I don't know how to say this without appearing rude, but I've no intention to read your book. Your work at the Times has indicated a person with a slanted view of the world and your pretense to objectivity is annoying. Why would anyone want to read your advice to the Dems when you clearly don't agree with their fundamental take on the issues?

--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape

Matt, you did a great job at the debate at YK and I've enjoyed a lot of your work at the NYT magazine.

That said, I think a lot of your analysis of blogs is wrong. Naturally, as someone who lives in New York, you're going to see this all from a top down, national-centric point of view, but the real story -- flying under the radar of national reporters like yourself -- is the growth of small, local blogs. These blogs will never get more than a thousand or two hits a day. And they will never drive the national discourse on issues. But a few thousand readers out of a local population of say, 500,000, is a greater proportion of that local population than Kos readers are of the national population. And with many fewer posts, the attention concentrated on what is posted is much greater than at Kos, etc. These blogs are helping to frame local discussions as well as doing a great deal to motivate progressives at a grass roots level.

I'm not sure that this is a story national reporters could cover even if they wanted to, but you and others should be aware that there's more to blogs than George Soros and Markos whatever his last name s.

Speaking of arguments, it would be really swell of you to advance an actual argument that Democrats are in need of truly "new" ideas. It's just childishly naive to believe without evidence that new ideas are always necessary or desirable. You sound like the worst kind of venture capitalist at the height of the dot com bubble.

Look around the world. There are any number of highly successful industrialized democracies, including, obviously, those in Europe. Why believe that there is a set of important and genuinely "new" ideas that Democrats should entertain or pursue that haven't already seen the light of day in one of those democracies?

The single most important idea pressing on the Democratic Party today, in my view, is that of national health care. It is exceedingly hard to talk about any potential solutions to that problem as being "new", given the long history of national health care in other countries.

If there is a particular problem for which a new idea might be important, it would likely be the increasing gap between the rich and everyone else. It's just not obvious how to solve that problem. Economists themselves seem to be stumped. My guess, though, is that the ultimate solution will be something rather old in vintage: higher taxes on the rich, or the promotion of unions. But first the ultimate basis of the problem itself must be better understood.

In the end, what Democrats need, and America needs, are good ideas, ideas that work. It's immaterial whether those ideas are old or new.

And the worst aspect of your breathless assertion that Democrats are in serious want of new ideas is that it implies that Democrats suffer from a real deficiency. But if there is no compelling need for new ideas at this time, and the most urgent problems can best be addressed with ideas that have been around for years or decades, how fair is it to impute a deficiency that isn't there?

You see, these things always become part of a political argument -- if the right wing can claim, with your strong approval, that the Democratic Party has no intellectual core and is lost in the woods, then it damages the Democratic Party, and with complete injustice.

Matt,

I finished your book a few days ago and think you did a fantastic job of capturing the challenges facing the progressive movement -- particularly the struggle to fit the square pegged New Deal social contract/1960's social liberalism into the round hole of the 21st century politics -- and the focus of the left on tactics rather than on substance.

While the right spent the last few decades focused on the development of ideas and crafting the contours of a new conservative movement (market fundamentalism, lower taxes and reduced regulations, so-called moral issues, and the neo-con's foreign policy), the left has been focused on framing issues, using the Internet to raise money, and single-issue groups that put their own agendas first.

The first campaign I worked on, as a volunteer, was in 1992. I watched the War Room and was captivated by the campaign itself -- not the candidate, but the tatics and personalities in that campaign. Carville and Stephopolus were celebrities as big, if not bigger, than most US Senators in my eyes. And the Clinton Presidency itslef became an exercise in tactics -- triangulation, his sbility to communicate, to connect with voters, to build political capital, and to raise money.

The 2000 election was a debate about Karl Rove's electioneering genius versus Al Gore's boringness and wonkishness. Consultants talked about wearing earth tones. And we lost an election after leading the longest period of peace and prosperity in our nation's history.

