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Go Home Losing It

POLITICS APRIL 9, 2010

Losing It

BY JONATHAN CHAIT

One day, just over a decade ago, The New Republic was hosting a pleasant off-the-record discussion with a very high-ranking Republican member of Congress who was expressing his belief in the public’s ability to assess its own self-interest. A colleague asked a clever question: If the public is so good at gauging its self-interest, and its interests were furthered by the Republican Party, then why did it elect Bill Clinton in the last presidential election?

The congressman disputed the premise that Bill Clinton legitimately outpolled his Republican opponent in 1996, and he began prattling off strange data points about ballot stuffing and other illegal tricks. Wait, another colleague replied, are you saying that Bill Clinton stole the 1996 election? His answer was “yes.” (To give you a sense of the scale of this imagined electoral theft, Clinton won that election by nine percentage points, if you believe the official totals, which our interlocutor obviously did not.)

The most recent spasm of right-wing rage in the wake of the passage of the Affordable Care Act has set off a wave of condemnation. The trouble is that this condemnation has failed to properly define the particular mania on display. Democrats, in this case echoed by news reporters, have scolded Republicans for egging on unruly Tea Party protestors on the day of the health care vote, for a general breach of decorum, and for provoking physical threats against lawmakers.

The pastiche of complaints seems vague and unsatisfactory. It sweeps up legitimate behavior with illegitimate—what exactly is wrong with encouraging nonviolent protests?—and makes too much out of what, for now, amounts to empty threats from a handful of scattered loons. There is, however, something genuinely disturbing at work in the latest conservative tantrum. If the Democrats have failed to define the phenomenon properly, let me take a shot: Large swaths of the Republican Party simply refuse to accept the legitimacy of losing political outcomes.

The Republican Party greeted the Affordable Care Act with hysteria directed not just at the impact of the legislation (“Armageddon,” was House Minority Leader John Boehner’s measured assessment of the law’s impact) but at its process. It was “an extraordinary abuse of traditional Senate rules,” The Wall Street Journal complained. The passage was “undemocratic” and “un-American,” insisted Sarah Palin. “It is a regime. They’re governing against the will of the people ... the Constitution be damned,” thundered Rush Limbaugh.

The caterwauling is difficult to fathom. President Obama ran for president promising to implement health care reform, and his plan was subjected to close scrutiny during the campaign, which he won with a clear majority. His plan became law only after endless hours of committee hearings, televised discussions, and floor debates. After a year of near-constant debate, a House majority and a Senate supermajority approved the legislation.

It is true, as numerous conservatives have protested, that the bill passed with no Republican votes. Numerous conservatives have pointed out that Medicare attracted 65 GOP votes in the House and 13 in the Senate. The implication is that the Democrats have grown more ironfisted than their Great Society counterparts. Given that Medicare was clearly structured in a more left-wing way (single-payer), the contrast tells you more about the GOP’s right-wing lurch than anything else. Republican Party leaders and an enraged GOP base pressured Republicans in Congress to abandon all negotiations, and then, Republican leaders cited this abandonment as evidence of the legislation’s radicalism.

It’s likewise true that the legislation lacked majority support in polls. Given a terrible economy—which intensifies skepticism of government—and the lengthy, contentious debate, it’s hard to imagine any other outcome for such a sweeping reform. The Republicans’ sudden belief in the absolute moral imperative of obtaining majority support for major changes is hardly an enduring principle. Among other things, this requirement would retroactively nullify the entire Bush presidency on popular-vote grounds alone. (In a decade, Republicans have progressed from skepticism toward the necessity of representative democracy straight to an embrace of direct democracy, skipping right over such halfway steps as, say, reforming the electoral college or congressional malapportionment.)

The Republican belief that health care reform was not merely misguided but actually, in some deeper sense, stolen sits comfortably aside a recurring paranoia about Democratic malfeasance. Republicans bear not merely the partisan distrust that comes naturally in a polarized environment but an abiding belief that Democratic success can only occur through electoral theft.

These fears pop up with regularity. Within the insular world of conservative discourse, widespread Democratic electoral fraud is taken for granted. “They started importing Haitians the day before elections, and now—and now—and now the—they got to go out and scour the country for felons,” proclaimed Limbaugh in 2004.

The assumption is shared by more respectable figures. “I think there are plans under way by the Democrats to steal this election,” warned Robert Novak the same year. The Bush administration believed so strongly in widespread Democratic electoral fraud that it insisted its prosecutors produce evidence of some, and fired a slew of them when they failed to do so.

Thus the right-wing obsession with ACORN a marginal force at best in electoral politics. Some acorn staffers registered nonexistent people (“Mickey Mouse”) to pad their totals, but the nonexistent voters never appeared at the polls. The fraud was committed by ACORN’s staff against ACORN. Nonetheless, a majority of Republicans have told pollsters that they believe ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama.

Lurking behind this paranoia is the fanatical populist conviction that their side has a monopoly not only on virtue but on the convictions of the American people. Of course, such a belief is not limited to conservatives, but those who hold the left-wing equivalent tend to regard the Democratic Party with Naderite hostility. Such fanaticism on the right has entrenched itself deeply within the Republican Party, a signature conviction of a bitter epoch.

Jonathan Chait is a senior editor of The New Republic.

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59 comments

Yep. The Republican modus is disingenuous these days. Making a habit of opposition for opposition sake is a dead end. Challenging the dems for such operational distinction is a dubious proposition. Achieving vacuity at the expense of integrity is NOT smart politics. I don't care WHAT the democrats say.

- jacko

April 9, 2010 at 7:15am

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Blame this on Ayn Rand and Bill Buckley; it's the paranoid reaction of a child whose formerly wealthy parents have seen their assets expropriated by foreign totalitarian governments. The driving force of American conservatism is the undying belief that Democrats are bent on stealing the assets of the wealthy. They do not accept any form of mandatory collective social obligation. The only recourse to alleviate human suffering is voluntary charity.

