Tag Archives: Democrats

Denmark’s Thorning-Schmidt: Preview of a Hillary 1st term?

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I think it’s likely that the first term (and first re-election campaign) of Denmark’s first female Prime Minister, Social Democrat leader Helle Thorning-Schmidt, probably gives us a forecast of what a hypothetical first term for President Hillary Clinton would look like and how she would likely position herself during her re-election effort. You can make of that what you will, but I think it would prove to be more than a passing comparison between the two.

Here are some excerpts from an Irish Times report on the closing weeks of the incredibly close campaign for the 2015 Danish parliamentary elections on June 18:

Her centrist – some would say [market] liberal – reform drive has won over Denmark’s business leaders. Now she hopes to win over reform-weary voters with a promise of €5 billion in additional social spending.
[…]
she launched a publicity campaign appearing to take a tougher line on immigration. Her party hopes this will peel away voters from the traditionally anti-immigration Danish People’s Party. Posters went up around Danish cities with a smiling prime minister and statements such as “If you come to Denmark you should Work”.

Thorning-Schmidt has been praised by some Danes for her straight-talking on a longtime taboo issue. Others are uncertain whether she is trying to beat or join the People’s Party on immigration. Some left-wing Danes see a danger of fanning intolerance towards foreigners, whether eastern Europeans or asylum seekers.
[…]
Social Democrat strategists are confident voters will reward their immigration policy they believe is tough without being heartless.

“What we have said on immigration is clear and common sense,” said Niels Fuglsang, a Social Democrat election strategist. “We have tightened requirements of how many immigrants we have, so our society can absorb and handle them. And we ask of immigrants here nothing more than we ask of Danes – that they work and contribute to our society.”
[…]
“Helle has stolen two shiny weapons from her rivals: economic reform from the Liberals, immigration from the People’s Party,” said Annette Juhlers, a news anchor and political adviser. “She’s more confident recently and I see a sparkle in her eye. She’s fighting tough and I think she’s realised that she likes it.”

 
The 2015 Danish parliamentary elections are on my 15 elections in 2015 to watch list from January. I highlighted the political mainstreaming of the People’s Party anti-immigrant ideology as a continuing problem likely to worsen in this election.

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New Hampshire starts to feel the Bern

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The Wall Street Journal — reporting from Keene, New Hampshire (population 23,409 as of the 2010 Census) — “Bernie Sanders Draws Crowds With Matter-of-Fact Message”:

About 800 people squeezed into a rec center on a sunny afternoon to get a glimpse of Mr. Sanders as he made his case that America needs him in the White House.

With all the metal folding chairs taken, people stood against the walls for a speech and question-and-answer session that lasted more than an hour altogether.
[…]
The Sanders campaign has the feel of an underfunded startup coping with unanticipated demand. Almost as an afterthought midway through his speech, Mr. Sanders mentioned that people should take a look at his campaign website. An aide later grabbed a microphone and gave the crowed more explicit instructions, asking them to text the campaign for regular updates on Mr. Sanders’s activities.
[…]
In his speech, he called for a “Medicare-for-all” health-care system, free tuition at public colleges and universities, and a breakup of the big financial institutions.

 
The comparison to a “startup coping with unanticipated demand” interests me in light of my suggestion yesterday that his campaign might gain substantial traction by mimicking the growth strategy of “[s]uccessful internet apps and platforms [that] generally seem to rise initially through favorable, viral word-of-mouth from early users” rather than the “expensive ad buys” of a conventional modern candidacy or an established corporate behemoth. This is merely the latest big crowd being reported in New Hampshire (or Iowa).

Waiting for a “Disruptor” candidate

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The ill effects of big money’s domination of our political system are indeed multitudinous and heavy. But I’m not as pessimistic as you might think about the possibilities of reversing that trend.

True, there are candidates who simply don’t care about the corrupting and corrosive influence of the sea of campaign cash on American politics and governance. But many of the candidates who do care (or would at least prefer not to have to do so much fundraising) have also made themselves excessively dependent on “consultants” and “strategists.” These operatives literally get compensated based on the number and cost of television ads that run — and quite often nothing else. In other words, the more ads that run and the more they cost, the more the consultants and strategists get paid (to tell the candidate to run more ads or lose the race).

