Im-Politic: You Bet Oprah Could Win

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2016 elections, 2018 elections, 2020 elections, Bernie Sanders, Democrats, economy, Elizabeth Warren, Im-Politic, independents, Joe Biden, Oprah Winfrey, politics, Republicans, Trump

Here’s a confession: I’ve never watched “Oprah.”

Still, since I’ve been in a waking state for much of the last few decades, I’m of course aware of the prominence she’s achieved in American culture and society, and the high regard in which so many hold her. That’s why I take absolutely seriously the idea that Oprah Winfrey could win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, and even take the White House.

One suggestive data point is already out. In a new poll, she tops President Trump by an impressive ten percentage points as a presidential choice. And as many observers have pointed out, unless the field of likely Democratic White House hopefuls changes markedly in the next two or so years (and we’re of course still awfully early in the presidential cycle, so don’t rule out that possibility by any means), Winfrey would face unusually flawed opponents.

Indeed, at this point, the leading Democratic contenders look to be Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, and former Vice President Joe Biden. Whatever you think of them as individuals either personally or politically, all three are septuagenarians, and two look to be well to the Left of a critical mass of American voters. And underscoring their vulnerability is how enthusiastically so many Democrats and progressives have reacted to the idea of “Oprah 2020.”

More reasons for optimism about a Winfrey White House run:

>She’s rich as Croesus and would have no trouble raising outside money.

>She has ocean-wide name recognition.

>She has made a career largely on her matchless ability to “feel the pain” of Main Street Americans (a skill that former President Bill Clinton so effectively conveyed).

>Mr. Trump has already broken through the celebrity “glass ceiling.”

>Similarly, she shows no evidence of being a whiz on policy issues, but no one associated such expertise with candidate Trump, either. And plenty of veteran Democratic- and liberal leaning academics and other specialists would no doubt flock to her cause and give her all the tutoring she needs for a campaign.

>Like the president, she can boast real business success.

Obviously, Winfrey would face important obstacles. I wouldn’t include race or gender on that list. It seems clear to me she’s transcended both categories. But her background isn’t completely scandal-free – as this article makes clear. In this vein, she could well be hurt from the inevitable gushing her candidacy will draw from a Hollywood/celebrity class that much of the public finds completely off-putting.

Perhaps most important, once Winfrey throws her hat in the ring, the halo currently surrounding her will surely fall off, and she’ll start looking more like a conventional politician. Certainly, even though the Mainstream Media will be favorably disposed to her (as they have been to any Trump opponent), she’ll still be under a much harsher spotlight than she has been so far.

Even so, there’s one advantage she’ll have in a 2020 campaign that I believe will be especially important in putting her over the top. And I feel pretty confident about this view even if Mr. Trump enjoys major traditional tailwinds like an economy that keeps performing reasonably well (at least by the standard indicators that attract all the media attention) and U.S. avoidance of military involvement in foreign crises that generate lots of casualties and costs.

Let’s call this advantage “Trump fatigue syndrome.” It’s entirely possible that Americans could enjoy the kinds of safety and prosperity that have often won presidents second terms, and still yearn for a return to normality in their politics and public life – or at least greater normality.

On the one hand, I agree with those (including many Democrats) who insist that the typical voter is much less interested in the “Russia-gate” charges and the other scandals with which the president has been charged than with their personal financial and economic conditions, and their sense of security.

On the other hand, though, I’m confident that those charges, their endless repetition in the media, and the President’s consistently harsh reactions to them and to any and all criticisms, are generating a wearying effect – and starting to erode the broad voter anger that contributed so much to Mr. Trump’s 2016 victory. In other words, outrage can be exhausting even for a die-hard Trump-er, and I expect Trump fatigue to spread as long as the current level of political warfare continues.

Indeed, the recent Alabama U.S. Senate and Virginia gubernatorial elections – won by moderate, soft-spoken Democrats amid an improving economy – indicate that precisely this syndrome is becoming established among relatively well-to-do suburban voters who supported the President in the general election. The persistence of Mr. Trump’s weak national poll ratings during at least decent economic times is another sign that many of his Republican, conservative, and independent backers are tiring of his act.

I also expect that the Democrats and the President’s other opponents know this, and will ensure that the various investigations underway into the actions of Mr. Trump and his family, aides, and other associates continue as long as possible. Trump foes in the media, political, and entertainment worlds are likely to keep baiting him with social media and other attacks for the same reason. The only risk they would run (and it’s not negligible):  At some point, the public could well demand that they “put up” (with some specific evidence of major Trump wrongdoing) or “shut up.”     

Even so, unless opposition research, or simply the campaign grind, destroys her aura of empathy and moderation and good sense, who better to cure Trump fatigue, at least by promising to restore some peace and quiet and dignity to the White House, than Winfrey?

Strangely, though, my case for Oprah 2020 also indicates that a major turn for the worse in America’s fortunes could greatly reduce her odds of winning the White House. Despite her impressive business career, I’m by no means convinced that many voters would regard Winfrey as an effective recession fighter. It seems even less plausible that she’d be seen as a promising commander-in-chief type if the world starts appearing a lot more dangerous. (Nor does that judgment reflect gender considerations. Unless you think many voters doubted 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s national security experience or toughness?) Even more important, a worsening economy and a more menacing world would appear a great formula for reigniting American political anger – which Winfrey would struggle to mollify.

And don’t forget the biggest threat to a Winfrey candidacy (though it seems to me unlikely at present):  Mr. Trump is removed from office, and in the process eliminate the shine from the ideas of celebrity candidacies and presidencies. 

