IS ANYONE HAPPY?

By Bill Breakstone, September 15, 2010


The campaigns for the 2010 Mid-Term Elections are well under way. There are still a few very minor primaries to be held, but with last evening’s results now in, it’s all over but the shouting until the election takes place on November 2nd.

The results thus far reflect a significant dissatisfaction on the part of voters with establishment candidates. There is little reason to doubt that this will carry over to the general election, and negatively affect both Republicans and Democratic incumbents.

The bottom line is that the American people are extremely unhappy. They are unhappy about their present economic condition; they are unhappy with their elected officials; they are unhappy about the diminished values of their homes; they are, in general, unhappy with their lot.

On Monday of this week, two Op-Ed columns appeared in The New York Times, the first by Bob Herbert, the second by David Brooks. These two writers come from different points in the political spectrum. Herbert is a Progressive Liberal writer, whereas Brooks is a moderate Republican. It is interesting to examine excerpts from these two columns, as they point to the unhappiness mentioned in the above paragraph.

First, Bob Herbert, commenting on Robert Reich’s new book “Aftershock:”

“The middle class is finally on its knees. Jobs are scarce and good jobs even scarcer. Government and corporate policies have been whacking working Americans every which way for the past three or four decades. While globalization and technological wizardry were wreaking employment havoc, the movers and shakers in government and in the board rooms of the great corporations were embracing privatization and deregulation with the fervor of fanatics. The safety net was shredded, unions were brutally attacked and demonized, employment training and jobs programs were eliminated, higher education costs skyrocketed, and the nation’s infrastructure, a key to long-term industrial and economic health, deteriorated.”

“While all this was happening, working people, including those in the vast middle class, coped as best they could. Women went into the paid work force in droves. Many workers increased their hours or took on second and third jobs. Savings were drained and debt of every imaginable kind — from credit cards to mortgages to student loans —exploded.”

“With those coping mechanisms now exhausted, it’s painfully obvious that the economy has failed working Americans.”

“Analysts have tracked the increasing share of national income that has gone to the top 1 percent of earners since the 1970s, when their share was 8 percent to 9 percent. In the 1980s, it rose to 10 percent to 14 percent. In the late-’90s, it was 15 percent to 19 percent. In 2005, it passed 21 percent. By 2007, the last year for which complete data are available, the richest 1 percent were taking more than 23 percent of all income.”

“The richest one-tenth of 1 percent, representing just 13,000 households, took in more than 11 percent of total income in 2007.”

“That does not leave enough spending power with the rest of the population to sustain a flourishing economy. The wages of the typical American hardly increased in the three decades leading up to the Crash of 2008, considering inflation. In the 2000s, they actually dropped.”

“A male worker earning the median wage in 2007 earned less than the median wage, adjusted for inflation, of a male worker 30 years earlier. A typical son, in other words, is earning less than his dad did at the same age.”

“This is what has happened with ordinary workers as the wealth at the top has soared into the stratosphere.”

“With so much of the middle class and the rest of working America tapped out, there is not enough consumer demand for the goods and services that the U.S. economy is capable of producing. Without that demand, there are precious few prospects for a robust recovery.”

As most other economists now predict, it will be a long time before our economy will grow at an adequate pace in terms of GDP growth, to absorb new entrants into the work force, let alone bring the rate of joblessness down to a historically acceptable level. Thus, this “middle-class malaise” will continue. It is being reflected politically by the rejection of incumbents and the rise of fringe movements, or shall we call them alternative parties, such as the Tea Party.

The question is: what’s next? If the Nation has to suffer through a five- to ten-year period of inadequate growth, and conditions do not improve for average Americans, will we suffer increased political unrest, or, worse, the emergence of civil unrest? The voting public’s dissatisfaction can be viewed as a much deeper and more worrisome sense of frustration with the direction in which our Country is heading. And they are placing the blame on everyone in power: a politically polarized and ineffective legislature; a President whose popularity decreases every week; local legislators who are finding it increasing difficult, if not impossible, to balance their state’s income with the social responsibilities they have heretofore undertaken; and on and on.

