"Having no agenda when voters face real problems is a bad omen for incumbents" (Matt Stoller)

"People who run government should, at some level, want to govern. They should want to use the power of a democratic channel to solve the nation's problems. In the past 10 years, seeking to govern boldly has been frowned upon -- seen as naive or impossible.

"The result has been political and financial chaos, marked by periods of placid inactivity. It looks like our political leaders could well be seeking this, even as the public needs solutions."

-- Matt Stoller, in "At least Weiner was
a distraction," in Politico

by Ken

In this interesting Politico op-ed (I guess Politico is happy to have progressive content as long as it's pounding on Democrats), Matt Stoller takes off from the point that Weinergate is regretted as having been a "distraction."

"It's worth asking." he says, "how was Weiner a distraction? What is the Democratic agenda he was pulling voters away from?" And he concludes, "The simple fact is: There's no governing agenda being debated. So Weiner wasn't a distraction -- more like an in-flight soft-core movie in between election jockeying by a bored political class."

Of course Weinergate wasn't a distraction from dealing with our problems. It was a distraction from having to address all the problems that aren't being addressed by Beltway bigwigs except the marauding House Republicans, who aren't actually trying to address those problems either but have made them a handy cover for their blitzkrieg to transform the country into the extreme-right-wing hellhole of their wet dreams. But Matt probably wouldn't accept that as an excuse. "People who run government should, at some level, want to govern," he writes. "They should want to use the power of a democratic channel to solve the nation's problems."

He's not encouraged by what he's hearing from a leading candidate to replace departing chief White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, Rebecca Blank, "a 'pragmatic progressive' economist, which apparently means someone who feels bad about the damage caused by the problems they aren't trying to fix."

"Could this economy take off again?" Blank said recently in the National Journal. "The answer is absolutely yes. If you look at corporate profits, if you look at consumer balance sheets [improving] … gas prices are falling. I guess I understand the reason to say, 'Let's see if this economy can do it on its own.'"

On its own? Really? Tell this to the more than 9 percent currently unemployed.

The Right, of course, has been anything but shy about its "solutions," and it doesn't seem to matter that they aren't solutions. At least they're saying something, and thanks to inept Democratic ineptitude, they've succeeded in wrapping themselves in the mantle of "fiscal prudence," slashing horrendously wasteful government spending.

You'd think that even on the crassest level of political expediency, the administration would feel the need to have something to say to the public. Matt points out that before Weinergate the Dems were getting a certain amount of mileage beating up on Paul Ryan's assault on Social Security, which managed to be not only lousy policy but dreadful politics. But that's not exactly the same thing as having a political agenda.

As Howie has reported here extensively, in the days when Master Rahm Emanuel was running the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, candidates who hoped to receive DCCC support were somewhere between encouraged and coerced to take no positions on any issues that might be judged in any way controversial, the thinking (for want of a better word) being that that could only cost support and votes. As far as I know, that "philosophy" has been retained in all essentials by the Master's DCCC successors.

It's a dreadful strategy, destructive not just of soul but of political future. It depends, obviously, on the other guys beating themselves, and on a really primitive level, there's some logic to it, when you consider who and what the other guys are. But eventually the public sort of figures out when it's being filmflammed, or at least stonewalled. Now, it turns out, the Master's philosophy is being applied, not just to campaigning, but to governing.

Here's Matt again:

In 2006, 2008 and 2010, incumbents had no answers for voters who wanted their problems solved. I remember watching [Bill] Clinton give a speech in late 2010, stumping for candidates before the Democratic immolation. Say what you will about the absurdity of his alleged fury toward Weiner, the man can give a stump speech.

Yet, after a half-hour, I still couldn't figure out just what Clinton's reason was for supporting the Democrats. There was something about student loans, and how it was the responsible thing to vote for bailouts. The rest was fuzzy.

Just what would congressional Democrats deliver in 2010 if reelected? They couldn't answer that question for voters. It looked like Democrats in 2009 and 2010 delivered foreclosures and unemployment -- so it's not surprising the public chose another path.

The subtext of 2010 was that Democrats had nothing to run on -- no popular accomplishments, and no agenda for 2011. The GOP faced a similar problem in 2006 and 2008 -- and they also met the voters' wrath. Having no agenda when voters face real problems is a bad omen for incumbents.


There's an obvious problem in that there isn't a whole lot of policy agreement among the political ranks disarrayed against the Right. Still --

[I]t's now 18 months since significant job destruction from the Great Recession ended. What has the Obama administration done?

According to the Federal Reserve's Flow of Funds, the first quarter of 2011 saw the destruction of roughly $270 billion more in homeowner equity. That's wealth gone from consumers -- money that can't and won't be spent. The health care bill's main provisions don't kick in until after 2012, and Dodd-Frank's rule-making is still barely off the ground.

Though the 2012 presidential election cycle is likely to have different contours than the midterms, the administration faces the same questions. What are they considering doing about jobs? What have they delivered?

If Blank is any indication, the plan is hope.

Matt suggests "at least three basic ways the administration could shift this dynamic":

One, the solution most cited now, is to use the government's control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to spark a refinancing boom, adding dramatically to consumer purchasing power. These entities could change the net present value test to allow more loan modifications, write-down debt or simply refinance loans with high loan-to-value ratios.

If the administration pushed bank regulators to account for the value of mortgages and home equity lines of credit now on their books, the write-downs would make good commercial sense as well as helping the economy.

The second solution would be to use government power to create jobs. For one example, the administration could dub the Chinese government a currency manipulator and spark domestic manufacturing by shifting our terms of trade.

It's not as if the government is powerless. Though creativity, boldness and wisdom might be required to find the appropriate tools, I'm sure that those who have found the legal authority to attack Libya without congressional authorization could tackle our domestic problems.

Third, the Obama administration could take legislation to create jobs -- an infrastructure bank, or a Works Progress Administration -- and use a barnstorming tour to pressure Congress to go along.

It's not uncommon for presidents to use the bully pulpit to soften congressional opposition -- Ronald Reagan did it regularly. President Barack Obama hasn't done this, but there's no reason his administration couldn't.

By now it's not exactly news that Barack Obama isn't the FDR type -- someone with a palpable sense of crisis, determined to think creatively and throw whatever he could at the crisis -- the country needed at this point in time. And we know by now that when he thinks and speaks, his primary constituency is always the moneyed elites. But again, even on that crassest political level, doesn't he need to have something to say to the rest of the American people?

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