But however strongly I feel that, barring a Trump exit, Winfrey could be taking the oath of office in Washington, D.C. on January 20, 2021, I’m less sure about two other big questions: Will she start to play a political role on behalf of Democrats in this year’s off-year elections? And will she be able to encourage enough additional Trump fatigue to affect the outcome notably?

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(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Which Democrats are Serious and Un-Serious About Trade Overhaul?

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AFL-CIO, Bernie Sanders, Canada, Charles Schumer, currency manipulation, Debbie Dingell, Democrats, dispute resolution, Elizabeth Warren, environmental standards, labor standards, Mexico, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, Politico, Richard Neal, Robert Lighthizer, Rosa deLauro, rules of origin, Thea Lee, Trade, Trump, U.S. Trade Representative, unions, Wilbur Ross, William Pascrell, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Usually, paying attention to instances of politicians and other public figures getting up on their soapboxes is a waste of time. Yesterday served up an exception: a press conference held by House Democrats in reaction to President Trump’s official decision to open talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The statements recorded in this Politico account offer some evidence as to which leaders on America’s Left are willing to work with the administration on trade policies that can help the working class voters Democrats still profess to champion, and those who will remain content to sit on the sidelines and take partisan potshots.

Reportedly, all of the House members who spoke at the event “said…they feared Trump would make only modest changes to NAFTA after blasting it as an economic disaster throughout last year’s presidential campaign.” The basis for these worries? The letter sent yesterday by new U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to Congressional leaders announcing the administration’s intention to open NAFTA talks with the two other signatories, Canada and Mexico. According to these House Democrats and some other trade critics, the document apparently was “short on details,” which many claimed indicated Trump’s intention simply to “tweak” rather than comprehensively overhaul the agreement.

All else equal, wondering about the president’s real intentions is anything but unreasonable. His personality, after all, is mercurial, and one of his major trade initiatives to date – the negotiations begun with Beijing following February’s summit with Chinese leader XiJinping – has legitimately disappointed advocates of the major course change he pledged during the campaign. (The other major trade initiative, scrapping the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, kept a leading campaign promise to the letter.) Moreover, the Lighthizer letter is indeed short on specifics.

But none of the participants in the press conference seems to have noticed that in previous statements –including reportedly to leading Democratic lawmakers, top Trump officials have emphasized the need for dramatic NAFTA changes.

For example, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has described as high NAFTA-related priorities greatly tightening the pact’s rules of origin in order to incentivize more non-NAFTA manufacturing investment inside the free trade zone, and restructuring a dispute-resolution system that gives each signatory an equal vote even though the United States represents more than 85 percent of North America’s total economic output. Reinforcing this point was the Lighthizer letter’s contention that “establishing effective implementation and aggressive enforcement of the commitments made by our trading partners under our trade agreements is vital to the success of these agreements and should be improved in the context of NAFTA.”

Meanwhile, Lighthizer reportedly has told Senators that the administration is thinking of adding to NAFTA rules that would prohibit currency manipulation – a move that would set a valuable precedent for future trade deals. In addition, his letter mentioned the need to improve NAFTA’s labor and environmental protections. In my view, they’re largely unenforceable. But they’ve been a prime focus of Democratic Party trade policy positions for decades.

So given that background, it seems fair at this point to finger Connecticut’s Rosa deLauro, New Jersey’s Bill Pascrell, and Massachusetts’ Richard Neal as grandstanders. The former stressed the “tweaking” allegation. The latter two charged that “It was clear from the start that the administration was only interested in working with the Congressional Republican leadership in drafting this notice [the Lighthizer letter].”

I’d also include in this group several key Senate Democrats, including Leader Charles Schumer of New York, former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders of New York, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. They voted against Lighthizer’s confirmation despite his decades-long record of fighting predatory foreign trade practices both as Deputy U.S. Trade Representative during the Reagan administration, and as a trade lawyer representing domestic American producers.

More temperate in their judgments were Michigan’s Debbie Dingell, and the AFL-CIO’s Thea Lee. The former stated that she was “investing the time to understand where the consensus is.” The latter said, “We enter every negotiation in a good faith state of mind and we expect a lot from our government. Certainly candidate Trump made a lot of promises about fixing flawed trade agreements and looking out for American workers and good jobs, so we will hold him and his administration to that promise.”

I can’t think of a more reasonable position for politicians and other supporters of a movement that still styles itself as the “party of the common man [and woman].”

Im-Politic: No Learning Curve for America’s Left on Immigration

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American Muslims, Angela Merkel, assimilation, Attorney General, Cory Booker, Democrats, Elizabeth Warren, Germany, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Immigration, Jeff Sessions, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party, liberals, Marketwatch.com, Muslims, national security, Obama, Open Borders, progressive, Social Democratic Party, terrorism, Trump, United Kingdom

I keep waiting for America’s self-styled progressives to start recognizing that they’re going absolutely nowhere in national politics until they abandon their devotion to Open Borders policies, and start responding to their fellow citizens’ legitimate economic and especially security concerns about mass immigration.

Sadly, nothing could be clearer from recent developments than that the wait will continue indefinitely. Even worse, the U.S. Left seems to be even more clueless on the subject than its counterparts in Europe.

