Give or take a buck, the median family income in the USA is $65,000. Keep in mind that “family” means, for the most part, mom & dad working for a full year.
- Hunter Biden made about this much money per month working for a company in the Ukraine.
- President Obama, after leaving office, made $40 Million since leaving office or, based on a 40 hour week for three years, worked about ten hours to make $65,000.
- After leaving office, Bill & Hillary Clinton, based on the same formula I used for President Obama, each worked eight and a half hours to make $65,000.
All while the average American family works and entire year to make $65,000. None of this is illegal. There is no outright corruption here. What there is, however, is a system that is rigged against the average American working class family.
Democrats are correct and stand on moral ground when they say we need to get big money out of politics and eliminate the horrible Citizens United decision. But Democrats need to do more than than this. Democrats need to set an example for the nation and not just get the big money out of politics, but agree to get big money out of their desires after leaving office and agreeing to change a system that is rigged so that some can make in a month, or a few hours, what an average family makes in a year.
I see nothing here but class envy.
The rigged system that creates the classes is the problem.
The love of money is the root of all evil. It applies to democrats as well as to everyone else. Hypocrisy has been around a long time, and unfortunately most of our ‘leaders’ don’t set much of an example of humility or grace. Calling a critic of the situation ‘class envy’ is just denial and an attempt to personalize the topic to avoid it, rather than to accept the problem is real and figure out the how and why of solving it.
If you have ever played a game of Monopoly, then you have experienced the problem of wealth concentration. People like to say that the system is ‘rigged,’ but it is more accurate to say that the system is flawed, since the majority MUST lose and inequality is the inevitable symptom.
Elvis has been dead for 20+ years and earns $20,000 hr. Inequality is everywhere.
The belief in a ‘free market’ will by future generations be seen as stupid as thinking the Earth was flat or the center of the universe.
I get the frustration that John shares.
Sadly, the thread-starter is NOT talking about “big money”. In fact, by “big money” standards, it’s nickel-and-dime stuff. The thread starter, in fact, demonstrates how counter-intuitive actual reality is.
In today’s America, “big money” is tens, hundreds, or thousands of times larger than this.
Consider, for example, Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax. Various sources report that it will affect about 75,000 U.S. households (less than 0.1% of the population).
That tax kicks in at a household wealth of FIFTY MILLION dollars. The tax is 3% for household wealth in excess of one billion dollars. The economists who helped Ms. Warren prepare and analyze the proposal used the Forbes 400 list to estimate the number of billionaires in the US. The 2019 Update of that list was released last week.
In 2019, the MINIMUM cutoff to make the list was $2.1 BILLION dollars. The linked piece says that “221 billionaires did not make the 2019 cutoff”.
So there are about 621 billionaires in the US, according to Forbes.
Wealth distribution is a straight line on a log-log scale. That means that if there are 75,000 households at $50 M, there are 7,500 households at $500 M and 750 households at $5 B. These are estimates, and of course the curve is not a perfect fit. The point remains that there are hundreds of billionaires in the US in 2019.
When we talk about “big money”, we therefore do NOT mean the paltry tens of millions banked by the Obama or Clinton families (we don’t know how much their $40-60 M annual income they retained). Those numbers are just barely enough to break into the ranks of those subject to Ms. Warren’s wealth tax.
Abigail Johnson is the wealthiest person in Massachusetts. Forbes estimates her 2019 net worth at $14 Billion. A full-time worker with two weeks vacation per year works 50 weeks per year, 40 hours per week. That’s a nice round 2,000 hours per year.
Abigail Johnson, CEO of Fidelity, presumably gets at least a 5%/year yield on her portfolio. That’s $700M/year just by breathing — about $350,000 per hour.
Abigail Johnson earns $65,000 each ELEVEN MINUTES she breathes — no working required.
I agree with you that we need to get big money out of politics and government. I profoundly disagree with you that post-Presidential earnings make that threshold. Similarly, by the way, there are very few professional athletes who join the ranks of “big money” families.
I suggest that we follow Ms. Warren’s lead and focus on wealth, not income — big wealth, not nickel-and-dime stuff.
