Elizabeth Warren And The Four Corners Of American Politics - HuffPo

[WillyT]

Elizabeth Warren and the Four Corners of American Politics
Mike Lux - HuffPo
Posted: 01/07/2015 5:51 pm EST Updated: 01/07/2015 10:59 pm EST

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The last couple of days have been a provocative view of the near-term future of American politics. There are four major teams on the scene at the same time, coming from four different corners of the field, and they all have some amount of political juice. How they end up interacting and competing with each other will be the driving political story for quite a while into the future.

On the Republican side, there is the increasingly conservative -- but apparently never extreme enough -- establishment wing of the party led by Boehner and McConnell and the big business lobby, and there is the Tea Party anti-establishment wing. The establishment guys, pretty much all guys, have the upper hand for now but clearly got a little surprised by the strength of the anti-Boehner rebellion in the Speaker election. Knowing the strength of the Tea Party gang in primary election fights, they are a force to be reckoned with for the foreseeable future -- as evidenced by the fact that the Republican Party's establishment has moved so far to the right on most issues in the last five years. The establishment team certainly has embraced the Ayn Rand worldview so popular with the tea partiers, as evidenced by how on day one, they passed a rule that will probably result in cutting benefits and stealing from the disabled.

The biggest policy difference between the two wings of the Republicans is that the establishment wing invariably does whatever the big business lobby want them to do, even if it violates small government and free market principles -- note how the Wall Street provision snuck into December's budget bill that caused all the trouble allows more bailouts of the biggest banks' riskiest bets -- which isn't exactly Adam Smith's idea of free market economics. Tea Party types have been railing against these kinds of Wall Street bank bailouts since the last round of them in 2008. The biggest political difference is that the establishment will go along with the company line when push comes to shove, while the Tea Party still doesn't mind-blowing up Congress to get what they want.

The two wings of the Democratic Party are similarly the insiders and the populists. The difference between these two corners of the party was of course, also on display in the blow-up over the budget bill with that nasty Wall St bailout. However, there are more ugly policy fights coming soon with the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal/abomination being at the top of the list, and the Antonio Weiss nomination fight also in the queue.

The philosophical and message differences between the two wings of the party were also on stark display today at the AFL-CIO's Raising Wages Summit.

Representing the establishment point of view was Obama's Secretary of Labor, Tom Perez. I should just say at the outset of this discussion that Perez is actually a strong progressive and great friend of labor, in my view the best of Obama's Cabinet Secretaries, and he certainly gave a good speech extolling progressive values on jobs and wages. But because he does represent the administration, the message he gave was an establishment message: that because of Obama's great economic policies, the macro-economy is getting a lot better and things are looking up. He acknowledged that there was "progress yet to be made," but made the case that the economy is recovering strongly because of Obama's leadership.

Representing the populist progressive wing of the party was Elizabeth Warren, and while she gave props to the president's leadership on economic issues for the good things that are happening, she cast a starker picture for the bottom 90 percent of Americans income-wise:

Think about it this way: The stock market is soaring, and that's great if you have a pension or money in a mutual fund. But if you and your husband or wife are both working full-time, with kids in school, and you are among the half or so of all Americans who don't have any money in stocks,(ii) how does a booming stock market help you?

Corporate profits (iii) and GDP are up. But if you work at Walmart, and you are paid so little that you still need food stamps to put groceries on the table, what does more money in stockholders' pockets and an uptick in GDP do for you?

Unemployment numbers are dropping. But if you've got a part-time job and still can't find full-time work -- or if you've just given up because you can't find a good job to replace the one you had -- you are counted as part of that drop in unemployment,(iv) but how much is your economic situation improving?

Inflation rates are still low. But if you are young and starting out life with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt locked into high interest rates by Congress, unable to find a good job or save to buy a house, how are you benefiting from low inflation?

A lot of broad national economic statistics say our economy is getting better, and it is true that the economy overall is recovering from the terrible crash of 2008. But there have been deep structural changes in this economy, changes that have gone on for more than thirty years, changes that have cut out hard-working, middle class families from sharing in this overall growth.

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More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-lux/elizabeth-warren-and-the_b_6432426.html

[djean111]

1. Yes, Ms. Warren - you speak the truth.

Sometimes, when some Democrats point out that the stock market is doing just swell - I have to think that those Democrats must believe in that "trickle down" theory that they jeer at.

[Faryn Balyncd]

2. K and R

[pampango]

3. Elizabeth Warren "gave props to the president's leadership on economic issues for the good things

that are happening, she cast a starker picture for the bottom 90 percent of Americans income-wise ..." I am not sure that Obama would cast a different picture for the 90%.

"... the Ayn Rand worldview so popular with the tea partiers ..."

"The difference between these two corners of the (republican) party was of course, also on display in the blow-up over the budget bill with that nasty Wall St bailout. However, there are more ugly policy fights coming soon with the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal/abomination being at the top of the list, and the Antonio Weiss nomination fight also in the queue."

The areas of potential agreement between tea partiers and "the populist progressive wing of the (Democratic) party" seem from the article to be opposition to Wall Street bailouts, the TPP and the Weiss nomination.

So the areas of likely agreement are largely on a few economic issues though it leaves unaddressed the tea partiers' positions on other economic issues like progressive taxes, corporate regulation, the safety net and support for unions - all of which, I suspect, most of them would come out on the wrong side of.

So even on the broad view of economic issues we don't have much in common with them. Still we have a few issues on which we agree. The world of politics is one of strange bedfellows so there is no reason not to cooperate on those few issues.

This is a great article. Thanks for posting it, WillyT.

[WillyT]

4. You Are Quite Welcome !!!