We Need A New New Deal
I believe the first 21 months of Democratic control of the Executive and Legislative branches of the federal government has been a missed opportunity, and an enormous one.
When Obama and the new congress took office, they had a country which was staring terrified into the abyss, angry at the oligarchs who created that abyss, and ready to be led in a new direction by the soaring rhetoric of Hope from their new president. The Reagan/Gingrich-Era conservative revolution was about played out, and people were ready for a change.
This was a shining, golden opportunity for a charismatic Democratic leader to begin a New Era in American political life. The story the Right had been selling for decades – that if only government got out of the way of business, it would boom and benefit everyone – was now easy to dismiss as the fairy tale it was: Between 1980 and 2010, the productivity of the average America worker increased by over 40%, while the median wage barely budged. All the benefit of those productivity increases went to the top of the wealth ladder, and stayed there. People were actually talking about things in just those terms.
I think part of the reason the 2008 presidential election went the way it did was that the economic crisis that fall stirred a cultural memory in the non-rich ground troops of the culture warriors of the right: a memory of which party had righted things and returned economic stability to the country the last time things had gone terribly wrong.
FDR, from his acceptance speech at the 1936 Democratic Convention:
An old English judge once said: ‘Necessitous men are not free men.’ Liberty requires opportunity to make a living-a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.
For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor-other people’s lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.
Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of government. The collapse of 1929 showed up the despotism for what it was. The election of 1932 was the people’s mandate to end it. Under that mandate it is being ended.
The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody’s business. They granted that the government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live.
Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.
These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the overprivileged alike.
We need a new New Deal. We need vastly higher taxes on the wealthy, and we need to use the money from those tax revenues to finance a WPA for the 21st Century. We need to give ordinary workers a far greater say in how our economy is organized, and in how the goods of economic activity are distributed. The elites have so gamed the system in their favor that they have begun killing the golden-goose working and middle classes. They need to be restrained; the oligarchy needs to be gravely inconvenienced, in order to save the system itself.
I’ve read a fair amount of history. These things either happen relatively nicely through reform; or, eventually the people being reamed will figure out — despite the propaganda, beamed from every form of media, pointing the blame elsewhere — just who it is that has been doing the reaming, and then those being reamed will come for them in a less kindly way.
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Thomas Frank (author of What’s the Matter With Kansas and other books) is a hero of mine. He remarked in a review of hack Joe Klein’s book of a couple years back, Politics Lost:
This is precisely what is called for in the present environment – and this is precisely what the oligarchy is spending millions of dollars to prevent from being discussed.
I agree with everything you’ve written, Matt, but Obama is no FDR and his party is not the party of the 1930s. It is the American equivalent of “New Labour,” and it shares “New Labour’s” contempt for those who have not risen through an academic or a professional meritocracy.
American society is, in fact, NOT in the same position, financially and economically, as it was in the 1929 depression; it is, instead, at the point of a much more serious transition, between one kind of an economy and another, and the situation is much more reminiscent of the recessions of the 1880s and 1890s, when the nation went from being an agricultural to an industrial society. At that time, what saved the country from impoverishment was enormous collaboration, at the behest of the “Progressive” movements of both the Democratic and Republican parties, between government and private industry. Then the railroads and steel foundries were built, the foundations of the telecommunications systems were put in place and the country became–unfortunately–a vast military power.
Now, the challenge is to build rapid rail transport between urban hubs all over the nation, to stop the hemorraging of financial assets into improvident housing schemes in the suburbs and to concentrate populations in cities, where they can be more efficiently heated, cooled and schooled, etc. (Too many people are trying to build too many McMansions they can’t pay for in suburbs; America can’t afford, anymore, to have 65% of its population as non-renters and fuel-burning commuters.) We must find a way to provide equitable health services, especially to the young (and Obama’s health scheme won’t do it, unless it’s revised). We must rebuild and renovate schools, bridges, dams, interstate highways, etc. We must have vehicles that are fuel-efficient. And on and on…
There are MILLIONS of jobs to be created through these projects, and many entrepreneurs who could benefit from them. It’s not capitalism that stands to lose from such politico-economic schemes, but, rather, inefficient, sluggish and non-innovative business firms that don’t wish to adapt, and the threat of descending into banana-republic and Third World chaos is the EQUAL of the threat of World War II, when the corporations didn’t bitch about collaborating with government in order to achieve “victory”. Obama had his opportunity–especially during his first hundred days–to do what Roosevelt did and galvanize the nation into meeting the challenges facing it. Instead, he basically sold out to the “banksters,” exactly as Tony Blair and Herbert Hoover would have done. His financial “reforms” allowed the banksters and corporate leaders to hold onto the taxpayers’ money and not pass much of it along in small business loans, or loans to rehire and re-train the low-skilled unemployed.
