dana milbank

Wanted: An Opposition Party, Not a Center/Right Coalition

Richard Eskow — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 22:45:24 -0400

Only two budget proposals are being 'taken seriously' in Washington right now. One adopts the rhetoric of "austerity economics," that grab-bag of right-wing misconceptions that's weakened the British economy and wounded its ruling coalition.

The other comes from the Republicans.

There's a third budget plan, too. It reflects the views most Americans hold - including, in some cases, most Republicans . But it's either being ignored or contemptuously dismissed by the People That Matter, apparently for that most traditionally British of reasons: it doesn't come from "the right sort of people."

What this country really needs right now is an opposition party, one that refuses to accept stale and discredited conservative ideas. The President and other Democrats have been governing as if they were in a coalition government with Republicans - and sometimes like the junior partner in that coalition. There are better ways to serve themselves, their party, and their country.

Fight Club

The front page of a Los Angeles weekly published last week illustrates just how skewed the American debate has become:

That's how the debate's being presented: In this corner, a center/right proposal which adopts some unpopular conservative ideas. And in this corner, a radical right proposal with ideas that majorities of all political persuasions hate. But the center/right proposal is described as coming from the "left," which may help explain why the left isn't very popular these days.

Granted, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal isn't a Beltway opinion shaper (although my colleague Marty Kaplan is a columnist there). But their headline shows how the Washington consensus has distorted public perception outside the Beltway. To many people President Obama represents the 'leftmost' side of the spectrum, even though his budget plan borrows liberally (you should forgive the expression) from a right-leaning philosophy that's rapidly losing credibility.

Oy.

President Clegg?

We're having a crucial national debate about our priorities and governing philosophies. That's a heck of a time for President Obama to position himself as the American Nick Clegg. Clegg, the leader of Great Britain's centrist Liberal Democrats, formed a coalition government with the Conservatives and gave their austerity program an aura of reasonableness and a dash of youthful vigor. Like Obama, Clegg strikes a Januslike pose, with rhetoric that faces left and compromises that face right. Clegg and his senior partner, Prime Minister David Cameron, even embraced a favorite slogan of the President's when they said they would "agree to disagree" on crucial matters.

It's not going well. While the British Conservatives are far more civilized than their American counterparts, they're still happy to undercut Clegg whenever it suits them. Clegg's posture of "reasonable centrism" has cost him both his base and swing voters, and has left him holding the bag as the economy flounders. Only 9% of likely voters now say they'll vote for a Liberal Democrat, down from a high of 30% one year ago. The Labor Party, which suffered what might be called a "whuppin'" last year, now dominates the polls at 39%. The Conservatives are holding steady at 35%, but austerity measures have cost Mr. Clegg's party most of the country's 'persuadable' and independent voters.

As well they should. As the New York Times reports, retail sales have fallen 2.5% in the year since Great Britain's austerity program began. Household income is projected to fall another 2%. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are being lost as a result of the cuts, triggering fears of another recession.

Of course, Great Britain is not the United States. Conservative leader Cameron is well to the left of American conservatives, and in many ways he's to the left of President Obama too. Cameron supports the country's national health system and is resisting calls to lower the top tax rate for high earners from its present level of 50%. President Obama, by contrast, is proposing to raise the top rate to 39.5% and offered only lip service to the public option.

And Great Britain has three major parties, not two. That means voters who aren't happy with the Conservative/Liberal Democratic coalition have an alternative.

The Loyal Opposition

Great Britain is a parliamentary democracy with a tradition of the "loyal opposition." As Clegg triangulated, the Labor Party assumed that role. And as the Liberal Democrats' fortunes have fallen, Labor's have risen. Where's our loyal opposition, our alternative to unpopular and failed austerity policies?

It might surprise most newspaper readers or cable news watchers, but there is one. It's in a subset of the Democratic Party called the Progressive Congressional Caucus. They've released a budget proposal that's more fiscally responsible than Ryan's, and which more accurately reflects voters' preferences.