- sharib

April 9, 2010 at 7:37am

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Isn't this behavior the same as that of the school yard bully who, when he doesn't get his way, resorts to intimidation, physicial threats, and violence. I am reminded of the scene in the elections office in southeast Florida in 2000, when the bullies intimidated the elections staff into discontinuing the vote count. Or the scene in any number of coups in south and central America when the right wouldn't accept the legitimacy of an elected left government. The excuses for the bully's behavior (e.g., Obama stole the election, Obama takes from the rich to give to the poor, Obama wasn't born in America) merely rationalize what is in fact bullying. Call them what they are: bullies.

- rayward

April 9, 2010 at 7:52am

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Great article! The Repugs are caught up in a fast river current, namely, de-Nile.

- JackR

April 9, 2010 at 8:46am

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This post needs a more explicit discussion of the fatal homogeneity of the Republican party, and the role of race in creating this paranoia in the GOP. This is an all-white, insular crowd, who may never encounter people who vote, think, or look different. Therefore, such people must not exist! Or if they do exist, their interests must not count! Hence the specter of people who usually screech against “special rights” for minorities suddenly insisting that any policy they oppose needs 60 votes to clear the Senate.

- corby_t_drone@yahoo.com

April 9, 2010 at 9:37am

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Because I believe political bullying can be so pernicious, one more comment. The political bullies in southeast Florida and central and south America, and the political bullies seen more recently in town hall meetings and in demonstrations across this country, have something in common: no, not Latin (though many are), but an echo chamber and the absence of an effective opposition. Take southeast Florida, where the strident, right-wing Cuban population dominates politics (where one is either for Batista or for Castro). Contrary to popular belief, this isn't a Cuban thing. I resided most of my adult life in Tampa, which also has a large Latin population (Italian and Spanish as well as Cuban). Yet nothing similar to the polar and corrosive politics of southeast Florida exists in Tampa. True, Latins in Tampa are just as passionate about politics (and most every other subject), but there is no echo chamber in Tampa as exists in southeast Florida. The bullying scene in the elections office in southeast Florida in 2000 would never happen in Tampa (the local Latin population would no more tolerate that behavior than any other bullying tactics). My point is that bullies only exist when allowed to exist unchallenged, as every school child can tell you. But if left uncontested, bullies grow in numbers, stridency, and aggression. I'd rather reside with my Latin friends in Tampa than with the bullies in southeast Florida.

- rayward

April 9, 2010 at 9:41am

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Exactly. And their is no way to negotiate with ideologues whose primary goal is your destruction as a means to their path to power. Which is why Democrats need pass strong bills now, which means among other things, ending the filibuster now.

- drofnats1

April 9, 2010 at 9:48am

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sharib: "They do not accept any form of mandatory collective social obligation. The only recourse to alleviate human suffering is voluntary charity." This is the crux of it, but I would add one more element: they believe that Democratic programs that help provide benefits to lower-income Americans are no more than vote-buying, and thus cynical, corrupt and immoral.

- gary21cp

April 9, 2010 at 10:14am

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The one thing Chait left out is the religious aspect. If you believe that the world is going to end within 10 years, then you tend to have a fairly dramatic view of political losses.

- Virginia Centrist

April 9, 2010 at 10:23am

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Republicans will never accept a Democratic President. If Hillary Clinton had won the nomination and the election, we'd be revisiting Whitewater, Rose Law firm, Vince Foster, and Lord knows what else that they'd dig up from her Senate career. Democrats accepted the Florida recount and the incredible circumstances that led to the disaster that was the Bush Presidency - let's face it, 15,000 Jews in West Palm Beach did not vote for Pat Buchanan. Had the recount or the Supreme Court gone the other way, there would have been armed insurrection. And of course when there's a Democrat in the White House, the black helicopter crowd puts on the tin foil hats and takes to the bunkers. Defiance, law breaking, threats, are seen by Republicans as virtues. And yes, they are bullies. John Boehner or Mitch McConnell would soil themselves if subjected to the same abuse and physical threats - threats they encourage - that Grandma Nancy Pelosi has to endure daily.

- dubyadoubte

April 9, 2010 at 10:40am

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This is a fascinating topic and one that has been building for years. Now, I vividly recall that the GOP made every attempt to delegitimize Bill Clinton's two victories but my memory is that their "argument" lay in the fact that Clinton got 43% in 92 and 49% in 96, thus both times, he received less than 50%, which they used to say that a 'majority" of voters did not vote for him. It was a thin argument, based upon obvious sour grapes, but it was persistent. In 00, we of course had the closest election in history so that one is an outlier. Democrats could not swallow that Florida result, given the tawdry details, and the fact that Gore won the popular vote. In 04, Bush beat Kerry by almost 3 points. Yes, there were some Democrats who insisted that the election was "stolen" but they were nuts and no one, especially among the party brass and in the leadership ranks of the Democratic party ever took up that mantle. I recall reading a periodic nutty article in The Nation espousing this view but hey, consider the source... With Obama's victory, it was hard to imagine that the GOP could find a credible narrative to contest his election but never doubt the creativity of the GOP mind. They were clearly stunned on election night - it is hard to forget the stunned, mute faces that stood to heard McCain's concession speech - but given time, they are now at the point where they have found their "bearings" and are now saying, with straight faces mind you, that ACORN stole the election. Why? I have said this before on these blogs: Republicans hate to lose and they really really really hate to lose to people whom they consider inferior. They believe that that their white privilege confers upon their the sole right to govern, and if they lose, say to a Democrat, irrespective of merit, academic, intellectual, or policy considerations, then the Natural Order of Things has been thwarted. Through in that person's darker skin hue and you have got a huge dissonance problem. There is NO WAY that your average white conservative, Christian male could or should lose to an inferior. (I have seen this all my professional career as my career trajectory has left a slew of frustrated white males in my wake). If Obama is re-elected in 2012 - and with the sorry lot of goofs heading the GOP field right now, I would bet that he will be re-elected - I truly expect the GOP to go completely, stark raving nuts. It will not be pretty and I would say that given this Tea Party stuff, representing the Terror wing of the GOP in all its gun toting glory, it will be very dangerous and scary.

