On Political Capital

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what “political capital” means. Conventionally it’s thought of in a fairly similar fashion to gold coins collected in a video game that allow the possessor to buy a bigger sword or magic healing potion. The most dynamic conventional wisdom notes that political capital will disappear if not spent in a reasonable amount of time, but that’s about as close the words “political capital” will ever find themselves to the words “savvy analysis.”

Big Tent Democrat raises a point about the relative influence of George Bush early in his first term as comparted to Obama’s early days.

George Bush, who LOST the popular vote in 2000, had the political juice to pass a 1.2 TRILLION dollar tax cut in 2001. Barack Obama, who won a sweeping victory last November, can barely muster $500 billion in stimulus spending in the face of the Greatest Depression. Some “victory.”

The issue of political capital is raised here in a somewhat roundabout way. What allows Bush, who went into office under the shadow of a constitutional crisis, let alone without winning the popular vote, to achieve a bigger ideological goal out of the gate than Obama? I don’t think there’s any objective use of a subjective measure like “political capital” that would suggest that Bush actually started his term with greater political capital than Obama has.

As far as I can tell, then, “political capital” is really a measure of ones willingness to exert ones will in Washington. It’s not a measure of what has been accrued, but rather who someone really is. You’re either willing to impose your will in a legislative fight or you’re going to enter a fight ready to concede stakes to your opponents.

The challenge facing President Obama is that so much of his campaign has been framed around post-partisan goals. Even since taking office he’s been seen decrying Washington partisanship as a problem we need to overcome (as opposed to, say, Republicans clinging to failed ideas in a time of crisis). When Obama stands up as a fighting Democrat, as he did last week with House Democrats, he is more likely to be painted as partisan than as principled (something Steve Benen noted earlier today).  Obama will have to reframe his agenda around his ideology and his principles, and away from bridging philosophically necessary divides between the Democratic and Republican parties. Only in this way will he begin to have space to exercise his will qua political capital. We can’t expect him to be able to turn electoral mandate into legislation as long as he’s incorrectly identifying the challenges that need to be overcome and who is responsible for them.

The Conscience of the Liberals

There’s a case to be made that since the nomination of Barack Obama to be President, but especially since his election, Paul Krugman of the New York Times has been the leading liberal spokesperson in America. He’s pushed back against timid policies and incorrect statements by the Obama transition hard than any other prominent Democratic figure. And his writing on the stimulus and the Wall Street bailout has been the most critical from the Left, at least in mainstream sources.

As I see it, Krugman is distilling much of the anger and energy of the progressive online movement and filtering it out to a national audience. His main targets have been policy timidity at a time when we can ill afford restraint. Republican ideas have had the spotlight for eight years. The result has been unmitigated failure. Our country heads towards an economic precipice; now is not the time for half-measures between what is wrong and what is right. Krugman’s other main target is bipartisanship, which I’ve recently blogged extensively about and is surely the nextdoor neighbor to timidity. Krugman’s column today, “The Destructive Center” is a confluence of his writings against timid Democratic policy goals and the damage non-ideological bipartisanship does during times of crisis.

During the transition, Obama said that he would take Paul Krugman’s economic advice. It’s fairly clear that he isn’t doing that, but now is the time for Obama’s team to reevaluate and start listening to Paul Krugman. He’s one of the few unabashed liberals in American public discourse and our leadership fails to listen to him at the country’s peril. Moreover, Krugman’s drumbeating columns against centrism, bipartisanship, timidity, and post-partisanship have the ability – far greater than anything the blogosphere does – to create meaningful cover for Obama and Democrats on the Hill to move to the left. He is a powerful voice with a large microphone and there are few people who can currently challenge him for the position as conscience of America’s liberals today.

It Bears Repeating

Digby:

I know I’m a broken record, but the fact remains that the Democrats have to start actually running against Republican ideology and not just saying they’ll be better Republicans or making promises to change the tone and the process. The people in this country don’t understand that most of what Republicans say with such arrogant assurance is malignant, discredited bullshit. Why would they? Nobody ever challenges it on the merits.

Here’s the result. When Republicans talk it makes “sense” to people because it’s what they’ve been hearing for thirty years. And they figure the other side must be the ones who don’t get it:

[chart removed]

After all the Democratic bowing and scraping, and all the phony baloney GOP sturm and drang about fiscal responsibility, the American people still think all the partisan bickering is the Democrats’ fault. That’s the paradox of the hissy fit.

Look as long as Democrats are incapable of internalizing the value of their own ideas, we can’t expect this to change. Or rather, we can’t begin to apologize for calling Democrats out for not getting self-evident political principles. If you believe your ideas are better than your opponent’s ideas, you have to say why.

The bigger issue, though, when it comes to polling around the attribution of blame for partisanship, if Democrats are incapable of attacking the Republicans’ ideas, then they really are just slowing things down for the sake of partisanship. There isn’t much evidence that our people actually believe their ideas are significantly better than the Republicans’ ideas. After all, if they had ideological backbone, they would by definition be willing to run their policy campaigns against Republican ideologies. This is a scary thought, but after a certain point the simplest explanation for Democratic incompetence may be that they actually don’t believe what Republicans are saying is wrong to the extent that they would directly oppose it.

