Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Progressive Plutocrats Ltd

From the Department of Putting Lipstick on a Neoliberal Pig:

An exclusive cartel of wealthy Democratic donors imagine that the way to win back the presidency in 2020 is to back more progressive candidates who can attract the black and brown working class from the Sunbelt and the Southwest. Their abandonment of the deplorable white working class from the Rust Belt who went for Trump leaves a big vacuum that has to be filled. To that end, they held a private strategy session at a luxury Washington D.C. hotel last week. And with only a few token exceptions, the voters whom they hope to attract were themselves barred from the discussions. To make matters even more anti-democratic, journalists were barred from covering the discussions and not invited to partake of the pricey hors d'oevres.

 Kenneth Vogel of the New York Times was escorted out of the exclusive affair after he sneaked in anyway. Vogel has been covering the secretive Plutocratic Progressives for quite some time now, and they apparently aren't fond of him. In his most recent article about the billionaire-run Democracy Alliance and its offshoots, he described how the wealthy donors have quietly been co-opting such erstwhile grassroots organizations as Black Voters Matter, BlackPAC and Color of Change. Although the rabble and reporters were barred from the recent strategy session reception, a few carefully selected minority leaders were graciously allowed a seat at the gourmet table.

Vogel writes:
Since its creation in 2005, the Democracy Alliance has played a significant role in shaping the institutional ecosystem of the political left by steering more than $1.6 billion to recommended liberal and Democratic groups, according to an alliance official.It has helped to fund an array of new nonprofit groups dedicated to taking on Mr. Trump. Its ranks include some of the left’s most prolific donors, such as the billionaire investors George Soros and Tom Steyer. This past week’s meeting drew appearances from several Democratic politicians, including Representatives Adam B. Schiff of California and Pramila Jayapal of Washington, as well as Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Governor-elect Jared Polis of Colorado, a former Democracy Alliance donor.
 Schiff, who voted for the Iraq War and has also legislatively backed the US-assisted Saudi genocidal war on Yemen, is a member of the right-wing New Democrat Coalition, an offshoot of the Clintons' Democratic Leadership Council, which was instrumental in moving the party to the right as a way to join the arch-conservative and anti-labor Reagan Revolution. He is also at the forefront of the congressional #Russiagate investigation of Donald Trump and as such, is a ubiquitous rising political star on the cable shows.

Polis, the owner of a network of for-profit charter schools and the founder of ProFlowers, is also a member of the conservative New Democrats. As a  congressional representative, he was at the forefront of the Obama administration's punishing neoliberal Race to the Top agenda, which predicates government funding of public schools and teacher retention on the scores of standardized tests administered by private, for-profit corporations. Although he opposed the 2016 Colorado ballot initiative for single payer health care, his winning gubernatorial campaign included mealy-mouthed support for "some kind of universal health system" that would "expand access and reduce costs." In other words, he is not for single payer and not for Medicare For All.

If these guys are positioning themselves in what the New Democratic Alliance considers a big bold new "lefty" roster of candidates, then the Democrats have moved further right than even I had imagined.  

Just because the plutocratic donors of the Democratic Gentry Party see, as the New York Times headline announced, "a leftward path to beating Trump"  this does not mean they are embracing democratic socialism as an actual mode of governance. Far from it. In barring the press from their events, they're even less fond of the First Amendment than they are of the actual bodies of distressed people seeking physical entree to closed receptions guarded by private security forces.

Without a hint of irony, in fact, Tory Gavito of the NDA offshoot "Way to Win" said that "the concentration of young people, poor people and people of color who used to sit on the sidelines because Democrats have not inspired them will upend the map.” (if not the heavily armed gates of the fabulously wealthy themselves.)

Among the donors spotted by Vogel at the closed reception were Susan Pritzker, heiress of the Hyatt hotel chain, where employees have been striking against low wages and poor working conditions, and Leah Hunt, scion of the Texas oil dynasty.

As he pointed out in his Times article, while these billionaires are making a big show of criticizing the neoliberal deficit-hawk Clintonism espoused by Pete Peterson's Third Way think tank and centrist operatives like David Brock, their Democracy Alliance continues to give money to them. Just as Wall Street does, the Progressive Plutocrats are hedging their bets.

