Supporting Aggressive Progressives for Very High-Leverage Offices

Legal scholar, activist, and Berniecrat Zephyr Teachout shocked the NY and the country when she came close to defeating Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for governor of New York. Now she's running for Attorney General. And she plans to sue Donald Trump over his conflict of interest as a business man. Zephyr also talks about neoliberalism, why the Dems need to be on offense, not defense, and why "it's time for a new 21st century trust-busting." (The Teachout interview starts at 1:50.)

by Gaius Publius

But at my back I always hear
Time's wingéd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
–Andrew Marvell on the climate crisis

A high-leverage bet is one that risks little for great gain with very favorable odds of success. That combination — small risk, great reward, favorable odds — happens almost none of the time. Either the market sets the reward appropriate to the risk (if you're risking little with favorable odds, the reward won't be much) or sets the odds appropriate to the gain (if you want a great reward with very little risk, the odds will be very much against you). In these instances, in other words, markets are generally efficient.

But not always. When it looked like Chrysler Corporation would go bankrupt in the late 1970s, its bonds were so undesirable, priced so cheaply, that they paid something like 25% interest per year. If you thought it more than likely that the U.S. government would bail them out — if you thought, contrary to the market, that the risk of bankruptcy was actually very low — you would have bought them at a very low cost and made a lot of money.

The government indeed bailed them out — how could it not? Chrysler was one of the "big three" American automakers, a national symbol — and the "bet" turned a very high reward at very low cost for those who spotted the opportunity. Can you imagine making 25% per year on your money today on a company backed by the U.S. government? Opportunities like that are indeed rare and should be taken when identified.

A Low-Leverage Political Bet — Controlling the Democratic Party One Elected Official at a Time

Now apply that thinking to the political sphere, in particular to the progressive political sphere. In our first example the goal was to gain a lot of money at favorable odds with a relatively low cost. In that case the thing invested is money. In the political sphere, the parallel goal is to gain a lot of power — control of the levers of government — at favorable odds with a relatively low investment of time and energy. For this kind of win, it shouldn't take moving a mountain to accomplish the goal, and it shouldn't take a generation to do it.

That last point — a fast, efficient reward relative to the energy invested — is important if you believe like me that the nation, already pre-revolutionary in its desire to be free of the austerity forced on the increasingly poor by the impossibly rich, is near a tipping point toward outright rebellion.

(We're actually near two tipping points, if you also believe that if we don't address climate change meaningfully and now, it will too soon be too late — and worse, everyone on the planet will know it and act accordingly. When that day comes, when people realize the fix they've been put in, the international chaos will only be contained by military action, and then only briefly.)

Time, in other words, is a commodity progressives do not have. Nor is our energy in infinite supply.

Put more specifically, progressives don't have time for a 30-year plan to take over the Democratic Party; nor do we have time to build a viable, national, well-funded third party to challenge it. Consider the effort to "change the Party" by taking over the House and Senate. Not only must masses of progressives replace well-established, well-funded New Dems and Blue Dogs, but progressives must also replace all the New Dem enablers in Democratic leadership. How long will that take, on the current trajectory?

Yes, Democrats may win the House in a 2018 wave election. But which Democrats will control the Party if they do? Even if Democrats take the House and Senate in 2019, those who bitterly fought and defeated Bernie Sanders will still run the show, even if the number of actual, Sanders-like progressives continues to increase.

This is a classic low-leverage effort relative to the time, energy and money needed to accomplish it. Not that this battle should not be engaged — I applaud everyone who engages in it. But time is not the friend of progressive insurgence.

To mitigate that problem, I want to suggest an additional way to achieve progressive goals in a much shorter time — focus on highly aggressive candidates for high-leverage offices, and focus hard.

A High-Leverage Political Opportunity — Sanders for President in 2016

Markets are not always efficient; sometimes a Chrysler bet does come along. Political "markets" are similar; every so often a very high-leverage opportunity occurs. Let me offer two examples, one from the recent past and one from the immediate present.

