On Thursday, Small Business Majority released the results of a national web survey of 500 small business owners. This poll, conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, reveals that a 57 percent majority of small business owners supports increasing the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour. They cite enhancing consumer spending and strengthening the economy as reasons to boost pay. A majority also agrees that raising the minimum wage would decrease pressure on taxpayer-financed government assistance to make up for low wages.
Click here to read the Small Business Majority press release, and here to view the full report.

The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
From all indications the GOP has gambled all the marbles on the proposition that Obamacare will sink Democratic candidates this fall. But the odds are good, they have made a losing bet.
In fact, it’s looking more and more like Obamacare may even be a net positive for Democrats this November.
Of course one reason why Republicans are banking so heavily on the toxicity of Obamacare is that they really don’t have much else to fall back on. The popularity of Republicans in Congress is at an all time low. And Democrats have the high political ground on just about every other major issue.
Raising the minimum wage is enormously popular with a public that is sick of stagnant wages while Republican Wall Street bankers continue to rake in record bonuses. Republicans say no.
Large majorities favor continuing federal unemployment benefits in an economy where there are still three job seekers for every job. But the Republican leadership has blocked continued unemployment benefits.
The GOP’s anti-woman, anti-gay outbursts make them look like an artifact of another era to young people and swing voters. As the New York Times reported last Friday:
In the past few months, Republicans have called Wendy Davis, a Democratic candidate for Texas governor “Abortion Barbie,” likened Allison Lundergan Grimes, a Senate candidate from Kentucky, to an “empty dress,” criticized Hillary Rodham Clinton’s thighs, and referred to a pregnant woman as a “host”.
Their seminars on “how to talk to women” don’t seem to be working.
Overwhelming majorities favor immigration reform that the Republican leadership has single-handedly blocked in the House.
Americans completely disagree with GOP “climate deniers” who don’t believe in science and are tied at the hip to Big Oil.
Over 90 percent of the population agrees with Democrats that it’s time to perform background checks on 100 percent of gun sales in the United States — but the GOP put up a stonewall to commonsense gun violence legislation after the massacre at Sandy Hook.
Most Americans reacted with revulsion to the GOP shutdown of government last fall.
So it’s no wonder that Republicans have pinned all of their hopes for the mid-terms on the proposition that the botched Obamacare roll-out would sour the public on the signal accomplishment of President Obama’s first term.
But once again, the Republicans are on the wrong side of history.

Read more…

TDS founding editor Ruy Teixeira has two posts at ThinkProgress which Democratic political strategists will find instructive and their Republican counterparts will find worrisome. From Teixeira’s “The Hidden Demographic Shifts That Are Sinking The Republican Party“:

First, look at where Republicans and Democrats tend to live. David Jarman took a detailed look recently, with great charts and interactive maps, at the relative growth in Democratic and Republican votes in the nation’s 3,144 counties between 1988 and 2012. For each county, Jarman calculates the net change in Democratic votes (increase in Democratic votes minus increase in Republican votes) over that time period.
The results are fascinating for how much and where growth is benefiting Democrats and Republicans. Start with the Democrats. The 25 top counties for net Democratic vote gain include many of the most populous counties in the country. They include Los Angeles at the top, eight of the ten most populous (LA, plus Cook [Chicago], San Diego and Orange [CA], Dallas, Kings [Brooklyn], Queens and Miami-Dade) and 15 of the top 25 most populous. The rest, without exception, are large counties that include a major city or are urbanized inner suburbs of a major city. The magnitude of Democratic gains in the top 25 ranges from 1.2 million in LA down to around 140,000.
The top gainers for the GOP, in contrast, tend to be in much smaller counties on the periphery of metropolitan areas (“exurbs”). The top 25 GOP gainers include no county in the US top 25 in population and include only one in the top 50. And the magnitude of GOP gains in the top 25 is much smaller than those enjoyed by the Democrats. Indeed, the largest GOP net gain of all–90,000 in Provo county, Utah-is not only smaller than the 25th ranked gain for the Democrats (140,000) but also smaller than Democratic gains all the way down to the 61st ranked Democratic gainer county.
Democratic strength in dense areas is clearly one reason for the Democrats’ increasing electoral potency, particularly in Presidential elections. Conversely, the concentration of GOP gains in more lightly-populated areas limits their strength now and in the future.

