The problem with "social liberal economically conservative".

[DanTex]

Last edited Mon Feb 3, 2020, 10:40 AM - Edit history (1)

The direction that centrists candidates like Bloomberg and Biden are going for independent votes is social liberal/economically conservative. Problem is, there aren't many voters there. I would also say that economic conservatism is bad policy. But policy aside, just from a perspective of getting votes, this is a bad idea.

If you watch cable news, or read editorials from centrist pundits, it will seem like there are a lot of people like that, because that's who gets on TV and who works at think tanks in Washington. It's also where a lot of wealthy donors are. But voters, not so much.

In effect, there are a lot more "Joe Rogan independents" than there are "Tom Friedman independents". So tacking right economically to satisfy the Tom Friedmans while rejecting the Joe Rogans is an obviously bad strategy.

Link to tweet

[bucolic_frolic]

1. So Nixon's Silent Majority is dead?

Who knew?

[Recursion]

19. They're socially conservative and economically liberal

That is, Trump voters

[Sloumeau]

2. Socially Liberal, economically Conservative describes Libertarians.

It does not describe Democratic Moderates like Joe Biden. Also, Joe Biden and Michael Bloomberg are very different.

Joe Biden has always been a Democrat. Michael Bloomberg has at times been a Republican, an Independent, and is now a Democrat.
Michael Bloomberg has about $60.5 Billion dollars. Bloomberg spent in five weeks just on his campaign about 20 times what Joe Biden is worth. Joe Biden has long sought to make things better for African Americans and was a 6 Term Senator in Delaware, where African Americans make up about 21% of the population. His support among African Americans is unrivaled as compared to other potential Democratic potential nominees. Michael Bloomberg proudly stood behind the racist Stop and Frisk policy.

You might be able to get away with saying that at times Michael Bloomberg acted like a Libertarian. Joe Biden has never been close to one.

[DanTex]

4. Both are on the record in favor of spending less on Social Security.

Which, as Krugman points out, is a position that only 6% of Americans agree with.

Yes, Bloomberg is to the right of Biden, for sure. But the whole direction moderate Dems have taken starting with the Clinton era has been to move to the right economically. That's what welfare reform, and deregulation, and all that was about. I oppose to that as a matter of policy, but policy preferences are debatable. What's hard to debate is the data that shows that the libertarian quadrant has very few voters in it, even though the people in that quadrant are very loud and show up on TV all the time and write lots of Washington Post editorials.

[Sloumeau]

10. First of all, you posted something that Krugman posted

on January 29, 2019, when he was talking about Howard Schultz. Then you tried to act like it described Bloomberg and Biden because each once talked about cuts to Social Security. In the case of Biden, you make no reference to why he was talking about cuts to Social Security.

After Reagan was elected in 1980, he invoked massive tax cuts which caused huge government shortfalls in income. In order to make up for it, Republicans decided that they wanted to cut as many social programs as possible. They wanted to try and make the U.S. like it was before FDR. In 1992, Bill Clinton ran as a Centrist, trying to find the middle ground between Republican and Democratic Ideas. Clinton raised taxes for the highest tax bracket by 3% because he wanted to avoid cutting programs and because he needed the money to pay for his infrastructure program. It was Republicans who had been insisting on cuts to Social Security and on welfare reform for years and years. Bill Clinton was trying to balance the budget--one of the things that he said that he would try to do during his campaign.

In order to balance the budget, things would have to be cut. Of course, the Republicans greatly opposed cuts to the military and the Democrats opposed cuts to things like welfare and Social Security. Joe Biden said that in order to get the cuts, we might have to put social security on the table along with everything else. However, none of the Democrats, including Joe Biden, really wanted to cut Social Security because they knew how much people depended upon it. In the end, the military was cut and welfare was cut, but Social Security was pretty much spared.

However, most Democrats would have preferred to raise taxes closer to what they were before Reagan than to cut any of the social programs, and most of them would have preferred cutting the military to cutting anything else. Krugman is wrong when he implies that cutting Social Security is a Centrist idea. It is a Conservative idea that Centrists have sometimes entertained when tax cuts have put their backs against the wall. Before the Reagan Tax Cuts, the idea of cutting either Social Security or cutting welfare was never an idea considered by most Democrats.

As far as deregulation, that is a separate issue. Deregulation was loved by Reagan and just about every Republican since Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and most Democrats have generally only been in favor of deregulation on a case by case basis. Large scale deregulation has always been the domain of Republicans.

As for Libertarians, you are correct. There are not that many of them. In 2016, the Libertarian candidate for President only got 3.27% of the vote, and that was a record for Libertarians in a Presidential Election. However, Joe Biden is not a Libertarian. Since the election of Reagan, Republicans have cut taxes all over the place, and then Democrats get in power and have to make all kinds of cuts that they do not want to just to balance the budget. The majority of Democrats would rather raise taxes back up to what they used to be, but sometimes that is not possible. Just because Democrat says "we can cut this or we can cut that" does not mean that making cuts is his or her first choice. Sometimes, Democrats don't really have much of a choice.

[DanTex]

11. Both Biden and Bloomberg have advocated Social Security cuts more than just once.

It wasn't just the Reagan incident with Biden. And by the way, Biden voted for Welfare Reform in the 90s. He also voted for the Balanced Budget Amendment.

