Why Do Republicans Hate Working People So Much?

Why do the Republicans hate working Americans so much? And, why has President Obama consistently skipped over to their side by failing to stand up for the working classes as Democrats have historically done? And, why have the Congressional Democrats given the President a pass, except for a few?

David Michael Green calls Republicans—Regressives, and this agenda has persisted for over 30 years; therefore, this explains why those top 80% of income earners are suffering today.

Fareed Zakaria explains this very well. He said the biggest 50 factories are in China. The world’s tallest building towers in Dubai. The U.S. is losing patent applications, along with scholarly works published in scientific journals to China.

China is moving up the value chain, and working to become a world leader of medical research, among other successes. They are moving to become a worldwide game changer in a post-American world. Along with China, the wealth of other nations is expanding creating these growing nations as world economic centers.

Now, we are witnessing the bullying Regressives in Congress wanting significant cuts in the budget if the debt ceiling is to be raised. They have refused to consider any tax increases on the wealthy and their corporations, who rarely pay their tax rate anyway.

Most multi-national corporations pay less than you do. Many pay below 9%. Some pay zero percent in spite of huge profits.

The Regressives continue to say via their propagandistic message that a rise in taxes is a job killing action. They fail to say that when the nation taxed the wealthy at a 90%  rate, our real economy was at its best and when it was dropped to its lowest level, under LilboyBush, the real economy collapsed to its worst!!

Since the tax rates have been the lowest we have experienced an evermore increase in the numbers of unemployed, underemployed and those no longer looking. For every single available job in the country, there are five people applying for that job.

Since consumer spending makes up 70% of our GDP, the demand-side has shrunk. The wealthy have more expendable income than anyone else, yet their spending has failed to pull the country out of the recession. So much for tax cuts as job killers. What is the truth is that tax cuts are actually job-killers, and not the other way around.

The public sector makes up around 33% of GDP and the Regressives want cuts there, or to transform those jobs into private sector jobs as dictated by the corporate elite, such as the Koch brothers, who want to steal more government dollars for themselves.

This is what an Oligarchy is. Vladimir Putin did just what the Regressives want to do under his Communist Party reforms. Are the Regressives actually closet modern Communists?

The Regressives are Hooverites wanting to vacuum up all the public sector dollars into their private sector bank accounts.

The Regressives fail to say that the current debt-to-GDP is 90%, yet the Brits have theirs at 110%, and Japan’s debt-to-GDP is at 220% and continue to have a strong economy and can still borrow on the world market successfully in spite of this very high debt level.

The Regressives have failed to tell the American people that if the Bush tax cuts were eliminated the Treasury would find $3.9T more dollars over the next ten years in their account. This change would drop our debt to the bottom of the debtor-industrialized nations. And, if we don’t raise the debt ceiling, the nation’s economy would be placed at an extremely high risk level, as well as negatively affecting the rest of the world with a decline in demand, and higher borrowing rates—a possible doubling of rates. The increase would cost the U.S. $500B more and increase the debt-to-GDP by another 15%.

The Regressives must hate America, as well!

The U.S. has never defaulted on its debts. Congress has already mandated to cover its debts via the Constitution (14^th Amendment).

If Simpson-Bowles would be enacted, we would see a drop of our debt-to-GDP to 2%, then our debt level would drop to the second lowest debt-to-GDP in the world!!!!!!! [in spite of it being a Regressive's dream-come-true.]

Fareed Zakarea continued to report that the No-Tax moronic bullies who regurgitate nonsense have failed to say that closing the tax loophole gap and cutting of the deficit won’t do the fix. The Regressives say that closing the tax loopholes is a tax increase when actually loopholes are only “gift scams” given to the wealthy elite to avoid paying taxes.

The Regressives have failed to explain to those dumb Americans who proclaim they want government spending reduced receive public benefits in the form of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, GI benefits, supplemental health benefits, mortgage tax deductions, student loans or grants, energy assistance grants, and other health benefits, as well as other government subsides.

They have failed to say that 40% of the public sector unemployed are teachers, and that 500,000 of those who make up the public sector unemployed are not only teachers, but are fire and police workers, as well as librarians. Therefore, if cutting those jobs over the last three years has been good for the economy, then prove it!

James K. Galbraith wrote, “Social Security is NOT a government purchasing program. It therefore takes nothing directly from the private sector. What it does, is provide insurance:  it protects workers from poverty in old age, whether or not their families would otherwise be willing and able to support them. Along with Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security is a powerful protector of the entire working population—young or old.

It distributes purchasing power, in loose relation to past earnings, in a way that meets the basic needs of a larger number of Americans who would otherwise, in many millions of cases, be destitute or medically bankrupt.

The notion that cutting Social Security would help keep interest rates down is absurd because interest rates are set in a way that has no relationship at all to the scale of Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid.” (Galbraith)

The Regressives who want to raise the recipient age of Social Security have failed to say that by lowering the age of “access to Medicare would work quickly to rebalance the labor force, reduce unemployment and futile job searching among older workers while increasing job openings for the young. It is the application of common sense. And, unlike all the pressures to enact long-term cuts in these programs, it would help solve one of today’s important problems right away.” (Galbraith)

Galbraith continued to make the point that the President, who claims to be a member of the Democratic Party, has failed the following points:

"First, there is the claim that we face a fiscal crisis, which is a big untruth. 

