AZspot

The second story is that Democrats didn’t deliver what they promised: meaningful change people could see and feel. They passed a stimulus package with job-creating provisions half the size most economists called for and filled up the rest with Republican tax cuts that had already proven not only useless but budget-busting. They failed to pass a jobs bill when it was clear that unemployment was going to hover near 10 percent. They passed health care reform from which no voter could see any tangible effects until this week, and paid for health insurance subsidies for working people at the low end of the totem pole years down the road with promised taxes on working people in middle of the pole instead of at the top. And while most voters are yet to see the benefits of health care reform, they’ve already seen their premiums skyrocket — just as they saw their interest rates skyrocket after credit card reform. Having watched the wheeling and dealing over health care, and failed to see a clean break from the last ten years when legislation always seemed to favor big corporations and the rich over ordinary Americans, voters have the pervasive sense that governing is the art of splitting the difference between the public interest and the special interests. Of course, that would make this the time to introduce a wave of populist legislation, from the Fair Elections bill, which might actually change that, to legislation keeping toxic chemicals out of our homes, our bodies, and our children’s cereal boxes (addressing the fact that our laws are so riddled with special-interest loopholes that the U.S. is the only nation with a GDP not dependent on bananas that can’t even ban asbestos). The success of Wall Street reform — perhaps the only piece of legislation Democrats have passed for which they’ve gotten any credit and which is widely popular — should have been a signal to Democrats that, right now, populist rhetoric and legislation to back it up win left, right, and center by wide margins and put Republican politicians on the defensive, because GOP leaders are out of step with even their tea-party base every time they adopt a lobbyist. Drew Westen ☀

What Democrats have needed to offer the American people is a clear narrative about what and who led our country to the mess in which we find ourselves today and a clear vision of what and who will lead us out. That narrative would have laid a roadmap for our elected officials and voters alike, rather than making each legislative issue a seemingly discrete turn onto a dirt road. That narrative might have included — and should include today — some key elements: that if the economy is tumbling, it’s the role of leadership and government to stop the free-fall; that if Wall Street is gambling with our financial security, our homes, and our jobs, true leaders do not sit back helplessly and wax eloquent about the free market, they take away the dice; that if the private sector can’t create jobs for people who want to work, then we’ll put Americans back to work rebuilding our roads, bridges, and schools; that if Big Oil is preventing us from competing with China’s wind and solar energy programs, then we’ll eliminate the tax breaks that lead to dysfunctional investments in 19th century fuels and have a public-private partnership with companies that will create the clean, safe fuels of the 21st century and the millions of good American jobs that will follow. Drew Westen ☀

The White House allowed the health care narrative to be all about process, and the process the American people saw wasn’t pretty. It scared seniors, who worried what would happen to their Medicare. It scared workers, who worried about what would happen to the plans their unions had negotiated so hard for in lieu of salaries. It scared middle class Americans with good health insurance plans, who had—and have—no idea whether their plans will be deemed—if not today, in three or four years—Cadillacs, which will first be taxed and then discontinued, leaving them with exactly what Frank Luntz told them it would leave them with: a bureaucrat between them and their doctor. And worst of all, it seemed to most Americans that the reason they were being asked to make such potentially big sacrifices was so that health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and millionaires wouldn’t have to. It seemed not only risky but unfair. Drew Westen ☀

Somehow the president has managed to turn a base of new and progressive voters he himself energized like no one else could in 2008 into the likely stay-at-home voters of 2010, souring an entire generation of young people to the political process. It isn’t hard for them to see that the winners seem to be the same no matter who the voters select (Wall Street, big oil, big Pharma, the insurance industry). In fact, the president’s leadership style, combined with the Democratic Congress’s penchant for making its sausage in public and producing new and usually more tasteless recipes every day, has had a very high toll far from the left: smack in the center of the political spectrum. What’s costing the president and courting danger for Democrats in 2010 isn’t a question of left or right, because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center. If this were an ideological issue, that would not be the case. He would be holding either the middle or the left, not losing both. What’s costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting. Drew Westen ☀

