To Fix the Economy, Fix Washington

Comment on The Field, 3/29/08 - http://ruralvotes.com/thefield/?p=962

Nothing builds (or rebuilds) the appeal of a political candidate more than having a superior public argument in the thick of a campaign. Barack Obama may not survive Hillary Clinton in shape to win in November, unless she is forced out by one or two decisive Obama victories soon, and that won't happen unless he makes a fresh, commanding argument at this point in the campaign.

None of his people should be lulled into any sense of inevitability just because the pundits are now saying she is highly unlikely to win. He can't wait for party bigwigs to pull her offstage. He has to take this nomination by main force. To do that, he needs to make a new argument, which is consistent with his innate identity as a powerful voice for change and as a personal harbinger of it.

Because Obama has had a good two weeks now tactically -- thanks to the Philadelphia speech which pretty much got the Wright affair behind him, the Richardson endorsement, and now the endorsement by Senator Casey of Pennnsylvania -- Obama can afford to go on the offense. And he should, or else he'll find himself in the final weeks before Pennsylvania responding to more Hillary attacks. But if he succumbs to the conventional wisdom about the politics of this primary and tries, tactically, to outbid Hillary on economic issues of concern to the white working-class, it won't work: The perception of her strength on that has hardened in the media, and that reinforces the general perception that she's a fighter for them -- which they now appear to believe.

It would be harder for Obama to dislodge that perception, than to jump over it and drive home another issue as decisive -- an issue on which he's perceived as naturally stronger. He has enough media money and enough free media to give visibility to any issue he wants to. But it has to be an issue that dovetails with the cumulative, valid, existing perceptions about what motivates him -- and that issue is this: fundamentally changing a broken political system.

Here's the strategic logic behind why this could translate into fresh new victories in the upcoming states. The white working class is indeed worried about losing jobs and now also worried about either losing their homes or losing sufficient resale value to have enough for retirement. But Obama cannot win a bidding war with Clinton by promising to apply more money to these problems, because he will never top her on pandering to those fears. And if he tries, he will rob himself of the comparative advantage that makes him far more appealing to independents than another redistributionist Democrat.

He must change the way that economic issues are perceived by asking why the economy has been brought to the precipice. And the answer is that the political system has been sold to the highest bidders, which has shifted opportunities away from those who work for a living, to those who can afford to buy access to politicians in Washington. It's not that factory workers can't be productive or don't have the capacity to compete. It's that the tax system and the mortgage finance system and the regulatory system have been mismanaged or corrupted by the way our political system has been rigged.

So changing the impact of the economy on working-class people in Johnstown or Scranton or Bethlehem or Allentown has to start with changing politics in Washington. And then Obama could say: "Let me tell you something that my opponent cannot: No one owns me -- just look at my tax returns. And I don't owe anything to anybody who profits unfairly from what goes on in Washington. I hate that system as much as you do. And if I do nothing else when I get to the White House, I promise that I will change it. It's time not only for equal economic treatment in America, it's time for equal political treatment -- because we will never fix our economy once and for all, unless we fix our political system once and for all. And we can't do that, without someone completely new in the White House."

This is an argument that renders Clinton's language and indeed the premise of her candidacy obsolete. It overrides any constituency-based appeals based on promising more breaks or programs or benefits. People have heard those appeals for election after election after election. They know that politicians promise to do more, and then they don't. The reason they don't is simple: The political system no longer works for ordinary Americans. And that's what Obama can change, and Clinton won't.

If he makes this kind of argument, and makes it passionately, he has a legitimate chance to win in Pennsylvania and will almost certainly win decisively in North Carolina and Indiana -- and thereby end the contest for the nomination.