I was just planning to excoriate William Burton (Im in that kind of mood; even my friends better watch their asses ) for this post:
I would first point out that the traditional Democratic donor groups don’t scare me, nor do they scare most people likely to vote Democratic. The unions, trial lawyers, environmental groups, abortion rights groups, and socially liberal Hollywood types are the most solidly Democratic donor constituencies. Try as they might, the Republicans have never gotten significant numbers of people to vote against the Democrats because of who gives money to them (people may vote pro-life, but they’re not changing their votes if the Democrats stop taking money from NARAL). These traditional Democratic donor groups line up pretty closely with good Democratic policies.
The problems occur when Democrats start relying on money from traditionally Republican groups. When Democrats start depending on money from banks, from insurance companies, from the investor class, and from big business in general, then they find themselves in an untenable position. To keep these donors happy, they must abandon traditional Democratic policies and the political advantages that come from representing the majority of the American people against those with outsized power and influence.
Hes wrong in more than a couple of ways here
but because Im so effing backlogged, I didnt get around to it until hed posted this:
I believe that FDR’s appeal was not to minorities, the poor, and to union members just because they belonged to those groups (even in the 30’s that wasn’t enough to win elections). I believe that his appeal to them was part of his greater appeal to huge chunks of the American electorate. That appeal was more psychological than based on race or other identity. FDR spoke to and for what America as a whole was feeling during the 30’s and 40’s, and that is still applicable today.
I’d say that FDR had two basic constituencies, with a great deal of overlap: the anxious and the powerless. Speak to those constituencies today and you win elections (a great deal of Reagan’s popularity was his appeal to those who felt anxious about the future and those who felt powerless in the face of government).
Whatever the drawbacks (and they’re too many to list) of the era, there was a lot less anxiety in the 50’s and early 60’s than there is now. If you had a job assembling cars, you could be pretty sure that the job would stick around and that you’d be able to support your family with it. If you had a job in middle management at GM or at a bank, you could be pretty sure that job would be there your whole life. If your kids were in college, then you could be pretty sure that good jobs would be waiting for them when they graduated. Things were more predictable, and that made people less anxious.
Compare that to the 30’s and 40’s, in which the Great Depression and war made everyone anxious. You couldn’t be sure that your job would be there in a year. You couldn’t be sure your son would be alive in a year. You couldn’t even be sure that your way of life would be around much longer. FDR dealt with this anxiety by letting people know that we were all in this together, and by using the government to actively make things better. He knew that when things are bad, people don’t want the government to simply step out of the way and let nature take its course (the Hoover approach); they want the government to step in and make things better.
This activist approach to government is very popular and should be just as big selling point for the Democrats now as it was then. While social dislocation and unemployment is nothing close to what it was in the 30’s and the War on Some Terror Funded by Some People (none of whom happen to be Saudi) pales in comparison to WWII, the public today is still quite anxious. A factory employee, a middle manager, even a professional doesn’t know for sure that his job will be there in a year. If it’s not, he doesn’t know for sure he’ll be able to replace it. He doesn’t know if his kids will find good jobs when they graduate college; nor does he know what the world will be like in even a few years. This leads to a lot of anxiety, and elections will go to those who act to calm it and are willing to take steps to make things better.
Damn.
How can I criticize someone whos so perfectly right?? Im gonna go home and kick the cats instead.
Why in the world should I feel calmed by a promise from Barbara Boxer (one of my Senators)? The woman can’t even balance a checkbook. What are we? Children who need to be burped and wiped, and to have our tummies rubbed when we feel upset?
What ever happened to “the animating contest of freedom” that made this country so great to begin with?
Well, I got to it, but in an area in which you and he likely agree fully.
Hope you feel better soon. Golden seal and echineacea, anyone?
I totally agree with him about Dems taking money from traditionally Republican donors. The really big money gives a money to both sides, but more to the Republicans. They want the Republicans to win, but they want a hedge.
