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Last week, while most journalists and intellectuals were focused on responding to the global pandemic and looming economic depression, a significant number of writers on both the right and left were busy absorbing and formulating criticisms of what may well prove to be the most important essay written by a conservative thinker in many years.

The importance of Harvard Law Professor Adrian Vermeule's "Common Good Constitutionalism," published by The Atlantic, is not a function of originality. Plenty of legal theorists have made similar arguments in the past. When I was an editor at the conservative religious magazine First Things back in 2003, we published an essay by an obscure academic that tentatively advanced similar claims but we ran it paired with a stinging rebuttal by none other than Robert Bork, a legend in conservative legal circles. Seventeen years later, the views Bork eviscerated are being advanced in a far more cogent and confident way in the pages of a prominent centrist magazine by an author ensconced in one of the country's foremost elite institutions hoping to influence the dozens of judges recently appointed to the federal courts by a right-wing populist president.

Times have certainly changed. But Vermeule hopes to change them quite a lot more.

His primary target is "originalism" the view, long favored on the right, that jurists ought to defer in their legal interpretations and decisions to the meaning of the Constitution that prevailed at the time of its drafting and ratification, even if doing so cuts against the policy preferences favored by present-day ideological conservatives. In its place, Vermeule proposes a "substantively conservative approach to constitutional law and interpretation" that would not hesitate to empower the legislators and judges to promulgate and enforce a comprehensive notion of the "common good" rooted in "objective natural morality," even if there is little warrant for doing so in the text of the Constitution itself. Instead of flinching from the charge that conservatives aim to use the law to "legislate morality," Vermeule wants conservatives to do precisely that, with conviction and without apology.

But the importance of Vermeule's essay also derives from the author's deft attacks on and selective appropriation of progressive legal assumptions. This is something that many of Vermeule's early critics have missed. Convinced that his ideas are potentially dangerous (they are), these critics rush to denounce and call him names (fascist!) while failing to realize that the most ominous passages of his essay reproduce and deploy for right-wing ends widely shared progressive arguments and assertions about the legitimacy of using law to advance and enforce comprehensive moral views.

In trying to make headway against Vermeule's legal project, one option is to concede these shared progressive/conservative premises and do battle over which of the two comprehensive moral views deserves to triumph. But there is another alternative, which is to take a stand on different ground the ground of liberal pluralism by rejecting those shared illiberal premises.

So many passages in Vermeule's essay seem designed to provoke progressives that it's easy to miss how much they reproduce progressive claims. Take the line of argument found roughly halfway through the essay, where Vermeule asserts that "common good constitutionalism" does not aim at maximizing "individual autonomy" or minimizing "the abuse of power," and neither does it "suffer from a horror of political domination and hierarchy" because it accepts that law is "parental, a wise teacher, and an inculcator of good habits." This leads to one of the most striking passages in the essay one that sounds remarkably like an impatient dismissal of the need for democratic legitimacy and a full-throated endorsement of political authoritarianism.

Just authority in rulers can be exercised for the good of subjects, if necessary even against the subjects' own perceptions of what is best for them perceptions that may change over time anyway, as the law teaches, habituates, and re-forms them. Subjects will come to thank the ruler whose legal strictures, possibly experienced at first as coercive, encourage subjects to form more authentic desires for the individual and common goods, better habits, and beliefs that better track and promote communal well-being. [The Atlantic]

The authoritarianism seems as novel as it is alarming at least until one realizes that a long line of progressive jurisprudence stretching from President Woodrow Wilson down to legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin and beyond makes nearly identical assumptions about the relationship of constitutional law to democratic majoritarianism. Think especially of progressive Supreme Court decisions on abortion and same-sex marriage that overturned democratically enacted law in states across the country. Or anti-discrimination law and efforts to use it to enforce conformity to progressive views on race, sexuality, gender, and related issues, even when doing so forces churches, schools, and businesses run by traditionalist religious believers to adjust what they say and claim to believe in public.

