Time To End the Left's Long Losing Streak

It's going to take a while and it's going to take a strategy

The shutdown and debt ceiling fight had me thinking hard about exactly where in the wilderness the American Left might be and what the map back to relevance might look like. I blogged about that a bit in "A few thoughts about the debt ceiling and a call for a Left political strategy." In the process, I started outlining a blogging/writing challenge for myself that goes something like this: Outline the elements of a comprehensive strategy and make the case for a Left unified around that strategy.

Ridiculous pipe dream, right? Still, I really do think the Left has been wandering through a desert of political irrelevance for almost 40 years now and it is past time for settling down and committing to something different.

Coming up with that strategy and some sort of stirring call to action must cover a range of important considerations. Among them:

Describe the wilderness. What has the Left devoutly wished for these last four decades and failed to accomplish? What has been lost? Who is it, exactly, who has been doing all that wandering? What were the Left's achievements during that period and why weren't they the path to larger political success? Other than its appeal as part of a metaphor, why make 40 years the period of concern?

Compare the Left's decades-long failure to the political success of the extreme right-wing, which never should have achieved the influence it has, given both the cruelty and the lunacy of most extreme-right policy positions.

The list goes on, of course. What are the main causes of the Left's failure? What are the strategic perspectives that ought to shape the development of a new Left strategy? Who should be a part of a newer, bigger Left and why should they bother? What should be the goals and objectives of that strategy? What tools, resources and institutional structures are necessary to support a struggle for political relevance?

There are other important questions, I know. Every time I sit down to think about the whole idea (or get up to wander and noodle the idea), I come up with a different list. But I'm pretty certain that I'm not going to reach any kind of clarity about the project until I start it.

So that's what I'm going to do. And I'm hoping this blog will help me move the project along. This post isn't really the beginning of that discussion--it's more like the introduction, but the discussion, maybe, starts here, if others will weigh in. I don't really care if I end up with any ownership of the idea, what I care about is that all of us who have been wandering in the alleged wilderness come out of it together, more aware of what we need to do and how we must work together to do it.

I'm rereading Rick Perlstein's Nixonland right now. The book focuses on the years 1964-1972, a period bookended at the start by Lyndon Johnson's overwhelming victory over Barry Goldwater and, at the other end, by Richard Nixon's smashing defeat of George McGovern. Perlstein writes that between 1964 and 1972, "...the battle lines that [currently] define our culture and politics were forged in blood and fire."

What struck me most in the early parts of Nixonland is the sense of how close the country came in 1964 and '65 to establishing a policy and politics that would serve the best interests of the vast majority of Americans.

As Perlstein puts it:

"Johnson kept on rolling out his Great Society: preschool for poor children. college prep for poor teenagers, legal services for indigent defendants, economic redevelopment funds for lagging regions, landmark immigration reform, a Department of Housing and Urban Development, national endowments for the humanities and arts--even a whole new category for the liberal agenda, environmentalism: a Highway Beautification Act, a Water Quality Act, a Clean Air Act..."

There was also the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the passage of Medicare and Medicaid, but then Watts burned, and LBJ expanded the war in Vietnam, and the wheels came off the Great Society. It all seemed to run into a wall almost at the moment the ride began. The losses and compromises litter the road since and now, from exile, we watch the Tea Party, the mother-ef'n Tea Party, for gosh sakes, exercise a power that eludes the rest of us. That's why we need a strategy.

What if Barack Obama planned all this?

Wouldn't that be something?

What if Barack Obama has played the country like a drum?

For a certainty nobody thinks Obama won as much as he could have during the recent stumble over the fiscal molehill. Hell, he didn't even seem to be asking for enough to begin with. Doesn't the guy know how to negotiate?

But what if Barack deliberately decided not to ask for as much as he could have, deliberately decided that he wasn't going to try to win all that was possible to win? What if that was a purposeful strategy?

To be sure, there's hardly anyone outside of the Republican caucus willing to say that Obama asked for too much and forced the caucus to give more than they should have given. Nope, people don't think that Obama asked for too much and they don't think he bludgeoned the Republicans. They think he governed.

