Two articles on
TomPaine.com have me feeling more excited than usual. Why? Because they have excellent points about how we could begin to regain our lost footing. One provides an example from Washington state, where a Democrat was able to win over a conservative, rural/suburban voting district to defeat a religious Republican incumbent. The other makes an excellent case for a radical change to our tax code that would simultaneously be more progressive and better for the economy, while simultaneously gutting income tax for all but the most wealthy. One is about tactics; the other, about an issue that could provide a huge bounty for us.
Details after the jump....
Sandeep Kaushik, staff writer for Seattle's indie tabloid
The Stranger, rejects many of the same arguments we Kossacks were using after the election--we don't need to abandon centrists, nor our progessive base, nor gays and lesbians, nor abortion. Instead, Kaushik argues
in this article that we need instead follow the example of Derek Kilmer, who was able to defeat Lois McMahan, a religious conservative incument, and thus helped strengthen the Democratic Party in the Washington legislature:
[Kilmer] avoided ideological labels, but he put forward a positive message of progressive change, in the best sense of the term. The gospel according to Kilmer was about strengthening the community and its families---through economic development, infrastructure improvements, taking care of the elderly. He broadened his base by talking about boring bread-and-butter stuff. It just so happens, though, that his voters considered boring bread-and-butter stuff to be relevant and important: job creation, transportation (residents of his district have long commutes on congested roads), education, health care.
...
What Kilmer's success tells me is that the bright lights of the liberal commentariat are going at the problem wrong. They are setting up false dichotomies: left vs. center, issues vs. values, substance vs. vision, realism vs. idealism. In the you-can't-run-and-hide world of retail politics in non-urban America---in Derek Kilmer's world---these distinctions don't apply. It is not that they can be integrated into a compelling, distinctly progressive, message. It is that they have to be.
Kaushik goes on to quote figures from The Center for a New American Dream which indicate that there is a huge opportunity for us in addressing a major problem in the workforce which has yet to be touched upon. To wit, a substantial majority of people feel that they are too preoccupied with money and not getting to spend enough time with family, friends, community, and the intangibles that lead to a greater quality of life. So while economic issues matter, so does free time--and increasingly we are losing free time in the struggle to make ends meet and to get ahead. As Kaushik summarizes, "There is the potential for a family and community agenda that idealistic Deaniacs and Clintonian realists might agree on: a living wage, restricting mandatory overtime, paid family leave, reasonable vacation time."
I could certainly sign up for that program; and I wager most of us would, too.
I could also sign up for the program that Patrick Doherty wrote in his latest Quo Vadis column. Here, Doherty argues that we are still presenting policy which presumes a status quo that has changed radically over the past few decades. In Doherty's view, the biggest problems are:
- Most of our domestic economic activity is driven by wealth transfer from the poor and middle class to the rich, and by debt in both public and private sectors; and
- A dependence on oil which not only risks environmental disaster but also compromises our ability to make rational, coherent foreign policy.
Doherty points out that a key to our current situation is in how we handle taxation, and that income tax--which was more feasible when America was expanding--is in itself a problem, not a solution:
By making labor artificially expensive, the employer, who is seeking to maximize profits, will be able to hire fewer workers for the same price. To make matters worse, by getting revenue from wages, the government is short-circuiting the power of the market, distorting it by weakening consumer power. With cheaper labor overseas, business strategies based on mass consumption will find it more profitable to relocate. Band-Aid measures to keep industries in the United States that use income tax revenue to subsidize corporations directly---through tax breaks or through subsidized natural resource pricing---merely corrupt the market, the government and the environment.
America's post-war economy is clearly not dead; it's pathological--and that is worse. Finding better social safety nets is foolish if the majority of Americans will need them. Promoting democracy abroad with millions of dollars is useless if oil is corrupting governments with billions. Democrats need a plan for overhauling our market economy so that it is aligned in a positive relationship with our social and strategic objectives. The time for tweaking is past.
So how do you tie this all together? As Doherty sees it, if we abandon income taxes on all but the most wealthy, and replace it with taxes on resource consumption--especially energy--we will have an incentive to develop a sustainable, environmentally friendly economy. It also leaves the Republicans with the burden of the decaying status quo, while re-establishing us as the party of vision and progress.
What do we have to lose? Only the chains of dead policy.