WSJ: The Doughnut Democrats

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal

The Doughnut Democrats
June 16, 2005; Page A16

(snip)

A centrist group of Democrats called Third Way recently issued a report explaining the Democrats' 2004 election debacle. It concluded that voters with incomes between $30,000 and $75,000 a year, or almost half the electorate, delivered "healthy victories" for President Bush and Republicans in Congress. The report concludes: "Rather than being the party of the middle class, Democrats face a huge crisis with middle-income voters."

Why is that? One reason is that the party of FDR and JFK no longer seems to have a moderate wing; they have become doughnut Democrats with no middle. This point is best exemplified by the utter collapse of Democrats in the South. In 1980 there were 20 mostly conservative Democrats in the Senate; now there are four, and even they are endangered.

• With the notable exception of Joe Lieberman, there are virtually no Scoop Jackson defense hawks remaining in a party that has made Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo its main policy touchstones for the war on terror.
• The party that voted en masse for income and capital gains tax cuts under JFK now has but one message on taxes: Raise them.
• On trade, the Democrats who delivered 102 House votes for Nafta and Bill Clinton in 1994 will, at last count, provide all of five House votes for the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
• The Clinton Democrats helped enact the most momentous social policy legislation of the past generation: welfare reform. Now Democrats conspire every day to gut work-for-welfare requirements and prevent the renewal of welfare reform by Congress.
• Above all, there's the know-nothing-ism on Social Security. The Democrats in unison proclaim that Mr. Bush is advancing a risky right-wing scheme to destroy Social Security by creating private investment accounts for workers.


But wait. How dangerous can this idea really be? After all, only a few years ago there was a long and esteemed list of elected Democratic leaders who endorsed personal accounts. John Breaux. Chuck Robb. Bob Kerrey. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Charles Stenholm. Tim Penny. Today in the entire United States Congress there is exactly one Democrat, Allen Boyd of Florida, who has endorsed personal accounts, and he has been shunned for his apostasy. In 2000 Senator Moynihan declared that a personal thrift savings plan for Social Security would allow hourly wage earners to "retire not just with a pension but with wealth. And the doorman will have a half million dollars, not just the people in the duplexes." Share the wealth. What could be a more traditional Rooseveltian idea than that?

(snip)

Many conservatives have watched the left's hostile takeover of the Democratic Party with great joy. We don't share that enthusiasm. The country would benefit from two vibrant parties competing on innovative freedom-enhancing initiatives. The problem is that the Democrats are running on empty when it comes to policy ideas other than big government, and this lack of competition has had deleterious effects on Republican behavior, as witnessed by their lack of any spending discipline.

(snip)

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111887914532260954,00.html

[meegbear]

1. The WSJ bitchslapping Dems?

What a surprise! Next thing, you'll be telling me fox news said something bad about Hillary Clinton.

[Cha]

2. Yeah, cutting taxes for the top

one% is really wise during bush's WAR ON IRAQ(THE BIG OL' CAN OF WHUPASS THAT he OPENED IN THE MIDDLE EAST).

And what about those FUCKING repuke zealot, rabid, faux fristians?

Dean is a moderate but thanks to the repuke foaming at the mouth, knuckle draggers..Dean looks like a beautiful Liberal.

Take that in your stupid, idiotic, analytical pipe and smoke the crap outta it.

[Warpy]

3. What a load of steaming BULLSHIT

First, it takes a MINIMUM of $100K to consider a family MIDDLE CLASS.

Second, the reason the DLC Dems lost the WORKING CLASS is because they took all the working class issues off the table DECADES ago when they started to whore for corporations.

The Dems offered us NOTHING. The GOP offered us TAX CUTS.

Do the math.

[Kolesar]

4. A pathetic recitation of White House talking points

personal accounts
taxes: Raise them
work-for-welfare

WSJ could cut their writers salary budget and just use Jeff Gannon to rewrite WH press releases. He will cost less because he gets it on the other side with his evening job.

[TahitiNut]

5. "tax cuts under JFK"? (Geezus Effing Keeryst!)

This pernicious right-wing meme can only find traction with the most brain-dead reichbots!! If these cretins are so much in love with what the Kennedy/Johnson administration did to income taxes, then let's restore a 70% top tax bracket on earned income and dividends!!!

While we're at it, let's inform the assholes at the WSJ that the tax rates on capital gains weren't lowered by Kennedy/Johnson and, indeed, were raised by the Nixon/Ford adminstration!

Fucking lying bastards!! :grr:

[David__77]

6. These are GOOD developments.

The Democratic Party must be the party of working people--the people's party, not the corporate party. If the "third way" takes over, the bulk of party activists will surely boycott them. Clinton's centrism hurt Democrats.

[question everything]

7. But Clinton won

and while he was in the White House, everyone did better. The wages of all people rose. I don't necessarily agree with the editorial and will post letters replying - once they arrive - but I think that it would good to consider the points, instead of just dismissing them because of the source.

And, the WSJ does attack Bush and the Republicans for the deficit and for the "big government" that they pursue including the Medicare drugs program.

[David__77]

8. I do not agree with the "third way."

He cut welfare and implemented such fascist schemes as the rule that someone can be evicted from public housing for simply having a visitor that is ACCUSED--not convicted--of a drug crime. I don't think that's pro-people politics. It's attack the people politics, and if the Democratic Party wants to buy into that then there a lot of people that will buy out of them.

[PATRICK]

20. The definition of "way"

by the sociopaths. WE cut your throat. WE pay others to cut your throat. We get YOU to cut your own throat(the Third Way). Ah, that's better, now we're in control again.