9/11 profoundly changed our country, yet the story in 2004 was how Howard Dean was using the Internet to raise record amounts of money and connect people across the country electronically. He lost Iowa when John Kerry convinced voters that he was more electable than Dean. Kerry didn't even bother to claim that he had better ideas than Dean or Edwards, but merely that he was the most "electable" of the candidates. And the activists in Iowa put him on the path to the nomination. Which he lost because he didn't really offer an alternative to George Bush (other than not being George Bush).

And now, there is virtually no difference in agenda's among the candidates on the left. All tout "big, bold" ideas like universal health care (proposed by President Truman and supported by most Democrats since then), taking action on global warming (they all support dramatic limits on emissions, most support an approach like the one to deal with acid rain a few decades ago), and Iraq (they all think the troops should come home now). And their positions on social issues parallels that of the single issue groups on the left. They talk about abortion, for example, just like they did in 1976.

This is not to say that there is anything inherently wrong with these positions on these issues. But they approach is one of solving individual problems rather than fullfilling a future oriented vision about where we want to lead the country.

There is no talk about a new social contract -- about what kind of relationship government, community and inidividual should have in the 21st century. There's mere lip service to the growing divide between the rich and the poor, and there is no discussion about what should be in a coherent foreign policy (outside of out-of-Iraq now). How should a post 9-11 America deal with the Middle East? What is a prorgressive national security policy? What role does growing the economy play within the debate about global warming? What role should the government play in protecting jobs when it comes to trade? Do we have a responsibility to people in other countries when it comes to thinking about trade policies? Should the government be taking a larger role in pensions? How do we change the way we educate our kids to compete in the emerging global economy?

There is far less time spent on any of these questions on the left than there is talking about how to properly frame issues, discussing George Lakoff, discussing the failings of particular political consultants like Bob Shrum, and or how to use the Internet to raise money and organize activists.

Those things are, arguably, worthy of discussion. But they pale in comparison to the importance of defining who Democrats are, and what we offer to the American people in the 21st Century. We had that conversation in the advent of the New Deal. We had that conversation in the 1960's as we built the civil rights and environmental movements. But today, we've got new challenges facing our country, and we're in need of a new view of how government can meet those challenges. Yet we're still debating what words we should use to sell our old ideas.

It's just childishly naive to believe without evidence that new ideas are always necessary or desirable.

In fact, it's exactly what conservatives have always accused liberals of doing, looking for solutions to problems that don't exist.

Democrats today are mostly interested in using old ideas to solve real problems: healthcare and Iraq, for example. Shouldn't they be commended for focusing on real problems -- even that means using old ideas -- rather than inventing new ideas that deal with imaginary or nonexistent problems.

Frankly, this is a little bit my problem with the political reporter set in general. You guys aren't interested in policy, only in narrative and rhetoric.

"I get the feeling you think Democrats should spend a lot of time sitting around in circles rubbing each others' backs and talking about who we are, deep down inside."

Not at all. I'm not advocating "a long national discussion" etiher. I think both of those are complete wastes of time.

I don't think we need more conversation and discussion, I'm merely looking at the topics of the existing conversations. I think the focus needs to change.

What I said was that we need to "defin[e] who Democrats are, and what we offer to the American people in the 21st Century" -- that will most likely be done by a Presidental candidate, but it doesn't have to be. You criticized the statement, but I don't think we're going to be very successful either politically or substantively if we can't define who we are and what we offer.

I agree completely. The thing that hampers progressives is we do not have the think tank networks the Rs have so there are no ready set ideas to pull off the shelf. My sense is the progressive movement is starting to build a political infrastructure to match the conservative but they are not doing the same on the policy side and that concerns. The movement will not be sustainable after Bush is gone w/o a new set of ideas to adapt the positive role of government to the realities of the 21st Century.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and found Andy Stern to be my hero in it. He is one of the few truly forward thinkers in the progressive movement. He understands the jobs are in the service sector and he has been hugely successful in organizing that part of the economy despite the difficulty this admin has put on union organizing.

