This Week: The Elections

"Quote" of the Week: Think Long Term

Pledge Drive Over. Big Success!

The American People Have Voted. Haven't They?
Who Voted?
"They Won't Invest in the Country"

Greetings,

In the wake of any election, the media and pundits everywhere attempt to interpret the results and impose some meaning on what is invariably a complex and evolving set of facts. I usually try to avoid this sort of thing, but for some reason I'm getting into it this week. I think part of the reason is that I kept hearing all the winners talk about "mandates" and "the American people" and "priorities" and all of it. I know, I know: What did I expect? Still, I did a little looking into it and I think I found a few interesting tidbits that might surprise you. They surprised me. Let me know what you think.

In solidarity,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week: Think Long Term

On November 4th economist and activist Robin Hahnel published a piece called "Election Redux: Learning From The 2010 Midterm Elections, Part 1: Lessons For Others." In it he made a point that I've been thinking to myself since the elections:

"Lesson # 3 for progressives: Think long term, because in all probability the political situation in Washington will deteriorate further after the 2012 election. In 1934 FDR responded to demoralizing midterm election losses by calling out capitalists and Republicans who ridiculed him, and denouncing all who stood in the way of his New Deal agenda for ending the Depression. As a result he won re-election in 1936 in the biggest landslide in US history, sweeping many New Deal Democrats into Congress on his coat tails. If Obama does an about face and comes out swinging like FDR in 1934, confronts his critics, and denounces all who stand in the way of real solutions to unemployment, who knows what might happen. But every indication is that even before the electoral debacle proved to be worse than they anticipated, Team Obama had already planned to take their cue from Bill Clinton in 1994, not from FDR in 1934, and respond to midterm election loses by tucking their tail between their legs and seeking collaboration with Republican initiatives over the next two years."

Read the whole article HERE.

Pledge Drive Over. Big Success!

I am amazed and humbled to report that the Fall 2010 Nygaard Notes Pledge Drive was the most successful one yet! A HUGE Thank You to the dozens of you who sent in new Pledges, or renewed and/or increased your current Pledges!

Maybe that's all I need to say, but I'll give a few details for those who are interested.

This was the first time ever that I did the 7-Day Tsunami, in which I sent out a mini-Nygaard Notes every day for a week, with the usual appeal plus a "bonus" essay about something-or-other. I don't know if that's the reason, but the Pledges sent in totaled to the largest amount EVER for a single Pledge Drive. I don't actually know that for a fact, as I don't typically add them up. But it HAS TO be the largest. The total Pledges in response to this Drive came to almost $2,500.00! That's a lot of money for a guy like me.

Two things happen when such a good response is received. One thing is obvious: The cash infusion allows me more time to work on the Notes. Since I have so little overhead, your Pledges go almost entirely toward paying me to spend time doing the time-consuming research and writing and talking and thinking that goes into every issue. As I said in the essay that kicked off this Pledge Drive, the work I have taken on is intellectual work, aimed at promoting the values I hold dear. And, while I do believe that all of us are intellectuals, it's also true that it takes a lot of time to do intellectual work, even on a part-time basis.

I mean—really!—who has time to read through 162-page reports from the Government Accountability Office, to read three or more newspapers every day, to look up global poverty statistics and compare them to 40 years ago, and to read academic books on ideology and propaganda and metaphor and public relations? It takes time, as well, to translate all of that important but sometimes difficult-to-decipher information into plain language that can be used by activists as we try to transform our world into a more life-affirming one. And it takes time to go out into the world and talk to people, via TV, radio, and sometimes in workshop and classroom settings. And I often get emails from readers asking for specific help with an issue, or finding some information, or whatever they need. I try to find time to help all who ask.

I couldn't do all of this stuff without your support.

While it is true that your Pledges give me the time to do all of this, work, that's not all your Pledges do. Your Pledges also serve as affirmation and motivation for me as I get out of bed each day. I sometimes think I maybe should go and get a "real job"—with benefits! But your support for this project keeps me at it.

Many of you send in notes along with your Pledges telling me, in so many words, that you find my work valuable and want it to continue. Many of you do the same without making a Pledge, of course. But there is something about a Pledge Drive that brings in more comments than usual, which really boosts my energy and keeps my nose to the proverbial grindstone. And, of course, the simple fact of sending in your contribution tells me that this work has value to you. I hear you, and will do my best to see that you don't regret supporting this bizarre and apparently-unstoppable project that we call Nygaard Notes.

The American People Have Voted. Haven't They?

There was a big election last week in the United States. You know, the one that brought us a new Republican leadership in the House of Representatives and reduced the majority of the Democrats in the Senate. The one where Republicans are claiming to have a "mandate" because "the American people" have spoken. You know. That election day. I looked into it and found a few small items that surprised me a bit. I thought I'd pass them on.

