Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:03 And if the freedom democratic, I am competent that the democratic party will reunite on the basis of democratic principles and that together we will March towards a democratic victory in 1980. I think the democratic leadership understands that we need to bring those people into the party. We need to transform the party. We need to make the democratic party, the democratic party with a small gate. I think the future of the party is working class. And I think that what I represent and, and perhaps, you know, Senator Sanders also Senator Warren, there's a lot of working class champions in the democratic party. And I do think that that's the future.
Speaker 1 00:00:50 Welcome to talking strategy, making history I'm Dick flux activist, retired professor of sociology and a really old guy. And I'm <inaudible> hall, a slightly less old guy and also an activist and political strategist. And this season on talking strategy, making history, we're going to be talking about one of the big questions for progressive strategy here in the United States, in what we're calling a Hitchhiker's guide to the democratic party greeting friends and our guests today, we're very honored to say is Bob Kuttner. Bob is co-founder and co-editor of American prospect, which to my mind is the leading magazine that is walking some of the same paths we try to, uh, be on here at the podcast, namely examining in depth, the left wing of the possible as Michael Harrington used to talk about it, especially what the left wing of the possible is in relation to the democratic party and the administration's run by Democrats.
Speaker 1 00:02:03 Uh, Bob is a journalist of tremendous note over decades of work in a number of different ways. Uh, he's a professor of social policy at Brandeis university is, uh, one of the founders of the economic policy Institute, a key think tank for Progressive's he's a, uh, active participant in Deimos or has been, and a number of other institutional settings. I can't even begin to, uh, recount his, uh, work over these years. A number of very important books, a pioneer maybe in examining in our time, the relationship between global capitalism and democracy, uh, or the ways in which that relationship is so contradictory and in conflict. So welcome, welcome. So I wanted to, uh, start with, uh, one of reasons I was eager to have you join us on this, and that is because of your work monitoring, the processes of appointments, uh, to the, uh, Biden camp. Uh, you started to work on this months ago, uh, warning, uh, uh, us, even then in your work, uh, of the kinds of appointments that would, uh, be pointing down the wrong road, as far as you were concerned. And I think as far as a lot of us were concerned. And, uh, so I wanted to ask you about the results of that effort on your part to examine that why that's important, uh, and how you evaluate what's the final outcome or near final outcome of that recruitment and appointment effort. Well,
Speaker 2 00:03:48 I'm actually, uh, very encouraged. Uh, if you go back to February and March, when it still looked as if, uh, Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders might conceivably be the nominee Biden was one of them, our center, right. People in the democratic field. And of course the entire experience with, uh, Clinton and Obama and then Hillary Clinton, although they were very good on, on some issues when it came to, uh, reigning in wall street and the whole corruption of, uh, capitalism, uh, they were terrible. They, they appointed wall street Democrats to leading positions. They were almost indistinguishable from the Republicans in their embrace of deregulation and, you know, liberalism, the idea that markets can do no wrong. And, um, Biden was very much part of that crowd. He had a huge amount of wall street, financial support. So we had every reason to worry. And, uh, I wrote a piece in March after it was clear that, uh, that Biden would be the nominate called the Biden DNR list, as in do not reappoint.
Speaker 2 00:04:58 And I flagged, uh, 12 leading wall street Democrats who played major roles in either the Clinton administration or the Obama administration, or both who under no circumstances should be a pre reappointed by Biden. Should he be elected? And in fact, 11 of them were not reappointed and the 12th got a relatively secondary position. Now, why did that happen? Well, one reason is depressive events. Uh, I mean, uh, we have a pandemic, we have a recession, both of them are getting worse. And so Biden is having to be somewhat more Roosevelt. And then he might have originally intended, secondly, um, uh, hanging concentrates the mind, and the whole progressive ecosystem has come together to support Biden who just barely got elected. And so we were spared the usual circular firing squad, or that the democratic party is so famous for. But, um, at the same time, the progressive wing of the party, uh, has had a lot of influence in making sure that really terrible people don't get appointed.
