A Member of Congress, a strong, active, unambiguous progressive who sailed to victory Tuesday, called me complaining about Pelosi's tele-caucus meeting the other day. The Democrats, Pelosi said, did badly in the election because-- wait for it-- turnout was bad. It was bad... something like only 36.6% of registered voters went to the polls. But that in itself doesn't explain why the Democrats did poorly, nor why Republicans did well. On C-Span's Newsmakers this morning, Bernie Sanders said he thinks "many of the Democratic candidates did not run on an agenda which resonated with working people… where the Democrats have been weak and individual Democratic candidates have been weak is not really coming up to the plate and saying, ‘You know what? We’re going to have to take on the billionaire class'." One of those weak, confused candidates the Democrats ran was Alison Grimes in Kentucky. When questioned she couldn't even admit she had voted for Obama. So the result? Tuesday she wound up with 100,000 fewer voters than Obama got in Kentucky in 2012. Her total was 584,622 and his was 679,370. Members were grumbling that what Pelosi didn't address is why turn out was low. What had gone wrong that the Democrats couldn't turn out their voters? Why, for example in Arkansas, why did 546,135 voters (65.9%) opt for the minimum wage increase, while electing Asa Hutchinson governor 468,017 (55.4%) to 350,535 (41.5%). Asa Hutchinson, not only didn't back the minimum wage increase but he doesn't back the concept of having a minimum wage at all. Arkansas voters also elected a radical right, anti-minimum wage senator, Tom Cotton 476,309 (56.5%) to 332,669 (39.5%) and 4 Republicans to its 4 House seats-- while growing the state House GOP majority from 51 Republicans to 63 Republicans?Well, the guy who ran against Hutchinson for governor, Mike Ross, (aside from being a crook) is a Blue Dog who had amassed one of the most conservative, pro-Republican voting records in Congress and was forced to retire in 2012 rather than face certain defeat in the district he had first won over a decade earlier. Of the 4 Democrats running for the congressional seats, none were progressives; all were conservatives with Republican-lite messages for the voters. And the U.S. Senator who Tom Cotton beat, Mark Pryor, was across all issues among the 3 most conservative Democrats in the U.S. Senate. And someone absolutely incapable of selling a progressive message. Watch this confused mess in his own office trying to navigate a conversation he should probably have never been in to begin with. Voters can smell the bullshit and the fear:In Alaska, the minimum wage bill passed with an even greater margin, 154,516 (68.8%) to 70,082 (31.2%)-- while those same Alaska voters appear to have elected a right-wing kook, Dan Sullivan, who opposes a minimum wage. He's currently leading generally conservative Democrat Mark Begich 110,203 (49.0%) to 102,054 (45.3%). In Nebraska, voters decided, by a margin of 59.2% to 40.8% to increase the minimum wage-- while electing minimum wage opponent Ben Sasse with 64.8%. Republicans had banner nights in South Dakota and West Virginia as well-- both of which had majorities in favor of minimum wage increases-- and new Republicans elected who oppose minimum wages on principle-- or, more to the point-- support the concept of slavery for the working class. In Illinois, voters approved a nonbinding advisory question that calls on the state Legislature to approve a $10 minimum wage-- and elected sleazy anti-minimum wage billionaire Bruce Rauner governor. At the same time, Illinois Republicans managed to defeat 2 Democratic congressional incumbents, Brad Schneider and Bill Enyart-- both confused, conflicted conservatives-- while electing Robert Dold and GOP sociopath Mike Bost.The AFL-CIO has post-election data that shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans favor Democratic Party progressive positions-- from a more specific one like raising the minimum wage to a more amorphous one like reducing the power of Wall Street and Big Business. AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka says that there's a disconnect with voters because over half of them agreed that "politicians from both the Democratic and Republican parties do too much to support Wall Street financial interests and not enough to help average Americans." That explains why most of the pain and suffering Tuesday was among members of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- Blue Dogs, New Dems and other corporate whores-- and, with a few exceptions, not among normal progressive Democrats. "If a candidate goes out with a strong economic message, and says, 'Here’s how