WE DON’T HAVE ENOUGH MONEY

Here’s why America can’t meet most of its challenges: we don’t have enough public money.  But it’s about much more than the federal deficit.  It’s  an assertion about America’s collective self-image that I believe will determine our future.

The lingering wake of the Almost Depression of 2008 is a nation desperately short on meeting what it perceives to be its accepted public standards.  In other words – Social Security can’t afford a COLA; public libraries are curtailing hours; working families are going to soup kitchens; inmates are being released early; workers are “voluntarily” furloughing themselves.

The immediate littered landscape shouldn’t obscure life before Lehman.  OSHA has nowhere near enough inspectors.  Bridges and roads are crumbling at a faster rate than ever.  Head Start is nothing close to capacity.  Wages are flat.  Pensions are dangerously underfunded and plunging in value.

And what about aspirations?  Maybe we’ll enact health care reform, but it won’t be enough.  A clean energy future is wonderful but not cheap.  And think about what our public schools need …

Oh, and the deficit is projected to be $9-10 trillion by 2019 and that’s before Medicare and Social Security enter real trouble.

I’m not trying to be depressing, but my larger point is: America’s basic idea of itself – that we always move forward, that we tackle problems, that we are a slight cut above the rest of the world, that we don’t settle – may be flat out wrong.

The problem is that our politics is grounded in a paradox, namely, a symbolic embrace of public values coupled with an actual embrace of elite private desires.  We want it both ways.  We want to believe we lift everyone up even as our laws, mores, cultural affinities, and financial decisions undermine this goal.

So we lament everything described above but we don’t really do anything about.  Paradox intact, we firmly step aside.

One of two things will happen over the next generation: either America will continue its self-delusion, paying lip-service while protecting smaller pieces of turf, or somehow we will accept that our post-War, post Civil Rights specialness is gone.

The latter would mean deep malaise, or, if progressives really step up, and honest and thorough reckoning.  Not a program here, an amendment there, but an overhaul of our financial values. Meaning: much higher taxes, a new connection between work and capital, and bold government regulation that goes to the core of problems, not their edges.

More on this theme later this week …

THE LEGACY OF LIBERALISM

I waited to write anything about Senator Ted Kennedy because nothing I could say would belong in the company of those painful but majestic five days last week.

But ten days after his death, I want to contribute one thought about what his life and achievements teach us: we are right, and Americans are grateful for it.

Think about the accomplishments that were celebrated last week.  Civil rights.  Special education.  Health care.  Minimum wage.  On and on.  These are liberal ideas, created and enacted by liberals.

Most important, they are the things that all of America celebrates.  It has been that way for 75 years.  From the heroic (Social Security, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Medicare) to the fantastic (the GI Bill, Head Start, desegregation of the armed forces) to the vital if taken for granted (the EITC, unemployment insurance, Title IX).

These are truly the things that both chart and define America’s progress.  They are celebrated with national pride, not just ideological satisfaction.

Think about it this way: What conservative politician would today propose eliminating any of the programs identified above?  Except for a few truly special wingnuts, probably none.  Yet their predecessors fought each and every one, and today’s leaders fight against their logical offspring: national health insurance, comprehensive immigration reform, clean energy policy, and on and on.

The obvious lesson here is don’t back down and don’t give in, but there is a deeper meaning in the celebration of Senator Kennedy’s life.  It is that America has a liberal soul.  Easily scared, sometimes hard to find, and susceptible to sweet conservative nothings, but it is there.  Finding it is our job.

Immigration Reform and the 2010 Mid-Term elections

In Mexico earlier this week, President Obama asserted that comprehensive immigration reform would be addressed legislatively in 2010.  That marker sets the table for a fascinating political gambit that involves two core questions:

1)      How hard, in late 2009, will progressives push the Administration to make immigration reform its top 2010 agenda?

2)      How hard will the right try to make immigration the top issue in key mid-term elections?

In short form, my answers would be 1) I hope so, and 2) Very.

Consider the landscape.  Over the next three months (at least) the battle over health care will be ferocious, bewildering, and all-consuming.  I think there will be a Grand Compromise, exhaustively reached in late Fall, that fudges enough on budget cost, cost containment, and a limited public option that most progressives will claim victory.

And then what?  Will battered progressives pick up the immigration mantle and both privately and publicly demand that the Administration lay down the gauntlet for 2010?  Will the coalition of grassroots activists, Latino advocates, unions, and business leaders be able to not just re-form, but sharpen and expand their political skills beyond the summer of 2007?

Is the money there?  Will the labor movement, stung by this year’s failure on the Employee Free Choice Act, re-double its efforts there rather than on immigration?  Will the business “community” give a half-hearted effort, distracted by its own problems and bruised by the health care debate?

I honestly don’t know.  But what I am fairly certain of is the Obama Administration wouldn’t weep to miss a election-defining bloody battle over immigration.  There are a thousand ways in Washington to avoid a real fight, and only one way to have one.  Advocates of immigration reform need to build their political plans now for full-scale political pressure on the Administration before this calendar year is out.  Reform has a chance only until the next August recess and only if the Administration strongly and constantly identifies it as its top domestic issue for 2010.

Of course, conservatives hope for just that.  As Charlie Cook notes, Americans’ appetite for change is diminishing.  The right-wing would love nothing more than to make 2010 a referendum on “too much, too far, too fast.”

And in 2010, I don’t think “All politics is local.”  I think very little of it will be.  A country that has spun wildly from 2008-2010 will take that moment to plant a flag.  Conservative strategists will build a national argument on amnesty for illegal aliens, socialized medicine, gay marriage, and the specter of more activist Supreme Court judges.