Certainly President Obama remains unrepentant about his own record. In his Farewell Address, he touted his record in fighting Islamic terrorism overseas (not that he used the term), and warned against the dangers of domestic radicalization. But his boast that “no foreign terrorist organization has successfully planned and executed an attack on our homeland these past eight years” once again made painfully clear his neglect of the dangerous impact of already having admitting so many newcomers whose original religion or culture creates huge obstacles to successful assimilation into American society. Why else would he have glossed over the deadly attacks by Muslim immigrants in Boston, San Bernardino, and Orlando?

In fact, according to Mr. Obama, the only Americans who need to learn about current and emerging immigration realities are those in the native-born population – because their fear that some immigrants today could “destroy the fundamental character” of the country is not only obsolete, but bigoted.

Other progressives also seem to be doubling down on efforts to address valid immigration concerns with smears. Can anyone reasonably doubt, for example, that Alabama Republican Senator Jeff Sessions’ appointment as President-elect Trump’s Attorney General would be sailing through the Senate if had not so forthrightly championed immigration realism – and enforcing the nation’s existing laws?

Yes, many Senate Democrats have accused Sessions of harboring racist views and neglecting the rights of a wide variety of discrimination victims. At the same time, none of these alleged transgressions prevented New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker – Sessions’ leading Congressional opponent – from feeling “blessed and honored” just last year “to have partnered with Sen. Sessions in being the Senate sponsors” of a Congressional Gold Medal for the voting rights activists of the 1960s. No one else in the Senate protested, either.

Maybe Booker’s Massachusetts Senate colleague, Elizabeth Warren, is moving in the opposite direction? Not if her declaration that she’s running for reelection is any indication. Warren marked the occasion by vowing to “fight back against attacks on Latinos, African-Americans, Muslims, immigrants, women, and LGBT Americans. Our diversity is what makes our country strong – and on this, there will be NO compromise.” As if all these groups can be lumped in the exact same victimization category.

In fact, the only sign of progress I can detect is that no progressives are urging Mr. Obama or Mr. Trump to quintuple the number of U.S. refugee admissions from war-wracked Middle Eastern countries – as failed Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton proposed.

The contrast with European progressive leaders is stunning. As reported in an insightful column on Marketwatch.com, the head of Germany’s Social Democratic Party – and the country’s vice chancellor in the current coalition government – is calling for “ncreased video surveillance…a ban on fundamentalist mosques as breeding grounds for terrorism, and…an end to freeloading on Germany’s generous child-support subsidies by other European Union citizens.”

Another German progressive leader has slammed Chancellor Angela Merkel for “uncontrolled border opening [and]a police force that has been downsized to the point of inefficiency, that neither has the personnel nor the technical resources that would enable it to cope with the current threat situation,”

Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn, who heads the United Kingdom’s struggling Labour Party, is unmistakably rethinking his former opposition to Britain’s decision to leave the European Union in large part because of the grouping’s lax immigration policies. Corbyn had previously opposed “Brexit,” which British voters passed in a referendum in June.

Germany, of course, has experienced Muslim terrorist attacks much bloodier than America’s. The Labour Party seems headed for its worst showing in Parliament since the 1930s. Will it take these kinds of security and political disasters to bring U.S. progressives to their senses on immigration?

Following Up: Democrats’ Safety Net-Heavy Policies Still Missing the Mark for Trump Voters

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2016 election, Center for American Progress, Democrats, Economic Policy Institute, Elizabeth Warren, entitlements, Following Up, manufacturing, middle class, Mitt Romney, Neera Tanden, private sector jobs, progressives, safety net, Trade, Trump, Welfare State, working class

A little over a week ago, I wrote that much of the American Left was way off-base in believing that working class Americans who supported Donald Trump’s successful presidential run had voted against their economic interests. My thesis: These Trump voters were (rightly) much more interested in the family wage private sector jobs his campaign was promising rather than the various forms of welfare that Democratic candidates were strongly suggesting were adequate substitutes. And revealingly, compelling confirmation for my claim arrived just this week – in my email box!

The evidence came in the form of fund-raising pitches from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and the Center for American Progress CAP). Yes, it’s true that such solicitations aren’t the same as detailed policy papers. It’s also true that both organizations have in the past supported at least some of the trade policy overhauls emphasized by Mr. Trump as vital to job creation in the genuinely productive sectors of the U.S. economy – especially manufacturing. It seems that their interest in new trade policies continues to some extent. And it’s true as well that funding appeals are practically by definition aimed mainly at core or likely supporters – so they don’t necessarily reflect the full output of thinking of these think tanks.

Nevertheless, as a result, fund-raising pitches almost by definition reveal much about these core backers’ priorities, and those of an organization. And in both the EPI and CAP emails, creating more good jobs via trade was a concept conspicuously absent, while what I’ve described as cleverly disguised (even when necessary or desirable) welfare measures were front and center. And here’s a fact that goes far toward clinching the case that the Left remains largely clueless re helping the “ninety-nine percent” it claims to champion. These think tanks in many ways represent the two main wings of progressivism and the Democratic party– what have been called the Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton camps.

Take EPI’s pitch – which came in the form of a note from Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Warren certainly identified a big problem faced by working class voters and bearing much blame for the neglect they obviously feel: “A lot of people in this country work hard, but they aren’t building any security—and they are angry about it.”

Warren continued:

“They’re angry that bonuses go up for CEOs while their own paychecks are stuck in the same place year after year. They’re angry that basic costs like housing, health care, and childcare have skyrocketed. And they’re angry about a tax system that benefits the rich and powerful.

“They’re angry because our economy and our government work for those who have already made it big, but don’t work for them.”

