Do The Two Political Parties Stand For Anything (Other Than Careerism)?

The rock-solid set of principles the Democratic Party once stood for has weakened... a lot. Thank Bill Clinton and his transactional politics for a lot of that. Choice doesn't matter, nor does marriage equality, unions, the legitimate aspirations of working families. The DCCC is out recruiting NRA allies. "But you need to adopt Republican-lite positions to win in that state (or district) is something I hear from faux Democrats on Twitter nearly every day. The Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- the New Dems and Blue Dogs-- stand for nothing except careerism, their own careerism. And that is the ascendant wing. Recently in Jackson, Mississippi Bernie Sanders told a large and enthusiastic crowd that "the business model, if you like, of the Democratic Party for the last 15 years or so has been a failure. People sometimes don’t see that because there was a charismatic individual named Barack Obama. He was obviously an extraordinary candidate, brilliant guy. But behind that reality, over the last ten years, Democrats have lost about 1,000 seats in state legislatures all across this country." Even the Congressional Progressive Caucus, originally founded by Bernie, seems to be going along for the ride more often than many progressives feel comfortable with.

How many members of the Progressive Caucus are also members of the New Dems? Well... there's Don Beyer (VA), Lisa Blunt Rochester (DE), André Carson (IN), Val Demings (FL), Ruben Kihuen (NV), Brenda Lawrence (MI), and Jared Polis (CO). And how many New Dems have the Progressive Caucus endorsed so far this cycle? Angie Craig (MN) and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (FL). And there are mixed stories about Florida conservative Darren Soto (FL), a New Dem and big NRA ally who doesn't appear on the CPC website but who was endorsed a few weeks ago. A few days ago, a candidate Blue America is still in the middle of vetting called me, excitedly, to tell me he has been endorsed by the Progressive Caucus. At one time that would have been a huge plus for Blue America. It doesn't mean much any more. This year it endorsed establishment insider Liz Watson over genuine progressive leader Dan Canon (IN-09). They endorsed Gina Ortiz Jones over genuine progressive leader Rick Treviño (TX-23). They endorsed hackish establishment shill Mike Levin over progressive Doug Applegate (TX-49), Steve Horsford over Amy Vilela (NV-04)...

The Democratic Party was once constantly pushed in a progressive direction by a strong, vibrant Progressive Caucus. The Progressive Caucus is no longer strong, no longer vibrant, no longer capable of pushing the Democratic Party in any direction. They're becoming a subsidiary of the New Dems. Instead of offering an alternative to the corrupt centrist Joe Crowley as the next Speaker, I'm hearing they're going to actually back Crowley! You want to know why the Democratic Party doesn't stand for anything worthwhile any longer? Don't just blame the Blue Dogs, the New Dems, Pelosi, Hoyer... blame the Progressive Caucus... for transforming itself into a big nothing pie of complacent identity politics.

You know who's just as bad-- or even worse-- than the Democrats? The pathetic Republicans. John Harwood, writing for CNBC yesterday, took on the hollowness the GOP has already fallen into. "The business model of the modern Republican Party," he wrote, "does not produce real-world budget discipline. So today, GOP lawmakers turn to make-believe."

Within the last four months, the Republican president and party leaders in Congress took two actions that dramatically expand federal deficits. On a party-line vote, they cut taxes by $150 billion a year, then increased spending by $150 billion a year in cooperation with Democrats.

Now, as the Congressional Budget Office projects the return of $1 trillion annual deficits, congressional Republicans plan a gesture for constituents alarmed by rising debt. The House will vote on Thursday on a constitutional amendment requiring lawmakers to balance the federal budget.

The amendment lacks enough support to pass. Nor would GOP lawmakers want it to, since they have demonstrated unwillingness to make the policy choices the amendment would require.

In a second gesture, the White House is preparing to ask Congress to rescind some of the spending increases that Trump signed weeks ago. Bipartisan opposition from lawmakers who just affirmed them with their votes makes it unlikely such a proposal can pass.