The case in favor of upholding and enforcing such laws is that a higher standard of morality (and maybe its emanations and penumbras within the text of the Constitution) demands it and those who resist or oppose this standard have no right to do so. They are bigots who will eventually come to realize that progressives were right and they were wrong. Which is exactly what Vermeule thinks conservative jurists and lawyers should say to those many Americans who would strenuously object, for instance, to a Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), and perhaps also acted to ground fetal personhood from the time of conception in the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Because I'm very much at home in "blue" America, I would be far more comfortable living in a country in which the progressive construal of what morality demands was uniformly upheld and enforced by law than I would be in the uniformly pro-life and sexually traditionalist country that Vermeule and other staunch conservatives prefer.

But far better than either absolute extreme would be an America in which the law recognized, reflected, and took its cues from the truth of pluralism. This doesn't imply the denial of a common good. What it denies is that the common good is obvious or simple. Every side of every dispute in our politics is dominated by people trying to advance their construal of the common good against opponents who have their own different views of it.

This jostling and clashing of competing views of the common good is what politics is like everywhere people are free to try their hands at governing themselves, as anyone who has read Book III of Aristotle's Politics is well aware. The main fissure that Aristotle noted in the city states of his time was the clash between the many who were poor and the few who were wealthy. Each class understood the common good in very different ways, and the best that most cities could hope for was a balancing and moderation of each view against the other to form a relatively peaceful and thriving polity.

Our political communities are far larger and far more diverse. Our disagreements are rooted in demographics, as were the ones of Aristotle's time, but the fissures are much more numerous now: class, but also ethnicity, religion, race, age, and others. A few of us, like Vermeule, are conservative Catholics who view the common good in one way. Other Catholics view it somewhat differently. As do white conservative Protestants, white liberal Protestants, black Protestants, Jews, Mormons, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and secular Americans ranging from "spiritual but not religious" to atheist. Add in hierarchies of wealth and education and regionalisms and ideology and many other differences and you end up with a multitude of disparate views about how to define and achieve the good of all 330 million Americans.

Faced with this tableau of pluralistic diversity, a would-be authoritarian like Vermeule will tend to deny its significance just as a progressive might be unmoved by being told that many millions of Americans don't share his outlook on gay marriage or transgenderism. Sure, people disagree about the good, both camps would say, but if they thought about it as they should, and if the law nudged them along in the right direction, they would eventually come around. Morality is unified and simple, and under the right set of norms and institutions, everyone can be made to acknowledge and affirm it as one.

The great liberal political theorist Isaiah Berlin called this view "monism," and he considered it a recipe for tyranny not simply because all political communities larger than a small village have too much diversity to be brought around to affirming a single view of the common good without employing coercion, but also because morality itself isn't unified and simple.

Berlin was a moral pluralist, which has implications that go far beyond the banal point that public opinion in nation states is diverse. Berlin's pluralism maintains that our experience of the world tells us there are many objectively good ideals or ends freedom (in its multiple senses), equality, communal solidarity, piety, justice, to name just a few and that they inevitably clash with each other. The liberty of a gay couple to marry, for example, will clash with the piety and communal solidarity of the bakery owner who doesn't want to be forced to bake a cake for the wedding ceremony. And of course both sides appeal to conflicting notions of justice as well.

The simple triumph of either side in this conflict represents a real loss. A liberal will be sensitive to the cost and the civically poisonous consequences of one side being forced to pay it and will therefore seek to achieve compromise and accommodation whenever possible, using every available means, including appeals to federalism and the crafting of highly nuanced and narrow court decisions that carve out space for different ways of life to flourish as much as possible.

Berlin's pluralistic liberalism teaches us how to live together in pursuit of the common good while honestly facing up and striving to do justice to the irreducible complexity of moral reality.

Adrian Vermeule's monistic authoritarianism, like that of the progressives he mimics, is something else entirely perhaps its polar opposite. It's an especially vivid example of the troubling tendency of leading writers on all sides of our ideological divides to indulge in the politically pernicious fantasy that they can make Americans who disagree with them disappear.

For those who realize the dangerous futility of such indulgences, a better option awaits us in the liberal tradition. If only we will seek it out.

See the original post:
When conservatives interpret the Constitution like progressives - The Week

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis and more, subscribe to Mother Jones' newsletters.

