THE PLANK FEBRUARY 1, 2008
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I'm taking issue with Paul Krugman's column today, which pays homage
to his favored candidate John Edwards. He praises him for good reasons: by
plowing the primary race to the left, he singlehandedly forced other Democrats
to pony up and produce more progressive plans for health care and the
environment, for two. As a result, we have a genuine contrast between the
parties on the major issues--a pleasant fact seen in high relief in the series
of debates that (perhaps) culminated last night. But the shrewd, disinterested
leadership Krugman imputes to Edwards is one he is--erroneously--not willing to
acknowledge exists in the Republican party. To wit:
Mr. Edwards ran an unabashedly populist campaign, while Mr. Obama portrays
himself as a candidate who can transcend partisanship--and given the
economic elitism of the modern Republican Party, populism is unavoidably
partisan. [emphasis mine]
I just fundamentally disagree with the yoking together of the "modern
Republican Party" to comprise both its leadership and its past and present
citizen supporters. Sure, the theorizing of the conservative elite, which
places a premium on capital accumulation, corporate personhood and deregulated
market activity, has convinced poor- and working-class Republicans to vote
against their economic interests for several election cycles. These voters are
not necessarily wrong to do so--they are perhaps spurred by unflagging belief in
American individualism (i.e. the hope that they will themselves wake up one day
replete with yachts and chalets; how else to explain the successful GOP
fetishization of top-tier tax cuts?).
But I happen to think populism is avoidably partisan; the shocking class
divide that has gripped America affects all voters, rich and poor, Democratic
and Republican, and Americans, like Krugman, concerned with economic inequality
in their country cannot afford to so simplify the terms. After all, is poverty
not the central concern of a very wealthy Democratic leader, as it should be
the concern of a downscale Republican family in middle
America? Hasn't Mike Huckabee successfully tapped into resentment
of that very real Wall-Street-to-Washington axis of power? Krugman is kidding himself if
he can't acknowledge Huckabee, nor that a party is not its people, nor the strain that the
GOP leadership has placed on their
base with such inhumane economic policies.
In fact, his commentary joins the counterproductive rhetorical war that Republican
partisans have been winning for decades. More irksome, he does so at a time
when the millions of people (of all political persuasions) who suffer in an
inequal America are--more than ever--up for grabs politically, if only the
Democratic party would find crosspartisan ways to shake free the indoctrination of
Reaganomics, and its own angry, exclusionary tone.
--Dayo Olopade
24 comments
Great post Dayo.
More Olopade; less Kirchick
- The Ignorant Populist
February 1, 2008 at 12:49pm
Maybe it's because I'm an independent and an Obama supporter, but I haven't been very impressed by Paul Krugman. Certainly he knows his economics, but he also seems to be reliably, obnoxiously, partisan and to belong to that group of "reclaim liberalism" progressives (MoveOn.org, various "netroots") that peaked around 2004. In the narrative of the Democratic Party regaining its power, I think some people still trace a line from Dean to Obama. Actually, I think Obama (and truth be told, the '06 election strategy with moderates stealing Red States) represents a second wave in the post-Clinton growth pains of the Dems.
I think in the argument between "we can't energize the base enough, so we need to proudly claim our position on the left" and "we need to reach out to the middle more" the latter has won, at least tactically, though you could make the case that Dems have shrewdly found a way to combine the two. I'm not sure Krugman & his ilk have really digested this fact though I wasn't reading him in the wake of Nov. '06 so maybe I'm missing something.
- CharlesFosterKane
February 1, 2008 at 12:54pm
Several people I know have been shocked by the level of acrimony between Krugman and Obama. In the future, I will point them to this column to illustrate that though they may sit on the same side of the ideological aisle, Krugman sees the world almost the opposite of the way Obama does.
- primwallflow
February 1, 2008 at 12:59pm
Yeah, you have really summed up a lot of my own discomfort with the tone of the Edwards campaign, my agreement with its basic assumptions aside. At the end, he wasn't even campaigning for economic fairness, he was campaigning against corporate greed. The same thing, perhaps, but one is a lot more appealing than the other.
And democrats who read Obama's post-partisan tone as anything other than an attempt to bring independents and some republicans in are misreading him, IMHO. The whole notion that appealing to the center (among voters) somehow means caving in to republican politicians just makes no sense. I think the lack of aggressive partisanship that he displays, though, will be misconstrued as the latter by some of Edwards' erstwhile supporters. They'll be wrong, I think, but I worry that they'll go toward the candidate (Clinton) who is more superficially partisan but also more comfortable with the kind of triangulation that folks seem to have forgotten.