Second, a concession in principle that we should deal with that crisis by enacting massive cuts in public services on one hand, and in vital social insurance programs on the other. This is an arbitrary cruelty.

Third, a refusal to stand on the strong ground of the Constitution, against those whose open and declared purpose is to tear that document and the public credit to shreds." (James K. Galbraith, from Alternet.org, "Deficit Predators: Everything You Need To Know About The Twisted, Dangerous Debt Ceiling Fight, 7-11-11.)

Paul Krugman wrote: "...voodoo economics has taken over the G.O.P.

Supply-side voodoo — which claims that tax cuts pay for themselves and/or that any rise in taxes would lead to economic collapse — has been a powerful force within the G.O.P. ever since Ronald Reagan embraced the concept of the Laffer curve. But the voodoo used to be contained. Reagan himself enacted significant tax increases, offsetting to a considerable extent his initial cuts.

Last year Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, asserted that the Bush tax cuts actually increased revenue — a claim completely at odds with the evidence — and also declared that this was “the view of virtually every Republican on that subject.”" ("Getting To Crazy", 7-14-11, NYT)

This is what we are dealing with today---sadly laughable, political manipulation by moronic Congressional lifers, such as Mitch-the Scarecrow (no brain)-McConnell wanting the golden parachute paid for by the taxpayers.

This is from Phil Davis's Istablog:

Deficit Deal Deception

Intro by Ilene at Phil's Stock World

Michael Hudson argues that there is no real need to raise the debt ceiling (below). Rather than slashing social security, medicare and other social support programs, we could cut spending that is funding our various wars, end Wall Street bailouts, claw back outrageous profits from fraudsters acting through the TBTF banks, and stop pandering to other special interest groups. We could raise taxes on the ultra-wealthy - the top 0.1% - those who measure their monthly income and capital gains (non income for tax purposes) in millions. But there is no political will, or big campaign contributors, that will support a real solution. The issue is another example of creating a crisis so that emergency measures can be rammed through à la Rahm Emanuel's famous statement about never letting a good crisis go to waste. 

As Jim Quinn of Burning Platform points out: "We will hit $20 trillion in debt by 2015. That is a lock. Total Federal government revenue today is $2.175 trillion. We spend approximately $1 trillion per year on our military related adventures, or 46% of our total revenue. If interest rates are 5% in 2015, we will spend $1 trillion on interest. If rates are 10%, we will spend $2 trillion on interest. 

"Do you get the picture? An unsustainable trend will not be sustained. We have two choices. We can proactively address the problem or just wait for the collapse of our economic system. This debt ceiling reality show is all the proof I need. Our leaders will choose to wait. It won’t be long." (THE SHOW MUST GO ON)

[Sign up for a free trial for Phil's Stock World here > ]

How much do we spend on military?  According tousgovermentspending.com, we spent an estimated 848.11 Bn in 2010. 

According to Warresters.com, we spend even more on military as a whole. Its numbers include past expenses:  "'Current military' includes Dept. of Defense ($653 billion), the military portion from other departments ($150 billion), and an additional $162 billion to supplement the Budget’s misleading and vast underestimate of only $38 billion for the 'war on terror.' 'Past military' represents veterans’ benefits plus 80% of the interest on the debt.* (*Analysts differ on how much of the debt stems from the military; other groups estimate 50% to 60%. We use 80% because we believe if there had been no military spending most (if not all) of the national debt would have been eliminated.)"

For 2009, Warresters calcuated: Total Outlays (Federal Funds): $2,650 billion, MILITARY: 54% and $1,449 billion, NON-MILITARY: 46% and $1,210 billion.

Obama’s Debt Ceiling Doublespeak

Courtesy of Michael Hudson

Video: youtu.be/z2uxb0oIfnE

Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay in Washington. And in Washington the drama over whether the United States Congress will raise the debt ceiling or not continues. The Republicans defend the need to cut spending and get government under control and the Democrats standing, defending the people’s social programs–at least that’s the theater that’s being played out. What is the reality? Well, for his take on all this, we’re now joined by Michael Hudson. Michael is a distinguished professor at the–distinguished research professor, I should say, at the University of Kansas City. He’s the author of Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire. And he joins us again from New York City. Thanks for joining us, Michael.

MICHAEL HUDSON, RESEARCH PROF., UMKC: Thank you, Paul.

JAY: So, what do you think? Good versus evil. We’re playing out the debt struggle and the debt ceiling issue. And if we don’t raise the debt ceiling, we’ll be in the apocalypse. What do you make of it all?

HUDSON: I think it’s evil working with evil. I think the whole argument in Congress is a charade that was pretty much set up two years ago, when the Obama administration first took office and Mr. Obama appointed the reduction commission of Republican Senator Simpson and Clinton manager Bowles. When Mr. Obama went on television two days ago, he said he’s hoping to reach a compromise, which is pretty much what this commission said. And the people he appointed to the commission to head it were the people who said, number one, cut back Social Security. If you have to choose between paying Social Security and Wall Street, pay our clients, Wall Street. And secondly, cut back Medicare. But most especially, cut back Medicaid to the poor. You have to give money to the job creators, mainly the financial managers who are closing down firms, downsizing, and outsizing–outsourcing on labor. They’re called job creators instead of–to the people who actually get work and spend money on goods and services, which is what’s keeping the market going in business.