If we want to get rid of big money, surely we should focus on people like George Soros — major Democratic Party donor and with a net worth of about $8 Billion, or Democratic candidate Tom Steyer, with a net worth of $1.6 Billion.
In my view, your attacks on the Obama and Clinton families are misplaced. You are literally talking about mole hills and ignoring the mountains.
I think you’re both right. Senator Obama had a great passage in Audacity of Hope where he talks about how spending all that time around wealthy donors corroded his own politics and made him see their worldview.
Krugman has a great piece today where he talks about the discredited “center” that was really an invention of the Acela corridor axis. The “center” that is for unfettered free trade, charter schools, and created a complex insurance friendly monstrosity like ACA instead of something simpler like expanding an existing and popular program like Medicare to cover everyone. The same group that obsessed about “entitlement reform” and “deficit reduction” that limited the stimulus for no sound policy reasons while working class voters were getting slammed by the foreclosure crisis and recession.
We’ve had wealthy progressives in the past from the Roosevelts to the Kennedys. In many ways these folks born into wealth and privilege were a lot more aware of how it is concentrated and willing to be class traitors and redistribute it.
The Clintons and Obamas are part of the new meritocratic elite that got good SAT scores, went to the right schools, and worked at firms like Sidley Austin. Michelle Obama is quite open in her own bio that her only professional goal was making money and she was always befuddled by Barack’s idealism. I do not begrudge them their success, my wife and I found a lot of ourselves in their story (right down to sharing some of the same Hyde Park date spots). My wife’s immigrant family also had the same mentality as the Robinsons-work hard, stay humble, and pay it forward.
There’s nothing wrong with making money, but I do think the meritocracy is a double edged sword when the same class of strivers is rigging their kids college admissions or supporting a host of policies that make it harder for working class to gain entry into the professional class. Compared to our parents (pastors on her side, a secretary and social worker on mine) we are doing quite well. Compared to our Chicago graduate peers we are comparatively poor.
People mean well, but they say stuff at parties like “I envy your work life balance” or “I wish I could be in public service” but then they express skepticism about teachers unions or fair trade or debt free college or public health care. Even though they are Democrats, they don’t want to give up their class privileges or redistribute their wealth. I think it’s a clear divide in the party.
I doubt that many of the attendees of your parties or mine are in the ultra-elite of wealth that is subject to any sort of wealth redistribution. For example, the federal estate tax is paid by a literal handful of people. I think it’s very unlikely that anybody in your social strata or mine has a net worth in excess of $50M.
If there is a divide in our party, it is driven by GOP-driven fear rather than reality and exists between the handful of big donors that get national attention and the rest of us. The fear that Democrats are trying to take away class privileges or redistribute their wealth is a pervasive lie spread at great expense by the GOP (and, sadly, the Russians).
In my view, the best answer to those at the party who fear giving up their class privileges and wealth is to remind them that no Democrats at that party propose to do that. In fact, it is the GOP who is actually taking both.
A healthy heartbeat is 60-100 beats per minute.
At 60 beats per minute and a 5% yield on her portfolio, Ms. Johnson collects about a hundred dollars per heartbeat, while resting comfortably.
By the standards of the truly wealthy, the Obama and Clinton families are mere wage slaves.
I want to highlight the first paragraph of the 2019 Forbes 400 that I posted earlier (emphasis mine):
When the “record 221 U.S. billionaires” who did not make the $2.1 billion minimum needed to even make the list, the combined net worth is more than THREE TRILLION DOLLARS. THREE TRILLION DOLLARS.
Three trillion dollars held by less than a thousand people. The thread-starter talked about the median family income ($65,000). According the federal government in a 2017 report, the median net worth of the US was $692,100. That number is literally buried in the report (this is typical of ALL published pieces about net worth in America, especially from the government). Here’s the quote (emphasis mine):
A little bit further down is this (emphasis mine):
For those less familiar with understanding statistics, a few things pop out from this data:
1. Note the enormous difference between the median ($97,300) and mean ($692,100) net worth. The median is the net worth at which half the population is lower and half higher. The mean is the average of the population. This HUGE spread is caused by our obscene wealth concentration. Consider five little children collecting marbles. Suppose, taken together, they have a total of 200 marbles. If the marbles are evenly distributed, then the median and mean are both 40 marbles. Now suppose the distribution looks like 1, 2, 3, 4, 490. The median is 3 marbles (2 children have less than three, 2 children more than 3, one child exactly 3). The mean is still 40. That large difference (40 versus 3) reveals how extreme the concentration is. If one child has ALL the marbles (0, 0, 0, 0, 500), the median is 0 and the mean is still 40. The ratio of the mean over the median of this household wealth data is 7.1.