One of my major frustrations is I don't see the policy ideas coming forth that are needed to back up the political infrastructure. No one is really proposing a comprehensive energy policy to both address global warming and wean us off foreign oil. Dick Gephardt had a great line in 2004 - If we can put a man on the moon in 10 yrs, we can be energy independent in 10 yrs. Why is no one discussing this and drawing the direct line b/w oil and Iraq? Hell, Alan Greenspan did last week but I haven't heard one Dem do it.

Also, why is no one discussing the need for a social safety net that is designed for people who work in a remote world or have seven jobs in their lifetimes. Most of the proposal I hear seem tied back to a world where people worked for corporations for years.

The Dems have been largely the beneficiaries of the implosion of the Rs under Bush but it will not be possible to build a long standing progressive movement without addressing the needs of 21st Century America. As of today, I share Andy Stern's frustrations because I don't see it yet.

will not be sustainable after Bush is gone

Indeed; I can easily imagine a great drop in liberal blogosphere traffic alone. How many have come to labeling themselves as "progressive" in opposition to Bush's presidency more so than any other factors? What is left as glue sticking all these "progressives" together with, for example, people who had always called themselves liberals, after Bush? He has a terrible approval rating, and a big segment of conservatives don't like him anymore as well, so "against Bush" is a majority party right now. That won't get anyone far in coalitions after he's gone, whatever you call yourselves.

Bai gives a good example to use along these lines in his post, quoting Andy Stern:

“You can’t stop globalization. You can’t stop trade. That debate is over. I like to say to people who want to return to the New Deal that we are now as far from the New Deal as the New Deal was from the Civil War. I don’t think Franklin Roosevelt looked back to Lincoln to decide what to do. And I don’t think we can look back to FDR.”

If you read someone like Nathan Newman's posts here, and the comments on this site, and elsewhere in the liberal blogosphere, that argument is not over.

Likewise, lots of people here seemed to dislike Todd Gitlin's suggested Democratic party platform as not liberal enough. (See here, here and all the associated links on the Book Club on Gitlin's book.) There seems only to be solidarity in being anti-Bush.

What does "the far left" have to do with it? The blogs like DailyKos include people starting from a wide range of perspectives, and generally serve to widen those perspectives farther. When you get hundreds of thousands of people in a greater discussion, ideas and sensibilities can travel fast. Those discussions continue in bars, barber shops and living rooms across the nation and the world. That's why, for instance, the idea of impeachment has polled well for many months, even though the orthodox old media hardly gives it the time of day - let alone the column inches it deserves given its appropriateness and popular support. The popularity of impeachment didn't come from people in isolated meditation, but rather from the national discussion facilitated through the blogs.

This isn't about the heirs to the SDS taking over, or even the sensibilities of some politically correct English department. It's about Americans discovering that our core values remain radical in ways defined through our national heritage - not through some ideological overlay. This is a narrative both Roosevelts spoke in their time. It's a narrative emerging again today.

Depends on what counts as an idea. We always do better with something fresh - whether that's in food or fashion or politics. Canning ideas is no substitute for producing fresh ones. Yes, you can grow a fresh crop from old seeds. It's not that you necessarily need new seed varieties. But you have to grow the crop again - you can't just keep hauling last year's corn out of the store room.

The point is, original and living perception of the world is generative of fresh descriptions of where we are and what we need. If your narrative is stale (and Lord knows that's true of almost the entire press) that's a true indicator that you aren't paying attention, in any serious way. Instead of seeing the current world, you're blinded by old narratives habitually imposed over your vision.

Sorry, I won't read your book wither. I've read enough about t to know that it is the same biased koolaid you peddle in the NYT. Like the bulk of the MSM, your outlook can be simply summarized as "If the sun come up in the morning, it's good for the Republicans, but if the sun fails to come up in the morning, it's bad for the Democrats."