And in my view, she correctly identified a goal that needs to be achieved for greater and more broadly based American economic success: “Our top economic priority must be improving the lives of working people in this country—because everyone in this country should have a fighting chance to build a future.”

But what did Warren emphasize as the policies most needed to help the working (and middle) class? “[F]ighting to raise the minimum wage to a living wage [and expanding] Social Security for millions of Americans…” along with addressing “the gender and race wage gaps….” The words “trade,” “offshoring,” and “globalization” simply don’t appear.

The appeal for the Center for American Progress came from its president, Neera Tanden. You might be familiar with Tanden from the presidential campaign. As a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter, she’s been a fixture on many of the Sunday morning talk shows. She was also one of the most prominent Democrats embarrassed by the hacked and leaked emails of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta.

Tanden’s email yesterday was titled “Defend Our Economic Security” – and therefore seemed full of promise. I thought that it might deal with neglected issues I’ve written profusely about, like the weaknesses that have emerged in the American defense manufacturing base, or the recklessness of permitting the nation’s best tech companies transfer much of their best (and defense-related) knowhow to China.

No such luck, however. Tanden’s focus instead was on “the issues that matter most to working families” – which of course is laudable. But as her letter makes clear, CAP is most concerned with “how the American middle class has been squeezed by the rising costs of health care, child care, higher education, housing, and retirement” and the greatest challenge it sees is preventing President-elect Trump and the incoming Republican-controlled Congress from cutting the government programs that have helped the middle (and working) class cope with these rising costs.

Again, I have no objection to ensuring the continued health of many of these programs, or entire safety net. But in CAP’s apparent view, they’re ends in and of themselves. I also understand the need to demonize political opponents in fund-raising literature. It’s a tried and true way to fire up the donor base.

But the organization doesn’t seem interested in policies to foster the types of private sector jobs that would enable Americans to reduce their burgeoning reliance on these measures. That notion is also difficult to find at the Economic Policy Institute. Both institutes may be right in viewing a safety net-centric economic game plan as a winning political formula. And if they were, in an ironic way, they’d be confirming one of former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s biggest verbal mis-steps during the 2012 election – his suggestion that 47 percent of Americans are welfare state takers.

But one of the clearest lessons of the 2016 election is that the masses of working class voters who opted for Mr. Trump aren’t buying it. All of which presents the Democrats – who have styled themselves as the Party of the Common Man – with a dilemma that’s not only momentous, but possibly existential.

Im-Politic: Why U.S. Progressives Need to Become Nationalists

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America First, Bernie Sanders, Democrats, Elizabeth Warren, free trade agreements, globalism, Im-Politic, Immigration, labor unions, nationalism, New Balance, offshoring, Populism, progressives, third world, Trade, Trump, white working class, working class

Tiny groups of individuals shouldn’t be mistaken for entire movements, or even significant factions of movements. Therefore, I don’t want to make too much of those Trump haters who burned their New Balance sneakers and/or slammed the company on social media because it stated that the election as president of a strong trade policy critic would be good for manufacturers seeking to make most of their products in the United States, like itself.

At the same time, the backlash against New Balance sheds lots of light on serious problems in the ranks of American progressivism that contributed to Trump’s triumph and that will need to be solved if the Left end of the country’s political spectrum is to win working class loyalties and convincingly claim populist chops.

Let me start with a little story (one of my father’s favorite phrases!). Back in the late-1990s, when President Clinton had requested new trade negotiating authority from Congress, I attended a meeting at AFL-CIO headquarters of activists seeking to block his ambitions. Early at the session, we agreed that we should explain to legislators and the public what kinds of trade policies we favored, not simply what we opposed, and someone (not me) suggested something along these lines as a unifying theme:

“The main purpose of U.S. trade policy should be to promote healthy growth for the American economy and higher living standards for the majority of the American people.”

That didn’t seem terribly controversial to me. But several hands immediately rose in protest. A representative of the Maryknoll Sisters made clear the objection. Why, she asked, were we ignoring the well-being of the rest of the world?

To his credit, the American labor leader who was running the meeting tried to argue that, however much he sympathized with her point, it was axiomatic that the first obligation of the U.S. government was to promote and defend the interests of the American people. But he didn’t make the argument very emphatically, and many of the others around the table – who came from left-of-center organizations – were even more conflicted. I tried to shore up the first speaker, but quickly realized I was in the greatly outnumbered and spent the rest of the session listening.

I don’t remember what the final version said, and doubt it was ever made public, but the phrasing of that opening point was definitely watered down. On my way out, some folks who worked for labor union offices outside the Beltway came over to me and asked, as they were shaking their heads, “What the heck was that all about?” I replied, “You’ve just learned a valuable lesson about American liberals. Many don’t believe that American workers’ interests should come first.”

They’d actually gotten many such lessons throughout the 1990s. As the first Bush administration and especially the Clinton administration turned U.S. trade policy into an exercise in offshoring, not domestic growth, their progressive critics decided that the best way to resist was to spotlight the harm this new strategy would inflict on workers and peasants in the developing world as well as in the United States. In fact, the third world and its grievances turned into a prime focus of those who famously protested the 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle.

This approach made some tactical sense, as many liberals in Congress clearly were not constitutionally inclined to buy an America First trade policy. But although there are any number of ways in which U.S. trade policies could be changed to create more situations of mutual benefit between rich and poor countries (see this recent article for an example), the progressive stance also reflected a refusal to recognize that many hard choices have confronted – and still confront – the nation on trade.