2. “The level of median and mean net worth for the top decile is 4 to 8 times the level of the next highest percentile group”. That shows that the wealth concentration is almost all at the top of the distribution. The wealth distribution of America is like a piece of gum stuck onto the underside of a desk with a heavy thumb. Most of the smear is a thin coating. Most of the gum is in a blob at the extreme edge of the smear.
Wealth concentration is an ENORMOUS issue in America of today. The post-presidential income gained by our living ex-Presidents is neither representative nor causal of that wealth concentration issue.
Attacking those ex-Presidents, in fact, distracts attention from the actual causes of the issue.
No one knows who Abigail Johnson is and she is not the leader of a political party. Obama and Clinton were leaders of their party. We need to lead by example. I do not “attack” them, I illustrate how difficult it is for me, as a Democrat, to convince others that Democratic politicians are not just “in it for the money” and that Democrats are the party of the common man, working for average families..
The contention of this entire diary — that I strongly agree with — is that big money has entirely too much influence in our party. Abigail Johnson is the wealthiest person in Massachusetts. As such, she has at least the potential to be VERY influential — whether or not we know who she is. The very point you’re making is that very wealthy people like her have enormous influence on our party leaders.
I hope you agree that the fact that many or most of the big donors are unknown to most of us is a huge part of the problem.
How many people know who George Soros is? Mr. Soros is not the leader of any political party. As the largest single Democratic donor, he has FAR more influence than anybody in either the Clinton or Obama families.
The way to get big money out of politics is to follow Elizabeth Warren’s lead and say “no” to donors like Mr. Soros.
If you’re looking for a way to persuade those around you that our Democratic politicians are not just “in it for the money”, I would point out to them that most of the people we’re talking about take enormous pay cuts to take public office. Deval Patrick is making FAR more money at Baine than he ever did as Governor, and not because he is an ex-governor.
I guess the part where I’m furthest away from you here is you seem to be saying that you want our officials to be “average” working men and women. That means no higher education, no law degrees, and no wealth (to speak of). In my view, that’s a prescription for disaster. I think holding public office today is a very tough job. I think it requires enormous intellectual skills, enormous intellectual agility, an ability to connect to a huge range of people, and to do all of that while being “cool”, “hip” and articulate in public appearances.
I think that men and women who bring all that to the table are already far beyond the limits you would impose on our candidates. They already have degrees, most have advanced degrees. It is worth remembering that our own Tommy Vitollo has at least one PhD. If I remember correctly he has several advanced degrees. He’s a great public official, and he is making a significant financial sacrifice to be a state Rep.
He is most certainly NOT “in it for the money”. The same is true of Elizabeth Warren.
In fact, I think that you’re actually advancing another right-wing canard with all this.
The “big money” people that we must identify so that we can manage and contain their influence are not people like the Clintons and the Obamas. They are people more like George Soros and Tom Steyer.
I want my elected officials to be unbought and unbossed, the slogan Shirley Chisholm famously ran on during her groundbreaking campaign for president. Sanders and Warren made millions off of their books and Warren probably enjoyed a high six figure/low seven figure salary as a highly sought after HLS professor. Tommy is certainly upper middle class, and did give up a nice Kendall Square fit for his job.
I think we have no problem with people doing well and taking pay cuts to serve. What we do have an issue with is people selling out after they are in office. I think the new normal of cashing out post-presidency with the 500k speeches, foundations, library fundraising all have a corrosive effect on the office and the people who serve in them. Similarly, the revolving door between the executive and legislative branches and corporate lobbying.