And yet we seem to not be passing any of those things in Congress despite opinion polls that indicate they enjoy healthy margins of support amongst the voting public.

And using Bush as an excuse won't be good forever there, the more conservative elements of the Democratic party are currently stronger than the progressive ones and that can be shown by things like I don't know recent Iraq votes or the latest thing with MoveOn.

So clearly there is some kind of disconnect here, and instead of faulting those in the party you decide to fault a journalist that is analyzing the situation and often drawing correct conclusions about it. They aren't perhaps conclusions many of us would like to hear, but that doesn't make them any less right.

And while Harry Reid is the Senate Majority Leader, in reality we don't have a majority there because Lieberman will side with the GOP on important issues more often than not and Cheney can break any ties.

Looking at who voted to condemn the MoveOn add such as Tester and Webb it looks like the Democrats who give the Democrats a majority in the Congress may have a populist streak but are not to be confused with leftwingers.

People who think that the United States Senate has no business sanctioning political speech are "leftwing"?

Russ Feingold is the only Senator who didn't make an ass of himself over that ad.

Try this on the MoveOn condemnations:

(Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama voted for a lighter Democratic version of the resolution, but Mrs. Clinton voted against the final Republican measure and Mr. Obama skipped the vote as a protest. You might say they voted for it before they voted against it.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/weekinreview/23mbai.html?pagewanted=print

Here's a review:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/books/review/Gillespie-t.html?pagewanted=print

(Of course, the review was written by the editor of the libertarian mag Reason, so it should be taken with a grain of salt.)

 Michiko Kakutani's take:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/28/books/28kaku.html?pagewanted=print

Actually, it's a problem that is far worse on the right than on the left, measured either in dollars or despicableness.

I've read most of those pieces in the NYT, and I think it is actually a pretty accurate generalization, even though I also liked the Edwards piece that you linked quite a bit (although at bottom, that may say more about Edwards than Bai).

He's got the typical too-cool-for-school, pox-on-both-of-your-houses take on politics and the parties that is the worst of the MSM. That leads he-said, she-said reporting and not bothering to examine whether what one side says is accurate and what the other side says is loony.

Yes, you can grow a fresh crop from old seeds.

To take this analogy perhaps too far, the only tomatoes I like are the heirloom ones. I don't get newness for the sake of newness.

I just don't think we need that many new ideas at the governmental level. There are plenty of models for universal health care. Let's use one. Prior to Bush, there was a consensus about foreign policy. Let's go back to it.

Those things worked fine. The truth is, the country was in good shape before Bush. Why can't we just run it the way we did before? Seriously, what's so funny about peace, love, and 3.9% unemployment? Will someone tell me?

We're not a majority in DC. Within DC, liberals aren't anything close to a majority even among Democrats. I'm talking about out here in flyover country where everyone wants better health care and a way out of Iraq, not DC where everyone wants to be on Meet The Press and a favorable mention from David Broder.

So clearly there is some kind of disconnect here, and instead of faulting those in the party you decide to fault a journalist that is analyzing the situation and often drawing correct conclusions about it.

I'm not wild about your tone here. You sound like a New Republic-reading pompous jerk. Take it down a notch and try to say something of substance. If you have a point to make, it will come through better without the smug condescension.

um, they're acting like Republicans?

OK. That's not rude, but I'm sorry you feel that way. I don't want to be annoying, but I also think we're living in this moment where people often want to have their preconceptions about the world immediately and completely validated for them by whatever they read. And there are plenty of people eager to do just that for you. I've always felt that part of our responsibility as journalists is to challenge our own preconceptions and ask you to challenge yours, as well. It doesn't always make me popular--in this case, it clearly hasn't. But I think it matters. And by the way, I've never seen myself as giving advice to Democrats. I have no interest in that and no expertise, either. I hold up a mirror as best I can. What you do with it is up to you. Join The Argument. www.mattbai.com

You know, Media Matters got all upset about that Clinton-Obama line, too. It was a joke. Politics can be fun. It's OK to laugh. Join The Argument. www.mattbai.com

Thanks for this, Tom. As it happens, I do not live in New York, that bastion of out of touch, transplanted, coastal elites. I live in Washington, where everyone is genuine and humble and deeply connected to the culture of mainstream America, So there.