- MrCookie1

April 9, 2010 at 11:00am

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It's important for conservatives to believe that the United States is a conservative nation, and that any political episode that disproves this has some explanation that makes it an aberration or anomaly from the norm. Rush Limbaugh and Ronald Reagan have both made this claim, and of course it's embedded in most conservative ideas about American exceptionalism. When the Texas State Board of Education recently passed its nutty right-wing revision to the state's social sciences curriculum, there was a triumphant quote from one of the wingnut members of the Board: "American exceptionalism is back." This, of course, means that in the eyes of conservatives we are emphatically NOT like any other nation, that we have a divine destiny to be different, and that our difference can be found in our "natural" state of right-wing, white Protestantism -- anything else is an alien state of affairs, "imported" by unwelcome infiltrators.

- gary21cp

April 9, 2010 at 11:34am

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You want a real picture of Armageddon in America? Just imagine the 2000 presidential election with the parties reversed. What would they be saying if they had won the popular vote and had a Dem installed by one vote of a liberal Supreme Court justice?

- Ouroboros

April 9, 2010 at 11:42am

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The scariest part is: what is the conclusion? Outright violence and rioting? Instead of getting more calm, every year it gets worse. There is a respectably large contingent of the US electorate that get more strident and belligerent every year. I asked my father, a 76 yr. old who vividly remembers the fights over getting Medicare passed, if the GOP was as hysterical then. He tells me it was nothing like this, that rank and file Republicans he's known all of his life have basically gone scary crazy since Obama got elected. Friends he's known since childhood espouse crazy ideas like Obama is a secret Muslim agent out to destroy the republic and stole the election. The entire HCR episode sent many of them off the deep end he says. These are not uneducated people but rather college educated/retired corporate types, more the 'country-club' GOP flavors. My father is outright scared that something has snapped in a large segment of the population and will lead to some frightening results. In his opinion, it's never been this polarized among what were otherwise 'normal' people before.

- tnmats

April 9, 2010 at 2:15pm

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You guys seriously think the opposition was much calmer under Bush? The opposition behaves the same regardless. One side is no different than the other. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6b1VOAATNk

- seattleeng

April 9, 2010 at 3:13pm

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Difference, Mr. Seattle, was the Democrats sitting in Congress nor former politicians were egging on the strife. BIG difference. Nor do I remember anyone outright calling in threats, real, physical violent threats of death to GOP Congressional members. This NCEng can see that easily. There were protests but not ones were opposition came into gatherings armed. You never saw that then. As I was told in 2000: you lost the election, get over it. Time the GOP did the same.

- tnmats

April 9, 2010 at 3:33pm

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"These are not uneducated people but rather college educated/retired corporate types" Unfortunately -- as I'm in the trade -- a college education is no guarantee of either basic common sense or a mature intelligence (even when the person gets to be, ah, rather mature). All it says is, you went to college once and graduated.

- ironyroad

April 9, 2010 at 3:57pm

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Give me my country back!...

- dossevi

April 9, 2010 at 4:28pm

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Yeah. Dems have always been reasonable and level headed truth telling dissenters. No two faces about it. Compulsory charity is kind of an interesting concept. Does such a thing really accommodate justice and human nature? Just asking. You see, it's not as simple of a subject matter as some would have it. For my money the current political ugliness in earnest began around 1987 heading into the campaign season with Jim Wright eventually earning a ticket to the peanut gallery with his ethical difficulties. Everything from show business to the pressures of globalization have their hands in this thing. The Dems would have Reagan undressed as a fool. The Pubs want to make him a god. I'm going downstairs to crank up the amp and throw some nasty chops on the Les Paul.

- jacko

April 9, 2010 at 4:40pm

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just to clarify Jim Wright was Speaker of the House and was involved in the campaign as a democrat and not a candidate. He eventually got the boot in 89.

- jacko

April 9, 2010 at 4:53pm

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Seattle: Good clip. Comical. Sad. And also over. Is this supposed to be a justification for lunacy on your side? All it says to me is that liberals, bided their time, and voted.

- jmarshall

April 9, 2010 at 8:02pm

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The conservative response to Obama's program of turning the land of the free into a socialist craphole is polite compared to the left's hysterical opposition to President Bush's successful attempt to avoid another 9-11. According to a 2007 poll 35% of Democrats believe that President Bush had prior knowledge of 9-11. We are talking millions of supposedly educated people who have chosen to live in tin foil hat territory.

- bulbman1066

April 10, 2010 at 12:57am

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As for defeat, see you at the polls Comrade Chait. The majority of the electorate who love liberty is just as motivated as the totalitarian minority who don't. I would give the edge to the freedom lovers. Courage and honesty in the end will win over cowardice and lies. Your side lost the Cold War, and God willing you will lose this one as well.

- bulbman1066

April 10, 2010 at 1:44am

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Hey, I thought the west won the Cold War! But maybe in bulbman's bizarro-world, you never know . . .

- ironyroad

April 10, 2010 at 2:47am

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tnmats: "Difference, Mr. Seattle, was the Democrats sitting in Congress nor former politicians were egging on the strife. BIG difference. Nor do I remember anyone outright calling in threats, real, physical violent threats of death to GOP Congressional members. This NCEng can see that easily. There were protests but not ones were opposition came into gatherings armed. You never saw that then." You are aware a man was just arrested for threatening Eric Cantor, right? Browse the links below and let me know if you think people are this unhinged today towards the current administration, because as the photos show, they were off the rails during Bush. http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=621 http://www.binscorner.com/pages/d/death-threats-against-bush-at-protests-i.html To me, it seems like things are at least a bit more civil today than 3 or 4 years ago.