Again, I don’t begrudge anyone their success. I just want them to lift up the next people on the ladder rather than pulling the ladder up from behind. I think Warren and Sanders get this and have eschewed the corrosive power of money for people power.
It sounds to me as though we’re talking about two different things.
“Cashing out post-presidency” is not an example of “big money in politics”.
I don’t like the revolving door into lobbying either — although I don’t think Barack Obama or Bill Clinton are examples of that. Neither is a lobbyist.
I don’t have a particular problem with ex-Presidents giving $500K speeches. There are never more than two or three at a time. I think the advantages of having presidential libraries greatly exceeds the disadvantages. I similarly think the several foundations do great good and I support them.
I don’t think any of that is what Ms. Warren (and by extension Mr. Sanders) eschews. I think Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders have rejected big money donors, PACs, and so on. I think that’ completely different.
If Elizabeth Warren is elected President, I expect her to create a presidential library. She will be our nation’s first female president — that is genuinely historic. Her personal archives have immense historic value. Do you think there’s something corrupt or corrupting about the JFK museum and library? I don’t.
I similarly expect her to give $500K speeches and I hope she creates a foundation.
I really think there are least two trees here. I think complaining about the post-presidential behavior of the Obamas and Clintons is barking up the wrong one.
The modern library process is a conduit for private foreign cash to go into presidential hands while a president is still in office. I also dislike that Obama totally privatized his and removed the National Archives from their traditional role of maintaining the documents.
The Nixon and JFK libraries are models in how it out to be done, they cover the warts as well as the triumphs. It was especially difficult for the Archives which had to wrest control of the Nixon library from the Nixon Center think tank. The JFK and to a greater extent EMK is an invaluable non-partisan civic resource for the children of Massachusetts. Free of charge school to door transport for urban districts to boot.
The Obama library could be great, I particularly like his foundations focus on helping young black men. I just wish the national archives and my alma mater were in charge of the archives, and not his private foundation.
My imagination is failing me as to how the examples cited in this thread is hurting someone in my position making just this side of minimum wage. I don’t see how my life would be better if Obama or Clinton swore off big money speeches, for example.
Where does the big money come from?
The people who pay for the speeches of course, but it’s not as if instead of giving that money to Obama or Clinton they would give it to us instead.
A lot of it comes from the Saudis. Or the insurance industry. And it’s a wonder we can’t seem to get single payer or why our soldiers always act as mercenaries for the black kingdom.
I think they are less likely to give a crap about working people when they surround themselves with the wealthy and think like they do about the issues. Clinton and Obama governed as Rockefeller Republicans-I think that’s well known. They kept organized labor at arms length while putting people close to the banking industry like Summers and Geithner in charge of the financial system. Elizabeth Warren welcomes the hatred of guys like that, and they hate her, which is why I like her.
He has a law degree – not a business degree…..and now he’s working in finance…..and his role as governor and that many connections has has from that role had no influence on his appeal to Baine?
I’m all in with Warren. I’m overjoyed that she just announced that she’s not going to take money from big donors even if it means being outspent by Republicans in the general election. I’m also a big fan of President Carter. He’s not making money with speeches or book deals….or using his influence to get on some board of directors and so on….nope, he’s building houses for those in need.
Deval Patrick is a Harvard Law graduate. He was an assistant attorney general under Bill Clinton. He was general counsel of Texaco and led its merger with Chevron. He then joined Coca-Cola as an executive VP.
All of that history prior to being governor built a strong reputation and network. He was and is a long-time personal friend of Barack Obama (both grew up in poverty in Chicago, both graduated from Harvard Law, and both had successful political careers).
I have no doubt that his role as governor enhanced his appeal to Baine. I think you insult and demean him to assert that he is “in it for the money”, that he inappropriately “cashed in” on his experience as governor, or that Baine welcomed him because of his connections.
Deval Patrick is a stellar role model — much more so than any self-pitying white male grousing at a coffee machine.,
Can you tell me, with specifics, what has he done with this position to advance the wages of the working class and change a system that is clearly rigged?