Seriously, though, I know you're right about this, at least in part. When you write this kind of story, you have to narrow your focus some, and in this case, because I was trying to explain the first iteration of the blogs, I did spend a lot of time with Markos and Jerome. And because I was trying to explore where the blogs were headed, I wrote quite a bit about Gina Cooper, too. These bloggers enabled me to tell a larger story, but it's not the entire story, it's true. Had I told the entire story, the book would be 2,000 pages long and boring as hell. And that's one thing no one has said about it, thankfully.

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Thank you Jack, both for reading the book and for thinking so much about this. I appreciate it, and I hope you'll recommend the book to others.

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Thanks for reading the book and for your kind words, even if you too live in New York and thus have no sense of what's true in the world. (Now I'm just making fun of TomT, who actually was making a lot of sense. But he can take it. I suppose Media Matters will come after me for this, too.)

And I agree with the spirit of your very thoughtful post.

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Thank you for this, terminal3. I'm sure John Edwards thanks you as well.

How I wish I were too cool for school. Or for something.

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And I'm not wild about yours, all up and down the thread you seem to be bullying others with your opinions, isn't the internet wonderful?

I also find it highly amusing that you think you've got me pegged off a few posts here on this blog post. But as it happens you are completely wrong, I've never even read The New Republic, nice try though. Maybe you ought to go check my posting history under this user name at DailyKos.

And what I said happens to be factually correct. The progressive caucus is growing and grew by a healthy margin in 2006, but when you combine the blue dogs and the dlc types, they are still outnumbered.

And you don't even need to go to that level, just look at any vote that has been cast recently on any issue of importance. If progressives and liberals were among the majority in the Democratic party then those votes would have come out a lot better.

You seem to be assuming that because I'm pointing out what should be patently obvious to anyone paying attention that I enjoy things the way they are... you are wrong.

Oh wait, OK, you're talking about the "voted for it before they voted againt it" thing, right? Sorry. As I said somewhere else on here, that was just a small moment of levity--poking fun both at John Kerry and his Republican adversaries from the last campaign. I think most readers got that it was just a little aside for humor's sake. Like I said, it's Ok for politics to be funny, too.

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Matt, the argument as to why one shouldn't use the "for it before he was against it" trope against a Democrat is pretty detailed and complicated -- basically, the very fact that it's supposed to be funny is based on a tendentious mischaracterization of Kerry and of the legislative process, made by Republicans in a bitter election; it has to do with Democrats' sense that they are the party of recognizing complexity, and that they are constantly being pummeled by Republicans wielding deliberately dishonest, reductive slogans. But in any case, I'd think you should be able to recognize that to Democrats, using that line to characterize any Democrat is the equivalent of "fighting words".

"All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." - I.F. Stone

Matt, I've bought your book and enjoyed the writing and some of the insights about folks in the current Dem movement--whether billionaires or bloggers.

I agree with those saying there's plenty of ideas that just need to be enacted--universal healthcare is one.

America's struggle right now is how to behave in the post-Cold War world and we simply aren't doing too well--and it's a bipartisan failure. We could use Bush I's Gulf War model--hire us out as mercenaries. We could use Clinton's Balkans model--take us through NATO and ignore Congress passing any sort of resolution. We could use Bush II's model--go through Congress, through the UN, and still get it completely wrong.

America is flailing all over the place in the post Cold War world. Where is nuclear weapon proliferation? Where is securing nuclear material? Where is our policy for genocide?

But it goes beyond that--where is a coherent policy for global warming, globalization, transantional terroristm, etc. A lot of good ideas are simply not orginating from America but from other western democracies.

