There Has Always Been A Republican Wing Of The Democratic Party. In The 30s They Called Themselves The American Liberty League

Al Smith is known primarily as having been the first Roman Catholic presidential nominee (1928). He was also a 4-term governor of New York. He was defeated badly for the presidency in ’28, winning just 8 states— 6 from the Deep South + Massachusetts and Rhode Island, even losing New York. While Smith was losing New York, Franklin Roosevelt, an ally was winning the gubernatorial seat created by Smith’s run for president. Roosevelt was reelected in 1930 (in a landslide) that propelled him towards the 1932 presidential nomination. The problem was that Smith, with the support of the conservative wing of the party, wanted to run for president again. As governor of New York Roosevelt had endorsed the idea of unemployment insurance, massively popular with a working class struck by Hoover’s Great Depression, hated by Republicans and conservative Democrats. FDR beat Smith at the convention and although Smith supported him in the general, Smith opposed the New Deal in general, which he felt wasn’t cooperative enough with business interests.

Smith joined the brand new American Liberty League, an organization founded in 1934 primarily by business elites and conservative Democrats but also with a handful of Republicans. What bound them all together was intense hatred for the New Deal. They worked ceaselessly to rally public opinion against it and against Roosevelt. The League was funded by wealthy business executives and Smith became a major player. They published pamphlets and sponsored radio programs, arguing that the New Deal was destroying personal liberty and private property rights and was socialistic. As the New Deal grew in popularity, the League— and well as the Republican Party— began to shrivel and die. It was officially dissolved in 1940, only to spring back to life decades later as the DLC, the Blue Dogs, the New Dems and Third Way.

In 1936, the League was rabidly anti-Roosevelt and attacked the New Deal nearly as shrilly as the GOP did. The problem was that the general public love the New Deal and the more the League and the GOP screeched “Socialism!!” the more popular the New Deal became. The conservative Dems became objects of scorn and the Republicans were circling the drain. Roosevelt was reelected 27,747,636 (60.8%) to 16,679,543 (36.5%). He won every state but Maine and Vermont— 523 electoral votes to 8. In Mississippi, FDR took 97.06% of the vote and did even better in South Carolina (98.57%). When the dust cleared there were 334 Democrats in the House and just 88 Republicans. There were also 13 actual socialists. In the Senate, it must have seemed like the end of the world for the Republicans. Confident that their anti-socialism campaign was finally going to bear fruit, they stepped up the shrill nonsense, lost 5 more seats to the Democrats and ended up with just 17 senators to the Democrats’ 74. (There was also 3 socialists.)

Prominent conservative Democrat Jouett Shouse of Kansas was a congressman, on the executive board of the DNC and married into a fortune. He was the only president of the League and FDR noted that the American Liberty League put “too much stress on property rights, too little on human rights.” When FDR talked about “economic royalists,” he wasn’t just referring to the Republican Party but also to the League, whose leaders, beside Shouse and Smith, also included former Democratic presidential candidate John Davis, former DNC chair John Jacob Raskob, “ex”-Republican and wealthy businessman, Irénée du Post and two of his brothers, Lammot and Pierre, former NY Republican Governor Nathan Miller, Congressman James Wadsworth (R-NY), Alfred Sloan of General Motors and Howard Pew of Sun Oil. At its peak there were 125,000 members but after the FDR landslide of 1936 it began to rapidly dwindle.

It was the League that tried, unsuccessfully, to recruit Major General Smedley Butler to lead a military coup against Roosevelt. League members lost their collective shit over Social Security, which they claimed would “mark the end of democracy.” Vehemently anti-union/anti-working class, these conservative Democrats sued the government over the National Labor Relations Act and the AFL accused them of hiring thugs to infiltrate local unions to incite violence.

Other Democrats who opposed the New Deal included conservative shit heads like Senator Rush Holt, Sr (WV), Senator Harry Byrd (VA) and Senator Carter Glass (VA). Today this wing of the Democratic Party is being led by Joe Biden, although Wall Street financiers are also intrigued by McKinsey Pete (should gaffe-prone Biden self-destruct before the convention, as many expect) and both John Delaney (MD) and John Frackenlooper (CO) are trying to offer themselves up as leaders of this faction. In Congress, the worst of the current crap would be Steny Hoyer (MD) plus rabid Blue Dogs like Henry Cuellar (TX), Collin Peterson (MN), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Cheri Bustos (IL), Dan Lipinski (IL), Tom O'Halleran (AZ), Jim Costa (CA), Joe Cunningham (SC), Jefferson Van Drew (NJ), Kendra Horn (OK), Ben McAdams (UT) and Anthony Brindisi (NY), as well as Senators Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Joe Manchin (WV), Doug Jones (AL), Jackie Rosen (NV), Mark Warner (VA) and Tom Carper (DE). Biden is trying to hide what is from Democratic primary voters, primarily by avoiding the media and counting on everyone remembering him as part of Obama. He’s counting on Democrats being willing to buy a pig in a poke. Former Obama chief strategist, David Axelrod, told the Daily Beast yesterday that Biden’s strategy isn’t tenable. “His message is that he’s the guy who can beat Donald Trump and he is viewed as the least risky choice. Over time, if the only interactions he has is around these screwups and gaffes, then he is going to start losing that message… I think that it is never a good idea to sit on a lead. That rarely works out well, and that's what they’re doing.” Biden has assiduously avoided TV or any media situation where people will realize he’s well down the senility road and no more capable of running the U.S. than Trump is.

The Republican Party And Its Financiers Have Been Waiting For 8 Decades To Destroy The New Deal. Is America OK With That?

Nancy Ohanian's Trumpist

Trump was driven to run for president by more than one thing, although high on his list was his visceral hatred for Obama and the outrage he felt of having been talked down to in public by a black president who Trump never recognized as an actual president but as a usurper whose com accomplishments he has been erasing, one by one. That reason doesn’t trump Trump’s overarching greed and avarice, but Obama hatred can’t be ignored as a motivation. With a sick and rotted out Republican Party taking on the role of accomplice and enabler, erasing Obama’s accomplishments is spilling over to erasing the legacy of the New Deal as well, a dream more of Paul Ryan’s than Donald Trump’s— although Trump was easily persuaded that erasing the New Deal is his destiny. On Sunday, Heather Cox Richardson explained to Guardian readers how it’s working. That 1.5 trillion dollar deficit was part of the plan— Ryan’s last laugh. But Richardson’s first sentence is hardly a laughing matter: “Since January, there have been frightening signs that America is becoming an oligarchy overseen by a dictator.” It hardly lightens up as she progresses.

From the first, Donald Trump has followed an authoritarian playbook, beginning with his rejection of objective reality. Forced early on to defend the assertion that the crowd at Trump’s inauguration was the biggest ever witnessed, presidential spokesperson Kellyanne Conway explained that the administration used “alternative facts”. Since then, the president has repeatedly attacked fact-based media as “fake news.” Indeed, with his insistence on an alternative reality, Trump sometimes seems like an elderly Fox News-addled neighbour suddenly given power to make his bizarrely warped view of America real.

But now, it feels all too real, with Trump delivering on the economic core of his vision. He has slashed regulations that protect workers, walked away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, attacked the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) and gutted the government. Finally, in a dramatic “win” for his administration, the Republicans last week passed a major tax overhaul that slashes taxes primarily for the wealthy and is projected to create an almost 1.5 trillion dollar deficit. Republicans have already said that the only way to address that shortfall will be with cuts to Medicare and Social Security.

Since Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the New Deal in the 1930s, radical conservatives have railed against the idea that the government should intervene in the economy. The New Deal responded to the Great Crash and the ensuing Depression by regulating business, providing a basic social safety net and promoting infrastructure in order to maintain a level playing field for all Americans. Opponents countered this principle by arguing that the government must not hem in America’s business leaders. In their view, government regulations and laws to benefit poorer members of society crippled leaders’ ability to prosper and, since their prosperity drove the economy by trickling down to everyone else, such laws destroyed progress.

But the New Deal was wildly popular, so conservatives sold their reactionary economic vision by enlisting white racism. As the federal government promoted civil rights, they warned that an active government redistributed the wealth of hard-working, white taxpayers to African Americans, a “special interest” that wanted better treatment than everyone else. In contrast, conservatives offered the image of the American cowboy individualist.

