It's STILL the Economy, Stupid!
That was the T-shirt I wore last night to a meeting of my local Democratic club, the Independent Neighborhood Democrats (IND). It proved to be a very appropriate shirt.
Last night, IND had a guest speaker, Hank Sheinkopf, political consultant, formerly a member of President Clinton’s re-election media team, and panelist on a NY-1 roundtable discussion. Sheinkopf is the ultimate Democratic insider and he came to discuss the 2006 election victory with us.
But first the warmup acts. There were two stand up routines and a farcical play. Well, not really. There were two good speechs by unexpected guests, Steve Harrison and David Yassky, and some club business.
Steve Harrison, whose followers were present last night in impressive numbers, showing that if he wants to run again, he may have an organization in place ready to go, spoke about finally winning NY-13. He pointed out that the district, contrary to popular "wisdom," is majority Democratic and that the fact that he did better with only $100,000 than Barbaro did two years ago with $300,000 shows that we are making progress. He did not say whether he would run in 2 years, but it sure seemed like he was trying to plant that seed. Good for him. Let's start now and I bet 2 years from now will be the year for us in NY-13.
David Yassky focused on a bill before the City Council. No, not resolution 131 [1], which I have been urging him to support for MONTHS now which will help protect our vote. No, he focused on another important bill which will repeal a huge tax loophole for developers. Or, at least, partly repeal it. There is an existing law that exempts housing developers in NYC from certain taxes for 15 years (if I got the details right from Yassky's speech). Essentially this was put in place during different economic times when developers didn't want to build in NYC. Yassky wants to repeal that tax break unless the developer promises at least 30% "affordable housing." In other words, if the developer is building market rate housing, which means he will probably make a killing off it, they will no longer get the tax break. If, however, they are helping alleviate the shortage of affordable housing, then they can keep the tax break. My one complaint is that, as usual in NYC, no one really wants to define affordable housing in any clear, meaningful way. But the basic premise of the bill is excellent.
The last warmup act was a spirited discussion and partial adoption of some bylaws changes by IND. Some language in the bylawas was cleared up and some anti-packing rules were adopted. Changes that would try and bar any members of other local clubs from voting at IND without sumbitting written statements that they only voted at IND was rejected.
Now we come to the main act: Hank Sheinkopf. And it was an excellent act indeed.
Sheinkopf's initial message was that Democras did not win this year because of anything we did right, but rather because the Republicans had crashed and burned. We won because the Republicans were so corrupt, had lied so much and had, in essence, lost the confidence of the voters. His warning was this: unless we return to the populist economic message that is the HEART of the Democratic Party, we will lose again.
Sheinkopf has his own agenda, of course. He is pushing for Hillary Clinton for President (more on that later for Michael and Wallner's benefit). But, that and a few other disagreements aside, I agreed with him just about completely.
The core of his talk was that Democrats need to focus on just one message, and it was the message that ALWAYS works for Democrats since the 1920's: economic populism. Actually, I would use the term "progressivism" because that is how Theodore Roosevelt described it when it was Republicans who were the economic populists, but Wallner and Gatemouth might quibble with my usage. And economic populism is a good term for it as well.
It's STILL the economy, stupid! That's the message. No...that's THE MESSAGE.
Sheinkopf argues that it is the blue-collar vote that determines national elections. He narrowed it down to 500,000 white, male Catholics...but I suspect that you could use other groups as the key demographic as well. This group is often socially conservative, but when faced with bread and butter issues, they vote for economic populism even over Republican posturing on gay marriage. They will only buy into the wedge issues Republicans routinely run on (what else do they have?) if they don't see the Democrats offering them economic populism.
Raise the minimum wage. Make education more affordable for working class Americans. Jobs. Fiscal responsibility. THOSE are the issues that Democrats MUST focus on to win. And I completely agree with Sheinkopf on this. Democrats have almost always been better on economic issues, presiding over better job prospects, better stock performance and lower deficits than the Republicans. That is our strength and that is what we ignore at our peril.
The Iraq war is a major issue right now. Republican corruption is a major issue right now. But "right now" is not 2008. They may still be issues in 2008, but what we KNOW is that economic populism is ALWAYS a good strategy for Democrats.
Sheinkopf believes Hillary Clinton WILL be the Democratic nominee in 2008, believes that she WILL run on an economic populist message (and I bet he wants to be the one to craft that message), and believes that 2008, and most years, come down to four states: Missouri, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. He thinks Hillary has a very good shot at winning the presidency and points to her good performance in upstate as evidence since upstate has a similar demographics to the four states he considers key to a Democratic victory (Wallner and Michael can now debate this). He disagrees with Dean's 50-state strategy, and I think he is wrong about that particularly since looking at Congress, we are winning our majorities thanks to a broad effort that includes Indiana, Montana, Kentucky, etc. Sheinkopf feels that the South below Missouri is irrelevant to the Democrats, and I think he is wrong about that, particularly given the strength of politicians from those states (Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Edwards, Jim Webb, Mark Warner...). As an aside, I also feel somewhat negatively towards Sheinkopf because he proudly brags about getting Betsy "do-nothing" Gotbaum elected Public Advocate. But I do think he is right that those four states are critical and that an economic populist/traditionally progressive message will play very well in those states. They have played well in Indiana and Montana recently, so let's expand that message and make it our Congressional agenda. Even if we want a 50-state rather than 4-state strategy, the same message will carry us.
Iraq
Minimum wage
Addressing income inequalities
Education
Those were the top four issues Sheinkopf advocates we focus on. I could add to that list...but it is a good starting point. And it agrees with many of the points I have made when I advocated a particular agenda for the Democratic Congress [2]. I will expand upon my recommended agenda, inspired by Sheinkopf, in the future. For now it is simply about remembering the message and starting with the four points above.
I had almost stopped wearing my "It's STILL the Economy, Stupid" t-shirt. But three things make it still relevant today. First, it is the liberal shirt I own that almost universally gets a positive reaction: a chuckle, a laugh or a shake of the head and a "you got THAT right." Second, as economists are warning of a new recession (did we ever really leave the LAST recession) as well as continuing threat of inflation, a combination we used to call "stagflation," it really IS the economy that is the #1 issue. And third, being reminded by Sheinkopf that this is the message that consistently wins elections for Democrats makes me prouder than ever of that t-shirt.
Start saying it now and keep saying it until 2008, every day: It's STILL the economy, stupid.
[3] | 
[4] | 
[5] | 
[6] | 
[7] | 
[8] | 
[9] | 
[10] | 
[11]