But their budget plan has a serious problem: It has the word "progressive" attached to it. That immediately provokes an attitude of contemptuous dismissal from the media herd. (See the ever-predictable Dana Milbank for one of the saddest examples of this. I fear for his state of mind if he ever realizes his impact on the national discourse. That's not "snark." I really do.)

If the "P word" were stripped from its title page and this budget was given a dummy name (like the "American Business and Stability Council Plan For Economic Growth"), it would poll like gangbusters and be met with the appropriate journalistic genuflections. But the "P" is there (and so is the unfortunate name "the People's Budget"). That's one of the reasons that reporters are either mocking it Milbank style or, more typically, ignoring it altogether.

A Plan That Works

The Progressive Caucus budget actually cuts the deficit, which Paul Ryan's extremist plan fails to do. And where Ryan's budget was rejected in polling, polls suggest that the policies in this proposal would be even more popular than the President's. On the revenue side, for example, it creates additional brackets for very high earners and it establishes a more progressive estate tax that asks a bit more from the Paris Hiltons among us. In other words, this proposal does exactly what the public wants: It raises taxes on the rich.

The Progressive budget also addresses Social Security in the manner that's supported by strong majorities in both parties and among Tea Partiers and independents - first, by separating that program from an overall deficit discussion, and then by eliminating the payroll tax cap for employers and raising it for employee contributions. The proposal cuts more from the defense budget, which is also highly popular, and it restores the public option for health care (which received wide public support last year, including from a slim majority of Republicans in swing districts).

The Progressive budget also provides funds for creating jobs. Post-election polling showed that jobs are a much higher priority for the public than deficits, and recent polling confirms that.

Weak Tea

Obama's budget, by contrast, embraces the unpopular personal proposals from Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. It embraces the right-wing formulation of "two thirds spending cuts and one-third revenue increases," which ignores the stimulative effect of government spending. While the President's rhetoric is powerful, his proposal only offers a nebulous, Clegg-like cloud. The Republican Ryan budget, on the other hand, is clear and direct. (The President's proposal does, of course, have the virtue of not being pathologically destructive to the American dream - but that's setting the bar a little low, isn't it?)

Obama's proposal would be considered center/right by any reasonable measure. Now it's being upstaged by negotiations among the Senate's "Gang of Six," a group of three center/right Democrats and three Republicans. They're using the leverage given to them by that body's undemocratic structure to attempt a "compromise" - between the far-right GOP proposal, and the position of Democrats like Dick Durbin, who tacked to the right of the President even before negotiations begin.

That's not what the public wants. But if the progressive proposal's such an exciting road to fiscal and political success, and is supported by Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi, how did the Jewish Journal come to believe that Obama represents the "left" side of the political spectrum?

Marginalized

I'd have to agree with the argument which says the progressive proposal is getting ignored because it won't get passed or even influence the final outcome. Its invisibility seems to say more about our media's "who's in/who's out" mindset than it does any Pravda-like suppression of dissident ideas.

But it's only treated as irrelevant because the Congressional Democrats have been marginalized by their own party, starting at the top with the White House and extending to the Senate. The President and the Senate leadership don't believe for a second that House Democrats will refuse to pass a budget that's been hammered out by President Obama - or by the Gang of Six, for that matter. They could probably defeat it if they did, but it's assumed that they'll be "responsible."

What's more, the White House has pre-empted and marginalized the progressive representatives with its centrist budget and talking points. As The Hill reports, "This year's budget battles have forged a loose bond between President Obama and Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) while revealing some distance between the White House and Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)." Hoyer's right-leaning opinions and longstanding intention to cut Social Security are unpopular with the general public, but they make him a handy ally for the Simpson/Bowles White House.

That leaves proposals like the Progressive Caucus budget out in the cold, even though they reflect majority opinion. Most people don't even know it exists. A Google News search on the phrase "Gang of Six" came up with 4,280 hits today, while "Ryan budget" came up with more than 16,000. "Progressive caucus budget" got 363 hits.