I’m gonna solve your economic problems,' that candidate’s gonna do well," said Trumka. "It doesn’t matter whether they’re a Democrat or Republican. But the economic message that voters heard, they heard stronger from the Republican side than from the Democrats."On Friday, I talked a little about why voters didn't vote but this morning I found a perspective worth looking at by George Lakoff. "Democratic strategists," he wrote "have been segmenting the electorate and seeking individual self-interest-based issues in each electoral block. The strategists also keep suggesting a move to right. This has left no room for the Democrats to have an overriding authentic moral identity that Americans can recognize." That's the crux of it. Pelosi appointed Israel because he's greasy crook with strong ties to slimy lobbyists, Wall Street predators and Big Business interests. His job was to raise money-- and he did. The problem was that he was an abject failure at crafting any kind of strategy (mystery meatism could not have possibly worked) or in recruiting viable candidates capable of independent thought and carrying a progressive message and vision-- both of which are abhorent to Israel himself. Israel's base is not working families; it is the strategic infrastructure on which Lakoff bases part of his critique: "PR firms, pollsters, consultants, researchers, trainers, communication specialists, speechwriters, and their funders."Lakoff points to a dozen strategic points the Beltway Democrats use as an excuse for strategy:
• Use demographic categories to segment the electorate, categories from the census (race, gender, ethnicity, age, marital status, income, zip code), as well as publicly available party registration.• Assume uniformity across the demographic categories. Poll on which issues are "most important," e.g., for women (or single women), for each minority group, for young people, and so on. This separates the issues from one another and creates "issue silos." It does not include segmentation for moral worldviews that differ between conservatives and progressives.• Assume language is neutral and that the same poll questions will have the same meaning for everyone polled. In reality, language is defined relative to conceptual frames. And the same words can be "contested," that is, they can have opposite meanings depending on one's moral values.• Assume that people vote on the basis of material self-interest and design different message to appeal to different demographic groups. In reality, poor conservatives will vote against their material interests when they identify with a candidate and his or her values.• In polling, apply statistical methods to the answers given in each demographic group. This will impose a "bell curve" in the results. The bell curve will impose a "middle" in each case.• Assume that most voters are in the middle imposed by the bell curve. Move to the middle. If your beliefs are on the left of the "middle," move to the right to be where most voters are. You will be helping conservatives, by supporting their beliefs. And you may be saying things you don't believe.• Check the polls to see how popular the present Democratic president is; if he is not popular, design you message to dissociate yourself from the president. It will reinforce the unpopularity of the president when members of his own party, as well as the opposition, disown him.• Attack your opponents as being "extremists" when they hold views typical of the far right. This will help your opponents as standing up for what they believe among those of their constituents that share any of those views.• Attack you opponents for getting money from rich corporations or individuals. This will help your opponent among Republicans (and some Democrats) who respect the values of the wealthy and successful.• Argue against your opponents by quoting them, using their language and negating that language. Negating a frame reinforces the frame, as in the sentence "Don't think of an elephant!" This practice will mostly reinforce the views of your opponent.• Privatization: When significant public resources become owned or controlled by private corporations, the public has lost an essential element of freedom.• Fear: When you are emotionally gripped by fear, you are not free.
This is certainly how Steve Israel ran the DCCC (and how Michael Bennet ran the DSCC and how Debbie Wasserman Schultz runs the DNC). "Such strategies," writes Lakoff, "miss the opportunity to present an overriding moral stand that fits the individual issues, while saying clearly what ideals Democrats stand for as Democrats. There happens to be such an overriding ideal that most Democrats authentically believe in."