Ronald Reagan, with his derision of the welfare queen and his mantra that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” rode that racist anti-government cowboy image into the White House. Trump is this conservative macho individualist exaggerated to caricature. He brags about how he knows better than anyone how to run a successful business, how to fight Isis, how to find “the best people” for office.

While Reagan hinted at the discrimination inherent in the conservative worldview, Trump revels in it. But Trump delivered not just on the racism and sexism of the individualist vision, but also on its economics. In short, Republicans under Trump have finally destroyed the New Deal, turning the government over to a small cadre of wealthy businessmen, unhampered, to run the country as they see fit. When Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore put on his cowboy hat and rode his horse to the polls in Alabama in December, he was deliberately embodying Republican individualist principles.

…In 2017, Trump brought to life the alternative reality portrayed on Fox News, the individualist vision designed to destroy the New Deal. Now that it is exposed to reality, Americans reject it. Trump’s approval rating is at 35%, a historical low.

Nonetheless, it is not clear that democracy will prevail. Trump admires not America’s democratic allies but autocrats: Turkey’s President Erdoğan, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. He has shown astonishing disregard for the law, flouting nepotism and emoluments rules and treating regular government procedures, including the authority of Congress, with disdain.

He has tried to undermine the FBI and American intelligence agencies, shows a disturbing affinity for Putin and Russian oligarchs, and has tried to undermine the authority of special counsel, Robert Mueller, charged with examining the role of Russia in the 2016 election. Acting again from the autocrat’s playbook, he has repeatedly attacked the press and has packed the courts: appointing the supreme court justice Republicans denied to President Barack Obama and 12 circuit judges, more in a year than any other president in history.

And Trump has followers who appear to be willing to rally around him, no matter what he does, even, perhaps, to dismiss as “fake news” any evidence of collusion with Russia that Mueller produces or, maybe, as the president suggested, to let him “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody.” If Republican leaders are willing to enable Trump’s autocratic enthusiasms in return for oligarchy, American democracy will die.

In the 1850s, when a small group of rich slaveholders took the government away from the majority and tried to create an oligarchy, Abraham Lincoln implored Americans to work to guarantee “that government of the people by the people for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Words for Americans to think about in the year 2018.

And more than think about. This isn’t going to end well… and Trump isn’t going to go down quietly or calmly. He has the support of 35% of the population— the crazy, armed 35%. Bernie and his supporters think a lot about the New Deal too and many of them think they can wean Trump supporters away from fascism with it. I guess we'll see soon enough, won't we?

Clinton's Wall Street Backers Hate Socialism And Say They'll Desert To Bloomberg If Hillary Loses. Real Democrats Won't

Yesterday's Salon post by Gary Legum, Bad news for the GOP: America isn’t scared of Bernie’s "socialism", emphasizes that the Republican Party has spent generations raving about the dangers of socialism but that it isn't working anymore." He talks about how the socialism smear Republicans used against Bill Clinton and against Obama had had the net effect of denuding the word "socialism," boy-who-cried-wolf-wise, "of the negative associations that scares the crap out of Fox News viewers. Polling over the last few years has shown Americans are much more receptive to some of what socialism has to offer and will not wet themselves in fear when they hear the word. This is particularly true of younger people who were in grade school when the Soviet Union collapsed. In 2011, a Pew Research Center poll found that 49 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds had a positive view of socialism. Considering the enthusiasm of that age group for Bernie Sanders, it seems safe to assume that number has at the very least remained stable, if not gone up... [A]fter decades of flat-out lying about the leftism of Democratic administrations (Bill Clinton was so centrist in some of his policies that some liberals will refuse to vote for his wife a decade and a half after he left office), the Republicans finally have a real-life 60s activist with a long history of arguing notably leftist policies to run against. And they could face him in a general election at a time when crying 'socialism' will likely scare a far smaller percentage of American voters than it has in a hundred years."

No American president since Lincoln has been as beloved as Franklin Roosevelt-- and no American president since Lincoln has been as violently attacked by conservatives as Franklin Roosevelt. The Establishment never gave up calling FDR-- as well as Eleanor Roosevelt-- a socialist. In 1932 Roosevelt beat incumbent Republican Herbert Hoover with 472 electoral votes to Hoover's 59. Hoover only won 6 states. Once FDR got into office he started pushing his agenda of democratic socialism and the Republican Party and other rightists screamed "Socialism!" from the rooftops. Four years later, Kansas Governor Alf Landon was the GOP anti-socialism candidate and he lost Kansas and every other state but two. FDR won 523 electoral votes to Landon's 8. Roosevelt went from winning 57.4% of the vote in 1932 to 60.8% in 1936. In 1940, Roosevelt ran for an unprecedented third term and with the GOP still screaming "Socialist," he won 38 states and 449 electoral votes to Wendell Willkie's 82 electoral votes and 10 states. Four years later the GOP put up Thomas Dewey and just kept screaming "socialism." FDR's 432 electoral votes and 36 states seemed to prove to everyone-- but Republicans-- that "socialism" was as disliked as Republicans are.



At the 1936 Democratic convention FDR made an acceptance speech that is worth reading through as Americans decide if they want to elect a reactionary, which is what the Republicans are, or a conservative like establishment candidate Hillary Clinton or progressive Bernie Sanders. FDR knew exactly how to take on Wall Street and Big Business and the American people embraced him for it-- gigantically.

It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.

...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.

...The brave and clear platform adopted by this convention, to which I heartily subscribe, sets forth that government in a modern civilization has certain inescapable obligations to its citizens, among which are protection of the family and the home, the establishment of a democracy of opportunity, and aid to those overtaken by disaster.

But the resolute enemy within our gates is ever ready to beat down our words unless in greater courage we will fight for them.

Hillary Clinton is a conservative, although she tries to claim she's an "incrementalist," which isn't as bad as a reactionary. Her policies are very much like updated versions of Thomas Dewey's, Wendell Willkie's and Alf Landon's. It is Bernie, not her, who is part of the mainstream of the Democratic Party. Please consider helping his campaign with a contribution at this Blue America ActBlue page or by clicking on the thermometer:

FDR Sends A Warning To Future Generations About Paul Ryan

The above FDR reelection speech from 1936 warning voters about GOP intentions towards the popular social insurance policies they had fought so hard against, is no less relevant today than it was then. Roosevelt went on to win 60.8% to 36.5%, taking every state but Vermont and Maine and winning the electoral college 523 to 8. Democrats continued winning seats in Congress and wound up with a margin of 334 (+ 10 left-leaning independents) to 88 in the House and 76 (+ 2 left-leaning independents) to 16 in the Senate.

"Let me warn you, and let me warn the nation, against the smooth evasion that says 'Of course we believe these things. We believe in social security. We believe in work for the unemployed. We believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die.

'We believe in all these things. But we do not like the way that the present administration is doing them. Just turn them over to us. We will do all of them, we will do more of them, we will do them better and, most important of all, the doing of them will not cost anybody anything.'"

Remind you of Paul Ryan trying to persuade saps he wants to help the poor? Republicans were all over corporate TV this week wailing about how minimum wage laws don't work and will never work and have never worked. They're demonstrably wrong and have always been. And overwhelming majorities of Americans disagree with them and see through their bullshit. Even half the self-admitted Republicans support raising the minimum wage!

Two-thirds of Americans in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll support increasing the minimum wage, rejecting arguments that doing so could encourage layoffs and reflecting majority sentiment that current federal government policies favor the wealthy.

Those who support a higher minimum wage even have a recommended level: The average response in this group is $10.25 per hour, very close to the $10.10 proposal endorsed by Barack Obama and now before the U.S. Senate.

Support for raising the minimum wage is linked to broader concern about income inequality, a theme sounded by Obama in a speech Dec. 4. Sixty-four percent of Americans say federal policies currently favor the wealthy, and 57 percent say they’d support efforts to try to reduce the wealth gap in this country. Support for boosting the minimum wage soars in both those groups.

…64 percent say that federal policies currently favor the wealthy and 57 percent say the government should try to reduce the gap between the wealthy and those less well-off. These also are highly partisan views: Among Democrats, 81 percent say federal policies favor the wealthy and 76 percent support government efforts to reduce the wealth gap. Those dive to 48 and 40 percent, respectively, among Republicans.