Speaker 2 00:06:08 The prospect's played a role in that. I, I mean, what, what happened after we started writing these pieces was that we became a kind of a go-to publication and people started leaking stuff to us. And then we would put stuff out, watch out so-and-so is seriously be considered for such and such a job. And then that would signal the progressive movement to really put the pressure on. And I think we, we did play an important role. I mean, we, we helped make sure that Janet Yellen, rather than somebody much worse would be appointed treasury secretary. I think we played a role in, in making sure that one of the usual suspects was not appointed a us trade rep. We've got Catherine Ty, who's going to be very, very good, uh, very much of a revisionist in terms of the traditional, uh, world trade organization liturgy.
Speaker 2 00:06:53 And, um, also I think, um, ethnic chess board politics helped in surprising ways in that, not in every case, but in some cases the need to appoint large numbers of women and Asian Americans and African-Americans, uh, to positions, um, you know, as, as you play this game of mix and match, you, you sometimes end up with more progressive people than you might have intended. So the, the, the person who ended up being us trade rep, Katherine Thai, Asian American, he might not have appointed, uh, somebody quite that progressive if he had not needed, uh, an Asian American same thing with Bissera for HHS, who was a single payer guy. Um, other cases at Deb Holland, it is a case of responding to pressure from constituent groups. But the fact of the matter is that we've ended up particularly on energy and environment, which connects very directly to infrastructure green infrastructure in particular, but infrastructure generally, it's a, it's a wonderfully progressive group of people.
Speaker 2 00:07:56 And the, the people on economic issues is not too bad. Given what might've happened. The other little nuance here is that, um, Biden had virtually no field operation for somebody who was a leading contender for the nomination. And as a consequence of that, he was more reliant on the rest of the progressive infrastructure, uh, to get elected. And so you have something less than we had under a Clinton and Obama of the president saying, thank you very much. I'll take it from here. And you guys can go home. He realizes he needs the rest of the progressive movement to keep organizing on the ground. If he is not going to lose the house in 2022 and even better, if he's going to take back the Senate in 2022. So I'm, I'm hopeful of where Biden's going. I'm hopeful of the role, the progressive movement is playing. And, uh, I'm rather surprised to hear myself saying that because it could've come out much, much worse.
Speaker 1 00:08:55 I wanted to examine a little bit more why these appointment matters are, are very important in looking toward the future, as what difference does it make who's in there? And your particular mention of wall street reminded me that when I was teaching political sociology, I would, uh, start the course or almost with an anecdote that, uh, Arthur Schlesinger tells in his book about the Kennedy administration, where Kennedy was told that in order to put together his cabinet, he needed to talk to Robert Morris, love it, who was a major figure in the liaison between wall street and government at that time. And love it told him he had to appoint Robert McNamara, head of the Ford motor company, Dean Rusk, head of the Rockefeller foundation and Douglas Dillon, who was a major wall street banker. And he said, you can put them in either of the three positions, state defense or treasury. Uh, and, and those were the appointments that Kennedy made. It was like an automatic situation, the way Schlesinger describes it, but it will tell you who should be in your cabinet. So obviously wall street people among others think this is very important. Uh, but, uh, can you say a little bit, this may sound like an obvious or strange thing to ask, but why is it important who's in these positions?
Speaker 2 00:10:21 You know, the prejudice of the United States by himself or his chief of staff can only do so much. And, uh, the secretary of the treasury has a colossal amount of discretionary power and also power to advise the president on what to do now, the most progressive appointee possible got that job, Janet Yellen. And, uh, because she's been at the fed, uh, she really knows a lot about how finance works. She was chair of the fed, but, uh, Janet Yellen was an academic economist. She was a labor economist. She believes in full employment. Uh, she's the most left wing, uh, fed chair, uh, since, since FDR appointed Marriner Eccles, and probably the most left-wing treasury secretary maybe ever, because she doesn't come out of wall street, she's never consulted with wall street. She's never worked on wall street. And so she doesn't come in with that set of biases.
