Democrats to dominate for next 40 years

[paladin]

Do you think James Carville is right, wrong, or just an A-HOLE?

LINK

When President Barack Obama took office in January, Democratic pundit James Carville saw the end of Republican domination in Washington.

In his new book "40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation," Carville criticizes the "disastrous" Bush presidency, praises Obama's victory and shares his vision of a very blue future in American politics.

'40 More Years' Introduction

When historians or scientists look back over huge cataclysmic events, they generally find some harbinger that went unnoticed at the time.

There's always a warning. If you're a chaos theorist, it's the flapping of the proverbial butterfly's wings in New York that caused a tsunami in Hong Kong. A meteorologist might think of it in terms of a category five hurricane that began as a low-pressure area off the Cape Verde Islands on the African coast. Historians remember the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand as the spark for World War I.

When future historians begin to examine the absolutely disastrous events during the term of President Bush, from massive incompetence to blatant falsehoods and the trampling of the Constitution to the savaging of the good name of the United States around the world, they will look for one of these events.

The stealing of the election of 2000 in Florida is going to be a leading qualifier. But it isn't the one to focus on, for several reasons. (After all, there's really nothing that unusual in people resorting to the courts to try to win an election that they didn't win in the first place.)

Two events occurred within a sixty-day time frame that really set the stage for the current state of America and, more to the point, the sorry state of the Republican Party. The first was a memo written by Matthew Dowd in late November or early December of 2000. At the time, it probably escaped the majority of Republicans' notice, and it was certainly well under the Democratic and national radar.

The exact content and evidence he used is largely unknown. I certainly don't know what exactly was in it, and I don't know of anyone who'd let me borrow a copy as I was writing this book. The best authority on the content of the Matthew Dowd memo that I know of is Thomas Edsall, who wrote about it in Building Red America. Here's Edsall's summary of the momentous memo that sealed the fate of the Republicans in 2008 and beyond:

Dowd analyzed poll data and found that the percentage of voters who could be classified as genuinely "swing" or persuadable voters had shrunk from roughly 24 percent of the electorate, to 6 percent or less. This meant that developing governing and election strategies geared at building up turnout among base votes became much more important than developing governing and election strategies designed to appeal to swing, or middle-of-the-road, voters. Persuading a non-voting conservative, a regular listener to Rush Limbaugh, or a hunter determined to protect gun rights to register and get to the polls became much more important and more cost effective than going after the voter who is having trouble making up his mind as to which candidate to vote for. The result was the adoption of policies designed to please the base (tax cuts for the wealthy, restricting abortion, appointing very conservative judges, opposition to stem cell research) that ran counter to Bush's 2000 claim to be a "uniter, not a divider."

Essentially Dowd concluded that trying to win elections by appealing to people in the middle, the vaunted swing vote, was a waste of time. Dowd posited that the real way to win elections was to appeal to and mobilize base voters. In essence Dowd repackaged a strategy many other Republicans, including Reagan, had used before, playing to the base to get elected, and suggested taking it quite a ways further than the GOP had ever dreamed. The Bush team embraced Dowd's memo enthusiastically.

The Bush administration thoroughly and relentlessly implemented the recommendation of the Dowd memo. The result was the rise of the Christian right in U.S. politics and the establishment of a near neo-theocracy, and, of course, a disastrous war, among other things. That memo may well go down in history as one of the most important, influential political documents of the century (if anyone can find it).

Now we come to our second harbinger of disaster. The Bush administration, like a bunch of teenagers with a new car, was eager to take Dowd's strategy for a test drive as they came into office. They wanted to see how far from the middle, how distant from truth, they could go.

And here let's take a quick minute for Carville's story time. I've got a real good one, courtesy of my friend Terry McAuliffe, who's done exhaustive, and, I might add, unchallenged research on the subject of Republican falsehoods. I'll tell you this story because it gives us great insight into just how far they were willing to go and how great the consequences of such a comparatively small lie were.

