Joseph Stiglitz: When Shall We Overcome?

When Shall We Overcome?

Mar 12, 2018 JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ

Mar 12, 2018 JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ

In 1968, the year after riots erupted in cities throughout the US, the Kerner Commission, established by President Lyndon B. Johnson, famously concluded that the country was "moving toward two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal." Sadly, it is a conclusion that still rings true.

NEW YORK – In 1967, riots erupted in cities throughout the United States, from Newark, New Jersey, to Detroit and Minneapolis in the Midwest – all two years after the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles exploded in violence. In response, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed a commission, headed by Illinois Governor Otto Kerner, to investigate the causes and propose measures to address them. Fifty years ago, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (more widely known as the Kerner Commission), issued its report, providing a stark account of the conditions in America that had led to the disorders.

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The Kerner Commission described a country in which African-Americans faced systematic discrimination, suffered from inadequate education and housing, and lacked access to economic opportunities. For them, there was no American dream. The root cause was "the racial attitude and behavior of white Americans toward black Americans. Race prejudice has shaped our history decisively; it now threatens to affect our future."

I was part of a group convened by the Eisenhower Foundation to assess what progress had been made in the subsequent half-century. Sadly, the Kerner Commission report's most famous line – "Our Nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal" – still rings true.

The just-published book based on our efforts, Healing Our Divided Society: Investing in America Fifty Years After the Kerner Report, edited by Fred Harris and Alan Curtis, makes for bleak reading. As I wrote in my chapter, "Some problematic areas identified in the Kerner Report have gotten better (participation in politics and government by black Americans – symbolized by the election of a black president), some have stayed the same (education and employment disparities), and some have gotten worse (wealth and income inequality)." Other chapters discuss one of the most disturbing aspects of America's racial inequality: inequality in securing access to justice, reinforced by a system of mass incarceration largely targeted at African-Americans.

There is no doubt that the civil rights movement of a half-century ago made a difference. A variety of overt forms of discrimination were made illegal. Societal norms changed. But rooting out deep-seated and institutional racism has proven difficult. Worse, President Donald Trump has exploited this racism and fanned the flames of bigotry.

The core message of the new report reflects the great insight of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.: achieving economic justice for African-Americans cannot be separated from achieving economic opportunities for all Americans. King called his August 1963 march on Washington, which I joined and at which he delivered his ringing, unforgettable "I Have a Dream" speech, a march for jobs and freedom. And yet the economic divide in the US has grown much wider, with devastating effects on those without a college education, a group that includes almost three-quarters of African-Americans.

WHEN SHALL WE OVERCOME?

Mar 12, 2018 JOSEPH E. STIGLITZreflects on how racism has persisted in the US in the half-century since the Kerner Report.

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Beyond this, discrimination is rampant, if often hidden. America's financial sector targeted African-Americans for exploitation, especially in the years before the financial crisis, selling them volatile products with high fees that could, and did, explode. Thousands lost their homes, and in the end, the disparity in wealth, already large, increased even more. One leading bank, Wells Fargo, paid huge fines for charging higher interest rates to African-American and Latino borrowers; but no one was really held accountable for the many other abuses. Almost a half-century after the enactment of anti-discrimination laws, racism, greed, and market power still work together to the disadvantage of African-Americans.

There are, however, several reasons for hope. First, our understanding of discrimination is far better. Back then, the Nobel laureate economist Gary Becker could write that in a competitive market, discrimination was impossible; the market would bid up the wage of anyone who was underpaid. Today, we understand that the market is rife with imperfections – including imperfections of information and competition – that provide ample opportunity for discrimination and exploitation.

Moreover, we now recognize that the US is paying a high price for inequality, and an especially high price for its racial inequality. A society marked by such divisions will not be a beacon to the world, and its economy will not flourish. The real strength of the US is not its military power but its soft power, which has been badly eroded not just by Trump, but also by persistent racial discrimination. Everyone will lose if it is not addressed.