- seattleeng

April 10, 2010 at 2:49am

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Rats, it ate the link: http://www.binscorner.com/pages/d/death-threats-against-bush-at-protests-i.html Seems like I need a lot of text to make it not eat the link. Seems like I need a lot of text to make it not eat the link. Seems like I need a lot of text to make it not eat the link. Seems like I need a lot of text to make it not eat the link. Seems like I need a lot of text to make it not eat the link. Hope that works.

- seattleeng

April 10, 2010 at 2:51am

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And tnmats, regarding your comment that those in congress were not egging on the strife, do you not remember Kerry saying on Bill Maher: Maher : You could have went to New Hampshire and killed two birds with one stone. Kerry : Or, I could have gone to 1600 Pennsylvania and killed the real bird with one stone . Or do you remember NY Comptroller Alan Hevesi saying that Charles Schumer "will put a bullet between the president's eyes if he could get away with it" Shocking. Just shocking. See the links for full sources.

- seattleeng

April 10, 2010 at 2:56am

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"Hey, I thought the west won the Cold War!" Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II and their conservative followers won the Cold War, despite the efforts of the European and the American left to prevent that victory. And here we go again. Conservatives are trying to save civilization from Islamofascism, and so-called liberals are doing everything they can to assure the victory of the star and the crescent.

- bulbman1066

April 10, 2010 at 3:10am

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The real action took place long before Reagan or Thatcher wandered on stage. The Cold War would not have been won without European social democrats (especially the British Labor Party and the German SPD, but there were others) who provided the challenge to Soviet communism from the left. In fact, the German SPD was the only party that didn't have a tame shadow party in the communist GDR, and tried in the 1950s to keep some kind of independent organization in the East. Do you think everyone was queuing up in 1945 to re-enact the conservative dalliance with fascism?

- ironyroad

April 10, 2010 at 4:05am

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Seattle: Perhaps you refer to the same guy who has also threatened Obama, Pelosi & Eric Cantor? Clearly a creature of the left rather than just plain nuts, and clearly motivated by democratic rhetoric rather than say, his plainly stated deism and Anti Semitism?

- Nari224

April 10, 2010 at 9:05am

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If Seattleeng had my parents, he/she would not be able to think of anything to say here. When I was little, I thought that I could be absolved of guilt for some relatively minor transgression by pointing out a greater transgression by someone else (preferably my younger brother) that they had overlooked. It never worked - every time I yelped "He started it" or "He flushed one of your earrings down the toilet, and I'm the bad guy because I forgot to use a coaster?", they replied, "Two wrongs don't make a right." And you know what? From the promontory of adulthood, they were right. Not only were they right, but they made me a better person by constantly forcing me to consider whether my actions were right or wrong in themselves, rather than merely "no worse than" or "slightly better than" the seemingly worse actions of others. A moral compass needs a true north or it's useless. Here's the thing, Seattle. If we assume arguendo that the left is full of amoral rat-bastards with no regard for decency or even calm intellectual introspection, and further assume that this is wrong (as was constantly stated by the right when the attacks were occurring), then it should be absolutely no comfort that the right is no worse, or maybe even slightly better. A movement in thrall to rat-bastards is heading in a bad direction. And if you're right about the fundamental corruption of the left, then there's a huge opening on the right for responsibility and decency. The right might even have a chance to save itself if it actually tries to do better than the left rather than matching or exceeding its perceived idiocy. It has no chance if it decides to overlook any and all of its own flaws resting comfortably in the assurance that no matter how flawed they are, liberals are worse.

- Geoff G

April 10, 2010 at 10:05am

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Geoff G, I've already pointed out it is deplorable on both sides. It was tnmats that claimed this stuff never went on under Bush, and it was tnmats that claimed the leaders of the left never egged this on. Wrong and Wrong. If you looked at those pictures, even if you never liked Bush, they probably made your skin crawl. It's great your parents were good parents, but history does matter in most arguments adults get into, as history goes to character and intent. The play book was crafted during Bush in which a constant drone saturates the internet and airwaves 24x7 with criticism. The goal is to erode the standing of the president. Track the polls, hit again, grind the man down. You are seeing that play book again in action. And it's counterproductive. But the left was even meaner about. If you want to correct this, then you start by admitting it happened and that it was wrong. And then the decent people on the right say "yeah, let's change the tone.' Not all, but some. And then then the right sees a proof point when the nastiness is lessened when they have a guy in office, it gets a bit better. It's the exact same way we fight racism. Every day fewer people are there to carry the torch. Zero tolerance always. Shunning by society. Jokes by late night comedians. But to pretend the hating never happened under Bush, and to write a moronic article called "losing it" and pretending that its a unique quality of the right is just ridiculous. That is a sure what to ensure it continues to intensify on both sides. A better article would have been "Why do some people resort to wacko tactics when their candidate loses?" and point out that there 2% of society that is absolutely off the rails nuts about politics. And point out how the political leaders egg them on. The greatest example of egging on, btw, is the non-stop promise of an investigation into lying about Iraq. Time and time again Pelosi and Reid promised it was coming. Each time emboldening the wackos on the left. Causing them to camp out a Yoos house, stand in front of Condi Rice with blood all over them and crazed looks on their faces, etc, etc. There was never going to be an investigation. Ever. That was just egging on the lunatics.

