That Triangulating B------ Grover Cleveland...

Paul Krugman thinks about class-war politics in American history:

Class War Politics - New York Times: By PAUL KRUGMAN: In case you haven't noticed, modern American politics is marked by vicious partisanship, with the great bulk of the viciousness coming from the right. It's clear that the Republican plan for the 2006 election is, once again, to question Democrats' patriotism.

But do Republican leaders truly believe that they are serious about fighting terrorism, while Democrats aren't? When the speaker of the House declares that "we in this Congress must show the same steely resolve as those men and women on United Flight 93," is that really the way he sees himself? (Dennis Hastert, Man of Steel!) Of course not.

So what's our bitter partisan divide really about? In two words: class warfare. That's the lesson of an important new book, "Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches," by Nolan McCarty of Princeton University, Keith Poole of the University of California, San Diego, and Howard Rosenthal of New York University.... What the book shows... is that for the past century, political polarization and economic inequality have moved hand in hand. Politics during the Gilded Age, an era of huge income gaps, was a nasty business -- as nasty as it is today. The era of bipartisanship, which lasted for roughly a generation after World War II, corresponded to the high tide of America's middle class. That high tide began receding in the late 1970's, as middle-class incomes grew slowly at best while incomes at the top soared; and as income gaps widened, a deep partisan divide re-emerged....

When the elite once again pulled away from the middle class, however, Republicans turned their back on the legacy of Dwight Eisenhower and returned to a focus on the interests of the wealthy. Tax cuts at the top -- including repeal of the estate tax -- became the party's highest priority. But if the real source of today's bitter partisanship is a Republican move to the right on economic issues, why have the last three elections been dominated by talk of terrorism, with a bit of religion on the side? Because a party whose economic policies favor a narrow elite needs to focus the public's attention elsewhere. And there's no better way to do that than accusing the other party of being unpatriotic and godless....

Pre-New Deal G.O.P. operatives followed the same strategy. Republican politicians won elections by "waving the bloody shirt" -- invoking the memory of the Civil War -- long after the G.O.P. had ceased to be the party of Lincoln and become the party of robber barons instead. Al Smith, the 1928 Democratic presidential candidate, was defeated in part by a smear campaign -- burning crosses and all -- that exploited the heartland's prejudice against Catholics.

So what should we do about all this? I won't offer the Democrats advice right now, except to say that tough talk on national security and affirmations of personal faith won't help: the other side will smear you anyway.

But I would like to offer some advice to my fellow pundits: face reality. There are some commentators who long for the bipartisan days of yore, and flock eagerly to any politician who looks "centrist." But there isn't any center in modern American politics. And the center won't return until we have a new New Deal, and rebuild our middle class.

Perhaps the advice Paul should give Democratic politicians seeking national office is that they should emulate the triangulating b------ Grover Cleveland--who pursued free trade and regulation of railroad monopolies, navy modernization and avoidance of foreign entanglements, attacked "unworthy" Republican clients--union army veterans who were claiming pensions for non-war related disabilities--and had his own Sister Souljah moment by using the U.S. army to break the Pullman strike over the objections of Illinois governor John Peter Altgeld.

Perhaps not: I've always thought Gilded Age America would have been a better place had the Eugene Debs-led Pullman strike succeeded. I've always been on the side of John Peter Altgeld and Clarence Darrow and Jane Addams.

Comments

[Bruce Wilder]

I thought Clinton was the 20th century version of Grover Cleveland.

Now, we are in need of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

[STS]

Now we're talking! Karl Rove wants to take us back to the Gilded Age, so maybe we'd better go fight him on his own ground. What worked for the Progressive movement then might just work again now?

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/books/review/15wolfe.html?ex=1294981200&en=7c648dc3d15ebfd1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

January 15, 2006

Becoming Jane Addams
By ALAN WOLFE

IN 1894, the Pullman Car Works, a paternalistic Chicago firm, announced a wage cut and its workers went on strike. Jane Addams, who had founded Hull House in Chicago five years earlier as a place of refuge and support for the poor, was stunned by the class antagonism that followed. "Nothing in my experience," she wrote many years later, had prepared her for "that distinct cleavage of society which a general strike at least momentarily affords." Unsure what to make of it all, Addams walked four and a half miles to the new statue of Abraham Lincoln created by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, where she brooded over the inscription, a reiteration of the Emancipator's call for charity to all, and then walked back to Hull House.

Did Jane Addams approach Lincoln as an equal? Or course not, for no one in American history rivals Lincoln's stature. Yet Addams would go on to become one of the greatest of Americans, and the pilgrimage she made to Lincoln Park, as Louise W. Knight relates in "Citizen," was a key stop along the way. Before the Pullman strike - and the simultaneous death of her sister Mary - Addams was a product of the small-town Midwest in which she was raised. Strongly shaped by the evangelical convictions of her father, she was as paternalistic, if in her own way, as George Pullman. Poor people lacked refinement; her task was to bring them culture. Sympathy, not solidarity, motivated her. She would teach the poor of Chicago Shakespeare and Goethe, and along the way, she would impress upon them the importance of virtue and the evils of vice.

The experience of the Pullman strike - indeed, experience itself - changed Jane Addams. She had developed a friendship with the University of Chicago philosopher John Dewey, and Dewey's pragmatism opened her to the idea that conflict was a fact of social life, even a sign of progress, not some deviation from an idealistic yearning for harmony. Examining with fresh eyes the realities of fin-de-siècle Chicago, Addams came to understand the role that powerful financial and political interests played in maintaining systems of social stratification. Devastating economic depressions and bitter class conflict, along with the insights of her Hull House colleague Florence Kelley, forced Addams to confront her belief in benevolence, which she increasingly saw as "self-righteous" and "egotistical." By the last years of the 19th century, the modern Jane Addams had been born, a determined social reformer, advocate of women's suffrage, opponent of the Spanish-American War, and powerful writer and political thinker.

Oddly, Knight stops her book at precisely the moment when the greatness of Jane Addams begins to emerge; "Citizen" ends in 1899, even though Addams, who would win the Nobel Prize in 1931, died in 1935. A half-life does not a biography make, but Knight is not really writing a biography; her book is what the Germans call a bildung, an account of how a person's character is formed. As it happens, Knight's decision to focus on Addams's early years is a stroke of genius. We know a great deal about Jane Addams the public figure. We know relatively little about how she made the transition from the 19th century to the 20th. In Knight's book, Jane Addams comes to life.