Speaker 2 00:11:21 And when these guys come in from wall street, you know, the, the, the main question they ask is how can we keep wall street, business model intact as we kind of clean it up around the edges. Now wall Street's fundamental business model is toxic for the economy and particularly toxic for the disproportionate financial influence and political influence that all these enormous investment banking houses. So we did as well as we possibly could have done. And I've been doing some reporting on the effort of the street Democrats to impose sub-cabinet people on Janet Yellen so that she will not entirely control her own department, but I mean, Yellen knows how the game is played. And I assume that there will be a back and forth as to, uh, will you eat this appointee? No, I won't, but I might eat that one. And that's the kind of jocking that, that goes on for the under secretary slots, the assistant secretary slots, the deputy assistant secretary slots, but she knows finance very well. So it matters both in terms of the, how, how the department is run day to day, all kinds of judgment calls that are made by the department. And then what the secretary of the treasury, uh, advises the president on some of these bigger policy questions where the president personally was in. So do you think
Speaker 1 00:12:39 She is actually intends to kind of resist that wall street penetration?
Speaker 2 00:12:45 Well, I think she will, you know, if he's not a radical Elizabeth Warren would have resisted it more, but she is less of a wall street Democrat than any treasury secretary within, within a living memory. And that means we have a shot at constraining. Some of the more flagrant abuses of the hall financial lock on the economy, which is at the heart of grotesque inequality, which in turn is at the heart of what brought us Donald Trump as a kind of a fall, a working class, uh, you know, president. So,
Speaker 1 00:13:20 Uh, given the power and interests of wall street, are we to worry about them too, uh, having a backlash against these appointments,
Speaker 2 00:13:32 We, we call it a backlash, but I think day in and day out, they're going to continue to exercise as much influence as they possibly can. And that's not only going to be via the treasury, but it's going to be via a lot of the, you know, the semi independent and independent regulatory commissions. And we'll, we, we still have to see who gets appointed head of the sec. Uh, antitrust is another one where, you know, after being completely more, have been for 40 years, antitrust moment has come around again because the abuses have been so grotesque. You had attorneys general in 38 states Republicans, as well as Democrats signing on to these, uh, these antitrust actions against the big platform companies. And some of the biggest investment banks, which have much too much market share are also vulnerable on the anti-trust front. You got the, uh, you know, you have the consumer financial protection bureau. You you've got the commodity futures trading commission. And for the most part, the people who were in the running for these key regulatory jobs are pretty good people as well from, from everything I've been able to find out.
Speaker 1 00:14:38 And there were a couple of more dramatic, potentially dramatic appointments. For example, labor department hasn't been appointed. And the attorney general is a very big one. Uh, and, uh, I don't know if you have any comment on what you expect there.
Speaker 2 00:14:52 Well, labor, department's interesting. Uh, I mean, you've got four really good people in contention, and you've got the labor movement a little bit split, but, um, Julie, so California, uh, labor secretary, I guess, terrific. Uh, uh, um, Patrick Gass Bard, who was the political director of the FCIU before he became Obama's political director, Obama then appointed him ambassador to South Africa. He then became president of the open society foundation. He's in the running, uh, 11 is in the running, Marty Walsh is the running, you know, they're, they're, they're all progressive. They would all do a good job. Steve Rosenthal. He used to be the political director of the AFL CIO. Who's just really, really knowledgeable reminded me that the last previous and only president ever to a point, uh, on the democratic side anyway, uh, a labor secretary directly out of the labor movement was Woodrow Wilson.
Speaker 2 00:15:56 You, you had a couple of Republicans appoints, two judges who were sort of the wrong kind of labor leader, but so this is good. I worry a little bit about commerce secretary, and I'll tell you why this is typically the job under a Democrat that you give to a Republican or to a billionaire business person. And, um, this time, if we're going to try and reclaim American manufacturing and have some kind of industrial policy that dovetails with job creation and, uh, dovetails with a more, um, uh, progressive version of America, first kind of, uh, progressive economic nationalism so that we can rebuild some of these economies, uh, the commerce secretary has to be not in your token, you know, corporate CEO, are you talking to Republican, but somebody who really believes in industrial policy. So I'm a little bit worried about commerce secretary and, uh, ag could be any number of people. And again, they're, they're playing this three-dimensional chess where it's ethnic diversity. It's also, which of the old boys hasn't gotten a job yet. It's also geographic diversity. So the last piece is still have to fall into place, but on the hall, I would not have guessed in a million years that the Biden cabinet would be this progressive, thank
Speaker 1 00:17:19 You so much for your, your work on the prospect. I'll be giving it subscriptions as a gift to family as I often have done in the past. Um, it's a really great resource.