JAY: Now, somebody who defends the Obama administration would probably say, number one, Obama was dealing with the political reality in America that public opinion and the press and the media were heavily on the side that government needs to be cut. And they would also probably make the argument that there are inefficiencies that could be cut. I mean, Obama did at least early on in his administration say–talk about the need for stimulus. So that certainly his waned. Do you think there’s any merit to some of that defense?

HUDSON: I think that words–Mr. Obama’s great with words. He says one thing, and he does the opposite. Here’s basically the charade that’s happening when he’s trying to be reasonable. In order for him to move way to the right and to continue the Bush administration policies, he needs the Republicans to move even further to the right. They have to be so extreme that they’re perceived as the crazies. And then Mr. Obama can say, look, they will give Mr. Obama room to move way to the right, because he’ll say, I’m not as crazy as Michelle Bachman. I’m not as crazy as Boehner. I’m not as crazy as the Republican leaders. But they were going to close down the government, and that would have really hurt us. And we have to–we do have to cut what’s inefficient. What’s inefficient? Paying for people on Medicaid. Got to cut it. What’s inefficient? Medicare. Got to cut it. What’s inefficient? Paying Social Security. What is efficient? Giving $13 trillion to Wall Street for a bailout. Now, how on earth can the administration say, in the last three years we have given $13 trillion to Wall Street, but then, in between 2040 and 2075, we may lose $1 trillion, no money for the people? That is absolutely crazy. So when we talk about public opinion, we’re talking not about public opinion that watches your Real News Network; we’re talking about the public opinion of Fox TV and sort of the echo chamber that says–that presents the financial sector as job creators rather than job destroyers.

JAY: Well, what would you think are the real repercussions if, let’s say, they don’t raise the debt ceiling now in August? Let’s say Obama calls the Republicans’ bluff. It seems to me it is quite a bit of a bluff, seeing as the US Chamber of Commerce has told the Republicans they have to vote in favor of raising the debt ceiling. It’s kind of hard to believe that in the long run the Republicans are going to defy the business and banking community. But let’s say they play this out and Obama says, okay, we’re not going to savage government spending the way you want us to, and if you want to not–if you want to force us into this quote-unquote “abyss”, we’ll go there because it’s on you. So what is the abyss? I mean, is this really such a serious issue?

HUDSON: It’s not about the abyss at all. It’s not about the debt ceiling. It’s about making an agreement now under an emergency conditions. You remember what Obama’s staff aide Rahm Emanuel said. He said a crisis is too important to waste. They’re using this crisis as a chance to ram through a financial policy, an anti-Medicare, anti-Medicaid, anti—selling out Social Security that they could never do under the normal course of things. They’re using this to stampede the Democrats.

JAY: Yeah, I understand the point. What I’m saying is is, you know, whether Obama would want an alternative policy or not. What if he says to Republicans, okay, do your worst, we’re not going to go down this road? What would be the repercussions of him saying–. I mean, I think the Republicans, personally, would more or less cave in, because they’re not going to defy the whole business community. But let’s say–. So, what happens? So they don’t raise the debt ceiling. So, what happens next?

HUDSON: Then, obviously, they have to cut back some kind of government spending. What are they going to cut back? They’re not going to cut back the war in Libya. They’re not, because that’s–.

JAY: They have to cut back because they can’t borrow more. That’s the point you’re making.

HUDSON: Right. They’re going to have to decide what to cut back. So they’re going to cut back the bone and they’re going to keep the fat, basically. They’re going to say–they’re going to try to panic the population into acquiescing in a Democratic Party sellout by cutting back payments to the people–Social Security, Medicare–while making sure that they pay the Pentagon, they pay the foreign aid, they pay Wall Street.

JAY: Yeah. But what–I hear you. But what I’m–I’m saying, what could be an alternative policy? For example, don’t raise the debt ceiling. Number two, raise taxes on the wealthy. Number three, cut back military spending. I mean, there are ways to do this without having to borrow more money, aren’t there?

HUDSON: Of course. There’s no need at all. Of course they’d–. First of all, the Federal Reserve can basically print money. And whether they count this as the debt or not, they can say this is off-balance-sheet activity. They can technically sell Treasury bonds to themselves and say this is–. They can do Enron-type accounting if they wanted to.

JAY: [crosstalk] probably is some of that going on anyway. But go on.

HUDSON: Of course they could cut back the fat. Of course what they should do is change the tax system. Of course they should get rid of the Bush tax cuts. And the one good thing in President Obama’s speech two days ago was he used the term spending on tax cuts. So that’s not the same thing as raising taxes. He said just cut spending by cutting spending on tax cuts for the financial sector, for the speculators who count all of their income that they get, billions of income, as capital gains, taxed at 15 percent instead of normal income at 35 percent. Let’s get rid of the tax loopholes that favor Wall Street.