Teixeira then takes a look at educational attainment trends by generation as revealed in a recent Pew Research Center report, and explains that millennial college graduates are doing exceptionally-well in terms of earnings and employment:

The report notes that 34 percent of Millennial generation 25-32 year olds have a four year college degree, compared to 25 percent among Gen Xers at the same age, 24 percent among both late and early Boomers and just 13 percent among those from the Silent generation. Millennials are also receiving the highest relative values from their degrees. A Millennial college graduate has median earnings of $45,500, compared to just $28,000 for a Millennial high school graduate. Back in 1965, the gap was much narrower: a Silent Generation college graduate earned $38,800 (2012 dollars) while a high school graduate earned $31,400.
Millennial college graduates also do very well in terms of unemployment (just 3.8 percent vs. 8.1 percent among those with some college and 12.2 percent among high school graduates) and poverty incidence (5.8 percent vs. 14.7 percent among those with some college and 21.8 percent among high school grads). These data should put to rest any notion that it is somehow not worth it for Millennials to invest in a college education.
That is certainly how Millennial college grads see the situation. In the accompanying public opinion survey, 88 percent said that, considering what they and their family paid for their education, their degree has already paid off (62 percent) or would pay off in the future (26 percent). In addition, 86 percent of employed Millennial college grads describe their current job as a career or career-track job, compared to 73 percent of those with some college and only 57 percent of high school grads.

The improving education and earnings attainment of the Millennial generation is “a powerful factor moving us toward a more open and tolerant society (see this report from CAP),” explains Teixeira. “It also should reduce Democratic deficits among white voters since white college graduates are considerably less hostile to Democrats than white noncollege voters.”
The data strongly suggests that “making a college education attainable and affordable for a much larger segment of the population should be a high priority for progressives,” says Teixeira. “And since the GOP’s commitment to enhancing economic mobility, as Sean McElwee has pointed out, is full-throated and unequivocal — except when it involves spending money — this is an issue where Democrats can draw a particularly sharp contrast between themselves and the GOP.”
But it’s not only the Millennials who are giving democrats an edge going forward. Teixeira quotes from a new Gallup report:

Baby boomers constitute 32% of the U.S. adult population and, by Gallup’s estimate, 36% of the electorate in 2012, eclipsing all other generational groups. Baby boomers have dominated U.S. politics on the basis of their sheer numbers since the late 1970s, when most of the group had reached voting age….If the party preferences of each generational group were to hold steady in the coming years as the Democratic-leaning baby boomers gradually replace the more Republican Silent and Greatest generations, the country as a whole would likely become more Democratic.

“Thus, over time, high-turnout seniors, currently the most conservative part of the electorate by age, will be liberalized as Baby Boomers age,” explains Teixeira. “Moreover, the most liberal part of the generation — those born up through 1955 and termed “early Boomers” — is frontloaded, so the political impact on the senior population could be fairly rapid.” In sum, adds Teixeira, “the changing location, education levels, and age of the electorate suggest why the Republicans’ long-term disadvantages aren’t so bad as most people think. They’re worse.”
In addition to the demographic advantages benefitting Democrats, Teixeira sees a more short-term game-changing opportunity for Dems in recent public opinion, as explained in his ThinkProgress post “Why Democrats Should Run On Inequality In 2014“:

There’s been some debate recently about how progressives should talk about inequality: opportunity and mobility or redistribution and fairness? I personally lean toward the opportunity and mobility approach, a position I outline here.
But this disagreement over how to talk about inequality here shouldn’t obscure the fact that, when it comes to the 2014 elections, there’s broad agreement among progressives that Democrats who share their values should talk about it. In fact, the data are unequivocal: if they want to win, they should talk about it a lot.

