What do Bill de Blasio’s rise, Larry Summers’ exit, and Elizabeth Warren’s rosy future have to do with each other? Everything, according to Peter Beinart, whose 5,700-word essay last week in the Daily Beast is a tour de force in political dot connecting. Like many such efforts to suss out more sweeping meaning from a set of recent events, it may not hold up over time, but Beinart is a nimble enough thinker to make it well worth a read.
Beinart’s central thesis is that we are approaching the end of a nearly 40-year era of American politics defined by the two dominant political figures of this time — Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. While everyone recognizes the way in which Reagan’s ascendance signaled a clean break with the New Deal era of big government, Clinton’s “third way” politics offered not so much a repudiation of Reagan as a Democratic accommodation to its basic tenets.
Beinart, a former editor of The New Republic, argues that Barack Obama, for all the hope and change he promised, has in many ways represented a continuation of this era. To read his book The Audacity of Hope, writes Beinart, “is to be reminded how much of a Clintonian Obama actually is.” Indeed, Obama, painted as a socialist community organizer by his rabid detractors on the right, offers plenty of nods in his book to what Reagan got right, and might well have defined his own intermediary path the “third way” had the term not already been taken, Beinart says.
Beinart then points to a set of rising Democrats who share Obama’s “pro-capitalist, anti-bureaucratic, Reaganized liberalism,” including Cory Booker, California’s Gavin Newsom, and Julian Castro, the young pro-NAFTA mayor of San Antonio who delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention last year.
Though Reaganites and Clintonites argue fiercely, the center of gravity in that debate is tilted to the right, Beinart says. The new third way in the national debate, he says, is an unreconstructed liberalism that is rising because of the heightened sense of economic insecurity among younger Americans and growing income equality, a sense that the great movement toward deregulation and the power of markets is not delivering on its promise to lift all boats. Wages for recent college graduates rose 11 percent from 1989 to 2000, he says, while they dropped 8 percent from 2000 to 2012. “The Millennials” writes Beinart, “are unlikely to play out their political conflicts between the yard lines Reagan and Clinton set out.”
Beinart says that explains the burst of Occupy Wall Street activity. Occupy collapsed, but the sentiments that gave rise to it didn’t disappear, says Beinart. He thinks they help explain the sudden surge in the New York mayor’s race of de Blasio, the liberal of the field who quickly left in the dust Christine Quinn, the gay city council speaker who was seen as too close to outgoing mayor Michael Bloomberg. For all of the ways in which New York hardly looks like a national political bellwether, under three successive mayors (Koch, Giuliani, and Bloomberg) it has opted for the socially liberal, market-oriented politics of the Clinton and Obama years.
De Blasio, who has called for higher taxes on the city’s top earners to support universal prekindergarten, represents a sharp turn away from that. In a much bigger leap, Beinart suggests that his victory may presage a broader “rise of the new New Left.” He says Hillary Clinton, presumed frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic nomination, could be vulnerable to a challenge from a candidate who can “inspire passion” on the issues of economic inequality and corporate power. The candidate who would best fit that mold, Beinart says, is our senior US senator, Elizabeth Warren.
It’s all wildly speculative to think Warren would even consider such a run, never mind that she could stand up to the rigors of such a race. But Beinart captures the growing restlessness on the left by pointing out last week (before yesterday’s sudden development) the continued unease among Democrats with Larry Summers as Fed chairman. Beinart says “the door is closing on the Reagan-Clinton era.” It would be ironic, he says, if Hillary were to sense that and help seal it shut by embracing the new, more muscular Democratic politics.
–MICHAEL JONAS
BEACON HILL
The MetroWest Daily News argues that the tech tax illustrates both the continuing transportation revenue crunch and the overall lack of transparency on how bills become law.