In public policy trying to please everyone tends to wind up pleasing no one. So substantively, this wishful thinking was a formula for confusion at best. Politically, the impact was far worse: The progressives wound up muddying and therefore weakening the message trade critics were trying to send to the public.

Small wonder that even though the critics won some procedural trade fights during the 2000s, even after the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008, President Obama managed to secure Congressional passage of three new free trade agreements. Not until a major politician forthrightly vowed to prioritize American interests in trade policy making did the powerful globalization status quo meet its match – and then some.

Based on their initial post-election statements, it seems that progressive leaders realize that rejecting the option of working with Mr. Trump on trade policy would be the height of folly. That is, it seems that they’re implicitly rejecting the notion that the President-elect is so odious that a company that employs American workers despite powerful pressures to offshore should be condemned not for endorsing the whole of his candidacy, but simply for noting that his election would likely aid those efforts.  Therefore, big changes on the trade front seem inevitable above and beyond the collapse of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement.

Yet even the progressives’ leaders still face a towering obstacle in their own quest to regain the votes of the millions of working class voters – probably like many of those New Balance workers – who deserted their party’s standard bearer last Tuesday night. They have no chance of succeeding if they continue describing all forms of common sense immigration policies as bigoted. And for those of you who think that I’m just talking about the white working class, keep in mind that the phrase “union household” also describes this constituency.

In other words, during the 2016 elections, progressives in part tried to convince Main Street America that they would gain from a massive increase in the nation’s supply of unskilled labor through both amnesty and the powerful magnet effect it would generate. And at the same time, if these working class voters worried about the resulting downward pressure on wages, along with the effects on the nation’s cohesion of surging bilingualism and its security of newcomers from the culturally medieval Middle East, they were condemned by the Left as nativists, racists, and even worse.

The pointed references to Mr. Trump’s alleged xenophobia by both Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (earlier in the campaign) show that their faction of American politics has much to learn on this score. Until they understand that real U.S. populists can’t be globalists in this day and age, they’re likely to continue wandering the political wilderness.

Im-Politic: The Day After, Part II

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2016 election, African Americans, Bernie Sanders, consumer confidence, Democrats, Elizabeth Warren, exit polls, Hillary Clinton, Hispanics, Im-Politic, labor, NAFTA, polls, TPP, Trade, trade laws, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Trump, white working class

It’s the day after the day after in America, and I’m still stupefied by the advent of the Age of Trump. I have absolutely no inside info on what to expect in the way of policy recommendations from the transition team or the new administration, so I’ll be just as eager as anyone for the hints and trial balloons to emerge.

But continuing with the theme of yesterday’s post, I believe it is possible to identify some important questions that major actors in American politics – and the voters they’ll keep trying to reach – will need to grapple with. Let’s focus today on the Democrats and their allies and constituencies, since they face the most obvious challenges:

>At least one piece of the conventional wisdom about Hillary Clinton’s failings strikes me as being right on target – especially since the emails exposed by Wikileaks make clear that her senior advisers spotted it as well: She never developed a clear, compelling positive message.

It’s not that “Stronger together” isn’t a positive idea, and no doubt had some appeal at a time of deep national division. But this slogan begs the question “Stronger together to where?” Regularly, Clinton suggested that she meant “to the 1990s,” when her husband was president. Many Americans – particularly in the chattering classes – do indeed view the period as a time of unprecedented prosperity along with peace. To many others, however – especially in working class precincts – the decade evoked memories of job-killing trade agreements like NAFTA. And of course many others were reminded of a string of scandals, both real and alleged.

In fact, I’d take the critique of Clinton’s message one step further. Even though her campaign website and many of her speeches were filled with any number of specific proposals, they were quickly replaced on the campaign trail, and especially in her ads, by a non-stop assault on Trump’s character and qualifications for the Oval Office. Clinton’s defeat strongly indicates that you can’t beat even a deeply flawed something with nothing.

>In fairness to Clinton, however, her messaging problems might have been related to a genuine quandary she faced. Democrats have styled themselves, and often acted like, the Party of the Common Man. As I and others have written, when it comes to issues like trade, demographic changes in Democrats’ ranks seem to be clashing with this relatively populist identity, and Tuesday night’s results indisputably show that the party has the majority of the white working class.

Indeed, according to the preliminary evidence, Clinton’s performance among union voters was feeble by the standards of recent Democratic presidential candidates – despite labor leaders’ vehement opposition to Trump. And keep in mind that nearly half of this electoral bloc is comprised of government workers, who naturally tend to favor the freer spending Democrats. As a result, Clinton’s backing from members of private sector unions was probably much weaker still.

So the Democrats face a fundamental choice, and it could well have rhetorically crippled an undecided Clinton. Will they turn their backs on private sector union members, possibly also in the belief that America’s changing population profile is steadily reducing their political importance? Or despite the gulf between private sector union workers and younger, better educated Democrats on issues like trade (along perhaps with immigration and those amorphous but crucial cultural and values issues), will they try to bring them back?

>Nonetheless, major Democratic constituencies and their leaders – including the unions and the party’s progressive wing – still loudly oppose America’s current approach to trade. But as mentioned above, they’ve been almost hysterically anti-Trump, to the point of incoherence.

If they’re serious about overhauling trade policy, it’s time for these folks to wake up and turn the partisanship down. They’ll soon be getting a president who supports most of their major and longstanding trade positions, including opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), sanctioning China for currency manipulation, rewriting NAFTA, and using U.S. trade law more energetically to fight predatory foreign practices.