JAY: I mean, this is, I guess, the point you were making at the beginning of this segment. Obama has bought into the only solution is some form of cutting. The alternative strategy’s not even being talked about. So of course he loses the battle of public opinion, because he’s not fighting it.

HUDSON: That’s correct. And that shows where his actual beliefs are. Lawyers very rarely understand economics anyway. But Mr. Obama has always known who has been contributing primarily to his political campaigns. We know where his loyalties lie now. And, basically, he promised change because that’s what people would vote for, and he delivered the change constituency to the campaign contributors...

*** 

Washington's Blog's also makes the point: 

S & P: America Could Default Even if Debt Ceiling is Raised

Knee-jerk conservatives may say, "yes, we have to slash all social support programs like unemployment benefits and food stamps".

Knee-jerk liberals might say "raise taxes instead of cutting any spending".

But the truth is that plugging the major holes in our economy is more important than either cutting spending or raising taxes.

And stopping bailouts and giveaways for the top .1% of the richest elite (which weaken rather than strengthen the economy, as shown here, here and here) and slashing spending on unnecessary imperial wars (which reduce rather than increase our national security, as demonstrated here and here) is what the budget really needs.

As I wrote last year:

Why aren't our government "leaders" talking about slashing the military-industrial complex, which is ruining our economy with unnecessary imperial adventures?

And why aren't any of our leaders talking about stopping the permanent bailouts for the financial giants who got us into this mess? And see this.

And why aren't they taking away the power to create credit from the private banking giants - which is costing our economy trillions of dollars (and is leading to adecrease in loans to the little guy) - and give it back to the states?

If we did these things, we wouldn't have to raise taxes or cut core services to the American people.

I pointed out the next month:

If there's any shortfall, all we have to do is claw back the ill-gotten gains from the fraudsters working for the too big to fails whose unlawful actions got us into this mess in the first place. See this, this, this, this and this.

***

Matt Taibbi agrees with Michael Hudson that the debt ceiling debate is a charade and that Obama's move to the right is a political strategy that has nothing to do with solving, let alone identifying, the real problems in our economy. 

Obama Doesn't Want a Progressive Deficit Deal

By Matt Taibbi of The Rolling Stone

Excerpts:

But what is becoming equally obvious, to both sides, is that the Obama White House is using this same artificial calamity to pitch its own increasingly rightward tilt to voters in advance of the 2012 elections.

It has been extremely interesting in the last weeks to see observers on both sides of the aisle make this point. Just yesterday, the inimitable New York Times conservative Ross Douthat listed Obama's not-so-secret rightward push as a the first in a list of reasons why the Republicans should dig in even more, instead of making a sensible deal:

Barack Obama wants a right-leaning deficit deal. For months, liberals have expressed frustration with the president’s deficit strategy. The White House made no effort to tie a debt ceiling vote to the extension of the Bush tax cuts last December. It pre-emptively conceded that any increase in the ceiling should be accompanied by spending cuts. And every time Republicans dug in their heels, the administration gave ground.

The not-so-secret secret is that the White House has given ground on purpose. Just as Republicans want to use the debt ceiling to make the president live with bigger spending cuts than he would otherwise support, Obama’s political team wants to use the leverage provided by those cra-a-a-zy Tea Partiers to make Democrats live with bigger spending cuts than they normally would support.

[...]

This is interesting because just last week, the liberal opposite of Douthat at the Times, Paul Krugman, came to the same conclusion:

It’s getting harder and harder to trust Mr. Obama’s motives in the budget fight, given the way his economic rhetoric has veered to the right. In fact, if all you did was listen to his speeches, you might conclude that he basically shares the G.O.P.’s diagnosis of what ails our economy and what should be done to fix it. And maybe that’s not a false impression; maybe it’s the simple truth.

[...]

The blindness of the DLC-era "Third Way" Democratic Party continues to be an astounding thing... They've abandoned the unions-and-jobs platform that was the party's anchor since Roosevelt, and the latest innovations all involve peeling back their own policy legacies from the 20th century. Obama's new plan, for instance, might involve slashing Medicare and Social Security under "pressure" from the Republicans.

Read more here: Obama Doesn't Want a Progressive Deficit Deal | Rolling Stone Politics | Taibblog | Matt Taibbi on Politics and the Economy.

From Paul Krugman:

As I pointed out yesterday, the same thing is true of the sticky-price CPI, which is arguably the conceptually closest thing to what we really mean by core inflation:

So, terrible growth prospects; low inflation; oh, and low interest rates, with no sign of the bond vigilantes. Ordinary macroeconomic analysis tells you very clearly what we should be doing: fiscal expansion and monetary expansion by any means we can manage; in fact, the case for a higher inflation target pops right out of just about any model capable of producing the kind of mess we’re in.

And what are we talking about in policy terms? Spending cuts and an end to monetary expansion.

I know the arguments — fear of invisible bond vigilantes, fear that 70s-style stagflation is just around the corner despite the absence of any evidence to that effect. But why do such arguments have so much traction, while everything economists have spent the last three generations learning is brushed aside?

One answer is that macroeconomics is hard; the idea that if families are tightening their belts, the government should do the same, is as deeply intuitive as it is deeply wrong.

