Radical Center Review
Michael Lind with a sharp piece in The Daily Beast reflecting on his 2001 book (co-authored with Ted Halstead) The Radical Center.
The Radical Center and Lind’s earlier The New American Nation are lodestars in my own political evolution.
Radical center consists of more center-left economic proposals with center-right cultural policy.
For me, Lind’s central insight:
To make things even more complicated, as journalists such as John Judis pointed out back in the 1990s, America’s loose but real class system produces not one but two centers: the radical center, which is based in the white working class and lower middle class; and the “mushy middle” (or the “sensible center” or “moderate middle), which is based in the corporate world, the corporate media and in many think tanks in Washington. While the socially downscale radical center is center-left in economics and center-right in cultural matters (in favor of lowering the Medicare retirement age, against race-based affirmative action), the socially upscale mushy middle is center-right in economics and center-left in culture (in favor of cutting Social Security and Medicare and also for promoting ethnic diversity in an elite that is homogeneous in class and worldview).
The mushy middle represents the class interests of the college-educated professional/managerial overclass, a group that makes up at most 10 or 20 percent of the U.S. population. That 10 or 20 percent, however, accounts for nearly 100 percent of the personnel in corporate management, news media and the universities. As a result, the only “center” that is ever represented in mainstream political discourse is the mushy middle, whose spokesmen include David Gergen and David Broder. Deprived of credentialed advocates in positions of power and influence, radical centrist voters are forced to find their tribunes among anti-system politicians or journalists, like Ross Perot and Lou Dobbs, whose theatrical styles and appeals to (sometimes justified) resentments allow the establishment spokesmen of the mushy middle to dismiss them as primitive Neanderthals and pitchfork-wielding populists. (my emphasis)
Obama, while in some ways a little to the left of Clinton, is very much of the mushy middle (a mushy left middle as opposed to say the mushy right middle of an Olympia Snowe and/or Susan Collins or the mushy center middle of an Evan Bayh).
Lind mentions immigration, health care, progressive value added tax, and education policy. A policy not mentioned but that would help form a bridge to more libertarian voters is a drug de-criminalization policy. And a green policy (perhaps an industrial green policy) would likely reach a good portion of that educated managerial overclass.
While I thoroughly appreciate the notion of a new New Deal or new social contract for a 21st century economy, there are still questions about the overhang from the New Deal era entitlement system and how best to bring it to a sustainable effort–i.e. is the national consumption tax along with a reduced corporate tax rate sufficient to reduce the deficit and sustain a reasonable new Neal Deal safety net?
Now some might say The Tea Party would be a logical context for someone like me to move, I have some serious qualms.
As in this Tax Day Tea Party poll from Politico:
Palin, who topped the list with 15 percent, speaks for the 43 percent of those polled expressing the distinctly conservative view that government does too much, while also saying that it needs to promote traditional values.
Paul’s thinking is reflected by an almost identical 42 percent who said government does too much but should not try to promote any particular set of values — the hallmarks of libertarians. He came in second to Palin with 12 percent.
The first set (the Palinites) aren’t really Tea Partiers. They’re social conservatives who will either stay home or inevitably vote Republican and therefore vote for a party intent on securing corporate de-regulation. Notice that while Lind characterizes the social/cultural side of the Radical Center as center-right, it is not he says a White Protestant Christian right (i.e. Moral Majority social conservatism). Palin (to the degree she believes and/or says anything coherently) represents another thread in the cut taxes, bombs away, but never really cut spending side of GOP Bush II economic and unilateral militaristic orthodoxy.
With Paul–however much I appreciate the self-coherence and sincerity of his political philosophy–I would say you get some of the worst scenarios. While I’m not a fan of the Cheney-ite foreign policy of a Palin, the Ron Paul American Fortress foreign policy doesn’t seem like a winner either. That plus his radical (so-called) free market stance and a lack of even a liberaltarian social safety net is to me quite repulsive.
Leaving as Lind correctly points out neither of the two US parties (nor even the tea party) as representing the views of the Radical Center.
“Radical center consists of more center-left economic proposals with center-right cultural policy.”
Doesn’t this largely describe the Blue Dog Democrats?Report
@Mark Thompson, My sense of Blue Dogs is that they are center-right economically. They are neoliberals in the economic sense. It was to get buy in from that crew that in many ways forced Health insurance reform to stick with the employer system (which Lind opposed).Report
@Mark Thompson, It actually reminded me of my father, who is very much working class Republican. He votes for them on the social issues, but in general believes that neither party really cares about the concerns of people like him.Report
Nice piece! I do love that so many are struggling so hard to identify the current political irruptions. I kind of remember the late, beloved Sam Francis struggling with the same or a similar effort to define a cadre of middle-Americans who might unite, through off their masters, and re-establish their own, little, anti-federalist nation. Sadly, his efforts came up short, his career was drastically curtailed by the powers that be and he ended up in the hinterlands, dying way before his time.