Addams was raised by three women; her mother died when she was 2ð, after which her older sister Mary and her eventual stepmother played major roles in her upbringing. But it was her father who dominated Jane's childhood. A successful businessman and devout Christian, John Addams corresponded with Abraham Lincoln and was an avid supporter of the Italian republican Giuseppe Mazzini. A man of his times, he wanted Jane close to home and constantly thwarted her dream of attending Smith College. But he was the kind of Christian who, believing that individuals ought to find their own path to God, never joined a church or subscribed to a creed. His daughter inherited much of the same disposition. Although under pressure from neighbors and teachers to convert, she resisted, and while her ideas would be shaped by Christianity, Jane Addams would never become a conventionally religious person.

Addams was an outstanding student at Rockford Seminary, where she met Ellen Gates Starr, with whom she would found Hull House. (Addams and Starr were a couple; whether they were celibate is known only to them.) For a woman expected eventually to settle into domesticity, Addams's early life brought her unusually close to public events. The son of a close family friend was the immortal disappointed office seeker who assassinated President Garfield. When a senior at Rockford, she participated in a debate dominated by men and placed fifth of nine; in second place stood an Illinois College student named William Jennings Bryan. Addams traveled extensively in Europe, where she met the leaders of Toynbee Hall in London, the inspiration for her efforts in Chicago....

[save the rustbelt]

I disagree on the entire thesis.

I think today's bitter partisanship is largely driven by cultural and social issues, especially abortion, which is why Bush won Ohio in 2004 despite a lousy economy here.

Blue collar pro-life Catholics and evangelicals voted heavily for Bush on cultural and social issues, and not for Kerry on the economy.

(Kerry could have possibly, maybe overcome this and won the Presidency with a coherent economic strategy for the Rustbelt, but apparently Bob Shrum didn't think of that.)

Is is the culture stupid (apoligies to Snakehead Carviile for the plagarism).

[Brad DeLong]

But that's one of Paul Krugman's points: in the late nineteenth century it was the Democrats who were fighting for the economic interests of midwestern farmers, while the Republicans were bought-and-paid-for by railroad barons like E.H. Harriman and lovers of high interest rates (especially on farm mortgages) like J.P. Morgan. So the Republicans won the votes of midwestern rural farmers by calling the Democrats the party of "rum, Romanism, and rebellion." It was the culture then as well...

[Brian]

Why can't free trade campaigning be done with a populist bent? It would make sense to take the fustration caused by free trade--some of it justified, but a lot of it not, in the sense that those who might be temporarily unemployed can rightly feel angry--and turn it towards breaking down professional barriers in the way that Dean Baker describes. (I've still got to e-mail him some questions about supposed falling standards, but what he says still makes sense.) It would make sense economically and would be fair.

Why won't the Democrats scream as loudly as possibly about this? Are they afraid of losing too many doctors and lawyers in swing states?

[Andrew Wender Cohen]

>So the Republicans won the votes of
>midwestern rural farmers by calling the
>Democrats the party of "rum, Romanism,
>and rebellion.

Nice post. But I must note that the phrase "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" (uttered by Dr. Samuel D. Burchard) actually lost James G. Blaine the 1884 election against Cleveland. Then, as now, the GOP needed some Catholic urban workingmen to vote Republican. Burchard's statement allowed Cleveland to tar Blaine with the nativism of his supporters, costing him a close election (GC won NY by only 1047 votes).

[anne]

Brad DeLong:

'But that's one of Paul Krugman's points: in the late nineteenth century it was the Democrats who were fighting for the economic interests of midwestern farmers, while the Republicans were bought-and-paid-for by railroad barons like E.H. Harriman and lovers of high interest rates (especially on farm mortgages) like J.P. Morgan. So the Republicans won the votes of midwestern rural farmers by calling the Democrats the party of "rum, Romanism, and rebellion." It was the culture then as well...'

Andrew Wender Cohen

'"Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" (uttered by Dr. Samuel D. Burchard) actually lost James G. Blaine the 1884 election against Cleveland. Then, as now, the GOP needed some Catholic urban workingmen to vote Republican. Burchard's statement allowed Cleveland to tar Blaine with the nativism of his supporters, costing him a close election (GC won NY by only 1047 votes).'

Brilliant analogy :)

[knzn]

“But there isn't any center in modern American politics.”

Has he ever heard of a man named Bill Clinton? Surely the man who signed the welfare reform bill was not a man of the left. Surely the target of the infamous “right wing conspiracy” was not a man of the right. Bill Clinton was a centrist, and he won two Presidential elections in a row (unlike Grover Cleveland, but that’s another story). Have things changed so much in the last 10 years that the center has disappeared?

Certainly there is a center. The Republicans in 2004 convinced many centrist voters that Kerry, although closer to them ideologically, was indecisive and soft on defense and would make an even worse President than the unambiguously right-wing but Presidentially experienced W. I expect that most of those centrist voters regret that decision now. But they are no less centrist than they were two years ago.

The Republicans have another trick of painting centrists as part of the left. It didn’t work with voters in 1992 and 1996, but somehow it seems to have worked with Paul Krugman today.

[Roger Albin]

One of the reasons the Gilded Age Republicans, arguably the party of Big Business, did relatively well was that the cultural themes -Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion-had a distinctive class appeal. These "cultural" themes appealed strongly to the Protestant middle classes who were intimidated by urbanization, Catholic immigrants, and industrialization of the economy. This was a form of class appeal with Big Business using fear to garner middle class support. Analogous situations can be found in European countries where the middle classes went from being reform oriented to become strongly conservative because of fears of working class political mobilization and supported traditional aristocratic elites. Germany is a good example. Such 'cultural' appeals, while they could cut across class boundaries, had a definite class element, often playing on the economic insecurities of the middle classes. Krugman and the people he cites are making a strong case for the importance of class warfare

[save the rustbelt]

"...Why can't free trade campaigning be done with a populist bent? It would make sense to take the fustration caused by free trade--some of it justified, but a lot of it not, in the sense that those who might be temporarily unemployed can rightly feel angry-..."