- miceelf
February 1, 2008 at 1:00pm
Bingo. Dayo Olopade, meet Kevin Phillips.
One doesn't have to be a Democrat to recognize the dangers of class inequities, or a Republican to see the bankruptcy of class-struggle analysis in American elections. Being pro-business growth should by now be an area of bi-partisan agreement.
- Robert Powell
February 1, 2008 at 1:23pm
This is Krugman at his worst. Edwards' campaign wasn't in the slightest "based on ideas." UHC? Fine, but that's a no-brainer. What was missing from Edwards' ridiculous riffs on Blackwater! and Halliburton!!! and INCOME INEQUALITY!!!!! was any kind of coherent view of the real sources of Americans' economic insecurity and the role of the state in addressing same.
Edwards fell on his face in several key regards:
1) he doesn't have any sense of how working _families_ are far more vulnerable to volatile markets than other demographics (singles, DINCs and retirees)
2) related to #1, he didn't focus on limited, specific, TARGETED state intervention that would address these unique points of vulnerability
3) related to #2, he couldn't develop a coherent narrative with winning catch-phrases of how to help WORKING FAMILIES-- e.g., helping those who "work hard and play by the rules"
4) he completely dodged the issue that more than any other crystallizes the politcal and corporate classes' contempt for our sad-sack US working class, the Mexification of the low-end labor market and social services in the blue-collar districts.
When I tossed him a softball question on #4, even to the point of supplying him with a lead-the-witness tagline that he might use ("why not put a progressive spin on this issue and call for 'helping working families ON BOTH SIDES OF THE BORDER'?"), Edwards completely dropped the ball. His answer was irrelevant, clueless, childish, insultingly stupid. He began riffing on inequality, then turned to Blackwater and Halliburton, and finally assured the crowd that "working-class people just HATE Hillary." All of this from a hedgefund employee / gazillionaire standing in the kitchen of a Silicon Valley gazillionaire.
I suppose in Krugman's defense you could say that only edwards even bothered to get out front of UHC, so he's tossing him a bone, but to my mind the miserable spectacle of this little man's flop of a campaign only indicates that "populism" is an immature and shoddy response to a complex economic situation. Wrong medicine. Wrong doc.
- teplukhin2you
February 1, 2008 at 1:25pm
If we win this election, and succeed in addressing the concerns of working people, the poor, and lower middle class families, then maybe we can avoid the partisan and populist future that seems otherwise to be inevitable. The next populist to come along will be a Huey Long rather than a John Edwards. If you didn't like John's tone, just wait and see how it will be if we don't end the inequities and address the volatility that threatens the security of the majority of Americans.
Let's hope that Obama can pull off an FDR performance and achieve the kind of change that people really need. Otherwise, it is going to get ugly.
John Edwards and Paul Krugman are right. I hope Obama is listening.
Neil
- purcellneil
February 1, 2008 at 1:26pm
Tep: Regarding the "Mexicfication of the low-end labor market," (great phrase, by the way, do you think Hillary did a good job last night of acknowledging this fact? I am no Hillary supporter, as you know by now, but I do think she was (shockingly) honest and straightforward on this front. I wish that Obama had acknowledged what's happening to black construction workers and the like. His answer seemed disingenuous and too sermon-like. He swiveled to education on this point--and that's not what I wanted to hear at that point.
Purcell: "If you didn't like John's tone, just wait and see how it will be if we don't end the inequities and address the volatility that threatens the security of the majority of Americans." Brilliant point. It's like the other sword of Damocles (nuclear proliferation being the first one) but nobody dares to look up and see what's hanging over them.
- MOLLYSIMON
February 1, 2008 at 1:52pm
What Citizen K and prim said. Even though I agree with Krugman on most of the issues he raises, his * style * of arguing seems almost calculated to offend the very people he should be persuading. He doesn't just preach to the choir; he goes out of his way to sneer at anyone who's not in the choir.
- teplukhin2you
February 1, 2008 at 1:55pm
Molly - didn't see it. What did she say / propose? If it did not include closing NAFTA's loopholes for US crop exporters, and a huge and creative program designed to raise incomes and expand opportunities in rural Mexico, then it's beside the point.