- seattleeng

April 10, 2010 at 12:07pm

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Sticking the link first so it doesn't get eaten: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/89667-dnc-will-give-cantor-threat-suspects-donations-to-charity Nari writes: "Perhaps you refer to the same guy who has also threatened Obama, Pelosi & Eric Cantor? Clearly a creature of the left rather than just plain nuts, and clearly motivated by democratic rhetoric rather than say, his plainly stated deism and Anti Semitism?" No, I'm referring to the guy who was a strong Obama donor that was arrested for threatening Cantor. If he made subsequent videos in which he was upset with Obama, then so be it. But the man was a pretty generous democrat. No bones about it.

- seattleeng

April 10, 2010 at 12:16pm

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Seattle - thanks for your reply. I would never say that there aren't unhinged people on the left; in fact, the left would be better off without them. Personally, I think that if you drained the loonies from both sides, the Dems would win in huge landslides, but I admit that I can't prove it objectively. I would venture, however, that there is an objective qualitative difference between a party led by a guy who got famous by declaring that most Americans are decent people and that it is wrong to assume that someone is evil simply by virtue of his/her political party, and another party led by a half-term governor who explicitly claims that you can divide the country between "real" Americans and people who don't really love their country, with a former VP who claims that Obama wants the terrorists to win and gray-haired eminence Newt claiming that Obama's administration is the most radical in history. But of course, I could be wrong. For one thing, I'll have to eat a lot of crow the day Obama's radical jihadists declare "Weatherman Appreciation Month" or "Sacco-Vanzetti Day" because, after all, if conservatives love the Confederacy, then liberals must love all the radicals in their past too.

- Geoff G

April 10, 2010 at 1:05pm

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Great piece, although Chait fails to mention the most ironic element of the right's paranoia about elections and refusal to grant Dems legitimacy: The one presidential election that was unequivocally stolen, right in broad daylight by the Supreme Court, was the 2000 presidential election.

- santoast

April 10, 2010 at 1:09pm

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Geoff: "But of course, I could be wrong. For one thing, I'll have to eat a lot of crow the day Obama's radical jihadists declare "Weatherman Appreciation Month" or "Sacco-Vanzetti Day" because, after all, if conservatives love the Confederacy" No, the easiest measure will the be the size of the government, how many receive entitlements, and the progressivism of our tax system. If the size of our government grows appreciably under Obama, and if the programs such as HCR turn out to be a long-term unfunded burden, and if the progressivity of our tax system, which is currently the most progressive in the world (save for Switzerland), continues to distance itself from the rest of the world, then you will know those that made so much noise right now were right: We are turning into a society of takers and freeloaders. On the other hand, if the size of government holds or even shrinks (a la Clinton), tax rates for all drop (a la Clinton), entitlements drop (a la Clinton), etc, then the wackos on the right will have been wrong about Obama. But I think all agree government size is growing up, entitlements is going up, tax progressivity is going up...right? And if you agree that is true, and if you agree they are moving into unprecedented ranges for this country, then you can't really object to the socialist label.

- seattleeng

April 10, 2010 at 1:56pm

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Seattle - if Obama serves two terms, and if his agenda gets more or less implemented, then I predict that we will be on much sounder fiscal footing than we are today. If he gets his way on entitlements, then taxes will go up, maybe even for the middle-class, and benefits will be reduced. The retirement age will probably be raised. HCR will meet its cost-cutting goals, and exceed them, but there will still be more work to be done. I very confidently predict that the US tax burden, including local and state taxes and payroll taxes, will still be among the world's least progressive in 2018, though perhaps slightly more progressive than it is today. Europe has been on the road to serfdom since Bismarck instituted public pensions - the US since FDR. We're still a long way away. I predict that we will be no closer to a society of freeloaders when Michelle succeeds Barack in 2018 than we are today. If you liked Clinton (which frankly seems weird) then you're going to love Obama.

- Geoff G

April 10, 2010 at 2:28pm

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Are tax rates supposed to be regressive? I was always told that the two key elements to check when it came to a tax regime were 1. It should not cost more to collect the tax than the sum of the revenue generated. 2. It should be progressive, i.e. those with more capacity to pay, should pay more. To that extent, if we returned to the tax rates that obtained during the Reagan administration, we would be meeting condition 2. more effectively.

- ironyroad

April 10, 2010 at 2:46pm

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Seattle - if you're talking about Norman Leboon, who made the "generous" donation of $815 to Obama prior to releasing videos threatening the same, then yes, there are bones to be made about whether he is a "pretty generous democrat". http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joan_walsh/politics/2010/03/29/norman_leboon http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/36061_Nut_Who_Threatened_Cantor_Also_Threatened_Obama etc. etc.

- Nari224

April 10, 2010 at 3:26pm

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Geoff writes: " I very confidently predict that the US tax burden, including local and state taxes and payroll taxes, will still be among the world's least progressive in 2018, though perhaps slightly more progressive than it is today." Our middle class are among the least taxed in the world. Our top 10%, however, are among the most heavily taxed in the world when it comes to the amount of federal tax burden they carry. Yes, our top 10% carry a larger tax burden than the top 10% in Canada, UK, Japan, Taiwan, Sweden, Finland, Germany, France..and on and on. If we crank up our taxes on the middle class to match the oppressive levels in Europe, then I agree, we can return to a firm footing even among expanding social programs. If we dial them up on just the wealthy, further punishing our top creators and producers, then I think we are headed for trouble.

- seattleeng

April 10, 2010 at 3:45pm

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Nari, an $815 political donation is massive compared to the national average. And yes, he's a registered democrat. And yes, he's an Obama donor. The assertion was that Republicans weren't being threatened. They are. Is the guy crazy? Probably. Is anyone that does this type of stuff sane? I don't think so. What did you think of all those pictures in the link I sent to people saying things about Bush? Do you have excuses for each of those? Have you seen equivalent hatred for our current president? I have not (thankfully). Most tea party posters I see accuse him of socialism..which means big government, big social programs, big taxes, increased government regulation of private entities...honestly, given Obama's moves to date, do you really think the socialist signage is unfair? Are you offended by the socialism labels?