Teixeira notes that Democrats have been perhaps over-sensitive to charges of “class warfare” when they raise the topic of inequality, while Republicans, aware that polls show increasing concern about inequality, are doing their best to muddle the issue. Further,

Take a recent CNN poll that asked people whether “the government should work to substantially reduce the income gap between the rich and poor.” Unsurprisingly, 90 percent of liberals of liberals agreed. But so did 71 percent of moderates, suggesting candidates who run on inequality have opportunities to make gains in the center.
However, the same data show that Republicans like Ryan and Lee aren’t exactly in a good position to capitalize on this opportunity. 53 percent of conservatives disagreed with the notion of government working to solve the income gap, suggesting Republicans will only have limited room to attack inequality without alienating their base. Indeed, the real political opportunity created by independent disgust with inequality is for Democrats to use it as a wedge issue to pry centrist voters away from Republican candidates.
More data in the CNN poll support this interpretation. 91 percent of Democrats and 66 percent of independents thought the government should work hard to reduce the income gap. 57 percent of Republican identifiers thought the government should not work at all on reducing the income gap.
Now, most independents are not actually independent: the vast majority of independents vote like either Republicans or Democrats. But based on what we know about the typical distribution of pure independents versus closet partisans and their respective views, we can estimate pure independents’ support for government action to reduce inequality from the CNN data. The figure comes, by my calculations, to around 66 percent.

“The electorate’s true centrists — the pure independents whom one might legitimately call swing voters — are overwhelmingly supportive of government action to reduce the gap between rich and poor in today’s America,” concludes Teixeira. “However progressives choose to talk about inequality, they should, above all, keep talking. Centrist voters will be listening.”
Teixeira’s analysis shows quite clearly that Republicans have a lot to worry about in terms of demographic transformation going forward. And if Democrats heed his findings about public attitudes towards growing inequality and amplify their proposals to address it, the 2014 elections should give the GOP increasing concern in the months ahead as well.

Adolph Reed, Jr.’s article “Nothing Left:: The long, slow surrender of American liberals” in the current issue of Harper’s has created a bit of a stir in Democratic circles. Read it, give it some thought, and then read two more nuanced takes on the topic and Reed’s article by Harold Meyerson and Kos blogger Armando, cited below.
First, from Meyerson’s American Prospect post, “The Left, Viewed from Space“:

As Reed sees it, both political parties have been captured by neo-liberalism, by Wall Street, by the cult of laissez-faire. The Democrats have succumbed while maintaining, or even increasing, their liberalism on social and cultural issues, even as the Republicans have moved rightward on those same social issues. More troublingly, as Reed sees it, the American left has acquiesced in the Democrats’ rightward movement, backing a passel of candidates and two presidents–Bill Clinton and Barack Obama–who adhered to the economics of Robert Rubin and his protégés. The Left, says Reed, has always had an excuse: If the Republicans are elected, the world will lurch to the right. Backing Clinton and Obama and the Democrats is a defensive exercise, and a kneejerk defensive exercise at that.

Meyerson notes that Reed is not calling for a third party and that Reed’s “primary lament is that the left over-invests, emotionally and otherwise, in Democratic candidates, inasmuch as those candidates don’t deliver much if and when they’re elected.” This, plus “its absorption into single-issue politics” distracts the left from its central goal of “building a long-term movement for economic equity that challenges the direction of American capitalism.”
Meyerson credits Reed with some worthwhile insights, but adds that “Reed’s characterization of the Democrats as neo-liberal NAFTA-ites seems frozen in time, that time being the 1990s.” Further, says Meyerson,

..Both Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have ruled out any support for Obama’s bid to resurrect fast-track–in essence, killing any chance for passing the latest iteration of corporate-backed trade agreements, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Reed’s view of the Democrats takes no account of the popularity of Elizabeth Warren and Bill de Blasio within the Democratic base, of the movement of fast-food workers and the spillover effect their campaign has had on efforts to raise the minimum wage. He didn’t get the news that Senate Democrats rejected Obama’s effort to make Larry Summers the chairman of the Fed precisely because of Summers’s role in deregulating finance. He seems not to have heard of the successes of groups like New York’s Working Families Party, which has built an electoral left in New York, or the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, which has won higher wages, union recognition and environmental victories by uniting labor and enviro groups in L.A. He seems, in short, to have missed the rise of a left that is doing pretty much what Reed says a left should be doing….