Jim Naureckas at FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), commented in his blog that there is a single "sentence that sums up what was wrong with election coverage ‘10, courtesy of the New York Times' Peter Baker (11/3/10): "Was this the natural and unavoidable backlash in a time of historic economic distress, or was it a repudiation of a big-spending activist government?"

Naureckas points out that this dualistic thinking implies that there are only two possible explanations for the votes to throw the bums out that were so often made by the apparently unhappy electorate. Either it was "a time of historic economic distress" about which nothing could be done. Or else it was a problem of too much spending by the federal government. We're left to ponder which of those two explanations makes more sense. If, in fact, these were the only choices, then that would be something to ponder. But those aren't the only two choices, and it's not that hard to find evidence that supports a different interpretation of the recent vote.

Time for a word about The American People and the Big-Spending Activist Government.

In a very brief press conference on the day after the election, the soon-to-be Speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican John Boehner of Ohio, talked a lot about "the American people." He said, "the new majority here in Congress will be the voice of the American people." According to Mr. Boehner, what he wants to do is to work "on the American people's priorities: creating jobs and cutting spending." He added that "the real question now is this: are we going to listen to the American people?"

Who are these "American people," anyway? Is there a set of priorities that is so widely shared among 300 million or so individuals that it turns them into a unified group called "the American people"? No, there's not. Let's give Mr. Boehner the benefit of the doubt and suppose that he was referring to the opinions of a majority of those 300 million people, and that he was promising to be the voice of that majority. Someone should tell Mr. Boehner that, despite the success of his party in the recent election, the people who seem to agree with him appear to be, overall, a decided minority.

Let's ASK The American People

I went and looked at a few opinion polls from the days leading up to the recent elections to see if there was any support for the Republican leader's claim that the "priorities" of "the American people" are really "creating jobs and cutting spending." I'm not a huge believer in opinion polls, but it's one way to get a rough idea of how the average person is attempting to make sense of the propaganda that is dominant at any given moment.

A Gallup Poll taken on the last three days of October appears to be the last one that was conducted before Mr. Boehner's remarks. Gallup asked,

"Looking ahead, which of the following should be the highest priority for Congress after the election: repealing the new healthcare law, passing a new economic stimulus bill designed to create jobs, cutting federal spending, or extending all the federal income tax cuts enacted during the Bush administration?"

Much to my surprise, the top vote-getter was "passing a new economic stimulus bill designed to create jobs." That was the choice of 38 percent of respondents. "Cutting federal spending" was the choice of only 24 percent. Not only was this Gallup poll ignored by the media in this country, but the idea of a new economic stimulus bill has never, to my knowledge, even been mentioned in the media in the context of the recent campaign.

When we consider that a new economic stimulus bill (Priority #1) would increase government spending (in violation of Priority #2), we see that this idea of "the American people" is a tricky one. Either that 38 percent is a completely different group than the 24 percent, or else people want to have their cake and eat it, too. (Which is quite possible.) In any case, did anyone in the media ask Mr. Boehner about this muddled picture of "the American people" that he says he will listen to? I don't think so.

I wondered if that Gallup Poll was just an anomaly. It wasn't. A CNN poll of October 27-30 asked "Which of the following is the most important issue facing the country today?", followed by a list of options. "The federal budget deficit" was considered "the most important issue" by 8 percent of respondents. That was far fewer than the 52 percent who cited "the economy" as most important.

(In case you're interested, here are the other options with the percentages that cited them: Education: 8 percent; Health care: 8 percent; The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: 8 percent; Illegal immigration: 8 percent; Terrorism: 4 percent; Energy and environmental policies: 4 percent; Other: 1 percent. Oddly, there was no option of "abolition of capitalism," but what did we expect?)

Another poll, by CBS News, asked the "most important problem" question early in October. In that one, the top response again was "Economy/Jobs," with 54 percent. In this poll, "Budget Deficit/National Debt" was cited by only 3 percent.

Who Do Ya Love, American People?!

I am not a Democrat, and am not trying to put Democrats in a good light. As a group, they have proven to be spineless do-nothings at best, shameless class warriors and imperialists at worst. (With a few honorable exceptions.) Yet, when asked whether they trust Democrats or Republicans more in terms of managing the country, "the American people" tell pollsters that they prefer Democrats. I was surprised at this.

