This Is Why We Don't Have Nice Things

Every now and then I come across a piece of punditry that's just so amazingly bad and mendacious that it really bears breaking down on a line-by-line level. So that's what we're going to do with Dougles Schoen's "Why Democrats Need Wall Street" column in Tuesday's New York Times.  Now, before we get started, it's important to note that Dougy was a pollster for Bill Clinton from 1994-2000, so he has something of vested interest in making sure the strategy his bossq implemented doesn't look so horrible.He starts off with 

"Many of the most prominent voices in the Democratic Party, led by Bernie Sanders, are advocating wealth redistribution through higher taxes and Medicare for all, and demonizing banks and Wall Street.
Memories in politics are short, but those policies are vastly different from the program of the party’s traditional center-left coalition. Under Bill Clinton, that coalition balanced the budget, teacknowledged the limits of government and protected the essential programs that make up the social safety net."

It's nice that right from the start we're already pretending that the whole Democratic Party structure is moving in the direction of Bernie Sanders' populism.  And sure, he has Elizabeth Warren and maybe a few others on his side, namely a bunch of people looking to be President in three years and are covering their asses now by co-sponsoring his Medicare For All bill, but to act like the DNC or the  party leadership in Congress like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have any interest in moving away from the holy "center-left" coalition is just laughable.

The other bit of comedy comes in acting like the this is somehow violating Democratic "tradition;" a tradition which is barely over thirty-years-old.  The Clintons and their ghouls all sprang from something called the Democratic Leadership Council which formed in the wake of the 1984 Presidential election and the party's second loss to Ronald Reagan.  Their strategy was to move the Party away from the working class and make it more appealing to Wall Street and other donors with lots of cash on hand.  And hey, it worked, didn't it?

Anyway, back to Schoen:

"As the party has left behind that version of liberalism, it has also found its way to its weakest electoral position — nationally and at the state level — since the 1920s. Hillary Clinton’s lurch to the left probably cost her key Midwestern states that Barack Obama had won twice and led to the election of Donald Trump."

This is really where the column makes the jump from your average bullshit punditry to some truly artistic levels of outright fuckery.  First off, Schoen just glides over the fact that the Democratic party lost Congress and the majority of governorships and state legislatures- that weak electoral position- entirely during the Obama Presidency.  You know, the same Obama who Wall Street gave more money to in both of his Presidential Elections than his supposedly more business friendly Republican opponents.  Also the same Obama whose Attorney General confirmed that they were intentionally not arresting or prosecuting Wall Street for their litany of criminal acts in the lead-up to the financial crisis of 2007-08 and who threw trillions upon trillions of dollars at the banks through whatever bailout method he could find.  Yeah, that's totally the actions of a Party moving away from acting in the interests of Wall Street, sure.

Oh, and I'm pretty sure that Clinton's loss of key Midwestern states had more to do with not even bothering to campaign in them once she secured the nomination but, I don't get paid for this so what would I know.

Speaking of, here's Schoen's primary reason why Democrats should snuggle up closely to the Vampire Squids:

"Democrats should keep ties with Wall Street for several reasons. The first is an ugly fact of politics: money. Maintaining ties to Wall Street makes economic sense for Democrats and keeps their coffers full.
In the 2016 election, the Center for Responsive Politics reports, employees and companies in the securities and investment industry donated more than $63 million to the Democratic Party."

And that, right there, is the core of the entire piece: politics is a job and we all need to get paid.  The idea that we should change our political system to one that eliminates or at the very least mitigates the influence of money in our political system is never even considered in the column mainly because, if it was, Schoen would have to address the overwhelming majority of people who want nothing money to have as little to do with our politics as possible.  One poll has 78% of the country saying that we need new laws limiting the influence of money.  Think about that, in a country as polarized as this one, you still get eight out of ten people across the political spectrum all agree on that one key fact.  That same pole shows 81% of Democrats saying they support their elected officials working across the aisle to come up with legislation to that effect, with 79% of Republican voters saying the same thing.  

You would think that someone whose literal job is to collect and analyze the data on political and ideological trends of the voting public would see that massive, bi-partisan- and correct -suspicion about money and its corrupting influence on our political system as something of a hint that advocating for its continued prominence is something of a liability.  You might also think that, in the wake of the DNC having its worst fundraising year since 2003 mainly because there are so many voters refusing to give the Party money precisely because it refusing to turn away from the direction Schoen is advocating for, would be a hint that they shouldn't fucking do that anymore.  