Working with Mr. Trump, they can achieve these goals. Remaining in spiteful high dudgeon could doom reforms they’ve sought literally for decades. Statements by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and from organized labor, are promising signs that these progressive leaders are open to cooperation with the incoming Chief Executive. Assuming that these declarations are serious, it’s time for the rest of the movement to fall in line and recognize that for the first time in modern U.S. history, the White House looks to be on their side.

>Finally (for now), nothing could be clearer about the 2016 election returns than the serious flaws they’ve revealed in the so-called science of polling. But politically focused surveys aren’t the only soundings apparently needing major surgery. Many of the best known economic surveys arguably were way off base as well.

For example, many polls – including this week’s exit polls – show strong public support for some form of legalization for illegal immigrants. Can this finding be reconciled with Mr. Trump’s win? Other surveys have revealed a notable warming of Americans’ views of free trade and recent trade agreements. That’s also hard to square with this week’s actual results – and would have been even had Mr. Trump lost by a respectable margin.

Also deserving of greater scrutiny – surveys of consumer and other forms of economic confidence. They have strongly tended to show significant improvement since the depths of the last recession, which isn’t hard to understand. But even their general claims of a simple return to pre-recession levels or, in some cases, better, ring false in light of this week’s voting.

One possible explanation is the gap identified by some researchers between rising optimism by African-Americans and Hispanics and the more downbeat views of whites. But if so, why did Trump fare much better among the latter than widely predicted, and why did he best 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney with both groups even though the economy was considerably weaker four years ago?

I can’t emphasize enough, however, how tentative my observations are, and how long my (and so many other) questions will defy confident answers. My only certainty so far is that election night this week was the most important historic event I’ve ever experienced. (I was born at the end of 1953.) I just wish I knew whether for good or ill.

Im-Politic: Will Sanders and His Backers Become Real Revolutionaries?

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2016 election, Bernie Sanders, Democratic National Committee, Democrats, DNC, Donald Trump, Elizabeth Warren, emails, Im-Politic, Immigration, leaks, Populism, refugees, Tim Kaine, TPP, Trade, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Wikileaks

You want a humbling experience? Try coming back from a week-long vacation perfectly timed to coincide with possibly the most tumultuous presidential nominating convention in recent decades! While relaxing on and around the beach in Fenwick Island, Delaware, I generally kept the electronic devices off, and so got only the general drift of events in Cleveland. My efforts to catch up yesterday, moreover, only reinforce my doubts about adding much useful to the latest torrent of news, analysis, and simple bloviation that’s flooded the nation – even though it’s far from clear that much new has been learned, or that many minds have been fundamentally changed.

Thank goodness the latest major development came just as I was returning home: the hacked Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails released by Wikileaks on Friday night. Much has already been written about how angry they are no doubt making Hillary Clinton’s former rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders, along with the Vermont Senator’s passionate supporters. 

Much more should and I hope will be written about how the disclosures and their fallout will affect the vast -but largely unrealized – potential that still remains for a grand left-right populist coalition to come together in American politics once this year’s presidential race is over.

The leaked DNC emails put the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party squarely on the spot. Barring major new revelations to the contrary, they’re the most powerful possible injection of salt into Sanders Nation wounds that were rawer than ever over the Democratic platform committee’s refusal to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, and over party standard-bearer Hillary Clinton’s choice of centrist, Big Business-friendly Virginia Senator Tim Kaine as her running mate.

Every suspicion held by the Sanders camp that the Democrats’ leadership worked overtime to ensure his defeat – despite the DNC’s own requirement of neutrality – has now been spectacularly confirmed. And who now can reasonably doubt that the DNC was motivated mainly by the threat Sanders’ economic populism posed to its Clinton-friendly donor class?

Donald Trump has made numerous verbal overtures to Sanders and his supporters throughout his successful maverick campaign for the Republican nomination. But no matter how many points of agreement he spotlighted – notably on trade, Wall Street reform, the bloated role of corporate and other special interest money in American politics, and hyper-interventionist U.S. foreign policies – he’s been angrily rebuffed both by the candidate himself and the vast majority of his followers.

Of course, Trump has made this rejection-ism far too easy for the Democratic Left, thanks largely to his inflammatory rhetoric on illegal immigration (especially from Mexico) and a long string of insulting comments both before and during his presidential run about any number of groups and individuals. In addition, serious questions have been raised – and not adequately answered – about Trump’s previous and current business practices. And because Trump’s pugnacious personality seems to rule out any efforts even to acknowledge the resulting concerns, his chances of victory in November have been damaged.

But the emergence of a large, genuinely populist constituency on the Right creates a much thornier longer-term challenge to Sanders Democrats if they’re serious about their avowed goal of revolutionizing American politics: Can they and will they abandon strongly held positions of their own that arguably have hardened into shibboleths and that limit their own bipartisan appeal as surely – and needlessly – as Trump’s excessive political incorrectness? The two biggest tests I can think of concern immigration.

Leftist Democrats have been outraged by Trump’s description, in his campaign kickoff announcement, of at least many Mexican immigrants as criminals. But do they really support the immigration policies laid out in the Democratic platform, which despite its reference to “reasonable limits” on legal immigration, would create powerful magnets to inflows by offering lightly conditioned citizenship to the illegals already in the United States; by streamlining the family reunification process that already fosters far too much chain migration; by gutting even today’s weak enforcement and deportation programs; and by expanding the range of public services made available to residents “regardless of immigration status”?