The source of the problem is the devastation of uneducated rural and small-town Mexicans' livelihoods. Border control, employer sanctions, amnesty, what-have-you are all pointless if you don't squarely and successfully address the problem at its source, in Mexico.
- teplukhin2you
February 1, 2008 at 2:08pm
tep-
Obama did a de rigeur pander for the Hollywood audience, and Hillary followed with a serious response that included both addressing problems in Mexico, and holding the line on legality in terms of related issues like employer sanctions and drivers' licenses. She gave a good, straight update re: her earlier bobble on the latter. Faced with this, Obama later acknowledged that the importation of an illiterate, exploitable underclass in fact depresses US wages. Both have a way to go before they can really be said to be appropriately tuned in to this issue, but she's ahead on it at this point. I trust molly agrees.
- Robert Powell
February 1, 2008 at 2:36pm
Tep - I understand your diagnosis, but what's the solution re: Mexico? It seems like there are some pretty fundamental structural and cultural issues that contribute to the absence of economic opportunity in rural Mexico. Isn't part of the issue that rural Mexico, particularly in the central and southern areas, is more of a 3d world country than we like to admit? In some ways its closer to some of the African countries than to many of the countries in South America. My point being, just like with foreign aid to Africa, its easy to say we want to help their economies and create jobs for working class Mexicans so they won't have to emigrate, but this might be one of those things that is somewhat beyond our control.
- paffoab
February 1, 2008 at 2:40pm
Thanks Robt P. That's a huge step forward, no sarcasm! I mean, we FINALLY have two members of the political class admitting the obvious, that doubling the size of the underclass puts a ceiling on wage increases for that underclass. Progress, seriously.
paffoab - our hibernian friend Ignorant Populist can address this better than I, but IIRC in resp to this query he said (sorry, TNR's archives don't work) that Ireland benefited not just from EU infrastructure subsidies but also from a huge increase in funding for post-secondary education in high-growth fields like finance, CS, biological sciences. Combine the latter with a major, multi-billion$ per annum increase in direct foreign investment by US multinationals serving the EU market in financial services, biotech, and processor chip and software production, and you have the ability to leap from third-world laggard to the top of the first-world income tables within 15 years.
Bottom line, we should halt the subsidization of US corn dumped into Mexico and close that NAFTA loophole ASAP; seek to buy up Mexican ag surpluses from small Mexican farmers; and fund the creation of new vocational schools at the secondary and past-secondary level that will offer opportunities in back-office and manufacturing a la the Irish model. Jump start it with tax-advantaged direct foreign investments by the likes of Intel, Citigroup, Hewlett-Packard, VISA and MasterCard, Amex etc
- teplukhin2you
February 1, 2008 at 3:15pm
You have it about right Teplukhin. Affordable technical education and low corporate taxation = FDI.
What's worrying for us is the latest IMF report, which states that for every 1% loss of GDP the US suffers, we suffer 1.75% as we are very dependent on that FDI. Despite our best efforts, a sizeable chunk of our SME base (the majority employer) serves the Glaxo's, Statestreets etc.
But, it's not rocket science. Your analysis is exactly right. It's just a shame that pragmatic solutions seem to get lost in the identity politics. I simply can't understand the Democrats postion on this.
Compassion for immigrants means recognizing why they're risking life and limb to cross the border in the first place. If foreign aid can subsidize the arms industry via Israel, Columbia and the rest of the ME, then surely some cash can be freed up for Mexico.
I'd say there's a role for the IMF and other international (American, North and South) bodies as well.
Where is the Mexican government on this?
Anyway, I'm out enjoy the rest of the day folks.
- The Ignorant Populist
February 1, 2008 at 3:49pm
Edwards dropping out put a fork in Krugman's road, and he took the path that exemplifies why I hate him, why Republicans hate us, and why Obama can win.
- psantillana
February 1, 2008 at 4:03pm
Tep: "Bottom line, we should halt the subsidization of US corn dumped into Mexico and close that NAFTA loophole ASAP; seek to buy up Mexican ag surpluses from small Mexican farmers; and fund the creation of new vocational schools at the secondary and past-secondary level that will offer opportunities in back-office and manufacturing a la the Irish model. Jump start it with tax-advantaged direct foreign investments by the likes of Intel, Citigroup, Hewlett-Packard, VISA and MasterCard, Amex etc" Yes. And if either had said this, point blank, they'd have won the damn debate. It appeals to everyone but billionaires and farmers: Immigrants, blue-collars, liberals. It's so obvious, it's genius. So why can't these cats be so straightforward?