When the Bush administration was first moving into the White House, doing whatever it is Republicans do to feel at home, someone decided the staff would claim that the "Clinton people" trashed the White House. Although I'm not prepared to name a suspect at this point in time, I might venture a general guess that the suspect's initials are Karl Rove.

It was a very involved process, putting out this rumor. The Bush people got creative, giving us an early inkling of that loose relationship with the truth we'd see so much of later on. They told everyone that these Clinton maniacs had removed all the "W" keys from the keyboards of the computer. (I have a lot of things in my closet, but no keyboard keys.) Then the Bush folks set about shopping this rumor to see if the press would bite, if the Democrats would protest, and generally just see how far they could take the strategy.

Ari Fleischer got out and said that the Bush administration staff would be "cataloging" the extensive vandalism that was being rumored of the Clinton staffers. The exact quote? As reported by the New York Post, Fleischer said, "What we are doing is cataloging [what] took place." Fleischer volunteered that the White House might itemize the cost of the pranks to taxpayers, but graciously conceded that the cataloging was "very informal -- we're going to note it and that's that. Nothing will ever come of it." The ease with which Republicans were able to feed fiction into the national news cycle told the White House that (a) they could say whatever they wanted and the press would not challenge them; (b) the Democrats were too confused or afraid to mount a vigorous defense; and (c) the public was willing to believe their lies. It wasn't until May that the media finally conceded to debunk the rumor. Republicans were so successful that their carefully crafted rumor about the Clinton staffers even resurfaced, no doubt by design, this year during the Obama administration transition. In the Christian Science Monitor, Jimmy Orr wrote on January 15, 2009, "Remember eight years ago when dozens of computer keyboards in the White House had the W keys removed?"

The Dowd memo and the story about the Clintons trashing the White House were the flapping of the butterfly's wings that caused the tsunami. They were the low-pressure depression of the Cape Verde Islands that caused a category five storm or the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. The Republicans had gotten away with stealing the election, and now they knew they could get away with a lot more.

"How did they get away with this?" It's the question I've been asked most frequently during the Bush era. It has many variations. I hear it every time I give a speech, of course, but also at the grocery store and in line at the movie theater. I can't even go into a men's bathroom without getting asked. People want to know, "Why did the American public let this happen?" "Why didn't the press do something?" And, of course, "Where were the Democrats?"

These pained and anguished cries have been sounding across this country for eight years. Now at last I have a good answer: They didn't get away with it. They've been caught red-handed, and the public has the whole thing figured out.

That's why on November 4, 2008, a majority of Americans, including those in Bush strongholds, elected Barack Obama president of the United States of America. This book is certainly about rapping Republicans for some of the things they "didn't get away with" and drawing attention to a few things they thought they got away with; but it is also, rather more important, about how Democrats and patriotic Americans can build a coalition to restore the United States to being a prosperous, just, and respected nation.

We'll spend some time on an autopsy of the Bush administration and the McCain campaign, reviewing the parade of horribles that is the policy platform of the contemporary Republican Party, before moving on to an examination of the policy ideas that we really do need in the United States. That means talking about the economy, the environment, energy independence, foreign policy, taxes, and health care.

The second part of the book explores the American political landscape and why it is that the Democrats won the 2008 election. The Republicans have been down before, and the Democrats have won Congress before, and we've still managed to lose. This time we strung our policies together into a coherent, appealing narrative. And we did it with the help of the historically diverse, historically Democratic young people who will be the foundation for a lasting Democratic majority.

Along the way, as I always do, I'll tell a few stories, rehash some old turf, and hopefully make a point or two.

