Burnt Orange Report

I hate sports analogies.

How about a military quote:

"Hard pressed on my right; my left is in retreat. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent. I am attacking. Attaquez!"

- General Ferdinand Foch (to General Joffre during Battle of the Marne)

Our motto for the next few years has to be one word:

NO.

Opposing the President builds political capital, acquiescing builds his.

that's the lesson of Gingrich in 1994.

The way to do that is not, is never, to engage their charge and answer its particulars. If their push hurts you, the answer is to punch back with something that hurts them worse and titillates reporters more. Because so long as they set the terms of the debate, we'll never win. So long as we keep ADD'ing away from our arguments and chasing their every talking point, we'll never win. Until we begin ignoring their attacks and focusing on our own, nothing we throw will ever stick.

I've been pushing such a game plan for ages. There's little value in playing the defense that the other team wants you to play.

Much of August and early September was wasted by the Kerry campaign's futile attempts to defend the candidate against the Smear Boats for Bush.
They should have mostly ignored the charges and attacked the Bush team's pathetic record on counterterrorism as outlined by scout Richard Clarke.

Coach Karl Rove is famous for his strategy of "attacking your enemies' strengths, not their weaknesses". A page should have been taken from the Rove playbook and used against his side.
Bush was vulnerable on terrorism but was allowed to score on that issue.

And for liberal Democrats . . . football is not soccer, at least not here. So football metaphors are lost on you . . .

*chuckle*

Good one, Keith.

I have been telling people that the Texas DP is a lot like a football team that has had a series of 5-11 or 6-10 seasons and after getting a new coach and making some big changes goes 9-7. Better than the past, still respectable, but a lot of work needs to be done still. With some solid off season acquisitions and if we keep working on the offense we'll have a real shot at the playoffs and the big show in 2006.

I suggest a move out of the history of the Dallas Cowboys, and it ties into my own history as an alumnus of UGA . . .

Herschel Walker was a great running back, and the Cowboys spent a small fortune to have him. But they were not winning with Herschel, even though he was one of the greatest running backs ever. he was not going to carry the Cowboys to the Superbowl.

So the Cowboys jettison Landry, hire the first edition of the embodiment of all that is Evil in College Football (Jimmy Johnson) and then trade Herschel for sixteen draft picks. Thus is born a dynasty.

Time for the DNC to trade in the New Deal and efforts and condescending southern coalition building (those southern conservatives are gone gone gone), and try something fundamentally sincere and new.

It won't happen in a season.

Martin Frost is Old School. It is time for New School.

Trade in the New Deal?

We did that when we pushed NAFTA and screwed the ordinary guy in 1994, and got our heads handed to us.

If both guys are going to pick your pocket, you are going to vote on prayer in school, if one guy stands up for you, you'll vote for him.

The entire political establishment on both sides of the aisle have bought into Milton Friendman economics, where he says that the free market will cure racism, because it is not profitable.

The average guy on the street, having had a falling wage for the past 30 years, knows better.

But the average guy on the street isn't still on the street . . . indeed, thirty years ago he wasn't born, or was doing something else . . . when the New Deal was in full swing as a coalition, you had the benefit of 100 southern congressional seats with nowhere else to go, southern standards of living 1/3 that of the rest of the country, a 25% unionized work force, and a much smaller middle class.

Now the South is at 80%+ of national income, primarily Republican in Congress, and unions claim only one in nine blue collar workers. More people own homes, have more education, and more diverse opportunities than seventy years ago.

To build a party on the New Deal coalition is like setting out to be the best buggywhip manufacturer in the world. You may have the best buggywhip, but you don't have enough of a market to stay in business.

Baloney.

The issues have not changed one bit.

The haves are taking as much as they can from the have nots, and our country is very near an economic tipping point, where a currency crisis kicks up interest rates, which in turn pushes down housing prices, and we end up Hoovervilles again.

And every step that the Republicans are engaging in takes closer to an Argentina style debacle.

Look at Social Security privitization in Argentina. They would have been in surplus but for the transition costs and loss of revenue stream.

No baloney . . . the issues mauy still be there, but the nature of concerns are different. people are, generally, much better off materially, economically, and educationally. They work less-risky jobs for generally more money as part of a larger middle class.

The New Deal gets you 38-43% of the vote, and it doesn't get you the 170 electoral college votes of the South and Border South like it used too.

Sorry dude. You're arguing for a 70 year old political package from the era of the Model T. Put it on the shelf and find a new plan.