Sen. Joe “Arthur Anderson” Lieberman, who smothered the Enron investigation and probably will help smother the 9/11 investigation, is my poster child. Enron (which bilked small investors, retirees and workers of billions)coiuld have been a powerful issue. It wasn’t. It’s not just politics either — there are major issues here that the Dems have failed to address.
That’s about the part you didn’t like. I’d be interested in hearing what you have to say.
I think Enron is going to either go away as a matter of some criminal indictments or take its place as a giant icon of the anti-business crowd. Which turns out to be the case depends on whether liberals can crank up the loudspeaker.
Going bankrupt is not illegal. Going bankrupt is not a goal of CEOs and their functionaries.
Enron’s problems were matters of corporate stupidity and arrogance, not to mention complete divorce from the realm of common sense and reality.
Enron tried to hide some of this stuff through fancy accounting, some of which is either legal or not, depending on which way the political wind is blowing. Then it lied about this stuff, which is really illegal.
The only people who got bilked in this process were the later buyers who bought at artificially high prices and earlier buyers who didn’t sell, hoping for more profit.
The latter are annoyed they didn’t get a chance to sell at the artificially hyped prices to some fool who didn’t know any better.
Their losses were from some fictional high, not supported either by the company or the market for very long. It does make compelling math, though, to say your share price was $100 at one point and now it’s $50, so you lost $50. But if you bought at $20, you gained $30 and if you were too dumb or greedy to sell at $100, whose fault is that?
At one point, Enron set up a fake trading floor where hundreds of employees sat at consoles barking out trading orders–to each other–for the benefit of visitors who were supposed to be impressed. Those employees either kept quiet (sure) or the entire company heard about it and no employee said a word for fear his 401k might fall apart before he could sell his undiversified (because he was greedy) holdings to somebody who wasn’t in on the scam.
How do you think those employees would fare in an investigation?
Does anybody want to go there when these employees have already been canonized as Victims of Corporate Greed? It would be like finding the Starving Family Farmer sucked up half a mill in assistance without mentioning his oil wells.
The real villain was Andersen. Enron would have been barenekkid in the snow with the entire country looking on if the CPAs had done their job. And none of the bilking resulting from the artificially jacked share prices would have occurred.
Perhaps I’m just feeling overly cynical right now (sleep deprivation can do that to you) but I’m finding it very difficult to believe that the actual substance of policy matters anymore. I didn’t hear much about policy in 2000. I heard about how that awful Al Gore was such a policy wonk(i.e. is interested in and knowledgable about the job he’s applying for) and about how George W. Bush was so gosh-darn nice. The contest wasn’t decided on the basis of “Who has the best policy?”. It was decided on the basis of “How many buttons are on Al Gore’s suit? What color is it?”. From the looks of things, the 2004 election will be based on the price of Kerry’s haircuts.
[grumble grumble grumble]
Burton’s political analysis may well be dead on–elections will go to activists–but where does that leave us if the activists have bad ideas? Sometimes just doing nothing IS the best policy, and it’s beyond my why anyone would put winning elections for the Democrats above pursuing the best policy.
BTW, there’s plenty of debate about whether FDR actually made things better or just appeared to.
I have always felt the Dems biggest failing was not in their ideas, but in their implementation. They would come up with a reasonable idea (social security), then purpose the worst possible implementation (pyramid scheme).
It seems pretty clear to me that Enron committed fraud and that they were abetted by a lot of other companies (Arthur Anderson, stockbrokers, law firm, etc) and that a lot of other similiar failures (too many to name, Worldcom, Tyco, etc.) also invloved fraud. Most of these companies were designed so that those responsible for the failures did not suffer from it. So yes, going bankrupt can be a goal, or at least a step toward a goal.
I also think that the effects will not be transient. Investors of all types will be much more cautious — beyond the fact that they have less money.
So fine, Richard Aubrey, there was no political issue there. Lay’s friend Bush certainly agrees. Lieberman agrees. So really the Dems did the right thing to roll over and play dead. Silly me.