Those of you who paid particular attention to the jacket noticed below my name a second name, that of Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza. She is known to me as Becky. There is an interesting story as to how Becky got to be on the jacket of this book. In the summer of 2005, Becky wrote a letter to my office asking for a job. She began as an intern that fall. Over the past four years she has worked with me on any number of projects here in the United States as well as in Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. When I sat down to do this book, I asked for her assistance. It struck me that if I was going to write a book at the age of 64 that focused on the youth vote, it just might be beneficial to ask someone young to give me a hand. It is a special bonus that she is a member of several rather important demographics that I myself cannot claim to represent -- she is, clearly, a young woman, and a Latina to boot. Becky did the research and she helped me assemble the entire book. In fact, she became so indispensable that I decided that I would put her name on the jacket with mine. Her input was particularly valuable in matters relating to technology, the Internet, and, of course, all things youth-related. Five campaigns, four continents, and one book later, Becky is now finishing her degree at Harvard.

[Raw Shark]

Do you think James Carville is right, wrong, or just an A-HOLE?

I think that he's right: The GOP has kind of fucked themselves, probably for decades, for the reasons listed.

If you think he's just an a-hole, which I'm presuming to mean "saying unkind things to hurt my feelings rather than presenting a valid point" since you contrast it with right and wrong, why don't you come out and say so, possibly with the reasoning behind your opinion, instead of being all chickenshit about it with the whole "full list of options with WHAT I THINK IN CAPS" bit?

[Thanas]

I don't thing that the republican's demise is certain. We all have heard that kind of talk before (permament republican majority, anyone?) and the GOP has not suffered a crushing defeat yet.

[Rochey]

Personaly, I doubt it. The Democrats could still fuck things up enough that the Republicans are able to grab the majority of votes again. While they certainly have a rather large hole they need to get themselves out of, I wouldn't count them as burried just yet.

[Patrick Degan]

It's way too early to make predictions of the GOP going the way of the Whigs. In any case, this piece does not lay out the points of argument which can be examined to test whether Carville's case is solid or not. It's just a book preface and doesn't really go into the meat of the subject.

[bobalot]

His argument is that the Republicans and their ideology has dominated politics for the last 40 years, and the demographics behind their base is shrinking.

He thinks that their ideology and religiosity has alienated an entire young generation.

[Steve]

If we do have a genuine shift in the political layout of America and not just a change of fortune, as has happened before (1920 for instance, where the Republicans demolished the Democratic Party thanks to various issues, including Wilson's dogmatic refusal to permit compromise on the GOP's desired reservations to the Versallies Treaty), it's probably more likely that the fracturing of the GOP factions becomes permanent with some of their sane adherents crossing party lines to the Democrats. This, of course, could also cause some internal difficulties for the Dems and may even lead to further alteration.

Attached to this possibility is the one that the GOP may become more of a regional party, depending on how their popularity in places like the Bible Belt and the rural West holds up. That, I think, may potentially hold some long-term dangers.

These are only possibilities, though. From time to time the political situation leads to one party or the other going into a nadir in terms of influence; events and new leadership eventually revitalize them.

[Star Empire]

I don’t think there is a chance in this world that the Democrats hold power for anywhere near that long. I don’t think they could have chosen a much worse time to wield so much power in the White House and Congress.

Government debt is skyrocketing and our treasuries are being sold for shorter and shorter durations and qualitative easing by the Fed (buying long term treasuries in the hope of keeping rates down) has proven to be a complete failure. We have kicked the debt can down the road for a long time (with both parties having majorities in Congress and the Presidency). I just don’t see the status quo lasting to even 2010, let alone 40 years and when things blow up, they’ll blow up hard and fast. The Democrats might be able to shift blame for a while, but I’ll be shocked if they do so enough to keep a majority in either house of Congress in 2012 (if they hold it in 2010).

This doesn’t mean the GOP will necessarily be the main beneficiary (although I don’t see them collapsing either). To many people, they’ve been discredited and I could see a 3rd party (and probably multiple parties for a period time) emerging in the mess.

[Darth Wong]

I don’t think there is a chance in this world that the Democrats hold power for anywhere near that long. I don’t think they could have chosen a much worse time to wield so much power in the White House and Congress.