I'm not sure the rest of the world wants America leading very much; apparently whether we are Dem or Rep we don't know how to do it without involving our military in some manner.

I agree, Matt, about the rage. I feel that rage every time I think about my country TWICE in my lifetime going into a DUMB WAR with their eyes wide open. I simply am coming around to the belief that America does not deserve a leadership role in the world.

"Prepare for disappointment".

If you use HTML formatting in the easy editor, then it messes up the line breaks without fail. The only way I have found around this is to had hard carriage returns and put a period between paragraphs.
.
Like this.

sPh

2 page campaign proposals are not the same as having policy think tanks that develop detailed proposal complete with statistical studies and data. The conservative movement has Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Manhattan Institute, the Hudson Institute (and I just thought of these off the top of my head) to develop their policy ideas. Most of them are crackpot but when they get into office, they have that network to lean up against to develop detailed governing plans/legislation.

What do the Dems have other than the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and Center for American Progress? Not much that I can think of and that is why we are hugely outgunned on this front.

If you don't believe me, read David Brock's book "The Right Wing Noise Machine" to get an idea of how big a problem it is.

Perhaps you don't consider it advice, but all investigation of the failures of the Dems includes an implicit advice component. If one says "why can't the Dems do X?" then the implication is that they should be doing X and that there is a better way to do X. If there wasn't this implicit promise for improvement then why write the piece?

I'll take a different tack. The problem in the US is the high cost of running for office. What this has done is weed out the field of prospective candidates to those who are independently wealthy like Bloomberg or Romney or those who are well connected in the business community. As a result there is almost no representation of the average citizen.

"He who pays the piper calls the tune." When you are wealthy or installed by the wealthy you focus on their concerns. That's why there is so little difference between the two parties. Both talk about a "stronger" military, both talk about the need for economic growth. Where they differ are on a few details having to do with marginal tax rates, the degree of government oversight and how much to support social welfare programs.

There is no difference on the fundamentals. We must remain the "world's only superpower". We must dominate the world militarily. We must ensure a steady supply of raw materials and finished goods at terms favorable to us. That both parties have pretty much the same goals is not surprising, this is what the public wants. No one is proposing banning SUV's or reining in exurban sprawl. If a pol made such a proposal they would get one vote (even their spouse wouldn't vote for them).

So what's to be done? First, the needs to be a way to get money out of elections. I don't see any way to do this. The wealthy like the current arrangement, it gives them influence. The media likes the ad revenue and the cozy relationship they have with legislators. And the media buyers, campaign consultants, etc. make their living exploiting this system.

Second, their needs to be an acknowledgment that we live in a finite world and that the US can't continue to consume 40% of the resources with 4% of the population. No one ever got elected on a platform of the need to sacrifice. Will we have to wait until there is a catastrophe for people to wake up? It would appear so, losing two wars and Katrina hasn't done much so far. Neither has the disappearance of the manufacturing base.

Societies have gone into decline many times before. Everyone likes to point to Rome, but I think the better example is the UK since their decline took place within living memory. Will the US learn anything from this? Not so far...

--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape

Fair enough. What I'm saying is that jokes like the one about MoveOn/Obama/Clinton fall too far on the glib Maureen Dowd side of the spectrum where the GOP always bests the inept Dems, which seems like a self-fulfilling prophesy to me and while annoying in a columnist, unfair in a journalist.

If you make a similar joke referencing John "Small Price to Pay" Boehner, I will feel better about it. (See Greg Sargent's posts at TPM Horse's Mouth if you don't know what I'm referencing.)

That said, I am interested in reading your book b/c I am now interested in hearing more from Andy Stern, who I also like quite a bit (and I think you also profiled awhile back in the NYT?), and I do think the Dems need to figure out how to weave things together into a narrative or "argument," as you say. I just think that the ideas and plans are all out there; obviously it's tying them all together that is the trick.

I really appreciate you hanging out and responding to questions and criticism as well.

