“What’s the matter with America?” – people vote against themselves

 

Gordon L. Weil

“What’s the matter with Kansas?”

An 1896 editorial in a Kansas newspaper carried that headline.  It became a national mantra, revived in a 2004 book, a film – both with that title – plus a New York Times commentary last week.  They all concluded that average people often vote against their own best interests.

After this month’s elections, political pundits deployed in force.  Most explained to us Washington outsiders that the Democrats had suffered a bad loss, while Trump’s GOP won.  They urged the Dems to tap dance over to the right so they could keep alive their slim chances for the 2022 congressional elections.

If you ever wanted to know the definition of “conventional wisdom,” that was it.  In other words, the “experts” saw the Democratic Progressives having pulled the party and President Biden to the left, away from the political mainstream.  They paid the price at the ballot box.

In this view, the problem stemmed from the extreme policies unduly influencing a party clinging to a bare majority. Policies like paid sick leave, free community college and even tax increases on billionaires were too far ahead of what people would accept.  The country is “center-right” opined Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (WV), not “center-left.”

Oddly, polling showed that a majority of Americans favor most “center-left” policies.  Maybe the pundits missed something that was bigger than issues.  Perhaps the view that people favored more moderate policies was not the cause of Democratic setbacks.

David Leonhardt in the Times took a different view from the pundits, one consistent with the Kansas book.  Democratic Party losses or narrow wins were not the result of its dalliance with the Progressive Left, but because it had lost its focus on the attitudes of average working people.

In its focus on appealing to suburban voters, traditionally backers of the GOP, it had assumed that generous federal spending would help it retain the support of middle income workers and their families.  It had failed to understand that many of these voters were driven more by their culture than their material interests, he wrote.

As often noted in this space, unhappy voters want change.  Government as usual has produced pointless wars, unresponsive officials, and troubled leadership. 

It’s not surprising that about one-fifth of Obama voters also backed Trump.  Obama embodied change and Trump, an aggressive businessman with no elective history, convincingly promised it.  In the end, Obama did not produce enough change and Trump abused his mandate.

Joe Biden offered calm and cooperation, but his pious hopes could produce neither.  In some respects, he embodied a return to the kind of government that people wanted changed.  The dangerously disorganized Afghanistan withdrawal and the endless haggling among congressional Democrats made him appear weak.

What had aided Trump’s appeal was his decisive style, even if it edged into being authoritarian.  His claim to have kept his promises had a ring of truth.  Even his critics would have to admit that he changed the way the federal government worked.

In effect, Trump’s presidency raised the question “What’s the matter with America?”  He wanted to slash medical insurance, reduce air quality and cut taxes for the wealthiest.  He let roads and bridges deteriorate. Yet he would gain the second largest popular vote of anybody who had ever run for president.

It’s possible that Trump has no deep-seated principles.  Instead, he recognized voter discontent with policies ranging from affirmative action to foreign wars and managed to make it look like he had led in shaping the opposition.  In reality, he exploited political and social discontent, and left what many saw as uncomfortable or fringe issues to the Democrats.

While this analysis may be pure speculation, conventional wisdom may itself be nothing more that that.  Cable “news” and social media spend little time reporting events and their background, while leaping into instant, poorly considered analyses.

For example, the GOP gain in the Virginia governor’s race is extensively interpreted as a nationally significant rejection of the Democrats in favor of Trumpism without Trump. Little attention is paid to the Democratic candidate’s well-intentioned, but breathtakingly inept gaffes.

Maybe something was the matter with Virginia, and it wasn’t about Trump.  But that’s too boring for the pundits.

Biden could benefit by asserting leadership of congressional Democrats to produce results, like the prompt post-election passage of the infrastructure bill.  It means taking bold, even risky action to get them to pass voting rights and popular parts of his economic and social programs.   

He should stop talking about his tough Scranton background and start acting like it. 

Biden is less than one year into his presidency and already he is being written off.  That’s too quick a judgment.  The challenge for him in the next year is less about policy and more about leadership. 

Covid 19 changed the economy; we won’t go back

 

Gordon L. Weil

To many people, “inflation” is a dirty word.

It means higher prices at the store and higher interest rates at the bank or auto dealer. The basic rule of inflation is that prices rise when too much money chases too few goods.

Yet the Federal Reserve, which can control the nation’s money supply, likes two percent inflation. That rate shows a growing economy in which business is trying to keep up with demand.  Along the way, that effort can create more jobs and, as a result, more demand.

The neat trick is to keep inflation from getting out of hand. If prices and interest rates increase too rapidly, the economy can slow down.   The mismatch between supply and demand becomes too great until the slowdown helps restore a more manageable balance.

For several years, the inflation rate has been at or below the Fed’s target.  But it has climbed in recent months and some market experts believe it will stay high.  They watch to see what moves the Fed will make to raise interest rates and when.  It will act sooner than planned.

Why is inflation increasing?  Its climb is yet another symptom of the Covid 19 pandemic.

When the coronavirus hit, the U.S. and much of the rest of the world hunkered down.  Some businesses closed, travel almost collapsed and many people began living on reduced incomes.  Less money was chasing fewer goods at the store – notably in the strange case of the run on toilet paper.  The federal government moved aggressively to prop up household incomes.

As the economy recovered from the depths of the pandemic, prices began to rise. That created inflation well above the target two percent, though the Fed concluded that the level is both natural, given the low 2020 base, and temporary.  The effect of the inflation surge can be seen in the big boost to Social Security payments for 2022.

While the Fed has been expected to allow small increases in interest rates as the economy returns to something like the 2019 level, what looked like temporary inflation now may extend as a changed economy begins to emerge.   The virus won’t go away and neither will its effect.