The most recent poll on this subject was conducted on October 20-21 by Newsweek. They surveyed people, saying "Please tell me which political party—the Republicans or the Democrats—you trust to do a better job handling each of the following." And "the following" included seven items: The war in Afghanistan; The economy; Health care; Immigration; Federal spending and the deficit; Taxes; Unemployment. On five of those seven, more people trusted the Democrats than the Republicans. Republicans prevailed only on Immigration and the Deficit. (Small but significant minorities volunteered the response: "Neither.")

Newsweek had asked the same question at the end of September, with a shorter list of issues. At that time Democrats were more trusted than Republicans on 4 out of the 5 issues listed. On the issue of Terrorism Republicans were more trusted, while on the other four—Social Security; Reform of the financial and banking industries; Energy and the environment; and Education—more people trusted the Democrats.

I repeat: I am not a Democrat and I am not endorsing them or encouraging people to vote for them. All I am doing here is pointing out what I think is a fascinating and important contradiction: Despite apparently historic electoral gains by Republicans, most USAmericans, on most issues, have more faith in the Democrats than in the Republicans.

There are a couple of lessons here, I think. One lesson is for those of us who get a lot of our information from the corporate media. We're hearing, and will continue to hear, a lot of talk about a "mandate" for the recently-elected Republicans. This talk of a Republican mandate—let alone a Tea Party mandate!—should be taken with a large grain of salt. Maybe a whole shaker full.

There's another lesson here for activists. Significant numbers of "the American people" are going to become increasingly aware that their priorities are not being addressed. It's going to be up to us to get the point across to the general public that the problem is not that the Democrats are too progressive/radical/socialistic for "the American people." The problem is that they're not progressive/radical/socialistic enough.

The American People have spoken! Or, some of them, anyway. See next article...

Who Voted?

I just talked about some opinion polls that show more support for Democrats among the general population than for Republicans. Yet Republicans, as a group, did better in the elections. So it must have to do with who actually voted in the elections. In that regard, here's a short item that says a lot, I think.

This story ran on the "Christian Newswire" on November 3rd, under the headline: "Evangelical, Social Conservative Turnout Highest Ever Recorded in Mid-Term Election; White Evangelicals Comprise Nearly 30% of All Voters, Voted 78% for GOP; 52% of all Tea Party Supporters are Born-Again Evangelical Christians, According to Post-Election Survey." As important as this seems to me, it's only been mentioned in passing in the major media, if at all. The Christian Newswire story is actually a more-or-less verbatim publishing of a press release from the Faith and Freedom Coalition [FFC], and here it is in its entirety:

"According to a post-election survey conducted by Public Opinion Strategies for the Faith and Freedom Coalition, the largest single constituency in the electorate in the 2010 midterm elections was self-identified evangelicals, who comprised 29% of the vote and cast an astonishing 78% of their ballots for Republican candidates.

"The turnout by conservative people of faith represented a 5 percent increase in evangelical turnout over 2006—enough to eliminate Democratic gains in that year—and was the largest ever recorded in a midterm election. Because the evangelical vote is concentrated in the South and the Midwest, these voters had an exaggerated impact on yesterday's GOP gains, contributing to the vast majority of U.S. Senate and House victories by Republican candidates.

"The survey also found that 52% of all self-identified members of the Tea Party movement are conservative evangelicals. This is consistent with polling data by other organizations conducted before Election Day.

"Evangelicals were joined by frequently-church-attending Roman Catholic voters, who constituted 12 percent of the vote and cast 58 percent of their ballots for Republican candidates, as opposed to 40 percent of their ballots for Democrats, according to CNN exit polling.

"‘People of faith turned out in the highest numbers in a midterm election we have ever seen, and they made an invaluable contribution to the historic results, including the election of a Republican majority in the House and significant gains in U.S. Senate seats, governorships, and hundreds of state legislative seats and local offices,' said Ralph Reed, founder and chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition. ‘This survey, along with numerous exit polls, makes clear that those who ignore or disregard social conservative voters and their issues do so at their own peril.'

"The Faith and Freedom Coalition made a total of 58.8 million voter contacts to social and fiscal conservative voters in 2010, including 16 million voter guides, 8 million pieces of mail, and 15 million [Get Out the Vote] calls. FFC has 400,000 members and supporters and chapters operating in 24 states."

End of article.

I don't know if all of the above details are true. But it is true that these "social and fiscal conservatives" understand how to use voting as a tactic in their larger strategy of getting the rest of us to play by their rules. They used it this year, and they're not the only ones who used their muscle to get what they wanted out of the election. Keep reading...

"They Won't Invest in the Country"

Back on August 31st, on the front page of the Business Section of the nation's agenda-setting newspaper, the New York Times, ran an article that goes quite a ways toward explaining what was about to happen in the midterm elections. It also, I think, helps to illustrate the importance of voting to our economic giants. They understand that they need to control the electoral process because the power of the vote is really the only thing that might, possibly, stand in the way of their power. Let's look at how it works.