Thanks, and glad to do it. And by the way, I made quite a few jokes at Rudy Giuliani's expense in this last cover piece, including making light of his strained relationships with his children. (Oddly, none of my friends in the netroots complained about that.) So i'm an equal opportunity seeker of levity, and that's because I care about readers and want them to have fun with politics, too. It's not personal and it's not a reflection of what really matters in the story. Hope that makes sense.

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I hope you're wrong about that, but I appreciate your thoughtfulness and the depth of your conviction.

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And also, thanks for giving the book a chance, after all. I appreciate that.

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No need to apologize--I was just giving you a hard time. No courtesies necessary here. Hope I went some way toward addressing your point.

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None of us are "here." That's how we get to do this. I see no harm in not pretending.

Second, my feeling is this: if you really want to see the New Deal and the Great Society rolled back, the best way to do it is to attach yourself to old programmatic solutions to decades-old problems and assert that no one with any compassion would every try to change or improve them for a new era. Watch how fast they come tumbling down (and have been). That is the best ammunition you can give your opponents--the unwilligness to reevaluate policy solutions no matter what else happens in the world.

Does the book actually make this argument? I don't see the argument made here so far. Really, how many voters in the '94 elections had heard of the Contract with America? Or how many voters were believers in the Great Society until they read an in-depth policy paper on it by Lee Atwater or Rush Limbaugh? Where is the argument that this is how politics works?

=== and who will then proceed to attack the premise of a 300-page book they haven't bothered to read. ===

Brooksfoe, I'd like to get into this in more detail than I really have the time for, but no, that is not what I'm saying at all. I think you fall into the conservatove trap there--or maybe, more accurately, you think I've fallen into the conservative trap--of seeing the whole debate as one of less government versus more government. I don't.

Let me try it this way: the New Dealers sat down at a time when industralization was changing the world and asked themselves what an optimal social contract would look like. (Actually, a lot of people had asked the same question well before then--they were called progressives, as you know.) Now we're feeling the effects of the next great economic transformation, and it comes with a lot of issues that didn't exist in 1932: global competition, self-employed workers who telecommute, childcare for two-income families, people who live longer, miraculous and expensive medical breakthroughs, and on and on. You know the list. So if we sat down and asked ourselves the same question, what would the answer be? Would it really be that we would create the exact same social contract we inherited from our great grandparents? Or would it have to address different things?

That's not about the size or nature of government; it's about the relevance and adaptibility of government. (And this is true in foriegn policy and energy policy, as well.) Right now, Republicans are saying that the new era demands a dismantling of the old government apparatus. Most Americans don't accept that. But Democrats (and many on this thread) are essentially saying the opposite--that the new era demands the exact same programmatic solutions that the last one did, plus a few more. How can that even be? If you could go wake up FDR and his architects and explain the situation to them, do you think they'd find that an acceptable way to govern? This is what Andy Stern was saying in that passage above, and it's the big question I ask in the book. And it is a question, or a series of them, as I say in the introduction. I'm chronicling people on this journey, but I don't endeavor to have all the answers.

Now, a lot of people will respond with protests about the political climate now and how you can't afford to innovate because Republicans will never let you and all of that, and there's a place for those considerations, but I'm not talking about the politics of it. I'm saying, at some point we're really going to need a government that can be as relevant and as creative in this century as FDR's was in the last one, and I think it's worth putting some resources into thinking about that, and I think the porgressive movement has the potential to play a very big role.

I hope that helps. I've really got to get some sleep. Thanks.

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Perhaps it would help if you also stated specifically what in Brooks's characterization (or Yglesias's criticism of it, or Drum's today) you distance yourself from.

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

You, sir, have great and profound insights regarding pundits and reporters. Would you happen to live in DC? ;-)

What TomT said upthread.
No need to try to improve on that.

The distinction is between what goes on in Washington and what the people really want to happen.
The people are left, the DC crowd is wrong when voting or espousing views to the right.