Evidence suggests that gestures are the best the 21st century GOP can do. Decades of evolution have produced overlapping but disparate Republican segments whose priorities consistently drive deficits up.

Backers of supply-side economics dominate Republican tax policy. Urged on by GOP donors on Wall Street and in executive suites, they press continually to cut taxes.

Advocates of limited government welcome the resulting reduction of federal revenue. They want Washington to do less.

But proponents of strengthening America's military posture want more, so they pursue larger and larger Pentagon budgets. And older, working-class whites who disdain Wall Street and depend on government programs increasingly define the GOP voting base.

Specifically, those voters want to protect their benefits under Social Security and Medicare, both now ballooning as the massive baby boom generation retires. Conservative ideologues opposed those programs from their inception but have failed to roll them back.

No Republican faction openly disavows deficit reduction. But when President George W. Bush sought to fundamentally restructure Social Security in 2005, a Congress controlled by fellow Republicans declined.

In winning the presidency two years ago, Trump promised not to touch Social Security or Medicare benefits.

House Speaker Paul Ryan keeps exhorting his colleagues to curb them but hasn't succeeded, and on Wednesday, he announced his retirement.

The GOP has forced cuts to the narrow slice of the budget that finances other domestic spending, recently through the 2011 budget sequestration law. In practice, however, Ryan and other Republicans found those constraints too severe to sustain and acquiesced in Democratic attempts to relax them.

The central difference between the parties on budget discipline is that Democrats, while backing higher spending, have also backed higher taxes to finance it. Republicans keep supporting tax cuts even while failing to shrink spending.

The result: since Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1981, all three Republican presidents before Trump left office with higher federal deficits than they inherited. One Democratic president (Bill Clinton) departed with a budget surplus; the other (Barack Obama) saw the deficit decline by two-thirds as a share of the economy.

That record has not deterred Republican claims that their policies will eventually reduce red ink. Last fall, the Trump administration insisted its tax cut would stimulate enough economic activity to boost annual growth to 2.9 percent over the next 10 years.

"Not only will this plan pay for itself," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin predicted, "but it will pay down debt."

The CBO concluded this week that Mnuchin's forecast is a fantasy.

Its report projects annual economic growth of 1.9 percent over 10 years-- mirroring the long-run outlook from before the tax cut passed. It projects the deficit growing from $665 billion in Trump's first year in office to $1 trillion in his fourth.

It envisions the national debt rising by $1.5 trillion above previous projections to reach $27 trillion by 2027.

When he backed the tax cut, retiring GOP Sen. Bob Corker cited his belief that it would not increase the budget deficit. After this week's CBO report, Corker fretted, "If it ends up costing what has been laid out here, it could well be one of the worst votes I've made."

Corker's House colleagues need not fear the same from their balanced-budget amendment vote Thursday. It won't change the deficit by even a single dollar.

And the trade agreements that have hollowed out the identification of blue collar workers with the Democratic Party? You want to blame Reagan and George H.W. Bush? George H.W. Bush couldn't pass NAFTA. Bill Clinton promised Wall Street and Big Business he would-- and he let Rahm Emanuel loose on Congress to accomplish it. That's when the Democratic Party turned into a big pile of stinking shit-- that and when Obama appointed Debbie Wasserman Schultz head of the DNC and allowed her to undercut the 2016 primaries to guarantee a win for Clinton's wife, a guarantee that brought America the Mafia presidency of Donald J. Trump.

The People Have The Power-- To Dream, To Vote

Labour's Jeremy Corbyn is drawing huge crowds across the U.K., just the way Bernie Sanders is here in the U.S.-- and for similar reasons. Both progressives are battling a distrusted and failed political Establishment and championing the concept of power to the people-- the polar opposite of what Trump is championing: power to the strong man who will look out for you (one of the roots of fascism). Corbyn's popularity is going through the roof. Friday people started voting in the Labour contest for Party Leader and, much to the chagrin of New Labour and the party's impotent, failed hierarchy, Corbyn is way ahead. (Voting ends September 10.)