Educating on Employee Free Choice, Part 18

Senator John Kerry writes an op-ed in The Herald News on the Employee Free Choice Act. He starts it with a strong defense of unions and their value to the US economy, while adding in a full frontal assault on the Big Business interests that are actively trying to prevent American workers from having rights and prosperity.

Workers in unions earn 30 percent higher wages on average, and are 60 percent more likely to have employer-covered health insurance. The question is what we will do to empower workers in this new century — and it should begin with The Employee Free Choice Act’s common sense, fundamentally fair mission of making it easier for men and women to join a union in their workplace. The legislation would give workers a fair and direct path to form unions through majority sign-up, help employees secure a contract with their employer in a reasonable period of time and toughen penalties against employers who break the law.

Powerful, entrenched opponents of the legislation have made a variety of false statements, arguing that the bill will take away workers’ right to a secret ballot election, expose workers to intimidation and harassment or hurt the economy. These arguments are untrue and especially dubious because they have no reliable data to back them up. Too often, these objections come from the same people and groups that have enriched and protected Wall Street over Main Street — among them those who opposed ideas like minimum wage increases and family medical leave, which history has proven are mainstream, commonsense policies.

Kerry goes on to write extensively on how the Employee Free Choice Act is not something small businesses should be worried about, an argument Big Business has pushed hard in this fight.

Honest and well-meaning people can differ, and many small business owners in particular have asked me how this legislation would affect their businesses. I don’t think they have much to worry about, for three key reasons.

First, in the decades when our labor laws protected workers’ free choice to join unions, small businesses thrived and America built the strongest middle class in the world. The evidence shows that our nation’s economy and overall productivity grew when American workers had an ability to share in the prosperity of our country and their companies.

Second, the Employee Free Choice Act makes no changes to the small business exemptions under our nation’s labor laws. Small businesses employing an estimated four million American workers would still be exempt and completely unaffected.

Third, the economic benefits of unions to all businesses, large and small, are well-established. Unions help reduce costs associated with turnover because they give employees a voice in the workplace to speak up for changes, rather than simply quitting or being fired.  Employment security fuels collaboration and information sharing, leading to higher productivity.

The research also shows that union firms are just as productive and successful as non-union firms.  A U.S. Small Business Administration report, for example, indicated that small business bankruptcy rates are lower in states with high unionization rates than they are in states where fewer workers have a voice.

In an ironic twist, the actual threat to small businesses may come from the groups fighting the Employee Free Choice Act most vigorously — the big corporations whose very business strategies have consistently hurt small businesses across the country by squeezing small businesses out of the marketplace.

There you have it – a solid, forceful defense of the Employee Free Choice Act from the perspective of small businesses.

More, Please

This is great stuff from President Obama, pushing hard for the stimulus. He’s an incredible communicator and this is what it looks like when he takes the gloves off for his agenda. The Obama administration has bent over backwards to bring Republicans along so far, but I think this speech is a signal that they are recognizing that the GOP is going to stick with opposition at the expense of the country. As Paul Krugman writes:

It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.

I take it Krugman’s column was written before Obama’s speech last night, because I think this is exactly what he’s done. Hopefully it is a sustained attitude shift, and not a flash in the pot.

Educating on Employee Free Choice, Part 17

Two items today…

First, Steve Rosenthal tears apart the last bogus poll by Rick Berman’s business front group, “Center for Union Facts.” The poll was much touted by anti-American worker bloggers because it absurdly claimed that most workers don’t want to join a union.  Rosenthal writes:

What this poll “clearly demonstrates” is its lack of seriousness and accuracy by including respondents who would likely never be unionized to begin with. According to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), of the 140.5 million people in the civilian workforce, 33.5 million or 23.8% have no rights under the National Labor Relations Act or any other labor law. Furthermore, there were a little over 13 million managers and supervisors in 2005, and about 4 million small business workers without collective bargaining rights because they were employed by businesses too small to fall under the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board.

The CUF question was clearly designed to get the least number of people to say yes as possible.

The Employee Free Choice Act makes it easier for Employees – rather than Employers – to make that choice.

Of course, what Berman’s outfit wants is bold headlines touting the stats and something Republicans can reflexively throw into their talking points. This will likely become a right wing zombie lie, repeated throughout the fight for Employee Free Choice.

Second, Michael Gottesman, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown, had a post yesterday on the American Constitution Society blog deconstructing a highly misleading anti-union op-ed by Richard Epstein in  the Wall Street Journal. Gottesman provides a highly detailed and scholarly legal rebutal that undercuts a lot of bogus spin from Epstein. It’s worth a read, as Epstein’s incorrect constitutional arguments against Employee Free Choice will be seen again during the course of this fight.

Parody, Thy Name Is Andrew Card

It’s really hilarious to listen to someone who helped to douse the Constitution in gasoline and set a match to it complain about how a relaxed dress code in the Oval Office is disrespectful to the Constitution. You know your take on the execute branch is twisted when you care more about baroque codes of dress than the rule of law.

…Adding, Obama’s style of dress was actually a subject of extensive Republican criticism and media discussion during the campaign.  Remember when his penchant for a white shirt with no tie and an open collar led to breathless attacks on him for dressing like Iranian president Ahmadinejad. I would say that much like Obama’s economic policies, Obama’s style of dress was vetted by the public and the public overwhelmingly supported his style of business casual.