The most promising sign is the outpouring of activism, especially from young people, who realize that it is high time that the US lives up to its ideals, so nobly expressed in its Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal. A century and a half after the abolition of slavery, the legacy of that system lingers. It took a century to enact legislation ensuring equal rights; but today, Republican-controlled courts and politicians often renege on that commitment.

As I concluded my chapter, "An alternative world is possible. But 50 years of struggle has shown us how difficult it is to achieve that alternative vision." Further progress will require determination, sustained by the faith expressed in the immortal words of the spiritual that became the hymn of the civil rights movement: "We shall overcome."

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JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ

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Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is University Professor at Columbia University and Chief Economist at the Roosevelt Institute. His most recent book is Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited: Anti-Globalization in the Era of Trump--

John Case
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Dani Rodrik: Trump’s Trade Gimmickry

Trump's Trade Gimmickry

Mar 9, 2018 DANI RODRIK

The imbalances and inequities generated by the global economy cannot be tackled by protecting a few politically well-connected industries, using manifestly ridiculous national security considerations as an excuse. Such protectionism is a gimmick, not a serious agenda for trade reform.

CAMBRIDGE – US President Donald Trump's bark on trade policy has so far been far worse than his bite. But this may be changing. In January, he raised tariffs on imported washing machines and solar cells. Now, he has ordered steep tariffs on imported steel and aluminum (25% and 10%, respectively), basing the move on a rarely used national-security exception to World Trade Organization rules.



Many commentators have overreacted to the possibility of tariffs, predicting a "trade war" and worse. One expert called the steel and aluminum tariffs the most significant trade restrictions since 1971, when President Richard M. Nixon imposed a 10% import surcharge in response to the US trade deficit, and predicted that, "It will have huge consequences for the global trading order." The Wall Street Journal wrote that Trump's tariffs were the "biggest policy blunder of his Presidency" – a remarkable claim in light of the administration's missteps over Russia, the FBI, North Korea, immigration, taxation, white nationalism, and much else.

The reality is that Trump's trade measures to date amount to small potatoes. In particular, they pale in comparison to the scale and scope of the protectionist policies of President Ronald Reagan's administration in the 1980s. Reagan raised tariffs and tightened restrictions on a wide range of industries, including textiles, automobiles, motorcycles, steel, lumber, sugar, and electronics. He famously pressured Japan to accept "voluntary" restraints on car exports. He imposed 100% tariffs on selected Japanese electronics products when Japan allegedly failed to keep exported microchip prices high.

Just as Trump's policies violate the spirit, if not the letter, of today's trade agreements, Reagan's trade restrictions exploited loopholes in existing arrangements. They were such a departure from prevailing practices that fear of a "new protectionism" became widespread. "There is great danger that the system will break down," one trade lawyer wrote, "or that it will collapse in a grim replay of the 1930s."

Those warnings proved alarmist. The world economy was not much affected by the temporary reversal during the 1980s of the trend toward trade liberalization. In fact, it may even have benefited. Reagan's protectionism acted as a safety valve that let off political steam, thereby preventing greater disruptions.

And once the US macroeconomy improved, the pace of globalization accelerated significantly. The North American Free Trade Agreement, the WTO (which explicitly banned the "voluntary" export restraints used by Reagan), and China's export boom all followed in the 1990s, as did the removal of remaining restrictions on cross-border finance.



Trump's protectionism may well have very different consequences; history need not repeat itself. For one thing, even though their overall impact remains limited, Trump's trade restrictions have more of a unilateral, in-your-face quality. Much of Reagan's protectionism was negotiated with trade partners and designed to ease the economic burden on exporters.

The voluntary export restraints (VERs) of the 1980s in autos and steel, for example, were administered by the exporting countries. This allowed Japanese and European companies to collude in raising their export prices for the US market. Indeed, these companies may even have become more profitable thanks to US trade restrictions. There is little chance that South Korean exporters of washing machines or Chinese exporters of solar cells will fare as well today. Trump's unilateralism will cause greater anger among trade partners, and thus is more likely to generate retaliation.

Another contrast with the Reagan-era measures is that we are living in a more advanced stage of globalization, and the problems that have accompanied it are greater. The push for hyper-globalization in the 1990s has created a deep division between those who prosper in the global economy and share its values, and those who do not. As a result, the forces of nationalism and nativism are probably more powerful than at any time since the end of World War II.

