Registration is now open for Everyday Democracy’s The Moment is Now: National Convening, December 8-10, 2016 in Baltimore, Maryland. People will come together from across the country to think of dynamic ways to solve community problems and build racial equity.
Related to the conference is a video competition for young leaders (18-30). The deadline is October 17th, and the winners will receive a small grant and full all–expenses-paid scholarship to the convening.
I’m back from a great meeting in Chicago in which one theme was the need to have honest, productive conversations between people who might support Donald Trump and members or supporters of movements like Black Lives Matter. I’d note a major obstacle: the fact that working-class white people–the demographic core of Trump’s support–don’t have organizations that answer to them. As an illustration, consider that just 6 percent of adult Whites without college educations now belong to unions. That’s below the rate for college graduates, many of whom have other organizations behind them.
A lack of organization blocks or distorts difficult discussions, for these reasons:
In 1959, A. Philip Randolph helped found and led the Negro American Labor Council as a voice for civil rights within the labor movement. As he pressed and negotiated with his fellow labor leaders on matters of civil rights, he was giving their millions of White rank-and-file members the opportunity to discuss segregation and racism productively. Crucially, not only were the Sleeping Car Porters organized; so were the predominantly White autoworkers, steelworkers, and mineworkers. Randolph also had–and used–substantial leverage over a Democratic Party that was still dependent on working-class voters, White and Black.
I’m certainly not implying that everything went smoothly in those days and reached satisfactory conclusions, but Randolph at least had a strategy that made sense. In an era of niche celebrities, candidate- and donor-driven political parties, and weak civic institutions, that strategy looks much harder.
Counterargument: The Fraternal Order of Police is an organization. Its members, although diverse demographically and ideologically, need to be at the table for any discussion of racial justice. But the FOP has endorsed Trump; and in many local contexts, its spokespeople seem particularly unwilling to deliberate and negotiate. Hence being organized is not a path to productive conversations. … To which I’d respond: Privilege yields to political power. Only effective political action will bring a group like this to the table. But the police can come to the table because they are organized, and that creates a strategic opening that is absent when people with similar views aren’t organized. It also enables pressure to come from within. For instance, the association that represents 2,500 Black police officers in Philadelphia has called Trump an “outrageous bigot” even as the Philly FoP has endorsed him.
See also: why the white working class must organize.
According to Pew’s new survey, only about one third of Americans care “a great deal” about climate change. That might be a matter of values: some citizens may set a higher priority on liberty or growth than on environmental protection, or they may not trust the government plus scientists to protect the climate.
But the public is also divided on a key matter of fact. In reality, there is near-universal scientific consensus that humans cause global warming, but only 27% of Americans perceive that consensus, including just over half of liberal Democrats.
If I thought that scientists were divided on the basic question of whether humans cause climate change, I would be much less confident that the problem is worth combating.
Two fairly obvious but crucial lessons:
See also Five Strategies to Revive Civic Communication; science, democracy, and civic life.
If Hillary Clinton is elected in November, the parallels with the start of the George H.W. Bush Administration will be striking. That does not imply that Clinton’ presidency must follow the trajectory of his: history rarely echoes, and her luck as well as her personal qualities may prove different. But she will begin where he did.
Bush the Elder ran for president in 1980 as the favorite of his party. He had the longest resume, stood near the ideological center of the traditional GOP, had close ties with powerful leaders in business, government, and foreign capitals, and was the son of a US Senator. He lost to the insurgent Ronald Reagan, who represented “change.” Bush served loyally in the Reagan Administration and then ran to succeed his boss and uphold a legacy that he had not originally endorsed.
Hillary Rodham Clinton ran in 2008 as the favorite of her party, with a long resume, relationships comparable to Bush Senior’s, and the support of party regulars. She was the spouse of a former president and had helped him to define the ideological center of the New Democrats. She was defeated by an insurgent who represented “change,” but she then served loyally in his administration and is running to preserve his legacy.
Both candidates were distrusted by the ideological base of their party. Bush 41 had to beat Pat Buchanan in 1988. Buchanan turned out to represent a powerful strand in the future of the GOP. Bush promised “No new taxes” to satisfy his base. Clinton had to beat Bernie Sanders in 2016. The demographics of Sanders’ support suggest that he represents a major strand in the future of the Democratic Party. Clinton has made policy concessions to satisfy Sanders voters (and Black Lives Matter).
Mike Dukakis is a fine public servant and an exemplary person, but he ran a notably weak campaign against George H.W. Bush in 1988. Donald Trump cannot hold a candle to Gov. Dukakis as a human being, but Trump is also running a poor campaign.
Although both George H.W. Bush and HRC are capable, detail-oriented policymakers who are said to be impressive in private, neither has the kind of eloquence that leaves a mark on the language or memory. Bush Senior is known for “Read my lips” and “Message: I care.” I don’t think Hillary Clinton is yet associated with any particular phrases.