The coronavirus pandemic and the catastrophic unemployment it sparked have put economic policy front and center. To many progressive economists and advocate,the CARES Act, the $2 trillion aid packagethat moved through Congress last month, put too much emphasis on bailing out corporations and not enough on helping people, especially those who were already struggling before the viruss spread.

With lawmakers now assembling a second major aid package, the leaders of several progressive economic, research, policy, and advocacy groups released a statement of principles on Thursday urging Congressional leaders to shift priorities to help the most vulnerable, including communities of color. The guidelines laid out are largely targeted at Democrats, whose control of the House of Representatives gives them leverage to shape future bailouts.

The economic crisis sparked by coronavirus has exposed major structural flaws in our economy that made this crisis far worse than it needed to be, the statement begins. It is clearer than ever that we need major government intervention to stabilize the economy and put us on a long-term path to resiliency.

The statement came out of conversations among the leaders of multiple progressive policy shops about how they could persuade Congress to respond not just with BandAids but with structural changes. It also signals a hope Congress will learn from its mistakes in responding to the 2008 financial crisis. During the last recession, corporations received massive bailouts while continuing the risky behavior that caused the economy to collapse, the statement reads, still free to act in ways which made recovery more difficult, particularly in low-income and communities of color.

As the next package comes together, Democrats are likely to have a long list of demands that includes, as the statements authors detail, more aid to people, small businesses, and frontline workers, but also universal mail balloting to preserve Americans right to vote during the November elections.

Read the full statement:

The economic crisis sparked by coronavirus has exposed major structural flaws in our economy that made this crisis far worse than it needed to be, and it is clearer than ever that we need major government intervention to stabilize the economy and put us on a long-term path to resiliency.

We urge Congress to move quickly to pass additional legislation adhering to the following principles to prioritize aiding families and communities, especially Black and brown people who are disproportionately harmed by both the public health and economic crises, and making the structural changes needed to make our economy more resilient in the long term.

Build Economic Resilience for the Long Term. This crisis has laid bare that decades of rampant inequality, attacks on public institutions, and blind faith in markets to solve public problems has left our economy deeply vulnerable. This crisis is acute in part because millions of families lack good jobs and adequate healthcareespecially the Black and brown families and women who are filling what are only now deemed essential roles in our economyand because government agencies tasked with pulling people from the brink are operating on threadbare budgets. Congress must address the underlying structural weaknesses in our economy that helped propel this crisis and ensure that the investments made now are durable enough to prevent future crises.

Reinforce essential responders, including workers, small businesses, and state and local governments. This crisis confirms how workers in traditionally low-paid jobs like warehouse workers, grocery clerks, farm workers, and child care workers arelike health care professionalsessential responders. These workers, disproportionately women and people of color, are risking their lives each day, yet lack basic protections to keep them safe and healthy. State and local governments are similarly pushing their resources to the brink to support their residents, and are in desperate need of federal government relief. Half measures to aid those we all rely on most in this crisis will not be sufficient. Congress must provide substantial and sustained relief to state and local governments and directly to all workers on the front lines.

Repair the Economy by Helping People. This crisis will only be solved by investing in people, first and foremost. Saving our economy from total collapse will require major investments in the health and economic well-being of the workers, small businesses, families and communities who drive our economy, and in order to be effective, must be inclusive of workers who are typically excluded, like restaurant workers, immigrants, and people of color. Instead of hoping that jobs and economic health will trickle down from corporations and the rich, Congress must prioritize getting substantial aid to the people who need it the most.

Prevent Further Accumulation of Corporate Power. During the last recession, corporations received massive bailouts while continuing the risky behavior that caused the economy to collapse. Corporations, private equity, and payday lenders also moved quickly to profit off of the suffering of millions of families, which made recovery more difficult, particularly in low-income and communities of color. Left unchecked, they will again extract from the public good and exploit marginalized people, which will leave the economy less stable overall and will likely allow them to concentrate their power as smaller businesses fail. Congress must prioritize shoring up small businesses and institute strong accountability mechanisms and regulations to prevent large corporations from using this moment of crisis to further concentrate economic and political power.