Discredited but so far unindicted war criminal Tony Blair is leading the charge against Corbyn and the hordes of new members he has attracted the the Labour Party with his populist ideas and vision. Mark Steel, writing Friday for The Independent grappled with why conventional Labour politicians find the prospect of Corbyn and all those new voters, so terrifying. Tongue in cheek, he sympathized: "It’s easy to see why those in charge of the Labour Party are so depressed. They must sit in their office crying: 'Hundreds of thousands of people want to join us. It’s a disaster. And loads of them are young, and full of energy, and they’re really enthusiastic. Oh my God, why has it all gone so miserably wrong?' Every organisation would be the same. If a local brass band is down to its last five members, unsure whether it can ever put on another performance, the last thing it needs is young excited people arriving with trombones to boost numbers and raise money and attract large audiences. The sensible response is to tell them they’re idiots, and announce to the press that they are infiltrators from the Workers’ Revolutionary Party."

The fervour around Jeremy Corbyn is extraordinary, but it wouldn’t be fair to suggest he’s the only Labour politician who can bring large crowds on to the streets to greet him. Tony Blair is just as capable. In his case the crowds are there to scream that he should be arrested for war crimes and to throw things at him, but that’s being pernickety; he can certainly draw an audience.

Blair made another contribution to the leadership debate this week, and his prose is worth quoting. It goes: “The party is walking eyes shut, arms outstretched, over the cliff’s edge to the jagged rocks below. This is not a moment to refrain from disturbing the serenity of the walk on the basis it causes 'disunity'. It is a moment for a rugby tackle if that were possible.”...[H]e was simply trying to convey the scale of apocalypse that will result from Labour electing a leader who stands for something.

...This week, I was lucky enough to enjoy at first hand this calm approach of Labour’s leaders, when my application to register as a supporter was turned down on the grounds that: “We have reason to believe that you do not support the aims and values of the Labour Party.” I suppose it’s encouraging that they’re being so thorough, although it could be argued that leading your country into a disastrous invasion, having justified it with a set of premises it turns out you made up, is also slightly at odds with the aims and values of the Labour Party. So, presumably, Blair and Campbell and their supporters will have received the same email as me?

Or there’s Simon Danczuk, the MP who has pledged to do all he can to overthrow Jeremy Corbyn from day one of his leadership. I wonder if publicly committing yourself to bringing down the democratically elected leader of the Labour Party could give someone a reason to believe you didn’t support the aims and values of the Labour Party?

If not, this could lead to a whole new way of running organisations. When someone joins the Scouts they should have to pledge to bring down the Scouts from day one, otherwise they’re not allowed to join. If a new member applies to join a bowls club, they should be asked if they’re prepared to abide by the rules of the elected committee, and if they are, they should be told to sod off and never come back.

Then there’s John McTernan, the former adviser to Jim Murphy, who insists that Corbyn will be a catastrophe, and that the party should continue with the strategy he devised in Scotland, which took the party’s MPs from 41 to a much more manageable one, making it far easier to deal with admin.

These are the types you want to make a party successful, not crowds of young enthusiastic people eager to change society. Isn’t it obvious?

Last year a Gallup poll showed how disaffected voters are from the two Establishment parties. Only 25% of voters identify as Republicans (way down) and 31% identify as Democrats (relatively stable but also slipping). Independents showed tremendous growth, now at 42%.

Americans are increasingly declaring independence from the political parties. It is not uncommon for the percentage of independents to rise in a non-election year, as 2013 was. Still, the general trend in recent years, including the 2012 election year, has been toward greater percentages of Americans identifying with neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party, although most still admit to leaning toward one of the parties.

The rise in political independence is likely an outgrowth of Americans' record or near-record negative views of the two major U.S. parties, of Congress, and their low level of trust in government more generally.

I can't imagine that conventional Establishment politicians like Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Scott Walker, Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden can turn those trends around-- or even want to think about them-- but they very much do account for some of the enthusiasm swirling around the electoral bids of outsiders Donald Trump (from a fascist perspective) and Bernie Sanders (from a small "d" democratic perspective). Too complicated? Go back to the top and listen to Patti Smith in Rome again.