Government debt is skyrocketing and our treasuries are being sold for shorter and shorter durations and qualitative easing by the Fed (buying long term treasuries in the hope of keeping rates down) has proven to be a complete failure. We have kicked the debt can down the road for a long time (with both parties having majorities in Congress and the Presidency). I just don’t see the status quo lasting to even 2010, let alone 40 years and when things blow up, they’ll blow up hard and fast. The Democrats might be able to shift blame for a while, but I’ll be shocked if they do so enough to keep a majority in either house of Congress in 2012 (if they hold it in 2010).

This doesn’t mean the GOP will necessarily be the main beneficiary (although I don’t see them collapsing either). To many people, they’ve been discredited and I could see a 3rd party (and probably multiple parties for a period time) emerging in the mess.

I think it's worth pointing out that as bleak as things sound, other countries have crawled out from under such messes before. Canada's debt:GDP ratio nearly hit 70% in the 1990s, but it's now below 30%. At its peak, the government was spending more than a third of each tax dollar on servicing the debt, but with some belt-tightening and, yes, tax increases, we climbed out of that hole.

[erik_t]

Indeed, I think it's an aberration for a developed country NOT to pull out from such danger. I grant that I am not an expert in such things, but I can't think of any such occurrence in a nation more developed than Weimar Germany or Argentina in the '80s.

[Thanas]

Given that the Weimar Republic was very advanced and certainly among the most advanced countries of Europe, that does not exactly fill me with confidence.

[erik_t]

Yeah, there's that slight difference that we're not coming off of a war that utterly decimated our society. I would think a man of historical insight would not overlook that. Perhaps it gets in the way of the panic; if so, I'm sorry, and you may return to your regularly scheduled disaster-porn.

[Thanas]

Yeah, there's that slight difference that we're not coming off of a war that utterly decimated our society. I would think a man of historical insight would not overlook that. Perhaps it gets in the way of the panic; if so, I'm sorry, and you may return to your regularly scheduled disaster-porn.

Please, I was mocking your viewpoint that the Weimar Republic fell because it was not developed enough.

Oh wait, you now have changed that point to "coming off a war that utterly decimated the society". Oh, that's what you mean by developed.

Never mind, carry on.

[erik_t]

I don't see how anyone could seriously argue that the Weimar Republic ever got out of governmental infancy. I wouldn't call the United States of 1790 fully "developed" either.

[Darth Wong]

Yeah, there's that slight difference that we're not coming off of a war that utterly decimated our society. I would think a man of historical insight would not overlook that. Perhaps it gets in the way of the panic; if so, I'm sorry, and you may return to your regularly scheduled disaster-porn.

Please, I was mocking your viewpoint that the Weimar Republic fell because it was not developed enough.

That seems like a strawman distortion to me. He pointed out that it appears that developed economies can easily weather this kind of economic crash. The Weimar Republic was subjected to something much worse than an economic crash, so your interjection of that precedent was arguably a red-herring.

[aerius]

I think it's worth pointing out that as bleak as things sound, other countries have crawled out from under such messes before. Canada's debt:GDP ratio nearly hit 70% in the 1990s, but it's now below 30%. At its peak, the government was spending more than a third of each tax dollar on servicing the debt, but with some belt-tightening and, yes, tax increases, we climbed out of that hole.

No doubt, but that requires a rational fiscal & economic policy to do so which we did under the previous government. Problem is the US doesn't have one and doesn't show any signs of getting one, in fact they're going backwards with their current policies & programs.

My feeling is that as the economy continues to worsen, people are going to start getting pretty frustrated & disillusioned with the government and make a change for the hell of it, even if it fucks things up even more.

[K. A. Pital]

Indeed, I think it's an aberration for a developed country NOT to pull out from such danger.

You meant "first world country". Yeah, as of now, a First World nation didn't utterly collapse or default. However, advanced nations collapsed and defaulted in the past, a point that cannot be overlooked as easy as you'd like it to. Size and power surely help, but they aren't the ultimate end of all debate on the issue.