The statement was signed by the following organizational leaders:

Neera Tanden, Center for American ProgressEileen Applebaum, Center for Economic and Policy ResearchBrian Kettenring, Center for Popular DemocracyDorian Warren, Community ChangeSabeel Rahman, DemosThea Lee, Economic Policy InstituteChris Hughes, Economic Security ProjectNatalie Foster, Economic Security ProjectTaylor Jo Isenberg, Economic Security ProjectIndi Dutta-Gupta, Georgetown Center on Poverty and InequalityMichael Linden, Groundwork CollaborativeFatima Goss Graves, National Womens Law CenterFelicia Wong, Roosevelt InstituteHeather Boushey, Washington Center for Equitable Growth

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Progressives Push for Rescue Package that Puts People Over Corporations - Mother Jones

The Young Turks founder and host Cenk Uygur said Thursday that the assumption that progressives have to get excited about presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe BidenJoe BidenBiden wins Alaska primary Alaska Democrats see spike in ballots in the 2020 vote-by-mail primary Joe Biden fails to understand the Constitution on military matters MORE is wrong.

Uygur told Hill.TV that the Democratic establishment expects all you progressives to raise enthusiasm for Biden as he will become the nominee after Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersBiden wins Alaska primary Alaska Democrats see spike in ballots in the 2020 vote-by-mail primary Biden sees opening over Trump with older voters MORE (I-Vt.) dropped out of the race Wednesday.

No, first of all, thats not my job, that's Joe Bidens job, he said.

The Young Turks founder added that the assumption is the media should produce propaganda to support the last-standing candidate.

So when you go to the general election, forget every critique you had legitimate critique of Joe Biden you had, now lie on his behalf. No, not going to do it.

But Uygur acknowledged that any vote that doesnt go to Biden will help Trump, adding he plans to vote for the credible candidate.

To me, its give me a random dog catcher versus Trump, and Im going to vote for the random dog catcher, he said. ...But if you say, Get excited about a random dog catcher, you dont know about or has a bad record, no Im not legally obligated to get excited.

Sanders dropped out of the Democratic primary Wednesday, leaving Biden as the only candidate standing from a once vast field of candidates.

Originally posted here:
Cenk Uygur: Assumption progressives need to get excited about Biden is wrong | TheHill - The Hill

The COVID-19 crisis has suddenly turned even conservatives into proponents of inclusive, middle-class economics. The historic, $2.2 trillion stimulus bill just passed unanimously by Congress is focused on sending money to people to keep the economy from cratering. It concedes the point to what progressives have said all along that spending by everyday Americans, not corporate profits, is what drives the economy.

The new law will send checks to people, even those with incomes too low for taxes, without worrying about making them government dependents. It extends and increases unemployment insurance, which Republicans have long worked to restrict. It forgives loans to small and medium businesses if they keep people on the payroll. After years of resistance, Republicans approved paid sick days and family and medical leave, another way to keep money in the pockets of working peoples.

Trump is turning people who cant pay the rent, payment,mortgage or student loan from dead-beats into deserving Americans. Republicans even agreed to tie bail-outs for big business to no stock buybacks for a period of a year, although it would have been far more effective if corporations were required to use the funds to keep people working, as several European countries have done. That should be at the core of the next federal COVID bill.

But lost in this turn-around is the fact that decades of trickle-down economics have made the U.S. poorly prepared for the economic catastrophe triggered by COVID-19. Half of the families are living paycheck-to-paycheck. A majority of families have little if any emergency savings and most Americans have little if any retirement income to fall back on. Health care costs weigh heavily on even people with insurance and 28 million people remain uninsured.

Some 45 million Americans have $1.6 trillion in student debt. Wages have been virtually stagnant for forty years, while the wealthy few have gobbled up a huge share of economic growth. One-of-three families pay more than they can afford for housing. Most Americans dont have paid family leave and most lower-paid workers dont have paid sick days. Meanwhile, major corporations have spent trillions buying back stock to enrich their stockholders and executives, leaving them with few cash reserves to weather the crisis.

The COVID-19 crisis is making one thing clear; our collective prosperity depends on the prosperity of each of us. When people are paid enough to care for and support their families, can educate their kids, afford health care and housing, shop in their neighborhoods and retire in security, that drives our economic prosperity.