While Trump's policies purportedly aim to restore fairness in global trade, they exacerbate rather than ameliorate these problems. As Jared Bernstein and Dean Baker point out, Trump's tariffs are likely to benefit a small minority of workers in protected industries at the expense of a large majority of other workers in downstream industries and elsewhere. The imbalances and inequities generated by the global economy cannot be tackled by protecting a few politically well-connected industries, using manifestly ridiculous national security considerations as an excuse. Such protectionism is a gimmick, not a serious agenda for trade reform.

A serious reform agenda would instead rein in the protection of drug companies and skilled professionals such as physicians, as Bernstein and Baker argue. It would address concerns about social dumping and policy autonomy by renegotiating the rules of the WTO multilaterally. And it would target areas where the gains from trade are still very large, such as international worker mobility, instead of areas that benefit only special interests.

But it is in the domestic arena that the bulk of the work needs to be done. Repairing the domestic social contract requires a range of social, taxation, and innovation policies to lay the groundwork for a twenty-first-century version of the New Deal. But with his corporate tax cuts and deregulation, Trump is moving in the opposite direction. Sooner or later, the disastrous nature of Trump's domestic agenda will become evident even to his voters. At that point, an old-fashioned trade war may seem irresistible, to provide distraction and political cover.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________-

Dani Rodrik is Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is the author of The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy, Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science, and, most recently, Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy.

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China Churns Out Half The World's Steel, And Other Steelmakers Feel Pinched

NPR

When President Trump announced plans to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports last week, he made clear he views a healthy steel industry as vital to the economic and military success of the United States.

But the industry is under threat from steelmakers in competing countries, especially China, which has emerged as by far the largest and most powerful producer on earth.

China now produces about half of the world's steel. It singlehandedly churns out as much steel in one year as the entire world did in 2000.

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During the same time, the U.S. share of global production has fallen from 12 percent to 5 percent today, says Eswar Prasad, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and professor of trade policy at Cornell University.

Steel has long occupied a special place in the way the U.S. and other nations see themselves. It's both a source of national pride and a symbol of a country's industrial might.

"When it comes to a time when our country can't make aluminum and steel — and somebody said it before and I will tell you, you almost don't have much of a country," Trump said last week at the White House.

This veneration of steel is common all over the world, but it has been particularly strong in China, says Linda Lim, a professor of corporate strategy and international business at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business.

"They had this very sort of Marxist notion that you have to have manufacturing and you have to have steel," she says.

"Way back in the '50s and '60s, it was such a fetish of theirs that they had what were called backyard furnaces. People melted down their silverware in order to produce steel for the national good," Lim says.

Most but not all of the steel China produces today is used domestically, in buildings, autos, railroads and bridges, Prasad says. But it sells part of its product on the global market, which tends to depress prices, he says.

"It needs to export about 10 to 15 percent of its steel, and given how much steel China produces these days, that tends to have a pretty big effect on world steel prices," Prasad says.

Other countries have long accused China of dumping steel at artificially low prices. Washington imposes duties on Chinese steel, which is why a relatively small portion of imported steel comes from the country. (Canada is the top U.S. provider of the material.)

THE TWO-WAY

U.S. Workers Are Skeptical, But China Says It Will Restrain Steel Output

In recent years efforts have been made by steel-producing countries to cut back on production, Lim says. China says it now employs 1 million fewer steelworkers than it did at its peak.

But the world still has far more capacity than it needs.

"Everybody agrees global excess capacity must be cut, but nobody can agree on who's to be cut," Lim says.

Lim notes that capital costs for building steel mills are very high, but once plants are up and running, companies have little incentive to cut back on production. In fact, because of economies of scale, it makes sense to churn out as much steel as possible.

And because steel is a global commodity, an oversupply in one place tends to affect producers everywhere.

Trump's tariffs may protect U.S. steelmakers from dumping and in the long run raise the profits of individual companies, but they will hurt other industries that use steel, Prasad says.