But the susceptibility of politicians — including, alas, the president — and pundits to these wrong ideas demands a deeper explanation.

Mike Konczal ratchets up my rentier argument, arguing that what we’re seeing is

a wide refocusing of the mechanisms of our society towards the crucial obsession of oligarchs: wealth and income defense.

That has to be right. It doesn’t necessarily take the form of pure cynicism; it’s more a matter of the wealthy gravitating toward views of economic policy that make immediate sense in terms of their own interests, and politicians believing that only these views count as Serious because they’re the views of wealthy people.

But the upshot is terrible: more and more, this really does look like the Lesser Depression, a prolonged era of disastrous economic performance. And it’s entirely gratuitous.

Dr. Drew Weston illustrated how the people are being sold-out through the following lies. Dr. Weston wrote, " whatever ails you, (whether budget deficits, unemployment, or kidney failure), the solution is tax cuts for the rich. 

The second is the belief (this one true) that whatever ails them can be fixed within any two-year election cycle by an infusion of venture capital from the Chamber of Commerce, Wall Street, Big Oil, The Pharmaceutical lobby, or whatever interests could be served or threatened by some piece of legislation. These venture firms now require a controlling interest of 51% of an elected official (whether Democrat or Republican), but the futures market for political votes seems to be the only market that is working efficiently in America today.

And third, belief that defines the Republicans [Regressives] is that deficits present a grave threat to our way-of-life--except when Republicans are in power, at which point deficits are deficit-neutral. [Or, don't matter.] This deep and abiding concern with deficits (under Democratic administrations) stands in sharp contrast to their relative indifference to unemployment, which they consider a luxury good consumed by people with too much time on their hands (after all, their unemployed), whose "whining" is really annoying to lawmakers, lobbyists and Washington pundits who want to get on with the real business of cutting budgets, and who have more important things to worry about than people who, for God's Sake, can't even keep a job now, can they." ("The Three Wings of the Republican Party", Huffington Post, 6-19-11.)

President Obama has moved right, instead of left. He has moved to challenge the Regressives who are being pushed into the far-right, along with the Tea Party cra-zz-ies. The question will be how will Obama's base feel about being pushed into austerity when it is totally unnecessary? Will they support a candidate who wants to continue to squeeze them from all sides leaving them on the edge of bankruptcy, or squeezing newly graduating young workers sitting on the sidelines for years to come.

Many are saying this recovery from the abyss, which has been orchestrated by the Regressives for over 30 years, will remain damaged for several years to come. 

The world, as a whole, is engaged in an ever-increasing sovereign debt accumulation. It is at   its peak, as we speak.

In spite of simple solutions to ease the debt crisis here at home, President Obama is hell-bent on cutting the bone instead of the fat.

http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com

P.S.


Listen to the interview with Fareed Zakaria by Terry Gross on her Fresh Air program.

Dr. Drew Westen--The Three Wings of the Republican Party

From Huffington Post. 6-18-11. This is an extremely relevant piece. Read Drew Westen.

Why Washington is Talking about Deficits While the Rest of the Country is Talking About Jobs and the Shrinking Middle Class

Today's Republican Party has three wings: the psychiatric wing, the corporate wing, and the Democrats.

The first wing, the psychiatric wing, is defined by severe psychological and intellectual impairments, exemplified by the inability to read a birth certificate. Sarah Palin's recent foray into American history, replete with her description of Paul Revere as the man who rang alarms, bells, and buzzers to signal his support for the Second Amendment years before there was either a United States or a Bill of Rights, provides an example of the kind of "gaffe" that is, in fact, psychologically meaningful. This level of intellectual dysfunction, equally common in the pronouncements of Michelle Bachmann, once disqualified a candidate for high office. That was until the "lamestream media" decided to turn elections into reality shows, where the only real criterion is celebrity (defined as the state of being or becoming famous), and where commentators may poke occasional fun but no longer communicate to the public the seriousness of intellectual deficits in someone running for high office who would actually have to make decisions in which "facts" occasionally matter. (The dangerousness of that level of media indifference to reality should have been a lesson of George W. Bush's tenure in office, but things have sadly only gotten worse since then.)

This is the wing of the Republican Party that most endangers the party's chances to turn a dismal economy into an electoral victory in 2012, because it is so far to the right of mainstream America that you can see Russia from its porch (even if it locates that porch in Minnesota). The problem for the Republicans is that this wing of the party constitutes such a large percentage of GOP primary voters that it is hard to imagine any nominee emerging from the primaries without having had to produce so many general election campaign ads for the Democrats that President Obama may well defy political gravity and get re-elected no matter how high the unemployment rate drifts.

The second wing is the corporate wing, also known as the wing-tip wing. Once the home of moderate Republicans such as Bob Dole, this wing used to be slightly to the right of the American center. Its advocates held beliefs now seen as "quaint" by modern-day wing-tips (e.g., that humans evolved the same way other animals did, that a fertilized egg does not hold property rights any more than an omelet does, and that cutting the jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers, police, and firefighters does not reduce unemployment).

Today's wing-tips, in contrast, are defined by three articles of faith.

