Robert Reich writing for Realclearpolitics today:
Nothing in politics is ever final. Democrats could still win back the white working class – putting together a huge coalition of the working class and poor, of whites, blacks, and Latinos, of everyone who has been shafted by the shift in wealth and power to the top. This would give Democrats the political clout to restructure the economy – rather than merely enact palliatives that papered over the increasing concentration of wealth and power in America. But to do this Democrats would have to stop obsessing over upper-income suburban swing voters, and end their financial dependence on big corporations, Wall Street, and the wealthy.
This is a great article, regrdless of whom you support in the primary wars. Reich takes a walk through recent history, pointing out that while the GOP catered to the racists starting with Nixon’s Southern Strategy and “silent majority”, it was also the Democrats who moved away from the working classes.
From pushing for free trade agreements to standing by while corporations further eroded unions, Democrats have increasingly moved away from the workers while obsessing about “soccer moms” in supposedly swing-county suburbs. Rather tellingly, he gives a personal account:
They [Bill Clinton and Obama] also stood by as corporations hammered trade unions, the backbone of the white working class. Clinton and Obama failed to reform labor laws to impose meaningful penalties on companies that violated them, or enable workers to form unions with a simple up-or-down votes.
I was there. In 1992, Bill Clinton promised such reform but once elected didn’t want to spend political capital on it. In 2008, Barack Obama made the same promise (remember the Employee Free Choice Act?) but never acted on it.
He notes that, partly as a result of these policies or standing aside and letting corporations get away with what they have, union membership fell from 22% in 1992 to 12% today. Meanwhile, corporations have gotten bigger and their profits continue to soar.
Reich also looks to campaign contributions, pointing out that since the 1980s, Democrats became more and more financially dependent on Wall Street and corporate cash. This is reinforced by a piece in Politico today about Goldman Sachs throwing around campaign cash, with almost $800,000 spent so far:
And the firm has a long alliance with Democrat Hillary Clinton dating back to her Senate days. Goldman Sachs gave $169,850 to Clinton’s presidential campaign and super PAC, according to CRP’s analysis. The bank doled out $675,000 in speaking fees to Clinton after she left office.
Reich argues that this combination has led Democrats away from the working class and has put the wealthy in the driver’s seat.
Which gets me to thinking about 1968. I was too young to remember the year—my first political memories are the Watergate hearings interrupting morning cartoons—but I’ve reflected on what might have been for some time. Bobby Kennedy’s death and Nixon’s victory changed the Democratic Party—it took us off the path we had been on from the Progressive Party to the New Deal to the Great Society, and put us on the path that Reich outlines.
In another diary, I quoted RFK’s speech he gave to journlists in Oregon from April,1968:
“We cannot continue to deny and postpone the demands of our own people, while spending billions in the name of freedom elsewhere around the globe. No nation can exert greater influence or power in the world than it can exercise over the streets of its own capital, and I think we have to recognize that as well.No government can sustain international law and order unless it can do so also at home. No country can lead the fight for social justice unless its commitment to its own people is credible and determined. Unless it seeks jobs and not the dole for its men. Unless it feels anguish as long as any of its children are hungry. Unless it believes in opportunity for all of its citizens, all across this land.
Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not beyond our control. Alfred, Lord Tennyson once wrote:
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes:
the slow moon climbs:
the deep Moans round with many voices.
Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.I come to you today to say that we can build a new and better nation. I say we can do so, that we must do so, and that we will do so.”
RFK was not without his warts, but his economic policies were firmly set on establishing great justice and equality for minorities, the poor and the working classes. Terrence Paupp, of the Council of Hemispheric Affairs and a frequent writer on human rights nd peace, wrote in his book, Robert F. Kennedy in the Stream of History (this is a hand-jam and not a linkable source):
In short, America’s economic catastrophe of 2008 could have been avoided. It was not inevtable. It was not a consequence of the so-called “natural evolution of capitalism.” In fact, to argue that “had the wealth been more evenly distributed” is to make the argument that if Robert Kennedy’s commitment to invest in the poor, wipe out the ghettos, raise wages and the minimum wage, as well as spur job creation through public and private investment had been actively pursued as a matter of public policy, then a different financial, sociala nd political environment in the US would have emerged. From this analysis it then follows that Robert Kennedy’s social and economic policy prescriptions for advancing the interests and well-being of America’s workers, the poor, the young, women and minorities would have likely averted the systemic practices which led to the financial crisis of 2008 is not a counter-factual argument. Rather, the argument has now become what amounts to a demonstrable, objective and evidentiary fact that has been born out by history and experience—not to mention the conomic data on growing disparities between classes and a worsening of economic indicators pointing to growing inequality….
Robert Kennedy understood this reality. Those who came after him in the Washington power structure did not understand it or failed to heed the warning signs. In either case, what is indisputable is that attempts to depoliticize distributional issues by attempting to rely on markets could never work. In 1968, both Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King knew that distributional issues were both moral and political issues that required democratic debate, citizen involvement and a great balance between the forces of private wealth and public interest. (Emphasis in original).
For me, this election is about geting back there—to the vision RFK had for the country and its future. Returning to the policies of the 1990s just won’t do it, and neither will maintaining the status quo. Only by rolling back the Reagan-era mentality about government, race, unions and economic well-being based on the markets can we return to the path we departed from in 1968.
Peace