First, from the past: As it turned out, the race for the Democratic Party nomination by Bernie Sanders represented a low-risk, high-leverage attempt to achieve a nearly unimaginable outcome, the U.S. presidency.

Consider the cost, the risk and the reward. The cost of entry was low. Sanders launched his candidacy with little fanfare and not much in the bank relative to, say, Hillary Clinton. If the opportunity wasn't there — if the nation wasn't ready for a real progressive with very high credibility — it would have been obvious fairly soon and not much would have been risked in terms of time, money and effort.

The risk of betrayal for supporting Sander, the risk of not getting what you voted for, was also low. Sanders has the kind of credibility that only a lifetime of absolute consistency can buy. With Bernie Sanders, the risk of voting for "Yes We Can" and getting "No I Won't" was almost zero.

Now look at the reward. If the attempt to take the Democratic presidential nomination did succeed, here's what progressives would have won — an excellent chance at complete control of the Executive Branch of the government, to the extent the winner could (and was willing to) exercise it. Not only that, but progressives would also win nominal control of the Democratic Party, again to the extent they could (and were willing to) exercise it. All because this was an attempted palace coup, a race for control at the top which bypassed most of the gate-keeper exclusions that keep current Party owners in place.

This was also a direct attempt to control the Party by exercising the voting will of the people to replace their king or queen with ours. Because it relied on votes, the attempt was not impotent. This was not an attempt to control the Party by exercising the will of the people as expressed in polls. That route to change is and has proved to be pointless. Everyone in Washington knows what the people want, and no one who serves the donor class will give it to them.

The only fast, sudden opportunity to force either party to bend in our direction occurs once in four years during presidential primaries. If the people don't want a change, there won't be one. If the people do want a change, they can use voting force to get it, but only when that window opens up.

The Odds of Success Were Greater than Anyone Suspected

As it turned out, the odds in 2016 were very much in Sanders' favor. The nation was ready to revolt and both parties saw insurgent candidacies topple or nearly topple long-time, well-funded Party operatives.

On the Republican side, 2016 voters, abetted by greedy media companies like those that control CNN and MSNBC, swept Trump to the nomination. On the Democratic side, it took every effort by Party operatives to hand Sanders a loss, and even so, for a while it looked like he still had a real shot anyway. In my view, those who think the nomination was stolen from him by a thousand petty larcenies committed by a thousand petty officials — and several major thefts committed by national media names — are correct. It took all that to defeat him.

Yet despite his loss, the Sanders candidacy was a classic high-leverage opportunity for progressives, and as his momentum built, people on both sides of the Sanders fence recognized it. The desire by the public to elect him, as evidenced by his stadium-size crowds, never flagged. At the same time, the effort by Party leaders to defeat him, as evidenced by the many thumb-on-the-scales obstacles put in his way, was similarly relentless.

The list of ways Sanders was disadvantaged by the Party would take up an essay on its own, or even a book, and I won't go into it here. My main point though is this. High-leverage opportunities exist, and if wresting control of the country in the shortest possible time is important, they must be recognized and taken.

The Next High-Leverage Opportunity — Zephyr Teachout for NY Attorney General

Which brings me to this, the next high-leverage opportunity. Just as Sanders' run for the presidency was a high-leverage opportunity for voters, so too is the current race for Attorney General in New York. It's a very high-leverage opportunity in fact, given the absolute and unchecked control over prosecutions exercised by the AG's office.

I'll return to a discussion of this race another time. It deserves to be highlighted separately and I don't want to obscure my main point above, that progressives must recognized and take full advantage of high-leverage opportunities.

But for more on the opportunity it presents, please listen to the recent interview with Zephyr Teachout embedded at the top. If you do, you'll see what I mean. The scope of the power of the NY Attorney General offers a breath-taking opportunity for real national change, assuming we elect someone willing to use it.

There are several candidates at the moment, but Teachout has something only Sanders before her had — an unimpeachable history of credibility that sets the risk of betrayal, the risk of "Yes, We Can but No, I Won't," at almost zero. This race and this candidate represent a Sanders opportunity, one that should not be missed.

GP