- seattleeng

April 10, 2010 at 3:54pm

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Seattle: I think the point is that Leboon is nuts, and so the cite him as an example of someone who was encouraged to violence by the rhetoric of the left is bogus. I have no excuses for those pictures that you linked to, and equally deplore them. However, as GeoffG pointed out, that does not excuse in the slightest the rhetoric that we are currently hearing from the right. Wearing firearms to demonstrations, waving militia flags, drawing Hilter mustaches on pictures of Obama, linking Pelosi, Reid and the president to the atrocities of the USSR, vandalising offices, posting a map of the US with crosshairs marking those senators who supported HRC on your facebook page (Palin) and posting the addresses of Congresspeople's families homes so that "you can drop in" are all unacceptable and inflammatory actions. If you have not seen equivalent hatred against the current president then you are either living under a rock or willfully blind. From Daniel Cowart to tea party protesters who chant "Kill Obama... (pause).. bill" to a bus of elementary school kids in Idaho chanting "assassinate Obama" (wonder where they got that idea from?), similar levels of violent sentiment has rather openly being on display for well over a year. As for the tea partiers - I sympathise with the general view that Washington is broken. However, almost to a one, those that I have met are themselves recipients of big government socialised programs for those who are retired, injured or served in the military. And alsmot again to a one, they do not understand that, so I would venture that few of them understand what socialism actually means, which somewhat detracts from the power of their message no? Socialism fundamentally is the control of production and the allocation of resources by a central body, typically a government. Naturally any interference by the government in society is somewhat socialist, however I utterly fail to see how increasing the share of health care spending by the government from what is today over 1/3 of total spending to still under 1/2 constitutes a descent into actual socialism. Anyone who lives in a society free of socialism does not live in a western democracy; as tnmats likes to point out, they probably live in Somalia. So yes, I feel the tea party signage is beyond unfair and well into the realms of absurd. It is curious that the movement that claims to be concerned about the deficit and taxes only sprang into life after the election of someone who actually has a plan to reduce the deficit, whose additions to the deficit are stimulatory and thus transient rather than structural and has reduced almost certainly those individuals' taxes was elected. As for what Obama has done - is it imperfect? Of course. Were there other options that did not include more government intervention and spending to save us from a depression? Not that I've heard, so these people are complaining that someone saved us from certain enormous increases in destitution and poverty? And lets not even talk about whether said private entities need more regulation - is not like there's been any recent cause for it is there now?

- Nari224

April 10, 2010 at 4:34pm

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While we're at it, anyone remember that loyal and committed Democratic supporter who pulled up a truck loaded with thirteen 55-gallon drums filled high explosive in front of the federal building in a state capital and detonated it, killing scores of people (including 20 small children) in the largest terrorist attack, other than 9/11, ever carried out in the United States? No? Oh -- wait a minute, he wasn't a convinced Democratic supporter. Sorry, my mistake. He was a conservative nutcase who hated government.

- ironyroad

April 10, 2010 at 4:40pm

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Seattle, share of taxes paid by the top 10 percent is not a measure of progressivity, because it can theoretically be explained entirely by income inequality. In order for their share of income tax burden to mean anything, you have to know their share of pre-tax income. Besides, what about all those other taxes you guys never like to count when talking about progressivity? (State and local, payroll, sales, property, excise, estate, etc.) In order to assess relative tax burdens, both within the U.S. and compared with other countries, you have to include everything. Your argument that any leftward move from the status quo within the spectrum of mainstream policy options causes one to jump categories into "socialist" is silly. Obama is a liberal Democrat -- a pretty moderate one at that. You know that. You don't like liberal policy. Fine, then argue against liberal policy. The socialism label is incendiary. You also know that. It conjures Communism and Nazism, however inaccurately, comparisons that even intellectual conservatives like Jonah Goldberg have made, to their everlasting discredit and shame.

- jhildner

April 10, 2010 at 4:43pm

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jhildner, fortunately the OECD looks at this stuff and we can rely on their definition rather than yours. And yes, they consider income and wealth concentration. And the OECD says the U.S. "has the most progressive tax system and collects the largest share of taxes from the richest 10% of the population." http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/23856.html PS. Socialism is an economic theory, with the state playing a large role in coordinating and planning, in an attempt to make things "fairer." It's not a bad word. What do you prefer to call someone that is growing the size of government and adding entitlements at an unprecedented pace? And along the way, enacting more controls on markets?

- seattleeng

April 10, 2010 at 6:43pm

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How about "a pragmatic and basically pro-market president who is responding flexibly to particularly difficult national circumstances rather than forcing a abstract ideology onto the real world"?

- ironyroad

April 10, 2010 at 7:08pm

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Seattle, I'd be interested to read that whole report cited by the conservative blog you link to. The blog does not link through to the whole report, but rather presents one chart called "alternative measures of progressivity." Meanwhile, you don't address the point about including other taxes, which strikes me as an important one. You insist on only looking at the most progressive type of taxes that people pay in America -- the personal income tax -- and forgetting about the rest. Finally, the term I would use is, as I said, "liberal," although there are of course quite a few liberals who don't think Obama is liberal enough. The term "socialism," in this country, connotes a view that is outside the mainstream -- not someone who proposes health care reform of the sort proposed by socialist Lincoln Chaffee or socialist Mitt Romney or proposes rates of taxation less progressive, at least by some measures, than those under socialist Dwight Eisenhower or socialist John Kennedy or socialist Ronald Reagan. Socialism, in popular discourse, is not merely a neutral term, so I don't buy your effort to feign otherwise. You know perfectly well that it suggests something extreme, something far left. Obama's policies, are simply not extreme but, in fact, middle of the road -- on a continuum that all those other non-socialist presidents and leaders are on, well within what most Americans should see as reasonable moves, and not revolutions. This is the crux of the matter. The Tea Party types, the Palin types, the Bachmann types, the Fox News types, and, it seems, an ever increasing proportion of conservatives overall, seem to feel assaulted by a president they perceive as upending everything they know. While health care reform is, yes, a big fucking deal, it is not a radical departure from what we know -- far from it. It is far less radical than, say, Medicare. The view that Obama is extreme -- which is what the word "socialist" suggests, as you know perfectly well -- is simply not true, and is born of incoherent, anti-Obama hysteria. That's my objection to it.