John, I don't mind spending a little time answering these and other questions if I can, I really don't, but it's not really fair to ask me to lay out the findings of a 300-page book for you in a few posts. First, it's asking me to repeat myself an awful lot, when you could theoretically just read it. Second, it misrepresents the book, which is more about people and events than it is about my critique. You wouldn't know that from reading a few of the blogs, but that's mostly because they, like you, aren't actually responding to the book itself.

A few points, though. First, in response to your interrogation on Brooks, I disagree specifically with the idea that the power in the party has been resolved and that the polls somehow prove that the progressive movement has failed to carry the day. I think David is a terrific columnist generally, but in this regard I think he's wrong. Not least because a September poll tells you very little about who will win, and because movements can't be judged, especially in their early phases, by elections, so much as by how the candidates who win elections are forced to change because of them. This, if I can puzzle through the breathless ranting, was Yglesias's essential point, and I agree with him.

Second, I say in the introduction the the book that I offer it as a series of questions for the movement, not as an answer. It would be awfully arrogant of me to tell you what I think the argument ought to be--I'm not even a Democrat. (And no, I'm not a Republican, either.) "Flexible government" isn't my term; I think Michael and ted are engaged in the much harder pursuit of trying to define a new argument, and I commend them for it. But my only role here, or the only one I've ever tried to play, is as a chronciler of those leaders who are trying to figure out the future, and my main criticism is that there's just so little openness to and so little enegry expended on a conversaton about what government might actually do differently.

For instance, since I know you want a for instance, as Andy Stern always says, the marriage between empoyers and healthcare benefits is a relic of the industrial age, a chief tenet of a social contract that no longer makes sense. People jump around from job to job and want some freedom. Employers buckle under the weight of foreign competition. Health care costs soar. The competition for lower skilled workers that spurred employer-based benefits in the first place is no longer a reality of the marketplace. Democrats have plenty of healthcare plans, but they don't acknoweldge the radical change in the system. They want to somehow preserve it.

Now, you will say, perhaps, that there's no political point in trying to reimagine the entire social contract--pass what you can to help people today, and ultimately that will lead you someplace else. I can accept that, sure. The Democrats' notion of healthcare does move you forward. But where is it leading you? What's that next iteration? My main point here is just that no one wants to ask that question, because it's unpopular to acknowledge that many aspects of assembly-line government are out of date and less than ideal for our moment. And I'm asking people to talk about it, because I'm worried about my kid and other people's kids, who deserve the same ingenuity that we were handed down. The same could be said about climate change, retirement security, and foreign policy. And to ask these questions isn't buying into some Republican spin about failed government. You want to help the conservatives? Refuse to acnowledge that things have changed and government has to change with them. There's no better way to marginalize a party than that.

And by the way, there's a little bit of shooting the messenger that goes on here, because it's not like I'm some polemicist who doesn't reflect the views of actual people. I wrote an 8,000 word profile of Andy Stern in which he laid out many of these same points. Rob Stein and some of his donors in the book talk about how to find a more modern framework. Tom Matzzie says in the book that he wonders what the next legislative era--"the moveon era"--will look like. Some critics conveniently ignore the people I write about and assail me instead, because it's easy to do in this environment.

Now I've got to get back to this essay I'm doing for the book review. It's about the book "What It Takes" and why campaign books are a dying genre. Very different from this discussion...

thanks.

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If you ask privately, I think that many Dems would say that the next step healthcare plans should be a bridge to single-payer. I think several candidates have basically said as much. You have a gov't plan that competes with private insurers, and if it's cheaper in the long run, well, no reason to keep the private insurers around (although I'm sure we'll have some sort of top-shelf extra add-on for wealthier folks, since this is America after all).

As they say, politics is the art of the possible, right? So you have to do now what you can get passed. Not everything has changed since Hillary screwed up the healthcare campaign in the Clinton Administration, and there will still be winners and losers from any proposal, and the losers are going to be fighting hard against it.