If that's true, imagine the possibilities.

And it might be true. I mean, look at how much ground Obama has recaptured since the 2010 election:

No one is asking to see his birth certificate anymore. And if they are, the media is not reporting it--well, Fox, maybe, but I mean the other media. And the Obama's-a-Muslim thing, is gone, too.

More important, the Tea Party is contracting. That passion looks spent. And Democrats actually gained seats in the House this election. And the Republican caucus in the House is in disarray.

This may be a man, this president, who always had his mind set on the long game. Maybe he saw a branch of the future that looks like a path to a president who doesn't lose on the debt ceiling.

Just saying.

Barack Obama's Christmas Wish

Or John Boehner's gift to Barack

Or the fiscal cliff is coming and you better be nice. Or we're all getting coal for Christmas. Or the Senate wants in on what may end up a Christmas with no gifts, at all. Or the Senate doesn't really want any part of Christmas. Or something.

To recap. Obama told Boehner that he is willing to settle for tax increases on households earning $400,000 or more, and might be willing to adjust cost-of-living increases for Social Security, maybe.

Boehner, thinking that he couldn't sell such an agreement to House Republicans, decided to test his own leadership by proposing legislation that would maintain most of the Bush tax cuts and increase taxes only for households making one million dollars or more. Feedback from his caucus persuaded Boehner that he would suffer legislative defeat on the proposal, a definite embarrassment for the speaker. So, he decided to humiliate himself by pulling his proposal without a vote and go home to Ohio. His last words were something like "let Harry (Senate Majority Leader Reid) do it."

Maybe that is Reid's Christmas wish, but it didn't sound like it when his Democratic colleague, Sen. Charles Schumer, said, "we're not going to want to come to a deal if we know Boehner isn't going to move it in the House."

Anyway, Senate Republicans have the filibuster to use against any deal. And, in comments reported by the Washington Post on Saturday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell sounded like he agreed with Schumer's statement. No enthusiasm for leadership there.

Still, though it seems improbable, there might be enough Republican votes in the Senate to shut down a filibuster. It would take seven Republicans to do so and, probably, a fiscal cliff deal that doesn't protect the wealthy as much as Boehner has sought to do, reduces some scheduled cuts to the Pentagon budget, and cuts Social Security COLA increases a bit (maybe including protection for low-income recipients). To complete the deal would then take support from all House Democrats and 17 House Republicans, or some mix of the two caucuses that adds up to 218 votes in the House.

Not only does such a deal seem improbable, it would leave larger budget cuts, stimulus spending, further revenue increases, and an increase in the authorized national debt to be negotiated by the same parties in January. Failure to address everything on the table in a satisfactory way means reduced unemployment benefits for long-term unemployed, tax increases for low- and middle-income earners and steep cuts for social programs. The Obama administration can take certain steps to put off the impact of some tax increases and spending cuts, but those steps likely will not do much to keep the stock market from tanking, or to prevent business investment and hiring from dropping significantly, or to avoid dropping back into recession.

So what seems likely to be the outcome of all of this? One of the following, I think:

Either,

1. Obama turns out to have been more clever than most people thought. Polls show that a significant majority of Americans will blame Republicans more than Democrats for failure on the fiscal cliff. This may well be a large part of Obama's willingness to hold out for a deal that protects low- and middle-income households, extends unemployment benefits and includes new stimulus spending. He gets some of this stuff in a proposal that passes the House and Senate between Christmas and New Year's and enters 2013 looking like a leader with an ability to get more of what he wants from demoralized Republicans.

or

2. Obama turns out to have been more of a compromiser than Democrats want and gets Republican votes in the House and Senate for a deal that gives up too much on entitlements and leaves extreme right-wingers in Congress feeling like they can still wag the dog. He enters 2013 with little chance of protecting social spending from further cuts and having to give in further to get congressional Republicans to raise the debt ceiling.

or

3. Obama holds the line and we dive over the cliff, causing a certain amount of economic panic as we enter 2013. Republicans will get the lion's share of the blame for the damage, but will be consoled by the ability to vote for tax cuts as part of any eventual agreement. It will be too late to prevent the collateral damage that will fall primarily on working folks and communities of color in the first quarter of the year.

or

4. Right-wing Republicans continue their zealous campaign to cripple the federal government throughout 2013 and turn the legislative session into trench warfare, insuring deeper recession and, likely, the longest mid-term election campaign in history. Even a shockingly large Democratic victory in the 2014 elections will do little to immediately relieve the longest and deepest economic downturn in American history. European and Asian economies will suffer even worse.

or

5. Mutated combinations of some or all of the above are possible. The actual outcome could be an either more or less disastrous hybrid and almost certainly a sterile one.