And while Vogel, in the politest Timesian way possible, is exposing them for who they are, his colleague Paul Krugman is spreading their message for them -- without, of course, ever mentioning them by name.

His latest column is worth quoting at length to fully appreciate its underlying Progressive Plutocrats Ltd message:
Even if they’re personally doing well, many voters in lagging regions have a sense of grievance, a feeling that they’re being disrespected by the glittering elites of superstar cities; this sense of grievance all too easily turns into racial antagonism. Conversely, however, the transformation of the G.O.P. into a white nationalist party alienates voters — even white voters — in those big, successful metropolitan areas. So the regional economic divide becomes a political chasm.
Can this chasm be bridged? Honestly, I doubt it.
We can and should do a lot to improve the lives of Americans in lagging regions. We can guarantee access to health care and raise their incomes with wage subsidies and other policies (in fact, the earned-income tax credit, which helps low-wage workers, already disproportionally benefits workers in low-income states).
But restoring these regions’ dynamism is much harder, because it means swimming against a powerful economic tide.
Economic grievance has turned into racial antagonism. Rust Belt voters who lost their jobs to corporate trade deals are not only resentful, they're racist. Therefore it's not worth it for the wealthy liberal oligarchs of the Gentry Party to even bother wooing them back into their Big Gilded Tent. The chasm is just too wide! Therefore, besides the Black and Brown voters of the South and West, the Gentries might also have a shot at wooing the upper class white Republicans from the Coasts by using the wedge issue of Trump, rather than promising to improve people's lives in any meaningful way.

 But still, to show what a good liberal he is, Krugman does deign to offer the Laggards "access to health care"  - which is plutocrat-speak for No Medicare For All, Not Ever, No Way.  And as usual, he doesn't explore the reasons why these regions became so distressed in the first place. If it's not those mysterious Headwinds, it's the Powerful Economic Tide which keeps washing over people with no cruel policy decisions by the ruling class racketeers of the Duopoly having had anything to do with it.

Stuff just happens. Too bad, so sad. And so extremely, sickeningly smug.

My (not well-received) published response to Krugman:
"Guaranteeing access to health care" is not the same thing as guaranteed, universal, single payer health care. And the vast majority of Americans (70%) who now support Medicare for All know it. They even include those "deplorable" Rust Belt voters who refused to come out for Hillary Clinton, despite many having cast their votes for Barack Obama in 2012. Clinton announced on the campaign trail, in no uncertain terms, that single payer "will never, ever come to pass."
Nothing attracts desperate people like telling them they'll just have to "shop around" each year for ever more restrictive, expensive private insurance. And even if they do scrape together the premiums, there's no guarantee that they'll be able to afford the co-pays and deductibles, which can reach thousands of dollars annually. As it is, 63% of us don't even have $250 in savings.
It was George Bush who once snarkily observed: "I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room."
Sure, and then you get an exorbitant bill. You can still go bankrupt if you get sick or hurt, even if you do have insurance. And 30 million Americans still don't.
Democrats will have stop sounding like Republicans if they want to win hearts, minds and elections. Marketing wonkish incremental policy proposals didn't work in 2016, and it won't work in 2020. There was a reason that many incumbent Dems lost this month, and it wasn't because they were too progressive or radical.
 

5 comments:

  1. Excellent response, Karen, to the Times's economist of the elites, for the elites and by the elites (and would-be elites). Let's hope Krugman reads it.

    Reading Krugman's essay, I detect a change in terminology for the lost sheep of the heartland. They are no longer 'deplorables'; they are 'laggards.'

    As with 'deplorables' the blame for their state points back to them. 'Laggards' by definition can't keep up after they lose their jobs, their homes, their schools, their doctors, their pharmacists. Such hebetudinous types turn their surroundings into "lagging regions." How subnormal they appear, as seen from a penthouse on 9th Avenue.

