Those Populist Democrats (Again)

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 7/17/2007 01:14:00 AM
Oh boy, here we go again. The International Herald Tribune is once more highlighting the growing populist sentiment pervading the politics of America's Democratic Party. I would of course parry this criticism by stating that the p-word afflicts both sides of the aisle. For starters, take Tom Tancredo (pleeze!) Furthermore, there is no guarantee that populist rhetoric adapted during campaign seasons is necessarily translated in policy action after election. Case in point: the Clintons. In any event, here is the article for your consideration:
On Capitol Hill and on the presidential campaign trail, Democrats are increasingly moving toward a full-throated populist critique of the current economy.

Clearly influenced by some of their most successful candidates in last year's congressional elections, Democrats are talking more and more about the anemic growth in American wages and the negative effects of trade and a globalized economy on American jobs and communities. They deplore what they call a growing gap between the middle class, which is struggling to adjust to a changing job market, and the affluent elites who have prospered in the new economy.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York calls it "trickle-down economics without the trickle."

Populism is hardly new in the Democratic Party. Al Gore vowed to fight for "the people versus the powerful" in his presidential campaign seven years ago, and Republicans have long accused the Democrats of practicing "class warfare."

But the latest resurgence of populism is deeply rooted in the current economic realities of stagnated wages and fears about losing jobs, analysts say, and it is framing debates over tax policy, education, trade, energy and health care.

Last week, Senate Democrats held hearings on proposals to raise taxes on some of the highest fliers on Wall Street, the people at the top of private equity and hedge fund firms.

Meanwhile, in the House, Representative Barney Frank, a Democrat from Massachusetts and chairman of the Financial Services Committee, convened party leaders and economists for a searching discussion of "globalization, outsourcing and the American worker - what should government do?"

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, offered participants some blunt marching orders: "The American people want to know what we're doing about their economic security."

Their language, and to some degree their proposals, reflect a striking contrast with the approach taken by Democrats during much of the 1990s, when President Bill Clinton asserted that trade would create American jobs and that paying attention to the concerns of Wall Street would help the economy by lowering interest rates.

So far, Republicans have, by and large, stuck by their free-market philosophy. They point to a rebounding stock market, declining deficits and steady if unspectacular economic expansion as evidence that conservative policies of tax cutting, less regulation and more trade are working.

But Democrats say they are responding to economic trends that the statistics in the headlines do not capture, including middle-class insecurity about job loss, the affordability of health insurance and the costs of education. The times have changed, these Democrats argue, and six years of Republican tax and economic policies have heightened the inequities.

Even as Hillary Clinton has sought to associate herself with the economic growth during her husband's administration, she, like other Democratic presidential candidates, has been expressing a sharp skepticism toward trade and globalization under Bush.

In recent weeks, she has announced her opposition to the proposed South Korean Free Trade Agreement and denounced globalization that "is working only for a few of us." She accepted the endorsement of former Representative Richard Gephardt, who spent much of his political career fighting what he asserted were unfair trade agreements.

And she has increasingly focused on "rising inequality and rising pessimism in our work force," and suggested that another progressive era is - and ought to be - at hand.

John Edwards, the presidential hopeful and former senator, staked out similar positions months ago and regularly notes that during the last 20 years, "about half of America's economic growth has gone to the top 1 percent." He praises the recent efforts to raise taxes on private equity and hedge funds. His campaign manager, former Representative David Bonior of Michigan, notes that Edwards has been sounding these themes since his first presidential campaign in 2004.

"John Edwards was there at the beginning of this," Bonior said.

While campaigning in Iowa last week, Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, suggested that even those who followed the standard advice for coping with a globalized economy - get more education for higher-skilled jobs - were losing out.

"People were told, you gotta be trained for high-tech jobs," Obama said, "and then it turned out that some of those high-tech jobs were being outsourced. And people were told, now you need to train for service jobs. And then it turned out the call centers were moving overseas."

It is not unusual for candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination to move left in the primary season; Bill Clinton himself touched on some of these populist themes in his 1992 campaign. But all the major Democratic candidates for president are promising to use government to ease the insecurity of the middle class, on issues from education to health care.