But Meyerson sees “the biggest hole” in Reed’s argument is his myopia about the role of labor unions in politics:

…With the Republican Party fairly brimming with Scott Walkers and Bob Corkers–with politicos whose very mission is to stamp out what’s left of the labor movement–the unions lack the luxury of downgrading their electoral work. Wherever they can, labor, liberals, and the left should favor candidates and campaigns devoted to working people’s interests and power. But if the choice is between a Scott Walker Republican and a Democrat of limited virtues who nonetheless will support unions’ right to exist, labor, liberals and the left still have to mobilize for that Democrat.

Reed blasts away at Democratic strategy, as well as Party leaders’ propensity for selling out core principles:

The atrophy of political imagination shows up in approaches to strategy as well. In the absence of goals that require long-term organizing — e.g., single-payer health care, universally free public higher education and public transportation, federal guarantees of housing and income security — the election cycle has come to exhaust the time horizon of political action. Objectives that cannot be met within one or two election cycles seem fanciful, as do any that do not comport with the Democratic agenda. Even those who consider themselves to the Democrats’ left are infected with electoralitis. Each election now becomes a moment of life-or-death urgency that precludes dissent or even reflection. For liberals, there is only one option in an election year, and that is to elect, at whatever cost, whichever Democrat is running. This modus operandi has tethered what remains of the left to a Democratic Party that has long since renounced its commitment to any sort of redistributive vision and imposes a willed amnesia on political debate. True, the last Democrat was really unsatisfying, but this one is better; true, the last Republican didn’t bring destruction on the universe, but this one certainly will. And, of course, each of the “pivotal” Supreme Court justices is four years older than he or she was the last time.

In his Daily Kos post, “The surrender of the left? Activism and electoral politics,” Armando also takes a more thoughtful look at the political reality behind Reed’s article. “I think that while Reed’s pessimism and diagnosis of what ails the left, the electoralitis, is accurate, I’m not sure that I agree with his prescription.”
Armando takes particular issue with Reed’s contention that a Hillary Clinton presidency would spell the end of progressive Democrats’ ability to shape and influence policy debates:

A President Hillary Clinton will not be, nor be perceived, as the left flank of the Democratic Party. This permits, in my view, real arguments, initiatives and negotiation from strong progressive elements in Congress. There will be more room for independence, initiatives and influence. This was not possible in my view under the Obama presidency.

If Reed doesn’t directly advocate that progressive Democrats sit out the next couple of elections, he comes pretty close:

The crucial tasks for a committed left in the United States now are to admit that no politically effective force exists and to begin trying to create one. This is a long-term effort, and one that requires grounding in a vibrant labor movement. Labor may be weak or in decline, but that means aiding in its rebuilding is the most serious task for the American left. Pretending some other option exists is worse than useless. There are no magical interventions, shortcuts, or technical fixes. We need to reject the fantasy that some spark will ignite the People to move as a mass. We must create a constituency for a left program — and that cannot occur via MSNBC or blog posts or the New York Times. It requires painstaking organization and building relationships with people outside the Beltway and comfortable leftist groves. Finally, admitting our absolute impotence can be politically liberating; acknowledging that as a left we have no influence on who gets nominated or elected, or what they do in office, should reduce the frenzied self-delusion that rivets attention to the quadrennial, biennial, and now seemingly permanent horse races. It is long past time for us to begin again to approach leftist critique and strategy by determining what our social and governmental priorities should be and focusing our attention on building the kind of popular movement capable of realizing that vision…

Armando responds,

I cannot agree that the abandonment of electoral politics, as Reed seems to advise, is wise. Reed, it seems to me, like too many persons, sees elections as only the presidential election. The hard work to do necessarily includes electoral work, especially at the state and congressional level. And there is no better period than the coming election cycles.

In any case, 2014 seems like a bad year for Dems to reassemble the old circular firing squad. The “long, slow surrender” in the title of Reed’s article may better describe the defeatist attitude that underlays withdrawal from electoral politics than any real ideological trends within the Democratic Party.