Ig: Israel's an ally. Columbia? We're fighting a (hugely misguided) drug war. Mexico? We give them tons of cash, which gets lost in the sewer system of corruption. What they need is jobs, jobs, jobs. And everything Tep said above.
- MOLLYSIMON
February 1, 2008 at 4:20pm
Re FDI from El Norte, a key objective should be to snag a portion of the FDI that's flooding into China and redirect it back to this hemisphere. Chinese wages are already starting to climb, and the cost-differential with Mexico's going to narrow considerably. Especially if the renminbi ever is revalued significantly, as we keep insisting China do.
All of that suggests that now may be a good time to try to give incentives for US manufacturing and fin'l svcs firms to start locating assemblies and back-office processing operations, and supporting development of schools and technical insitutes, in rural Mexico.
- teplukhin2you
February 1, 2008 at 4:40pm
Tep, hate to break the bad news to you buddy but there are plenty of secondary and technical institutes in rural Mexico, more than you can shake a stick at, it is not the availability of the schooling or even the quality, but the quality of the students. I am a University Professor in the Oaxacan state system, so I know whereof I speak. Having taught in Universities in China and in Mexico I can tell you the critical difference between the two have been the students. I am not saying I don't admire your sentiments but up against reality that I see they are just that.
- blackton
February 1, 2008 at 5:05pm
Molly, Mexico has jobs jobs jobs, they just don't have jobs that pay worth a damn. I will be honest, for here it is passable, but since they can earn 5 times the amount across the border for the same work they will try to do it. The longer I live here, and this is my going into my 4th year, the longer I begin to understand this is more of a solution less situation than people realize. In my 7 years in China I saw a tremendous transformation from the ground up, throughout much of China. Down here, if it weren't for the powerlines you would be stepping back to the 18th century. In some rural zapoteco villages women can't even vote because they aren't even viewed as citizens. Don't get me wrong this place has tremendous potential, but it is just that, potential.
- blackton
February 1, 2008 at 5:14pm
Fair enough. Start with the primary schools. Gotta start somewhere.
- teplukhin2you
February 1, 2008 at 6:05pm
Tep, I hate to admit it but it is the culture. Education is the closest thing to a religion in China, here it is an afterthought. I love the students here, they are a lot of fun but for far too many getting honest effort out of them is hard work, and this is a publicly funded University, which is open to all that pass the entrance exams. At this point, I got no answers. Luckily for Mexico they found a huge new oil deposit in the Gulf, which will keep them in the black for another generation, after that who knows?
- blackton
February 1, 2008 at 6:28pm
Re:China/Mexico/Ireland Culture________________With all due respect, it's the politics, stupid. China is certainly no paragon of virtue as it's defined in the US, but in terms of values they've been pretty responsible about reinforcing cultural norms around things like education and social responsibility. Single-party rule in Mexico lasted longer than it did in the Soviet Union, with similar consequences in terms of cynicism. People in Mexico go into government in order to steal more effectively, and this has been the case for a long time. It's going to take a revolution, and the best we can do is to try to make it a soft one if we can. One thing for sure--we have at least at much at stake in Mexico as we do in Iraq.
- Robert Powell
February 2, 2008 at 6:20am
Bob, I doubt you will get back to this but you gotta brush up on your history. People in China go into government to steal as well. And during the Cultural revolution education was a disaster. There is multiparty rule, especially locally, in Mexico. My own experience of it is it is the Culture. The Chinese have had 2,000 years of Confucianism and a culture that requires an extraordinary amount of sophistication just to read the paper. You try learning 7,000 chinese characters sometime. In Mexico, the only people who go out at midday are mad dogs and Englishmen. It is just a different life here.
- blackton
February 2, 2008 at 7:33pm
blackton-nice to hear from you. I'm aware of corruption in China, and the wages of the Cultural Revolution. I also know that PRI has recently had some competition. But I guess I'm mixing culture with politics when I get to Mexico. The fact that most of the population has been kept in darkness by the political power structure at least since the Spanish arrived, and for all I know since the Mayans ruled, seems to have stuck. All I know is that it only take a generation or two to change things with the right incentives, as we've seen in multiple cases. I'd like to see us try encouraging the Irish model rather than what we're doing now, which is encouraging the further peonization of labor there and, increasingly, in the US.
- Robert Powell
February 3, 2008 at 3:41am