Or as governor for that matter. Pushing charters and casinos, inaction on the T, busting union pensions, and dead kids at DCF. Almost identical to Baker whom everybody here thinks is a local Trump incarnate. Cutting social services and mental health funding too. Never lifted a finger for progressive taxation.
@ never lifted a finger:
From Gov. Deval Patrick calls for increase in Massachusetts’ income tax, cut in sales tax (emphasis mine):
Deval Patrick did as much as any governor can do.
I think you guys are dead wrong here.
It’s stuff like this that resulted in Ed King replacing Mike Dukakis. Is that really what you want?
So he gave a rousing speech and proposed a few things….what was the outcome?
The outcome was that Bob DeLeo, Speaker of the House, nuked the proposal. I join you in criticizing Mr. DeLeo, I’ve certainly never defended him here.
It sounds like you’ve decided you don’t like Mr. Patrick and then found rationalizations to support that.
Whatever that is, it has nothing at all to do with “big money in politics”. Deval Patrick is not wealthy. He is not getting wealthy at Baine. Various estimates put his 2018 net worth at about $3M — FAR below the $50 M cutoff of Ms. Warren’s wealth tax.
“Big money” does not mean “somebody with a higher income than me”.
He could’ve passed it in the first term when BMGs favorite progressive crook Sal DiMasi was in office. Blaming DeLeo for everything is like blaming Baker, they only have as much power as people are willing to give them. If Deval used his sophisticated grassroots organizing machine to and Walsh who’s legitimately the best in the business to primary some DINOs he might’ve been able to send a message. DiMasi might’ve been down with new taxes for the T without that to begin with.
Instead he wastes his political capital fighting DiMasi on casinos and charters, two really bad really regressive ideas. Then DeLeo gets in and they fight over what kind of gambling to allow. Deval pushed the bill that stripped union pensions in the dead of night which DeLeo gave him as a favor for casino negotiations and then Deval guts the group homes for kids with disabilities and cuts DCF until some kids die, and then he refuses to fire anybody. He almost shut down the zoos such was his zeal for budget cutting. He was far more austerity happy than even Baker was. He even floated privatizing the T, which Baker has yet to do.
Deval was competent at passing his bad priorities and incompetent at passing his good ones. Then he took the revolving door right to Bain and a ridiculously high retainer for the lousy Olympic bid. Really glad he sat 2020 out. Bain can keep him on retainer for all I care, he was useless for us he’ll be useless to them.
Proposing raising one flat tax and cutting another flat tax has absolutely zero effect on anything.
It is a good example of the problem, when these ‘radical’ reforms are not laughed at as pointless. There is no critical thinking taking place, just wasted motion of throwing things at the wall. If it really generated 1.9 billion, then how can it be progressive, exactly? Businesses set prices and wages. They can just adjust both to protect their income from diminishing, and the lower classes will pay all the new tax revenue. How many times are we going to beat the same dead horses about minor changes to tax rates as a panacea?
No, it’s stuff like this that makes us pick somebody who has our back next time there’s an open primary for governor.
Pretty sure Deval never took the T either, but he never got any crap for it on his site. His legislative push on taxes and the T was late in his lame duck second term when nobody on Beacon Hill wanted to work with him anymore. He should’ve pushed it after he won over 60% of the vote the first time and had a real mandate to govern.
I think the issue is that they are removed from the day to day struggles of ordinary people the longer they stay in these elite orbits and attend these elite fundraisers. Ordinary people do not get 500k a pop for speeches. Presidents are above all citizens, Jefferson did not even cite the presidency on his gravestone, nor did they have the retinue or post-presidency pensions and perks until the last 50 years. Truman went back to the farm like Washington, foreclosed on it and sold his memoirs and Congress gave him a pension so he wouldn’t have to sell his farm. Grant was penniless and sold his memoirs to pay off debtors. So maybe a pension makes sense, but they should forego the industry fellating speeches.
If we want to fight wealth concentration we should be leery of politicians who concentrate on their own wealth in office or out. The Republicans are far more egregious. McConnells wealthy Chinese tycoon father in law gave him $75 million. This Ukraine pipeline is full of greed and money. Look at how cheaply Rudy sold himself out on the graves of 9/11. I want to hold our side to a higher standard.