Looking at the results of yesterday’s primary elections, the New York Times reports that “Carl P. Paladino, a Buffalo multimillionaire who jolted the Republican Party with his bluster and belligerence, rode a wave of disgust with Albany to the nomination for governor of New York on Tuesday, toppling Rick A. Lazio, a former congressman who earned establishment support but inspired little popular enthusiasm.”

“Mr. Paladino became one of the first Tea Party candidates to win a Republican primary for governor, in a state where the Republican Party has historically succeeded by choosing moderates.”

“We are mad as hell,” Mr. Paladino said in a halting but exuberant victory speech in Buffalo shortly after 11 p.m. “New Yorkers are fed up. Tonight the ruling class knows. They have seen it now. There is a people’s revolution. The people have had enough.”

“Referring to criticism from what he said were liberal elites, he added: “They say I am too blunt. Well, I am, and I don’t apologize for it. They say I am an angry man, and that’s true. We are all angry.”

“The Tea Party movement scored another victory on Tuesday, helping to propel a dissident Republican, Christine O’Donnell, to an upset win over Representative Michael N. Castle in the race for the United States Senate nomination in Delaware.”

“Ms. O’Donnell, a former abstinence counselor who had failed in previous attempts to run for office in Delaware, won the endorsement of Sarah Palin, Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina and other leaders of the party’s conservative wing.”

“The results on the last big night of primaries highlighted the extent to which the Tea Party movement has upended the Republican Party and underscored the volatility of the electorate seven weeks from Election Day.”

But they also are a signal of the voter dissatisfaction that will affect not only Republicans, but Democrats as well in November.

In yesterday’s Times, David Brooks, commenting on the state of the Republican opposition, wrote:

“Throughout American history, there have been leaders who regarded government like fire — a useful tool when used judiciously and a dangerous menace when it gets out of control. They didn’t build their political philosophy on whether government was big or not. Government is a means, not an end. They built their philosophy on making America virtuous, dynamic and great. They supported government action when it furthered those ends and opposed it when it didn’t.”

“If the current Republican Party regards every new bit of government action as a step on the road to serfdom, then the party will be taking this long, mainstream American tradition and exiling it from the G.O.P.”

“Republicans are right to oppose the current concentration of power in Washington. But once that is halted, America faces a series of problems that can’t be addressed simply by getting government out of the way.”

“The social fabric is fraying. Human capital is being squandered. Society is segmenting. The labor markets are ill. Wages are lagging. Inequality is increasing. The nation is overconsuming and underinnovating. China and India are surging. Not all of these challenges can be addressed by the spontaneous healing powers of the market.”

“Conservatism is supposed to be nonideological and context-driven. If all government action is automatically dismissed as quasi socialist, then there is no need to think. A pall of dogmatism will settle over the right.”

“Republicans are riding a wave of revulsion about what is happening in Washington. But it is also time to start talking about the day after tomorrow, after the centralizing forces are thwarted. I hope that as Arthur Brooks and Paul Ryan lead a resurgent conservatism, they’ll think about the limited-but-energetic government tradition, which stands between Barry Goldwater and François Mitterrand, but at the heart of the American experience.”

What Brooks points out in his piece is exemplified in stark relief by the positions taken by the two Republican congressional leaders over the past few days. On Sunday, John Boehner, the House Minority Leader, stated that it was possible that he could eventually support Obama’s proposal to extend the Bush-era middle class tax cut while allowing the cut on upper income individuals to expire. But on Monday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell ruled out any such support in the Senate.

In an interview with The Caucus this morning, New York Senator Charles E. Schumer, the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said Ms. O’Donnell’s victory in Delaware was indicative of a primary pattern that will help his party.

“Republicans have basically chosen extremists to be their nominees and that has changed the map for the cycle,” the senator said.

“Republicans make the same mistake over and over again,” Mr. Schumer added. “The wounds are not healing, and I believe that demonstrates just how extreme these candidates are.”

What Schumer is saying is what Brooks was pointing out in his piece: that the Republican Party has been captured by its own extreme wing, and that in doing so, it has abandoned its traditional role of a politically reasoned counterbalance to the more liberal elements on the left.

Although John Boehner has the presence of mind to realize a political trap when he sees one, the intransigent McConnell does not, and he is aiming his Party into what looks like an abyss over the issue of middle class tax relief. And the Democrats will be smiling right up to November 2nd.