Prediction: when the history of this era is written, and after the “revolutionary fascists” have come to power with THEIR solutions to the crises facing this “post-industrial,” “post-modern” society, Obama will be seen for what he is: a weak-kneed, feckless politician, unprepared by experience to be a statesman, and lacking the serene self-confidence required to stand up to entrenched economic interests that genuine American aristocrats like Roosevelt and Kennedy had, by virtue of their birthright. Obama, like Richard Nixon, like LBJ, wants to be “accepted” by the economic royalists; he doesn’t have sufficient self-confidence or assetiveness to discipline them or lead them.
We should have elected Hillary; at least she would have understood her adversaries, and their utter devotion to social Darwinism as a creed–as a part of that dumbed-down Calvinism Morning’s Minion likes to right about regularly–from the moment she took office.
Between 1980 and 2010, the productivity of the average America worker increased by over 40%, while the median wage barely budged. All the benefit of those productivity increases went to the top of the wealth ladder, and stayed there.
Actually the 40% went to pay for employee health care benefits.
One thing about politicians is that they are very concerned about keeping their jobs. If a Democratic politician could stave off defeat by engaging in a little class warfare rhetoric or by calling for “the construction of public housing, an increase in the minimum wage, expansion of Social Security, a national health-care program and the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act” then they would have long since done so.
If Democrats don’t engage in class warfare rhetoric it’s because voters don’t want to hear it. If they don’t propose huge leftwing expansions of government it’s because voters don’t want that. Look at the election results over the past two years: Canada, the UK, India, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands. In each case, parties that advocated free markets and fiscal restraint did well; parties that advocated leftwing progressivism did poorly. Next week you’ll see the same effect here.
I’m not saying you have to be happy about this. The realization that most people do not support the policies you believe in and think are best for the country can be a very bitter experience. But it’s reality.
If Democrats don’t engage in class warfare rhetoric it’s because voters don’t want to hear it.
And you know this how? Actually, I think it’s because the plutocrats who finance both parties won’t allow them to be exposed to it. To steal a line from PJ O’Rourke: the Republicans worship Satan, and the Democrats want to go to hell because it’s warm there in the winter.
No, BA: the voters virtually never hear a case for it because the oligarchs control what they hear and shape the discussion in profound ways. A significant fraction of Americans thinks Obama is a “socialist”, possibly Muslim, and may have been born in Kenya. Wherever did they get those ideas, BA? Did they, say, go to the library and discover them in the reference section? No? Then where did they “learn” those loony “facts” about him?
[P]arties that advocated leftwing progressivism did poorly. Next week you’ll see the same effect here.
Yes, BA…that’s the narrative the oligarchy is pushing (I’ve asked you this before, but are they paying you a retainer to advocate for their interests, or is your work here pro-bono?). The Dems will suffer losses for rescuing the oligarchs while not doing nearly enough for ordinary Joes. It’s not that they are too “leftist” – actually, quite the opposite. No: it is that they are not answering the cultural populism of the Republicans with the economic populism that they rode to success in the New Deal years.
The hands-off approach to the economy you tirelessly advocate for has always had one result, every time it has been tried since industrialization commenced in earnest: the relentless concentration of wealth (and thus, power) in the hands of a smaller and smaller slice of rich people at the top of the heap. This always destabilizes society (and, worth mentioning, the economy itself).
Answer me this, Blackadder: Given the tendency of wealth and power to concentrate at the top in capitalism, what ought to be done to counter that? I predict that the gist of your answer, once we peel away the varnish, will amount to “whatever can be done around the margins, as long as no oligarch is inconvenienced in any way.”
