CT Blue

This morning I attended a breakfast meeting of the Chamber of Commerce in Norwich. I made this sacrifice solely to show support for Chris Murphy, who addressed the assembled multitude. I figured that it could only help if there were at least a few Democrats in a crowd consisting mostly of people who think that their interests are aligned with the people who actually control the Republican Party.

But I digress.

Murphy acquitted himself well, but would I be a good Democrat if I didn’t find something to complain about?

There may breathe a member of Congress who speaks the flat out truth about the “fiscal cliff”, but if there is, I haven’t heard, unless it’s Bernie Sanders. I will give Murphy credit for having the brains to realize that all this talk about cliffs; looming economic Armageddons, and debt crises are fact free diversions from the agenda that is really being pushed. Yet, there he was, accepting, or appearing to accept, the reality of this artificial crisis and fitting comfortably within the frame constructed by the beltway insiders, who masquerade as deficit hawks until it looks like they will have to contribute, if ever so slightly, toward reducing the deficit they claim to deplore.

I can sort of understand why an informed politician might nonetheless feel obligated to talk to a group such as the Chamber folks in the way Murphy did. By and large, they’re uninformed, since they get their news from the media elite that have constructed the frame. It would be hard for them to bend their minds around the concept that the deficit is actually a minor matter in the near term; that in fact decreasing it is not a good idea; that the only danger posed by the “fiscal cliff” is the fact that it might very well reduce the debt too quickly; and that slashing Social Security and Medicare would be inefficient and destructive ways to deal with deficits, either in the short term or the long term.

To give him his due, Murphy did allude to the fact that Social Security does not contribute to the deficit, and that Medicare’s contribution is fairly insignificant and he certainly didn’t embrace the slash and burn solutions to the non-problem that are so often proposed. But he said nothing that would lead anyone to question that the entire debate is predicated on the existence of a threat that exists only in some fevered imaginations. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to hear a politician tell us the whole truth and nothing but the truth: that deficits are the least of our problems right now, given that we have huge numbers of people unemployed and an entire generation at risk of permanent relegation to the ranks of the unemployable. Sure, they’re not used to hearing that, and the first politician who breaks free of the mandatory meme will be taking a risk, but here we might learn from Republicans. They have found, with this issue as with so many others, that all you need to do to get people to believe a lie is repeat it often enough. It’s about time for Democrats to at least experiment with the possibility that the same thing works if you keep repeating the truth.