CT Blue

I'm no big fan of Charles Schumer, but he made some good points recently, urging the Democratic party to articulate positions that actually help people. I think he's wrong in treating advancing “middle class” positions and passing health care as being mutually exclusive, nor is he right about health care only affecting a small non-voting slice of the nation. In any event, the Democrats were actually in a position to do both things at once; they chose to throw that chance away in the name of collegiality and respect for the poor, downtrodden Republican minority. We see where that go them. Anyway, here's his argument:

First—we must ask ourselves, does this policy directly benefit middle-class families in an immediate and tangible way? Will the policy help increase their incomes or lower their expenses in a meaningful way? If we are to fulfill our pact with the middle class, we must articulate policies that will make their lifestyle more affordable. Period. These policies must be aimed at “who,” not “what.”

Not all of these policies will involve spending. For instance, raising the minimum wage; negotiating good trade policies that prevent jobs from going overseas; and changing labor laws so workers can demand more pay all don’t involve spending, but rather changing the rules of the game to make it easier for the middle-class to fight the forces they’re up against.

Second—the policy should be simple and easily explained. Can it be grasped almost intuitively as something that will help middle-class families?

Third—is it likely to happen? Democratic priorities should be achievable. Yes, they must be easy to message, but they have to be more than just messaging bills.

Fourth—does the policy affect a broad swath of Americans? Even though health care had very real benefits, it did for a very small slice of the country. There are even some policies that would help constituencies within the middle class but not a great deal of people. Those policies should be considered but shouldn’t become part of the core of the Democratic platform.

Fifth—our program cannot seem like a group of disjointed, specific policies, but must fit together to create an effective theme, message, and even symphony, so that people don’t see individual Democratic programs as individual pieces, but rather, parts of a whole.

Folks elsewhere have elaborated on his points about the health care law. I want to concentrate on numbers three and five. It is an unfortunate Democratic tendency to refuse to advocate for anything that they feel has no present chance of passing. Republicans are not similarly constrained. They advocate for things that seem unachievable, like eviscerating social security, and over the years, it has become conventional wisdom, at least in the Beltway, that eviscerating social security would be a good thing. Imagine how much easier it would be to convince the nation (if not the Beltway) that things that actually do help people, even if presently unachievable, would be worth doing. Nothing ever gets done without demand, whether for good or ill. So, by all means, the Democrats should include in their policy prescriptions things that people want or need that seem impossible presently to achieve. If it's a good idea, the Democrats will be perceived as owning it. They can put up with some Beltway derision if it earns them votes elsewhere.

I'm not sure what kind of policy “theme” would, in Schumer's mind, satisfy Schumer's fifth requirement, but I agree wholeheartedly with the words he used. Most important is that people be able to understand how Democratic policies can improve their lives. We don't need no wonkish proposals. We can argue all we want that the stimulus made things better (or prevented things from getting worse), but almost no one actually felt that impact directly (or, more accurately no one felt that they felt it). Even those who got employment directly as a result of the stimulus were unaware of that fact. Yes, it was a good thing, but you need to be an economist to appreciate that fact. On the other hand, if we make higher education free or actually relieve the burden of student loan debt, there will be a clear understanding on the part of the beneficiaries of those policies that they owe their good fortune to Democrats. Same if we raise the minimum wage, or empower workers. We need to keep things simple, inasmuch as we have the propaganda stream flowing from almost all mass media against us.

So far as Schumer is concerned, the proof's in the pudding. It's hard to see how you can craft a really convincing message to the “middle class” (quotes because there's no such thing anymore) without perturbing Wall Street, which is Schumer's core constituency.