The first is that whatever ails you (whether budget deficits, unemployment, or kidney failure), the solution is tax cuts for the rich.

The second is the belief (this one true) that whatever ails them can be fixed within any two-year election cycle by an infusion of venture capital from the Chamber of Commerce, Wall Street, Big Oil, the Pharmaceutical lobby, or whosever interests could be served or threatened by some piece of legislation. These venture firms now require a controlling interest of 51 percent of an elected official (whether Republican or Democrat), but the futures market for political votes seems to be the only market that is working efficiently in America today. (Word has it that Larry Summers considers the deregulation of the commodities market for politicians one of his signal achievements, although to give credit where credit is due, he had an assist from the Roberts Court in its Citizens United ruling, which held that money need no longer be exchanged under the table, and reaffirmed that money is speech, making political payoffs a high form of rhetoric.)

The third belief that defines the wing-tips is that deficits present a grave threat to our way of life -- except when Republicans are in power, at which point deficits are deficit-neutral. This deep and abiding concern with deficits (under Democratic administrations) stands in sharp contrast to their relative indifference to unemployment, which they consider a luxury good consumed by people with too much time on their hands (after all, they're unemployed), whose "whining" is really annoying to lawmakers, lobbyists, and Washington pundits who want to get on with the real business of cutting budgets, and who have more important things to worry about than people who, for God's sake, can't even keep a job now, can they.

These are the Paul Ryan and John Boehner Republicans, whose virtue is that they seem genuinely to believe what they are paid to say. Some of them, like Ryan, can even do so with earnest looks on their faces (something Boehner has not mastered, even while smearing his mascara). This is an impressive feat, given that what they have been saying lately is that they would happily throw their own grandmothers under the bus, although they know this will never come to pass because they don't believe in public transportation (hence the absence of buses, ergo the safety of grandmothers).

The Wing of Icarus

And that brings us to the third wing of the Republican Party, the Democrats. Their standard-bearer, President Obama, has proven himself perhaps the strongest potential challenger to Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination if he decides to join the debates, having established his conservative bona fides on a wide range of social and economic issues:

• Deporting more immigrants and breaking up more families than George W. Bush (or to put it in more business-friendly language, increasing U.S. "exports" of poorly documented human capital).
• Coming out in support of expanded off-shoring drilling just before the BP catastrophe in the Gulf; repeatedly touting production of a mythical substance (seen only, legend has it, by industry executives) as "clean coal" (widely believed to be found in the Fountain of Youth); and calling for the building of more nuclear plants, which the Japanese have shown to be a safe complement to offshore drilling (perhaps with the hope that water contaminated with radioactive materials discharged into the ocean might prove useful as a dispersant for oil).
• Extending the "Hyde Amendment" to allow GOP lawmakers to exclude abortion coverage from even private health insurance.
• Cutting 120 billion in taxes for the rich while proposing billions in cuts to "entitlements," such as home heating subsidies to people who are poor or elderly.
• Making sure the nation's largest banks remained solvent so they could continue to foreclose on the homes of millions of Americans, whose tax dollars supported the multi-million-dollar bonuses of the executives who continue to refuse to renegotiate their mortgages.
• Saying virtually nothing as Republican governors and state legislators around the country attack organized labor (e.g., remaining almost entirely mum on the Wisconsin law stripping workers of the right to negotiate their contracts).

But that's just the president. We can't blame the party whose name he never utters for the actions or inactions of its titular leader, who prefers to remain "post-partisan."

So with nearly 15 million Americans unemployed and millions more working two and three jobs just to get by to feed their family, how are the Democrats saying they're going to solve the problems of ordinary people?

Consider the following five-point statement of conservative economic principles from ABC's This Week a couple of Sundays ago, which concisely describes what conservatives believe the Obama administration should do to solve our nation's economic ills, and how the Democrats responded to it:

• Our effort now ... should be to get the private sector, to help them stand up and lead the recovery. [T]he government is not the central driver of recovery.
• Now, we must live within our means.
• We've got to rely on government policies that are trying to leverage the private sector and give incentives to the private sector to be doing the growth. And ... so ... these tax cuts ... will continue over the rest of this year.
• Put in place this regulatory review in which all of the major agencies are going to go through, find any outmoded regulations, ones that are excessively costly for their benefits, find ways to streamline.
• The free-trade agreements, trying to increase exports, which are rising at 15 percent annual rates.

So there you have all the elements of the ineffectual conservative Republican response to a severe recession bordering on a Depression: let the private sector lead and the government step out of the way; cut the budget, exercise austerity, and "live within our means;" use tax cuts as the primary stimulus to get the economy moving again (because they worked so well under the Bush administration); eliminate excessive regulations on businesses, because we all know that excessive regulations are what threw us into the Great Recession and are what are hindering the business community's ability to create economic growth; and implement free-trade agreements so the sticky fingers of the invisible hand of capitalism can work its wonders across international borders, just as it has done for the millions of Americans who once had manufacturing jobs, but just don't understand the fine points of the theory of comparative advantage in economics (by which countries with the "comparative advantage" of having the 2/3 of the world's workers who are willing to work for less than $2/day get jobs as factories in the U.S. shut their doors).