Somehow you might think creative thinkers looking for options would question what "way" they were going with all this.

[TahitiNut]

9. Without Perot populism in '92 and '96, Clinton is just a trivia question.

:shrug:

[Bread and Circus]

19. good point, and cleverly said

[IrateCitizen]

10. It was all thanks to an energy glut...

Seriously, if you want to know what the prime contributor to any trend of economic growth is in the modern economy, it is the availability of energy sources.

Ronald Reagan had the good fortune of being in office at a time in which the nation recovered from the 1970's oil shocks due to the North Sea oil fields coming on line. It had NOTHING to do with his tax policies -- it was the re-introduction of reliable supplies of cheap energy (oil) into the economy, along with the drive to start drilling in earnest for natural gas.

While Clinton was in office, the oil glut continued -- with prices tumbling to around $10 per barrel -- along with an attendant stock market bubble fueled by the high tech boom. When the tech bubble collapsed, the economy took a hit -- but not too much of one, because there was still plenty of cheap energy.

But, for better and worse, those days are over. Oil demand is rapidly outstripping supply available. OPEC is demonstrating that it no longer has any true swing production available -- they've failed to come through on any of their promises to raise production in order to stabilize prices. And the big conglomerates -- rather than increasing funding for R&D of new fields, are instead going merger-happy in order to keep stock prices up in a diminishing market niche. Even ExxonMobil has gone on the record as acknowledging the imminence of the peak.

We're facing a series of oil shocks that will make the 1970's seem like a walk in the park -- and they will NEVER go away. The "boom years" of Clinton and Reagan will be seen, in retrospect, as perhaps the greatest misallocation of resources imaginable, and all of us will be left to pay the price, pick up the pieces, and try to radically transform modern society in hopes that it will survive in some form.

[Kolesar]

13. The economy has become more efficient,so high energy prices don't hurt....

...as much as they did during the 1973 and 1979 oil embargos. Industry actually has implemented efficiency programs. I am surprised inflation is not out of control like it was in 1980 due to OPEC driving energy prices.

I do agree with your thesis, though.

[ikojo]

18. While the wages of most people did increase while

Clinton was in the white house, the gap between the rich and poor grew at an increasing rate during his two administrations. The minimum wage was increased just once while a Democrat sat in the white house as well.

The primary reason wages grew under Clinton was due to record low unemployment. Employers felt compelled to pay people more. I don't foresee that happening anytime soon. Now, they can go overseas and pay people LESS.

[applegrove]

11. Wishfull thinking. n/t

[Larkspur]

12. This whole piece is PURE Conservative SPIN

:puke:

[applegrove]

14. I'm a third wayer and I cannot wait until these neocon Utopians

get piled into the dustbin of history as a the bunch of hypocritical, lying, nefarious, ***holes who have used & tribalized Americans and spend every day drinking their own neocon****.

They don't have policy .. they have a delusional theory on geo-politics which they keep trying to impose on the world 1) to keep Americans from dealing with the reality of the end of empire and getting hungry & inspired again to study sciences & the like(instead they want Americans, who they deem as less intellectually gifted as themselves, to sit on couches watching & admiring the narcissists and eating junk-food) 2) to hide their own neocon faulty policies from the 1980s which ruined the Middle East in the name of Oil profits and improve their place in history.

Kool-Aid? No thanks... I know what it is.

[question everything]

15. Perhaps, but we really do not have much to offer

beyond rescinding some of the tax cuts and... I am not sure that our leaders - whoever they are - want to leave Iraq right now, cold turkey.

We cannot get elected by simply bashing the pugs. We thought that Bush would lose because of Iraq, but he did not. Doing nothing by claiming that "one does not stand in the way of a train wreck" is not going to accomplish anything.

The reality is that Social Security and Medicare will be in trouble in 10 years (I think) and the money spent on Iraq and on irresponsible tax cuts is already spent. We do need to offer an alternative. Sure it will be attacked by them but at least we can debate real issues and not "social" ones that Karl Rove loves so much.

We need to define the areas that are of concerns to most Americans; we know what they are; polls tell us that most voters support the Democrats' agenda, they just don't know it.

We need to talk in positive terms. Painting the Republicans as the bogey men is not enough. Talking about security of health care, of jobs and of retirement will get many voters to listen. Talking about the "social" issues upfront and then done with them will get many to listen.

And, please, no excuses about the electronic ballots. This sounds like a very poor excuse of sore losers and remove the responsibility to offer real alternatives.

[thebigidea]

16. money for Iraq and tax cuts already spent? The heck?

we'll be spending countless hundreds of billions on both for years to come. where did you get the idea that it's money already spent?

[ConservativeDemocrat]

17. Don't let this WSJ spin actually persuade you...

Democrats, from conservative to mainstream to the far left, have plenty of good ideas. It's just that - as a party - we have made moral decisions as a party that hurt us electorally.

Far from the "Doughnut" spin, it's plainly obvious that the place where Democrats are failing is among racists. Two dozen Senators from the South recently didn't want to go on record apologizing for 60 years of keeping the lynching of blacks legal. If this was 30 years ago, those crypto-racists would all be "Dixiecrat" Democrats. Today, they're all Republican, put in place by an electorate prevalent in the South and parts of the West.

But guess what? Those racists are getting older. And under Republican policies, they're getting tremendously poorer. Morality doesn't really appeal to them, but it's hard for them to ignore the fact that they can't put food on the table, either. So they're getting mad at the GOP.

I really think the Democrats can't appeal to those people. But we can drive them away from the Republicans. And that works almost as well.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community