Merry Christmas, or something.

Cliff diving

Fiscally speaking, Obama's position only gets stronger

Why shouldn't President Obama demand Republican support for ending Bush-era tax cuts for the rich? Because if he doesn't find a way to compromise with John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, we will all go over the fiscal cliff?

The truth is Republicans have stronger reasons to avoid the cliff than Obama does and, surprisingly, many more reasons to go over it, as well. Either way, they face political damnation.

If we do take a dive, Boehner and McConnell know that Republicans will get the major portion of the blame. Their refusal to compromise will be portrayed as protecting lower tax rates for the rich. No amount of explaining will change that perception.

Obama will be criticized, too, but not as harshly, and he doesn't have 2014 election worries, either. Republican incumbents (House or Senate) planning on running for reelection will begin their campaigns fearing that intransigence on the fiscal cliff (and the debt ceiling, if it comes to that) will cost them politically.

Theoretically, going over the cliff will position Republicans to reach a "grand bargain" in January that includes tax cuts. The new year will create incentives for both sides to reach a compromise that restores some of the Bush-era tax cuts (except for high-income earners) and maintains the payroll tax exemption that will disappear at year's end.

A January compromise will allow Republicans to claim that they remain the party of tax cuts. Unfortunately for them, to get the cuts that will help maintain their brand (even though Democrats will want them, too), Republicans will likely have to agree with healthcare reforms that they have always opposed, like allowing the government to require competitive bidding for medical equipment and other items purchased by federal health-care programs.

Medicare and Medicaid reforms outlined by the Center for American Progress and generally supported by Democrats are projected to save $385 billion over 10 years, without affecting eligibility or benefit levels. Republicans have their own proposals for saving billions more in healthcare spending, but most of them come from delaying eligibility and raising costs for recipients. The credit for such reforms will go to Obama, not to Boehner, Ryan, Cantor, McConnell, et al.

That same Republican leadership will want to restore some of the cuts to the military budget that will result from going over the fiscal cliff and Democrats will want to do some of that, also. But they won't want it worse than the Republicans will and will be able to bargain for other things they want more, like a little bit more stimulus spending and reduced cuts in education and human service spending.

All of that compromising is going to make Republicans look weak to their core constituencies. It's a painful prospect; agree to tax increases to avoid going over the fiscal cliff and tarnish their anti-tax, anti-government brand, or strengthen the perception that they are defending tax cuts for the rich and agree to a compromise afterward that makes them look like a junior partner in supporting handouts to Democratic constituencies.

The only possible basis for Democrats to oppose going over the cliff is the possibility that doing so will result in instant and significant damage to the economy. (Just three weeks ago in Compromise or Betrayal, I did advocate compromising with Republicans before going over the fiscal cliff. What can I say? Like Obama on gay marriage, my thinking has evolved.)But there are all sorts of ways the government can blunt the immediate effects of tax increases and sequestration, delaying the pain for long enough to pass a fix in January. Obama has lots of cards to play now. After the cliff dive is done, his hand will be even stronger.

A meditation on the Romneys

comes to an improbable conclusion

Walking the dog a bit ago and musing, I came across something of a meditation about Ann Romney and about Mitt. I'm feeling pretty well-disposed right now (it turns out the defense of Obamacare is pretty damn good medicine), but I'm still not intending to write anything nice about the Romneys.

The meditation began with a focus on Ann's horse, which, we have been told, has been an important element in the treatment of Ann's multiple sclerosis. Really? And, so, are we to understand that we are to pay no attention to the wealth piled up in the corner, but focus instead on Ann's self, mortal like the rest of us?