You are apparrently in thet Milton Friedman fantasy land where the free market eliminates racism, provides health care, and raises everyone's standard of living, even at the bottom.

It's simply not the case, particularly when you don't game the CPI as aggressively as the US BLS does.

The first President to go after significant portions of the New Deal was Jimmy Carter, and much of the stock scandals and MOST of the S&L scandals, were an artifact of his deregulation efforts.

He lost to a Republican.

The biggest single step away from the New Deal by congressional Democrats was NAFTA in 1994.

They lost to the Republicans.

The problems still exist.

Families can't live a middle class existence without two earners.

Economic security has fallen through the floor.

Personal debt is at an all time high.

We don't have prosperity. We are living on kiting checks.

A Milton Friedman/Randroid society was implemented in Chile under Pinochet, it collapsed in under 18 months.

The slow creation of a Randroid society in the US is just taking more time.

Acting in the best interest of the majority of the population, which is what the New Deal is, works, but the Democrats are as captured by the modern religion Friedman economics (which have never worked in the real world), so they don't do that.

The collapse of the Democratic party was not caused by the New Deal or Great Society, but rather its abandonment.

As to the South, N***** baiting still works.

Look at Bob Riley, conservative Republican, of Alabama's attempt to make the tax code better.

It would have benefitted 90% of the people there, but lost because the opponents sowed the meme that "all the money would go to the n*****."

Wonderful party you've got there Keith.

Nice rhetoric, but utterly lacking in factual foundation. In real dollar terms, proportionally more people make more money and have more property (and equity, and also debt) than ever before. More people WHO VOTE are living better and less dependent on physical labor or repetition tasks than ever before.

You're just pissed because you can't believe that such a materially-prosperous, educated electorate could reelect a man as transparent and shallow as George Bush. Be honest. You are flabbergasted, and cannot understand how people can be so stupid.

And you cannot express the stupidity moment to them because you need their vote.

New Deal, RIP. Thansk for saving our families during the Depression, but things change.

And yes, I do live in that Friedmanesque world, because it works. I can look around me and see the benefits of the philosophy, both material and intellectual.

Hope you like your congressional districts.

*chuckle*

I might also recommend F A Hayek's ROAD TO SERFDOM.

My congressional districts are just fine for me. I live in Maryland.

I also understand that they are bad for society as a whole, both in Maryland and Texas.

I've skimmed Hayek.

Like Friedman, and Rand, he constructs a wonderful world that collapses on exposure to reality.

The banking system in Chile almost collapsed from fraud and corruption after 18 months of Friedman economics, and it was run by Chicago School economists, so it wasn't that they didn't understand the idea.

It doesn't work in the real world.

Look at the failed pension privitization in Chile, Argentian, the UK, and the progress to failure in Sweden.

More people WHO VOTE are living better and less dependent on physical labor or repetition tasks than ever before.

Physical labor, you're probably right. Repetitive tasks, probably not.

Most service work is far more repetitive, and far less engaging than factory workers.

I've done both. I've supervised both.

As to the decline of labor, the NLRB has been hostile to labor for the past 24 years (I'm including Clinton here).

As to quality of life:

* You need two salaries to support a family and send your kids to school.

* Healthcare costs are out of control.

* The average financial reserves for a typical family have plummetted, particularly when you consider the amount of assets that are not liquid (401(k), IRA, Home Equity).

I hope you enjoy your cheap labor economics, because one day you will have actually live it, and I will laugh at you.

Well, yes but . . .

* You need two salaries to support a family and send your kids to school.
--Yes, but. If you look at consumption relative to income, we can live as our grandparents did in the 1950s on a single income; much of what we end up spending on a second income is value added consumption and not a product of declining purchasing power (Stephen Rhoads has a new book on this).

* Healthcare costs are out of control.
--I'll give you this one, but it is also not part of the New Deal.

* The average financial reserves for a typical family have plummetted, particularly when you consider the amount of assets that are not.
--rates of saving are down, yes, but that is offset by much broader investment in 401KS, 403Ks, holding personal stocks, and IRAs, which are not counted as part of the general savings rate.

Sorry, I came loaded for bear this time. :)

The New Deal doesn't deal with these issues, because the coalition, be design, is an amalgamn of concerns from agriculture, working poor, minorities, and Southerners . . . those issues are not at the fore.

I'm advocating a vibrant, progressive opposition, and absolutely do not want to see "me too Republicanism."

But, since the Republicans are not Republicans anymore, i guess someone has to be the GOP.