States have a crucial role in building on federal actions to be sure that people do drive economic recovery from the COVID recession. Moreover, states must reject austerity policies that will only deepen the crisis. Rather than retreat from the recession, states should but charge into it with public investments that create jobs and promote growth

States have a crucial role in being sure that the federal money gets out quickly and to everyone who is eligible. State employees should be shifted to state unemployment offices to handle the increased workload. State agencies responsible for small businesses should be geared up to help employers understand and apply for federal loans.

Governors and state legislatures should use the press, social media and constituent communications to educate people about the new programs. They need to let self-employed people know that they are eligible for the first time. They must put the word out that unemployment is available even if people still have some income when wages or self-employed income take a big hit because of the crisis. They need to get the word out to the small business community. They should lean on every TV and radio outlet to run PSAs.

States should require all health insurers to cover all COVID-19 related care without any out-of-pocket costs. States that run their own ACA marketplaces should open enrollment to anyone who applies, as eleven states have already done. States in the federal marketplaces should pressure the federal government to do the same. All work requirements tied to eligibility for benefits should be ceased. States can also take immediate steps to protect consumers: stop evictions, foreclosures, debt-collection, car repossessions. Vigorously enforce laws against price-gouging.

But states cant stop there. We must use this crisis to transform the guiding logic of our economy from trickle-down to inclusive economics. Raising the minimum wage not just to $15 an hour, but to half of the median wage. A major investment in job-creating clean, renewable energy with policies that move states to 100 percent renewables. Making college and childcare truly affordable, limiting rent increases and building affordable housing. Being sure that every working person has paid sick days and family and medical leave. Boosting retirement income. States around the country have pioneered many of these measures; all should follow.

Just as the Great Depression led to inclusive economic policies like Social Security, unemployment insurance and the minimum wage, laying the ground for decades of prosperity, the unfolding COVID Depression can bury neo-liberal economics once and for all and turn this terrible crisis into a new era of widespread prosperity, based on inclusive economics.

Richard Kirsch is the director ofOur Story: The Hub for American Narrativesand the author of "Fighting for Our Health: The Epic Battle to Make Health Care a Right in the United States." Follow him on Twitter@_RichardKirsch.

See more here:
In a crisis, even conservatives turn to progressive economic policies | TheHill - The Hill

After months of denial regarding the spread COVID-19, Donald Trump first embraced the role of being a "wartime president," then shifted again to wanting the war over immediately, saying, "We don't want the cure to be worse than the disease." A chorus of conservative voices quickly echoed him, suggestingolder Americans should be happy to die to save the economy "for their children." Although Trump hastemporarily retreated on that front, he appeared to feint toward that message again this week,and we'll be hearing echoes of it again, repeatedly.

This new line of argument vividly reminded me of the "South Park" episode"Margaritaville," discussed in striking fashion in Anat Shenker-Osorio's2012 book, "Don't Buy It: The Trouble with Talking Nonsense about the Economy,"which I enthusiastically reviewed at the time. "Don't Buy It" was based on three years of research into how economists, journalists, advocates, think tanks and others think and communicate about the economy, and the breadth of Shenker-Osorio's research made it all the more striking how well that episode captured a fundamental truth about our pervasive economic confusion a confusion that's now deadlier than ever.

That alone was enough reason to want to talk to her. But as it happens, Shenker-Osorio hasalso just released a COVID-19 messaging guide, whichbuilt on the race-class narrative project that I wrote about in 2018. "In moments of crisis, new narratives, new policies and new social behaviors are established," the guide begins. "How we act and what we say in this moment can help define perceptions, assumptions and policy preferences in our communities, states and country."

With so much of the future at stake in this moment, I couldn't think of anyone who could shed a more light on the bewildering and competing messaging around this dire historical moment.This transcript of our recent conversationhas been edited for clarity and length.

Your book "Don't Buy It" starts out with a discussion of the "South Park" episode "Margaritaville," which, properly understood, tells us a great deal about how confused we are and why, when it comes to thinking about economics. What happens in that episode?

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Roughly speaking, the residents of the Colorado town where the series take place face a grave economic downturn and, in trying to make sense of it, decide the economy is an angry and vengeful god to whom they've not paid sufficient homage. They attempt to appease this deity until one of the kids, toga-clad, gives a rousing speech about how the economy isn't actually real. It's merely how we measure what humans do.

