Mark Schmitt

Follow-up on Edwards post

I posted some comments on the value I believe Senator Edwards has had on the Democratic Party, helping it shed its belief that all policies and political language must be "universalist," or benefit almost everyone, and then left for four days away with my family, coming back to a dozen or so very provocative comments and links. A few deserve comment:

First, Matthew Yglesias is right to point out that there is a basic error in my assertion that Dean showed that "enthusiasm could be as valuable as converting a swing voter at the 50th percentile." I thought I had written exactly this but I must have deleted it in shortening the post: Yes, it is a mathematical truism that converting a swing voter -- one who is certain to vote but just might go either way -- is always twice as valuable as drawing a a new or unlikely voter to the polls on your own side, since the new voter does not also take a vote away from the other side. Indeed, that has been the basic premise of Democratic party politics through most of the last decade or more, and it, too, has a lot to do with the lack of imagination and inspiration in such politics.

On the other hand, at a certain point the equation changes. When the number of actual swing voters narrows to probably less than 10% of the electorate, and probably much less (how many people do you know who aren't sure whether they will vote for George W. Bush's reelection or not?), then the payoff to converting swing voters becomes more and more constrained. And some other numbers look more appealing: Voters age 18-24 voted at a 32.3% rate in 2000 -- imagine getting that number closer to the overall average of 58% by generating enthusiasm. People in families with incomes below $25,000 voted at a 39% rate -- what about raising that number. Sure, it takes two new enthusiasts from either of these categories to match the value of one swung voter, but there are a lot more of them. And that is the sea change in politics since the mid-1990s -- when the proven electorate is solidly polarized, both parties will move outside, to look for new voters and untested opportunities. It will radically change the language and culture of politics, but for Democrats, probably for the better.

That said, all Dean did -- and this is also true of Edwards -- is to suggest the possibility. He did not in any way prove that such a strategy of drawing new voters in a general election could work, and that's not just because he faded in the primaries. None of them have had a chance to test this general-election premise. E.J. Dionne commented six weeks ago that, "Foundations have spent small fortunes trying to figure out how to connect young Americans to politics. Dean just did it." But that wasn't at all true: all Dean did was show that there was a greater potential to fire up young people with an alternative than some of the other candidates had perhaps imagined.

Second, the commentor "Terry" put together some truly fascinating statistics showing that Edwards did not seem to be reaching the voters he was talking about in his stump speech, as he generally seems to do less well than Kerry with less affluent voters and -- like all Democratic runners-up since Morris Udall in 1976 -- finds his base among the better-educated. As helpful as that analysis is, it misses my point. I'm interested in the fact that Edwards talks about poorer people in the context of our obligations as a society, not in promising benefits to them in exchange for their votes. That's the radical break with the past. Of course every candidate, speaking at an event such as the Center for Community Change's roundtable in Columbia, SC on January 30, will talk about policies affecting poor people. Edwards talks about "the two nations" entirely without regard to his audience. It is a moral claim, not an appeal based on benefits, and that is what makes it distinctive. As a number of commentors noted, there is no proof that this tone, any more than Dean's approach, has truly lodged itself in the Democratic imagination. But just to say it without hesitation, to do well in the primaries, and to have this message be a part of a mainstream Democratic candidacy, rather than one that is perceived as a very liberal one, is a breakthrough.

Needless to say, I appreciate all the comments, which have helped refine this point and many others.

How John Edwards has Changed the Democrats

It is now an acknowledged truth that Howard Dean, even though his candidacy for president was unsuccessful at the ballot box, nonetheless changed the Democratic party for good, showing the party the possibilities of bringing in new voters, new technology, new sources of funding, and an unintimidated spirit of challenge to the right.

As the nomination process seems to be winding swiftly to a conclusion, it's time to argue that Senator John Edwards has done the same, and in fact, his contribution to the party and to modern liberalism may be more important, more daring, and more lasting. His contribution was in challenging the lazy assumption of "universalism" that has dominated the language and program of liberals and Democrats. By this I mean the assumption that successful politics depends on benefits that reach "a huge cross-class constituency," in the words of political scientist Theda Skocpol. It is largely Skocpol and pollster Stan Greenberg, in books and articles such as "The New Majority" who popularized the idea that only programs that benefit the middle class as well as the poor, as Social Security and Medicare do, can be politically successful.

