I couldn’t escape the impression that last week’s GOP convention was just a big bust — and that was before Clint Eastwood talked to a chair. There was no compelling single message other than that President Obama has been a disappointment. Doubtless a lot of people feel that way, but there was no way forward offered, no real alternate vision. As Jon Stewart riffed magnificently, the empty chair was the perfect embodiment of the GOP’s strategy: They’re fighting against a strawman, a caricature, a figment of their own imaginations. Ironically, the gridlock and hopelessness that they themselves created in Congress has foiled their ability to craft an alternate vision. Obama failed, and we’ll do better because we are Obama minus x, where x is whatever they’ve projected onto him.
The Democrats need to do better than that this week … and that’s where Massachusetts comes in.
Elizabeth Warren embodies the center-left’s confrontation of a wildly unjust economic/political order. Large corporations, especially banks, have abandoned a business model in which their own bottom line grows in direct proportion to the satisfaction of their customers; and instead depends upon deception, obfuscation, and exploitation of their market power to squeeze ill-gotten gains from their marks, er, customers. She is a voice of outrage against an exploitative game, but perhaps even more importantly, of a need to set things back into balance: The meltdown didn’t exactly work out well for most banks, either. Her message will doubtless speak to the lingering sense of injustice among a public suffering for someone else’s hubris and stupidity.
Deval Patrick is one of the few Democratic elected officials who actually dares speak in a language of values. He has always spoken a language of neighborliness, as in the sense of the Good Samaritan. And who is my neighbor? It is not merely a sense of empathy or pity that is redemptive; rather, neighborliness is enlightened self-interest — that we benefit when those around us benefit, that reciprocity and interdependence makes us even stronger than mere self-assertion.
Properly developed, this theme can redirect the “we built it” theme of the GOP convention and infuse it with a theme of common purpose. There is no necessary distinction between the necessity of hard work, initiative and ingenuity on one hand; and the need to strengthen the broader community at large. As Henry Ford realized as he doubled workers’ wages in 1914, a producer needs customers, and broadly-shared prosperity makes more customers.
Massachusetts can deliver this message to the country this week. Our state’s leaders can determine the theme of the national election. Watch closely.
Update: Wow, jconway and I must be Vulcan mind-melding. Didn’t see the NYT article or his post before I posted … weird.
Discuss
10 Comments . Leave a comment below.who talks about obvious exploitation of the American worker and consumer. There are very few of our Democrats who even talk about what a living wage is. You may hear them talk about minimum wage once in a while, but even $12-15 dollars an hour is no living wage, and that is well above minimum wage. Our current elected officials, and yes, that means Democrats too, are so out touch with the reality of life on Main St, and what people are going through. Last month, I was in the tax collectors office paying my property taxes, I ran into a young cousin who told me that the cable company just shut off her phone for non-payment, and there she is in the tax collectors office paying higher than ever property taxes instead of having a phone. When are they going to get it? Are they ever going get it?
…very well represented at the convention this week. Contrast that with Scott Brown skulking around the RNC.
I remarked the other day that in the past, Dems were criticized for not articulating a vision and Republicans could, and therefore, they would win. Now the tables are turned. The Republican vision is ashes in our mouths, and they can no longer run on it without deception to cover up its total inadequacy.
I do agree with liveandletlive above, we’re not all the way there…we talk about the middle class all the time but where’s the compassion for the poor? Even minimum wage is barely mentioned, IMHO.
Republicans made these things a bunch of “dirty words” in the last few decades, so they could perpetrate their kleptocracy by dividing the 99%. The time is coming that we can say the words “raise taxes on the rich” and the voters say “OMG yes please!” instead of “you said the T word! Shame!” The time is coming when we can abandon neo-liberal policies because we can stop trying to out-Republican Republicans.
We have the Occupy movement to thank for a lot of that.
The Republicans have the upper hand because even the old people understand that we can’t keep sending money at the poor people through the same old government channels. Two reasons seem to have become clarified:
1. It doesn’t seem to be helping
2. It takes so much money and initiative out of private business and that part of the system isn’t working well
Basically the Democrats of the Clinton mold claimed that government spending would create some kind of escape velocity on the individual level. Under Obama the Democrats tried to achieve escape velocity for the whole system and it failed. Now you’re sounding like you just want to keep spending money, but it’s not going to get us out of this bad economy. There’s just going to be this bigger lump of poor people that we need to support, and those of us from the middle class headed down, well there’s lots of things to like about the simple life.
Nobody expands in a declining market. We’re in a demand glut, not a glut of investment capital.
mostly because they can’t get decent pay for unskilled labor.
Next strawman canard please!
especially when unskilled labor has giant pressure from illegal aliens taking those unskilled jobs for even less money and being happy as a clam.
You are so mired in your lame GOP talking points, I doubt you can even hear yourself any more.
Do they teach liberals to answer “strawman” whenever you can’t answer a question.
gets a job?
I think one of the biggest problems for both parties is nobody knows how to fix the economy! The Republicans have ideas and the Democrats have ideas. Obama was elected to try his ideas since the GOP failed, and Obama has failed. You can spin it any way you want but the last four years has been terrible on so many people. You can say “it could have been worse” but that is not the message people want. The bad news about Obama’s failure is it taints the ideas he had even if the spending levels were not what they should have been AND “where” the Stimulus was spent was not the right places since state workers, teachers… should have been cut.
At this point the public doesn’t think anyone has a solution and the economist who predicted great outcomes were wrong. Again, we don’t like it when someone says “give me this, even though it will hurt, and I’ll fix things…” and then when it doesn’t work the people especially don’t want to hear excuses “Well things were worse than we thought!” or “Republicans didn’t cooperate…” or “there were no real shovel ready jobs…”. These are all heard as bullshit excuses, you didn’t get it done!
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