- jhildner

April 10, 2010 at 8:20pm

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p.s. Chait previously linked to the below discussion on 538 about how redistributionist the U.S. is. Before taxes and transfers, the Gini coefficient in the U.S. in the mid-2000s (the same period you're link is talking about) is just a bit above average of .45 -- .46 (where 0 is perfectly even income distribution and 1 is perfectly uneven -- the person with the most income makes all the income). After taxes and transfers -- which, unfortunately, I'm not sure includes *all* taxes or not -- the Gini coefficient for the U.S. is much higher than the average of .31 -- .38. This says that, if you like redistribution of income through government taxes and transfers, the U.S. does it, but it does about the worst job of it. The source of this data? The OECD. http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/04/jonah-goldberg-anti-maldistributionist.html

- jhildner

April 10, 2010 at 9:05pm

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p.p.s. Note, by way of illustration that Germany's Gini coefficient goes from .51 (significantly higher than ours) before taxes to .30 (much lower than ours) after. Ergo, Germany is doing a lot more to redistribute income than we are.

- jhildner

April 10, 2010 at 9:09pm

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I'm an independent--all my adult live as a voter, which is over 30 years. I volunteered for the Kerry campaign during the 2004 primary season and for the Obama campaign for the 2008 primary campaign and general election. Every Democrat that I knew who had an opinion on the subject was convinced that the Republicans stole the 2000 election in Florida. They all had different arguments--that someone the butterfly ballot designed by a Democrat county official in Miami was responsible or voter intimidation, etc. Democrats are happy to have the Supreme Court decide everything except when it rules against them. I find that except in their particular ideological beliefs Republican and Democratic primary voters are very similar--they both believe that the other side is either crooked, deluded, or both. This is why I continue to be an independent.

- tmitch57

April 10, 2010 at 9:29pm

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tmitch57 -- But 2000 was a much closer call, right? Sorry, it's a bogus comparison. A literal handful of votes made the difference in 2000. The conservative Supreme Court stopped the recounts in a decision that most legal experts agree was wrong on the law. Even the decision's best intellectual defender -- Richard Posner -- defends it chiefly on pragmatic grounds rather than formal legal grounds, but I do not find it far-fetched to speculate that some of the justices' bald preference for Bush led to the outcome of that case. Perhaps Gore would not have won, but it was possible. You make it sound like a conspiracy theory. Clinton won handily. The facts are wildly different.

- jhildner

April 10, 2010 at 10:42pm

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jhildner, you are mixing topics. The original topic was the progressivity of our tax system. The data is cited in the OECD book "Growing unequal?: income distribution and poverty in OECD countries" You can browse pages of that book on Amazon. The cite you are looking for is on page 104. Regarding "other taxes", the OECD data does not include VAT, which is also highly regressive. Now, if you want to talk about how much redistribution goes on, then that is a completely separate topic. But there is a good point to start, and that is here: http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/tabfig/2008/08/15.pdf This chart shows you how much the bottom 10% get in each country relative to the median. The authors want you to focus on the difference between our richest and poorest. And it is quite a gulf. But look closer, and you see the bottom 10% in the US has as much as the bottom 10% in Japan, France, Ireland, Canada, and we're within spitting distance of Australia and the UK. So, the summary from this is that our poor are not really any worse off than the other countries. But we allow our wealthy to keep most all of their spoils! Now, if you believe our innovation engine is stronger than any other country in the world, then you must wonder if it's because we allow our rich to keep more of what they earn? Personally, I think that is critically important. Wihtout motivated people like Gates and Jobs, and the guys that started Facebook adn ebay, etc, people aren't motivated to create and drive the country forward like they are in the US.

- seattleeng

April 10, 2010 at 11:01pm

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Between the bulbman and the seattledude, we all know that conservatives are the saviors of the world and liberals are the source of all evil, so why bother arguing otherwise. A stone would be easier to convince otherwise. They'll convince us all the all the strife in the world is caused by liberals, that there is no other answer. And it's why I quit listening to any conservative. Liberals don't have all the answers by any means but they don't delay, deny, deflect at every chance and refuse to admit THEIR side has some serious problems.

- tnmats

April 11, 2010 at 6:42pm

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tnmats, it's called a discussion. You make an assertion, and either you have data or you don't that backs it up. Based on a series of these assertions, you hope to sway me to adopt your line of thinking, or vice versa. I'll bet before we had this little exchange that you had no clue the US had the most progressive tax system in the world according to the OECD. And I'll bet you had no recollection of how nasty protesters were to Bush. And I'll bet it was uncomfortable looking at the those signs at Bush protests. My guess is you learned a heck of a lot from this little exchange. You might not want to admit it, but learning something new is always a good thing.