Speaker 2 00:17:30 Thank you so much for that. So I,
Speaker 1 00:17:32 I want to have a sort of two-part question and it really picks up on something that you said, uh, earlier about, about Biden in particular and his relationship to progressive organizations or the progressive movement, uh, because of, uh, the dynamics of this election. So th that's a really interesting point to me. So first, who, who do you see as this progress is the progressive movement in terms of organizations, um, that you think Biden is going to be looking to, or relying on for, uh, um, for strength out in the field for, for electoral strength. And secondly, you know, did those organizations play a role or do they play a role? Are they playing a role in the construction of the cabinet and in this process? And I asked that because the one name that has come up or that, you know, that that is a cabinet nominee, who a lot of folks on the left were provoked by, um, was near a Tandon.
Speaker 1 00:18:33 And I don't want to get into sort of like the particulars of her biography and so forth, but it, it did occur to me that this is somebody who comes from cap, the closest thing to a center left permanent, you know, government, partisan government in waiting. But then, you know, it was sort of from our perspective of, from, uh, uh, left a social democratic or progressive perspective, not always great on the issues, but I'm, I'm interested in your, as a journalist, as an observer of this, like what role do these foundations or networks of organizations, what role are they playing and what should progressive observers be paying attention
Speaker 2 00:19:10 To there? Yeah, it's a great question. Let me do this in a couple of different ways. Let me give you best case worst case. So best case all of the resistance groups and all of the rest of the progressive coalition comes together and works towards a common goal. And that happened in Arizona where our PIO was the common enemy and all the groups kind of pulled together in the same direction, the party, the movement groups, the resistance groups that started after 2016. Um, same thing in Georgia. We, we have to wait and see whether it's sufficient, but all of the, all the groups that progressive groups on the ground and the, and the, the party, um, uh, are, are all pulling in the same direction. The same thing happened in, uh, in Wisconsin, where you had a particularly talented, uh, uh, state party chair, Ben Wickler and the need to make sure that, um, you know, you didn't lose any seats so that, uh, the, the, the, the Republicans didn't didn't have, uh, you know, the ability to overturn the governor's vetoes.
Speaker 2 00:20:17 Um, now the other end of the other end of the spectrum is New York, where you've got a democratic governor and Andrew Cuomo, who's reminiscent of a kind of Tammany boss. And instead of a Cuomo, seeing a working families, party and AOC, and some of these primary winners as assets, he sees them as threats. So that's sort of as good as it gets, and as, as bad as it gets. And, um, the progressive infrastructure, you know, includes everybody who, whose names, we all know. I mean, it includes the invisible groups includes move on. It includes the, the issue groups like, uh, league of conservation voters and all of the, all of the, the, uh, environmental groups that includes planned parenthood. It's the usual progressive coalition, really hyper mobilized by the common thread of Trump and now hyper mobilized to keep Biden moving in a progressive direction.
Speaker 2 00:21:15 You also got some really interesting progressive state party chairs. It's not just bandwidth there who really wants the national democratic party to put more money into state and local based organizing year in and year out so that you don't start thinking about, uh, defending the house and gaining seats in the house, you know, in April of an election year, but you do it on, on day one, you do it year in and year out. So, um, that's what all that looks like to me. We may get a party chair who is committed to that kind of, uh, on the ground person to person organizing, which made a tremendous difference in 2018 and picking up 40 house seats and picking up down-ballot, uh, seats. And with short circuited in 2020 by the pandemic, I mean, a as good as a digital organizing is, and as good as telephone organizing is, uh, as, as Dick knows better than I do nothing beats face-to-face organizing.