What Hunter Biden did wasn’t illegal, but it was shady as hell. We shouldn’t excuse the shade on our side with the darkness enveloping theirs.
It sounds as though you’re arguing that Barack Obama is comparable to Rudy Giuliani or Joe Biden. Is that what you mean?
Presidents are not ordinary people.
You seem to resent Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. I do not.
We can criticize people we admire. This isn’t the Soviet Union, China, or North Korea where dear leader is always right. They are human beings who did good things and did bad things. The speeches to me are an example of the corrosive influence of money in the system that is similar to the fundraising. It means you’re removed from the day to say experiences of the people you are supposed to govern. Presidents are human beings, we ditched the whole king and aristocracy thing when we created this country.
Jimmy Carter doesn’t get paid, he builds houses for the poor at home and works to create more peace and democracy abroad. That’s what someone with the character of Obama should be doing, not bragging to health care companies how his reform gave them more clients like he did at the start of his post-presidency. That’s the corrosive influence.
@Jimmy Carter doesn’t get paid …:
I invite you to offer an overall rank of the following three presidents:
– Barack Obama
– Bill Clinton
– Jimmy Carter
I hope we agree that as much as we admire Jimmy Carter for his post-presidential life, he was a distant third in this group.
My presidential vote is just that — a vote for president. I’m not voting for the Pope, for a CFO, for most popular, or for most attractive.
Was there a better Democratic candidate than each of the above three during the primary season?
It sounds like we agree that Ms. Warren is our preferred choice for President. While she has forsworn big money donors, she has not to my knowledge made any promises about her post-presidential behavior if elected.
If Ms. Warren wins the nomination and the election, I expect her make more money after stepping down than any of the above three.
I’m perfectly happy with that.
@ If we want to fight wealth concentration…:
I’m not sure this is true in the way you mean it.
Wealth concentration is not caused by greedy people choosing to grab everything and share nothing. Wealth concentration is caused by the mechanisms that create and distribute wealth. It is a property of a wealth distribution network, not of the nodes within that network. Wealth concentration is fought by regulating the network.
The technical driver is something called “preferential attachment”. When a new node enters the network it does so by connecting to existing nodes. The selection of which nodes to connect to is not random (this is the great insight of network theorists in this century). Instead, nodes with many connections are more likely to get a new connection than nodes with a few.
In the world of the web, this means that new sites link to existing sites with lots of links. New people who move into a population are more likely to make friends with people who already have lots of friends.
The way to fight wealth concentration is through government regulation — gift and estate taxes, wealth taxes, and so on. Elizabeth Warren has MUCH more wealth than Colleen Garry.
Which of those two is more likely to fight wealth concentration?
Colleen Garry is irrelevant to this conversation. She won’t ever amount to anything outside of Dracut so who cares what she does? Warren doesn’t take corporate cash, she talks to voters instead of hob nobbing on the Hampton’s and she calls back her small donors. I doubt she’d have the need or desire to do the 500k rubber chicken circuit. Her presidency will be about saving Main Street instead of saving Wall Street.
I mention Colleen Garry because the assertion you offer is that wealthy people are less likely to fight wealth concentration than non-wealthy people:
Elizabeth Warren has much more wealth than Colleen Garry. I can’t think of a single piece of GOP dogma that Ms. Garry hasn’t embraced, so I can’t imagine a scenario where Ms. Garry would even consider — never mind drive — the imposition of a wealth tax or of a dramatic increase in the top estate tax rate.
Where did I offer that assertion? I don’t recall offering it. I am not saying wealth automatically prevents someone from fighting wealth concentration. I offered Warren and Roosevelt as examples of this up thread. The inverse property does not have to apply here either. Garry is probably not a millionaire, but she votes like a conservative because she is one. So what?
You’re with me that Hunter Biden’s business activities trading off his dads name while his dad is in office is problematic. You’re with me that Warren and Sanders eschewing big dollar donors is laudable. I’m just asking you to be with me on that last leg of a public servants career.
If they sell out after they retire we have no way of knowing they did not sell out while in office. The foreign library and foundation donations happen while the president is still in office and I think it’s deeply problematic and should be illegal.