You would have to do this very carefully.

The workers in Ohio and Michigan who have lost jobs, filed bankruptcy and been foreclosed are having a rough time getting warm and fuzzy about free trade.

I don't see Dean Baker's arguments doing much for a 54 year old former manufacturing worker.

[save the rustbelt]

"...So what's our bitter partisan divide really about?..."

Cultural issues, especially abortion, more than economic issues.

The politcal gurus on the coasts cannot seem to understand that.

[knzn]

I’m skeptical of how much meat there really is in Dean Baker’s free trade arguments. Another way to do free trade with a populist bent – one that might sell better in Ohio – is a weak-dollar policy.

[anne]

Ah, but the divide is economic while the mask that has been adopted and worn is cultural. There is what Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman are arguing, while the mask has increasingly and recently been more effective than it was against Grover Cleveland. Nice :)

[Jason]

save_the_rustbelt is at least half right: many people in the midwest that are not really economically conservative will always vote pro-life because they feel they can't waiver on this (to them fundamental) issue. It is maddening, but true. In every recent election cycle, the GOP makes a simple declaration: WE ARE PRO-LIFE. Without having done anything *substantive*, they garner huge, solid voting blocs in the South and Midwest. Eventually, the Democratic party will have to acknowledge that abortion, as an issue, is *killing* them. The Dems need to put a muzzle on the Pro-Choice crowd, take a (public) Pro-Life stand, (publicly) limit the scope of abortion rights, and then work behind the scenes to keep abortion rights legal in some fashion; perhaps by working provisions into a COMPREHENSIVE, SINGLE-PAYER HEALTHCARE PLAN. See, two birds with one stone.

[im1dc]

A thought occurred to me reading Krugman, Delong and the excellent comments above: The middle class does not have a Political Party to represent them in either the Democratic or Republican Party.

Perhaps we should be asking who represents the Middle Class in America?

Maybe that's what's wrong with our politics and politicians is both Party's and their apparatchiks represent only the rich, the campaign donors, and leave the nonrich and small donor, the Middle Class, out in the cold holding onto promises made but never acted upon or if delivered much less than actually promised.

Yes, I think that's the real issue with American politics today.

What's amazing is that those paying for politicians today are not happy with what they bought anymore than the ones left behind by the wheeling and dealing.

Maybe the way out is for the truly wealthy, the top 1/10 of 1%, to recognize that they need a vibrant growing Middle Class to feel good and to make more money, i.e., everybody wins when everybody wins.

And, 'winning' does not apply to just our borders but to other nations who also are nurturing their emerging middle classes. China, India, Russia, Poland, etc., all leap to mind.

Seems elementary.

[demisod]

I'm not so sure that the cultural divide isn't real. It is possible that voters might simply assign a higher priority to the cultural questions than the economic ones. After all, the standard of living is quite high in the U.S.. Note too that there is plenty of disagreement within the same economic class on these questions. Barbara Streisand is hardly poor, yet her views of social questions probably differ greatly from an equally wealthy Texas conservative.

It's certainly true that the GOP is quite happy to play up social issues and downplay economic ones in appealing to middle class voters, but that doesn't make the cultural issues false or manufactured. Though it may make the GOP cynical in a number of ways for the emphasis they place on them.

[Jason]

Yes, anne, the power elite in the GOP have purely economic gains in mind whilst planning policy (economic divide). Not having the votes to be "honest", the GOP feed their plans to the public in the guise of morality/religiosity, which means social conservatism is given some political power (cultural mask). Unfortunately, the social conservatives are being "had" as it were: it is just too valuable (vote-wise) for the GOP to actually go to bat for these people. Also, the particular issue of our society (abortion) means that the there can be no public compromise. You are either pro-life or "pro-death" on this issue. Many people vote ONLY on this issue. Democrats need to take this issue off the table, ASAP.

[A. Zarkov]

"I've always been on the side of John Peter Altgeld and Clarence Darrow and Jane Addams."

Is this the Clarence Darrow of Leopold and Leob fame, of the “Scopes Monkey Trial,” or the railroad corporation lawyer? Or perhaps the Darrow who represented the McNamara brothers where he was charged with attempting to bribe jurors and gave up practicing law in California? There are many Darrows.

I like Darrow because he was a good lawyer who got his clients acquitted, which is what you pay him to do. He also showed how superfluous a formal law school education is.

[Dean Baker]

I have yet to hear any Democrats tell me why they are so afraid of free trade for professionals. My guess is that they are concerned about losing the campaign contributions from yuppies. As an economic matter, free trade among doctors, lawyers, accoutants and economists, would lead to far larger gains than NAFTA, CAFTA and all the other trade deals that have recently been the focus of attention. It's too bad that the "free traders" have so little interest in free trade.

By the way, for knzn, I have been arguing for a weaker dollar for more than a decade, so I don't see any inconsistency in supporting a weaker dollar and free trade for professionals.

[knzn]

Jason, I would have to caution the Democrats, however, that there are also one-issue voters on the pro-choice side. (I know because I’m essentially one of them.) Possibly these people are smaller in number and mostly in states (like mine) that are so solidly Democratic in national elections that it doesn’t matter. Then again, it is probably the cultural issues that make them so solidly Democratic: economic issues often lead voters in my state to choose Republicans in state and local elections.

[anne]

Good grief, I am afraid of free trade for professionals. Can I be afraid, is that permissible? I am afraid that my students and families will make all sorts of sacrifices and work ever so hard and have to struggle to be successful in professions they care about and can make fine contributions to. Have you bothers to notice what the costs of college and professional education are these days? I am afraid. Can you understand what it means to be afraid for others even after you are secure? I am afraid for American workers who lack all sorts of security they would not lack in Europe, and suddenly you are arrogant enough to dismiss my fears. I am afraid for American workers. Phooey, on arrogant advice to be brave.

[a different chris]

>Cultural issues, especially abortion, more than economic issues.

But that's a symptom of the way the Democrats have allowed the Republicans to shape the playing field. Fix the damn field, don't try to play a rigged game!!!

