" A Party for the Middle Class!" by: Mike Lux (Dem Lobbyist)

[KoKo]

A Party for the Middle Class
by: Mike Lux
Sun Nov 14, 2010 at 17:17
A sweeping loss, and two years of angst and frustration after people felt so hopeful, generates a lot of interesting conversation (as well as quite a bit that isn't interesting at all- but I'm not here to talk about that). There is discussion of how to come back; discussion about shaking up leadership at the White House or Capitol Hill; there is all the positioning palaver I have written about (although that is mostly in that uninteresting category); there is talk of the need for a new economic strategy. And on the edgiest side of things, there is talk about a primary challenge for Obama, and even a 3rd party effort. A lot of this is just blowing smoke, of course, getting people's frustrations off their collective chests. But some currents are interesting and worth exploring.

On the 3rd party issue, the fascinating thing is that I am hearing very little of this discussion coming from my lefty friends, who the conventional wisdom would leap to assume would likely be talking about it. I think Nader actually getting enough votes in Florida to elect Bush was an experience that has definitively shut the door on 3rd party challenges for at least another generation, as it became real damn clear after that election that, yes, there would have been some differences between Bush and Gore on a few key issues. The 3rd party stuff is coming instead from a certain kind of centrist. Michael Bloomberg is the most likely candidate (and arguably the reason for a lot of the conversation). This kind of 3rd party centrist is far removed from the Ross Perot style of centrist, although like Perot, Bloomberg would be a big self-funder and would probably talk a lot about deficits. Perot was more of a populist, though, with his opposition to NAFTA and his appeal to working class white men. The chatter about 3rd party challenges now comes from what Matt Miller, one of its leading proponents, describes as "fiscally conservative, socially liberal" types. I'm not sure what exactly is meant by fiscally conservative. I consider myself one because I don't like wasting government money on stuff like no-bid contracts, subsidies to agribusiness, and loopholes for bankers, but I'm guessing my kind of fiscal conservatism is not what Matt has in mind.

This kind of 3rd party challenge is of the high-minded "politics-is-broken" school. I'm thinking of people like Bloomberg himself of course- a corporate CEO type who is a liberal on issues like gun control and abortion rights, but doesn't mind the anti-middle class stuff the deficit commission co-chairs are proposing. Come to think of it, Deficit Commission co-chairs Bowles and Simpson would be the kind of folks at home in this party. I'm also thinking of people from the past and present such as Paul Tsongas, Lowell Weicker, Bill Bradley, Bob Rubin, Lincoln Chafee (and his father John before him), Charlie Crist, Joe Lieberman, Olympia Snowe, Gray Davis and his successor Ahnold, Peter Orzag, Tim Geithner. I think such folks could all be very happy in a political party together.
A centrist party like that would be the ultimate test of Mark Penn's old theory that the most important demographic group in American politics, the premier swing voters who all politicians should try to appeal to, is the "office park dad"- upper middle income suburbanites who aren't very angry at corporations because they work in management positions at them, or are lawyers and sub-contractors for them, and whose biggest issue is caring deeply about balancing the budget. This has for at least a generation been the DC centrist version of the middle, precisely because the power brokers in DC fit with this demographic so well. Many of my friends argue that such a third party would hurt Democrats, but I'm a lot less sure about that simply because having such a party would clear the way for pretty much forcing the Democratic Party to become one that would once again unapologetically be for the middle class, which is where I think by far the biggest swing vote segment in American politics actually resides.

MORE THEORIZING by Mike Lux (ALWAYS A GOOD READ) at:

http://www.openleft.com/

[howaboutme]

1. I'll give America 10 years

and we will see a merging of interests between the Tea Party and progressive Democrats on the left. They will find more commonality in interests than they do with their "own" Parties.

Americans will soon come to the conclusion that neither Party serves them, but instead the Party leaders serve the rich globalist financiers and capitalists who have zero loyalty to America. Cantor is a good example.

This will all come down just about the same time that China becomes the world's dominant economy. China was made prosperous not by the Chinese but by both US political Parties. They made China great because it would provide profits for their wealthy capitalist benefactors. Bill Clinton whom I will never forgive is a globalist who gave China MFN status and signed NAFTA. There are few jobs in the USA because of such politicians, like him on both sides, who failed to serve their country.