Curtis Gans, director of the non-partisan Center for the Study of the American Electorate has an article entitled “Why 2014 Could Be a Very Democratic Election” up at HuffPo. That’s very bad news for Republicans, who up till now have been enjoying pundit predictions of November doom for Democrats. Gans, a respected political analyst, who has studied turnout and voting patterns for more than three decades, writes:

The record will show that the Democratic Party sustained no net losses in the U.S. Senate and gained five seats in the House in the 1998 mid-term during President Clinton’s second term and after Monica Lewinsky and impeachment dominated the news for the majority of the year. The record will also show that January polls tend to be irrelevant to November results or President Muskie would have been elected in 1972 and Hillary Clinton would have been the Democratic nominee and probable president in 2008. Foibles from a year earlier will only be remembered around election time if nothing has changed to render them obsolete. All of these are noise.
What could be either signal or noise in the Republican election scenario are two factors: 1) The mid-term electorate is substantially smaller (by as much as 20 percentage points) than the presidential year electorate, and it tends to include fewer young voters and minorities; and 2) There are twice as many Democratic Senate seats up for election in this cycle as there are Republican and, according to the Cook Political Report, there are only 77 House districts that were won by a 55-45 margin or less in 2012, only 33 by 52-48 or less — and those nearly evenly divided between Democratic and Republican winners.
Elections are not decided by how many turn out, but rather who turns out, and it is not at all clear at this juncture whether the deep divisions within the Republican Party will reduce GOP turnout by a greater amount than the likely lower turnout of some key Democratic constituencies.

Regarding prospects for a “blue wave” election, Gans writes:

Despite current conventional wisdom, such an election is not only possible but probable but only if three signals occur: If September polls, the polls taken when people are paying attention to the upcoming election, show a substantial improvement in Obama’s approval rating and an equally substantial increase in public support of the Affordable Care Act, and if the economy does not relapse into recession.

Gans then discusses a major problems for Republicans, including their being blamed for the “do-nothing congress,” demographic change and, internal divisions. If Obama and the Democrats have a little good luck, on the other hand, and the economy improves, the prospects for an upset improve considerably. It looks highly unlikely, however, that the Republicans will finally decide to address the issues of concern to the middle class, such as unemployment and reducing economic inequality. As Gans concludes,

But public opinion on a person or an issue is usually formed on a compared-to-what basis. And in that context, it hard to believe that a party whose leader in the Senate would see in 2011 his single most important goal as “to make Obama a one-term president,” and whose leader in the House would say, “We should not be judged on how many laws we create. We ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal,” would be given a 2014 mandate to continue on its present path.

All in all, Gans makes a good case that Dems have some reasons to hope for an upset.

From Michael Tomasky’s “Democrats’ Best Weapon for Midterms: Fear of a Red Senate Control of the Senate depends on turnout in November. Democrats need to tap what scares their base most: fear of an unrestrained GOP.”:

You’ll read a lot about Obamacare and the minimum wage and the War on Women and everything else, and all those things will matter. But only one thing really, really, really matters: turnout. You know the lament: The most loyal Democratic groups–young people, black people, single women, etc.–don’t come out to vote in midterms in big numbers. You may dismiss this as lazy stereotyping, but sometimes lazy stereotyping is true, and this is one of those times.
So how to get these groups energized? Because if core Democratic voting groups turn out to vote in decent numbers, the Democrats will hold the Senate. Two or three of the six will hold on, the Democrats will prevail in the end in Michigan and Iowa, and either Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky or Michelle Nunn in Georgia will eke out a win. Or maybe both–if Democratic voters vote. And if not? Republicans could net seven, eight.
The other side will be motivated: They’re older, white, angry that Obama continues to have the temerity to stand up there and be president, as if somebody elected him. This will be their last chance to push the rage button (well, the Obama-rage button; soon they’ll just start pushing the Hillary-rage button). But what will motivate the liberal side?
I call this the vampire-slayer election…