Oh well; back to the party:

"If voters really hated ties to Wall Street and financial elites, Republicans would not enjoy such a commanding electoral position — or have elected a New York plutocrat president. Most voters’ major problems with President Trump stem from his performance, not from his wealth or connections to Wall Street."

This would be a real solid stumper and excellent point if it wasn't so busy ignoring literally everything about how Republicans work to win elections.  I've gone over the Southern Strategy so many times even I'm kind of sick of doing it, but, really, it's easy to think of the Republican strategy as having three main pillars: stoke as much racial/cultural resentment as humanly possible (the "Merry Christmas, not Happy Holidays" or whatever other Judeo-Christian values nonsense is in this season), voter suppression like the voter I.D. laws that by sheer coincidence keep poor minorities from voting Democrat and keeps the turn out favorably low, and finally, the grand American tradition of gerrymandering.  As far as Trump goes, his connections to Wall Street mattered far less to his base than his appeal to their good ol'-fashioned racism.


And now, one of my absolute favorite passages:

"A second reason Democrats should keep ties with Wall Street: Despite what the Democratic left says, America is a center-right, pro-capitalist nation. A January Gallup poll found that moderates and conservatives make up almost 70 percent of the country, while only 25 percent of voters identify as liberal. Even in May 2016, when Senator Sanders made redistribution a central part of his platform, Gallup found that only about 35 percent of Americans had a positive image of socialism, compared with 60 percent with a positive view of capitalism."

The whole "Americans identify has conservative" trope is one of my favorites in political hackery precisely because it such a naked ploy to ignore actual policies the public supports.  Let's take regulation, as an example.  In a poll released this year, Americans for Financial Reform found that 70% of Independents and 53% of Republicans felt Wall Street should be more tightly regulated.  The same poll also found that 90% of Independents and 87% of Republicans think it's important to regulate Wall Street activities.  Oh, and Medicare For All? That's at 60%.  Tuition-free college is at 62%.  Higher taxes for the rich and corporations? Those poll at 76% and 52% support, respectively.  So yeah, Americans may not like the label of Socialism, but they're pretty fond of the expanded social policies, higher taxes on the richest people, and tighter regulations of businesses.  Point is, there's no way you can look at those policy preferences and say that the American public is of an overwhelmingly conservative mindset when it comes to economic and social policies.  In the 90's and early 2000's, I can see Schoen and his ilk easily getting away with this kind of tactic because no one could easily disprove what they were saying.  But now, in the Google era?  That he's still trotting out this shit when it takes all of five minutes to get a full, comprehensive rebuttal is just insulting.

Moving on:

"Third, it is hypocritical for Democrats to maintain ties to Silicon Valley and then turn their backs on the very people who help finance its work. The financial industry brings to market the world’s most innovate products and platforms that expand the economy and create jobs."

Schoen actually stumbles onto a solid point here, so, good for him.  I think it merits a participation award, even.  To the core of his point, though, I will say that given the rampant racism, sexism, and massive invasions of privacy perpetrated by the tech industry, the easiest way out of this conundrum is to cut ties with both of those toxic industries and hold them to account.  Pretty simple, when you think about it.

Next:

"Fourth, demonizing Wall Street does nothing to bridge the widening gaps in our country. Wall Street has its flaws and abuses, which were addressed in part by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. And yes, the American people are certainly hostile to and suspicious of Wall Street. But using this suspicion and hostility as the organizing principle for a major political party will consign Democrats to permanent minority status. 

Here’s what the Democrats need to do instead: develop a set of pro-growth, inclusive economic policies. Democratic leaders must prioritize entrepreneurship, small-business growth and the expansion of job-training and retraining programs."

You can really see Schoen running out of rhetorical thread here, since his main argument in the top paragraph boils down to "Yes, Wall Street has done bad things, which we kinda-sorta already punished them for.  And yes, most people still hate them.  But playing to that majority opinion will only make you unpopular, so there."  Also, the Democrats already have a plan that follows his whole thing about prioritizing entrepreneurship etc etc, it's called "A Better Deal."  That Schoen has apparently forgotten or never even knew that the Party already did the thing he wanted them to speaks for itself in how successful they would be in pursuing that path.

And now, the beginning of the home stretch:

"American leadership in finance will make it possible for our country to invest as much as $1 trillion in infrastructure, extend health care access to every American at an affordable rate and lift the 76 million Americans who are barely surviving financially, as reported in May 2016 by the Federal Reserve, into the middle class. 

The Democrats need to partner with the financial community on these issues. Most important, the Democrats have simply had an ineffective, negative and coercive economic message. Advocacy of a $15 minimum wage and further banking regulation does not constitute a positive, proactive agenda."

