Step One Is Still Admitting There's a Problem
And more from this week...
Hope and change are fired up and ready to go. This week’s Democratic National Convention made clear that the party is eagerly returning to the Obama style of politics. The vibes, the joy, the unbridled enthusiasm for whatever anyone named Obama says or does—only the Greek columns were missing for Harris’s speech last night.
The question is whether that mode of politics is a good fit for what has become an increasingly sour national mood. As the Republican Party under Trump has focused increasingly on a message that everything is broken and much of it must be torn down, Democrats have become the institutionalists making the case to preserve the status quo ante. Can that work?
ONE THING TO READ THIS WEEK
Your one thing to read this week is James Pogue’s profile of Senator Chris Murphy (D, Conn.) in the New York Times, “The Senator Warning Democrats of a Crisis Unfolding Beneath Their Noses.”
Donald Trump and the movement around him have tapped into a sense of deep alienation and national malaise. Democrats often have trouble even acknowledging those feelings are real. … Academics, think tanks and magazines are buzzing with conversations about how to undo the damage wrought by half a century of misguided economic policies. On the right, that debate has already spilled out into the public view. But on the center-left, at least, very few politicians seem to be aware of this conversation — or at least willing to talk about it in front of voters.
Senator Murphy is a fascinating figure in all this, diagnosing the problem much more aggressively and presciently—and with much greater self-reflection and criticism—than the Democratic establishment has mustered. What’s much less clear is whether Murphy has the courage of his convictions to go where his conclusions lead him, which will be far afield from his own party, and whether his party will tolerate such divergence.
The trouble is that orienting the American economy back toward producing things and building a strong middle class may mean reassessing those old ideas and asking tough questions about whether we can afford to maintain our military might or continue financing the federal government with debt. These are now common talking points on the right, and at a time when Mr. Trump and his allies hint at ideas like withdrawing from NATO and curtailing the independence of the Federal Reserve, even a critic of the globalized economic order like Mr. Murphy can end up looking like a milquetoast defender of the status quo.
“He has a very tough road ahead, and here’s why,” says Steve Bannon. “There’s no audience for what he’s saying on the Democratic side. Democratic voters like the system.”
This is a common theme in off-the-record discussions between friends across partisan lines. Both sides will lament everything that’s worst and hardest about working within their own coalitions. But thoughtful, heterodox folks on the Left have a unique lament: You guys on the Right are lucky, they will say. There’s no ideological enforcement. You can actually have these fights out. On our side, step out of line and you get shot.
In my experience, that’s correct. Certainly, American Compass’s success is evidence of it. And there’s no real analog on the Left. The “bold” groups basically take the existing progressive orthodoxy and try to push it a little bit further. But don’t look for introspection, or rethinking, or any new direction. The ideology and policy proposals of leading Republicans would be unrecognizable to their counterparts just a decade earlier. The Democrats? Well, their convention may as well be happening in 2008.
BONUS LINK: In “A Stalled America,” friend-of-Compass and brilliant writer Chris Arnade has a long dispatch on the despair he has observed in his recent travels across America, and how much worse things seem than a decade ago.
THIS WEEK AT AMERICAN COMPASS
The Toaster Economy: Fred Bauer draws lessons for trade policy for from the humble kitchen appliance.
Toward a More Responsive American Urbanism: Theo Pollack makes the case for reforms that could make America’s towns and cities more like the people who live in them.
‘Let Them Eat Joy’: Batya Ungar-Sargon writes on how the DNC, far from being a discussion of any meaningful policy, was a celebration of the joy of the rich and famous.
And, on the American Compass Podcast this week, Sports Solidarity president Harry Marino describes his experience as a minor league baseball ballplayer, his work leading the effort to unionize the minor leagues, and lessons for the larger labor movement.
WHAT ELSE SHOULD YOU BE READING?
Re: Thinking Like a Lawyer, Problems Therein… Financial Times columnist Janan Ganesh says to Beware the Professional Ghetto.