Tomasky explains that Democratic strategists are embracing Michael Bennett’s 2010 victory in Colorado, along with the wins of Heidi Heitkamp in ND and John Tester in MT in 2012 as a rough template for beating tea party surges in tough states. He adds that every voter in 10 targeted states “will be given two scores on a scale of 1 to 100: a support score and a turnout score. So if Molly Jones in Paducah is a 58 likely to support the Democrat and 38 likely to turnout, she can expect a lot of contacts from field operatives this fall.”
Tomasky applauds the strategy and the impressive investment in money and manpower Dems are planning for those ten states. But he argues that the time is ripe for a fear-driven campaign — one that reminds potential Democratic voters of how bad the Supreme Court could get if Republicans take over the senate and force Obama or the next president to nominate timid moderates or worse for upcoming vacancies. Ditto for other federal judgeships.
If that doesn’t shiver your timbers,

Picture the mad Darrell Issa having a counterpart in the Senate to launch baseless investigations. It’s one thing for the House to be banging on about phony IRS and Benghazi scandals, but the Senate doing it is another matter entirely–far more serious. You really think a Republican Senate won’t? And I haven’t even gotten to regular policy. You think a GOP House and Senate combined won’t try every trick in the book to pressure Obama to fold on Social Security and Medicare?

It is a scary scenario. some pundits have commented that a GOP senate takeover wouldn’t be so bad because Obama and/or the next Democratic president would still have the veto, and the Republicans are not going to get enough wins to override. But the Supreme Court is a pivotal factor for any Democratic strategy, especially checking the power of a highly-politicized conservative court majority. Letting it get worse would be a prescription for disaster, especially for African Americans, Latinos, women, unions and low-income workers.
Sure, Democratic candidates need a positive message. But the vampires smell blood, and their funders are already spending lavishly in support of the GOP senate campaign. Dems should have zero tolerance for the argument that a Republican senate takeover wouldn’t be so bad. As Tomasky concludes, “Democrats need to make their base voters see vividly the potential consequences of a GOP Senate majority and live in mortal fear of it. That and $60 million just may stem the tide.”

The following article by Dermocratic strategist Mike Lux, author of “The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
The executive order President Obama signed today on the minimum wage increase for workers employed by federal contractors is a very big deal, far bigger than even most progressives realize. Substantively, symbolically, politically, this policy change will have ripple effects for years to come, which will only widen if a Democrat stays in the White House after Obama’s term ends.
I say this as someone who has been disappointed with some of Obama’s economic policies. His administration has been far too weak on holding Wall Street accountable, has opposed a much-needed financial transactions tax, and could have done far more to force write-downs of underwater mortgages. His proposal to cut Social Security benefits are wrong, as is his willingness to make federal workers take pay freezes and pension cuts. His embrace of so much in the way of domestic budget cuts has been disappointing. His policies on international trade are downright awful. In general, his record in terms of taking on income inequality has often fallen far short of his rhetoric.
But on this executive order, the president has done it right. This wasn’t just a simple provision raise the minimum wage: On decision after decision within the document, the president made the right call. It indexes the minimum wage for these workers to inflation, meaning there will be yearly wage increases. It covers individuals with disabilities, ending the practice of many government contracts going to companies that pay those with disabilities a sub-minimum. Most importantly, given the big numbers of fast food companies that contract with the federal government, and given the extreme exploitation due to the $2.13 minimum that waitresses and waiters get paid if they get tips, the executive order includes specific provisions helping food industry workers by raising the tipped minimum wage.

Read more…

At Daily Kos Lefty Coaster quotes Daniel Rothberg’s warning in the L.A. Times article J.P. Green cited in his strategy notes yesterday:

If you support Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick’s bid for reelection, stay away from annkirkpatrick.com. The site might greet visitors with a welcoming photo of the Arizona congresswoman and a screaming “Kirkpatrick for Congress” logo, but that design belies its true agenda

Lefty asks, “How can these deceptive web sites be even remotely legal?, and lets Rothberg elaborate:

The National Republican Congressional Committee bought up hundreds of URLs ahead of the 2014 election cycle and has created nearly 20 websites appearing to support Democratic candidates in all but the small print, a spokesman for the campaign confirmed Thursday…The websites include donation forms that accept credit cards and encourage viewers to contribute up to $500, but instead of money going to the Democratic candidates, it goes to the NRCC.

Lefty concludes with his own warning:

Be very careful this election year when you donate money to Democrats over the internet. If you’re not careful your money may go to a bunch of Republican Rat Bastards instead of Democratic Candidates who need your help.

