July 06, 2005
What's It All Mean?
In the middle of an excellent post on the decline of the labor movement, Matthew Yglesias writes this:
What you see when you look at something like the Bankruptcy bill, however, is that on most subjects the influence of public opinion is pretty small. The overall level of political awareness is pretty low, and most economic and regulatory issues fly more-or-less below the radar screen. Instead of a battle for the hearts and minds of the public, or a grand contest of ideas, what you mostly have is a tug-of-war between contending interesting groups. The defining feature of American politics over the past couple of decades has been the ascendancy of business lobbies in these disputes.That ascendancy, much more than the Democratic Party's electoral fortunes, is the fundamental problem facing progressive politics. Insofar as Democrats have more House or Senate seats it gets marginally less problematic. Insofar as Democrats have the White House, it gets substantially less problematic. But it's still a huge problem. The reason we don't have universal health care, the reason we don't have paid family and medical leave, the reason our trade policies have gotten so out of whack, the reason we're cutting food stamps instead of farm subsidies, etc., etc., etc. is fundamentally not that we don't have enough Democrats or that Democrats don't have enough spine -- it's that there are too few checks to K Street.
As I've been researching the Astroturf phenomenon, I've occasionally wondered to myself whether all this represents anything but fodder for bizarre conspiracy theories. Sure, Joe can give Bob five bucks and sit on his board of directors and shill for Acme, Inc., but does it have any effect on anything?
I think Matt hits on exactly what it all means there. And as I delve into the more conventional lobbying and think-tanking promulgated by the Koch, Coors, and Mellon-Scaife families, it becomes more and more clear how pervasive those business voices have become, and why a reinvigorated labor movement is so necessary to a reinvigorated left-wing. I have a some hope that the coming break-up of the AFL-CIO will introduce more life into the movement, but I don't know enough about the subject area yet to say anything more.
Posted by ben at July 6, 2005 07:33 AM