All politics is moral. When a politician says to do something, he is implicitly claiming that it is the right thing to do. No political will over say, do what I say because it's wrong-- pure evil! None will ever say, "Do what I say, though it doesn't matter." When politicians' policy prescriptions differ widely, it because their sense of what is right is very different. In short, they have different moral systems. That is true of progressives and conservatives alike. The political proposals conservatives and progressives make are based on different moral systems.Progressive and conservatives have very different understandings of democracy. For progressives empathy is at the center of the very idea of democracy. Democracy is a governing system in which citizens care about their fellow citizens and work through their government to provide public resources for all. In short, in a democracy, the private depends on the public.Elizabeth Warren says it out loud. If you have a business it depends on public resources: roads, bridges, the Interstate highway system, sewers, a water supply, airports and air traffic control, the Federal Reserve, a patent office, public education for your employees, public health, the electric grid, the satellite communication system, the internet, and all the government research behind computer science. You can't run a business without these. Private enterprise depends on the public.The same is true of individuals, who depend on public resources like clean air, clean water, enough food, safe food and products, public safety, access to education and health care, housing, employment-- as well as those roads, bridges, sewers, satellite communication, electric grid, and so on. And most important-- voting in free elections, choosing the government to provide those resources. Private life depends on the public.What public resources provide is freedom. Most progressive issues are freedom issues.And one more, which had a major effect in the 2014 election:• Voting: Without the ability to vote in free elections you are not free.• Health: If you get cancer or even break a leg and don't have health care, you are not free.• Education: Without education, you lack the knowledge and skills not just ot earn a decent living, but also to even be aware of the possibilities of life. Without education, you are therefore not free.• Women: If you are denied control over your body, you are not free.• Marriage: If you are in love and are denied the ability to marry with a publicly declared lifetime commitment, you are not free.• Vast income inequality: When the economic gains that most people have worked go not the those who worked for them for go only to the wealthiest of the wealthy, those who did the work-- most people-- are not free.• Race: When you are treated with suspicion and disdain, you are not free.• Corporate Control: When corporations control your life for their benefit and not yours, you are not free.As FDR pointed out, Freedom From Fear is a vital freedom. In the 2014 election, conservative played on fear - of Isis and Ebola.Every progressive instinctively knows all this, but very few say it. Instead, progressives tend to talk not about such values, but instead about facts, policies, and programs.Conservatives, on the other hand, have a very different view of democracy. For them democracy is supposed to provide them with the liberty to do what they want, without being responsible for others and without others being responsible for them. For them, there is only personal responsibility, not social responsibility. Indeed, providing public resources is, to a conservative, immoral, taking away personal responsibility, making people dependent, lazy, unable to take care of themselves. Removing public resources is seen as providing incentives, and individual liberty is seen as the condition in which you can carry out your incentives.This is very much what conservative morality is about. If you cannot succeed through personal responsibility, you deserve what you get.But these are not just two equally valid, though opposite, moral systems. Because the private really does depend on the public, because personal responsibility without public resources gets you nowhere, the conservative view of democracy has radically false consequences. It is immoral because it lacks empathy, but it also just plain false... Progressivism supports freedom. The private depends on the public. If you believe it, say it. Moral ideals matter. Authenticity matters.
Authenticity? I suppose some would argue that the words "inauthentic" and "politician" go together like a gin and tonic but if you want the ultimate definition of inauthentic look no further than losing conservative transactional Democrats like Charlie Crist (FL), John Barrow (GA), Pete Gallego (TX), Ron Barber (AZ), Joe Garcia (FL), Brad Schneider (IL), Ro Khanna (CA), Jennifer Garrison (OH), Andrew Romanoff (CO), Domenic Recchia (NY), Sean Eldridge (NY). Give me a break. These are a bunch of pointless careerists, not even politicians! Pelosi is about to replace the most inauthentic DCCC Chair in recent memoiry with a Wall Street puppet even less authentic, Jim Himes, a catastrophe in the making for working families who depend on the Democratic Party and are the real victims of the party's geriatric leadership's inability to see the errors of its own ways.