MARATHON BOMBINGS
A clear majority of Boston residents favor a life prison sentence without parole over the death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev if he is convicted of the Marathon bombings, according to a Globe poll. Meanwhile, a Washington Post story looks at the mixed fortunes of bombing victims who have received payments from the One Fund.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
The Patriot Ledger does an analysis of salaries in 12 South Shore communities and finds that more than 700 public employees earn more than $100,000.
New Bedford officials release a list of more than 400 property owners who owe the city $1.2 million in delinquent taxes.
The owner of the largest fleet of taxis in Boston is looking to sell off 200 medallions, but Police Commissioner Ed Davis vowed to try to stop the sale by Edward Tutunjian, who is facing a criminal probe and a class-action lawsuit over allegations of exploiting cab drivers.
A man living in a homeless shelter finds a backpack full of money and turns it into Boston police, NECN reports.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
Former treasury secretary and Harvard University president Larry Summers withdraws his name from consideration for chairman at the Federal Reserve because of opposition from Democrats, to loud cheers on the left. The Washington Post analysis of the episode is here. A Wall Street Journal editorial says that although opposition from Elizabeth Warren and Joseph Stiglitz would normally earn one the Journal’s backing, Summers would have been “an exceptionally political Fed chairman at a time when the institution needs the opposite.”
The government’s Lifeline program to subsidize cell phone service for the poor is rife with fraud and abuse, according to a study by the National Review and Scripps National Investigative Team.
Eight years after Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast, Mississippi is sitting on $852 million in unspent federal disaster funds, Governing reports.
ELECTIONS
The latest Boston Globe poll shows a Boston mayor’s race that’s still tough to call, with John Connolly drawing 13 percent followed by several candidates bunched several points behind. With nine of the 12 candidates falling within the poll’s 4.8 percent margin of error, the paper declares in its headline that the race has “no clear leader.”
A Globe round-up story on Sunday’s mayoral campaigning mentions a Rob Consalvo stop at a Mattapan church, “where the pastor encouraged his flock to vote for Consalvo.” That prompts this tweet from another Boston pastor pointing out that such an act is an IRS sin.
Felix Arroyo and Marty Walsh are in this week’s spotlight as Keller@Large continues to profile the 12 Boston mayoral candidates leading up to next week’s preliminary. Walsh rolls out an ambitious plan for selling and redeveloping Boston City Hall, drawing immediate criticism from rival Mike Ross.
Saying the last four years have been disastrous for Lawrence, the Eagle-Tribune endorses CIty Councilor Dan Rivera and firefighter Juan Manny Gonzalez in the preliminary election for mayor over incumbent William Lantigua.
Attorney General Martha Coakley is launching a campaign for governor with a video and a trek across Massachusetts, NECN reports. Herald columnist Kimberly Atkins ponders how Coakley can move past her 2010 Senate loss, while her colleague Joe Battenfeld doesn’t see anything different in the new Coakley. Coakley’s announcement video is here; CommonWealth’s 2012 profile of Coakley is here.
The Republican credits New Yorker voters with disposing of the likes of Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer, but concedes that the former New York governor at least has a better shot at a normal career.
Joe Biden stops by Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin’s annual steak fry to test the 2016 presidential waters.
EDUCATION
A later school start time and more sleep appear to be improving grades at a school in North Eastham, the Telegram & Gazette reports.
The Brockton Enterprise has a two-part look on the high cost of school sports and the increasing fees students and their parents must pay to play.
Lynn officials are unhappy that 17 city schools will be field testing the state’s new standardized exam this year, the Item reports.
Tufts University convenes a conversation on race.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
A shark attack on a seal briefly closes an Eastham beach.
Would-be casino operators here have a double-green strategy: Taking your money and being kind to the environment.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
A Worcester woman (who used to be a man) takes a bike ride wearing nothing but shorts, shoes, and a helmet as a way of making the case for topless equality, the Telegram & Gazette reports.
MEDIA
Congress attempts to define who is a journalist under a proposed media shield law, sparking an outcry from bloggers and others who the definition may not cover.