Surely this was an easy target for a Democratic counter-attack. After all, this is Hoover economics, all of which has been thoroughly discredited, if not by the Great Depression, more recently by the Bush administration and the Great Recession that capped off that glorious eight-year period of economic growth during which we managed to double the national debt and crash the economy at the same time.

So what was the Democrats' response?

Actually, that was the Democrats' response. This statement of conservative economic principles was actually from the Chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisors, Austan Goolsby.

To his credit, Goolsby, one of the smartest, clearest-headed, plainest-speaking progressive economists around, looked very uncomfortable having to recite Hoover's plan for economic recovery (actually, Hoover was substantially more proactive and progressive in his vision as the economy sank into the abyss), and he announced his decision to resign the next day, I suspect out of a sense of futility and disgust that there's not much he can do with both of Uncle Sam's hands tied behind his back.

Who Misplaced the Democratic Party?

So how did we get to this point, where Democrats in Washington are looking increasingly difficult for the average American to distinguish from Republicans, as the two parties focus with equal fervor on how to find $50-60 billion in budget cuts after passing twice that amount in tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires and then wring their hands that the deficit is out of control ("there's gambling in this establishment!")?

At first it looked as if the Democrats were graciously going to accept Paul Ryan's gift (Medicare cuts that poll about as well as Wall Street bankers, particularly with a voting public of which 40 percent are age 55 and older, who punished the Democrats in large numbers in 2010 for helping finance health care reform with promises of cutting hundreds of billions of cuts in Medicare "waste." Ryan and his party's insistence on a draconian form of "austerity" for older voters, the majority of whom live on less than $20,000 a year, would have placed the differences between the parties in stark relief -- and might well have won the Democrats back the House. Now, however, for reasons that are impossible to fathom, Democrats are unilaterally disarming in advance of negotiations again, making clear that they plan to let the Republicans off the hook by "putting Medicare on the table," as if seniors will either understand or care which party seems to be selling them out more (or more efficiently) in what will become a he said-she said that is completely avoidable.

One could point to many factors that have led the Democrats to occupy the center-right wing of the GOP, but three are among the most important.

First, apologists for the president and the Democrats rightly claim that their hands are tied: the Republicans just won't let them pass any legislation that might move the economy forward, so their only tools are ineffectual ones such as tax cuts and exhortations to the business community to invest.

But what this account leaves out is that this state of affairs is entirely of the Democrats' creation. Had the White House and the supermajorities the president started out with for two years simply done what the voters asked them to do -- and what the House actually did do with remarkable speed in 2009 -- the Democrats' hands would not be tied today.

Voters were terrified when the president took office, and they were looking for him to do something dramatic -- anything -- that might turn things around, just as voters had done with FDR 75 years earlier. The economy was hemorrhaging ¾ of a million jobs a month, the Dow had dropped by over half, and credit was impossible to obtain.

Had the White House not chosen to cut the stimulus package almost in half from the size suggested by virtually all competent economists and then larded it up with $300 billion in tax cuts they already knew were inert because they had been the staple of Bush economics for the last eight years, and had the president simply foreshadowed to the American people that it might take two or three more shocks from the paddles of deficit spending to get the blood circulating again in an economy whose heart had stopped, the president and his party might not have led the average American to conclude (with a little help from some unanswered creative story-telling from the other side) that the stimulus was a failure (instead of having to argue the counterfactual that had they not half-stimulated the economy with their half-stimulus we would likely have gone into a second Great Depression).

Second, by running scared and adopting Republican talking points on economics, Democrats have created a self-fulfilling prophecy. Listening to the same pollster-industrial complex that advised them in 2002 to support George W. Bush's trillion-dollar unfunded bloodbath in Iraq, Democrats have joined with Republicans in offering massive giveaways to millionaires and billionaires and then telling working and middle class Americans that the sky is falling and we (they) have to tighten our (their) belts. Democrats inside the tightened beltway (with the exception of a strong contingent in the House and a dozen or two Senators) appear to have become convinced by the new conventional wisdom in Washington, that Americans aren't really concerned as much about jobs as they are about the deficit.

If you stop and think about it for a moment, that notion is absurd on the face of it. Is it really possible that Americans who have lost their jobs or fear losing them are more worried about an abstraction -- the budget deficit in Washington -- than about the realities of their lives -- that they face a budget deficit around their own kitchen table at the end of every month when they're trying to pay their rent or make their mortgage payment on their rapidly depreciating home?

And as it turns out, this view is as mistaken empirically as it is intuitively.

Can a pollster who believes or wants to show that Americans are as or more concerned about the national debt than jobs or the economic insecurity they face every day write questions in such a way as to get what he or she is looking for? Sure. Does this reflect what working and middle class Americans feel as they watch their economic security disappear? Not in a million years.

Consider the following statement about budget deficits, which began a message that beat a tough deficit-focused, budget-cutting message taken straight from the mouth of John Boehner with a large national sample by over 30 points with the general electorate and by an even larger margin with swing voters: "The best way to reduce the deficit is to put Americans back to work. There are 14 million Americans who've lost their jobs through no fault of their own, and they'd be happy to be paying taxes again instead of drawing unemployment insurance."