I’m not saying you have to be happy about this. The realization that most people do not support the policies you believe in and think are best for the country can be a very bitter experience. But it’s reality.
BA – That is so…just…you. Thanks for providing me with a head-shaking chuckle.
If Democrats don’t engage in class warfare rhetoric it’s because voters don’t want to hear it.
And you know this how?
My initial comment gave two reasons for believing this: 1) politicians are very good at looking out for their own self-interest, so if voters would respond to that rhetoric Democrats would provide it; and 2) in elections around the global voters picked more market oriented parties over parties advocating left-wing policies.
Actually, I think it’s because the plutocrats who finance both parties won’t allow them to be exposed to it.
The problem with this theory is that you see the same thing (voters rejecting left-wing parties in favor of more market oriented parties) in Sweden. Is the problem in Sweden that people just don’t get exposed to left-wing ideas because Swedish plutocrats somehow prevent this? That doesn’t seem plausible.
A significant fraction of Americans thinks Obama is a “socialist”, possibly Muslim, and may have been born in Kenya. Wherever did they get those ideas, BA?
As I recall the born in Kenya thing was started by some Hillary supporters. Seriously, though, is it really your view that if Obama were to start talking like Harry Truman that *fewer* people would think he is a socialist?
It’s not that they are too “leftist” – actually, quite the opposite.
This is pretty much what a lot of conservatives have talked themselves into thinking about 2006 and 2008. The only reason Republicans lost in those years is because they weren’t right-wing enough.
Politics is a wonderful thing. Not only is our side the repository of all truth and justice, but there is a 100% overlap between political principles and political popularity. If our party fairs badly at the polls, it can only be because the party has strayed from its principles or because people have had their minds clouded by evil evil oligarchs like George Soros, er, the Koch brothers.
Answer me this, Blackadder: Given the tendency of wealth and power to concentrate at the top in capitalism, what ought to be done to counter that?
I reject your premise that capitalism leads to “concentration of wealth (and thus, power) in the hands of a smaller and smaller slice of rich people at the top of the heap.” The tendency under capitalism has been for everyone to be made better off.
The tendency under capitalism has been for everyone to be made better off.
BA – C’mon, that’s a transparent evasion: Industrial capitalism has always, absent some counter-balancing force, concentrated wealth at the top. This is a commonplace of political economics – do you really know nothing of this?
Seriously, though, is it really your view that if Obama were to start talking like Harry Truman that *fewer* people would think he is a socialist?
Well, firstly the propagandists for our Reptilian Corporate Masters will make that claim of anyone who threatens their interests; and secondly Truman wasn’t within a 5-hour plane ride of being a socialist. He and the New Dealers wanted to restrain capitalism’s worst tendencies in order to save it, not out of some desire to destroy it.
[P]oliticians are very good at looking out for their own self-interest, so if voters would respond to that rhetoric Democrats would provide it.
And who would finance the ads to inform the voters about this theoretical candidate’s proposals? Alan Grayson, who is, for all his faults, a fiery populist in the mold of Harry Truman, has an opponent who is benefiting from roughly a fifth of all private money being spent on ads on behalf of Republican congressional candidates. The message is clear: oppose Our Reptilian Corporate Masters, and They Will Bury You With Money. (Speaking of which, the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling was a silver-platter gift for our Reptilian Corporate Masters. Since money = speech, they finally found a way of shouting down their inferiors in a way that offers their inferiors no recourse: if the poor dears can’t afford to counter our ads with their gauche bleatings about fairness, well, it’s their bad luck for being born in the lower classes.)
By the way, why is it only called Class Warfare when we fight back?