I can manage a very little of that, but then the thought comes to mind: How incredibly privileged the Romney's are that they can afford such treatment. Yes, we will all shuffle off this mortal coil, but along the way some of us will suffer more.

None of this means that the Romney's are bad people (though wealth and cluelessness and the desire to lower taxes on the rich is the dangerous wish of a powerful person), but they do not a First Family make. According to media reports, Republicans are doing some serious investigation of their strategies and commitments and exploring options for the future. Let me suggest that they never run a person this rich for the presidency, again.

That wasn't a viable choice this time, and isn't going to be again, I'd wager (though I'm not willing to bet a Romney-style $10,000 on the proposition). Certainly, wealthy men and women are going to be the ones occupying the presidency for as far into the future as we can see, and will capitalize on their stature and our celebrity culture after they serve, but Romney was very likely a zero too far. His $250+ million fortune was less transparent than the fifty-times smaller fortune of the man he ran against and substantially larger than that of the Bush family.

But Obama made what he has on fame and book royalties, both things that have come to him fairly recently in life. And George W. Bush had a goofiness about him that persuaded lots of ordinary folks that Bush was a pretty ordinary guy, too. Lots of voters were okay with a goofy, rich man for president when times were good, but this time around, a rich man who has the same vibe as Thurston Howell III (on Gilligan's Island), would have been kicked to the curb sooner, and long before Obama sleepwalked through the first debate, if the economy had been only marginally better.

Thinking back on images of the campaign, I am struck by how often I recall pictures of Mitt looking befuddled or startled. Looking, in fact, like he has just run up against another manifestation of real life--like mere mortals questioning his judgement or his veracity--that he had never experienced before. Well, the only people I know of who are routinely protected from that sort of collision with reality are CEO's and the one percent. Don't kid yourself, you Republican deep thinkers, everyone was going to figure out that Mitt didn't have a clue, even if the Obama campaign had spent less money trying to convey that impression of Mitt.

I must say I don't envy Republican strategists right now. They must figure out a way to compromise on taxes and the deficit and Social Security and Medicare and the debt ceiling and immigration and infrastructure and climate change while maintaining strong connections to Tea Party supporters, half of whom will demobilize as the economy improves. For the Republican party as it is presently constituted, staying relevant in an age of adverse shifts in demographics and the electoral map  is like being up the creek without a paddle.

But the somewhat bizarre conclusion to my meditation is the thought that I really do wish the Republicans well. Democrats could use a hand governing the country at this very critical time. A Republican boost could be transformative.

Debt Ceiling Blues

But all praise to memory

While we're all trying to decide how much we hate Obama's debt ceiling deal and whether or not the man has crossed our own individual political line-in-the-sand, I offer my own reflections on memory (probably, but not certainly, irrelevant to the current fiscal crisis and equally irrelevant to the lives of all but a tiny few of the admittedly small number of readers of this blog). Got that?

Last night Marrianne and I watched the 3rd episode of Falling Skies, some cable channel's 13-episode, alien-invasion series. (And, no, I am not going to get into some side discussion on what and why we were watching.) At one point, a father tries to console his son over the son's loss of his girlfriend during the struggle against alien invaders. Into the bargain, the human population of Earth has been decimated, so everybody is essentially an individual variation on a shell-shocked survivor.

"At least you have memories of her," the father comforts.

"Mom was better at this, Dad," the kid responds, both wryly and sadly.

"Yeah, that was pretty lame," says Dad.

NOTE: Do not rely on these quotes for authenticity. They are constructed from memory.

The viewer sort of nods and agrees with Dad and Son that the comforting advice is lame. That, I suspect is what we all think; that memories of a person or a pet or a place or an event are but pale shadows of the real deal and without the power to comfort especially when the loss is recent and raw.

Most of the time it may be nearly indisputable that memory is not enough, but the truth is that sometimes memory is more than loving recall of something that cannot be recreated. Sometimes memory is vividly real and as familiar as the air. I am 64 years old (or nearly so) and past my prime in, oh, so many things. But I remember prime in those many things, and remember in detail.