[erik_t]

Indeed, I think it's an aberration for a developed country NOT to pull out from such danger.

You meant "first world country". Yeah, as of now, a First World nation didn't utterly collapse or default. However, advanced nations collapsed and defaulted in the past, a point that cannot be overlooked as easy as you'd like it to. Size and power surely help, but they aren't the ultimate end of all debate on the issue.

I did. The terms are synonymous to me.

[K. A. Pital]

The terms are synonymous to me.

Not all industrialized nations are First World, but that aside, even a First World nation with a large debt, quite surely can default under certain circumstances if there is additional economic pressure which does not allow for timely debt correction (that pressure can come in the form of rising fuel or food prices, for example) or additional political pressure, such as - rapid change of government, erosion of national confidence [in the government or governments] and ultimately, partial defaults of internal entities (like states inside the USA) can trigger a large default even in a nation like the USA.

Or am I wrong?

[Star Empire]

Note most of this post is coming from an American perspective, although it does apply to much of the world.

I hope we can crawl our way out, but I don’t see the political will to do the necessary until after the shit hits the fan.

There has got to be a lot of changes and I think we’re talking months or possibly a year or so at most to get serious about them (assuming we haven’t already crossed the event horizon, which I think is a distinct possibility). The first thing that needs to happen in my opinion is end the corruption. The rules keep being changed (the reordering of debt priority in the Chrysler bankruptcy as one recent example) and fraud is not being persecuted. If the private capital and foreign governments decides the game is rigged and withdraw their money from the system (this has already started), nothing the government can do will stop a massive collapse.

The banks are a big part of the problem and must be dealt with. We need a banking system, but we don’t need the current banks. Banks are legally supposed to be seized as soon as their liabilities are greater than their assets (this is designed to prevent the FDIC from having to pay off much if anything in most cases). Many of these huge national banks aren’t even holding on with their assets marked at almost 100% (in reality most probably aren’t worth half that). Through TARP, through AIG (which by paying full for CDS is essentially a backdoor way of supporting the banks, some of which aren’t even American), through the Fed accepting crap as collateral, we are throwing an ungodly amount of money at the blackhole that is the banks.

The banks absolutely have to be forced to come through and show their true balance sheets (nothing off the books and everything priced to the market (note the current so called “mark to market” doesn’t cover a lot of this)). Any bank that is insolvent has to be seized. This will hurt a lot and maybe lead to a collapse anyway, but it’s better than the one that will happen if the issue isn’t dealt with. If we need to, put this same money that is being thrown at the current big banks into regional ones with good balance sheets. At least then the money might do something useful rather than being used to plug up holes that are only getting bigger anyway.

Next we need to bring spending down to reasonable levels. I’m hesitant about higher taxes because it will hurt struggling businesses even more, but even saying that’s part of the solution, spending needs to be dropped dramatically. This means cuts in just about everything, including defense, Medicare, and Social Security.

I hope we can do all of this, but I just don’t see it happening. I personally think we’ll see a bond market dislocation within the next year (basically what happened to Iceland with everything falling apart is a very short amount of time). It will probably start in another country (Eastern Europe, Ireland, or Britain being most likely). This will hurt everyone (ironically, the US will likely still be better than most the world). Karl Denninger at the Market Ticker has been talking about all of this about 2 years and been scarily accurate with his predictions (and willing to admit when he has been wrong, which is a plus). His blog and forum at http://market-ticker.denninger.net/ has grown from a small niche site to a pretty large sight.

[Darth Wong]

The terms are synonymous to me.

Not all industrialized nations are First World, but that aside, even a First World nation with a large debt, quite surely can default under certain circumstances if there is additional economic pressure which does not allow for timely debt correction (that pressure can come in the form of rising fuel or food prices, for example) or additional political pressure, such as - rapid change of government, erosion of national confidence [in the government or governments] and ultimately, partial defaults of internal entities (like states inside the USA) can trigger a large default even in a nation like the USA.