Blackadder really doesn’t understand what the 18th century economic theory developed in opposition to mercantilism and called “capitalism” actually IS. He mistakes the “corporatism” he constantly advocates as Adam Smith’s economic theory. Actually, Adam Smith himself wanted an “enlightened despot” to regulate to ensure a “even playing field,” as we call it today, and to help his new system to avoid the monopolism that he knew it would constantly threaten to descend into. In France, these capitalist theorists were called “physiocrats,” and they were hand-in-glove with the monarchy, so long as it would behave in an “enlightened,” “philosophic” way; needless to say, they wouldn’t because at heart they, like blackadder and his ilk, actually cared more for one certain entrenched social class than they did for whatever economic justice could be furnished by any system of absolute opportunity of economic opportunity. Blackadder, like all the plutocrats whose rule over the American economy he supports, would have absolutely NO problem with enormous government expenditures–no matter how much national debt were incurred–if the nation were at war (and if all that red ink enriched inefficient corporate monopolies). The tragedy is that he and the fools who are about to win at the polls don’t realize that America IS “at war”–with her own inevitable decline, if her citizens don’t come to understand that the threat posed by the transition into another type of economy and another type of physical environment is a GREATER one than World War II.
First of all, it is worth saying that what saved the global capitalist economy during the Great Depression was world war, and not the New Deal. The only effective Keynesianism is military Keynesianism.. Obliterating half of Europe and forcing the working class to save and produce at lower wages was what kick started captialism into what Mandel would call a long wave of economic expansion. This began to stall in the late 1960′s, and what is going on now is really the return of the inevitable.
That being said, the other missing component here is talk of the class struggle. The most naive position is that of thinking that when the bourgeoisie benefits, everyone benefits. Everyone benefits when the class struggle in the streets yanks these benefits out of capitalism’s clenched hands. How was the right to strike won? The 40 hour week? How was Jim Crow ended? By the right sort of capitalist concluding that these things needed to be conceded because it would look bad if they weren’t? Not bloody likely.
That is the tragic farce of the Tea Party in general: it is a simulacrum of struggle funded by finance capital to criticize the corruption of finance capital, only to lead the public back into the cage of finance capital. If anything, the right wing movements in Europe are doing exactly the same thing: blame the immigrant, blame the Muslim, oh, the banks are being bailed out with your money… nothing to see here, we’re not the real problem.
The underside of this is what is NOT being said. Tea Partiers can get away with rhetoric of resorting to violence if their demands are not met. Could you imagine a mass movement in the ghetto saying some of the things the Tea Partiers say? The Black Panthers in the 1960′s were mainly about opening soup kitchens, and only occasionally flashed rifles in spectacles of guerrilla theater, and they still were hunted down and killed by the FBI. The MOVE black nationalists in Philadelphia were interpreted as being so dangerous that an entire city block was blown up to make sure that they were dead. And this is not even to speak about the violence against labor organizers in the 1930′s. Tea Partiers are tolerated because they are the clowns of the capitalist system: they are amusement for those in power because their borderline violent rhetoric leads people back to the very same things that caused the crisis in the first place: more market, more inequality, more economic and social chaos. If anything, the real tragedy is that a popular Left is nowhere to be found, and that is perhaps the greatest success of the ruling class at this point. They are laughing all the way to their bailed-out bank.
First of all, it is worth saying that what saved the global capitalist economy during the Great Depression was world war, and not the New Deal. The only effective Keynesianism is military Keynesianism..
Well, sort of. I would say it is more true (and more to the point of this post) that massive problems call for massive solutions. The depth of the great depression meant that the solution had to be equally massive. World war II did the trick, yes: but a new deal on steroids would have done the same thing.
The basic situation is this: Reagan and the Oligarchy finally, after 40 years of trying, finally got what they wanted; a situation where the John Galts of the world got all the benefits of economic growth, and the rest of us got no share of the increased wealth of the 30 years since. All the benefit went to the top. The consequence has been, rising wages have gone away, so that the only way for most people to provide the increasing purchasing power that keeps the economy growing is to take on more debt. The limits of that temporary “solution” can be observed in the current economic statistics. (Funny how we forget that the word “unsustainable” means what it says, huh?)
What the oligarchy wants is a docile, low-wage workforce, distracted by Professional Wrestling and Fox News culture-warring and be-grateful-you-weren’t-born-black racism and all the rest. The government acting on behalf of ordinary people is portrayed as “socialism” which is kind of like what Stalin was and he killed millions and pay no attention to the sensation you have of being raped just relax it’ll hurt less.
The oligarchy finally squared the circle of how to sell economic slavery to the plebes, and the Democrats did precious little to stop them. Both parties are going to reap the whirlwind of consequences of this abject betrayal; the Republicans because This Is Who They Are, and the Democrats because they failed their historic mission of restraining the oligarchy.