The headline read: "Why Wall St. Is Deserting Obama," and it focused on a letter from one Daniel S. Loeb, a hedge fund manager, who "was one of Barack Obama's biggest backers in the 2008 presidential campaign." He recently sent a letter to his investors that the Times considered revealing. In turn, I found the Times article to be revealing.

"Over the weekend," we're told, "the letter... was forwarded around the circles of the moneyed elite." (Question from Nygaard: Why didn't I get one?) Many of them, it seems, have turned against the President, and have started to work against him in various ways.

The article explained this week's election (two months in advance!) when it pointed out that "Less than two years ago, Democrats received 70 percent of the donations from Wall Street; since June, when the financial regulation bill was nearing passage, Republicans were receiving 68 percent of the donations..." Note that the Democrats were successful at the polls in 2008, and in 2010 the Wall Street favorites won again. Coincidence?

The article notes that "some of the president's biggest supporters have so publicly derided his policies, even at the risk of hurting their ability to influence the party in the future." The Times finds this "surprising," noting that "Issues like the carry-interest tax on private equity or the Volcker Rule have become personal."

The carry-interest tax and the Volcker Rule affect Wall Street tycoons and big banks, respectively. Why have these things "become personal"? Here I will quote at length from the Times article:

"The prevailing view is that bankers, hedge fund mangers and traders supported the Obama candidacy because he appealed to their egos. Mr. Obama was viewed as a member of the elite, an Ivy League graduate (Columbia, class of '83, the same as Mr. Loeb), president of The Harvard Law Review—he was supposed to be just like them. President Obama was the ‘intelligent' choice, the same way they felt about themselves. They say that they knew he would seek higher taxes and tighter regulation; that was O.K. What they say they did not realize was that they were going to be painted as villains."

Mr Loeb is quoted again, saying, "Many people see the collapse of the subprime markets, along with the failure and subsequent rescue of many banks, as failures of capitalism rather than a result of a vile stew of inept management, unaccountable boards of directors and overmatched regulators not just asleep, but comatose, at the proverbial switch. It is easy to see why so many people have concluded that the entire system is rigged."

Yes, it is rather easy to see, isn't it? But Loeb ridicules this idea, saying, "Perhaps our leaders will awaken to the fact that free market capitalism is the best system to allocate resources and create innovation, growth and jobs. Perhaps too, a cloven-hoofed, bristly haired mammal will become airborne and the rosette-like marking of a certain breed of ferocious feline will become altered. In other words, we are not holding our breath." In this case "we" means the "moneyed elite."

After noting that Mr. Loeb's "poison pen is legendary," the Times tells us that his views "irrespective of their validity, point to a bigger problem for the economy: If business leaders have such a distrust of government, they won't invest in the country. And perception is becoming reality."

That is, their perceptions are becoming our reality, and the Times then quotes the chief executive of Intel, the gigantic technology company, explaining just how this works. The CEO was speaking this past summer at the Aspen Forum, where he said that unless the government was able to come up with "a clear, enduring strategy that ... rebuilds confidence among global business leaders," then "the next Intel or the next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here. And wealth will not accrue here. Ultimately, we will face an inevitable erosion and shift of wealth."

To put it in terms that a fifth-grader can understand, this business giant is saying to the nation's political giants that, "If you won't play the game my way, I'll take my ball and go home." Or, in this case, to Ireland or Indonesia or Honduras or wherever he can find a "clear, enduring strategy" that gives he and his fellow "moneyed elites" the confidence to let us keep playing the game. The game of capitalism, we understand.

And the political giants—Democrat or Republican or whatever—had better listen, because, if they step out of line, they lose. They lose the support of "the moneyed elites." I have spelled out how this works before. The first time was ‘way back in Nygaard Notes #56, January 2000 in an essay titled "So... How About That Campaign?" And again in Nygaard Notes #390, November 2, 2007, in an essay called "Rock the Boat, Lose the Vote: Investing In the ‘Right' Democrats." It might be worth your while to check out those thoughts as you ponder the results of November 2nd, 2010. (Instead of "the moneyed elites," I referred to them as "the monied class." Both spellings are correct!)

In summary: Let's try to stop ourselves from thinking about Republicans and Democrats. The winner of the 2010 elections was The Moneyed Elites. My advice for those looking for insights into how the next election might go: Follow the money. My advice for those who do vote, and want their votes to mean something: Work on reforming the rules about money in elections. For some ideas, check out my essay "Seven Steps to Better Elections" in Nygaard Notes #274.