Romney's Big Moment Overshadowed by Ryan Problem

The inevitable happened, which I guess is only newsworthy because we doubted its inevitability for large chunks of the last four years. Mitt Romney is the Republican candidate in the 2012 Presidential Election. Congratulations to Mr. Romney and his family, this will probably be the high mark of his political career. He responded with uncharacteristic grace, delivering one of the better speeches of his political career last night. He didn't let himself get carried away in attacks on Obama, which let him remain happily generic and relatively truthful.



He should savor this moment, because the next several months are going to be a miserable grind. Mr. Romney has a big problem, which pretty much entirely summed up by the other half of his ticket. By completely tethering his horse Ryan and the conservative, he has committed himself to the basic partisan dynamic existing in the US, and he has set his campaign on a course for failure.

It's hard to understand why he should have chosen Paul Ryan in the first place. Vice Presidents have very little influence in Presidential elections. To understand this, you have to remember that the American electorate is incredibly misinformed and apathetic towards politics, which is largely the result of the unending stream of partisan crap sprayed on them. When 49 percent of Americans actually know that Obama is a Christian, don't expect them be won over by Paul Ryan before November. He only has one major prime-time appearance in the next three months, the VP debate.

To make matters worse, Ryan is actually pretty unpopular, despite what a lot on the Right might say about it. He was pretty much unknown to the general public before Romney brought him to the ball, and there has been almost no evidence of Ryan actually helping the Romney ticket's chances in November. Americans also strongly oppose his signature Medicare plan, which is why they've desperately run away it over the last couple of weeks.

Many people viewed the Ryan choice as a "game changing" kind of move that was meant to help Romney narrow the gap on Obama. It was probably the wrong risk to take to. By putting Ryan on the ticket, Romney's strategy seems to be completely based around the conservative base. Unfortunately for him, there just aren't enough conservatives to actually get him elected.

Even worse, the choice of Paul Ryan highlights a bunch of icky social issues, total abortion bans and unrelenting gay bashing, that all Republicans want to avoid. They've thrown away Missouri already, a race that should have been easy for them to win.

Never has a president been reelected when economic conditions are this bad. A candidate like Romney should be the kind of guy to beat him. Unfortunately, the Republican party is so out of touch that they've lined themselves up for a historic defeat. They'll lose the White House when it should have been easy to take; they'll fail to retake the Senate because a Republican couldn't win states like Missouri. Democrats have spent a long time being known for their talents of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. I have little down that this embarrassment will stick to the Republicans for a long time to come.

The Problem with the Rich

A common misconception on the left is that the rich simply inherent all of their wealth. Mitt Romney, so they say, only got to where he is because of his rich daddy. If he had started poor, like everyone else, he never would have become the incredibly wealthy man that he is today.

Unfortunately, this just isn't true. As Robert Frank helpfully points out, only 9 percent of the net worth of the top 1 percent was inherited (as of 2001). Of course, no one would deny that there is an advantage to being rich. But what happened in the last 30 years in the US has very little to do with people being richer than others. Even in your story about the casino, the money isn't actually inherited. It was earned, regardless of whether the way of earning it is offensive or whether the odds were already stacked in someone's favor (the second part is closer to the truth than the first). If the problem was only inheritance, it could be solved pretty quickly with an aggressive estate tax. Nor would it lead to situations where a small elite continue to skyrocket away from general populace. The problem of inequality is much deeper and much pernicious than just inherited wealth.

George Romney was well off, but he would barely be considered that rich nowadays. He comes from an era where a CEO earned only 40 times more than the average worker. He wouldn't seem all that different than what most people call upper middle class today. The most, MOST, anyone earned back then was about 250,000 a year; and that's in today's dollars.

The problem with Mitt is not that he started well, we're always going to have that, but that he was able to game the system to make unimaginable sums of money for himself and other rich people. Let CEOs give birth to other CEOs, as long as they're all earning 40 times more, like in the past. But now, now they make 3,500 times more than the average worker. That's not some "natural" thing. That's not a "market" reward for higher productivity. That's the result of specific changes in policy. That's the result of the efforts of specific groups to get government to create obscene awards for people like Mitt Romney and Dick Fuld and John Thain and Jimmy Cayne.