Do they really believe that pumping up the domestic labor supply to this extent (including with the increases in visa quotas for highly skilled immigrants favored by Clinton and her Silicon Valley backers) will benefit the existing legal American workforce? In other words, do they really believe that handing over current American jobs to a burgeoning flood of newcomers is any less damaging to the nation’s working and middle classes than shipping those jobs overseas through offshoring-friendly trade deals?

Or should they listen to a voice who a decade ago warned that the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill then before Congress “would bring low-wage workers into this country in order to depress the already declining wages of American workers” and that “With poverty increasing and the middle-class shrinking, we must not force American workers into even more economic distress”?

That voice was Bernie Sanders’, and although he was referring specifically to the bill’s guest worker programs, the economics behind his analysis apply across the immigration board.

Sanders backers also need to reexamine their views on admitting immigrants and refugees from war-torn Middle Eastern countries. Let’s agree that Trump’s original Muslim ban would have been unconstitutional and unworkable. (Even Trump has backed away from this position.) Do they honestly agree with the Obama administration’s insistence that current vetting procedures are adequate? Do they not recognize – as even the president grudgingly but repeatedly has acknowledged – that Islam has presented a distinctive terrorism problem? Indeed, on Thursday, he stated that “the Muslim faith itself…has driven violence in some parts of the world.”

Are they dead-set against acting on the logical implication of Obama’s remarks, and participating in efforts to devise practicable, legal methods for protect their fellow citizens from threats they face from both without and within? Are they determined to self-righteously remain on their soapboxes and condemn as bigots and xenophobes the roughly half of their fellow countrymen who endorse Trump’s fundamental demand to end business-as-usual approaches? And do Sanders’ populists line up behind Clinton’s call actually to make the domestic Islam problem bigger, by quintupling current immigration and refugee admissions from the Middle East?

So far, Trump’s gratuitous bombast has handed Sanders’ backers, as well as supporters of Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, a convenient excuse for opposing immigration proposals that would directly and concretely bolster the prosperity and security of the working and middle-class Americans they claim to champion – and that large chunks of the mass public clearly favor. By the same token, at least apparently in their minds, Trump’s excesses have relieved Democratic Leftists of any responsibility to reach out to their fellow populists on the opposite end of the spectrum, try to bridge the immigration and other gaps, and create a transformational new coalition in American politics.

But Democratic populists can’t count on this excuse much longer. Whoever prevails in the general election, populists of all stripes will need to cooperate to ensure that their unprecedented combined impact this political cycle produces enduring successes. And no current issue touches core questions of economics, national security – and national identity – like immigration. Left-wing Democrats who want to be successful revolutionaries will focus on identifying and expanding common ground, and on working with Trump, his backers, and that group of more conventional, less sharp-edged politicians who decide to proceed down the trail the Republican nominee has blazed. Those content simply to advertise their political virtue while establishment policies continue threatening Main Street Americans will keep demonizing Trump and his insurgency.

Im-Politic: A Masterful Takedown of Ruling Class Economic Hypocrisies

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2016 elections, Afghanistan-ism, Bernie Sanders, boardroom liberalism, Clinton Foundation, Democrats, Elizabeth Warren, free trade agreements, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, Noam Scheiber, Obama, offshoring, Paul Theroux, poverty, reform, The New York Times, Trade

Here’s a must-read for you: Paul Theroux’ op-ed in The New York Times today on the hypocrisy of members of the American corporate class who have made towering fortunes by offshoring U.S. jobs to developing countries, and then have contributed to and even fostered charitable efforts that seek to alleviate the poverty their business models have produced.

The highlights (lowlights?) are too numerous to list. And besides, the entire article really does deserve your attention. But given the burst of interest in recent years occasioned by all the fiftieth anniversaries of milestones of the civil rights movement, this paragraph on the impact of offshoring on some of that period’s most revered stretches of hallowed ground in Alabama is just jaw-dropping:

“Selma may have been a political success and a great symbol, but it is an economic failure; Greensboro has some effective well-wishers, but it does not look very different from the town that James Agee wrote about and Walker Evans photographed in ‘Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,’ which was published in 1941; Monroeville earns some revenue from the ‘Mockingbird’ literary pilgrims, but it lost more than 2,000 jobs when Vanity Fair Brands downsized its operations there. The catfish industry is faltering all over the state, thanks in part to fish imported from special-relationship Asia.”

In all, Theroux’ article is so devastatingly on target that I can only offer one observation to help round out, and one to help sharpen the author’s long overdue attack on the “strategy of getting rich on cheap labor in foreign countries while offering a sop to America’s poor ” through ostensibly good works – and implicitly on the pass this gimmick gets from our social, cultural, and political tastemakers. (That is, when they’re not explicitly praising and endorsing these crocodile tears displays).

First, Theroux’ inclusion of the role played in this snow job by the Clinton Foundation and its galaxy of one percenter business and entertainment industry supporters deserves much more attention, for two reasons. After all, the Clintons epitomize the politicians that the offshoring interests needed to buy with campaign contributions in order to push their agenda through Congress in the form of the string of job- and wage-killing trade deals that began with the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993. Just as important – along with President Obama – they epitomize the Democrats and liberals who became champions of offshoring-friendly trade strategies even though they clashed violently with their avowed determination to fight poverty and expand opportunity and create more “inclusive growth.”

In this vein, their efforts to square this circle wound up fueling a broader approach to politics that New York Times labor reporter Noam Scheiber has insightfully called “boardroom liberalism.” Click here for a post where I discuss this phenomenon and describe it as “an especially insipid version of the ‘trickle down’ theories championed by most of [these liberals’] conservative rivals.”