It will be shrill and it will be creepy.  But we have to fight it, not mock it. Aspiration brought us Obama and these opportunities; on immigration reform, only early strategy and political backbone will deliver them.

When the Grassroots Calls

Though this blogpost will often deal with national themes, today I want to take it down to mundane core of progressive communications.

With right-wing zealots self-immolating in town hall meetings, I thought it was a good time to offer progressives some practical advice on how to actually communicate during a congressional recess.

First, grassroots organizing and grassroots communication are very different.  With the former, you are trying to build an activist base.  With the latter, you are trying to use that base to reach a wider audience.  Not surprisingly, the style and tactics of each are different.

Let me focus on just one example (and it is a tactic greatly underutilized by progressives).

It is talk radio.  During the August recess, progressives should be all over their local talk radio shows.  But to do it well, you have to be both smart and thorough.  Here’s a primer:

1)      Build a group of callers.  Without a group of dedicated activists ready to call, numbers 2-9 that follow don’t matter.

2)      Do the research.  Know what shows take calls.  Don’t ignore smaller markets, and don’t bypass conservative radio!

3)      Write a schedule.  Literally.  For a week, make specific assignments for which activist is going to call which show, and when.  Shift assignments for the next week.  Treat this as a job.

4)      Be prepared to get busy with the re-dial button.

5)      Be prepared for far-flung tributaries.  Talk radio flows all over the place, but your activists need to pull it back to your message.  Memorize this line: “what the last caller said was interesting, but the real point is …”

6)      Be prepared to convince the producer who answers the phone that your call is worth putting on the air.

7)      Encourage your activists to speak with more wisdom than zeal.  With more tolerance than rage.  With more persuasion and less confrontation.  With more sincerity and less script.

8)      Use personal stories but make them brief and factual.  You are not calling Dr. Phil.

9)      Harness the power of streaming Internet radio.  Meaning, utilize activists who don’t live in the market to tune in to the web and call-in.

And a final encouragement … as someone who worked on the Hill for 10 years, I know first hand what August recess is like back in the district.  For many Members, it’s driving from one town to the next for an endless parade of meetings.  And believe me, the car radio is on more often than not.  Otherwise, the Member would have to chat with the staffer in the car.

It Was Fifty Years Ago Today …

Enjoy 2009.  Savor every last day on the calendar.

Why?  Because starting January 1, 2010, we will be bombarded for 10 years with an endless parade of 50 year anniversaries of everything 1960’s.  My stomach hurts just thinking about it.

The Kennedys.  The Beatles.  Interesting rock bands.  The moon landing.  Vietnam.  The first Super Bowl.  Medicare.  The Summer of Love.  The Weather Underground.  The Bay of Pigs.  And on and on.  (Also, interestingly, the last decade in which a Bush didn’t run for President.)

See: “mawkish.”

It’ll be the baby boomers’ last hurrah before they retire and realize that Bob Kerrey wasn’t kidding about Social Security.  I don’t think the celebrations will be quiet little affairs.

There’ll be the three-hour network specials, the books, the Facebook groups, the on-location-for-a-week morning shows, the musical tributes.  There’ll be commentary about the commemorations, and billions of blogs about both.

Plus, how might communications change over those ten years?  I don’t think the trend of mind-numbing saturation will reverse itself, leaving us perhaps with cereal boxes programmed to play video tributes to Martin Luther King (brought to you by Cheerios), or pants that, when you try them on at Banana Republic, audibly suggest “a 60’s vintage t-shirt would complete this outfit.”

And to top it off, surely the decade will bring a politician who claims to have a “2020 vision for the future …”

As Socrates once said, “As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.”

White people (like me) should remember that sentiment as they think about the Henry Louis Gates / Cambridge PD conflict.  What white people know about being black in America is very little.  Our approach to racial situations should be guided by that core premise.

Every single second of every single day being black could mean that you get treated differently.  I literally can’t imagine what that’s like.

That doesn’t mean white people are racist, or indifferent, or not liberal enough.  Maybe any of us are one or all three, but most meaningfully, we are white.  And it doesn’t mean we are lazy and won’t understand what it’s like to be black.  It’s just not something you learn, like carpentry or poker.

That isn’t a flaw, but it is a barrier.  And it’s potentially destructive when awareness of that barrier dims.  That’s when only the things we understand matter, and prejudice goes right by us as we celebrate the Civil Rights Act, MLK Day, and Obama’s election.

I’m not a self-hater.  Of course white people have been a major part of racial progress.  But we need to remember that, outside the headlines, bigotry can be a daily, crappy fact of life for African-Americans.  Just because we don’t or can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Today’s poll news that President Obama’s personal popularity far outpaces his agenda’s should come as no surprise. First, complicated policy is always a tough sell to Americans who don’t care about Medicare reimbursement rates, and second, elected Barack Obama largely because he was a celebrity.

That last, disturbing point will be revisited soon. But for today my focus is on what this paradox means for progressives. It means we have a long way to go.

Let’s start by acknowledging that Barack Obama is not Paul Wellstone. The President is a good man, moderately progressive, and a strong leader. But he didn’t run as a fire-breather (which is good, because he would have lost) and it is largely emergency, not philosophy, that is defining his domestic agenda.

The existence of a President Obama is a good thing, but also a dangerous thing if his celebrity masks a greater and more lasting truth: progressives are behind the times.

To put it one way: when is the last time someone made a full-throated case to significantly increase the poverty line? Or to put another way my wife and accountant will not like: I should pay more in taxes.

The today and tomorrow of progressivism will be the central subjects of this blog. I seek to add my small bit to a thankfully growing conversation, and welcome your ideas and feedback.