This year 5 states have already raised the minimum wage, California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island. A study by the Economic Policy Institute shows that when this is done nationally (to $10.10 by 2016), it would return the federal minimum wage to roughly the same inflation-adjusted value it had in the late 1960s while it would either directly or indirectly raise the wages of 27.8 million workers, who would receive about $35 billion in additional wages over the phase-in period. The effect of that, despite tired right-wing lies, is that the GDP would grow by about $22 billion, resulting in the creation of roughly 85,000 net new jobs over that period. They also found that, despite the stereotypes perpetrated by the corporate media, among affected workers, the average age is 35 years old, nearly 88% are at least 20 years old, and more than a third (34.5%) are at least 40 years old. 54% work full time, about 69% come from families with family incomes less than $60,000, and more than a quarter have children. 

Over the Christmas break, grassroots Democrats plan to pressure GOP lawmakers and Republican voters over the expiration of unemployment insurance for 1.3 million workers who were kicked out of work because of GOP economic policies. Greg Sargent outlines the contours of the whole plan in his column this morning (linked in the last sentence). As he points out, "[M]ost House Republicans will just shrug at all of this stuff, since they are cossetted away in safe districts. A new Pew poll finds that Republican voters prioritize deficit reduction over maintaining current aid to the “poor and needy” by 55-35. But the broader public favors maintaining current aid to the poor over deficit reduction by 59-33, as do independents by 53-38. And so, with the deficit dropping away as a concern, Dems hope GOP leaders-- who don’t appear to harbor visceral opposition to unemployment insurance-- will come around to the view that continued resistance to extending benefits that are set to cut off just after Christmas won’t help the party’s overall national image. It’s a point of constant frustration for Democrats that in situations like these-- when one party favors extending benefits, and the other opposes it-- the media storyline is invariably that 'Congress' is failing to act. So one key goal of this campaign is to drive home to the public that 'Congress' isn’t letting down these one million or more Americans; Republicans are."

Thanks to conservative sabotage (on both sides of the aisle; good riddance, Max Baucus) of single-payer or even just a public option, Obamacare barely qualifies as an extension of the New Deal. But it's better-- even a LOT better-- than the lump of coal the Republicans would like to give Americans instead of healthcare. And Americans know it. In yesterday's Washington Post Greg Sargent took a good hard look at the new polling from CBS and the NY Times and reminds us that:

• A majority of Americans says “providing access to affordable health care coverage for all Americans is the responsibility of the federal government,” by 54-43.

• A majority says that “when individuals don’t have health insurance,” it “hurts the country,” by 70-22.

• A majority says “providing health care coverage for the poor is the responsibility of the federal government,” by 53-41.

• Only 37 percent support repealing Obamacare entirely, while 53 percent say there are good things in the law and that changes are needed to make it work better.

• Only 41 percent say the law goes too far in changing the health system, while a total of 50 percent say it doesn’t go far enough (28) or is about right (22). All this, at an absolute low point.

All these things may be related. This is admittedly speculative, but one reason majorities may be unwilling to give up on the law, even though they disapprove and are skeptical of it, may simply be that many Americans support government doing something about the problems Obamacare is designed to solve, and don’t believe there is any other set of viable solutions out there. (With single payer being a political impossibility, they’re probably right.) Indeed, an October Kaiser poll found that only 13 percent want to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a generic GOP alternative. In short: The Affordable Care Act is it.

…The new poll found that most Americans-- 55 percent of the general public and 57 percent of the uninsured-- disapprove of how President Obama is handling health care. Democrats in Congress got roughly the same rating, with 59 percent of the general public and 58 percent of the uninsured disapproving of their handling of the issue. Republicans in Congress were judged more harshly, with 73 percent of the general public and 70 percent of the uninsured disapproving of their handling of health care.

And don't even get me started on healthcare or this post will double in size. Wait… the next post will be like a continuation of this one-- except about what it means if the GOP ever gets its paws on the healthcare system. Republicans, as Chris Hayes pointed out on his show last night, have nothing left in their quiver but their hatred and disdain for working families. Watch:

No, Ryan Didn't Win In November But... Austerity Ahoy Anyway

You don't have to be a Professor of Public Policy, or a former Secretary of Labor, to know that the current sputtering recovery is anemic and that Beltway dysfunction is not addressing it. But Friday, Bob Reich, asserted that "apart from the Fed-- which continues to hold interest rates down in the quixotic hope that banks will begin lending again to average people-- the government is heading in exactly the wrong direction: raising taxes on the middle class, and cutting spending." That describes the Austerity Agenda being demanded by conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic-- Britain, which has instituted it wholeheartedly, is slipping into a triple-dip recession-- and both sides of the aisle. The document of the failed Austerity Agenda is Paul Ryan's budget, which has been extolled by virtually the entire Republican Party. Conservative Democrats just think it needs a little lightening up around the pain infliction and then it'll be just fine.

Something like 20 million Americans are either unemployed or under-employed. That's the real problem and, as Reich has pointed out, we know exactly what to do about it. "It's not rocket science." Consumer spending has been dropping and even a Republican knows that "the only reason for employers to hire more workers is if they have more customers. But American employers have not had enough customers to justify much new hiring."

There are essentially two sources of customers: individual consumers, and the government. (Forget exports for now; Europe is contracting, Japan is a basket case, China is slowing, and the rest of the world is in economic limbo.)

American consumers-- whose purchases constitute about 70 percent of all economic activity-- still can’t buy much, and their purchasing power is declining. The median wage continues to drop, adjusted for inflation. Most can’t borrow because they don’t have a credit record sufficient to allow them to borrow much.

And now their Social Security taxes have increased, leaving the typical worker with about $1,000 less this year than last.

The Conference Board reported last Tuesday consumer confidence in January fell its lowest level in more than a year. The last time consumers were this glum was October 2011, when there was widespread talk of a double-dip recession.

The only people doing well are at the top-- but they save a large part of what they earn instead of spending it.

Overall personal income soared by 8 percent in the final three months of 2012 compared to an increase of just over 2 percent in the third quarter, but this income didn’t go into the pockets of the middle class. It went into the pockets of people at the top.

Wages and salaries grew a measly six-tenths of one percent.

...So if we can’t rely on consumers to stoke the economy, what about government? No chance. Government spending is dropping, too.

The major reason the economy contracted between the start of October and end of December 2012 was a major reduction in government spending in the fourth quarter.

Government spending has declined in nine of the last ten quarters, but it took a precipitous drop in the last quarter. This was mainly because military spending fell 22.2 percent. That’s the largest fall-off since 1972 (mainly due to reduced spending on the war in Afghanistan, and worries by military contractors about further pending cuts). State and local spending also continued to fall.

Personally, I’m glad we’re spending less on the military. It’s the most bloated part of the government. Major cuts are long overdue. But the military is America’s only major jobs program. Cutting the military without increasing spending on roads, bridges, schools, and everything else we need to do simply means fewer jobs.

What’s ahead? More of the same. So what possible reason do we have to suspect the recovery will pick up speed? None.

Don’t count on consumer spending. Wages and benefits continue to drop for most people, adjusted for inflation. States are hiking sales taxes, which will hit the middle class and the poor hardest. Deficit hawks in Washington are contemplating additional tax hikes on the middle class.

Housing prices are stabilizing, thankfully. But one out of five homeowners is still underwater, and the ranks of people renting rather than owning are rising. Health-care costs are also rising for most people in the form of higher co-payments, deductibles, and premiums.

Don’t count on government, either. Government spending continues to head downward. The White House has already agreed to major spending cuts, some to go into effect this year. Coming showdowns over the next fiscal cliff, appropriations to fund government operations, and the debt ceiling will likely result in more cuts.

More jobs and faster growth should be the most important objectives now. With them, everything else will be easier to achieve-- protection against climate change, immigration reform, long-term budget reform. Without them, everything will be harder.

Yet we’re moving in the opposite direction-- following Europe’s sorry example of failed austerity economics.

Now there's one unadulterated dose of pessimism! Yesterday on his blog, Krugman seemed to back up what Reich was saying.