…I wouldn’t mind hearing about values from our current president. And more importantly, I wouldn’t mind seeing him act on them, whatever they are. No, compromise doesn’t count as a value. And personally, I’m over “let me talk about personal responsibility in front of a black audience because everybody likes that.” It was inspiring the first couple of times, but it’s starting to reinforce white people’s stereotypes that all black people need a talking-to about personal responsibility. Speaking of personal responsibility, let’s set aside for a moment the fact that Obama brought on the fellas who crashed the economy to fix it and hasn’t fired or investigated anyone who caused the Great Recession or who continues to suck bonuses from the blood of our 401(k)s. That would be looking backward, and we’re supposed to look forward. And forget about the wiretapping, the extraordinary renditions, all that civil liberties stuff. That would be looking forward, and we’re supposed to be looking away. No one really knows why he’s taken the positions he has on those issues because the reasons are all either classified or locked up in some jail cell in some country far away with duct tape over its mouth. Drew Westen ☀

The President is offering the public a series of stories that are all missing half the plot and half the characters—namely, the part of the plot that says how we got where we are (e.g., 50 million without health insurance, half a million losing their jobs every month, 1 in 8 homes foreclosed or in danger of foreclosure, 70% of our energy coming from regimes hostile to us and gas prices on the rise again even as demand has fallen)—and the characters responsible for those gaps in the stories. He is trying to sell health care reform without calling out the drug and insurance industries, whose profits have soared at our expense. He is trying to sell financial reform without pointing his finger squarely at the banks and speculators who bankrupted us. He is trying to sell energy reform without blaming the oil companies who racked up record profits as Americans racked up record debts paying for their gas. And he is trying to sell all of these essential reforms without mentioning that there’s been a party—not just nameless “naysayers”—that has been fighting every one of these reforms for decades. When the President does feel compelled on occasion to mention the people who not only put their interests above the public interest but are now funding the lobbyists and attack ads aimed at derailing his agenda, he speaks in passive voice about how “mistakes were made,” or refers to unnamed “naysayers.” The President’s hero is Abraham Lincoln, but it is the Lincoln who penned the Gettysburg Address, not the Lincoln who ordered Union troops to fire. Drew Westen ☀

On every issue we have studied, from abortion to immigration, a well-refined progressive narrative, designed to speak to the hearts and minds of the American people in their language, not the language of activists and advocates, can beat the strongest of conservative messages nationally by 15-20 points. Even in the Deep South, where I live, we can win by strong double digits with common sense, center-left messages on issues such as abortion. There is no reason for progressives or Democrats to play defense on these issues. We should be playing offense, putting Republican ideologues on the ropes, where they are used to having Democrats. Drew Westen ☀

…the events of the last few months should have etched indelibly on the national psyche the conclusion that laissez faire, robber-baron capitalism—the Great Idea of the conservative movement—has proven a dreadful failure. We have painfully relearned in this century the lesson our grandparents learned during the Great Depression of the last, that the appropriate alternative to an oppressive state is not a negligent, impotent one. George W. Bush and the Republican Congress did not abandon the legacy of Ronald Reagan. They fulfilled it. Reagan branded in the popular imagination the notion that “government is the problem, not the solution.” Bush and his ideological counterparts in Congress took that philosophy to its logical conclusion, dismantling as many of the safeguards and safety nets put in place since the New Deal as they had time to dismantle. They preached the gospel of unregulated greed, arguing that what’s good for unscrupulous lenders and multinationals en route to Dubai is good for America, and we all paid the price. That should be the Great Lesson of the first Great Depression of the 21st Century. Drew Westen ☀

Barack Obama began his campaign with a powerful theme of unity. He needs to contrast it starkly with the message of divide and conquer that the Republicans have used successfully since Nixon’s “Southern strategy” of peeling white voters away from the Democratic Party through coded messages. I can’t imagine a much more effective ad than one that took the “greatest hits” of the politics of division from the RNC Convention and ended with the simple words, “Dividing American against American for political gain isn’t just politics, it’s un-American. Patriotism is about standing as one people, under God, indivisible. That’s the Pledge of Allegiance we all learn as children. Renew that Pledge on November 4. Put an end to the politics of hate and division. Drew Westen ☀