The Tim Russert interview where he responded "absolutely" to "Would you consider looking at those programs, age of eligibility, cost of living, put it all on the table" was in 2007.
Biden supported the Social Security cuts that the Obama administration proposed, and that was in 2013.

[Sloumeau]

12. You wrote:

Both Biden and Bloomberg have advocated Social Security cuts more than just once.

Yes, they have. This is because we are still living under the Reagan tax cuts. Also, after Reagan, we had the G.W. Bush tax cuts after he took office.

It wasn't just the Reagan incident with Biden. And by the way, Biden voted for Welfare Reform in the 90s. He also voted for the Balanced Budget Amendment.

Since Reagan cut taxes, they have never risen back to pre Reagan levels. We have been in a low tax situation ever since Reagan cut the taxes in the first place. As for Welfare reform, I explained that. Reagan's tax cuts were still mostly in effect in the 90s. Clinton raising the highest tax bracket from 36% to 39% did not raise them as high as they were before. Because of this, in order to balance the budget after all of those tax cuts, welfare reform was undertaken. Also, yes, he voted for the Balanced Budget Amendment because he was trying to balance the budget. Letting the debt rise just means less money for programs in the long run because the government is paying more and more in interest rates.

The Tim Russert interview where he responded "absolutely" to "Would you consider looking at those programs, age of eligibility, cost of living, put it all on the table" was in 2007.
Biden supported the Social Security cuts that the Obama administration proposed, and that was in 2013.

Politicians say "yes" to "would you consider" questions all of the time. It makes them appear open-minded about things. That does not mean that they will actually do the thing that people are asking them about, or even that they want to do that thing that people are asking about.

[DanTex]

15. I agree with you that we are still living with the consequences of the Reagan tax cuts.

But not all politicians favored things like Welfare Reform and Social Security cuts. Bernie Sanders, for example, didn't. That's basically the whole debate about the "soul of the party." Do we want to be FDR-style Democrats, or do we want to meet Reagan half-way.

[Sloumeau]

16. Sometimes, it is not about what you want, it is about the political reality.

When you have less money coming in, you usually have to make cuts. That does not mean that you want to do that, that means it is a political reality.

As for FDR, we cannot have FDR's programs as he had them without FDR's taxes. That is one of the reasons why Republicans love tax cuts. They know that the more they cut taxes, the more they strangle FDR's programs. To assume that we can have FDR's programs without FDR's taxes is to live in a world separate from reality.

[DanTex]

17. But that's the point of what Krugman is saying.

It's not actual political reality that voters want to cut things like Social Security. It appears to be political reality, because that's what the pundits always say needs to happen. Voters don't want that.

Yes, taxes need to go up to have more of FDR-style programs. Most of that burden will fall on the rich, the very rich actually. Who can afford it, particularly since it's the top incomes that have seen the largest gains in the last 30 years.

[Sloumeau]

18. We are talking about three different things here:

1. What voters want.

2. What voters are willing to pay.

3. What voters will actually get.

In politics and in business, what you are willing to pay has a lot more bearing on what you will actually get than what you want. If you walk into a car dealership, which really decides how nice a car you are going to get--what kind of car you want, or how much you are willing to pay?

Krugman and everyone else can do all of the studies that they want about how much people do not want cuts in their Social Security. Sooner or later, how much money there actually is to pay Social Security Benefits will always win out over the desire of voters not to cut Social Security.

You wrote:

Yes, taxes need to go up to have more of FDR-style programs. Most of that burden will fall on the rich, the very rich actually. Who can afford it, particularly since it's the top incomes that have seen the largest gains in the last 30 years.

I am totally in favor of getting taxes back to where they were before Reagan took office. However, until that happens, Presidents and Congresspeople will have to deal with whatever budgetary restrictions are presented to them at the time that each budget is made.

[JudyM]

3. K&R, interesting.

[George II]

5. From that second chart it's obvious that Hillary Clinton did indeed appeal to a wider variety....

....of voters. And it should be noted that she won the popular vote by three million votes, too.

[DanTex]

6. On economic issues, the progressive vote is huge.

It's only on social issues that the country is divided. Republicans use social issues to appeal to socially conservative voters, and then once they get elected they pass economic policies that nobody supports except for corporations, lobbyists, and very rich people.

Put another way, there are a lot more "Joe Rogan independents" (and he's not even socially conservative, he just makes offensive jokes) than there are "Tom Friedman independents". Going fiscally conservative to attract the Tom Friedmans while rejecting the Joe Rogans is just plain dumb, assuming we want to win elections.

[bluewater]

7. You have made an excellent point.

Thanks for posting the OP.

[Quixote1818]

9. Very articulate and spot on! nt

[OneMoreCupOfCoffee]

8. Populism isn't progressive.

Embracing Joe Rogan is shameful.

Those not the values of my liberal Democratic Party.

Resist!

[progressoid]

13. Welcome back!

[DemocratSinceBirth]

14. Biden and Bloomberg

Biden and Bloomberg would be slightly to the left of your median American voter on economic issues, not far to the right as you suggest.