Choices

The President's lofty "the parties should stop squabbling" approach to the budget debate seems to be part of his approach toward winning re-election (although it's more likely to backfire). But it's no way to lead in a two-party democracy.

There's no doubt that the President can lead. As McClatchy reported, "Support for higher taxes rose by 5 percentage points after Obama called for that as one element of his deficit-reduction strategy last week. Opposition dropped by 6 points." But if he raises expectations only to abandon them without a serious fight, he won't be serving his country or his own future very well.

Voters don't want radical austerity that supports the newly rich, and they don't want "austerity lite" either. The President and his party should consider the fate of Nick Clegg and his Liberal Democrats before committing themselves to joining with the right in a "coalition government" that's doomed to fail. Sure, they'll eventually have to compromise to keep the government running. But before they do they should offer voters a real alternative, not just a cup of weak tea whose best quality is that it's not Republican cyanide.

This post was produced as part of the Curbing Wall Street project and the Strengthen Social Security campaign.

The Unbearable Lightness of Reading Dana Milbank

Richard Eskow — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 11:55:08 -0400

Feel free to read Dana Milbank if that sort of thing appeals to you, but don't imagine for a minute that you're learning anything. That would be like studying the French Revolution by reading Marie Antoinette's cake recipes. The Milbank school of journalism - which at this point is American journalism -doesn't just fail to inform. Somehow it's able to subtract from a reader's overall body of information, as if by magic, leaving her or him even less informed than they were before.

That was made clear this week during the annual conference held by the Campaign for America's Future, the progressive organization where I am a Fellow (although I certainly don't speak for the organization). An objective reporter would have found much of substance to cover there, especially the widespread agreement that the progressive movement must lead the political debate rather than yielding that role to the Democratic Party establishment. In saner journalistic times, that's a heckuva story. But with newspaper readership down and cable news fueling an ADD-like journalistic tone, publishers have apparently decided to take a different tack: politics as gossip journalism.

That's not a new observation, of course, but the Milbank School takes the creeping Lindsey Lohanism of the American media to new heights. (Actually that's not fair to Lindsay, who is a surprisingly gifted actor in the right vehicle - I'm referring, of course, to her press coverage.) Politico is often credited with the celebretization of political journalism, but Milbank has an even longer history of practicing the craft. (And let us not overlook the First Czarina of the Gossip Empire, Maureen Dowd.) That's why the mournful cry often rises from information-hungry readers like ululations in a Sophocles tragedy: Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

The two-and-a-half day conference was punctuated by precisely twenty-three minutes of protest. That was the amount of time it took Speaker Nancy Pelosi to address the conference - a task she conducted heroically under challenging circumstances. Guess which twenty-three minutes Milbank chose to cover. We'll pause for a split-second to let you think ... Hey, you're right! Now guess what theme he chose ... right again! Liberal House Speaker heckled ... by liberals. How ironic! How droll! How celebrity-journalism-like!

How ... inaccurate. Actually, Pelosi was not heckled by liberals. She was shouted down - quite rudely - by a single-issue group that treated her even less respectfully than Kanye West treated Taylor Swift. They didn't even say "I'ma let you finish." The group apparently supports the Community Choice Act, a good bill that - ironically, for you Milbankian irony junkies - one that the Speaker reportedly supports. Memo to Dana: Single-issue advocates are not "liberals" or "conservatives," and the demonstrators expressed no political agenda. But "liberals heckle a liberal" is too juicy a tag to sacrifice just because it's inaccurate. Code Pink, which really is a progressive group, was also there and unfurled a sign about Israel policy, but they did not heckle the Speaker. They failed to provide Milbank with a catchy hook for his piece.

That means they failed to perform their patriotic duty. Don't these lefties want to save the newspaper industry? They should realize how much the country needs a medium that provides ledes like this one: "For 17 months, anger at President Obama and congressional Democrats has been pooling on the left. On Tuesday morning, it spilled onto the floor of an Omni Shoreham ballroom and splashed all over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi." Now that's great political prose! I. F. Stone, eat your heart out.

