POLITICS MARCH 4, 2013
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The sequestration impasse is so obviously the Republicans' fault that the punditocracy, which can't abide an obvious and unchanging story line, is trying hard to invent a new one that blames President Obama. Bob Woodward says it was Obama's fault for inventing the sequester, which misses some crucial context. Dean Baker says it's Obama's fault for positioning himself as a budget hawk. Bill Keller says it's Obama's fault for not positioning himself as a budget hawk. And so on.
Rather than spin ever-more-rococo theories about who's to blame, these domes would do better to think about how the current alignment of the two parties makes the sequestration problem so very difficult to solve. I submit that the obstacle is that the Democrats haven't moved far enough to the left. My argument here isn't ideological (though I certainly wouldn't mind seeing a more liberal Democratic Party). It's tactical.
To understand why Democrats must move further left, let's consider why Republicans are so intransigent. Richard W. Stevenson had a good piece in the New York Times mapping the problem from the Republican point of view. The GOP is struggling to figure out what it stands for. Being the anti-immigration party isn't working. Being the anti-gay-marriage party isn't working. Being the party that says you can't get pregnant from being raped isn't working. And, as Sam Tanenhaus noted recently in The New Republic, being the party of white people isn't working.
All the GOP has left, Stevenson argued, is to be the party that shrinks government. That's not quite right. Very little in the GOP's behavior during the past three decades (as opposed to its rhetoric) indicates that cutting government spending is a high priority for Republicans. Real government spending per capita at all levels of government increased much faster under George W. Bush than it did under Bill Clinton or President Obama. Ronald Reagan increased federal spending by 22 percent in constant dollars; Obama has thus far increased federal spending by 19 percent, and virtually all that increase occurred during Obama's first year, when the financial crisis necessitated a large spending increase (much of it at the prompting not of Obama but of Bush).
The GOP isn't the party of smaller government. It's the party of lower taxes. Opposing tax increases and legislating tax cuts is its numbskull heart and soul.
With an aging population, an enormous budget deficit, and three decades behind us (Robert Samuelson would say four) in which we consistently kept taxes too low to cover federal spending, lower taxes isn't an option for this country. It just isn't. The Republicans need to stop being the party of lower taxes, or no new taxes, because that's a dead end. Instead, they need to become the party of relatively small tax increases.
One problem, though: This niche is already taken by the Democrats. Today's political center is inhabited just about exclusively by Democrats. Geoffrey Kabaservice and others have called for Republicans to become once again the "modern Republicans" of the Eisenhower era. But let's say they decided Kabaservice was right. How would they distinguish themselves from Obama, whom more than one commentator has already compared to … Dwight Eisenhower? The GOP can't become 1950s-style "modern Republicans" right now because that's what the Democrats are! Ergo, the Democrats must migrate leftward. Instead of impersonating Eisenhower, President Obama needs to start impersonating Franklin Roosevelt or the pre-Vietnam-escalation Lyndon Johnson.
It is, to be sure, a tricky calculus. The center is a pretty comfy place to be. The more Democrats dominate the center, the better their electoral prospects will remain. The more they shift leftward, the less certain these will be. But the governing imperative runs in the opposite direction. The more Democrats dominate the center, the worse their governing prospects will be, because the opposition they try to bargain with will by definition lie outside the center. If Democrats shift leftward, their governing prospects will improve because Republicans will shift leftward, too. Then compromise with Republicans will produce acceptably centrist results.
President Obama has been accused of wanting to destroy the Republicans' viability as a national party so he can usher in an era of Democratic dominance. But if he were to do that—and I have my doubts he even wants to—his victory would have to be swift and total. The percentage of Republicans in Congress would have to be so small that the Democrats could govern entirely without Republican participation. I don't see that happening.
Rather than destroy the Republicans, Democrats need to give Republicans a reason to move to the center. The only way to make that happen is for the Democrats to travel leftward, dropping Reese's Pieces along the way so that Republicans can follow them, like E.T. That doesn't mean giving up the center entirely. But it does mean sharing it.
14 comments
Agree! But Hillary .... ???
- Wonderland
March 4, 2013 at 6:26pm
This is so ridiculous. Is it supposed to be funny? If so, it's not. It's sad. And what it really is is the kind of unin- formed armchair nonsense I thought we were not going to see any more.
- mlottman
March 4, 2013 at 7:20pm
If Democrats want to solve the sequester they should learn basic negotiating skills. And never, ever pay attention to advice from folks like Tim Noah. This is simple. We need confidence building measures. They give on tax rates, we give on....something! There are literally dozens of easily available cuts that would make sense both in terms of government operations and the next stage of negotiations which would be the time for closing loopholes. Doesn't anybody know how to play this game?
- Robert Powell
March 4, 2013 at 8:35pm
"They give on tax rates." Which GOP are you talking about?
- ClumsyMohel
March 5, 2013 at 5:59pm
SHOW 1 RESPONSE
Democrats move left? what a concept
- teoc
March 5, 2013 at 12:50am
I'm not sure they are going to give on taxes -- as Tim says, the truth of the revenue situation even if trimming of social programs and basic medical provision for seniors and low-income people happens is that Americans will have to cough up more in the future. But the sense of entitlement on the part of the rich is extreme in the U.S., as if they make the world go round for us doofuses. What's needed is a real change of mind about what wealth and prosperity should mean. As the mayor of Florence (Italy) remarked a week ago, an advanced society is not one in which everyone has a big car, it's one in which the rich take public transport too.