Speaker 2 00:22:09 And the fact that that was short circuit is one of the big reasons why Biden barely won and why we lost so many down-ballot races. And one hopes that we pick up where that left off once the, uh, once the pandemic is over. Let me say an unkind word about Neera Tanden. I don't think you have to worry about Neera Tanden, because I don't think narrow tan is going to be confirmed. I think Neera Tanden, although she ran an enormous center left, uh, emphasis on setter, a think tank was very hyper-partisan and spent years just doing very snarky, personalized emails against Republicans. And so she's going to be the human sacrifice. She's going to be the one that they don't confirm, and they've already, uh, wheeled up, uh, some contenders, some backup people into the on-deck circle on the assumption that she's not going to be confirmed.
Speaker 2 00:22:59 I think most of the rest of them probably are going to be confirmed. Uh, enough Republicans have sent signals that they don't want to play the game of denying a new president, his nominees, they will block legislation as much as they can, but I think most of the rest of the cabinet, uh, we'll probably be, we'll probably be confirmed, but she is the, she is the one most likely not to be confirmed, not ideologically, she's more centrist than a lot of the others, but just because cap, even though it's part of it as a 5 0 1, C3 has been, uh, been very, very hyper-partisan. And I'll tell you a story. When cap was founded, we at the prospect did a joint event with them on foreign policy and, uh, John Podesta, who was then the founding head of cab said to me, Bob, do not mistake our ferocity when it comes to the Republicans for ideological positioning. That is, we are not as left wing as you are, even though we're very anti Republican. So I think that's true of Neera Tanden as well. So
Speaker 1 00:24:01 As a followup, why is it that being partisan and, you know, focusing a lot of, uh, energy and attention and resources towards, uh, attacking Republicans or refuting their claims? Um, why is there a divide between that partisanship and being more progressive, the ideological piece, so to speak the, the, the, the question of values or policy preferences, you know, one of the questions that we're tackling in this podcast is, you know, both reckoning with the historical reality, and also trying to push back on it that the left has this reticence about being, uh, robustly consistently partisan about the democratic party per se, but the actual existing democratic party. Um, I'm wondering if you could just reflect on, on that, cause even in the way that you were just telling that story, there was a kind of dichotomy there
Speaker 2 00:25:00 Let's unpack the different meanings of partisan. So Neera Tanden made the tactical incautious error of personalizing things and attacking individual Republicans for, for, you know, sins that were originally deserving of attack, but they keep score. They have, they have long memories. So she was partisan in a very personal way. I think when it comes to the, the various gradations of left, there are some people who are left of the typical mainstream Democrat, who recognize that, you know, we're, we're, we're never going to have a socialist party in the United States of any consequence because all structure of the system precludes third parties. And so we're going to stand or fall with the democratic party. And the best thing we can do is to try to take it over. And the second best thing we can do is to try to influence it. And there are other people on the left who are more skeptical of the democratic party.
Speaker 2 00:25:59 They think the democratic party is hopelessly compromised. And, you know, you go all the way out to sort of the left wing of the Jacobin crowd. Uh, some of them weren't even sure that the, that they wanted to vote for Biden. So my own view is, uh, you know, somebody said to me once, uh, are you for a third party? And I said, I'd be for a second party, meaning that, uh, we, we really need to make sure that the democratic party is a progressive party. And that means sometimes, you know, you work with it. And sometimes you put a lot of pressure on it. And I think the great thing about this election, because the stakes were so high, uh, defending American democracy itself in this election, everybody worked to get Biden elected. Everybody was rather disciplined in that effort. And at the same time, uh, people who were to the left of Biden kept the pressure on, I mean, we did it as a, as a magazine to do a lot of reporting on the risk that bad people, uh, would get nominated, try to head that off at the past, try to signal the progressive moment, you know, watch out for this guy he's on the fast track and we need to make some noise.