What’s needed is truly massive government stimulation of demand; a vast WPA whose task will be to not only get the unemployed working again, but also to go further and initiate a chronic labor shortage in order to get the bottom 80% of the workforce some bargaining power when they come to the table to negotiate a price for their labor.
What’s needed is repeal of Taft-Hartley, and strengthening of pro-labor legislation.
The heartless, cynical manipulation of workers by the Oligarchy is something they will hear about eventually: either through reform of the system (the nice way of doing it) or by the collapse of the system, revolution and violence, or, if they avoid both of those, then by the realization, at the time of their judgment, that Hell Is Forever.
Industrial capitalism has always, absent some counter-balancing force, concentrated wealth at the top.
This is a much longer conversation, and since it is tangential to my point I would suggest we leave it for another time.
Truman wasn’t within a 5-hour plane ride of being a socialist.
The question isn’t whether Truman was a socialist. The question is whether a Democrat who talked like Truman talked today would be considered a socialist by more or less people than think Obama is a socialist. My view is that the more a candidate uses class warfare rhetoric and advocates left-wing policies, the more people will think he is a socialist. Do you disagree? If so, why?
Alan Grayson, who is, for all his faults, a fiery populist in the mold of Harry Truman, has an opponent who is benefiting from roughly a fifth of all private money being spent on ads on behalf of Republican congressional candidates.
I don’t know where you heard this, but if you look at OpenSecrets.org, you’ll see that Grayson has outspent his Republican opponent by about 4 to 1. If you include outside spending it’s still more than 3 to 1. So it’s not the case that Grayson just can’t get his message out because he doesn’t have money to run ads.
Nevertheless, he is likely to lose his race. Similarly, unions spent more than $10 million in support of a more progressive candidate against Blanche Lincoln in the Democratic primary this year (they could do this, btw, because of the Citizens United decision). They lost.
So it’s not a matter of progressives losing because our “Reptilian Corporate Masters” have more money to spend. All the money in the world can’t ensure the election of a candidate if voters don’t support what they stand for (just ask Meg Whitman, or, for that matter, Alan Grayson).
The heartless, cynical manipulation of workers by the Oligarchy is something they will hear about eventually: either through reform of the system (the nice way of doing it) or by the collapse of the system, revolution and violence, or, if they avoid both of those, then by the realization, at the time of their judgment, that Hell Is Forever.
It seems to me that what you’re suggesting is simply replacing one system with inequalities (markets) and replacing it with another system with equally striking inequalities (unions and larger government). There are problems with both systems; papering over the difficulties with one and castigating the others isn’t very effective advocacy, particularly when there is strong evidence that unions and government control of industry create inefficiencies that make everyone – rich or poor, but especially the poor – worse off in the end (see, e.g. the automobile industry or the education industry). Every structure that people devise creates inequalities; your utopia sounds like a dystopia to me. Governments and unions are not inhabited by a better class of people than corporations; the difference between the two is that bad corporations are more easily killed off than bad governments or bad unions.
Apocalyptic rhetoric about the insidious they who are engaged in a coordinated effort to manipulate workers and who will soon receive their just deserts does little to advance your cause. There are villains in this world of ours; but they are not as easy to identify as your worldview appears to demand.
It seems to me that what you’re suggesting is simply replacing one system with inequalities (markets) and replacing it with another system with equally striking inequalities (unions and larger government).
No; what I’m proposing is a system where the government steps in to restrain capitalism’s worst tendencies, and thus ultimately save it from itself.
there is strong evidence that unions and government control of industry create inefficiencies that make everyone – rich or poor, but especially the poor – worse off in the end (see, e.g. the automobile industry or the education industry).
I’m not proposing “government control of industry,” but more just reviving and expanding the New Deal. The evidence of history is pretty persuasive that the New Dealers’ approach was effective. Look at the period 1945 to 1980; there was a broad and stable middle class, strong unions and high marginal tax rates. This was not a coincidence.
Every structure that people devise creates inequalities; your utopia sounds like a dystopia to me. Governments and unions are not inhabited by a better class of people than corporations; the difference between the two is that bad corporations are more easily killed off than bad governments or bad unions.