Okay, so, first of all,you really have to admire the casual contempt Schoen has for the idea of paying people more money so they can maybe have a living wage.  It's such a tell that he views "pay workers more money" as such an obvious waste of time that he can't hide his frustration with the, from his perspective, utter stupidity of pursuing such a thing in the first place.   More importantly, if the government really wanted to expand social services or spend money repairing and rebuilding our infrastructure, they could do it all on their own.  The government creates the money used to do all of those things in the first place, they don't need the financial industry for shit.  The only reason to include the public-private partnerships in those kind of public services is to give the private sector a chance to fleece the public to profitability.

Finally, the closer:

"The Democrats cannot be the party that supports only new, stifling regulations. Reducing regulation allows banks to employ capital and finance investment in our country’s future, making electric cars, renewable energy and internet connectivity across the globe a reality 

This was evident to Democrats in the 1990s. From 1996 to 2000, for example, Democrats led the way on two key economic legislative victories. First, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 deregulated the communications and cable industries, increased growth and enhanced market competition. Second, the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 removed regulations placed on financial institutions by bureaucrats and expanded opportunities for Wall Street to engage in mergers and acquisitions, adding wealth to the retirement accounts and other investment portfolios of millions of middle-class Americans. 

If the party is going to have any chance of returning to its position of influence and appeal, Democrats need to work with Wall Street to push policies that create jobs, heal divisions and stimulate the American economy."

I already covered the regulations bit, so I won't go over it again.  But, I will say that it's hilarious that Schoen uses deregulating the cable/internet industry, an industry that has spent the last several decades consolidating into regional monopolies and provides the absolute worst internet and broadband services in any industrialized country on the planet, as a "win" for deregulation.  The real balls-of-steel moment though, comes right after, where he uses the deregulation of Wall Street as the apex move of the moderate Democrats.  Schoen really expects everyone to forget, or just ignore, that the end result of that bill was a financial industry so untethered from consequence or oversight that they made fraudulent mortgages to any warm body they could pull off the street, and then packaged those up with other toxic loans and falsely sold them off as quality products that would never default only to turn around and bet heavily that those products would implode, and finally, when all that and more finally came crashing down and nearly caused a second Great Depression, wrote off the entire thing with taxpayer bailouts and walked away into the sunset, free and clear of absolutely everything.

It takes a real piece of shit to wax nostalgic about the time where everyone turned a blind eye to the thing that turned our financial system into little more than a government-backed criminal enterprise but, hey, Schoen has to be good at something, I guess.

Vegas

Another year, another "worst mass shooting in American history."  It's an honorific that is quickly losing all sense of tragedy or weight since we have a new event so often and we do absolutely nothing to stop the next from happening, a pattern that shows no sign of breaking anytime soon.  Still, it's worth it I think to at least look at the components of why.

Don't expect the numbers to shift anything, at least this time.  Mass shootings are, quite literally, an everyday occurrence.  We've all grown used to the fact that 4-5 people are being shot somewhere in the country so the only thing that makes these things newsworthy is if they happen on a large scale.  Point is, we are long past the time where you can count on the horror of a mass shooting to have any real world consequences in a political sense.  When events like this become part of the everyday life and culture, the only possible thing that really push them back out into the extraordinary is if the sheer scale of the dead hits something previously thought impossible.  I don't really know what that tipping point is- hundreds dead, maybe?  Thousands?- but if that's what we're waiting for then a whole lot of other people are going to die before we find it.

Also, we should stop paying so much attention to the motives and reasons of the shooter.  They are, in the grand scheme of things, not all that relevant.  As the NRA and their stooges love to point out every single time this happens, there will always be crazies.  And on that, they have a point; you can't legislate and craft an effective gun control policy that will foresee every murderously homicidal motive people can craft for themselves.  What we should be more concerned about is that no matter the motive, everyone before this shooting and everyone after it who wants to build an arsenal to kill as many people as possible will be able to do so without any real impediment.  That's really where our focus needs to be, the supply side.  If we want to really stop people from using these guns for their intended purpose than the easiest way to do so is just not allow those guns to be sold.  But since no one is really advocating that, it's not gonna happen.  And even if there were, the Supreme Court decisions in the DC vs Heller and McDonald vs Chicago cases would kill any law enacting such a ban dead the moment anybody filed a suit against it.