I don't mean to criticize Skocpol, whose work I love and whose research and knowledge is unimpeachable, or Greenberg. But it's really when their historical understanding gets oversimplified in ordinary political practice that it severely narrows the sense of possibility in modern politics. The result of the search for programs that reach "a huge cross-class constituency" in times of fiscal scarcity and hostility to government is thin programs, like Clinton's "micro-initiatives" of the Dick Morris era, that offer a little something for everyone and not much to anyone.

Meanwhile, what this politics missed was the fact that the middle of the middle class in the U.S. was not doing that badly -- at least not during the Clinton boom -- but life has been getting steadily more difficult for the bottom 40% of the population, which is to say not only the very poor but the first rungs of the middle class. The median income for households in this sector is $23,000, and they have gained virtually no income since 1974, while losing significant economic security. While we fixate on the fact that more than 50% of Americans now own stocks or mutual funds, at least 45% do not. Three in ten households has a net worth of less than $10,000.

Of course you'll never hear George Bush, or, sadly, any other Republican mention any of that. You won't hear many Democrats mention it either. They prefer to hit a little closer to the middle, to the stock-owning, voting middle. They want to talk about child care, not Unemployment Insurance and certainly not Food Stamps or Medicaid. Last week, for a project I've been working on, I spoke to someone in Washington who has been very important in organizing opposition to the Bush tax cuts. "Every communications person or pollster we talk to," she said, "tells us that we have to speak to the middle middle of the middle class, and not talk about anything that benefits poor people." She didn't disagree with that judgment, but found it very limiting.

Even the "populism" peddled to candidates Kerry and Gore by Bob Shrum conveys little sense of the degree to which the working poor are screwed in today's economy and how that can be changed. It's about "the people vs. the powerful," that is, it's a populism that's almost entirely about the rich, and only by inference about the people who are really suffering. (I resist even calling this appeal "populism," because it is only vaguely resembles the American tradition of populism, which (1) had an ugly side to it and (2) sprung naturally from the deeply suffering rural poor. It was not just language adopted by ordinary politicians.)

Edwards is the first politician who, when he talks to a room full of middle-class people, doesn't necessarily seem to be promising something to them. Sure, he's a little vague about just where the line is between the "Two Americas" -- it's "the rich and powerful" and "everyone else." But when he gets specific, when he starts talking about the ten-year-old girl who goes to sleep hoping that it isn't as cold tomorrow as today because she doesn't have warm enough clothes -- it's got to be apparent to any audience that he's not talking about what he's going to do for them. He's making a moral claim about what our country owes to those who have the least, not promising something to everyone who "works hard and plays by the rules." And, shocking as it is, that's a big deal. And it matters that it comes from a candidate who is generally perceived as a moderate -- if only because he's a southerner -- rather than the leftmost candidate in the race. Although I think that's a very subtle distinction, and I agree with every word of Joel Rogers' argument in The Nation, "Progressives Should Vote For Edwards".

It also, surprisingly, permits a kind of optimism. The Shrum populism is just a complaint, it doesn't lead to a structural revamping of the economy that would really change the circumstances that the rich and powerful are rich and powerful. Edwards' vision, on the other hand, suggests something that it is within our power to change. We can do something for that ten-year-old girl, we can generate what the folks at the Economic Policy Instittute call "broadly shared prosperity."

Dean's transformation of the Democratic party was largely procedural, though not unimportant. He helped the party see that enthusiasm could be as valuable as converting a swing voter at the 50th percentile. He showed that money could be raised from supporters of any age, income or background, that the only contributors were not those on the Democratic National Committees official list of proven contributors. And he showed how giving up control of a campaign, letting it be driven by its supporters, could generate tremendous enthusiasm. Edwards' campaign has been more conventional in procedure, and in the end, while doing "better than expected," he is still unlikely to be the Democratic nominee. But if Democrats hear his language, the willingness to make a moral claim about what our country should be like, not just what he will do for the middle of the middle, it will be a powerful voice.