Not long ago, the usual suspects were going on and on about how government spending had soared under Obama, pointing to spending as a share of GDP. Some of us tried to point out that this bump represented two temporary factors: 1. GDP was depressed thanks to the crisis, so the spending share was correspondingly elevated 2. Emergency aid programs, notably unemployment benefits, were up because of the crisis. The implication of this argument was that the government spending share would decline as the economy recovered.

Conservatives were, of course, having none of it-- Obama was permanently enlarging the government to European size. So, how’s it going?

In the figure below the blue line shows government spending at all levels as a share of GDP; the red line shows the share of potential GDP-- what we’d be producing at normal employment-- as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office; it’s lower than the first line because the economy is still operating well below capacity.

Down we come.

What both Krugman and Reich would like to see-- as well as Bernie Sanders, as you can see in the video up top-- is the President demanding that the lazy, worthless bums in Congress give the country a real Stimulus package, rather than more failed Austerity. Warning that the Beltway is using Austerity to lead the country into another Recession, Roosevelt scholar David Woolner reminded us last week of a speech FDR gave in 1938:

The only real capital of a nation is its natural resources and its human beings. So long as we take care of and make the most of both of them, we shall survive as a strong nation, a successful nation and a progressive nation-- whether or not the bookkeepers say other kinds of budgets are from time to time out of balance.

This capital structure-- natural resources and human beings-- has to be maintained at all times. The plant has to be kept up and new capital put in year by year to meet increasing needs. If we skimp on that capital, if we exhaust our natural resources and weaken the capacity of our human beings, then we shall go the way of all weak nations.

He further reminds us that "most economists agree that the uncertainty brought about by the dysfunctional nature of Washington is having a negative effect on the economy. But we hear little about the direct effects that cuts in government spending have had on job growth. How many Americans, for example, are aware that one of the primary drivers of our persistently high unemployment rate is the sharp decline in public sector employment-- the massive layoffs of teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other public sector employees over the past two years? We might also ask how many Americans recognize that one of the primary ways President Obama managed to stop the downward economic spiral at the start of his first term was through the funding of public sector jobs via the stimulus funds that were channeled to state and local governments. Indeed, it was the expiration of that federal support, and Congress’s refusal to support the president’s modest request for additional federal dollars to support state and local governments in his jobs bill, that initiated the recent public sector decline."

One would assume, in the face of such economic realities, that Congress would support the type of modest spending proposals President Obama put forward in the American Jobs Act. But rather than provide funding for the employment of teachers, firefighters, police officers, and the like, rather than put hard-pressed Americans to work rebuilding our dismal infrastructure (now rated 23rd in the world), Congress would rather engage in another endless round of bickering about the perils of deficit spending. Once again heeding the siren song of the deficit hawks, those soothsayers of doom who insist that without an immediate and massive reduction in the level of federal spending we face an imminent economic collapse.

Interestingly, roughly three-quarters of a century ago President Roosevelt faced a similar argument at the start of his second term. Thanks to the stimulus spending of the New Deal, the U.S. economy had been growing at an average annual rate of over 11 percent. Fearing inflation, his more conservative economic advisors, like Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, urged the president to cut spending, balance the budget, and tighten the money supply. But the U.S. economy-- which had seen the largest drop in the unemployment rate in history-- was still fragile, and the results of the spending cuts were a disaster. Unemployment shot up, industrial production declined, and the country soon found itself in the midst of a recession.

Thankfully, FDR quickly reversed course, and his re-instigation of the essentially Keynesian economic policies (counter-cyclical deficit spending) he had been following since the start of his tenure as president soon turned the U.S. economy around. But the cost to the American people and to FDR’s political fortunes was high. Millions lost their jobs unnecessarily, and the president took a real beating in the 1938 midterm elections, rendering his social and economic reform agenda much more difficult to accomplish.

President Obama, who is fond of history, might do well to study what happened to FDR in 1937. At the very least he should not give up on his demand that Congress provide a modest level of support for further federal spending on behalf of state and local governments. He should also insist on further federal spending on infrastructure. As FDR once said, these measures do not represent wasteful spending; they represent an investment in the American people, an investment in what he liked to call “human capital.” Human capital whose health and well-being was not only critical for the present but also for the future. Indeed, FDR insisted that:

Before we can think straight as a nation, we have to consider, in addition to the old kind, a new kind of government balance sheet-- a long-range sheet which shows survival values for our population and for our democratic way of living, balanced against what we have paid for them. Judged by that test-- history’s test-- I venture to say that the long-range budget of the present Administration of our government has been in the black and not in the red.

A lovely fantasy: What if the president believed in some of the stuff FDR did? (And defiantly said so!)

"What Roosevelt had going for himself was a real set of policies and the capacity to speak on their behalf -- a willed capacity to state things plainly, forcefully, and effectively."

-- New Yorker editor David Remnick, in a blogpost,
"F.D.R.'s Message to B.H.O."

by Ken

David Remnick explains in this newyorker.com News Desk post that the FDR video was sent to him by a friend "for the obvious reason: F.D.R. sounds as if he is sending a message in a bottle (a YouTube bottle) to Barack Obama as he prepares for the second debate with Mitt Romney on Tuesday."

In 1936, Franklin Roosevelt was faced with a vicious reëlection campaign. He was vilified for the New Deal reforms. The word "boondoggle" was popularized in the U.S. the year before to describe alleged abuses of the New Deal. Opposition politicians and critics compared F.D.R. to Lenin. The Depression was still on, and unemployment, which had dropped significantly, was still high, over fourteen per cent. (It would rise again in 1938.) What Roosevelt had going for himself was a real set of policies and the capacity to speak on their behalf -- a willed capacity to state things plainly, forcefully, and effectively. Never more so than on September 29, 1936, at the New York Democratic State Convention, in Syracuse. Here is the most famous passage of the speech, which came in the thick of the national campaign:

Let me warn you and let me warn the nation against the smooth evasion which says, "Of course we believe all these things; we believe in social security; we believe in work for the unemployed; we believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die, we believe in all these things; but we do not like the way the present Administration is doing them. Just turn them over to us. We will do all of them -- we will do more of them, we will do them better; and, most important of all, the doing of them will not cost anybody anything."

But, my friends, these evaders are banking too heavily on the shortness of our memories. No one will forget that they had their golden opportunity -- twelve long years of it.

Remember, too, that the first essential of doing a job well is to want to see the job done. Make no mistake about this: The Republican leadership today is not against the way we have done the job. The Republican leadership is against the job’s being done.

The video of the Syracuse speech has been kicking around -- you’ve got to watch it; F.D.R. is sharp, funny, and masterful -- and the full text is well worth reading, too. A friend sent it to me for the obvious reason: F.D.R. sounds as if he is sending a message in a bottle (a YouTube bottle) to Barack Obama as he prepares for the second debate with Mitt Romney on Tuesday.

P.S. Roosevelt’s Republican opponent was Alf Landon of Kansas. F.D.R. won forty-six of forty-eight states.

What's not entirely clear is whether DR understands that the president isn't just that "willed capacity to state things plainly, forcefully, and effectively," but "a real set of policies" on whose behalf he might undertake to speaky. Oh, he has policies, all right, but I think it's pretty clear by now that they're of the right-of center corporatist, neolibe sort, policies that have hardly anything in common with those we can see and hear FDR advocating, policies that don't lend themselves to FDR-style plain, forceful, effective advocacy.

Still, it makes for an appealing fantasy, doesn't it? Like as if some political fairy godmother could wave her magic wand and make President Obama believe these things -- and say so cloudly and clearly.

Okay, back to reality. But it was nice while it lasted.


OR THERE'S THIS APPROACH FOR THE PRESIDENT

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) -- With his polite and well-mannered performance widely panned in the first Presidential debate, President Barack Obama is under mounting pressure to prove that he can act like an asshole in the second debate tomorrow night, a campaign aide confirmed.

“In America, we demand that our President remain cool and calm in a crisis but go batshit in a debate,” the aide said. “Tuesday night is all about that second piece.”

Rather than unspooling a laundry list of facts and numbers as he did in the first debate, this time Mr. Obama will focus on tearing Mr. Romney a new one.