I shudder to think what Trump will do with that precedent of selling himself after he’s out of office, even if he’s ultimately removed or loses re-election. Decent presidents have given indecent ones cover to cash in on their office and the title we gave them.
I think that’s wrong, and I think both recent Democratic presidents lack of action on corporate accountability and wealth concentration is telling. Hiring Geithner, Rubin, and Summers. Outsourcing good union jobs by passing NAFTA. Obama doing nothing to stop right to work laws which eviscerated the Democratic Party in the Midwest. This hollowing out of the heartland is reminiscent of Thatcher letting the Midlands die. They used to vote Labour and now vote Leave. Lackawanna County was a D stronghold until Trump. I think it matters. I think these guys getting wealthy *off their office* gives cover to Trumps lie that everybody is bought so why should he act differently?
Perhaps we should all take some deep breaths on this.
I get that all of this is a matter of judgement and nuance and each of has different thresholds and different triggers. We also have very different perspectives on the past. I think its very important to interpret historical events in their historical context rather than in today’s.
I think it’s worth asking what would have happened in prior elections if we had adopted this standard then. It seems to me that this standard would have required us to dump FDR because of his personal wealth. I think we’ve already established that Jimmy Carter was not one of our most effective presidents. Was there another Democratic candidate who would have been a better president than Bill Clinton or Barack Obama? I don’t think so.
There is much about Barack Obama’s administration that I take issue with. Nevertheless, we must still choose from whatever candidates are available. Would any other Democrat have done something different in the midwest?
You close with this:
Do you really think that John McCain or Mitt Romney would have done something different in the Midwest? Do you really think that Barack Obama was indistinguishable from either of those?
The unfortunate reality is the politics is a lagging indicator. Candidates have no choice but to follow, by and large, the demands of the electorate.
Huge swaths of the heartland really do believe that labor unions are evil, that immigrants are evil, and that their economic suffering is the result of self-serving Democrats lining their pockets.
You seem to be arguing that the last piece of that is more true than the others. I think they’re all the result of dismaying ignorance, functional illiteracy, and explicit misinformation from Fox News.
The irony is that the result of those misguided beliefs is to empower GOP demagogues who directly enrich themselves at the expense of those deplorable heartland voters
.
That’s why we have until now had an inviolate standard of innocent until proven guilty. We do not yet lock up people because we fear they are about to commit a crime. I think “proactive intervention” is a mistake.
I know of no examples where any ex-president has sold out while in office — Mr. Trump is likely to be our first example. I think that we should investigate and prosecute any such behavior after it happens, not before.
I think legitimate criticism of any and every elected official is fine and good. I fear that this meme crosses over into something much less constructive.
If any of us fears that a given candidate is likely to sell out to big-money interests, then we should support a different candidate.
Since the three of us in this exchange seem to agree that Elizabeth Warren is the best of the current cohort, isn’t that good enough?
I think you’re confusing personal wealth with the political influence of the wealthy. I could care less about the former. I’ve voted for millionaires who shared my values and even worked for a self-financing millionaire candidate who shares my values. I like Tom Steyer and won’t bash him for being wealthy (although I do question his strategic judgment in spending that money on a long shot campaign for president, I wish he was a left wing Koch). I think George Soros is an American treasure who puts his money where his values are. So do the Kennedys, so does Warren Buffett. Theres a group of Rockefeller heirs who have done a lot to fight climate change, including a Cambridge resident.
People who are wealthy who acknowledge their privilege and use it not just for philanthropy, but to lift up the working classes and protect the planet from war and pollution with better public policies have my heartfelt thanks and appreciation.
These are not the wealthy I worry about. It’s the ones who mask their self interest as sound public policy, whether it’s the Koch Brothers hiding behind libertarianism or the C-Suite neoliberals who hide behind Third Way economics. The latter ideology drastically influenced and in my judgment, hurt, the presidencies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama by making them far less radical.
It’s why their legacies were so easily reversed by their faux populist Republican successors. Why they lost so much power for down ballot progressives. This donor class convinced Democrats to abandon organized labor for Big Hollywood and Big Tech. To abandon the K of C’s and labor halls for the Hampton’s and Nantucket’s. It convinced them to abandon progressive populism for cosmopolitan capitalism.