- ironyroad
March 5, 2013 at 12:52am
@IronyRoad - The mayor's anecdote is a keeper, thanks!
- Wonderland
March 5, 2013 at 12:07pm
You're welcome WLand!
- ironyroad
March 5, 2013 at 4:21pm
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Democrats don't have the desire to speak with one voice, like the Republicans, who learned to do that as a necessity after being in the minority for 40 years in the House. For Democrats, someone like Tom Delay, "The Hammer," forcing compliance, and a phenomena like conservative talk radio, in complete sync with far right Republican positions, won't happen.
- Nusholtz
March 5, 2013 at 8:37am
"Rather than destroy the Republicans, Democrats need to …" That's a dubious premise on which to wrap up such a tentative piece. No Democrats in Congress have declared that intention. No Left pundits have won plaudits for urging destruction of the GOP as a party, though I cannot discount the possibility that the thought might have flitted across a few frustrated minds. Indeed, out in Wisconsin, home state of the RNC chairman, the well established spokesman for the state's Democratic Party has just been removed from that role for tweeting hastily a simile of the embattled governor with the state's notorious serial killer. That's a fairly firm signal that Democrats are not seeking extinction of the GOP. But my own musings about how to bring resolution to this budget-hack standoff cluster around how to bring a modicum of Republican acceptance of responsibility to the dialogue. And I know with near certainty that merely identifying that goal will set off a Republican chorus denying they are acting irresponsibly or have not shouldered their share, immediately segueing to a long cataloging of all the ideas floated by them and their punditocracy. So perhaps convincing Right Republicans that Democrats have gone off the Left Cliff and the level playing field of Middle Ground is theirs for the taking can bring fresh perspective, then willingness to bend a few of their own fixed demands among the Intractables.
- lespin
March 5, 2013 at 9:54am
I agree with Robert Powell to a certain extent, but the idea that better negotiating skills - which would help, no doubt - would have any impact on these Republicans is not supported by facts. They are so fevered and incoherent, they don''t know how to do anything but say no. They are not even capable of no-brainers that might strengthen their minuscule credibility that they care about Americans or governing at all - approving a modest jobs program for returning Vets, reauthorizing the VAWA come to mind. These Republicans only nurture their vested interest in destroying the economy . Hey, it beats working. Why not? They get free health care while doing it, get to stand in front of the camera Acting Important, make a nice cushion for themselves when they get out. If the economy continues to improve after ignoring their ridiculous economics, as the American people demanded be done by 5 million votes last I checked, then what would they have? They have lost on literally every other issue: social issues? Americans hate their ever loving guts. Immigration? Ditto. Defense? I can't think of anyone who bought their tired line of bull on this administration except for the pathetic, preening old white men the media still find interesting for some reason and the carping dopes in winger-entertainment complex (I still laugh when I think of the title of Romney's "autobiography" "No Apologies" What an idiot). The Republicans have to double down and do everything in their power to destroy the recovery and hope the American public splits the difference on who caused what. They don't know anything about governing or policy and literally have nothing else. So, they could be up their negotiating with Jesus Christ on allowing him to make rain gold, and they'd say no. Obama, and America, are effed.
- WandreyCer
March 5, 2013 at 10:50am
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The Democrats couldn't destroy the GOP, even if they wanted to. 61 million people voted for that mean-spirited clown, Romney. last November. And, as long as the GOP is frenetically gerrymandering in the states, they ain't movin' toward the center. The only hope for a decent Right in America is for a very rich and moderate conservative to run against extremist Republican buffoons in the primaries and take over the party. But that person would first have to educate at least several million GOP voter-buffoons with ceaseless ads. And since Republican voters are so imbued with a fanatic religious spirit, even when they're atheists, it will take, well, a miracle to come up with such a person. America will be 'governed' from crisis to crisis for the foreseeable future, which is what Republicans and the people who vote for them want. When you hate government (except when you're cashing government checks), why would you want it to work (except when it's dispensing money to you)?
- magboy47.
March 5, 2013 at 11:43am
on other rightwing threads I have repeatedly asked righties precisely how they think Obama should compromise on this issue, when I prove he has put entitlements on the table they shift to saying Obama should lead because leaders lead. I can never get an answer because even they realize writing do what the Republicans demand is not a compromise. So yeah, if Obama were to demand nothing but tax hikes going forward then the center is tax hikes and spending cuts. I am not sure it has to be obama though, it can be the Senate caucus that does that if only Reid had reformed the filibuster, then the Democrats could have passed a bill that fixed the sequester with tax hikes on the rich only but even then I think they are too gutless for that.
- blackton
March 5, 2013 at 12:30pm
The sequester has clearly demonstrated, the Republicans are now in thrall to the Koch-Brothers Tea-Party. Their lunatic and self-destructive policies are the ONLY policies they'll support, and they're willing to damage the economy of America through sequester or debt-ceiling or even shutting down the Government to do so. This "impasse" came into existence with the Tea-party election of 2010, and won't be resolved until we throw out enough Tea-Party Republicans in 2014. Meanwhile, Obama's ability to juggle and pre-compromise and try to calm the un-calmable has reached its limit. There IS no way to convince Tea-Party Republicans to compromise -- only throwing them out of office will suffice. Meanwhile, we'll muddle along with the damage they do.
- AllanL5
March 5, 2013 at 1:07pm