What does it tell us about how economic matters are commonly portrayed anddiscussed?

Both when I wrote "Don't Buy It" and disturbingly, more so right now the economy is often portrayed as an all-powerful, personified entity. Previously, we would hear politicians admonish that we can't pass X policy because it will "hurt the economy" as if it were a being to which we owe our efforts and loyalties. And now, all the more brazenly, Republicanstellus we must sacrifice ourselves or perhaps our elders to the economy. When, as we know, the economy is ahuman invention; it's merely a means to measure what humans do.

Further, much like when priests were considered the lone conduits to God, today's Wall Streetbankers and corporate CEOs are modern interlocutors uniquely positioned to understand, prop up and maintain the economy. Just as pre-Reformation Catholics may have felt disdain at their priests selling indulgences, we may harbor anger toward this wealthiest one percent,but we're chastened not to go against their wishes lest we stir the wrath of "the economy."

You went on to discuss how conservatives have two clearly defined models or metaphors related to the economy, one describing whatit is, and the other whywe need to treat it deferentially.So, first:What's the "what"?

Conservatives, aided and abetted by progressives who also unwittingly employ the metaphor, tend to talk about the economy as a body. You can hear this expressed in language like "it's suffering" or "the economy is thriving." We have a "recovery bill" to get the economy "off life support" and "restore it to health." What this metaphor suggests is that in grave cases, we must "resuscitate the patient" (perhaps with a stimulus bill.) But as inthe business of daily living, you don't really want continuous external meddling with what your body does. And sothis lends credence to a laissez-faire approach to viewing government actions as "interference" that harms the all-critical market best left to its own devices. This outlines how we're meant to understand the economy, unconsciously the "what" of the thing.

And the "why"?

Historically, the right has peddled the notion that the economy was there to reward the good and punish the bad. Essentially, it's meant to incentivize desirable behavior i.e., working hard, investing, trying to amass more and keep people from laziness or imprudent spending. Thus, a program like welfare is deemed problematic because, in a worldview where your economic lot is purely of your own making, it rewards those who've made bad choices.

We're seeing this play out right now in debate about unemployment insurance in the stimulus with Republicans up in arms about how paying people (a pittance) will make them loathe or unwilling to work. Paul Ryan, for example, famously railed against welfare as a hammock that lulled people into complacency.

Yetwe see progressives attempt to make arguments about how social welfare programs will "grow the economy" in the hopes of sounding like the reasonable adults in the room. This tacitly reaffirms the toxic idea that our purpose ought to be to serve the economy that the correct evaluation of policy is how it affects the GDP, and not actual humans. Andit doesn't even move conservatives because it still butts up against this idea that helping people who haven't done the right things is fundamentally wrong.

In essence, what the right fails to understand or just pretends not to get is this: Thereason that people are poor is that they have no money. That's it. And they've been systematically blocked from having enough by a racist, xenophobic and plutocratic system designed to take the wealth that everyday working people create and hand it to an ever smaller, decidedly white, generally male, few.

This dovetails with what we've heard from Trump and others, focusing on saving the economy anddownplaying the cost of human lives. Is there anything more specific you'd like to add?

Traditionally, the right-wing story on the economy had two parts. The first, as outlined by Ian Haney Lpez in"Dog Whistle Politics"and"Merge Left" [Salon interview:part oneandpart two], is that government is bad because it takes from good "hardworking people" (who we're meant to understand are white) and gives it to undeserving ones expecting handouts (dog whistle for black and brown.) Thus we should dislike and distrust government and want to contain its size and reach. The second part of the tale was that if you work hard in America, this land of opportunity for every rugged individual, you get your just reward in the form of sweet cash and piles of it. But the "work hard" part was always key.

What's been remarkable and, I believe, not well noted, is that Trump has largely abandoned the "work hard" part of the story. Since he came down that escalator to announce his campaign, he has relied on weaponizing racism, blaming some "other" to his aggrieved white base, without the corresponding push to put nose to grindstone.

Andobviously, this strategy of scapegoating, of deliberately attempting to divide us to distract from his total incompetence and unrelenting cruelty, is on full display with COVID-19. The "other" selected may vary but the same playbook applies.