"Pro-life", c'mon, who the hell isn't "pro-life"??? -- Jeffrey Dahmer? This type of characterization of people that in the next breath are being dissed over their the "bleeding hearts" should have been laughed out of the political arena. I mean, how in God's name did Democrats, whose policies are so much more on the side of the greatest orator in history (Jesus, not Clinton you dummies) lose this ground?

On the specifics, for the millionth time, abortion with some hazy restrictions is supported by the majority, and not even close. South Dakota, for chrissakes', is suddenly in an uproar over it.

And it's one issue. And as knzn said, there are other "one-issue" voters on the other side.

Jason thinks the Dems should take it off the table, but that's Shrumism. They've tried to take everything off the table, when they should be filling it with their own bounty.

But the Democrats gotta learn to tell people that their are only two parties here, and tell them clearly and concisely what they are giving up for their one-issue vote. Voters have to grow up and realize that there are hard choices to be made.

Granted you can't directly tell voters that they have the mentality of a 5-year old who wants another piece of cake, but you sure as hell can rip the Republican representatives for acting like they represent 5-year olds.

[Dustin]

"but that's Shrumism."

What, pray tell is "Shrumism"?

"Voters have to grow up and realize that there are hard choices to be made."

Sounds like a winning strategy.

[knzn]

Dean, there is no inconsistency at all between your weak dollar position and you’re “free trade for professionals” position. I’m just skeptical about the quantitative importance (as well as the political importance, as discussed by save_the_rustbelt, who happens to be a Republican) of the latter. My comment was in response to Brian’s earlier comment in which he cited that position specifically (later referred to by save_the_rustbelt as “Dean Baker’s arguments”).

An unrelated point, thinking about my last comment above (addressed to Jason), I’m beginning to agree with save_the_rustbelt and some others that the cultural issues are the real ones. While I sympathize with the redistributionist (for want of a better term) tendencies of the Democrats, this issue has, for me, an importance that is lexicographically inferior to the abortion issue. (By the way, a different chris, I actually personally frame the issue more like the way the Republicans do, but I happen to be against life.) I guess part of the thing is, on most issues, the Republicans have a case, even if, on balance, it’s probably not as strong as the Democrats’ case. On the abortion issue, the anti-lifers like me are simply right, and the pro-lifers are simply wrong. (The pro-choicers don’t have it quite right, either, but I’m willing to include my party of one in their coalition.)

[Dustin]

"I have yet to hear any Democrats tell me why they are so afraid of free trade for professionals."

What is Free Trade for professionals? How does this differ from garden variety free trade?

[Dustin]

What is "anti-life" and how does it differ from "Pro-choice" ?

[Bill]

I went to Amazon to order the book, Polarized America, Krugman referred to in his column arguing there "isn't any center in modern American politics." I searched Amazon using "polarized" and the first title that popped up was "The Myth of a Polarized America." The book is described thusly: "The Myth of a Polarized America combines polling data with a compelling narrative to debunk commonly-believed myths about American politics–particularly the claim that Americans are deeply divided in their fundamental political views. This second edition of Culture War? features a new chapter that demonstrates how the elections of 2004 reinforce the book’s argument that Americans are no more divided now than they were in the past. In addition, the text has been updated throughout to reflect data from the 2004 elections." I guess we have to read both and decide for ourselves.

[knzn]

‘What is "anti-life" and how does it differ from "Pro-choice" ?’

In practice, there is no difference, just as there is no difference between “anti-choice” and “pro-life.” But in principle, I’m more concerned with the fetus’ right not to live than with the mother’s right to choose. Given that the fetus doesn’t have a choice in the matter, it always seemed strange (and wrong) to me that the presumption should be for life. It seems to me, someone who has been brought into the world without being given a choice in the matter has more cause to complain than someone (hypothetically) who has been denied the opportunity to live. (Surely the hypothetical offspring of potential matings that never happened in the first place aren’t generally seen as having cause to complain.) Of course none of this has to do with the legal justification for abortion rights, but I think I would be against the 4th amendment if it didn’t have this application.

[dryfly]

We already have 'free trade' for professionals... ever been to Mayo Clinic? It sounds & looks like the United Nations in the middle of rural Minnesota. Meanwhile across town lotsa working class Minnesotans don't have health insurance.

Likewise hear of 'medical vacations'... if you can't afford a tummy tuck or boob job at Mayo do it in India, cost you about a quarter or so of what it costs here air fare included... and that doctor probably did his internship at Mayo (or similar). Plenty folks there don't have insurance either.

This is NOT an issue the Dems will win on. It isn't a bad issue or a good issue... its a NON-ISSUE to most Americans. Make more enemies and no friends. With that said, makes me wonder why Dems aren't all over it already.

[anne]

http://www.pkarchive.org/economy/ForRicher.html

October 20, 2002

For Richer
By Paul Krugman - New York Times

You don't need a political scientist to tell you that modern American politics is bitterly polarized. But wasn't it always thus? No, it wasn't. From World War II until the 1970's -- the same era during which income inequality was historically low -- political partisanship was much more muted than it is today. That's not just a subjective assessment. My Princeton political science colleagues Nolan McCarty and Howard Rosenthal, together with Keith Poole at the University of Houston, have done a statistical analysis showing that the voting behavior of a congressman is much better predicted by his party affiliation today than it was 25 years ago. In fact, the division between the parties is sharper now than it has been since the 1920's.

What are the parties divided about? The answer is simple: economics. McCarty, Rosenthal and Poole write that ''voting in Congress is highly ideological -- one-dimensional left/right, liberal versus conservative.'' It may sound simplistic to describe Democrats as the party that wants to tax the rich and help the poor, and Republicans as the party that wants to keep taxes and social spending as low as possible. And during the era of middle-class America that would indeed have been simplistic: politics wasn't defined by economic issues. But that was a different country; as McCarty, Rosenthal and Poole put it, ''If income and wealth are distributed in a fairly equitable way, little is to be gained for politicians to organize politics around nonexistent conflicts.'' Now the conflicts are real, and our politics is organized around them. In other words, the growing inequality of our incomes probably lies behind the growing divisiveness of our politics.