Unfortunately, the aide acknowledged, such classic dick moves as dismissively interrupting an opponent and laughing over his answers do not come naturally to Mr. Obama: “That’s why we’re having Joe Biden work with him.”

But even as Mr. Obama worked around the clock to practice being a douche, Mitt Romney’s campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, doubted his efforts would succeed.

“Being an asshole isn’t a skill that you can just pick up overnight,” Mr. Rhoades said. “Mitt Romney’s been working on it all his life.”

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Tea? Or Something More Nutritious?

Yesterday I was reading an interesting interview with self-described "recovering Republican" Bob Ney, the Ohio freak show and designated patsy, who went to prison in the Abramoff scandal, which, in reality, should have send at least two dozen Republican congressmen to prison, if not Bush himself. What originally caught my attention was his analysis of the upcoming presidential election. He thinks Romney, the anointed Establishment pick, will be the nominee and he thinks the party's doctrinaire conservatives don't care that much if they beat Obama or not-- Miss McConnell's stated top priority for 2010-12. Ney worries that's an ass-backwards approach.

[F]rom the conservative end, under their breath, well, they think it doesn't matter if we don't beat him. They think if we don't beat him he's going to do such a bad job over the next four years there will be no Democrats standing in the House, no Democrats standing in the Senate, we'll take the whole ball of wax (in 2016). That theory's out there ... to keep the "bad guy" in for four more years and you'll really see what happens. That's not necessarily what reality becomes.

Interesting tangent to follow up on... sometime. But not where I want to go today. Today we're here to examine how the teabagger thing is working out for the Members of the House who joined the Michele Bachmann-led official teabagger caucus of 60. Ney was always a kind of cloddish and superficial establishment Republican but he indicates he has a lot of admiration for the teabaggers, even if he doesn't understand how completely controlled they are by the fascist-oriented Koch family and a tiny handful of predatory billionaires. Ney:

I think the Tea Party has been very good for this country. I really do. ... They raised an issue out there. And they were smart, they didn't get into abortion, gun control, gay marriage. They got into one element of the financial side of it, so I have to give them a lot of credit.

A congresswoman I don't even know was on the floor yelling, They're holding the Congress hostage. First of all, 62 members of the House are "Tea Party" candidates. Only 30 are active in the Tea Party caucus. So this Democrat is standing there saying they're holding us hostage, wow, she's really giving them credit for completely running the congress. The Tea Party wouldn't run my office, but I am very respectful of what they've done. ... The Tea Party has helped the Republican Party morph back into what it was supposed to be.

... I'm currently unhappy with the Republican leadership. They took a debt ceiling issue, a very serious issue, there's 535 members of the House and Senate ... and they said OK, we'll pass the debt ceiling bill with cuts ... but we'll create a committee of 12 people who will speak for all 535 people, so to heck with 97 percent of the Americans who send their members to Congress.

Here's what John Boehner said, and Harry Reid, and Barack Obama. They all three said this: You all aren't smart enough, you can't make those tough decisions, we'll take 12 people as a representative body of the House and Senate and the president and we'll tell them to make a decision by Dec. 23. If I was Standard & Poors or Moodys, I would be like "OK, that gives me a lot of confidence." They should of had a vote, ugly as it could have been, let the process work. ... They punted this down the road to 12 people. They're going to make Jack Abramoff and me look like pikers with the defense lobbyists and the campaign dollars. ...

On the biggest issue to me of importance to my grandchildren and future generations, and currently to all these unemployed people ... you had Harry Reid, John Boehner and Barack Obama and you ended up with something like the 72nd anniversary of the Wizard of Oz: no brains, no heart, no guts. It was Oz. These three tried to do this private secret deal without having votes.
They should have been voting all along. The Republican Party had the biggest opportunity ever to really nail this one.

Ney didn't quite have his numbers right. There are 60 members of the House teabagger caucus, the one led by Bachmann. More than half are from the Old Confederacy. And, of course, all of them are Republicans. This seems to be the definitive list, although there have been a couple of members who have joined and left and rejoined and left again. Freshmen are in bold type:

Sandy Adams (R-FL)
Robert Aderholt (R-AL)
Todd Akin (R-MO)
Rodney Alexander (R-LA)
Michele Bachmann (R-MN)
Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD)
Joe Barton (R-TX)
Gus Bilirakis (R-FL)
Rob Bishop (R-UT)
Diane Black (R-TN)
Michael C. Burgess (R-TX)
Paul Broun (John Birch Society-GA)
Dan Burton (R-IN)
John Carter (R-TX)
Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
Howard Coble (R-NC)
Mike Coffman (R-CO)
Chip Cravaack (R-MN)
Ander Crenshaw (R-FL)
John Culberson (R-TX)
Jeff Duncan (R-SC)
Blake Farenthold (R-TX)
Stephen Fincher (R-TN)
John Fleming (R-LA)
Trent Franks (R-AZ)
Phil Gingrey (R-GA)
Louie Gohmert (R-TX)
Tom Graves (R-GA)
Ralph Hall (R-TX)
Vicky Hartzler (R-MO)
Wally Herger (R-CA)
Tim Huelskamp (R-KS)
Lynn Jenkins (R-KS)
Walter Jones (R-NC)
Steve King (R-IA)
Doug Lamborn (R-CO)
Jeff Landry (R-LA)
Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO)
Cynthia Lummis (R-WY)
Kenny Marchant (R-TX)
Tom McClintock (R-CA)
David McKinley (R-WV)
Gary Miller (R-CA)
Mick Mulvaney (R-SC)
Sue Myrick (R-NC)
Randy Neugebauer (R-TX)
Rich Nugent (R-FL)
Steven Palazzo (R-MS)
Steve Pearce (R-NM)
Mike Pence (R-IN)
Ted Poe (R-TX)
Tom Price (R-GA)
Denny Rehberg (R-MT)
Phil Roe (R-TN)
Dennis Ross (R-FL)
Ed Royce (R-CA)
Steve Scalise (R-LA)
Tim Scott (R-SC)
Pete Sessions (R-TX)
Adrian Smith (R-NE)
Lamar Smith (R-TX)
Cliff Stearns (R-FL)
Tim Walberg (R-MI)
Joe Walsh (R-IL)
Allen West (R-FL)
Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA)
Joe Wilson (R-SC)

Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), a Jew who converted to Mormonism, a Democrat who converted to Republcianism, who was campaign manager and then chief of staff for Governor John Huntsman, defeated a very conservative incumbent Republican, Chris Cannon by running as a hard-core teabagger. His #1 issue was being virulently anti-immigrant. Since being elected he's also been virulently anti-gay. He joined the Congressional Arts Caucus instead of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus, kvetching that "[s]tructure and formality are the exact opposite of what the Tea Party is, and if there is an attempt to put structure and formality around it, or to co-opt it by Washington, D.C., it’s going to take away from the free-flowing nature of the true tea party movement."

Yesterday on This Week Jim DeMint told Christiane Amanpour that "the Tea Party's being thrown around a lot today, but for everyone who calls him a Tea Party-- themselves a Tea Party member, there are hundreds of people who have the same concerns about our spending and our debt. We know over 70 percent of Americans want to balance the budget... I think it's one of the best things that's happened to our country and to politics, because there's a broad cross-section of Americans involved in citizen activism today. And some are called Tea Party; some are not. But all the candidates are going to have to appeal to this new grassroots movement. And that's really what I'm looking for... Any of these [presidential] candidates are going to have to appeal to those Americans who are unified, particularly around fiscal issues." 

DeMint, of course, didn't get into a discussion with Amanpour about the true nature-- the ugly racist nature-- of what's behind the grassroots of the Tea Party or about the billionaires financing it to achieve their own plutocratic goals and agenda. National surveys have all shown that self-described Tea Party supporters are overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly Republican, overwhelmingly old and overwhelmingly extreme right-wing. They also tend to be wealthier than the average American. Most Tea Party supporters are male (61%) and almost half are evangelicals or "born again." Surveys that have dared delve into it have all found that the teabaggers are deranged racists, which was completely apparent to me when I spent a day with them at their first big Los Angeles event two years ago. A University of Washington study found that teabaggers are "more likely to be racially resentful" than the population as a whole, although, in fairness, most extreme conservatives are racists.

