Two articles, both by Benjamin Studebaker, have really encapsulated what I believe is happening in this race. I am not an economist, but this somehow speaks the truth to me — I encourage you to read both, and engage in this conversation.
The first, Why Bernie vs Hillary Matters More than People Think, was diaried well by … last week. Studebaker, a PhD economist at Cambridge, has more recently followed up with another blog on this entitled “Why Bernie Sanders is more Electable than People Think.” I think it’s brilliant writing, and full of food for thought. Let me just cite a few points and paragraphs from both blogs.
Our country is split roughly into three economic, and therefore political, ideologies.
Neoliberalism — Business investments / economic deregulation / trade pacts will create a healthy economy. Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton I, Bush II, Obama, and now Clinton II, Bush III, Rubio, Kasich, Christie.
Left Egalitariansim — Economic inequality is the cause of wage and income stagnation, economic underperformance. Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Adlai Stevenson, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, and George McGovern, even Eisenhower and Nixon.
Right Nationalism — Stagnation due to foreigners and minorities taking our jobs; government spending money on humanitarian interventions. Think right wing populists like Trump, Cruz.
In his first blog, Studebaker says,
On economic policy, contemporary establishment democrats have more in common with contemporary republicans than they do with the FDR/LBJ democrats. Carter and Clinton took the party away from economic progressives. The Democratic Party, which was once the party that saw economic inequality and poverty as the core causes of economic instability, now sees inequality and poverty as largely irrelevant. Instead of eliminating inequality and poverty to fuel the capitalist system and produce strong economic growth, establishment democrats now largely agree with establishment republicans that the problem is a lack of support for business investment.
In his second, he says,
Economic ideologies change when there is an economic disaster that is seen to discredit the prevailing ideology. The Great Depression discredited the classical economics practiced by right wingers like Calvin Coolidge, allowing for left wing policies that in the 1920’s would have sounded insane to ordinary people. The stagflation in the 70’s discredited the Keynesian egalitarianism of FDR and LBJ, allowing Ronald Reagan to implement right wing policies that would have been totally unthinkable to people living in the 1960’s. I submit to you that the 2008 economic crisis and the stagnation that has followed have discredited the neoliberal economic ideology of Reagan and Clinton not just among democrats, but for supporters of both parties, and that new policies and candidates are possible now that would have been totally unthinkable to people as recently as 10 years ago.
Bernie is not just a slightly more progressive version of Hillary. He is offering — demanding — a different economic and political paradigm.
So, what does that mean to this race?
Tea Party Republicans are drawing away from their more centrist, neoliberal leaders like Bush (I, II, III) and Reagan. What party stalwarts fear is that “the establishment will remain unable to unite, and this will finally let a nationalist take the republican nomination.”
So are Democrats. In fact, Studebaker posits that Hillary is all that stands between the demise of neoliberalism and the rise of left egalitarianism in the Dem party. He believes that, although the people in charge can’t understand it (as they’re not affected personally), massive economic instability is forcing a paradigm shift.
What this means is that if this is the year when the voting public decides that it’s done with neoliberalism, the party that nominates a neoliberal candidate will likely lose. If democrats don’t nominate and support the left egalitarian political movement, if they instead continue to nominate neoliberals who continue to allow incomes to stagnate, they are ensuring that sooner or later (and probably sooner) disaffected poor and working Americans will choose right nationalism as the next dominant economic ideology for potentially decades to come.
Is the public ready for a new economic reality?
If so, then will it be the one offered by Bernie Sanders or by Donald Trump?