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This is actually one reason why the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign could be genuinely fascinating. He’s reportedly planning to rely far less heavily on TV advertising and use the money for things that are probably genuinely more productive for delivering votes. This also very likely means he can run a solid campaign with vastly less money. If he can win some states and put up a decent showing, it might encourage other Democratic candidates in future (at various levels of government) to ditch the failed media-consultant model. Already there have been some low-profile victories in recent non-presidential races for Dems who emphasized cheap ground game over costly TV ad wars.

There’s a model from outside politics that demonstrates the potential of eschewing the costly TV-oriented campaign model in favor of something else. Successful internet apps and platforms generally seem to rise initially through favorable, viral word-of-mouth from early users. Not from expensive ad buys. People try the thing, they like it, and they tell everyone else to get on board. Yes there’s also less likely to be barrages of attack ads from a rival company against the new product, but the main factor in boosting consumer adoption is the positive and enthusiastic word-of-mouth reviews. (Negative ads in politics, by the way, tend to depress turnout rather than persuading someone to switch from one candidate to another.)

Of course, the media networks that cash in big on these advertisement purchases won’t be happy if such a transformation occurs. But legacy media has less total control than they once did. I believe it’s easier than ever for a candidate to break through by other means and get their message out with the help of enthusiastic voters who like them.

So: which presidential candidate is going to be the first to try being a “disruptor” and ditch the media-consultant/ad-buy model? Which candidate will win on the strength of favorable word-of-mouth from voters meeting him/her in person, without omnipresent TV ad exposure?

The toxicity of expensive TV campaigns and the consultants who push them is a relatively small, fixable problem to tackle that also carries fairly large ramifications for our political system.

June 3, 2015 – Arsenal For Democracy 129

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Posted by Bill on behalf of the team.

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Topics: Why the media should take Bernie Sanders more seriously, the raid on FIFA, and remembering Beau Biden. People: Bill, Nate, guest UD alum Kevin. Produced: June 1st, 2015.

Discussion Points:

– Why is the media devoting negative coverage (or little coverage at all) to Bernie Sanders relative to many Republican presidential candidates this year?
– Why did the U.S. government finally step in on FIFA corruption?
– A few personal recollections about the late Beau Biden

Episode 129 (50 min):
AFD 129
(If you are unable to stream it in your browser on this page, try one of the subscription links below.)

Related Links/Stats

– Columbia Journalism Review: “Bernie Sanders can’t win”: Why the press loves to hate underdogs
– Media Matters: Daily Show Blasts Media’s Dismissive Coverage of Bernie Sanders
– Quinnipiac May 28, 2015 Poll
– NY Times: Democrats Seek a Richer Roster to Match G.O.P.
– Press Think: Campaign reporters: you are granted no “role in the process.” It is your powers against theirs.

Additional notes:
– On this episode, Bill mistakenly implied that Jay Rosen is affiliated with Columbia University. In fact, he is affiliated with New York University’s journalism school. We regret the error.
– This episode was recorded prior to the announcement of Sepp Blatter’s plans to resign in a few months.

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Free college AND a better Wall St? Sanders sees a way.

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Sanders-021507-18335- 0004Senator Bernie Sanders has unveiled his latest policy proposal as part of his Democratic presidential campaign: Free public college, funded via a new financial transactions tax to discourage damaging Wall Street speculation. It’s a step up from his earlier pre-campaign proposal of cutting tuition only in half. Here’s a summary of his new plan:

Annual tuition costs at those institutions add up to roughly $70 billion, according to a fact sheet from Sanders’ office. The proposed legislation would require the federal government to compensate for two-thirds of that sum, with the states making up the additional third.
[…]
The federal funding for Sanders’s proposal would come from a tax on financial transactions. Stock trades, bonds, and derivative trading would be taxed at rates of 0.5 percent, 0.1 percent, and 0.005 percent, respectively. Supporters of the financial transaction tax […] say it is not only a progressive way to raise revenue but would also discourage dangerous levels of Wall Street speculation.

A recent report from economist Joseph Stiglitz and the Roosevelt Institute, intended to provide a comprehensive framework for reworking American economic policy, endorsed a financial transaction tax as a way to “penalize short-term traders and incentivize longer holding periods, thus reducing instability and encouraging longer-term productive investment.”