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"The profits of some of those manufacturers will be squeezed, or — what is more likely — a lot of those costs will get passed on to American consumers," Prasad says.

Because the steel industry has become so automated, the tariffs are unlikely to produce many jobs, and even if they do, they won't necessarily be in the Rust Belt towns where the jobs used to be, Lim adds.

But it will send a message that the U.S. remains a globally competitive manufacturing power.

"It's not really about jobs, and it may not even be really about politics," Lim says. "It's about something deeper."

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John Case
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If we’re so productive in steel, why the persistent deficits? [feedly]

If we're so productive in steel, why the persistent deficits?
http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/if-were-so-productive-in-steel-why-the-persistent-deficits/

First, let's get this out of the way: I'm certain the Trump tariffs will do more harm than good. But I've been trying to add a bit more nuance to the conversation than "trade war!" and "higher prices!"

It's been clear forever that team Trump mistakenly views the trade deficit as a scorecard, one that's not improved on their watch so far. Again, nuance is required. There are times when the overall trade deficit is a clear drag on growth, and times when the capital flows that support it are distortionary. But this is not one of those times, and targeting bilateral trade deficits makes no sense and can be counterproductive, as I describe here (and I'll have more to say about this question of when trade deficits are problematic in coming days).

Still, Trump's lousy tariff idea is surely motivated by our persistent deficits in steel and aluminum, a point I thought was missing from this otherwise useful article in the AMs WaPo on US productivity gains in steel.

Source: https://www.trade.gov/steel/countries/pdfs/imports-us.pdf

The piece describes impressive productivity gains in steel production:

Labor productivity has seen a fivefold increase since the early 1980s, going from an average of 10 hours of work for each finished ton to an average of two hours in 2016, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute. Many North American plants were producing a ton of finished steel in less than one person-hour…

But if we're so damn productive in steel, which should imply competitive pricing, why are we by far the world's largest importer with persistent net imbalances? Why is so much domestic demand for steel met by imports? Obviously, price—but again, why?

It could be that other countries' productivity gains in steel production have been greater than ours, or their labor costs are lower, i.e., our unit labor costs are not so competitive. But at least in broad manufacturing, that's not the case–our ULCs are, on a dollar basis (so factoring in exchange rates), are below that of most of our trading partners, both in levels and growth rates.

Source: BLS

Certainly at the heart of the problem is China's out-sized contribution to excess global capacity, which neutralizes the productivity gains documented in the WaPo piece (excess capacity is roughly unutilized production). This 2016 Duke University study (sponsored by the Alliance for American Manufacturing) gets right to the point:

The global steel sector is once again in a state of overcapacity. The sector, predominantly fueled by China's expansion since 2000, has grown to over 2,300 million metric tons (MT) while only needing 1,500 MT to meet global demand. The result is a global steel sector at unviable profit levels and an influx of cheap steel in the global trading system adversely affecting companies, workers, and the global trading regime.

The first figure shows the Duke studies measure of steel capacity and production, along with the difference, which is overcapacity. The table below that shows production by country, wherein you can see the extent to which China is an outlier.

Source: See text.

Source: See text.

The table also shows how clearly Trump's scattershot tariffs are not the solution; just look at Canada's production! But the fact that Trump's tariffs are the wrong solution does not mean there isn't a problem!

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Krugman: Trump’s Negative Protection Racket (Wonkish)

Trump's Negative Protection Racket (Wonkish)

Paul Krugman:

(Please follow the ny times link to see the graphs....the text below is for those blocked by ny times paywall)

What economic thinking went into the Trump tariffs announced last week? None at all. In fact, the economists ("economists"?) who currently have his ear seem to regard their job as being to confirm the wisdom of whatever he decides to do. Peter Navarro:

My function, really, as an economist is to try to provide the underlying analytics that confirm his intuition. And his intuition is always right in these matters.

Translation: Navarro sees his role as that of a propagandist, not a source of independent advice.

But the rest of us don't have to accept that Dear Leader is always right. And in fact, these tariffs are weirdly poorly considered even if all you want to do is create manufacturing jobs, leaving aside all the other ramifications.

