Here's What's the Matter With Kansas

[Omaha Steve]

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/09/paul-pierson-jacob-s-hacker

— By Kevin Drum
| Fri Sep. 10, 2010 2:00 AM PDT



Why has income inequality grown so explosively over the past 30 years? Why do so many working and middle class voters cast their ballots for a party that's so obviously a captive of corporations and the rich? Why is there no longer any real sustained effort to improve the lot of the middle class?

There's no shortage of answers. There's the "What's the Matter With Kansas" theory. There's the demise of labor unions. There's the well-worn story of the rise of conservative think tanks. There's the impact of globalization on unskilled and semi-skilled labor. There's the growing returns to education in a world that grows more complex every year.

But these are all limited and therefore unsatisfactory explanations, and no one has yet put them all together into a single organic whole that feels genuinely complete and compelling. Until now. The book that finally does it is called Winner-Take-All Politics, by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, and it puts together all of these pieces with a clarity of explanation that's breathtaking. I hesitate to summarize their argument for fear of ruining it, but here's the nickel version:

1. In the 60s, at the same time that labor unions begin to decline, liberal money and energy starts to flow strongly toward "postmaterialist" issues: civil rights, feminism, environmentalism, gay rights, etc. These are the famous "interest groups" that take over the Democratic Party during the subsequent decades.
2. At about the same time, business interests take stock of the country's anti-corporate mood and begin to pool their resources to push for generic pro-business policies in a way they never had before. Conservative think tanks start to press a business-friendly agenda and organizations like the Chamber of Commerce start to fundraise on an unprecedented scale. This level of persistent, organizational energy is something new.

FULL story at link.

[safeinOhio]

1. One word describes the rise of corporate interest

in America.

PROPAGANDA
it works.

[Solly Mack]

2. k/r

[starroute]

3. This review leaves out a big piece of the picture

I can't tell from the review if the book has the same gap -- but liberal attention didn't just "start to flow" towards social issues at the same time the labor unions happened to be declining. The union members themselves were becoming way more conservative and forgetting why they'd needed unions in the first place.

If you don't remember the 60's personally, think of the cliche of hard-hatted construction workers yelling at anti-war demonstrators to "love it or leave it." Not all union members were pro-war, but many were -- and their leaders even more so:

http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Texts/Reviews/Smetak_US_Labor_01.html

The biggest single factor in the latter perception was AFL-CIO president George Meany's support for Lyndon Johnson and his war policies. Labor spoke with a monolithic voice. Worse, Labor spoke with a Neanderthal voice. In May of 1965, Meany declared that the AFL-CIO would support the war in Vietnam "no matter what the academic do-gooders may say, no matter what the apostles of appeasement may say." He further argued that those who criticized the war were "victims of Communist propaganda." From organized Labor, no other voice was audible.

Granted, the young activists were in many ways out of touch with the realities of ordinary life. But I think most of the blame has to fall on the workers. They'd gotten used to enjoying a middle-class standard of living, prided themselves that it was the result of their own hard work, and forgot that it was union solidarity and a willingness to challenge the system that had gotten them to where they were.

That obliviousness, I think, explains both why the left turned away from economic issues and why the unions declined. The workers themselves were no longer prepared to be radicals.

And I think that is still the problem. Most workers identify with the system, believe the system will reward them if they only play the game right, and are terrified of rocking the boat. And those factors -- combined with a well-cultivated suspicion of progressive "intellectuals" -- leads them to vote Republican.

[xchrom]

4. Recommend