You also found that progressives have a coherent model, as well, but that it's not nearly so widely recognized or articulated. What is that model and how does it help us better understand what the economy actually is, as well as what we should do?

Progressives do sometimes talk in a more helpful metaphor that likens the economy to a vehicle. You can hear this in language like "it's on the right track" or "the economy is veering out of control." Indeed, the language of economics borrows heavily from physics, with "acceleratingjob losses" and "friction," for example. But, we also use the aforementioned personified language, among other simplifying models. This makes it challenging to establish a clear, coherent, repeated refrain that unconsciously conveys to our audiences what the economy is.

The vehicle model helpfully implies a role for government. Just as we'd expect a car to have a driver in order to maintain control and get us to our desired destination, using language that unconsciously suggests that the economy can be understood as a vehicle primes audiences to desire an outside controller to "steer" the way.

A vehicle model, or other language that reminds listeners the economy isnotan element out of nature but rather a product of the decisions we make, lays the foundation that the purpose of the economy is to serve people. To extend the original metaphor, to get us where we need and want to go with as smooth and enjoyable a ride as possible. The economy must serve our needs, since it's merely the sum of our endeavors. Not the other way around.

How does this relate to what progressives should be arguing for now?

Applying this to today's debate, we are now fully enmeshed in the consequences of having accepted the right's framing for decades. They contend that you appease and please the economy by giving tax cuts to rich people and, now,handing kickbacks to corporations. The left, meanwhile, has argued that we help the economy by raising wages or enacting social programs or making health care more affordable.We agreed to let them set the terms and have been left debating who loves the economy best instead of forcing the far more relevant discussion: Whatis best for people.

Every time we argued, for example, that something was an "investment," we primed expectation that decision making in politics ought to center on GDP growth, not human welfare. Every time we contended that, say, Medicare for All would be much cheaper, we indicated we agree that health care should rightly be a market good and now we'll haggle over the price. This is the very definition of a morally bankrupt argument.

And now that we're in this COVID-19 moment, we're on defense about people's lives and well-being. What we need to do is insist that life and health cannot be for sale. If a large number of people have to die in order for the economy to work, the economy doesn't work. And it never has.

It seems fair to say that conservatives have much more politically potent, widely-shared metaphors for talking about the economy ones that naturalize and moralize the existing order of things while progressives have less prominentbut much more realistic ones. You've studied many other political issues over the years. How does this situation relate to the broader issue landscape?

Conservatives have message and metaphor discipline. They have set overarching frames for talking about their worldview and then tightly controlled talking points for conveying their issues that emerge out of them. This allows them to always break a signal through the political noise. Sadly, research demonstrates that a message that's been heard more frequently is deemed more credible. Something you've heard often requires less cognitive load to process you can fill in the ending once you hear the opening lines.

Meanwhile, as has been widely catalogued, the left has many different, sometimes contradictory, frames and messages for the same issue. We have disparate organizations and leaders who often each have their own unique encapsulation. And on top of this, a tendency to want to get really creative and say something new create new branding, a new slogan each and every time. All of this works against our ability to get heard.

Sothat's the first problem:a multiplicity of narratives or frames as opposed to an unrelenting and coherent drumbeat.

The second problem is when we get in our own way byinadvertently reinforcing narratives at odds with what we want people to believe. Besides the examples named above arguing for universal care on the basis that it's cheaper, making the case for wage hikes as ways to grow the GDP, etc. we can add others. For example, the acceptance of the insurance industry talking point "pre-existing conditions." What this actually means is occupying a human body; there is no person on this earth without fallible body parts. Instead, we've helped prop up the notion that denying people coverage based on how our bodies work and what has happened to them makes sense.

In 2017 and 2018, you took part in a major project developing "race-class narratives" thatshow how progressives can win by embracingrather than running away from the intersection of racial and economic issues. This wasin part drawn from the work of Ian Haney Lpez, as you touched on already, but there was also continuity with your work in "Don't Buy It."

As I referenced earlier, the Race Class Narrative project emerged out of Haney Lpez's recognition that the right has weaponized race (among other identities) in order to keep working people divided so they can continue to pass policies that funnel wealth to their lobbyists and donors while pointing the finger elsewhere as the cause of our hardships. This project sought to craft and then systematically test out narratives that could weave together issues of race and class in order to both act as a ready rejoinder to this right-wing race baiting and prove more effective than standard left colorblind populism.