Why? Because steel and aluminum aren't final goods – nobody directly consumes steel. Instead, they're intermediate goods, basically used as inputs to other U.S. manufacturing sectors. And while tariffs that raise primary metal prices may increase production of those metals, they make the rest of U.S. manufacturing less competitive.Trade economists used to talk about this kind of thing a lot. Back when most developing countries were trying to promote manufacturing with tariffs and import quotas, we used to talk about effective protection, which depended on the whole structure of tariffs. Sometimes effective rates of protection were very high: if you imposed, say, a modest tariff on cars but none on imported auto parts, the effective rate of protection for auto assembly could easily be in the hundreds of percent. Sometimes, however, rates were negative: if you put a tariff on parts but not on cars, you were actually discouraging auto assembly.



Clearly, we can apply this kind of analysis to the Trump tariffs. In fact, there are people out there trying to put numbers on it, although I wouldn't put too much weight on them, for reasons that will be clear in a minute.

What I want to do, mainly to scratch my own analytical itch, is briefly sketch out how this story should work in this case. For the purposes of this post, I'm going to treat the U.S. as a small open economy facing given world prices; that's not quite right, but I don't think it would change the basic point to make it more realistic.


So, let's suppose we put a tariff on steel imports. What this does is raise the price steel producers
can charge, and it should lead to a rise in steel output:
Photo

But steel is used by other manufacturers, say producers of autos, and their costs rise when steel prices go up, shifting their supply curve back, and reducing their output:

Photo
So what is the net effect on manufacturing output and manufacturing jobs? It's not obvious, because it all depends on the details. How sensitive are steel output and employment to prices? How sensitive are output and employment in other sectors to costs? People are trying to estimate all this, but I wouldn't put too much faith in those estimates, simply because these are hard questions to answer. And there are further complications once, for example, you take into account possible effects on the exchange rate.



But still, the key point is that even while embracing protectionism, Trump is imposing negative protection on a lot of manufacturing. That's hardly the story he wants people to hear – and he's almost surely doing it by accident, out of sheer ignorance (because his "advisers" aren't in the business of, you know, giving advice).

And this is how we risk a trade war?--

John Case
Harpers Ferry, WV

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Re: [socialist-econ] Have Ohio Democrats Learned Anything About the Working Class? [feedly]

Very good piece on the central problem of Dems--the refusal to lay out a vision and a plan that could increase the quality of life for wotkers.  The writer says Sen. Sherrod Brown is such a good candidate because he has been on the front lines of economic issues fighting plant closings and outsourcing and bad trade deals

On Sat, Mar 10, 2018, 3:13 PM John Case <jcase4218@gmail.com> wrote:

Have Ohio Democrats Learned Anything About the Working Class?
https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2018/03/05/have-ohio-democrats-learned-anything-about-the-working-class/

Cincinnati Enquirer, Mike Nyerges

In presidential elections, Ohio has long been a swing state. Its voters supported Obama in 2008 and 2012, then swung right in 2016 to support Donald Trump. On the state level, however, Republicans have dominated for the past two decades. Only partly due to gerrymandering, they have a 12-to-4 advantage in the U.S. House of Representatives, and Democrats hold only nine of the 33 seats in the Ohio Senate and only a third of the 99 seats in the Ohio House. Republicans have also held the governorship for all but four years since 1990. Progressive U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, now seeking his third term, remains the only Democratic candidate to consistently win statewide elections.

Why has the Democratic Party lost so much ground in Ohio? To a large extent, it's because they have lost the support of white working-class voters.

As in other Rust Belt states, a majority of Ohio voters are white people without college degrees. Fully 55 percent of the state's voters belong to this demographic, while only 31 percent are white and college educated. In the polling booth, the gap between those with and without higher education has steadily increased, according to pollster Ruy Texiera. To win in Ohio, he argues, Democrats must "find a way to reach hearts and minds among white non-college voters."