I'll admit straight up that what I remember may never have happened as I remember it, but that is a mere bagatelle (French, I think, for a gossipy bagel). Memory, however flawed, is the best we got for building and maintaining individual identity, so while we need to have it, we might as well tap some of its great power, e.g., the ability to hold a lover or a pet or a great moment in our lives so close to the core of our being that they come alive, tangible as a warm breeze or cool water, releasing a flow of endorphins that cleanses us and brings us close to what we most desire.

One is favored by such moments only rarely. If they happened too often, the number of square-peg people in a round-hole world would overwhelm the capacity of our institutions. As, in fact, is happening now with the tribal fantasies of the Tea Party seriously testing our political capacity to understand each other and cooperate.

Yesterday morning, while out with my middle-sized dog, Jetta, traipsing through a dry-season wetland, I stumbled upon a series of memories of myself at 12 and the games I would play with my neighborhood friends. One game, in particular, seemed perfect for our block of brick three-flats and apartment buildings. "Ditch," as we called it, was played entirely outdoors, except for the warrens of basement tunnels running under the three-story apartment buildings that squatted on three or four lots along the street. If you could get into a basement, more power to you. Just don't get caught by your pursuers on the other team or by a building janitor.

Evolved out of the almost casual inclination of any group of two or three or four or more kids to hide from, flee or "ditch" a subset of that same group, into Ditch, in which half of us pursued the other half everywhere on the block--though tunnels, over fences, off garage roofs--until we had captured and held every member of the other team. It was an adrenalin-soaked, terror-producing, entirely exhilirating after-school and weekend activity. We played it compulsively, like rats ignoring food and water in favor of the button that releases another dose of cocaine or some such drug.

I think we played Ditch often enough and hard enough and long enough to force our bodies to adapt productively. For all that fitness has always mattered to me, I don't think that my body and its capabilities were ever again so well matched. I was a wiry, agile, relentless, Ditch-playing machine.

And now, I'm 64. I can still go hard when I have to, but I can't keep it up with the same ease I used to have, and I don't recover from going hard at anywhere near the old rate. One thing I am plainly not is twelve years old. But Saturday morning, out with Jetta, I was.

We had gotten kicked off a portion of the back acreage of the Howard University Seminary and I was morose. I knew Jetta and I would be okay out on the wetland (quite dry at this time of year), but I was feeling furtive and anxious. I sat down and wrote a poem that I'll post on Outdoor Poetry Season, but the effort did not empower or invigorate me.

Moping my way off the property, I recalled myself at 10 or 11 walking across the lawn of some 10- or 12-unit apartment building and being suddenly confronted by the building janitor, who was waving a rake and ordering me off his lawn. None of us knew his name, but he was a big guy, putting us in mind of a bear, so we called him Andy Panda; a cuddly sort of label that I suppose we applied in order to diminish the fear he inspired in us.

I ran around him and when I got a safe distance, I yelled. "I'm not afraid of you, Andy Panda."

The memory stimulated additional memories and all the sights and sounds of Ditch flooded my mind. It was definitely a WWJD-moment ("J" meaning a 12-year old Jeff). Trying to caution Jetta to stealth, I made my way along the wooded fringe of the Howard property, suddenly determined to get across the three-block landscape from which I'd previously been banned, not by Andy Panda but, by a guy with a gun and sergeant's stripes.

Jetta was having difficulty inhabiting my vision, but I was all in. I was 12 and my heart was pumping and I was alert and tingling and ready and finally confident that no guy with a gun and sergeant's stripes was a match for me. I can't say what proportion of the journey involved stealth and slinking through the shadows and what part was sprinting and dashing ahead, but it felt a good mix. I could feel the sweep of dozens of prying eyes, but I was nearly invisible. I could sense when my pursuers got close, or when I passed near a surveillance point, but I zigged and darted and sped beyond their awareness.

At the other end of property I paused and coaxed Jetta into the shadow by the trees and looked back at where I'd been. I was safe, I was victorious and looking ahead to where I was going with fresh anticipation. All praise to memory.

And what was it we were talking about?