What we found, in broad strokes, is that messages that explicitly name race outperform those that stick only to economic issues, not merely with our progressive base but also with voters in the middle. And this was as true in a nationally representative sample when we first tested in 2017-2018 as right now, whenwe've just completed a fresh look among voters in six Midwestern states.

What's an example of these narratives?

An example would be: No matter what we look like, or where we come from, most of us work hard for our families. But today, certain politicians divide us from each other based onour color, our background, or what's in our wallets, hoping we'll look the other way while they hand kickbacks to their corporate donors and deny us the basics every working family needs. By joining together across racial differences, we can elect new leaders who will govern for all of us, not just the wealthy few.

That's just one example, but there are permutations of this narrative applied to criminal justice, education equity, revenue, immigrant rights and climate change, just to name a few. For a closer look at one robust and successful way we deployed this narrative in 2018, you can check out this "Greater Than Fear" episode about Minnesota.

What was most significant in terms of continuity with your earlier work on economics?

There is massive continuity across projects I've been lucky enough to be part of, beginning with work done on how to talk about poverty with Community Change, as well as related studies on how to talk about the economy and inequality, in particular. The through-line centers most around best practices in messaging, whatever the topic.

In brief, effective messages follow a set order: They first name a shared value;second, describe the problem; and third, offer an affirmative solution rather than an amelioration of harms. In contrast, standard progressive messaging often errs by having an opening salvo that's I like to call, "Boy, have I got a problem for you!"

Many other lessons like naming clear agents and avoiding negation learned earlier and summarized in this handbook are still very much in effect in what we see works for a race-class narrative message as well.

What was most significant that was new?

The most significant was the central importance and effectiveness of explicitly naming race, both in our opening shared value and then again in narrating deliberate division or scapegoating.

In essence, politics isn't solitaire. We don't get to decide what voters do and don't hear because we can't make our opposition be quiet. Soour choice to stay silent about race, to not bring up immigrant rights, to not discuss reproductive health caredoesn't end conversations about these issues. It just means all conflicted voters hear is what the other side spews about them.

How politically powerful or persuasive were these "race-class narratives"?

Both in the initial testing, in subsequent forms of testing using different methods and in independent verifications by other pollsters, race-class narrative messages have demonstrated their efficacy. This has also held true in large-scale randomized controlled trials.And this is both for persuasion, shifting voters toward our policy preferences and beliefs,and mobilization, motivating ideologically aligned audiences to take action.

You recently put out a COVID-19 messaging guide, which among other things included narratives that vividly reminded me of the race-class narratives.

The guidance on COVID-19 follows the same formin terms of ordering, calling out villains in active constructions, offering positive directives to create good rather than ameliorate harms and so on.

An example would be: No matter what we look like, where we liveor what's in our wallets, getting sick reminds us that at our corewe're all just human.But for too long, we've let a powerful few divide us to pad their own profits by makinglife and health a product for sale and blocking our efforts to ensure paid time to care for our loved ones and recover ourselves. We must rewrite the rules to ensure everyone can access the care that we need withoutfearing we'll go bankrupt to do it. This is a moment that we muststand with and for each other across our differences and against anything and anyone who seeks to divide us.

What's particular to the COVID-19 case, or perhaps more acute, is the incredible need to hold in check the absolutely understandable fear and anxiety we are all feeling. Fear evokes in many of us a freeze response, an instinct to shut down and hold tight to what little we've got to try and protect those closest to us. This is all the more salient when public health practices demand that we keep physical distance. (Note how unhelpful it is to use the phrase "social distancing" in lieu of "physical distancing," precisely when we need social solidarity to an unprecedented extent.)

To the extent our messaging evokes a negative emotion again, only after we open with that shared value it ought to be anger. Anger at the incompetent and corrupt "leaders" who have imperiled so many more of us than necessary rather than fear for our own lives and those of others. Anger is an energizing, catalytic, negative emotion.

Go here to read the rest:
Trump, the pandemic and "the economy": How progressives can fight his message - Salon