After two decades of losses, you might think that the Ohio Democratic Party would have figured that out. But for the most part, it has not. Instead, the current crop of Democratic candidates has focused on critiques of Trump, Kasich, and the Ohio legislature. They've raised concerns about gerrymandering and voter suppression, the opioid crisis, Ohio's pitiful record on women's issues, and the almost uniformly bad performance of for-profit charter schools. Valid concerns all, but the Democrats running for office in 2018 have offered almost nothing in the way of concrete economic platforms.

The website of gubernatorial candidate Richard Cordray, for instance, features only biographies of him and running mate Betty Sutton and a button to donate. It's not as if he hasn't had time to develop a coherent policy agenda, since he has been planning to run for governor for more than a year. Nor does the website identify any specific plans for addressing Sutton's "kitchen table issues": jobs and wages, education, healthcare, and a secure retirement. Cordray has raised considerable money, but he can't count on his personal story to defeat primary opponents like Dennis Kucinich, the former congressman and mayor of Cleveland.

Kucinich and Senator Sherrod Brown are the most notable exceptions to this pattern. Kucinich's website provides the most concrete – and progressive — platform in the Democrats' gubernatorial field. Similarly, Brown's 77-page white paper, Working Too Hard for Too Little: A Plan for Restoring the Value of Work in America, lays out a comprehensive and concrete program to raise worker wages and benefits, give more workers voice and power at work, improve retirement savings, and encourage workforce investments.  That he released his plan in March 2017, on the heels of Hillary Clinton's defeat, shows that he understands that the Democratic Party needs more concrete economic programs squarely aimed at improving the economic lives of working people.  

What makes Brown a strong candidate is that he doesn't just talk about protecting good jobs. He has long been on the front lines fighting plant shutdowns and outsourcing and leading Congressional battles over unfair trade and banking laws. On trade, he has crossed party lines to work closely with his fellow Ohio senator, Rob Portman. His regular meetings in all 88 Ohio counties and direct connections with working people have made him even more credible.

Candidates could also find a good model in the strategies recommended by Policy Matters Ohio, a non-partisan think tank. Its recent white paper, "A New Way Forward," outlines "10 ways to support Ohio's working people," such as  protecting the right to organize, increasing the minimum wage, protecting against wage theft, fixing unemployment and workers' compensation,  and improvements in work scheduling and paid leaves. Like Brown's and Kucinich's programs, PMO's plan clearly aims to redress the economic losses sustained by Ohio workers.

PMO Executive Director Amy Hanauer says the organization has met with most of the gubernatorial statewide candidates. So far, only Kucinich is focusing on the group's recommendations.

Unfortunately, neither the Ohio Democratic Party nor the other statewide candidates have shown any indication of embracing such strategies. An argument can be made for avoiding issues that could cost the party votes within the white working class, such as gun control. No plausible argument can be made, however, to downplay economic concerns. But even progressive candidates like Kathleen Clyde are largely mute on the state's economic troubles. Clyde is the presumptive Democratic nominee for Secretary of State. She has taken her cue from state Democratic leaders and is pursuing a narrower campaign strategy focused on "bringing real accountability and transparency to my office and securing and modernizing our elections." While voter suppression has been a real problem in Ohio, aimed primarily at voters of color (most of whom are also working class), Clyde has yet to connect the economic concerns of disenfranchised working-class voters with voting rights or access.

Why haven't Ohio Democrats come out swinging with a populist campaign that could appeal to the working class? First, the Party's leadership is too conservative to mount a persuasive populist campaign. The ODP is also inbred, relying on a relatively small circle of consultants who have been responsible for past defeats. Furthermore, Richard Cordray has chosen to rely on the same strategic campaign communication specialists that mainstream Democrats have typically hired.

The ODP is controlled by David Pepper, who chairs the state party. Pepper is the son of the former CEO of Proctor and Gamble, and his close circle includes downstate lobbyists and operatives. This group has shown no affinity for working-class voters or their concerns. After the disastrous 2014 election, in which Democrats lost seats statewide and Kasich was re-elected, the ODP rejected Brown's suggestions for changes in the Party as well as his choice for state chair. Since then, Brown and the Party have had an uneasy and transactional relationship. Sources close to Brown's campaign estimate that between 30 percent and 40 percent of the contributions to the state party are tied directly to Brown's involvement. At the same time, Brown needs the party to help get out the vote.

