Legal Commentary

Taxes And "Shared Sacrifice"

By Big Tent Democrat

Since the economic reality that now is not the time to be dealing with deficits is ignored by every Very Serious Person, from President Obama on down, the next question is how to address the deficit.

Economic reality tells us that it is not the time to reduce government spending as the nation continues to suffer from insufficient aggregate demand, slack that the private sector is simply not capable of picking up at this time. So, if we must address the deficit now, the most efficient (not to mention fair and decent) policy choice is to raise taxes on the rich. President Obama blew this issue when he did The Deal. A terrible mistake. At the federal level, the discussion is about how much the poor and the middle class must "sacrifice," the rich must never do so. And that cake is baked. At the state level, the electorate voted in zanies as governors in many states (Florida, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania . . . New York?) who seem determined to destroy the economies of their states (and to contribute to the destruction of the national economy.) They will likely get their way. In a sense, this will be an additional experiment regarding the basic tenet of Republican governance. But does it matter how it turns out? More . . .

I ask that question because voters, for whatever reason, seem comfortable with a system that protects the rich and punishes the middle class and the poor. Part of this is due, in my view, to the ineptness of the Democratic Party.

There is a myth that the Democratic Party is an effective political organization that effectively represents its constituents. This is false. It is a disastrously inept political organization that when handed political victories due to the worst President in the history of the nation, demonstrated that it is incompetent at enacting its agenda and, just as importantly, winning the policy debate.

In the Open Thread yesterday, this article by James Vega was discussed. Vega makes some good points:

Last week TDS published an analysis1 that carefully delineated the very different political roles of activist, moral leader and legislator. As the author, political scientist Andrew Sabl noted: “all three contribute crucial things to democratic politics—but very different things, normally best performed by very different kinds of people… the same person is unlikely to be able to play more than one of these roles well.…”

While this is obviously true, to me, it does not go far enough. It's not just activists who need to understand that politicians are "not their boyfriends," in Bill Maher's phrase. I return to my refrain:

As citizens and activists, our allegiances have to be to the issues we believe in. I am a partisan Democrat it is true. But the reason I am is because I know who we can pressure to do the right thing some of the times. Republicans aren't them. But that does not mean we accept the failings of our Democrats. There is nothing more important that we can do, as citizens, activists or bloggers than fight to pressure DEMOCRATS to do the right thing on OUR issues.

And this is true in every context I think. Be it pressing the Speaker or the Senate majority leader, or the new hope running for President. There is nothing more important we can do. Nothing. It's more important BY FAR than "fighting" for your favorite pol because your favorite pol will ALWAYS, I mean ALWAYS, disappoint you.

In the middle of primary fights, citizens, activists and bloggers like to think their guy or woman is different. They are going to change the way politics works. They are going to not disappoint. In short, they are not going to be pols. That is, in a word, idiotic.

Yes, they are all pols. And they do what they do. Do not fight for pols. Fight for the issues you care about. That often means fighting for a pol of course. But remember, you are fighting for the issues. Not the pols.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on March 09, 2011 (boomark / email).