The Right tends to put forward the argument that its not "equality of outcomes" that matter, but "equality of opportunity." That hides the fact that the outcomes delivered by the system have fundamentally changed. Some people are rewarded on a scale unfathomable to others. And while they trumpet along about free markets and battling the "evils of socialism," few people seem to be noticing that they're rewriting economic rules to make sure they always profit.

Dan Ariely presented this table originally on his blog. It can be found here.

That's why "we built this" must be the most hilarious slogan any party has put forward. Especially since it's coming from a Republican party that has specifically used government to make itself rich. The stadium they held their little conservative rally in was paid for with taxpayer money. Just like so many of those Republican-owned sports teams are supported by taxpayer money. Many of the businessmen that they paraded across the stage enjoyed government-backed loans. Just like all those whiney financiers made their money through deregulation. And like all how those CEOs who got their compensation rules changed to pay themselves otherworldly amounts of money.

That's not capitalism. There's no worthwhile innovation there. It's all about manipulating the rules to make sure you get to operate in a protected bubble while everyone else fights to survive.

So don't rail against Mitt Romney or others like him for being born rich. Rail against Mitt Romney because he represents the most insidious sides of our "market" economy. He's a man who made the vast majority of his money by gaming the corporate tax system, who considers it patriotic to aggressively avoid actually contributing to the system that made him wealthy. Mitt Romney represents a type of world-view where the rich get to enjoy endless government largesse that is paid for by the suffering of the rest. That's where the casino metaphor is apt. Government is picking winners all the time, just as those doing the picking deny it actually happens. This is what needs to change. It doesn't matter if your rich or poor, we all should be treated the same. Right now, we're not. It's not even close.

The Austerians of Reactionary Keynesianism

Howard Dean has a horrible little video on Big Think, where he talks about the need to "drive over the fiscal cliff" in order to restore our public finances.

This video is wrong for a wide variety of reasons. First and foremost, it violates Charles P Pierce's  basic economic theory: Fk the deficit. People got no jobs. People got not money. When Howard Dean says "there will be a little pain" for everyone, he forgets to mention all of the working men and women that will be thrown out their asses because of a two-quarter long recession. We have spent the last four years essentially shrugging our shoulders at the greatest economic crisis in 60 years; Howard Dean wants to make it worse.

Howard Dean, unfortunately, seems to have spent three years ignoring any and all news about the UK and Europe. His little jab about Greece is the epitome of misinformation (Greece's ultimate problem is currency related), and it's the exact same argument that extreme budget cutters on the Right use to justify their personal madness. Note to any left-leaning politician out there: if there ever comes a moment where you might think you agree with Paul Ryan, slap yourself hard across the face and say the exact opposite.

But there's a bigger issue here. Democrats have essentially ceded the politically beneficial aspect of fiscal strategy over to the Right. They talked about this recently on Up with Chris Hayes. While Republicans, in their permanent minority status from the 40s to the 70s, regularly complained about having to be the tax collectors for the welfare state, they've been able to turn the tables on Democrats recently, essentially making them the Austerians for the tax-cuts state.

The Right gets to be Santa every two years (more tax cuts for everyone!!!), forcing the Democrats into being the party that takes away everyone's money. This kills the Dems in election after election, and it means they're always on the back foot when it comes to average voters' pocket books. Do you really want to vote for the party that's promised, time and again, to raise your taxes? Of course not! It's an easy choice.

The shift in attitudes, as Corey Robin explains so well, is an incredible two-front attack on Progressivism in the United States. On the one side, Democrats' priorities have shifted towards budgetary issues over progressive economic issues. It's the basic complaint many liberals had when President Obama shifted to concerns over the deficit in 2010. At the same time, reducing deficits often means cutting support for social programs, further eroding efforts for economic justice. In one stroke, the Right has discovered away to force supposed liberals to ignore their economic priorities and attack them at the same time.

If you're wondering what happened to the Left over the last thirty years, there's your answer. Our "Left-leaning" party runs on essentially the same governing platform as David Cameron's Tories, giving America has the choice between the Center-Right and the Far Right. Good luck.