So far this election cycle, only one Blue America-endorsed candidate, Nick Ruiz down in central Florida, is squaring off against an admitted teabagger and actual member of the congressional caucus. Nick's opponent, freshman Sandy Adams, is one of the less bright of an already far from glowing caucus. Yesterday Nick's battle against this lunacy went beyond the lunatic and racist fringes of Teabaggia.

There is a fragile tension that’s growing, but it’s not the tension you think it is.
 
Not the Tea Party lunacy. Not the corporate Republican debauchery. Not even the thirty years gone of abdication on the part of the Democratic Party, that ironic party of the people, to do the right things for the majority of Americans-- by fighting for the America we laud in textbooks.
 
It’s us. Progressives. For too long, we have supported people we know will do us political harm and disservice, by evidence and history and by all reasonable projections of their future actions. Why?
 
We send them our money, our political contributions-- and they squander them on politicians that vote against almost everything we believe in-- and call it ‘pragmatic progressivism,’ the ‘third way,’ the ‘center,’ and of course, ‘compromise.’ But there is little compromise in a room full of sharks.
 
We wear their pins and buttons, we fill out their incessant requests for petitions and email addresses, as they fill their databases and their coffers with our information and our passion and currency-- only to have them commit small token efforts of advertisement and ‘advocacy’ at best, and at worst, the full-fledged endorsement and financing of candidates who will never do one socially just or legally fair thing for us and America.
 
All while the entourage ‘keeps the change’ and pockets the difference.
 
Progressives thus far have failed to produce a New Deal America. In fact, they have been failing for decades. Not even to fail better, but to fail worse-- because indeed, political circumstances are not improving-- they are disintegrating.
 
I say we can turn this around-- but not by proceeding as the status quo.
 
Progressives, there is a New Deal America waiting for you this 21st century. But you will have to do more than you have done to see it through. Don’t be suckerpunched by a silk tie and a white pearl necklace. It takes a progressive to get things done. Ask FDR. Ask MLK. Ask the scientists that proclaim the Gulf is still leaking oil, with no end in sight. Ask the real Harriet Tubman, not the self-proclaimed Harriet Tubman fake, Tea Party Caucus member Allen West (FL-22).
 
How will you support a New Deal America? By breaking the cycle of complicity-- and backing New Deal Democrats that will do what is necessary to bring about a New Deal America for the 21st century. By endorsing candidates that reject complicity and excessively narrow corporate overtures. People like Dennis Kucinich (OH-10) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT). There are others. Find them.

Americans want economic security-- it starts with a federally mandated, livable minimum wage: $15 per hour, not a paltry $7 and change.
 
Americans want to protect vulnerable families-- it starts with a robust, rather than underdeveloped U.S. Social Safety Net. We need better food assistance, housing assistance, unemployment insurance, and ultimately, retirement assistance-- Social Security. For people who need it, when they need it, until they no longer need it.
 
Americans want America to promote equality of opportunity-- not cronyism, legacy and special favors. That’s for royalty-- and no American fits that description. Promoting equality of opportunity starts with freedom-- freedom of good health, with universal health insurance; freedom of religion, speech, suffrage, sexual preference, expression and equal opportunity of education-- essentially, the freedom to be who you are and accepted, rather than tolerated.
 
A New Deal America is going to take more than boldness, pink t-shirts, courage or guts. There is plenty of that to go around, in fact, perhaps too much, because those emotions often become something else entirely. And if that was working-- we’d have seen some results by now, no?
 
A New Deal America needs national coherence. And that means that there must be alliance and allegiance and that means people working together in order to elect dozens of progressives nationwide. Folks, one or two, are not going to be able to accomplish anything on the federal level. We need more than the cult of celebrity and a rock anthem.
 
We need a progressive orchestra and a New Deal symphony.
 
It’s never going to get any clearer.

In 2008 Blue America didn't waste its time-- or its contributors' money-- on supporting middle of the road corporate Democrats like Barack Obama. Nor will we waste our efforts on him this year. I hope we can find the "dozens" of progressive New Deal Democrats Nick says we need. We haven't so far. So far this is what we've got (on the House side): our candidates. After Labor Day (today) we're going to start stepping it up a bit with other progressive fighters from across the country, like Connie Pillich (D-OR) and John Waltz (D-MI). If you want real change-- not small change or backwards reactionary change-- in America, please consider helping us find good candidates and supporting good candidates. And, while you're at it... watch this:

Happy Labor Day!

by Ken

Howie already offered a Labor Day message, and I have nothing to add that isn't likely to be bleedingly obvious to DWT readers: that there hasn't been any time since the American labor movement took hold when workers -- and I mean all kinds of workers, union and non-union -- were less respected by their bosses.

As with so much of the apparently succeeding assault on the social fabric built up since the New Deal, I think what makes it possible for demagogues and power-grabbing morons to hornswoggle eager-to-be-deceived Americans is that the benefits are so entrenched that people with microscopic attention spans have no idea how much of the good in their lives is built on organized labor, government regulation, all kinds of government spending, and on and on. It's a willed stupidity that works wonders for the oligarchs and their faithful stooges, whose reward is to suck up most of what little trickle-down trickles down from the greed-besotted elites. It's not such a good deal for the rest of the populace.

People so stupid as to be fooled into believing that labor unions are their enemy and management is their friend will learn how wrong they are. Meanwhile, once again Andy Borowitz is wait out ahead of the official nooze media.

Labor Day Officially Moved to China
First U.S. Holiday to Be Outsourced


BEIJING (The Borowitz Report) -- Labor Day, one of America’s most beloved and longest-celebrated holidays, has been officially moved to China, U.S. officials confirmed today.

The Labor Day celebrations are expected to kick off Monday afternoon in Beijing with a barbeque attended by over seven million people and presided over by former NBA star Yao Ming.

The transfer of Labor Day to China represents the first time in American history that an entire holiday has been outsourced, experts said.



“It may be just as well,” said the University of Minnesota’s Davis Logsdon, who has lectured extensively on Labor Day traditions. “It’s been getting harder and harder for Americans to remember what labor is.”



Tracy Klugian, 37 said he was sorry to see his annual Labor Day barbeque relocated from his home in Medina, Ohio to Beijing, but is taking the loss in stride.

“I used to really look forward to Labor Day,” he said. “But to be honest, getting a day off isn’t as special as it used to be.”



While Mr. Klugian said it was “a little strange” for Labor Day barbecues to occur in China with no participation by Americans, he added, “Maybe someday we’ll be able to make illegal fireworks for them.”



Meanwhile, U.S. officials said it was looking "more and more likely" that Thanksgiving would be relocated this year to India.



“At the very least, Americans will still be able to celebrate Thanksgiving by phone,” one official said. “But they should listen closely because some menu options have changed."

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Line In The Sand Time? To Save What's Left Of The New Deal From The Bandits And Predators?

Wednesday one of Raúl Grijalva's most important points in his press conference about the Republican threats to force the treasury into default was that "The people we represent cannot simply be collateral in this discussion... We owe our allegiance at this point to that group of people that is not here to speak for themselves." Of course, who hasn't known that's exactly what conservatives-- on both sides of the aisle-- intend and have always intended? What else are average American families, the kind who don't hire lobbyists and don't write big campaign checks, but collateral?

What Grijalva's speech above closely. Will he be able to withstand the pressure to vote for "the deal" if it comes down to forcing the country into default? Will he be able to withstand it if his is the deciding vote? Would any progressive? Would YOU? I don't know the answer to that-- not for Grijalva, not for you... and not even for me.

Yesterday I read a memo from the Blue Dog polling firm, Anzalone Liszt Research in which they summarized how the public is reacting to the debate over the debt ceiling. Since this is being widely read Inside-the-Beltway, I thought it might be worth sharing so readers of this blog can see what goes into the thought-process of the Serious People who make the decisions for us. Obviously-- apart from the drama among the political elites-- "Wall Street, Main Street, and real voters seem to be increasingly aware-- and concerned-- of the consequences of forcing the government into default.

It shouldn't be a surprise that "raising the debt ceiling" is not verbiage that tests well in opinion polls. Recent AP/GFK numbers show roughly twice as many voters want their member of Congress to oppose raising the debt ceiling as prefer their member support it (22% Support / 42% Oppose). Though it does bear noting that a majority either support the extension (22%) or aren't sure (35%).
 