The Iraq Commission

I'm still mystified by the Bush appointments to the commission on pre-war intelligence about Iraq's WMD. Obviously, for reasons that other resourceful bloggers developed within hours, Judge Laurence Silberman violated the ethical obligations of the bench by his fierce activisim in the anti-Clinton quasi-legal skullduggery (activities that, as far as I know he has not denied), and is therefore no more qualified to chair such a commission than Henry Kissinger was the 9/11 commission. I presume that only the fact that Bush's AWOL status suddenly flared back up as the issue of the moment prevented the Silberman question from being the issue of the day. This administration has always been very savvy about the fact that the press and even the blogs can only handle one outrage at a moment. But let's hope we get back to this one.

I don't share the view of some of the bloggers that former Senator Chuck Robb is compromised here. His career is over, and he was defeated by a Bush crony -- Senator George Allen. He's capable of being a tough and plain-speaking guy, almost like McCain, and he was just so paralyzed by attacks and pseudo-scandals over his Senate career that nothing ever came of it. He's not going to play the role that Max Cleland played on the 9/11 commission, but I doubt he'll be a pushover here other. He's got nothing to lose.

And some of the other members of the commission are surprisingly good. I've come to know Judge Pat Wald a little bit in the last year, and she is extraordinary -- very well-versed in international issues as well as the law. And McCain -- that appointment is just amazing. McCain doesn't just give "the appearance of independence" -- he actually is independent. And he won't be sheepish in the least.

Trying to figure out the McCain appointment, though, I was reminded of something I was once told was the general wisdom around the House and Senate intelligence committees: "They don't tell you enough that you really know what's going on, but they tell you just enough that you can't say anything" without compromising classified information. In other words, exposing someone like McCain to just enough classified material is actually a good way to silence someone who might be a forceful critic whether on the commission or not. This only works with people who are actual patriots, however.

A little more on the budget

I finally caught the severe cold/sore throat that everyone else had a month ago, and I've been working on another project, so I haven't posted as much to the Decembrist as I would like. I expected to take a closer look at the budget, but obviously didn't get past the pictures, which I mentioned the other day.

All the good blogs by people who actually know something about economics, like Max Sawicky have by now thoroughly covered the budget. If you want a good just-the-facts summary of the major outrages, with the actual outrage left to your own mind, always rely on the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

A month ago, when the first "leaks" of the Administration's proposals started to come out, I wrote a short piece called "How To Read the Bush Budget," listing the ordinary ways that almost any presidential budget fudges the numbers, particularly about cutting discretionary programs and estimating the savings from tangential changes affecting entitlements. I got a lot of compliments on that post, and I notice it's gotten a lot of hits in the last three days. Let me just make clear that the reason I could do that post a month before the budget came out was that it explained the predictable ordinary white lies that are to some extent in the budget of every president. They are the "this never happened to me before," or "She's not really my girlfriend, we just went out a few times" kind of lies. The dishonesty in the 2005 budget is more like something out of a movie on the Lifetime network, with the guy whose wife and three kids in Chicago don't know that he has a whole other family in Texas, plus another one in Canada and everything's fine until the three wives accidentally meet... Well, you know the rest.

There's the decision to project out just five years instead of ten. There's the complete failure to account for expensive policies the administration favors, such as reform of the Alternative Minimum Tax. There's the overstatement of the current deficit in order to make plausible the claim that they will cut it in half in three years. All of these are the very same things that men like Richard Scrushy of Health South and Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom are likely to go to jail for. And this is on top of the "discovery" that the Medicare bill will cost 1/3 more than estimated, which the very, very sober and non-ideological budget analyst Stanley Collender has already compared to Enron.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities also points out another amazing thing that has not received much attention. The budget proposes to restore the "pay-as-you-go" rules that governed Congress when I worked on the Hill. They were frustrating, but essential to getting the deficit under control: Any money you propose to spend, through spending or tax cuts, has to be offset with a spending cut or tax increase. Except in the Bush version, tax cuts would not have to be offset. But refundable tax credits -- the kind of tax cut that helps poor working families -- would have to be offset. And increases in entitlement spending could only be offset with other spending cuts, not by closing tax loopholes. In other words, the rule says, you can't do anything, really, except cut taxes. Amazing.