Put this way, there is nothing the other side can say that can beat this message. And that's on an issue -- budget deficits -- that's supposed to be the Achilles heel of Democrats and progressives.

What we have witnessed in the last several months is a phenomenon described in a classic book nearly 20 years ago by the political scientist John Zaller. What Zaller discovered is that public opinion tends to follow the lead of party leaders and pundits, as partisans turn to their own leaders and trusted sources for cues on what they should think and feel about the central questions of the day. Normally, when the two sides offer competing views, the 40-45 percent of voters on each side follow the lead of the "opinion leaders" on their side of the aisle.

But when leaders on one side are voicing a strong opinion -- in this case, the Republicans arguing that the sky is falling on the economy because of deficits, tax and spend liberalism, and over-regulation of business -- and the other side is either silent or echoing GOP talking points -- the average voter hears what sounds like a consensus and starts to mouth it.

Then pollsters start to pick up in their polls precisely the view they have been promulgating and elites have been putting into the minds and mouths of ordinary citizens, rendering elected officials all the more afraid of bucking what is now the conventional wisdom. And the result is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So now both the president and Congressional Democrats are making the same mistake Democrats chronically make: When the going gets rough, adopt GOP talking points. Unfortunately, that's bad politics and bad policy. It's bad politics because no one is going to believe that a Democrat is as serious as a Republican about cutting spending, especially the kind of "discretionary spending" (a term that if Frank Luntz didn't make it up, he should have) that disproportionately hits working and middle class people and the most vulnerable. It's bad policy because, as Nobel-Prize-winning economist after economist has told us, GOP plans for "economic growth" will kill hundreds of thousands of jobs, and if you really want to restore "business confidence," the best place to start is by putting Americans back to work and restoring consumer confidence.

You can't create robust growth by frightening or impoverishing everyone but the upper 1 percent, who spend the smallest percent of their income, if you want to sustain demand.

Americans need a choice again between two parties, not between two strains of Hoover Republicanism. The more Democrats offer them the latter, the more they will both sink the economy and blur any distinctions left between the parties. Frankly, if the question is, "Who can do the better job slashing programs to finance tax breaks for the rich?" I would vote Republican. If you want trickle down, vote for people who really believe in it, not the ones who say they believe in it when they are too frightened to say what they really believe.

Three Wings, One Air Supply

That brings us to the third reason so many Democrats have created a third wing of the Republican Party: because they're competing for the same corporate money, which leads them to support the same policies. The major difference between Republicans and Democrats is that virtually all of the Republicans are quite comfortable being bought because it fits their ideology, whereas most of the Democrats who are beholden to one industry or another are conflicted about it -- but not conflicted enough to pass a fair elections bill when they had the chance last year that might have taken away some of the advantages of incumbency but restored integrity to our electoral system.

From the standpoint of voters across the political spectrum, who overwhelmingly endorse statements such as, "It's time we returned to government of, by, and for the people, not government of, bought, and paid for by big corporations," or (in reference to the tax cuts to the rich), "In tough times like these, rich people ought to be giving to charity, not getting it," they have no idea where to turn, because neither party seems to be standing up anymore for working and middle class Americans, let alone for least fortunate among us. What they hear from Democrats are talking points like the following from a Senate press release, which is indistinguishable from the disingenuous pabulum coming from the other side, and does little more than reinforce the conservative economic message: "It's time for Republicans to join Democrats to cut spending in a smart, responsible way that reduces our deficit while creating American jobs, not destroying them."

In other words, let's cut our way to growth.

Somewhere Ronald Reagan is smiling.

The Democrats are at a crossroads. They can continue to populate the third wing of the Republican Party, fundamentally accepting the premises of Reagan's narrative about government the way Republicans from Eisenhower through Ford accepted the premises of Roosevelt's New Deal. If they choose that course, they will continue to marginalize, antagonize, and demoralize not only their base but the vast majority of swing voters, who don't give one whit about ideology but simply want someone to represent their interests and values -- most importantly, the idea that America ought to work again for people who work for a living.

Alternatively, they can return to progressive principles, starting by articulating for themselves as well as the American people what those principles are. (Personally, I have no idea what it means to be a Democrat anymore, other than to "talk about jobs," as if talking about them will somehow magically create them, while searching for compromises with Republicans at each successive "budget crisis" -- this time the debt ceiling -- that will endanger even more jobs.)

If they choose to endorse progressive principles again, they will need to hammer home the distinction between the party that cares first and foremost about working and middle class Americans, those who want to join the ranks of the shrinking middle class, and the small businesses that create two-thirds of all new private sector jobs for working Americans; and the party that cares first and foremost about the rich and well-connected, the big corporations that ship American jobs overseas and rake in massive profits without sharing that prosperity with their workers, and CEOs, Wall Street bankers, and their bloated bonuses.

That would be a change we can believe in. But the Democrats would have to mean it this time.

The Politics of the Tomato--Terry Gross on Fresh Air

"How Industrial Farming 'Destroyed' The Tasty Tomato"


Berry Estabrook speaks with Terry Gross on her program, Fresh Air.

Bill Maher's New Rules-If You Think The GOP is Crazy, Just Look At Rick Perry

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