However, a basic favor / oppose measure only tells part of the story. Even as pluralities generally oppose extension in a vacuum, there has been a consistent trend toward greater support for lifting the ceiling. Polling from Pew/Washington Post has found an uptick in voter concern toward NOT raising the debt ceiling, while concern over raising the ceiling has remained static. 

A thirteen point plurality in mid-May was more concerned about raising the ceiling (35% NOT raising the ceiling / 48% raising the ceiling) than letting it lapse, but the same question has since tightened to just a 5-point plurality (42% NOT raising the ceiling / 47% raising the ceiling). Similar polling from Gallup and the Wall Street Journal/NBC confirms the trend of more voters favoring lifting the debt limit as the national debate progresses.
 
Also, when voters are provided with more context, the issue becomes more competitive. Gallup finds support for raising the limit running at roughly 1:1 with opposition when pro and con arguments are provided (46% Should Raise the Ceiling / 49% Should Not). When AP/GFK asked voters if they support or oppose raising the debt limit to "avoid defaulting on U.S. Government debts", voters were again split virtually down the middle with 38% supporting raising the limit to 41% in opposition. Similarly, recent Quinnipiac numbers show a fuller picture of the situation leading to an evenly divided public. Roughly as many voters are concerned that "not raising the debt limit would force the government into default and hurt the economy" (43%) as are concerned that "raising the debt would lead to higher government spending and make the debt bigger" (45%).
 
AP/GFK also finds only minimal support for the extreme Bachmann-esque position that the debt ceiling shouldn't be raised under any circumstance. Their mid-June results found 34% of voters believe Congress should raise the debt limit then deal with spending cuts separately, 43% believe Congress should raise the limit only with significant spending cuts, and only 18% believe Congress should not raise the debt limit under any circumstance. Gallup also shows that Americans prefer a deficit reduction approach that includes both spending cuts and tax increases. More than seven in ten voters prefer a plan that either includes "equal spending cuts and tax increase" (32%), "mostly spending cuts" (30%), or "mostly / all tax increases" (11%). Only 20% of Americans insist on deficit reduction through spending cuts alone. Even 68% of Republicans prefer some element of tax increases to cut the deficit, compared to just 26% of Republicans who want tax increases completely off the table.
 
Fundamentally, the Republican position in the debt ceiling debate (spending cuts only) is not only out of step with the broader electorate, but also even among self-identified Republicans. 

Fresh CBS News polling reveals that Americans are eager for their leaders to compromise and focus on the real issues facing families. By more than 5:1, voters nationwide would prefer a compromise that they don't fully support (76%) to not reaching an agreement and having the U.S. default on its debts (14%). Support for a compromise spans party affiliation, as overwhelming majorities of Democrats (80%), Republicans (78%), and Independents (72%) prefer even an unsatisfying compromise to government default. Even 64% of self-identified Tea Party supporters would rather see a compromise they don't fully support, compared to only 28% who prefer no compromise and a government default.
 
Gallup polling out this week shows a similar phenomenon. A better than 2:1 margin would prefer their representatives "agree to a compromise plan, even if it's one they disagree with" (66%) than "hold out for the basic plan they want, even if the debt ceiling is not raised by the deadline" (27%). Clear majorities of Democrats (69%), Republicans (57%), and Independents (72%) are ready for a compromise, even if it is not their preferred plan.
 
As the details of a debt ceiling-compromise evolve, so do the politics behind it. Spin is rampant on both sides, but over the past couple of weeks the dynamic seems to have shifted against Republicans. John McCain's public critique of the GOP's House leadership that Republicans are "not winning the battle" is symptomatic of a growing sentiment that Republicans are poised to receive the brunt of voter anger if a deal is not reached. The most recent polling on the issue seems to confirm that public opinion is indeed gelling against Republicans. 

As the President has repeatedly said, the debt ceiling debate represents what many Americans believe is wrong with Washington: profligate spending, political gamesmanship, and a failure of political leaders to come together in good faith to solve real problems. Given that, it shouldn't be a surprise that voters don't give any of the actors high marks for their role in the debt ceiling debate. However, a CBS News poll out this week shows President Obama's rating for his handling of the debt ceiling negotiations (43% Approve / 48% Disapprove)-- while not stellar-- is dramatically higher than those of Congressional Republicans (21% Approve / 71% Disapprove). Congressional Democrats are also in the red (31% Approve / 58% Disapprove), but receive a net-disapproval rating roughly half the 50-point disapproval rating of Congressional Republicans.
 
No matter what Americans may think of the details of the different plans, President Obama is seen as operating in good faith while Republicans are not. Gallup shows that 60% of Americans feel the President is trying to find a solution, while a similar 62% believe Congressional Republicans are NOT. The perception that President Obama is working to find common ground, while Republicans play politics certainly contributes to the critical 19-point edge the President receives on who respondents believe is more concerned about doing what is best for their families in the debt ceiling debate (51% Obama / 32% Congressional GOP).
 
Gallup finds a 20-point margin of Americans blame Republicans for the current crisis (29% Obama / 49% Congressional Republicans), and July Quinnipiac numbers show voters more likely to blame Congressional Republicans (48%) than President Obama (34%) if the government defaults on its debt obligations. In June, Pew found similar results, with 42% blaming Republicans and 33% blaming the President. 

The politics of the debt ceiling are certainly volatile, and while it may be difficult for any side of the debate to come out better than they entered, the Republicans' current trajectory could inflict real political damage on a party struggling to prove it can govern and to find its political identity heading into a crucial election year.

One Democratic congressman who is unlikely to buckle under pressure from the Establishment is Dennis Kucinich (D-OH). And he made that pretty clear in a letter he sent out to his constituents yesterday denigrating Obama's "Big Deal" framing. Like most progressives, he's fuming over Obama's seeming willingness to compromise away Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid guarantees.

President Obama applauded the gang of six "compromise" based on, as he explains, "shared sacrifice and everybody... giving up something."

The only thing being compromised is the Administration's values. This deal cuts Social Security and threatens Medicare and Medicaid, selling out those who need help the most, America's children, poor and elderly-- all while taxes are being cut.

Our message is simple: cutting Social Security which has nothing to do with the debt ceiling is not a "big deal" we can accept, it is a bad deal we must reject.

Do not let them disingenuously fold the issue of Social Security-- which is solvent through 2036-- into raising the debt limit. Do not let them move the ball so far down the field that a "compromise" has become a politically friendly term for caving in on the very cornerstone of our Party and-- more importantly-- on well established principles of economic and social justice in America.

The more details that emerge, the worse the picture gets. While our unemployment remains perilously high and families are suffering, instead of a roadmap for recovery we are receiving directions towards another depression. Any "deal" that ignores the massive economic challenges of this country and balances the budget on the backs of children, seniors and the poor is not moral. In a lifetime, will our party have journeyed from the New Deal to the Raw Deal?

With the signatures of Dale Kildee (D-MI) and Cedric Richmond (D-LA) last night, there are now 80 Members of Congress who have signed the Grijalva-Ellison letter to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. People are wondering how many will buckle and vote for the execrable deal when Obama's Wall Street economic team begins threatening doom the way Bush's did to get the TARP bankster bailout passed. Remember what happened with all the pledges to not vote for the corporate-oriented health care reform bill if Obama killed the public option?

The More Things Change... Meet Mike Lux, Author Of "The Progressive Revolution"

I went to a public lecture last night. Mike Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution, spoke at Book Soup in Los Angeles and led an inspiring talk about the history of American politics-- going right back to the drafting of the Constitution and the difficulty progressives had in getting conservatives to agree to the Bill of Rights.

Personally, I was very excited to learn that Millard Fillmore (perhaps the worst president before George Bush), and who, as VP, ascended to the presidency with the death of Zachary Taylor ran as a Know Nothing. Fillmore was so horrible as a president that his own party, the Whigs, refused to renominate him in 1852 after he served out the remainder of Taylor's term. Many Americans pray to God that Bush will go down not just as the worst president ever but also the last Republican ever to serve as president-- just as Fillmore was the last Whig to ever serve as president.

