{"id":268,"date":"2016-06-05T21:59:10","date_gmt":"2016-06-06T01:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/?p=268"},"modified":"2016-06-06T16:05:30","modified_gmt":"2016-06-06T20:05:30","slug":"no-voting-for-trump-wont-accelerate-progressive-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/?p=268","title":{"rendered":"No, Voting for Trump Won’t Accelerate Progressive Change"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yves Smith (aka Susan Webber), a management consultant and principal at Aurora Advisors, writes<\/a> at Politico<\/a><\/em> that the \u201chighly educated, high-income, finance-literate readers of my website, Naked Capitalism<\/a><\/em>, don\u2019t just overwhelmingly favor Bernie Sanders<\/a>. They also say \u201cHell no!\u201d to Hillary Clinton<\/a> to the degree that many say they would even vote for Donald Trump<\/a> over her.\u201d<\/p>\n

They (9 out of 10 Smith friends polled) developed their \u201cconclusions\u201d from \u201ccareful study of her record and her policy proposals,\u201d and believe the Clintons represent a policy status quo of \u201ccrushing inequality, and an economy that is literally killing off the less fortunate.\u201d And they think \u201cthe most powerful move they can take to foster change is to withhold their support.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is because Barack Obama, the Clintons, and the Democratic Party generally supports a neoliberal regime and has intentionally slow-rolled or blocked progressive reform initiatives:<\/p>\n

\u201cBy contrast, the Democratic Party in the Clinton and Obama administrations has consistently embraced and implemented policies that strip workers of economic and legal rights to benefit investors and the elite professionals that serve them. Over time, the \u201cneoliberal\u201d economic order\u2014which sees only good, never bad, in the relentless untrammeling of capital and the deregulation of markets\u2014has created an unacceptable level of economic insecurity and distress for those outside the 1 percent and the elite professionals who serve them.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a result of these policies:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe\u2026U.S. economy is becoming lethal to the less fortunate, according to the New York Times, which reported this week that U.S. death rates have risen for the first time in a decade. The increase in death rates among less educated whites since 2001 is roughly the size of the AIDS epidemic.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This has caused Progressives to leave the Democratic Party:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Clinton and Obama administrations presided over the worst losses in congressional and state races in modern history in 1994, 2010 and 2012. And voter preferences were clear. Under Obama, it was the Blue Dog, Third Way Democrats who were turfed out, while candidates with strong stances on economic justice kept their seats.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After this Smith cites\u00a0a litany of policy complaints and\u2026interesting\u2026claims.\u00a0 For example:<\/p>\n

\u201cBill Clinton made a deal with Newt Gingrich to privatize Social Security, but Monica Lewinsky derailed his plans.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cObama promised a minimum wage increase to $9.50 an hour and failed to act in the first four years of his presidency.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cObamacare took single payer off the table, instead rearranging the current costly, clumsy system while guaranteeing profits for health insurers and Big Pharma.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yadda Yadda questions of competence, corruption, and something about the Clinton\u2019s drinking French bourbon (may have misread\u2026was quite a slog to get to that part).\u00a0 Read the whole thing if you will<\/a>, but tl;dr: All Smith’s Progressive pals and readers will vote for Trump or stay home because HRC is a neoliberal corporate and financial industry shill who will screw \u201cworkers and other ordinary citizens\u201d to protect her pals in the One Percent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure what to say about some of her specific points.\u00a0 To the extent the Lewinsky news ended a bipartisan Social Security reform plan, it strikes me that the news would weaken the President and permit Gingrich to secure a more conservative agreement<\/em>.\u00a0 Obama eventually took the only action he could in the face of GOP Congresses: required defense contractors to pay a minimum $10.10 wage<\/em>.\u00a0 And single payer was never on the table, so Obama put together the most progressive regulation of the US health care industry.\u00a0 And that\u2019s what it is: health care industry regulation.<\/em><\/p>\n

In any event, Scott Lemieux<\/a> at Lawyers, Guns and Money<\/a><\/em> gave it his treatment<\/a>, and I don\u2019t imagine I could improve on that.\u00a0 Instead, I\u2019d like to make a more general point about political change that Ms. Smith\u2019s readers need to hear: it comes from the bottom, not the top.\u00a0 Smith thinks that \u201cPresidents have enormous bully pulpits. They can move the Overton window if they choose to.\u201d\u00a0 I doubt this is true.\u00a0 While Presidents have a huge platform to speak \u2013 and certainly have a key role in agenda-setting \u2013 it\u2019s not clear how much Presidential rhetoric actually changes the accepted social understandings that US society relies upon.<\/p>\n

The range of politically possible government policy action – the Overton Window – depends on shared social understandings about \u201cwhat right looks like\u201d (as my old First Sergeant might have put it).\u00a0 These understandings include norms about the nature of property, labor and citizenship, the definition and importance of discrimination, and the role of religion and government in society, among others.\u00a0 Presidents have powerful voices, and they can, to be sure, influence debate.\u00a0 But they don\u2019t so much influence changes in these shared understandings through bully pulpit rhetoric – rather, they set agendas by paying attention to the broader policy discussion.\u00a0 When they see broader normative acceptance of homosexuality, they begin to bring related issues \u2013 marriage, discrimination \u2013 onto the agenda for action.<\/p>\n