But the politics of rich and poor hasn't played out the way you might think. Since the incomes of America's wealthy have soared while ordinary families have seen at best small gains, you might have expected politicians to seek votes by proposing to soak the rich. In fact, however, the polarization of politics has occurred because the Republicans have moved to the right, not because the Democrats have moved to the left. And actual economic policy has moved steadily in favor of the wealthy. The major tax cuts of the past 25 years, the Reagan cuts in the 1980's and the recent Bush cuts, were both heavily tilted toward the very well off....

[dryfly]

On Pro-life... Pro-choice... Rust is 'correct' in that there are voters who see this as their only vote issue. Nothing else even matters. The Midwest is full of people like this - some are my neighbors & friends - I know these people.

But Jason is wrong that Dems can walk away & the issue dies - no chance. As diff chris said above Dems aren't 'Pro-abortion' or 'Pro-death' its that they don't want gov't involved in the decision - its YOUR choice not the governments. Dems are PRO-LIBERTY in your own personal life choices. So the only way to walk away is to be as or more anti-abortion than the GOP.

Similar problem with right to die & gay marriage issues. Dems want it to be a private individual lifestyle choice - GOP is comfortable having it dictated by law. Irreconcilable differences.

Trying to hide from these issues is a non-winning strategy for the Dems because in many of their strong holds (East & West Coasts) they have have supporters who feel as strongly in favor of Pro-choice as the GOP has members who feel strongly Pro-life. If the Dems 'walked away' the party in these regions would absolutely blow up & they would lose more there than they would have gained in the Midwest.

In short the Dems have to know what they believe & not be scared to voice those beliefs. If they believe in these personal life options - then don't be scared to say so. But don't be stupid about it either. Work hard to sell the ideas in tasteful ways and if they lose then be an effective opposition party - ie oppose the alternative to the best of their ability.

The problem with Dems is they don't have a base to draw from right now... its a club of individuals unified by the motto "We aren't Republicans." Tough to win that way.

GOP is HIGHLY unified & motovated... for now anyway. That can change but if I was a Dem operative I wouldn't count on it as a 'strategy'.

[anne]

http://economistsview.typepad.com/

June 19, 2006

Immigration and Political Polarization

Paul Krugman follows up on today's column "Class War Politics." In the follow-up, he talks briefly about research on immigration and political polarization he couldn't fit into the column. I'll be curious to hear reactions to his reason for being "less enthusiastic about immigration than many liberals":

Politicians Need to Go Back to Class, by paul Krugman, Money Talks, NY Times: Readers respond to Paul Krugman's June 19 column, "Class War Politics" ...

Lenore Scendo, New York: I think you're absolutely on target about class warfare and the futility of going centrist to reignite bipartisanship. But doesn't this consign our country to perpetual politics of division? After all, the New Deal succeeded in dire times. Are you suggesting we might need to experience a kindred upheaval before like-minded policies will again succeed?

Paul Krugman: I don't expect or hope for another depression. But think of it this way: what happened politically in the 1930's was that the public realized that true believers in conservative ideology just weren't able to govern effectively. Isn't something like that happening now, in slow motion?

Mary Ellen Verdu, Salem, Va.: ...Why do so many in the working class and lower middle class vote Republican? In Virginia ..., my liberal upper-middle class friends and I threw up our hands as working people voted for elimination of the car tax — and just this week, the estate tax... The same is true for other issues... As a liberal in the progressive tradition this has bothered me for a long time...

Paul Krugman: The point, I think, is that distraction works: many people think that conservatives represent their values, or are tough on terror. Also, bear in mind that there's far too little news reporting on actual policy ideas. During the 2004 election, the biggest domestic policy difference between Bush and Kerry was on health care policy. But I surveyed two months of network news reporting, and there wasn't a single explanation of the difference between the Kerry and Bush plans.

Paul Krugman: A final note. For readers interested in following up on all this, many of the McCarty et. al. charts are at
http://voteview.com/Polarized_America.htm

Also, because of the limits of space, I couldn't talk about an important secondary theme in their book, the role of immigration. They argue that when unskilled immigration is high, the effect is to create a disenfranchised class of low-wage workers, which makes it easier for the Republican party to shift right. And there's a strong correlation between the foreign-born share of the population and political polarization, visible in the charts at the Web address above.

This political effect of immigration, much more than the effect on wages, is the reason I'm less enthusiastic about immigration than many liberals; I fear that immigration undermines the political foundations for a decent social safety net....

[derrida derider]

On the abortion question, has anybody noticed that since Roe vs Wade Republican presidents have appointed ultra-conservatives to the Supreme Court who somehow have failed to overturn this decision?

And why not - so long as abortion's legality is mandated by an unelected Federal body, instead of by State legislatures, it's always going to be a huge electoral plus for them. This is despite the fact that there are actually more pro-choice than pro-life voters (the pro-lifers tend to vote the single issue and be in swing states, while the pro-choicers usually don't and aren't).

I'm pro-choice myself, but if I was a Dem strategist I'd yearn for Roe vs Wade to be overturned. And if the question went back to State legislatures abortion would be legal everywhere but Jesusland anyway - and it'd cease to be a vote winner for the Repubs even there.

[anne]

Well, my argument on liberal immigration policy has been that there must be a strengthening of worker security to go along with immigration. Paul Krugman however notes the political argument makes it seem less likely that increased immigration will result in enough pressure to strengthen worker security. Though I have known of the work on immigration and political polarization for some while, I have been reluctant to talk about the issue. Time though to be talking about the issue for a while :)

[wcw]

To the right: google "red Tory".

To the "left" (such as exists in North America these days): you've lost. Lump it.

As for the rest of you who want the future to treat your children as kindly as the past treated you: you're fucked. Your children's future lies between my parents (postwar Europe, thanks) and the Anasazi.

Enjoy, kids. I bet you all don't enjoy economic dislocation as a spectator sport.

I do. Ha. Ha.

[Brian]

"I don't see Dean Baker's arguments doing much for a 54 year old former manufacturing worker."

Nobody is going to be happy about losing his job. But if we have free trade for professionals, health care costs might go down for this unemployed person, making his life just a little bit easier. And if we make that point to him, he just might be more inclined to vote for us.