Fillmore did try a come back (in 1856)-- as the nominee of the Know Nothing Party, a bunch of self-righteous nativists and xenophobes who were hysterical that Catholic immigrants, primarily from Ireland, Germany and Italy, were destroying American values and bringing diseases and... all kinds of bad stuff. (James Buchanan was elected with 174 electoral votes, but Fillmore carried one state, Maryland, and its 8 electoral votes.) There were enough bigoted racists voting though, to give Fillmore 21.6% of the vote, ironically the exact same percentage of Americans who identify themselves as Republicans today! In fact, just 21% of GOP voters believe Republicans in Congress have been doing a good job.

But the Republicans, who have immersed their political identity in obstructionism, haven't fallen to their lowest. They will be worse off in the future and they have been worse off in the past. In fact, after decades of the exact same kinds of greed-inspired Republican policies in the 1920s-- subsequently enacted by Bush and his GOP rubber stamps and with the predictably sane results-- the Republican Party of the time (as their descendants today) decided the best solution to their political dilemma was obstructionism. Last night Mike reminded us that not a single Republican in the House voted for FDR's Social Security bill-- and the only Republican senator to support it, George Norris (NE) soon left the party and was re-elected as an Independent with Democratic Party support! The Republican Party's response to cure the Depression their agenda had plunged the country into was to oppose banking reform, oppose work relief programs, oppose breaking up the monopolies, oppose the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (which was the Employee Free Choice Act of its day), oppose unemployment insurance for workers, oppose everything that went on to make the U.S. a successful middle class country.

After Republican stewardship of the economy increased unemployment from 4% to 25%, (and cut a third of the national manufacturing output) by the time FDR got to the White House there was rampant deflation and a desperate need for action. There were a handful of reactionary Democrats who teamed up with the Republicans to try to stop FDR's programs, almost identical to the scenario today where we see the Evan Bayh anti-Obama Bloc doing the same thing. The worst of the Bayhists, Nebraska shithead Ben Nelson, just announced that he would join the Republican filibuster of Obama's health care reforms. A shill for the insurance industry, Nelson is parroting all the right wing talking points about reform-- in fact the exact same talking points Republicans were using to try to defeat FDR's programs in the 1930s! And that brings us right back to Mike Lux's excellent book:

The two parties which divide the state, the party of conservatism and that of innovation are very old, and have disputed the world ever since it was made. Now one, now the other gets the day, and still the fight renews itself as if for the first time, under new names and hot personalities.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is the contention of this book that American history consists of one long battle between the forces of reaction and the defense of wealth and power, on the one hand, and the forces of progressivism and community, on the other.

If you look at our country’s long history, from the days of the first stirrings of our revolutionary impulses against Britain to today, progressive leaders and progressive movements have moved this country forward in the face of bitter-- and frequently violent-- opposition from reactionaries and defenders of the status quo. Consider the major advances in American history:

• The American Revolution
• The Bill of Rights and the forging of a democracy
• Universal white male suffrage
• Public education
• The emancipation of the slaves
• The national park system
• Food safety
• The breakup of monopolies
• The Homestead Act
• Land grant universities
• Rural electrification
• Women’s suffrage
• The abolition of child labor
• The eight hour workday
• The minimum wage
• Social Security
• Civil rights for minorities and women
• Voting rights for minorities and the poor
• Cleaning up our air, our water, and toxic dump sites
• Consumer product safety
• Medicare and Medicaid

Every single one of those reforms, which are literally the reforms that made this country what it is today, was accomplished by the progressive movement standing up to the fierce opposition of conservative reactionaries who were trying to preserve their own power. American history is one long argument between progressivism and conservatism.

The striking thing about this long debate is how much the arguments that have occurred are repetitive over time, in terms of their rhetoric, constituencies, philosophy, and the values they represent. From generation to generation, the conservatives who oppose reform and progress have used the same kinds of arguments over and over again. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. described the division as one between “public purpose and private interest.” If you sketch out the broad lines of the conservative case against the progressive case, it flows something like this:

The Conservative Argument

Successful businessmen and their allies make America great, and we should not undermine their authority or cost them money because that will mean bad things for the economy and all of us. Their freedom to run things as they like benefits everyone in the long run. And they should be the ones who control the government as well, because they know how the world works, and we can trust them to protect out national interests because of their knowledge and wisdom. An excess of democracy is a dangerous thing.

We must adhere to tradition because once we tamper with tradition, society goes to hell. It’s a scary world out there, and the people who have always run things can protect us, but only if we stay with our traditions and keep things the way they have always been. People who are different from us create problems, and we don’t want our traditions or the carefully built structure of our society undermined.

If people are poor, it’s probably their own fault because they are too lazy to work, didn’t study in school, and are generally bad people. Society shouldn’t spend any money on helping people who can’t help themselves, and we can’t afford it anyway. Ultimately, each of us is responsible for ourselves in the world, and we shouldn’t be relying on government or anybody else to make it.

We should fear change and be wary of hope because when things change, we just don’t know what the unintended consequences will be.

The Progressive Argument

We are all created equal and deserve both equal rights under the law and equal oppor-tunities to make good lives for ourselves and families. That means that the laws should not be formulated to favor one race of people or to help the wealthy over the poor. And it means that we all should have a good education, enough food to eat, adequate health care if we get sick, and a decent place to live.

Our society works well only when it has a sense of community, an understanding that we are all interdependent on one another, that we are all diminished if any one of us is suffering, and that we look out for those who can’t take care of themselves.

America is a democracy that should be a government of, by, and for the people. We don’t trust elites to look out for the rest of us, and we want everyone to have a say in how the government and the economy are run.

Fear and Hope

The argu-ments by conser-vatives all too fre-quently invoke fear-- of change , of one another, of foreigners and foreign enemies, or of certain people. They proclaim a loud and fervent patriotism and a love of traditional values, quite often quoting the Bible to justify their point of view, while ignoring those patriots and Bible quotes that don’t fit their agenda.

Progressives, on the other hand, have called for hope, rather than fear, and for changing things for the better, rather than just leaving things the way they have always been. We have been for more power for regular folks and less power for elites. And we have been for a stronger sense of community, rather than the sense that each of us is on his or her own.

The central theme of this book is to show how these political arguments have been repeated over time and time again since the American Revolution, how the same alternative visions of America keep being argued over and over, and how when progressives have won the day politically, the country has moved forward.

The good news is that a more progressive vision of what America can aspire to has prevailed enough times over the years to make us a far better country. While it is certainly true that the United States is more conservative by many measures than the industrialized countries in Europe, and that progress has been uneven and painfully slow, we are also the country that invented the modern notions of democracy and equality, and that legacy has echoed down through the generations and inspired new movements to make their claims on the American dream.

American history has always been a mixed bag, with vision and courage and progress mixed together with slavery, the brutal killing of many millions of American Indians, wars shouldn’t have fought, and altogether too much greed. There have been plenty of times when the progressive movement was too weak and small to stop bad things from happening, or when it settled for compromises on fundamental issues, such as slavery and women’s suffrage.

Even leaders who pushed for progressive policy in some areas failed us in others. As I discuss more in Chapter 4, this is especially true in terms of the way otherwise progressive leaders, such as Jefferson, Jackson, Wilson, and FDR, have failed us on racial justice issues. But it applies to other leaders as well. For example, Teddy Roosevelt created the national park system, partially broke apart the big trusts, and brought us some measure of food safety, but he had no use for unions or women’s suffrage, allowed some of the worst lynchings in the nation’s history to occur in the south, and was a military adventurer. Woodrow Wilson brought us the single most important economic reform in the country’s history-- a progressive income tax-- and his ideas set the stage for many New Deal-era reforms and the United Nation, but he got us into a stupid, wasteful war that we had no business being in. Kennedy and Johnson helped push through civil rights laws, Medicare, and Medicaid, but got us into the Vietnam War.

Yet even with all of the disappointments that are part of America’s history, we also know that the progressive arguments and movements have prevailed again and again and have created democracy where progress is always possible. Movement leaders such as Tom Paine, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, John L. Lewis, Walter Reuther, Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, and Rachel Carson have always been ahead of the politicians and have pushed our country to become better. Our history is full of progressive leaders fighting the good fight, and winning much of the time, to create a better nation. The battle between conservatism and progress will continue to be fought as long as there is a United States of America.