Bush 41 faced a Democratic Congress with formidable opposition tacticians, such as Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell. HRC is likely to face at least a Republican House in 2017, and probably a Republican Senate after 2018. In the face of congressional opposition, Bush achieved no changes in domestic policy other than a grand compromise on the budget that lost him the support of the Republican base. Clinton will have to negotiate budgets with the Republican House. Bush left a much bigger mark on foreign policy. Clinton has also demonstrated that she is willing to use executive power overseas. Both confront a war in and around Iraq
When Bush the Elder took office, an economic recovery was 7 years and three months old and had only 18 months left to run. When our next president takes the oath of office, the current recovery will be seven-and-a half years old and probably can’t last much longer. Both also inherit a party apparatus that is pretty tired after almost a decade in control of the executive branch.
Again, none of this implies or predicts that Clinton (assuming that she is elected) will follow the path of Bush Senior. New realities will confront her, and she has some freedom to act differently. But the parallels are a bit sobering and deserve some thought.
Jonathan Chait’s entire interview with the president is fascinating. It offers Obama’s perspective on his own presidency, which is not the objective reality, but it is full of insights.
For instance, Chait asks, “So it’s January 27, 2009, and you hear Boehner say he is against the stimulus. I’ve heard complaints from Republicans about what you’re like in these meetings. They say you’re didactic and you lecture. In a situation like that, are you trying to discuss Keynesian theory and saying, ‘Do you believe in stimulus?’ At what level is the discussion held?”
Obama first responds, “You know, the truth of the matter is, it’s hard for me to characterize myself. You’re probably better off talking to some staff members who sit in on these meetings.” He’s right about that: none of us can objectively assess how we appear in interactions with others, especially in tense and difficult situations. No one would accuse this president of being unprepared, uninformed, or intentionally offensive, but it’s possible that his professorial manner alienates some people who read him as acting superior. As he acknowledges, he’s not the one to judge that.
He does, however, review his good relationships with Republicans in the Illinois legislature. He believes his problem with Republicans in Washington is strategic rather than personal: they decided to block his entire agenda in 2009, both to reverse their electoral losses and to appease their base.
Then he gives a window into how the conversations would actually unfold:
Look, typically what would happen, certainly at the outset, it would be that I would say, “We’ve got a big problem: We’re losing 800,000 jobs a month. Every economist I’ve talked to, including Republican economists, thinks that we need to do a big stimulus, and I’m willing to work with you to figure out how this package looks.”
Note the combination of a policy argument–which could be considered didactic, although it’s also correct–followed by an invitation to discuss.
And typically, what you’d get would be, “Well, Mr. President, I’m not sure that this big spending approach is the right one, and families are tightening their belts right now, and I don’t hear a lot of my constituents saying that they want a bunch of big bureaucracies taking their hard-earned tax money and wasting it on a bunch of make-work projects around the country. So we think that government’s got to do that same thing that families do.” So you kind of hit that ideological wall. I’m sure that after about four or five of those sessions, at some point, I might say, “Look, guys, we have a history here dating back to the Great Depression,” and I might at that point try to introduce some strong policy arguments. What I can say unequivocally is that there has never been a time in which I did not say, “Look, you tell me how you want to do this. Give me a sense of how you want to approach it.”
A common criticism of the president is that he’s too cerebral; he doesn’t know how to appeal to self-interest and make a deal. He offers three responses to that charge.
First, Republicans did not think it was in their self-interest to negotiate at all. “During the health-care debate, you know, there was a point in time where, after having had multiple negotiations with [Iowa senator Chuck] Grassley … in exasperation I finally just said …, ‘Is there any form of health-care reform that you can support?’ and he shrugged and looked a little sheepish and said, ‘Probably not.'”
Second, Obama insists that he did work the phones. “It’s interesting, in 2011, when the left had really gotten irritated with me because of the budget negotiations, there was always this contrast between Obama and LBJ, who really worked Congress. But I tell you, those two weeks, that was full LBJ. I think [White House photographer] Pete Souza has a picture series of every meeting and phone call that I was making during the course of that, which is actually pretty fun to see.”
The president calling a Member of Congress on March 19, 2010
Third, a 21st century president just doesn’t have the bargaining tools that were available to an LBJ, not to mention an Abe Lincoln. “And one of the things that’s changed from the Johnson era obviously is I don’t have a postmaster job. … Good-government reforms have hamstrung an administration, which I think is for the most part for the best. But it means that what you’re really saying to them is, ‘This is the right thing to do and I’ll come to your fund-raiser in Podunk and I will make sure that I’ve got your back.'”
I’d add that not only patronage but the whole legislative process has changed in ways that reduce a president’s ability to deal transactionally with Members of Congress. Just to name one change, Congress now sends relatively few bills to the president, and they tend to be omnibus compromises that he more or less has to sign. Thus he can’t use a targeted veto threat to get a Member’s vote. Johnson received about eight times more bills from Congress than Obama gets.
The president is good at understanding and addressing differences of principle. For instance, “[Former congressman] Bart Stupak was a very sincere, pro-life legislator and a Democrat, a really good man who worked really hard with me to try to get to yes and ended up getting there, working along with Sister Carol [Keehan], the head of the Catholic hospitals, despite strong opposition from the Catholic bishops. So in some cases there really were legitimate difficulties, substantive issues that had to be worked through.”
The president has not been as successful at winning zero-sum negotiations, but I have often felt that he’s played a weak hand pretty well.