong leadership over the ages and a willingness to compromise to advance measures for the public good even if it didn't go far enough for most people. To be a Democrat one has to take the long view or there is no point to it. And if Dayen and his buddies can't handle that, I'm sure the Green Party will be more than accomodating to him because that's basically where his loyalties really and truly lie: parlor socialism.
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