How’s this for a stat: “Tim Walz is the first person on either the top or bottom half of a Democratic presidential ticket since 1980 who did not attend law school. That is 20 individuals across 10 elections over 40 years who pursued a JD or LLB. Not one of the four Republican presidents over the period had a legal background.” As Ganes notes, “Professions have their deforming effects. And those of law are all over modern American liberalism. Such as? … An exhausting primness about words and their use.”
Re: Industrial Policy… Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) writes in the Wall Street Journal on How I Differ with J.D. Vance on Industrial Policy.
Having spoken alongside both Khanna and Vance at events about industrial policy, I guess I feel at least somewhat qualified to weigh in on this topic! First, the positive: This is a very good op-ed, that makes a full-throated and compelling case for industrial policy (nice to see on the Wall Street Journal opinion page, by the way). Second, the negative: Khanna focuses almost entirely on areas where he and Vance actually agree (e.g., support for the CHIPS Act) and then tries to pin Vance with mischaracterized views to showcase disagreement (e.g., suggesting that Vance sees corporate tax cuts or immigration restriction as key elements of industrial policy). What’s most telling, Khanna prefers not to talk about the places where they actually disagree (e.g., Khanna’s emphasis on using industrial policy to promote green energy and unrelated social priorities like childcare mandates, or his unwillingness to enforce immigration law and his support for expanding guest-worker programs). One might go so far as to conclude that he knows, in an actual debate over how his industrial policy differs from Vance’s, he is playing a losing hand.
Re: The Big Ed Bubble… Bloomberg reports that Colleges Need $1 Trillion of Campus Upgrades to Lure Students.
Just a perfect storm of problems in both our higher education and financial systems. Universities have already committed to cost structures that few students can afford, thus relying on massive public subsidy and financing to operate at all. That financing generates a massive overhand of student debt that progressives now want to transfer onto taxpayers, even as the debt continues accumulating. Meanwhile, college enrollment is declining and demographic pressures will continue pushing it lower. Solution, according Moody’s bond rating agency? All universities should take on more debt themselves to compete with each other to attract a dwindling customer base… This will end well.
Re: The Alternative… meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal highlights The Colleges Where Students Start Jobs Right Away.
You know who’s not having trouble attracting student? Northeastern University, where “students alternate academics and up to 18 months of full-time paid work experience” and surging applications have left the acceptance rate on par with some Ivy League schools. Going out on a limb here, but, maybe investing in building relationships with employers and getting students out of classrooms and into on-the-job training would offer our education system a better return than investing in fancier student centers. Fly in the ointment: the Journal notes that “Northeastern’s total annual cost can now reach $90,000 … compared with less than $20,000 three decades ago.” That seems high? Reporting on how universities actually spend their money is very much needed. But for now…
Enjoy the weekend!
"But thoughtful, heterodox folks on the Left have a unique lament: You guys on the Right are lucky...There’s no ideological enforcement. You can actually have these fights out. On our side, step out of line and you get shot." True, on the Right there is no longer ideological enforcement. There is just loyalty enforcement. Criticize Him and you get shot.
RE: your take on Chris Murphy’s rumination’s, I think it is just not true that Republicans and other non-democrats have some wonderful open discussion going on about how to cure the malaise that Murphy is trying to identify and understand. There is almost nothing wrong with America that a Trump-led Republican Party can’t and won’t make worse. That’s because Trump is not involved in any of those discussions except from the point of view of what people, countries, and entire American alliances owe him, or his completely disjointed and largely unhinged sense of who is being suckered by who. He cares not a white for “the common man” except as fodder for donations and adoration. And there is almost nothing in the Project 2025 playbook that would cure the malaise unless you define the malaise as arising from a a lack authoritarian leadership in America.
Working-class people have a lot to complain about in the effects that 40+ years of Reaganomic Trickle-down Neoliberal Globalization. But all of the Republican cures being espoused by the Party of Trump are built on thuggish suppression and oppression of fellow Americans defined as enemies of Trump.
The Harris Campaign and the Convention has been all about engaging in the issues around disillusionment and alienation for heartland Americans. The inability to hear or see this speaks more about one’s own ideological filters and b pioneers than it does about this election and the choices America now has in moving forward to make things better for all Americans.