- seattleeng

April 11, 2010 at 7:42pm

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I get uncomfortable when I see at least weekly letters to the editor in my home town newspaper like this: http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/03/23/402441/arms-at-the-ready.html This isn't an isolated letter. It's scary and we didn't see letters like that until after the HCR bill was passed. We also have governors like Perry of TX outright advocating secession. I thought talk like that was called sedition. High ranking politicians between 2000 and 2008 did not routinely called for either sedition or armed insurrection, unlike GOP governors like Perry. There are some left-wing wackos that I'd be afraid to be around. I don't care to associate myself with them at all. I don't condone what some on the left did but I didn't care much for Bush's "take or leave it" attitude, that the Democrats don't matter either. But the Democrats did not have their VP nominee constantly smearing the opposing presidential candidate as palling around with terrorists or other such evil types. The original discussion was that the GOP can't accept defeat. Work to get elected, I expect that, it must be that. But when governors talk about secession, it's gone overboard. We didn't have Obama nor Gore nor Kerry supporters *routinely* scream out "Kill Him!" about their opponent as we did in the 2008 campaign. http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/10/mccain.crowd/ http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2008/10/06/in_fla_palin_goes_for_the_roug.html How about this?: http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/10/08/1517943.aspx Of with his head? Really? At a campaign rally? We also didn't see Al Gore or John Edwards use gun imagery like ""Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!" like Palin. Not something you're hearing routinely from Democrats in defeat.

- tnmats

April 11, 2010 at 8:54pm

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Seattle: I find it ironic that you feel free to lecture someone else on what constitutes a discussion, as I will confess to finding it extremely difficult to engage you beyond a single post to develop an idea or thread. You have a terrible habit of never actually responding to rebuttals that people make; instead you leap to some other (mostly tangential) point, often backed solely through assertion. And honestly, I find this disappointing as you are a) clearly an intelligent person and not someone's idea of a joke, which is the only explanation I can find for bulbman and b) appear to want to discuss items in earnest. You are correct that I did not know that the OECD "considers" the US tax system the most progressive, mostly because this discussion is rather like watching a repeat of the one you had with Roi a few weeks back where he pointed out the taxes that the OECD do not include that rather level the playing field, and the fact that the OECD make no such claim. It is what one might call a cherry picked data point, which as was observed above, could be (but is not neccessarily) completely explained by income disparity. Now what does the OECD have to say about that? As it happens they have a handy "cliff notes" version of the report per country (http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/47/2/41528678.pdf for the US). Some of the highlights: * The United States is the country with the highest inequality level and poverty rate across the OECD, Mexico and Turkey excepted. Since 2000, income inequality has increased rapidly, continuing a long-term trend that goes back to the 1970s. * Redistribution of income by government plays a relatively minor role in the United States. Only in Korea is the effect smaller. This is partly because the level of spending on social benefits such as unemployment benefits and family benefits is low – equivalent to just 9% of household incomes, while the OECD average is 22%. The effectiveness of taxes and transfers in reducing inequality has fallen still further in the past 10 years. * Wealth is distributed much more unequally than income: the top 1% control some 25-33% of total net worth and the top 10% hold 71%. For comparison, the top 10% have 28% of total income. So lets agree that the US extracts the most income tax (important distinction from total taxation burden) from the top of society in the OECD (a point that is not in dispute), and that this may be characterised as being more progressive . So what? What does this mean? Does it mean that the lives of the poor are better off in the US? Only if one views paying taxes as the most intolerable burden in life, which is normally the preserve of the rich. In reality, it means that the poor are making a lot less money than the rich and have considerably less of the wealth than their equivalents, a point the OECD categorically makes, not one that is inferred from a single data set. One note I must make: It is important to consider the impact of the omission of the VAT (for other OECD countries) and payroll taxes (for the US). Firstly because, IIRC, 4 out of 5 tax filers pay MORE payroll taxes than income tax, omitting it rather skews the picture. Secondly, while the VAT is regressive, it is a true flat tax, meaning that everyone pays it for all of their consumption. Whereas payroll taxes in the US are not levied on some forms of income, and caps out. As you have noted, it would be a good idea to a) increase this (a plan endorsed by candidate Obama on his website) and b) look at changing decades old entitlement schemes. Now you did make a very good point about the possible motivational factor of allowing the wealthiest Americans to keep more, much more, of what they earn. However the picture is likely to be much murkier than that as a) America has had considerably higher marginal tax rates in the past that did not appear to dampen innovation and b) innovation occurs in many countries, despite their considerably higher tax rates. What often happens is that ideas come to the US to become commercialized, as there is a much bigger market, more VC and a host of other structural advantages that the US have that are all unrelated to income tax rates. This is something that we definitely want to preserve. Undoubtedly lower income tax levels are also an attraction; they just are more likely to be a minor factor. So lets agree that there are benefits to lower top tax rates. What are the costs? One would appear to be a ballooning deficit, one that grew by leaps and bounds even while the economy was booming. You have made it clear that, quite sensibly, you are concerned about the debt. You do appear to take a rather contradictory stance here however, decrying a new entitlement which is expected (by the CBO) to actually reduce our future deficits. That one is not clear to me. So what would your proposal be to reign in the deficit? It is worth noting that most economists do not view raising taxes to pay down an inherited debt will cripple future productivity and capacity gains as clearly not paying down the debt will save future interest payments.

- Nari224

April 11, 2010 at 9:28pm

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seattle, the original topic was whether or not Republicans can accept being defeated (soundly, in this case) in two elections in a row or slide into paranoia and blanket denial.

- ironyroad

April 11, 2010 at 9:29pm

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Also, as Warren Buffet once pointed out, his receptionist found herself in a higher tax bracket than his: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_tax

- ironyroad

April 11, 2010 at 9:49pm

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I am tempted to say this article cheers me up, because I am confident most Americans are sane and will vote more often for the sane party over time, 2004 being an aberration because of national trauma. However, when I'm cheered by the supperation of the Republican party, like a flan in a cupboard on a hot day, I worry Dems will become complacent, because, dammit these Tea Party people look so preposterous. We must remember that looking preposterous can be an excellent tactic. Dick Armey is behind the Tea Party stuff and he's not dumb. If Dems are to prevail they have a lot of hard slogging ahead.

- haricot

April 13, 2010 at 7:04pm

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