Speaker 2 00:27:10 So that, that doesn't happen. And, uh, so I think in terms of the progressive movement, both working with and putting pressure on a democratic administration, this is about as good as it gets. And Dick will remember as I do the, the SDS, uh, slogan circuit, 1964, part of the way with LBJ, it was a brilliant slogan. It meant that on the one hand, LBJ is only going to get as part of the way to where we need to get as a domestic reformer. And it also meant that we broke with him over Vietnam, and we were part of the way with LBJ. Well, uh, we're part of the way with Joe Biden. We're going to do everything we can to help him not get stymied by the Republicans when he, uh, introduces good legislation. And we're going to keep the pressure on him, you know, loving, well, one
Speaker 1 00:28:02 Last thing just picking up on that. Did, uh, did you see, there was a, a small, independent expenditure built around the messaging of settle for Biden that actually had, I mean, there were funny memes and, and so forth, but the, the message was a very part of the way with LBJ kind of spirit of, Hey, we got to get them in and then we're going to keep
Speaker 2 00:28:24 Pushing. Yeah. I actually don't think that settled providing is a very inspiring slogan. I mean, this login should have been working your ass off for Biden, and then keep the pressure on to try and make him the kind of president you want. I mean, settle for Biden is not the sort of slogan that really gets people animated. He gets out the vote. Um,
Speaker 1 00:28:43 I guess I think filtered through the humor of generations X through Z, that, and especially with the actual messaging that came with it, when you, when you clicked on the images, it was all about working your ass off and all about the need to elect him, but trying to be intellectually honest that there were deficiencies. And I think that's, that's the balance that we need to be able to
Speaker 2 00:29:07 Have. I absolutely agree with you that it's a tight rope act on the one hand, you know, you don't, you don't want people to feel so much that, uh, you know, this was our fifth choice that, that we, we give up and get discouraged, but on the same time, you really want to motivate people to keep the pressure on. So you probably know, um, what animates your generation better than I do.
Speaker 1 00:29:30 So let me jump in with movies in a somewhat well building on this, but, uh, pushing the conversation forward in the following way. One of the things the prospect has done is to, uh, and again, this has been going on for quite a couple of months, the idea of creating a gay one agenda, and I take it that that's in part to indicate what the Biden regime can do with regardless of Congress. And then second measures that require a Congress, but evaluating, uh, what might be strategically the best things to be, to be raised. You want to talk a bit about that effort?
Speaker 2 00:30:12 Sure. I think the last time I counted, it was 280 something executive actions that Biden can do without Congress and happily. Um, Donald Trump has paved the ground for that because he showed how the courts would let him shift money around from one appropriated news to another. And Biden can do that. Biden has all kinds of executive authority over federal contracting. I mean, you could provide that nobody can bid on a federal contract. Who's not paying at least $15 an hour. Who's not in compliance with various labor laws. Who's not giving workers the right to organize. You know, you can use executive power in a wide variety of ways on the labor front. You can reprogram money, you can move money around, you can take money, you know, away from Trump's wall and put it into a, into infrastructure. You can involve the defense production act and, and, uh, uh, forest licensing, a vaccine manufacturer at a much more rapid rate.
Speaker 2 00:31:10 I mean, there are literally 280 items that Biden can do that make a difference. And, uh, he can relieve student debt by executive order. He can, I believe under public health authority, put a moratorium back on evictions even before Congress acts. So, and I think it's not just that he can enact good policies. It has a signaling function and a messaging function that I am on your side. And Trump was not on your side. And here are some tangible things that I'm doing that show that I care about you, I care about the suffering that you are having to endure, and I'm doing everything I can until I get Mitch McConnell to act, to do what I can in my power as president,
Speaker 1 00:31:55 You mentioned student debt, I think maybe, um, you and I kind of agree that that would be an example of a pretty dramatic move that could be done. Um, and in fact, it's probably actively being debated right now among the Biden folks.