[Brian]

"What is Free Trade for professionals? How does this differ from garden variety free trade?"

Unless I am horribly mistaken, it doesn't differ much. It's simply the breaking down of barriers that artificially increase the prices for the services of professionals.

---------

"We already have 'free trade' for professionals... ever been to Mayo Clinic? It sounds & looks like the United Nations in the middle of rural Minnesota. Meanwhile across town lotsa working class Minnesotans don't have health insurance.

Likewise hear of 'medical vacations'... if you can't afford a tummy tuck or boob job at Mayo do it in India, cost you about a quarter or so of what it costs here air fare included... and that doctor probably did his internship at Mayo (or similar). Plenty folks there don't have insurance either.

This is NOT an issue the Dems will win on. It isn't a bad issue or a good issue... its a NON-ISSUE to most Americans. Make more enemies and no friends. With that said, makes me wonder why Dems aren't all over it already."

Is it just me, or did this make no sense at all?

[monkyboy]

Since the start of the "war" on terror...

The U.S. military has been burning through 150 million barrels of oil a year...

Or about 10% of America's domestic oil production.

Yet those who want to drill in ANWR to make America "energy independent" also tend to support the "war."

I think inconsistent positions like the one I pointed out will be the Republicans downfall...

[Dean Baker]

folks, we don't have free trade for professionals. Free trade for professionals means that it would be as easy for a doctor in Mexico, China, or India who has met U.S. licensing standards to work in the U.S. as a doctor who was trained in Chicago. The same would hold true for all other professions.

Economists claim they support free trade for professioanls, or that we already have it, but this is ridiculous and they should know it. Free trade means the elimination of barriers, not that it's possible for extraordinarily talented and motivated foreign professionals to practice in the United States. The fact that I can buy Mexican tomatoes in the supermarket doesn't mean that we have free trade in agriculture.

In terms of the importance of this issue -- the high wages of professionals are the cost of living of autoworkers, dishawshers, and all the other people who already have to compete in a global economy. Exposing high paid professionals to international competition will mean enormous savings in health care, tuition and many other areas for less-educated workers and their families. It will also mean more jobs and economic growth (economists know the argument for gains from trade.)

Will it hurt some people -- absolutely, so does NAFTA, CAFTA, the WTO and all the other trade agreements that Republican and Democratic administrations have pushed through over the last two decades. I am looking forward to hearing the argument as to why we should be more concerned about the doctors/lawyers/accountants/economists who won't be able to earn enough to repay their student loans than the steelworkers/autoworkers/textile workers who ruined their health working in factories and lose their job and health care in their fifties. It should make for some interesting politics.

[liberal]

Bruce Wilder wrote, "Now, we are in need of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson."

God forbid. Wilson was a vicious racist who introduced Jim Crow into the Federal workforce.

[Robert Waldmann]

What the hell has Krugman been smoking ?
"The era of bipartisanship, which lasted for roughly a generation after World War II, "
Yep no nastiness from the great statesmen of that generation, Joe McCarthy would be appalled at the depths to which Hastert has sunk. And the 60 ? no cross burning then, thank God. Nor did dozens of big US cities burn.

Back in the good old days protestors patriotism wasn't questioned at all. But of tear gas, fire hoses, police riots sure, but no one no one questioned Jane Fonda's patriotism then.

Politics now isn't particularly nasty, it is particularly partisan. What has changed is that the Democratic party has lost its far right wing and the Republican party has gained a new far far right wing due to the South's forgiving Lincoln after all these years.

There used to be violent anti constitutional right wing nastiness against the center left, and (less) left wing nastiness against the right and the squishy center acting slimy. Now there is violent anti constitutional right wing nastiness against the center left, and (less powerful but equally dedicated) left wing nastiness against the right and the squishy center acting slimy. It's just that the Democratic party has fewer vicious rightists to give politics as usual a bi-partisan sheen.

Look Brad, you don't like it when journalists BS about bloggers and economics, so you should notice when economists BS about politics and history. The golden age is a myth.

p.s. Why does Krugman stop before writing down that which is obviously his advice. He clearly thinks the Dems have to stop letting the Republicans get away with stealth class war by declaring open class war. Well anyway, I think that (as I have been telling you since 94) so whay doesn't he ?

[bob mcmanus]

"He clearly thinks the Dems have to stop letting the Republicans get away with stealth class war by declaring open class war."

The only advice he hinted at was: "But think of it this way: what happened politically in the 1930's was that the public realized that true believers in conservative ideology just weren't able to govern effectively. Isn't something like that happening now, in slow motion?" ...from Anne's 4:21

I am not sure the Democrats ever campaigned on open class war, with the possible exception of William Jennings Bryan. One can read theoretical explanations in Marxist theory and current problems (our plutocratic media and elites) on why it is very difficult. The field of plausible candidates get co-opted. A possibility is the left-of-center empowering and supporting/tolerating a movement to their left, as a scapegoat and farm system, in much the way Republicans treat the Christian Conservatives.

Since I personally think the institutions are inherently corrupt and will be turned into weapons against progressives every 4-12 years, I am starting to become interested in anarchy and Emma Goldman. Gov't will inevitably become a tool of elites and concentrated wealth. We may be better off without it.

[bob mcmanus]

Oh. I also think the blogosphere should make a deliberate effort to move as far left as possible. We don't need a seat at Hillary's table; we need her to be scared we'll tip it over.

[Esq.]

At least in the legal profession, "'free trade' for professionals" would incite screaming from Aroostock to San Diego. Really loud screaming.

In case you haven't noticed, there is not even free trade in lawyers between the states.

Getting licensed in another state often takes six months to a year, requires thousands of dollars and a major expenditure of time to slog through the applications, bar exams, and bar exam prep classes. At least one state, Vermont, requires applicants to intern for six months in a local attorney's office. New Jersey just got rid of its requirement that lawyers (even lawyers that passed the NJ bar exam and were members of the bar in good standing) maintain an office in New Jersey in order to be allowed to appear in court.

I am enjoying the thought of the foolish legislator who proposed such heresy being chased through the streets by a pin stripe suited lynch mob.

[dale]

"What the book shows... is that for the past century, political polarization and economic inequality have moved hand in hand."