Consistency and logical coherence are optional in the Milbank school. You've already read his first sentence: Anger has been pooling on the Left for 17 months. Now read the opener to his second paragraph: "The celebrated San Francisco liberal took the stage to greet what should have been a friendly audience ..." (Note the use of the word "celebrated." In Milbank's world, celebrity rules.)

How can a competent writer or analyst say this "should have been a friendly audience" after he's just said that the same audience has been "angry" for a year and a half? That's incoherent. The Milbank School apparently believes that surprise, like irony and celebrity, helps sell newspapers. So forget logic - "move those units," baby!

Let's be clear: There is a sense of frustration with the White House and Congress, and it was expressed at the conference. But the sentiments expressed at the conference were not personal, and they included recognition that, given the right strategies, progressives can engage productively with a Democratic leadership that also has accomplished some meaningful things. But let's face it: That story isn't "splashy." "Liberals are mad at Daddy and Mommy" fits more closely to the Milbankian style. They don't permit him to write that the "San Francisco liberal" (get it? lattes and hippies?) was "eaten by her own."

The real discontent expressed at the conference stems from a number of unresolved problems which center around our ongoing economic crisis, and the sense that the government isn't doing enough to address them. This picture will help put the conference's themes into context:

That captures the urgency of one of the conference's key messages - we need jobs now. The blue lines show the Administration's expected unemployment rate with and without the stimulus, compare with today's reality: Our jobless rate is far worse with the stimulus than the White House thought it would be without it. Yet, instead of proposing more jobs-centered stimulus, the Administration's focusing on deficit reduction.

Milbank didn't address this issue or anything else of substance. Instead he used precious column inches to quote lyrics from a song played during the break, and to observe that "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" was one of the other tunes coming through the loudspeakers. His hurried scribbling of words from an old MTV hit may explain why he was unable to fit more substantive information in his notebook.

Poltico's coverage of the event looked like Pulitzer Prize material when compared to Milbank's vapid scribblings. Reporter Glenn Thrush's headline was "Left to Obama: We're Not Happy," which was certainly a major theme of the conference. His first quote was from Ilyse Hogue of MoveOn: ""We are not apathetic, we are not depressed -- we are willing to get out and fight for the people who fight for us." That captures of one the conference's themes. But the comment that "criticism of Obama during the lightly attended opening day was more visceral than issue specific" leaves the sneaking suspicion that Thrush only attended plenary presentations. If he had attended breakout sessions, chatted with the authors signing their books throughout the day, or interviewed the many policy experts and activists in attendance, he would have encountered a lot of specifics.

At least Politico's readers have some idea what took place. Milbank's will have come away with this impression: Liberals are eating their own, and their digestive process is leaving big splashy pools that some celebrity from San Francisco stepped in while speaking to people who were critical of her, although that was really some other people, and which in any case comes as a total surprise because they've only had a mounting sense of anger for the last 17 months, which means they should have been really friendly to her. People in wheelchairs suddenly became spokespeople for the liberal community rather than activists for the disabled, and they rode their wheelchairs right through those pools of boiling anger, and all those people were angry at Mommy and Daddy and probably at themselves, but the details don't really matter and I want to report this in a catchy, celebrity-driven way and besides hey Fatboy Slim and the Rolling Stones are on the radio and I love this song and my notebook's almost full and, and ...

And for God's sake, please buy this and save the American newspaper - because, after all, how would people stay informed without reporters like us?

Elites Rule, Not You: When Bipartisanship Becomes Undemocratic

Richard Eskow — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:05:26 -0500

At what point does "bipartisanship" begin to erode the democratic process?

Here's my answer: When it's used to take decision-making power away from voters and place it in the hands of a governing elite - an elite which acts in secret so that its members cannot be held accountable to anyone for their actions.

Democrats traded away some of the most critical elements of health reform for bipartisan comity that never appeared - and yet didn't bring those elements back when the other side of the aisle rebuffed them. Now they appear to be doing the same thing with financial reform.