In the world of norm entrepreneurs, Presidents recognize the approach of a tipping point in normative change, and respond when the point has tipped.\u00a0 Good ones do this extremely well, and people love those Presidents because they get the policy they demand<\/em>.\u00a0 But Presidents don’t push normative change through that tipping point. \u00a0This happens through broader rhetoric and discourse \u2013 popular TV and movies, talk radio, political pundit shows, newspaper opinion columns, water cooler and coffee shop chats\u2026and on and on.\u00a0 Social interaction and discourse across the social, political, economic, news, and entertainment space drives normative change.\u00a0 Politicians don’t shift the Overton Window – they figure out where popular discourse has placed it and support policies that\u00a0fit in their own interest: achieving and holding political power.\u00a0 This is, after all, where the votes are.<\/p>\n

This means that Naked Capitalism<\/em> readers, and anyone else who wants to move US politics and social discourse to the left, should worry less about whether Hillary Clinton wins the Presidency \u2013 progressives could face worse electoral outcomes (*cough* President Trump *cough*).\u00a0 Progressive social change does not depend on an ultra-liberal Sanders regime moving Overton Windows through the bully pulpit.\u00a0 It relies on local activists working through a variety of social institutions, including but not limited to political parties.\u00a0 The good news is that social change has happened: claims that we best organize society around free markets and religious institutions have lost power in social discourse about what \u201cright\u201d American society looks like.\u00a0 Those taking their place associate capitalism with economic insecurity and religious institutions with discrimination and sexual abuse.<\/p>\n

This shift in discourse has created a polarized electorate because many Americans aggressively oppose this shift.\u00a0 They want to shout down opponents of discrimination, runaway capitalism, xenophobia, and military intervention, but others shame them when they do.\u00a0 Trump gives voice to their frustration more openly than they dare.\u00a0 Reactionaries like him because he gives social change the finger.\u00a0 They know it\u2019s coming and they can\u2019t stop it \u2013 but they want to go down with a leader who rages openly against it as they do. \u00a0And until it does, they have some measure of political power and can limit the range of options available to progressive leaders.\u00a0 This means liberals just have to work for and accept incremental change and push US society to the left as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n

This is hard work that takes place under the radar at the grassroots level.\u00a0 It\u2019s not about electing Presidents who move Overton Windows.\u00a0 It\u2019s about engaging neighbors, identifying and swaying those open to progress as well as likeminded liberals, and motivating both to participate in the political process rhetorically and at the voting booth.\u00a0 This certainly includes complaining about how liberals exercise power, but should not include abandoning liberal\/progressive institutions in favor of destroying the system.\u00a0 Liberals should not give blind loyalty, but should not blindly exit, either.\u00a0 They should add their voice to the liberal movement, which includes neoliberals, in a way that advances the progressive project.<\/p>\n

Your mileage may vary about the best strategy for accomplishing this, but I\u2019m pretty sure voting for Donald Trump or enabling his election through indifference won\u2019t get it done.\u00a0 It won\u2019t do anything to normalize discussions about how and whether to change the rules governing American capitalism.\u00a0 It won\u2019t do anything to clear the way for living wages, force police departments to identify and punish misconduct, protect LGBT rights from religious liberty claims, protect social safety nets from privatization or elimination, or end our interventionist foreign policy.<\/p>\n

Progressive activists should work to capture the liberal governing apparatus rather than abandon it in a quixotic attempt to shake up the entire system. \u00a0Don\u2019t withhold support \u2013 use it to demand more progressive policy.\u00a0 Since Sanders started his run, this has worked \u2013 Clinton\u2019s rhetoric and policy preferences reflect a reaction to these demands.\u00a0 Hillary Clinton is not working to convince Democrats that they should support certain policies \u2013 she\u2019s writing her policy proposals to reflect Democratic coalition wants and needs<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I certainly agree that a Trump Presidency might damage the country enough to help advance the progressive cause more quickly.\u00a0 But like the G. W. Bush regime, which arguably did the same thing, it would hurt millions of \u201cworkers and other ordinary citizens\u201d in the process.\u00a0 Smith\u2019s \u201chighly educated and high-income\u201d friends would weather the resulting storm.\u00a0 Others will not, and protecting them matters.\u00a0 This is why liberal leaders like Smith should forsake the less emotionally satisfying #NeverHillary approach and work to reform the system and influence the Democratic Party from within.\u00a0 This reformation is underway and since 2008 successfully shifted the median possible policy framework on a wide range of issues to the left.\u00a0 Let\u2019s not end that leftward movement by electing a proto-fascist.\u00a0 It simply makes no sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yves Smith (aka Susan Webber), a management consultant and principal at Aurora Advisors, writes at Politico that the \u201chighly educated, high-income, finance-literate readers of my website, Naked Capitalism, don\u2019t just overwhelmingly favor Bernie Sanders. They also say \u201cHell no!\u201d to Hillary Clinton to the degree that many say they would even vote for Donald Trump […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,67,75,18,70,84,36,74,37,83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-democratic-nomination","category-2016-presidential-race","category-bernie-sanders","category-discourse","category-donald-trump","category-hillary-clinton","category-liberal-campaign-strategy","category-norms-and-shared-understandings","category-politics-and-elections","category-the-rules-of-american-capitalism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=268"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":272,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions\/272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}