Speaker 2 00:32:12 Well, it's interesting, there there's a lot of bad research that has had some influence on some of the Biden folks that argues that distributionally because the typical person hasn't gone to college or graduated from college or gotten an advanced degree that, uh, you'd be disproportionately giving relief to people that don't need it. But if you unpack that and you look at how those numbers are calculated, a lot of this is based on the federal reserves of household income, which takes the income of the top earner as a proxy for the whole household. And so you have millions of kids who have moved back in with their parents because they can't get any traction in their lives because they have so much student debt and they are mistakenly counted as wealthy. And the other thing you can do, which, which Biden has proposed Schumer's proposed Warren has proposed, you know, you cap the amount of relief at $50,000, which means that it's much better targeted. You could also give a hundred percent of debt relief, uh, to people who got taken to the cleaners by for-profit colleges and universities, and targeted downward much more effectively, which, which would also send a good message, but
Speaker 1 00:33:24 The major things that are going to actually make a difference in people's lives probably depend mostly on legislation that Congress has to pass. Even if, uh, the Democrats can win the Georgia seats, that that's going to be a very uphill battle, but I, uh, I've heard you say that there could be, uh, even some, some potentials for Republican splitting that might aid some of the measures that would make a real difference. What, what are you thinking of? I'm
Speaker 2 00:33:56 Kind of an outlier on this, but, uh, let me at least make the argument McConnell. Let's slip something very revealing. And this was reported very widely. He was on a phone call with members of his caucus, and he said, we have to do this $900 billion relief package because the fact that we're blocking it is killing us in Georgia, killing our candidates in Georgia. Now, if you extrapolate that and you imagine what life is going to be like at the peak of the pandemic and the peak of the economic damage in February and March, where more people are unemployed, people are losing their health insurance. People are being evicted on the hospitals are overflowing. There's going to be tremendous pressure on so-called red state senators, as well as blue state senators to give their people some relief. And if you, if you disaggregate the, the various members of the Senate, Republican caucus, you've got three who are sort of traditional center, right?
Speaker 2 00:34:56 Rather than Trump based as you, you got Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitt Romney. So that's three. Then you got three or four more who are not running for election. So they don't have to be worried about being primaried by a Trumpy Republicans. Then you've got three or four who were worried about their own reelections because you've got several Republicans who are having to defend seats in swing states that gets you up to 10. Then you got two or three more who were just sort of pragmatist rather than hyper ideologues. Now, if those people start saying I'm McConnell and you know what, we, we really, uh, we really ought to let some relief through because our people are really hurting. And again, it's paradoxical, here's here's Joe Biden. None of us, I think, saw Biden as our first choice, because he's more centrist than a Bernie or an Elizabeth Warren. But one of the benefits to that, he's got a long history of working with Republicans of working across the aisle. So I will go out on a limb and predict that some kind of relief package beyond the 900 million that they're going to let through this weekend will probably pass in in February or March.
Speaker 1 00:36:10 And I think, uh, one other that I've been thinking about is the minimum wage, which, uh, voters in Florida very strongly supported across presumably party lines. Uh, there, that might be an important national legislative thing that could be achieved very quickly. Is that, is that something you're, you're thinking
Speaker 2 00:36:35 You, you put the minimum wage forward and you, you demonstrate your ability to do everything you can as president by, by using your executive power to require the federal contractors. But then you put legislation in and you win either way. Either the Republicans are pressured into, uh, supporting it and it passes, or the Republicans get tarred with having a polished it. And either way, it's either a partisan win or an ideological win, or it's a win in the sense that you actually get iron minimum wage through. So yeah, there are things like that where you can take easy to understand measures that would benefit the average person all over the country. And you put it forward in the, in the form of legislation and you dare Republicans to vote against it, and you pressured them into passing it.
Speaker 1 00:37:24 And if they don't support it, then you have a great set of issues to run on in 2022. So I would just want to, um, suggest that there's maybe three or so elements of activity that I'm gleaning from this conversation that have to happen. But if they happen, there's a considerable amount of hope. And, and that is first the capacities. And this is what we've been talking about, mostly of this administration to actually formulate these policies and push them through executive action and congressional proposals. Secondly, messaging by the administration around these things, FDR succeeded in part, because of using radio for fireside chats, that really did capture the engagement of tens of millions of Americans during the depression. I'm not sure what equivalent might be developed, but maybe there are some that would make it more credible than people think that yes, I Biden am on your side.