I'd like to know if my two Senators are in favor of a strong and independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency or not. That will help me decide whether to support their re-election. Yet if Senators Dodd and Corker have their way, I'll never get to find out. They'll work out their deal in private, either with the tacit support of the Administration and the Senate leadership or not (I won't know that either), and voters like me will never know where their Senators stood on this important issue.

Did you know that under Dodd/Corker it would be hard for individual states to enforce stronger consumer protection rules those set by the Federal government? One reason you might not know is that there's been no public debate of the Dodd/Corker compromise. "Bipartisanship" sometimes means keeping the public in the dark.

Here's how democracy's supposed to work: One politician stands for a certain set of ideas and values. Her or his opponent stands for others. We, the electorate, choose between them. But apparently this model of governance is considered too inefficient and messy in some circles. The current "bipartisanship" vogue would end the interference of all those meddlesome middlemen - the voters, that is.

In the New Bipartisan Order Washington elites get to decide what will be debated publicly and what will be decided privately. Any ideas that might require politicians to take controversial positions are hashed out behind closed doors and then presented as a "bipartisan" solution (after, of course, having been ritually blessed by David Broder and other cheerleaders).

It's time to give the proper label to this new, fetishized version of bipartisanship: It's an ideology. It's a new philosophy of governance that challenges our current system. Not so coincidentally, it also serves the interests of those promoting it, strengthening those currently in power and weakening the influence of voters and political outsiders.

It has other advantages for its advocates, too: Politicians can adopt a Good Cop/Bad Cop approach, for example, even when they hold a decisive majority. "Sure, pal, I'd give you a private option and a strong CFPA, but my partner here won't let me."

Do I have any hard evidence that's what has happened with financial reform? Of course not. I can't know anything about my politicians or their motivations under this system. That's the point. I don't even get to learn whether they'd vote for the policies I support.

Don't get me wrong: Compromise has its place. It's how legislation gets passed. We don't need to repeat the cliche about how "laws and sausage get made" any more. But in an ideal system compromise takes place after the votes have been counted. That's why it makes sense to put the ideas like the CFPA or the public option to an up-or-down vote. That forces politicians to declare their positions in public. If those measures fail, then it's time for some horse-trading - but out in the sunshine, where people can see it.

Instead we're being presented with faits accompli written in secret chambers, and we're supposed to celebrate the "bipartisan" manner in which they were designed. It's like being ruled by Plato's Guardians - except that these Guardians have been chosen for their wealth and salesmanship, not for wisdom and selflessness. And remember: Plato's Republic was not a democracy.

Take that recent rash of pro-Rahm Emanuel stories. Whether they're true or not, the "virtues" they perceive in the Chief of Staff aren't democratic in nature. Take this embarrassing genuflection from Dana Milbank:

"Obama's greatest mistake was failing to listen to Emanuel on health care. Early on, Emanuel argued for a smaller bill with popular items, such as expanding health coverage for children and young adults, that could win some Republican support. He opposed the public option as a needless distraction."

The American people support the public option by a wide margin. But in Milbank's world - the world of Washington's elites - allowing voters to learn where their representatives stand isn't important. It's better to have a "smaller bill" (i.e., one that does less to fix this critical problem) as long as it has "popular items." And in Milbank's world "popular" doesn't mean popular with voters - like the public option - but popular with the elites (including the party that the electorate just overwhelmingly rejected.)

Some democracy.

Now Barney Frank is saying that the Dodd compromise is a "bad joke." He's speaking for a great many voters, and the residents of his district will know where he stands. Apparently he hasn't gotten the memo: These matters are supposed to be decided in private by the elite, not argued in public where the hoi polloi might overhear.

Don't get me wrong. Elites have their place, too - when they're meritocratic elites. The Olympics are the ultimate elitist event, and we saw a lot of very impressive people there. People should excel at what they do in order to win positions of leadership. But in a democracy, the people decide who leads and who doesn't. They have the right to know where their elected officials stand so they can decide accordingly. The elites don't get to choose their own membership ... or at least they shouldn't.

Bipartisanship ends where a voter's right to choose begins.