Moreover, much of the fight for control of the Democratic party playing out in this year’s presidential campaign entails a fight between the boardroom liberals – represented not only by Hillary Clinton, but potentially by Vice President Joe Biden – and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. His supporters, of course, and those of fellow Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, favor reform programs that, if not more realistic substantively than those supported by the boardroom liberals, flow from views of economic power and human psychology that seem far more accurate.

I also hope that Theroux recognizes that to some extent his piece conflates two related but distinct problems: the boardroom liberals’ offshoring hypocrisy on the one hand, and what has been called their “Afghanistan-ism” on the other. What I mean by that latter term is the tendency of many of society’s avowed do-gooders (and I’m not using that term as such as a pejorative) to focus on dramatic, high-profile, exotic, and geographically distant problems and injustices that (perhaps not so coincidentally) they can’t do much about rather than on equally serious but more mundane woes right under their noses that they can plausibly hope to address meaningfully.

The author does a terrific job of upbraiding the boardroom liberals not only for their responsibility for domestic poverty but for their neglect of this situation in favor of funding all manner of charitable endeavors focused overseas. My reference above to the chances of solving or at least significantly easing domestic versus foreign problems indicates that boardroom liberalism and Afghanistan-ism are certainly closely related – by suggesting that major reform at home is the last outcome boardroom liberals want. But they’re not identical.

In any event, please read Theroux article. It speaks volumes about why the current two-party system today represents an obstacle to the kinds of change America so urgently needs, rather than a potential change agent.

Im-Politic: Why Elizabeth Warren Needs to Become a Real Trade Warrior

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Elizabeth Warren, Financial Crisis, financial regulation, Im-Politic, Jobs, Main Street economy, Mainstream Media, offshoring, One Percent, Trade, trade Deals, trickle down economics, Wall Street reform

One of the most heartening trade policy-related developments of recent months has been Senator Elizabeth Warren’s growing interest in the issue. In addition to expressing concern that President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal will undercut the Wall Street reforms she’s helped spearhead, she devoted some lines to trade in her recent economics speech to the AFL-CIO that were more than mere talking points.

Given the Massachusetts freshman’s burgeoning role in Democratic party politics – and signs of some appeal to populist conservatives – these remarks represent one more small sign that much of her party is moving beyond stale, narrow cliches when talking trade. Indeed, they encouragingly echo a previous speech by her New York colleague, Chuck Schumer, a member of the Democratic leadership as chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Center.

Nonetheless, Warren and her colleagues have a ways to go before they develop a trade-related campaign pitch that both excites voters and yet isn’t completely trashed by the trade-liberalization-worshipping Mainstream Media.

That last point is worth elaborating on a bit. It’s not that voters will read in any detail the MSM’s descriptions of any candidates critical of trade and conclude that opposition to current policies disqualifies them from public office. It’s that constant MSM descriptions of such candidates as neanderthals and know-nothings and xenophobes and the like tend to saddle target politicians with a distinctive “fringe” or at best (hopeless) “protest candidate” label.  

In any event, it was good to see Warren, a la Schumer before her, in part blame the woes of the American middle and working classes in part on government decisions that “turned loose giant international corporations to…outsource more jobs.” Even better was Warren’s critique of “trade pacts and tax deals that let subsidized manufacturers around the globe sell here in America while good American jobs get shipped overseas.”

But Warren oversimplifies.  As a result, she needlessly leaves herself and other trade policy critics needlessly vulnerable to charges of being anti-capitalist, and misses a chance to knit together her domestic and international positions into the strongest possible political force.

The main culprit behind offshoring isn’t the “trickle-down economics” she villifies in the AFL speech and more generally. It’s a more specific set of trade policies that inevitably slow U.S. growth and therefore hiring by encouraging American (and other foreign) companies to supply the lucrative American market from foreign production sites that are much lower cost, lightly regulated, still heavily protected by (difficult-to-identify) non-tariff trade barriers, and (yes) often subsidized.

Moreover, precisely because recent trade deals and related policies have offered this sugar-sweet deal to U.S. companies, they inevitably have increased the pressure in America to deregulate dramatically in order to compensate – including on Wall Street. And if restoring or even raising U.S. trade barriers made investing abroad much less attractive to the One Percent (because selling the output to American customers would be that much harder) much more of the wealthy’s wealth would indeed trickle down to the rest of Americans. In that trade policy environment, new financial regulations could genuinely ensure that most corporate investment benefits the real Main Street U.S. economy and strengthens its foundations, rather than underwrite unproductive and even reckless Wall Street shenanigans.

Just as important, Warren needs to connect trade-induced offshoring with the onset of the financial crisis. As I’ve pointed out previously, she’d have plenty of world-class academic company. But it’s imperative to popularize the idea that most of the gains from offshoring went to third world populations who were still left way too poor to buy much of what Americans could hope to export them. Most of the losses, meanwhile, went to Americans whose consumption was still vital to fueling the nation’s and the world’s growth. When Washington decided to offset those income losses with oceans of cheap credit, bubble inflation and then bursting was guaranteed. So if Warren is genuinely determined to improve the financial stability of the American economy – as seems the case – then she’ll concentrate more of her energies on a trade policy makeover.

Because of her skyrocketing profile, Warren will be influencing the next presidential campaign whether she runs or not. Let’s hope she uses the opportunity not only to stoke populist emotions that should be heated, but to raise the odds that they’ll generate the most constructive change.