I’m not proposing a “utopia” – just a revival of the New Dealer’s approach to public policy. Our government is accountable to “we the people.” Corporations are accountable to rich shareholders. Again, I want the government to restrain corporations’ worst tendencies and act as a counterweight to their power.
Thank you, Matt. You’ve defined it squarely. My prediction is a gradual implosion of the system, decline of the United States into a senile, doddering dinasaur of “great power,” ultimately followed by a fascist “night of the long knives” and coup d’etat which will bring a “leader” to power who will do everything you propose but accompany it with suppression of all the “liberal” elements of society (you know, the uppity women, the queers, the “pointy-headed” academics, etc. who “caused the problems in the first place”). This is why I’ve left the “land of the free and home of the brave,” and ain’t ever gonna’ be comin’ back.” I read history, and know that history–especially American history–repeats itself as bloody farce.
No, bad corporations are NOT “more easily killed off than bad governments and bad unions,” and, when they do get “killed off,” they frequently take with them all their employees, all their investors and all those they’ve promised pensions to. Look at the broken-down American car industries, financial institutions, mines and steel foundaries. You call them competitive? You call what they’re doing “capitalism”–playing on AN EVEN PLAYING FIELD? You know very well that they’re corporate monopolies protected by governments, State, local and Federal. You right-wing nut-jobs know very well that what you’re “protecting” isn’t “free-market, entrepreneur capitalism,” but, rather, a plutocratic system designed to “protect” only the “ownership class.”
digby – oh the drama of it all – come on get real while this country like most has many flaws compared to most this is heaven.
Governments and unions are not inhabited by a better class of people than corporations;
True. That is why the Church has so long and firmly favored a role for all three in economic questions. As one economist once exclaimed to me, “Tripartism — yeah, that’s something the Catholic Bishops keep pushing.”
While I think he said it to be dismissive, he is right. Here in the US, the Catholic Bishops have been the leading proponent of Tripartism, giving business, workers and consumers a voice in economic decisions.
The evidence of history is pretty persuasive that the New Dealers’ approach was effective. Look at the period 1945 to 1980; there was a broad and stable middle class, strong unions and high marginal tax rates. This was not a coincidence.
I think you are confusing correlation with causation. History, as such, simply records that the 1950′s and 1960′s (less so the 1970′s) were times of economic prosperity in the United States. You have observed that the middle class flourished during these time periods and attributed it to strong unions and high marginal tax rates. However, there is little evidence that unions and high marginal tax rates were the cause of American prosperity during this time period, rather than larger macroeconomic forces (like the destruction of most of the world’s manufacturing capacity during World War II, giving U.S. manufacturing an enormous head start, or the availability of a large market of young employees and consumers from the Baby Boom generation). Everyone wants economic prosperity; but there is little evidence that unions and high marginal tax rates are what deliver it (even if they receive more criticism than they should from certain sections of the right).
However, there is little evidence that unions and high marginal tax rates were the cause of American prosperity during this time period, rather than larger macroeconomic forces (like the destruction of most of the world’s manufacturing capacity during World War II, giving U.S. manufacturing an enormous head start, or the availability of a large market of young employees and consumers from the Baby Boom generation).
Unions meant more bargaining power for workers, which meant a bigger slice of the pie, which meant they could afford to buy more stuff, which kept the economy booming. Nice “virtuous cycle.” High marginal tax rates meant less incentive to give yourself five hundred million dollar bonuses, which meant capitalists had to find some other use for their company’s money, such as reinvesting in their companies, which meant competitive advantages, which meant higher pay, etc.
The thing to remember is that the economy not only boomed, but that the boom was widely shared.
I agree with everything you’ve written, Matt, but Obama is no FDR and his party is not the party of the 1930s. It is the American equivalent of “New Labour,”
Haley Barbour joked on Meet the Press, “I’m having a hard time imagining who could be to the LEFT of President Obama.”
The majority of Americans think that the “New Labour” Democratic party a la Clinton and Obama is liiibbbrul. They have not seen or heard from a truly populist Democrat.
Hence, the calls for Dean and Feingold 2012.
See: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44667.html