Former Ohio Attorney General, Marc Dann says Ohio voters reward strong convictions. Dann won the biggest political upset in recent Ohio political history when he defeated Republican stalwart Betty Montgomery for Attorney General in 2006. In an interview, Dann said that successful Democratic candidates like onetime Governor Richard Celeste and former Senators Howard Metzenbaum and John Glenn all demonstrated a strong commitment to their political views. And, says Dann, they won elections, even though Ohio's slightly more Republican electorate didn't always share their views, because they stood by their beliefs.

Today's ODP has not nurtured strong candidates like these. Rather, Dann believes, the Party has encouraged more moderate, Republican-lite candidates and worked hard to defeat their more progressive opponents in primaries. "Straddling the middle is exactly the right strategy for Republicans," Dann says, "but is a losing strategy for Democrats."

Brown understands that, which is why he's been the party's only consistently successful statewide candidate over the past two decades. If Ohio Democrats would learn from his example and understand the appeal of the working-class economics like Brown, Kucinich, and organizations like PMO, they just might break the Republicans' stranglehold on the state.

John Russo

This commentary also appeared on the American Prospect blog.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

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Have Ohio Democrats Learned Anything About the Working Class? [feedly]

Have Ohio Democrats Learned Anything About the Working Class?
https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2018/03/05/have-ohio-democrats-learned-anything-about-the-working-class/

Cincinnati Enquirer, Mike Nyerges

In presidential elections, Ohio has long been a swing state. Its voters supported Obama in 2008 and 2012, then swung right in 2016 to support Donald Trump. On the state level, however, Republicans have dominated for the past two decades. Only partly due to gerrymandering, they have a 12-to-4 advantage in the U.S. House of Representatives, and Democrats hold only nine of the 33 seats in the Ohio Senate and only a third of the 99 seats in the Ohio House. Republicans have also held the governorship for all but four years since 1990. Progressive U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, now seeking his third term, remains the only Democratic candidate to consistently win statewide elections.

Why has the Democratic Party lost so much ground in Ohio? To a large extent, it's because they have lost the support of white working-class voters.

As in other Rust Belt states, a majority of Ohio voters are white people without college degrees. Fully 55 percent of the state's voters belong to this demographic, while only 31 percent are white and college educated. In the polling booth, the gap between those with and without higher education has steadily increased, according to pollster Ruy Texiera. To win in Ohio, he argues, Democrats must "find a way to reach hearts and minds among white non-college voters."

After two decades of losses, you might think that the Ohio Democratic Party would have figured that out. But for the most part, it has not. Instead, the current crop of Democratic candidates has focused on critiques of Trump, Kasich, and the Ohio legislature. They've raised concerns about gerrymandering and voter suppression, the opioid crisis, Ohio's pitiful record on women's issues, and the almost uniformly bad performance of for-profit charter schools. Valid concerns all, but the Democrats running for office in 2018 have offered almost nothing in the way of concrete economic platforms.

The website of gubernatorial candidate Richard Cordray, for instance, features only biographies of him and running mate Betty Sutton and a button to donate. It's not as if he hasn't had time to develop a coherent policy agenda, since he has been planning to run for governor for more than a year. Nor does the website identify any specific plans for addressing Sutton's "kitchen table issues": jobs and wages, education, healthcare, and a secure retirement. Cordray has raised considerable money, but he can't count on his personal story to defeat primary opponents like Dennis Kucinich, the former congressman and mayor of Cleveland.

Kucinich and Senator Sherrod Brown are the most notable exceptions to this pattern. Kucinich's website provides the most concrete – and progressive — platform in the Democrats' gubernatorial field. Similarly, Brown's 77-page white paper, Working Too Hard for Too Little: A Plan for Restoring the Value of Work in America, lays out a comprehensive and concrete program to raise worker wages and benefits, give more workers voice and power at work, improve retirement savings, and encourage workforce investments.  That he released his plan in March 2017, on the heels of Hillary Clinton's defeat, shows that he understands that the Democratic Party needs more concrete economic programs squarely aimed at improving the economic lives of working people.  