Truth has a cost.Report
@Bob Cheeks, Ah yes, appreciation for an unrepentant white supremacist who wrote: “We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called ‘affirmative action’ and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races.”
He defined a cadre, all right. They wear white sheets, burn crosses and lynch people.Report
@Travis, Thanks for writing that. Apropos of Chris’ post, I find Lind’s stuff intriguing and I find myself agreeing with much of it but I’m troubled by the prominent role that race-related matters play in his presentation. Let me be clear: I am not calling him or his ideas “bigoted” or “racist” or any such thing. I’m just wondering where “non-whites” come in. “The Next American Nation,” after going through various iterations of white America, wound up at “Multicultural America” and that wasn’t a good thing in Lind’s mind. Not because of any bias or prejudice but because, well, I’m not sure why. Yet, that’s where the numbers are headed. In the piece Chris linked to, what is meant by “culture” isn’t abortion or gay rights but affirmative action and immigration.
You can agree with Lind on both counts but still wonder if the “radical center” he’s describing isn’t, at least in some small part, about the anxieties of certain white folks. I wonder if we’re not seeing history repeat itself: the populist and labor movements of the late 19th century dissipated so much of their energy on race-related questions that they were an easy mark for “divide and conquer” tactics.Report
@Roberto, good question and one I’ve struggled with myself in terms of his writings.
As I understand it, mostly he’s talking about moving away from a race-based affirmative action system to one that is classed based. In that sense he sees raced-based affirmative action tending towards racial balkinization and he’s talking about a cross-racial economic alliance. Jim Webb has made similar comments. Lind might be wrong about (or probably over-estimating) the degree of such balkinization, but that’s the idea. He talks about the earlier elements of the civil rights movement as an example.
In terms of immigration I would support massively increased legal immigration, moves to integrate and legalize those already in the country, shift that legal immigration more to high tech/higher wage immigration, and then see about what realistically and humanely can be done about proper enforcement.Report
Don’t get it, sorry. The actual policy proposals seem to be well within the mainstream of the Democratic party or the shrinking moderate arm of the GOP. I mean how is “economic egalitarianism, color-blind civil rights, opposition to wage-lowering, union-weakening unskilled immigration, and enthusiasm for innovation-driven economic growth” a radical or anti-elitist program? If you heard Obama say that would you even bat an eye?
Maybe there’s something going on here that I, as an elitist, libertarian immigrant, am deaf to, but really the class-war rhetoric seems totally incompatible with the moderation and pragmatism of the actual policy proposals, which seems totally opposite to the unserious extremism of the Tea Parties.Report
@Simon K, I disagree. The health care proposals Lind supports would have completely done away with the employer based system. The only Democrat I can think of who supported such a notion was Ron Wyden.
The immigration policy would shift to high tech immigration not the current policy favored by both parties.
The education reform would create a larger federal umbrella (equalization payments) at the same time that it would allow for more school choice (not supported generally by the Democratic party).
Lowering the corporate tax rate at the same time as having a federal consumption (progressively balanced) is not exactly where the Democratic party has been going (under Obama or Clinton) vis a vis taxes.Report
But that’s just the difference between politics-as-politics and politics-as-policy. I don’t think anyone would (in private) defend the actual health care reform act against Wyden-Bennet as policy, but its clearly superior politics because it actually passed!
But what’s actually populist about any of Lind’s proposals? Populism isn’t known for its focus on detailed policy reforms. Those are the domain of elite policy wonks. Its known for its focus on preserving existing institutions that benefit “the majority” while screwing “elites”, “minorities” and for’ners, and doing those things in simple, obvious ways: protectionism, immigration restrictions, cutting entitlements for the poor but keeping those for the middle class, and so on. You can’t dress up voucher schemes and value added tax in those clothes.
It seems like an attempt to harness populism to a fairly sensible but thoroughly elite-friendly set of policy proposals. I’m fine with that in principle, except that it won’t work. Genuine populism, sadly, looks like the Tea Partiers at the moment. If you want to get sensible policies passed, I don’t think there’s a class-war short-cut to doing it right now – it would require a new cross-society bargain that created an electoral coalition sound enough to be invulnerable to the inevitable hold-outs, a New New Deal in effect. I don’t see any sign of either party being able to do that on a stable basis.Report