    I have begun to realize, thanks to intellectuals like Paul Krugman, that we are not all in this together on Spaceship Earth. The crème de la crème of the human race (i.e., the superrich) will engineer some kind of spacewalk away from Spaceship Earth and the Sixth Extinction. By the end of this century, as the oceans turn to hydrochloric acid and the continents to deserts, astronomers will have discovered a lush planet, not too many light years away, for billionaires to make their getaway, most likely on an Elon Musk rocket ship. May they take the NY Times with them.

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  2. Thanks, Jay.

    The top-rated comments were similarly condescending at best, hostile at worst. These otherwise intelligent people don't seem to realize that they're being manipulated via the neoliberal ruling class's "divide and conquer" just as effectively as Trump manipulates his own fans into hating thy neighbor as thyself. Especially depressing was when Krugman, without evidence, posited that the offshoot of economic anxiety is racism. If he and they think that name-calling Trump voters rather than trying to engage with them will win them votes, they have another think coming. As I have written before, I find myself more in empathy with the "deplorables" every time I read stuff like this, no matter how laggardly they may be. The biggest threat to neoliberals is class solidarity. Plus, I don't believe that the Gentry Party cares whether they win or not. They want to position themselves as noble outsiders and rake in the cash as they bitch and moan and flail.

    A book I highly recommend, as a counterweight to Krugman, is Jefferson Cowie's "Stayin' Alive"- it's about the plutocratic war on the labor movement. Once upon a time, when there were still unions in the Rust Belt, Blacks and Whites pretty much got along, because they were unified against the bosses. The Civil Rights movement spawned the right wing backlash, co-opted if not created by Nixon and later Reagan. So this whole racism trope is not only false, it's disgustingly false.

    Are many Trump fans racist? Of course. But to use racism as a cudgel is racist in and of itself, in my view.

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  3. The NY Times, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the New York Review of Books and other such publications cater to the well-off with a college degree or more, of whom there are still enough to support such publications, at least the digital versions. As was said above, the other half (or is it more like 4/5ths?) who don't subscribe to these front line publications, is having lots of trouble just stayin' alive. Cue the BeeGees.

    I come not with book offerings or better mag suggestions, but films, films that move at a more human pace than we're accustomed to, ever since computers took over from the men in gray flannel suits. Here are two films that might help us get back to everyday normal thinking about why we're here, and what to do while we're here, other than to make lots of money or simply survive.

    The first film is "Patterson," a couple of years old but it should not be that difficult to find. Those who hate it say nothing happens as it moves at a glacial pace. Wrong!

    A more recent film (available on Netflix) that goes against the grain of the usual Oscar picks is "Certain Women." I'd keep an eye on its director as a real helpmate in the feminist cause. As one of my un-hip male teachers used to say every once in a while, "It makes you think"––a quaint practice that seems to be an early casualty of the Sixth Extinction.

    Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving, Yanks. You really ought to think about moving the date of your Thanksgiving closer to Canada's (October 8 this year). Lots better weather for travel in early October, even up here. And you'll have much more than a month to decompress (after the rough exchange of political views over turkey) and gird your loins in preparation for the joyful trials of Christmas.

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  4. I applaud your determination to take the NY Times to task. Nowadays I have to turn wifi off on my phone and send my comments in via mobile as it appears I'm blocked at the IP address level. I suppose too many comments directed at the inane Charles Blow, themed usually on Charles' suspect writing ability and questioning how his demagoguery is any different than Trump's. And I suppose my pointing out to them that Michelle Goldberg is a shrieking idiot makes them hate themselves because they know I'm right. Not sure why I keep sending them the better part of twenty bucks every month but they do have a very good cooking app.

    Anyway, I enjoy your blog, not sure we're always on the same page but that's what makes it interesting.

    Thanks.

    David Peers

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  5. When we consider that the cult of Trumpism has ripped the veil off of the GOP and shown us their true motivations (greed, racism, and assorted hatreds) and that they are interested in looting rather than governing, when we consider that the Democrats are captured by neoliberalism, what are we left with?

    It is important to have voices documenting this as Karen does, but why don't the rest of us realize that resistance is futile, that we will be assimilated? What keeps us going?

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