The author of A Generous View of Kerry endorses

Last weekend, I posted part of an article from 1996 by Jack Beatty of The Atlantic because I thought it made the best case that John Kerry had been an active, entrepreneurial Senator, not in the traditional legislative sense, but in using the investigative powers available to an individual Senator with a good staff on the right committees.

I've just seen a piece that Beatty posted on The Atlantic site a couple days ago, which should indicate that nothing he wrote in the previous decade should be construed as an endorsement:

Presidential politics turns on personality. Kerry?haggard, a knight of the woeful countenance?lacks vitality, the aura of promise. Edwards's campaign pitch is all about optimism?"We can do better, you and I. We can change America!"?and he exudes life. Message and messenger fit. By a gift of grace, Edwards's capacity for hope survived the death of his sixteen-year-old son. John Edwards's suffering, like his rearing as the son of a Carolina mill-worker, connects him to the trials of most Americans. He gets it. Kerry has read about it. Bush hasn't a clue. "You give me a shot at George W. Bush," Edwards declared at the end of his Dartmouth speech, "and I'll give you the presidency." I believe him. He's the real deal. .

Here's the full article: http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/polipro/pp2004-01-26.htm

I certainly agree. I strongly prefer Edwards to Kerry, but I won't despair if Kerry is the nominee. To use Beatty's phrase, having read about it is a lot better than what we've got. Kerry's proven a lot to me just by getting himself on track and really improving his campaign, although Edwards is equally to be admired for the fact that he stuck with his message and his vision and never once seemed fazed by Dean. Edwards was the most impressive candidate to me from the start, and I'm sorry that I sort of gave up on him when he didn't seem to be going anywhere. Now I found myself on Tuesday actually rooting for Clark not to win Oklahoma because I wanted Edwards to have one more state and a clearer shot at Kerry.

The Budget Ads are Better than the Super Bowl Ads

It seems the Administration has discovered a new deficit-reduction technique that just might work: Why not sell advertising right in the middle of the federal budget documents? If they can put ads at eye-level in men's rooms, and on airline baggage carousels, why not? And, needless to say, there are cash-rich advertisers who would love to buy space in a document that's been considered reliable and respected since 1948. For example, there's a little corporation called Bush-Cheney '04, Inc. that's sitting on about $100 million in cash and needs to boost a sinking brand name.

That's the only explanation for this, which jumped out from the section of the budget entitled "Upholding America's Values":

Good company. President Bush visits the St. Augustine Parish Hunger Center in Cleveland, Ohio in May 2001.

or this:

Caring for our seniors. President Bush meets with 94 year old Anna Tovcimak after a roundtable discussion on Medicare Liability Reform in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

or this:

Listen first, then act. President Bush takes a private moment to discuss Medicare. In December 2003 the President signed into law the first major improvement in Medicare since 1965.

or this:

Ready to read. President Bush helps a child with a reading assignment at Sullivant Elementary School in Columbus, Ohio.

The federal budget is far from a neutral statement of accounts. Of course it's an argument for the direction that the president wants to take the country. I've said before that it's a political document, and should be. But it is still a budget. It's not a campaign brochure. It's not an occasion to tout that the President "Listens, then acts" (even if there were the slightest reason to think that he or Congress listened to seniors in designing the Medicare bill), or reads to kids, or provides "good company" for hungry people!

The first Bush budget, for Fiscal Year 2003, was full of cartoons, including one depicting government as a bunch of Lilliputians tying down the American people. This one is full of these ridiculous campaign photos. No president in history has produced budgets like this, and there should be a little more outrage about this. Or, the Bush-Cheney Committee should just pay for the ads and maybe we'll reduce the deficit by 0.000003 percent.