What makes Brown a strong candidate is that he doesn't just talk about protecting good jobs. He has long been on the front lines fighting plant shutdowns and outsourcing and leading Congressional battles over unfair trade and banking laws. On trade, he has crossed party lines to work closely with his fellow Ohio senator, Rob Portman. His regular meetings in all 88 Ohio counties and direct connections with working people have made him even more credible.

Candidates could also find a good model in the strategies recommended by Policy Matters Ohio, a non-partisan think tank. Its recent white paper, "A New Way Forward," outlines "10 ways to support Ohio's working people," such as  protecting the right to organize, increasing the minimum wage, protecting against wage theft, fixing unemployment and workers' compensation,  and improvements in work scheduling and paid leaves. Like Brown's and Kucinich's programs, PMO's plan clearly aims to redress the economic losses sustained by Ohio workers.

PMO Executive Director Amy Hanauer says the organization has met with most of the gubernatorial statewide candidates. So far, only Kucinich is focusing on the group's recommendations.

Unfortunately, neither the Ohio Democratic Party nor the other statewide candidates have shown any indication of embracing such strategies. An argument can be made for avoiding issues that could cost the party votes within the white working class, such as gun control. No plausible argument can be made, however, to downplay economic concerns. But even progressive candidates like Kathleen Clyde are largely mute on the state's economic troubles. Clyde is the presumptive Democratic nominee for Secretary of State. She has taken her cue from state Democratic leaders and is pursuing a narrower campaign strategy focused on "bringing real accountability and transparency to my office and securing and modernizing our elections." While voter suppression has been a real problem in Ohio, aimed primarily at voters of color (most of whom are also working class), Clyde has yet to connect the economic concerns of disenfranchised working-class voters with voting rights or access.

Why haven't Ohio Democrats come out swinging with a populist campaign that could appeal to the working class? First, the Party's leadership is too conservative to mount a persuasive populist campaign. The ODP is also inbred, relying on a relatively small circle of consultants who have been responsible for past defeats. Furthermore, Richard Cordray has chosen to rely on the same strategic campaign communication specialists that mainstream Democrats have typically hired.

The ODP is controlled by David Pepper, who chairs the state party. Pepper is the son of the former CEO of Proctor and Gamble, and his close circle includes downstate lobbyists and operatives. This group has shown no affinity for working-class voters or their concerns. After the disastrous 2014 election, in which Democrats lost seats statewide and Kasich was re-elected, the ODP rejected Brown's suggestions for changes in the Party as well as his choice for state chair. Since then, Brown and the Party have had an uneasy and transactional relationship. Sources close to Brown's campaign estimate that between 30 percent and 40 percent of the contributions to the state party are tied directly to Brown's involvement. At the same time, Brown needs the party to help get out the vote.

Former Ohio Attorney General, Marc Dann says Ohio voters reward strong convictions. Dann won the biggest political upset in recent Ohio political history when he defeated Republican stalwart Betty Montgomery for Attorney General in 2006. In an interview, Dann said that successful Democratic candidates like onetime Governor Richard Celeste and former Senators Howard Metzenbaum and John Glenn all demonstrated a strong commitment to their political views. And, says Dann, they won elections, even though Ohio's slightly more Republican electorate didn't always share their views, because they stood by their beliefs.

Today's ODP has not nurtured strong candidates like these. Rather, Dann believes, the Party has encouraged more moderate, Republican-lite candidates and worked hard to defeat their more progressive opponents in primaries. "Straddling the middle is exactly the right strategy for Republicans," Dann says, "but is a losing strategy for Democrats."

Brown understands that, which is why he's been the party's only consistently successful statewide candidate over the past two decades. If Ohio Democrats would learn from his example and understand the appeal of the working-class economics like Brown, Kucinich, and organizations like PMO, they just might break the Republicans' stranglehold on the state.

John Russo

This commentary also appeared on the American Prospect blog.

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