One more thing on that point, it's brought up, again by the NRA/stooges, that people who want to do harm can always buy guns on the black market so it doesn't make sense to stop people from legally buying all the hardware they ever wanted legally.  My main question to these people is, where do they think black market guns come from?  The quick answer is: they come from legal purchases.  To be fair, some of the guns are stolen from their owners, although only DC has a law requiring owners to report the theft to law enforcement.  But mostly, they come from straw purchasers and let's say flexible dealers.  Why not just shut those dealers down, you ask?  Well, because it's against the law for the ATF to share gun trace data with... pretty much everyone.  There have been exceptions made to the law since it passed which allows the ATF to share the data amongst other law enforcement agencies (keep in mind the amendment establishing these conditions was passed in 2003.  The law enforcement exception didn't come along until 2008 and the exception to access the data beyond one specific criminal case didn't happen until 2010) but the ATF is still legally barred from releasing that information to the public.  Ignorance and conjecture for everybody, woo-ho.

The law also requires the FBI destroy approved sale background checks within 24-hours so the actual ownership of a gun can't be easily tracked from person to person and also bans the ATF from requiring gun shops and dealers to submit their inventory records for federal review.  So if someone is selling things on the side and later reports it "missing" there's no real way to confirm they ever received the gun in the first place.   So when people say "They should just enforce the laws on the books already" they either don't know or don't care that "the laws on the books" are the exact thing stopping law enforcement agencies from doing that.  So, probably shouldn't listen much to anybody who says that, just to be safe.

The tag for all of that is that even you point out to people that having an unrestricted legal market is the number one thing creating the black market they're all so afraid of, it probably won't change their mind at all.  Because, like most things associated around guns, the argument isn't for the logical side, it's aimed at the emotional part of our brains.  By creating this fear of potentially being outgunned by criminals who may one day bust down your door in the night, you create the need for people to have unlimited access to buy the biggest, deadliest weapons they can get their hands on with the added benefit of getting to react like someone is killing their children whenever any gun control measure gets brought up.

None of these things would be possible, though, without the quiet dedication and perseverance of the National Rifle Association, the tumor which kills all hope in decent people everywhere.  There's no real mystery to why the NRA has the stranglehold that they do on this issue- they're the ones who show up everyday of every year with their money and political pressure at every level to keep gun laws weak to non-existent.  Democracies are won by the people who show up, and who do so consistently.  The NRA can weather all the storms of these mass shootings because they know that in a week, a month, maybe two, everyone screaming for gun control measures will give up and go on to something else and when the next day comes, they'll still be there.

What happened in the wake of Sandy Hook is a perfect example of this. Everyone thought that twenty dead kids would be too much to ignore, a tragedy that demanded a response. But four months later the universal background check bill was dead and the public response was... nothing. No calls to Congress, no backlash, just, nothing. And so the NRA went about it's work, confident in the fact that if the opposition couldn't sustain themselves after a killing like that, they would never be a serious threat.

Until a separate counter organization gets built up to match the commitment the NRA shows, or until the supposedly 75% of their membership who support gun control actually do something about their leadership, than the status quo will stay as it is.

Even then, it will be hard to effectively counter the NRA because everyone attempting to do so will be missing any significant facts to clear away the mountains of bullshit the NRA dumps on this topic.  The primary reason for that is something called the Dickey Amendment, which was passed in 1996 after the NRA lobbied to prevent the CDC looking into gun violence because in 1993 they published a study saying that people with guns in their homes tend to shoot other people in their homes more often than people who don't.  Shocker, I know.

Specifically, the amendment bars the CDC from "none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be used to advocate or promote gun control," which doesn't explicitly bar the CDC from researching gun violence and gun deaths, true, but since no one at the CDC is stupid enough to believe that if they do a study about gun violence and someone in Congress uses that research as the basis of a gun control bill, the NRA and their minions will cry foul and say they're violating the spirit or whatever of the amendment and threaten to cut the CDC's budget in retaliation.  So, instead, they do nothing to save themselves the hassle and I don't think anyone can really blame them for that.

The consequence of this is that when it comes to the gun control "debate" nobody has any real ground or authority to stand on because no one knows anything about the exact details surrounding gun deaths and gun violence in the country, which is just what the NRA wants.  Without any clear facts, all we have is emotional grandstanding and pleas to have some vague notion of human decency and kindness and all that jazz.  Predictably, this goes absolutely nowhere, and everybody just gets exhausted and stows whatever feelings they have left away to use whenever the next massacre comes they have enough good will so all the thoughts and prayers they send out don't feel completely meaningless.

But you really have to ask, how bad and how hard have we given up when we feel that's the absolute best we can do?