 
Unfortunately perhaps the biggest pitfall of this plan — though it is (abstractly) an excellent starting point for a negotiation in Congress — is its dependence on state governments for a third of the funding. Low-cost public colleges and university educations are already being demolished in the name of dogmatic tax cuts. This plan depends on somehow convincing dozens of states not to slash funding / hike tuition and fees for their public colleges. But it’s a lot better than nothing.

Related reading on…

– How much would it cost to make public colleges free?
– Corporate borrowing diverted to shareholders, not investment
– Putting Finance Back in the Box
– Stock market speculation
– Billionaire stock speculation

April 29, 2015 – Arsenal For Democracy 125

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Topics: The emerging 2016 Republican presidential field and Hillary Clinton’s new campaign. People: Bill and Nate. Produced: April 27th, 2015.

Episode 125 (37 min):
AFD 125

Discussion points:

– Do any of these Republicans actually have a shot?
– Should Iraq still count against Hillary Clinton? Should she run to be Obama’s third term?

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“Polarization”

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It never ceases to amaze me how many current analyses of “polarization” between the parties in Congress skip over the multiple waves of party-switchers and solid-partisan district flips in the Solid South (and to a less noticeable extent the northeast in the opposite direction) from the late 1960s into the late 1990s.

Instead, the story is framed along the lines of “Oh my, where did this polarization come from? It just magically appeared! Why don’t they work together like they used to!”

Well, it was pretty easy to work across party lines when the Segregationist Pro-Corporate-Welfare Anti-Communist Democrats could vote together with the Ultra-Conservative Anti-Regulation Anti-Communist Republicans, while the liberal Democrats voted with the progressive Republicans.

Chart 2 at this link shows a pretty clear peak in party overlap on votes between the 1965 Civil Rights Act and the formal 1968 launch of the Republican Party’s Southern Strategy in Nixon’s first successful presidential campaign, which started to break and convert the Solid South from the Democrats to the Republicans.

DemocraticSolidSouth_1876-1964

In other words, before then, there was a phase where large sections of each party’s members of Congress actually probably belonged in the opposite party but were grouped for historical and geographical reasons (usually Civil War related) in the “wrong” party…and then that phase came to a crashing halt when Democrat Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and Republican Richard Nixon explicitly appealed to the angry southerners to leave the Democratic Party and join him. Voters and their Congressmen began switching in droves. As the Goldwater-Reagan wing gained control of the Republican Party from 1964 to 1980, in part on the strength of this reactionary influx in the Deep South, they in turn purged the moderate and liberal Republicans who represented the northern Lakes and New England states in the Senate and the northern cities in the House.

To explain shifts in voting behavior in Congress over the past 50 years, we need some way of visualizing ideological grouping distributions, not just separation of party affiliations, which in the past were often arbitrarily based in historic-geographic allegiances until more recently. (There are also geographic allegiances now, but it’s a very different kind.) It’s pretty hard to talk about “polarization” without acknowledging that the ideologies didn’t line up well with the party labels for quite a while in American history.

After all, cousins Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt more or less supported similar agendas as president, despite being from different parties, and they were each both warmly supported and deeply opposed by rival factions within their own parties. Conversely, progressive Governor Thomas E. Dewey and hardline conservative Senator Robert A. Taft both theoretically represented the Republican Party at the same time period but had almost polar opposite ideologies and issue positions.

There are no longer cross-party conservative coalitions and cross-party progressive coalitions in Congress. They have sorted almost entirely into their respective parties. Technically, that by definition means there’s “more” polarization in Congress, but only in a superficial sense. A more serious analysis would have to take into account whether moderate, conservative, and liberal members are voting less frequently together — or at least in combinations of two of the three — than they used to do, regardless of party label.

The bigger thing to worry about is not so much whether the parties have sorted themselves ideologically but how that development changes the role of rules and procedural hurdles in each chamber of Congress (and between chambers). If it’s now harder or easier for one particular ideological coalition to gain control of all power points in Congress by being in one party, instead of two, that changes what kind of proposed legislation makes it through to law.

In particular, I think it’s far more likely now that there will be no ideological overlap between the majority leadership and minority leadership — the people controlling the levers and valves on legislation — because the odds are more in favor of a liberal Democratic leadership facing off against a conservative Republican leadership, instead of liberals controlling both parties at the same time or conservatives controlling both parties at the same time, which was often a feature of mid-20th century Congress.