"I disagree on the entire thesis...
I think today's bitter partisanship is largely driven by cultural and social issues, especially abortion..."

Isn't our understanding of social phenomena always held in tension between the observer perspective and the participant perspective? System vrs lifeworld, etc? There doesn't have to be a contradiction- just different methodologies and perspectives.

[dryfly]

Exposing high paid professionals to international competition will mean enormous savings in health care, tuition and many other areas for less-educated workers and their families. It will also mean more jobs and economic growth (economists know the argument for gains from trade.)

Complete bullshit.

The vast cost of medicine is NOT professional fees - it is capital & overhead. This has been true since sometime around 1970 when things like the early NMR burst on to the scene.

Take a walk around a place lie John Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, Scripts... the place is bristling with machinery & instrumentation... most of it obsolete in five years or less & will be replaced (amortized accordingly). I know for a FACT how expensive these things are cause I support the other end of the pipeline - the engineering of the materials that go into it.

If there is a place where 'free trade' in labor would make a savings in medicine it would be on the low end. If they could pay orderlies & food service & laundry workers & clerks what they pay them in India - now THAT would have a cost impact. They hire THOUSANDS of people like that at every major clinic vs the hundreds who are the specialists & professionals.

Same ratios apply at smaller clinics - just fewer of them in total.

A friend who works in HR at Mayo confirmed this to me years ago... Doc's make the 'big money' & highly visible but the bulk of the payroll goes to the grunts, always has, always will... its the numbers game.

If you doubt me - next time you are at a hospital do a head count. Docs & such vs all others - it will shock you how large the support staff is making it possible for Doc to 'play God'. Include all the support folks you see & then imagine all the people in the belly of the beast sterilizing & cleaning & fixing - the ones you DON'T see.

Oh & don't forget accounting & admin. A few heads there too... and not all MBAs.

And we haven't really begun to guesstimate capital & non-labor overhead (computer systems & such - clinics almost all run ERP now - not cheap).

Nor take into account how many Docs & high level specialists already come from offshore. Dean says few - I say a lot more than you realize. Both my local clinic & Mayo (where we go for major stuff) are full of foreign born Docs & nurses & specialists.

This idea is incredible nonsense. Bad policy & worse politics. Might as well have every admin & clerk & bottle washer making Bangalore wages. Boy that would help our overall standard of living - NOT.

[A. Zarkov]

“At least in the legal profession, "'free trade' for professionals" would incite screaming from Aroostock to San Diego. Really loud screaming.”

I’ll more than second that. The whole legal profession (big supporters of the Democrats) is one giant exercise in restraint of trade. And I say this as a father whose daughter has just graduated law school and studying for the California Bar right now. I well remember reading the preface section of the famous book “How to Avoid Probate” by Dacy. After publishing the book he woke up one morning to read in the newspaper that Connecticut had disbarred him without notice. Later a court ordered his publisher to cease distributing the book! That’s right prior restraint-- the First Amendment be damned. Dacy had to appear in court before a judge who was a member of the very organization suing him to stop publication of the book. When he asked the judge if he was a member, the judge said: “I forget!” In more recent times, the Texas Bar tried to stop publication of NOLO self-help books in Texas. The barriers to entering the legal profession are enormous, and they reap the benefits.

[A. Zarkov]

Sorry that should be “Dacey” not “Dacy.” The organization was the New York County Lawyers Association. I didn’t think the web would have anything on this very old case but it did. See http://members.aol.com/jmccauesq/ethics/articles/probono.htm. I’m glad I remembered everything else correctly.

[A. Zarkov]

dryfly:

Your analysis is very good. The Mayo Clinic in Rochester does bristle with staff and technology. Amazingly they are somewhat cheaper (to the patient) than some of the other big med centers like Stanford who seem to have a smaller staff and less service. Things run amazingly smoothly at Mayo considering the huge throughput of patients they have—I don’t know how they do it. On the other hand, The George Washington Medical Center in DC runs amazingly poorly, is more expensive (to the patient) than Mayo and seems to have less staff and technology. I was absolutely shocked at their incompetence in every aspect of their operation I experienced. And rude too.

[liberal]

dryfly wrote, "The vast cost of medicine is NOT professional fees - it is capital & overhead. This has been true since sometime around 1970 when things like the early NMR burst on to the scene."

Strawman. Dean's actually run the numbers, and the savings would be extremely large.

[anne]

Ah, I understand. Dean Baker is just playing at irony since the idea of allowing for more worker security seems to have so little support here, curiously little support among economists who would support fiercely security for themselves.

[Blissex]

«The barriers to entering the legal profession are enormous, and they reap the benefits.»

Among the benefits there is are two that are particularly nice:

* When the cost of other non-protected goods or services goes down, that of protected goods or services goes up, as their relative pricing power improves (e.g. a company that saves on cleaners has more money and thus less resistance to price increases from laywers).

* The same happens when lawyers as a whole become less productive; in that case their compensation goes up too, because their services have become relatively scarcer.

But this is sort of like the general principle that when labour becomes abundant assets become more profitable, assets are not just the physical ones, and a bar licence is an asset which can pay good rent (especially if accompanied by other assets like an Ivy League degree and connections).

[kharris]

Perhaps a more correct thing to say is that there is a political center, but not in Washington, and many voters, level-headed people who see no value in government for the extremes, despise those who govern because they do not feel represented.

Rusty,

Anne has turned over the right rock, I think. All the economic gains of the Bush administration have gone to the top 10%, and even those at the low end of that 10% have seen only middling gains. That was intentional. It has to be mixed in with a big dollop of social demagoguery to distract those who would otherwise recognize that the GOP is not serving their interests. It is too simple a view to claim that partisanship across the entire country and in Washington all has to do with the social agenda. Not everybody is stupid enough to miss the real agenda. The social agenda is, and has long been, cover for the economic agenda. Just look at Reagan's use of abortion to win middle-class Catholic votes.

Iraq, an increasingly partisan issue, is a particular instance in which the socio-religious agenda ("God told me to destroy Iraqi lives") serves an economic and power agenda.

[Barry]

derrida derider: "And why not - so long as abortion's legality is mandated by an unelected Federal body, instead of by State legislatures, it's always going to be a huge electoral plus for them. ..."