Or am I wrong?

I'd imagine it's all a matter of ratios. A nation with a huge GDP can take on a correspondingly huge amount of debt and still be able to climb out, if it's willing to take the necessary measures (obviously, this is the real question).

This chart might be helpful:

Code: Select all

Ratio of External Debt to GDP for Top 10 Debtor Nations				

Rank   Country    External Debt          GDP     Ratio
1      USA              $12,250      $14,290       86%
2      UK               $10,450       $2,231      468%
3      France            $5,370       $2,097      256%
4      Germany           $4,489       $2,863      157%
5      Spain             $2,478       $1,378      180%
6      Netherlands       $2,277         $670      340%
7      Ireland           $1,841         $192      959%
8      Japan             $1,492       $4,348       34%
9      Switzerland       $1,340         $310      432%
10     Belgium           $1,313         $391      336%

Notes:
1) All figures are in billions of dollars
2) All figures taken from CIA World Factbook on May 25 2009

Seems to me that most of the countries on that list are much worse off than the US.

[K. A. Pital]

Seems to me that most of the countries on that list are much worse off than the US.

Certainly, a lot of other nations would probably default before the US does (actually, isn't Ireland already under a very real threat of default? I think it was in the news). Also, shouldn't there be total debt included, or is internal debt irrelevant for the purpose of determining whether a nation is close to default?

I also seem to gather that the UK's default risk has shot up dramatically during the crisis. If the UK or Ireland do default - even on a portion of their debt - it would dramatically change the beliefs in debt default of a First World government, and the consequences can bring not one treasury to a default....

[Darth Wong]

I know this is a really oversimplistic analogy, but individual households often manage to buy houses worth many times their own annual income, and are able to function despite that debt. Of course, as the ratio becomes sky-high, it can become a real problem; as you say, Ireland looks pretty bad. But their fiscal policy was apparently created by a bunch of drunkards

More seriously, I have to wonder how the fuck they could run up so much debt despite being such a small country, with such a small GDP. The city of Toronto alone has a GDP approaching that of Ireland.

[K. A. Pital]

The GDP is not everything there is. A nation with a smaller GDP, but a greater part of it in the state budget might be more fit to outlive a debt stress, because it has more assets out of it's GDP at the disposal of the government who is the ultimate debtor. The money generated in the private sector cannot be legally used for debt payments by the government.

Perhaps if a small nation dedicates a large swath of it's budget (or a disproportionately large one even, as I presume is the case with Ireland), to debt service payments, it can support a greater debt/GDP ratio. Likewise, if the US spends a small fraction of it's budget on debt, despite a favourable debt/GDP ratio, it would be hard pressed to make payments.

For example, US annual expenditures are 2,979,000.0, whereas the debt - 12,250,000, a ratio of 4,11. Germany's annual expenditures are 1,579,000.0, to 4,489,000 in debt, which gives us a 2,84 ratio. Despite Germany's debt to GDP ratio being worse than that of the US, Germany's ability to pay it's debts in the short term is greater than that of the U.S.A.

Unless the government just starts arbitrarily seizing industrial assets to pay for it's debts, the size of the GDP is not the only measure to consider. Ireland's default threat is quite real because it's budget is just a mere 110,800, whereas the debt is 1,841,000 - a ratio of ~16. It's also clear that the Irish state sector controls most of it's GDP so it can use it to concentrate resources on debt service payments, but it's still a very dire situation.

[Thanas]

That seems like a strawman distortion to me. He pointed out that it appears that developed economies can easily weather this kind of economic crash. The Weimar Republic was subjected to something much worse than an economic crash, so your interjection of that precedent was arguably a red-herring.

He clearly wrote "more developed nations than the Weimar Republic", making the development of a nation the indicator for the potential to weather it and then coming up that the WR fell because it was not developed enough.

So no, no red-herring here as far as I am concerned.