I think it’s done lasting damage to our politics and our economy. I agree that Elizabeth Warren is our best chance to fix it, and I’m happy to end the ‘argument’ there. I think she’s shown the donor class the finger and it’s why she’s the first candidate I’ve become a recurring donor for.
He had a reputation of anti-labor activity at Coke and sweeping racial and environmental incidents under the rug at Texaco. That was well documented here in 2006. I drank the kool aid because I was 17 and he’s the most charismatic speaker I’ve ever heard, but he’s about as do nothing on the issues I care about as Baker. Nothing on transit, housing, healthcare, or education during his tenure in office. And then adding more charters and casinos.
No. Democrats need to:
1. Not engage in self-flagellation about attaining moral perfection while ignoring Trump, Trumpist accommodationists, and accompanying sycophants dismantling the entire legal system for regulating corruption and conflicts of interest
2. Not repeat false flag information, misinformation, disinformation, and wildly out of proportion and irrelevant propaganda (as this post is) put out by Putin, his Russian bots, and his stooges in the White House; and
3. Focus on the emergency at hand: a wannabe distator with zero respect for the rule of law, democracy, and our troops, who is staging the gradual destruction of our constitutional system of governance.
That’s what Democrats need to do.
With all do respect, Hillary ran that campaign already and it failed to win the Electoral College. that strategy failed in 2016 and will fail again. I think failing to focus on this emerging class divide, cited by Krugman and also by Thomas Edsall and Stanley Greenberg-all respected social scientists with a progressive persuasion-is going to re-elect Trump.
All three of the issues you cite are totally irrelevant with the block of voters that defected from Obama to Trump. Or with the minorities and working class people who stayed home.
That high level stuff about defending democracy does nothing to put money in their pockets. They don’t know where Kurdistan is, let alone, who the Kurds are. I think we have to recognize there is a bubble between the issues emphasizes.
Support for authoritarianism increases during times of high income inequality, when people lose faith in democratic institutions to provide for their standard of living.
It’s not just the 1%, but the top 10% that has pulled up the ladder of opportunity in America. Many of those folks are in the income brackets of my peers, my more affluent family, and the Democratic donor class. Bernie and Warren have shown they cannot only compete on even ground but outraise the traditional donor class candidates.
It’s time we put fixing our broken meritocracy front and center. That gives hope to black parents who are getting five times the jail time as Felicity Huffman for doing the same thing, and hope to the working class voters if all races who feel shut out of the pipeline to opportunity.
With all due respect, Hillary ran that campaign already and it failed to win the Electoral College. that strategy failed in 2016 and will fail again. I think failing to focus on this emerging class divide, cited by Krugman and also by Thomas Edsall and Stanley Greenberg-all respected social scientists with a progressive persuasion-is going to re-elect Trump.
All three of the issues cited are totally irrelevant with the block of voters that defected from Obama to Trump. Or with the voters of color and working class people who stayed home.
That high level stuff about defending democracy does nothing to put money in their pockets. They don’t know where Kurdistan is, let alone, who the Kurds are. I think we have to recognize there is a bubble between the issues emphasizes.
Support for authoritarianism increases during times of high income inequality, when people lose faith in democratic institutions to provide for their standard of living.
It’s not just the 1%, but the top 10% that has pulled up the ladder of opportunity in America. Many of those folks are in the income brackets of my peers, my more affluent family, and the Democratic donor class. Bernie and Warren have shown they cannot only compete on even ground but outraise the traditional donor class candidates.
It’s time we put fixing our broken meritocracy front and center. That gives hope to black parents who are getting five times the jail time as Felicity Huffman for doing the same thing, and hope to the working class voters if all races who feel shut out of the pipeline to opportunity
#1 priority is to clean up elections and the corrupt influence of money. That has to happen before trying to tackle climate, health care or anything else, boucle we won’t get REAL change without it. So, that’s the ball I’m keeping my eye on. Everything else will be easier to deal with (like we won’t be electing politicians with an eye for cashing out).