Third Way Democrats Propose Politics Of Opportunity - Road to the Middle Class

HOW IS IT POSSIBLE that Americans in opinion polls agree with Democrats but keep voting for Republicans? That is the question that the folks at Third Way are asking. What’s going wrong, they ask in a new study, The Politics of Opportunity conducted by Anne Kim and Jim Kessler?

Martin Frost reported on the report on Fox News and Rush Limbaugh mentioned it on his show on Wednesday.

What they discovered was

several key disconnects between the way progressives view the American economy and the middle-class, versus the way the middle-class feels about the nation’s economy and their role in it. Americans are optimistic about the nation’s future and their own; progressive messaging is not.

Let us repeat that for our readers, big and strong:

Americans are optimistic about the nation’s future and their own; progressive messaging is not.

That’s better. And even that statement doesn’t quite address the problem. It is not just “progressive messaging” that is pessimistic. It is progressives themselves.

Kim and Kessler go on to define five disconnects between progressives and the middle class.

Pessimism vs. Optimism
Economic Decline vs. Economic Strength
Economic Security vs. Individual Opportunity
Most progressive economic ideas don’t benefit the middle-class
An off-target critique of conservatives

Yeah, that does pretty well cover the waterfront. So what do they propose?

First of all, they propose a new message: “A new era of middle-class opportunity.” Then they propose a three point framework to advance progressive ideas:

Keep the American economy strong
Promoting middle-class aspiration
Helping individuals manage risk so they can pursue their aspirations

Who can argue with that? The whole point of Republican economic policy since 1980 has been precisely to grow the economy, promote middle-class aspiration, and introduce a measured amount of risk into peoples’ lives, getting off the dangerous Democratic policy of socializing all risk so that the whole nation is at risk if the Democratic suits screw up. It is Democrats who have been actively opposing the common-sense policies that Republicans have been patiently pushing for the last generation.

And now these Third-Way Democrats want to sweep away a generation of demagoguery? Who do they think they are?

The report finishes off with a number of bullet points on how to demagogue Republicans. Here’s one. “No investments in infrastructure.” The United States is only No. 12 in internet infrastructure penetration.

That’s an interesting point. The United States used to be big in infrastructure. It built roads, bridges, schools, and hospitals. Then the liberals came along in the 1960s and wanted to spend money on social programs. Infrastructure, they said, would end up paving over the whole nation. And liberals started opposing highway construction. And the national investment in infrastructure started to get crowded out by the War on Poverty.

Now liberals want us to forget a generation of folly and opposition and believe them when they tell us that the US is lagging in the Internet. Please!

Still, let us look on the bright side. If Democrats could really came up with sensible ideas on the economy, ideas that catered to aspiration rather than pessimism, then Republicans could retire for a well-earned rest.

We could declare victory in the Reagan Revolution and figure out what to do next.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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