TPM Reader NL on the roadblock in the House and the steep wall of inequality …
Frank Rich, in his column, asks what Democrats stand for now? I’m probably as up to date on politics as any observer and I can’t say that I can’t say I have a clear answer to that question. I always vote, but my friends who are infrequent (but Democratic) voters didn’t know what the Democrats want to do on the economy and ended up not voting on Tuesday. I think a part of the problem is that the Democratic leadership knows they can’t retake the House for another 8 years, which means coming up with good policy prescriptions isn’t going to make a difference anyway.
My sense is that the next election is going to revolve around income inequality. We’re in the 5th year of a recovery in which ALL the income gains have gone to the top 1%. People are tired of just getting by while also being afraid of losing their jobs. I don’t know that there’s an easy answer on how to solve income inequality, but I do know that an uncontested Democratic primary in 2016 isn’t going to bring out those ideas.
In 2008, I was a huge Hillary fan. People can run as “uniters” all they want, but the reality is that Republicans were going to gum up the works no matter which Democrat was president. The only way to bring Republicans and Democrats together is to fix the economy, thereby supercharging your approval ratings. Results matter more than having beers with McConnell/Boehner or the price tag of major bills. If Obama passed a $2 trillion stimulus, no one would have given a shit if the economy picked by 2010. I trusted Hillary to recognize this more than Barack. Screw outreach. Just fix the damn economy and make people’s lives better.
The reason I was comfortable with settling for Hillary and her experience in 2008 was because I was confident the standard Democratic policy prescriptions would work. It worked to a degree. But the 2008 recession was unlike most other recessions and we are in the middle of 30 years of middle class wage stagnation. The standard policy prescriptions probably can’t break this rut. But new ideas entail political risk and politicians are ridiculously risk averse. More than 2008, we need a vigorous, heated, contested primary. I think Democratic policy wonks have some great new ideas on how to boost middle class wages (higher inflation target, targeted infrastructure spending, etc …), but don’t I think that there’s a Democrat willing to run on these news ideas and sell them to the country.