One of the biggest changes has come in labor.  Government policy assumed that almost all workers would want to come back to their own jobs just as soon as they could. Trucking companies, offices and restaurants were poised to open.  But something funny has happened on the way to recovery.

During the slowdown, workers had the time to learn something about their place in the market economy.  Employers have traditionally paid them at levels linked to the cost built into the prices they charge.

The Covid 19 quarantines allowed workers to better understand that their value to their employers was more than they were being paid.  Places of business closed for lack of workers.  If you withheld your labor, you might get paid more.  It began to feel like a giant national labor union.

Only a few months ago, debate raged over a $15 minimum wage.  Companies claimed that prices would have to increase, cutting sales and causing unemployment.  When workers did not return as expected, major employers boosted wages in an attempt to lure them back.  The minimum wage is now being set by the market and it could end up higher than $15.

Higher pay can translate into either higher prices, cuts to executive pay, or a reduction in booming investment gains.  Right now, it’s higher prices. That yields higher inflation than originally expected.

The prospect of better pay should bring more workers back to the job.  But what has been called the “Great Resignation” is also taking place.  The Covid break led some people to decide on a more simple, family-oriented life, even if that means less income.  When people start thinking “money isn’t everything,” the economy can change.

The impact of Covid 19 has been big enough to raise questions about the American economy itself.  The free enterprise system is alive and well, but the supply chain from some sources, especially China, has been disrupted.  Add to that the changed relationship of workers to their jobs and employers.

President Biden believes the historic opportunity now exists for increased government efforts to develop new economic and environmental rules and social policies.  The next 12 months should reveal if he is right.  If so, sooner or later, somebody’s taxes will have to increase.

Economic change is occurring.   Operating private enterprises is becoming more costly, possibly promoting labor-saving efficiency. In any case, people are likely to pay more and probably buy less.

That could look like inflation.  But it may turn out to be paying something closer to the real cost of what we need or want.

Democracy could commit suicide if elected leaders block voting

Gordon L. Weil

The wrong Maine senator gave the right U.S. Senate speech.

Sen. Angus King, the independent who aligns with the Democrats, recently argued strongly for a bill that would protect voting rights from efforts in many states to discourage voting or discard valid votes.

He showed that state laws supposedly to protect against election tampering were really attempts to suppress voting.  He said that such laws were aimed at fixing election defects that do not exist.

States passing these laws are under Republican control, but the GOP fears losing its dominance.  It wants to prevent Democrats from winning elections by reducing their valid votes.  King saw their recent moves as endangering democracy itself.

As he noted, the American political system is an “experiment.”  It tests whether government under the people, expressing their will through voting, works and can survive in a world where authoritarian rule has seemed to be the natural form of government.

Over the course of history, people have most often been under the control of either a single man or an elite group.  They have lacked the weapons to overthrow authoritarian rule.  In creating the American republic, the founders gave the people the necessary tool – the vote.

Popular control of government has spread around the world.  The U.S. did not invent democracy, but it has played the leading role in its adoption.

Yet democracy contains the seeds of its own potential destruction.  Voters may choose a government that then uses its legitimate power to curtail or eliminate democracy. In effect, the democratic system can commit suicide.

The simple reason why elected officials would endanger or destroy democracy is their desire to cling to power for their own ends.  Their drive to make their control permanent, even if it means undermining democracy, proves the truth of the famous assertion by a long-ago British leader: “All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Sometimes they seek power for its own sake.  Or they may use the power of government to enrich an elite group.

That threat is why the system of government under the U.S. Constitution is considered an experiment.  It was endangered when a destructive mob of a few thousand people tried to seize the Capitol on January 6 to reverse the results of an election decided by tens of millions of people.

Attempts to prevent majority rule, the central element of democracy, have gone on as long as the U.S. has existed.  Yet the Constitution has been repeatedly amended to extend democracy by guaranteeing voting to all 18 and older, regardless of race or sex. It provided for popular election of senators and abolished the poll tax used by some states to screen out black voters.

Increasingly, GOP-run states limit access to the polls, and some give Republican legislatures the right to overrule election results.  They echo Trump’s self-serving charge, made with no proof, that massive cheating deprived him of victory in 2020.

Not one Republican senator voted in favor of a bill to prevent states from suppressing voting or overriding the popular vote.

King did not gain as much national recognition as Maine Sen. Margaret Chase Smith received for her “Declaration of Conscience” speech in 1950.  Backed by a few other Republican senators, she condemned Wisconsin GOP Sen. Joseph McCarthy for his phony anti-Communist campaign, smearing hapless victims.

Smith gained fame because she took on a member of her own party.  For her, principle did not conflict with her party.  She said the GOP could defeat the Democrats without resorting to McCarthy’s tactics.

The difference between Smith and King was that he was defending democracy by opposing the other party, the Republicans, while she defended it by taking on her own party. His warning was laudable.  Her declaration was both laudable and courageous.

Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, says that Smith is her political model.  Having shown the courage to vote against the political impeachment of Bill Clinton and for the impeachment of Donald Trump because of his support of the January 6 insurrection, she might have been expected to speak out against the GOP assault on democracy.

Collins would have been the right senator to express the sentiments in King’s speech.

When a thoughtful senator like Collins falls in line with the anti-democratic actions of her fellow Republicans, it reveals the depth of political division.  The GOP’s policy boils down to crushing the Democrats, even if they represent a popular majority in a state or the country.

Compromise is now impossible, because there is no common ground.  Unless the Democrats can find ways to win elections despite GOP voter suppression, fair elections could be lost.    The real loser would not be either party, but the people.

Correction: Last week, I erroneously labeled the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution as the Eighth.