Hopefully the FEC will take action against the latest Republican deception. Meanwhile Dems should amp up their protest to force the GOP leaders defend deceiving their constituents.

The following article by TDS Founding editor Ruy Teixeira is cross-posted from ThinkProgress:
President Obama has talked quite a lot about inequality lately, most recently in his State of the Union address. Progressives have gone after him for it, with some arguing that he’s distracting from jobs and others suggesting he isn’t talking about inequality enough. But they’re wrong on both counts: inequality really is a winning issue, and Obama’s couching of it in terms of “equal opportunity” makes the argument stronger, not weaker.
While the conservative backlash has been predictable, Obama’s emphasis on inequality has prompted some backlash from those arguing that the main problem today is jobs rather than inequality. Is this a fair criticism? It’s certainly true that in the short run jobs does look like the most serious problem. To boot, as Jared Bernstein and Mike Konczal have pointed out, there are few programs that would have more of a positive effect on inequality than achieving full employment.
So should we be talking mostly about jobs and stimulus and turning down the volume on inequality? Paul Krugman dissents, rightly arguing that progressives must “face up to an awkward political reality: moderate populism has a broad popular constituency, Keynesian macroeconomics doesn’t.”
A recent Pew poll bears out Krugman’s point. Sixty-five percent of Americans said the gap between the rich and everyone else in the US has been increasing the last 10 years, and by a 60-36 margin, respondents said the economic system in the country unfairly favors the wealthy, as opposed to being fair to most Americans. Americans think inequality is both unfair and getting worse.
That theme of “everyone else” versus the top is dramatically underscored by results from a recent Hart Research poll conducted for the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Americans today overwhelmingly believe that the single most important goal for the nation’s economic future is creating an economy that works for everyone, not just the wealthy few (the pollsters call this concept “everyone economics”). While voters also rate many other goals as priorities — job creation, a strong future for the next generation, a stronger middle class — none resonate nearly as strongly as having an economy that works for all Americans. And no other critique better captures Americans’ economic anxiety than the idea that our economic system now benefits only the wealthy and corporations, while the deck is stacked against everyone else.
This suggests that not only is populism the right approach for progressives to take, but that populism should be pitched in a particular way. Everyone economics is consistent with an inclusive populism, rather than favoring one class over another. Instead of merely replacing the rich with the middle income folk as America’s “most favored” class, progressives should pitch their policies as a means of leveling the playing field for everyone.
For Americans, this is a moral, as well as an economic, story. The public believes that virtuous behavior (especially hard work) is not being properly rewarded today because of barriers erected by the wealthy and powerful. Three-quarters agree that “the rules in America have changed — hard work and sacrifice are not rewarded anymore,” while for 63 percent,providing more opportunity to those who work hard and struggle to provide for their families is a high priority.
Obama has also received some pushback for framing much of his talk about inequality in terms of opportunity rather than redistribution. But it’s better to think about the opportunity language as complimentary, rather than opposed to, the inequality arguments he and other leading progressives often employ.
In fact, the Hart data suggests that opportunity talk is actually the most effective way to challenge inequality. It is unquestionably true that the reality of large and growing inequality in America is shaping Americans’ perception of what is wrong with their economy and how it needs to change. But the Hart survey shows clearly that the specific language of “equality” (and “inequality”) is not the best way to speak to these concerns. Instead, Americans want to see expanded opportunity, especially for those who demonstrate effort through hard work. What worries them is less the size of statistical gaps in income or wealth, and more their sense that the system is rigged in favor of the powerful to prevent average people from having opportunities to move up the ladder.
This is why Americans are more focused on providing opportunity to everyone than on narrowing income inequality per se. By a solid 26-point margin, voters say their priority is to make sure everyone in the country has a real opportunity to succeed more than reducing the gap between the richest 1 percent and the rest of the country. And while 38 percent cite “economic opportunity” as an important quality for today’s economy, just 21 percent say the same for “economic equality.”
The most effective way to sell the progressive vision for the economy is everyone economics language focusing on providing opportunity for those who lack it today, not simply taking from some and giving to others. That’s is precisely what Obama was seeking to do with his emphasis on “ladders of opportunity” and he was right to do so.