Speaker 1 00:38:32 I am speaking with you directly, I'm hearing you back. Uh, and that was part of FDR his appeal. I think that he's able to do that. And the final piece of course, is what the social movements, the progressive forces that we've been referring to actually do to put pressure on, to create the kind of pressure that might deliver some of these things, because the need to deliver them, not just as campaign proposals, but as real changes that people need. That's what makes this moment so urgent because it's not just good things need to happen. It's that things need to happen. Otherwise the catastrophes are gonna build, so I'll, I'll, I'll ask you to comment on that, but the final point that I've been thinking is the crisis is so profound that there are even people on wall street who recognized the need for some, uh, progressive reform and who might be able to speak to that or use their influence to that.
Speaker 2 00:39:37 Well, two responses, first of all, uh, one of the most heartening things I saw in the past several days was, was the, the statement that the sunrise people put out after, uh, Biden appointed his energy and environment team is climate team. And it was as euphoric as anything you would have expected from anybody. And this is, you know, pretty well on the left side of the coalition that works within the democratic party. So by, by appointing these folks, he taps into all of that grass roots energy that that might have been opposing him. I'm uh, I said, I, I said I was optimistic. One of the things I'm pessimistic about is, um, reform originating from wall street. And let me draw a distinction here. Wall street would love the federal reserve to continue to turn this big it's wide open to pump up the bond market to pump up the stock market.
Speaker 2 00:40:35 But when you talk about reform, that would change their business model. I, you know, you could have that meeting in a phone booth, and we can explain to our listeners what a phone booth was, but there are not a lot of people on wall street who would be in favor of changing the fundamental business model of wall street. Now, the sinister thing, the insidious thing about the wall street Democrats is they tend to be liberal on everything else. They tend to be liberal on foreign policy. They tend to be liberal on gender. They tend to be liberal on race. They tend to be liberal on LGBT rights. And so they masquerade as liberals, but when it comes to reigning in the power of wall street, they're terrible. And I think the way you reign them in is not by co-opting some of their numbers, but by just, uh, using overwhelming force to pass regulations, that they will use every ounce of power at their disposal to oppose. So
Speaker 1 00:41:33 That, and it actually says that there's going to be a struggle for continuing within the democratic party ranks and the liberal ranks, uh, as we go forward in order to save the country. I think that's one way we've been framing this conversation. It's not only about changing the democratic party. It's actually about American democracy itself. Uh, depends on that kind of struggle. That involves, uh, strategies within the democratic party, as well as more broadly. Do you have any final thoughts you want to share with us?
Speaker 2 00:42:11 Well, it brings us back to this question of class. You know, you might even call it a class struggle. It's a glass, it's a struggle between capital represented by wall street and labor, which represents everybody else. And it's a struggle for which side the democratic party is going to be on. And the fact that Franklin Roosevelt existed, the fact that Roosevelt during the new deal sided more with labor than he had with wall street tells us that sometimes when the stars aligned, this is actually possible, but you have to work your tail off to make sure that it comes out right, because the people who have so much economic muscle, uh, turn that economic muscle into political muscle. And I fight you every step of the way. So it's a never ending fight and things are looking a little bit better on that front than they might have looked because of the pandemic, because of the need for unity to get out Trump, because the appointments are better than one might've thought. That's the kind of thing that that has to give you hope. And
Speaker 1 00:43:07 We hope that that hope can invigorate people, uh, as we struggle forward. Yeah, this has been a really illuminating conversation, really educational one. And I'm really glad that we, we were able to tap into your expertise and your closeness to the arena of struggle, the level of struggle, um, you know, over cabinet positions at the level of national policy, et cetera. That's just a great addition to our conversations that that often get down very much into the local weeds. Um, so that's a great
Speaker 2 00:43:40 Perspective. Thanks. Thanks very much for doing these and, and thanks again for having me. So
Speaker 1 00:43:45 We are totally grateful for this and, uh, keep in touch. We'll keep in touch with you. Thank you and hope. Hopefully we will survive and move forward in, in, in, in hope. Take care, Robert happy holidays and new year. Thanks.