Riiight. They're only pissed because it was a court decision. Haven't you noticed that very few people on the right get mad at 'unelected' courts making decisions that favor them?

[Barry]

Robert Waldmann: "... and the Republican party has gained a new far far right wing due to the South's forgiving Lincoln after all these years. "

The (presumably white) South hasn't forgiven Lincoln; the GOP has ceased being the party of Lincoln.

[a different chris]

>What, pray tell is "Shrumism"?

Bob Shrum: don't risk offending any voter at any time, don't rock the boat, don't mention the stinking elephant in the room.

If an issue is controversial, avoid it, run around like that greased pig at the country fair. Because if nobody dislikes you then everybody will vote for you, right???

>>"Voters have to grow up and realize that there are hard choices to be made."

>Sounds like a winning strategy.

I bet Dustin thinks he's "grown up and made a hard choice" when he supports ANWR drilling. I bet Dustin thought he'd "grown up and made a hard choice" when he supported pre-emptive war against Iraq. I bet Dustin thinks he's "grown up and made a hard choice" when he supports the criminalization of abortion, realizing that it's gonna put kids in jail, and stress society's resources at the points where it can least take the stress.

The amazing thing about the way the Republicans have approached the voters is that they make it sound like said voters are making "hard choices" (strong Father) but those choices don't actually affect too much of their base.

"Small government" just means tax cuts for everybody. Money still rolls to the Red States and the Defense Industry, they just borrow it. The rich know that they can always schlupp Buffy to Canada for an abortion, the rest of the anti- crowd are in situations where they can at least afford a baby, and also are the ones most delusional about what goes on among teens. The death of affirmative action would not materially affect one white voter. Environmental stewardship in a land of couch potatoes in heavy debt? Gee, that's a hard tradeoff.

I could go on, fill in your own examples.

The only large exception is the rural voters who do supply soldiers to Messopotamia, not in porportions nearly as large as "The Heartland" fantasists would have you believe, but they pull their weight much better on that subject than when it comes to the economic load of this country.

[failingeconomist]

Esq and others: you’re right, lawyers certainly do go in for a great deal of restraint of trade. As do doctors in fact: less intrusive but still state licencing. And funeral directors and even flower arrangers (there are several places where you must pass an exam and get a licence to practice the dangerous art of putting flowers in a vase).

This is what the phrase "supply side reform" is actually all about. No, it doesn’t just mean lower taxes. It means sweeping away many, most or all of these petty restrictions by which one group extract rents from the rest of us with spurious justifications for the protections of their own jobs and markets.

Just to be blindingly obvious, yes, this will sometimes mean unions as well as professional bodies. You never know, we might even get to the point where not every person lecturing a remedial college class in English or Math has to have a Ph.D or be studying for one.

[piotr]

I think that one can obtain a true centrist position by using out-of-the-box thinking to design compromize positions.

Take posting commandments in public buildings: we could split the difference and allow to post 5 our of 10. Surely, defenders of religiously based law/morality can prioritize?

Take the issue of abortion. As I have read, the majority is against out-right outlawing of abortion and yet unconfortable with "abortion on demand". Simple reform: allow abortion but prohibit abortion on demand, in other words, allow it only when the woman does not want it.

Now we can consider gay rights. Perhaps homosexual marriage should be allowed from January 1 to June 30, so during hurricane season we would not provide extra justification for the Wrath of the Lord. Accordingly, from July 1 to December 31 states would be allowed to stone the sodomites. Now every one gets everything they want, just not all the time.

[derrida derider]

Barry, you miss the point. The fundies would still be pissed if it was a State matter and they lost in their State, but where they have the numbers they won't lose. Where they don't have the numbers they don't matter electorally.

Yeah, there'd still be plenty of bitter fights, but it wouldn't be lead in the saddle of a Dem presidential or congressional candidate.

[andres]

Nice to know that someone still remembers John P. Altgeld, besides Vachel Lindsay, that is...

http://www.bartleby.com/267/89.html

(John P. Altgeld)


SLEEP softly … eagle forgotten … under the stone.
Time has its way with you there, and the clay has its own.
“We have buried him now,” thought your foes, and in secret rejoiced.
They made a brave show of their mourning, their hatred unvoiced.
They had snarled at you, barked at you, foamed at you, day after day. 5
Now you were ended. They praised you … and laid you away.
The others, that mourned you in silence and terror and truth,
The widow bereft of her crust, and the boy without youth,
The mocked and the scorned and the wounded, the lame and the poor,
That should have remembered forever,… remember no more. 10
Where are those lovers of yours, on what name do they call,
The lost, that in armies wept over your funeral pall?
They call on the names of a hundred high-valiant ones,
A hundred white eagles have risen, the sons of your sons.
The zeal in their wings is a zeal that your dreaming began, 15
The valor that wore out your soul in the service of man.
Sleep softly … eagle forgotten … under the stone.
Time has its way with you there, and the clay has its own.
Sleep on, O brave-hearted, O wise man that kindled the flame—
To live in mankind is far more than to live in a name, 20
To live in mankind, far, far more than to live in a name!—

(Not my favorite poem, but still good to read once in a while).

[andres]

"I've always thought Gilded Age America would have been a better place had the Eugene Debs-led Pullman strike succeeded. I've always been on the side of John Peter Altgeld and Clarence Darrow and Jane Addams."

Watch out what you wish for, Brad. If the Pullman strike had succeeded, possibly with Altgeld or Bryan becoming president, the political backlash would have made the Civil War look mild by comparison. Sooner or later some young militarist with delusions of Bonapartism (eg Theodore Roosevelt) would have started a revolt against the new radical government. Worse yet, he would have been bankrolled by the likes of Mark Hanna and J.P. Morgan, and would have had ready-made propagandists like William Randolph Hearst. And the political leaders would have had no scruples about enrolling reactionary movements like the KKK and Jim Crow South into their cause.

All told, a politically successful labor/small farmer movement at the end of the 19th century might have led to an American version of the Spanish Civil War, and it is unlikely that the good guys would have had the resources to win. Maybe Cleveland's choice was the right one after all, though I hate to admit it.