I’m going to start this diary by saying that I don’t recall contributing to Beto O’Rourke this year, and for a variety of reasons he’s probably not even in my top 10 of favorite 2020 candidates. I don’t dislike him, but feel rather blasé about him.
This past weekend I stumbled upon this tweet from David Sirota,
As I read more, I realized Sirota was referring to individual donations from people that work in the Oil and Gas Industry. I think most of us know that Beto O’Rourke didn’t take any PAC money which is the only way corporations can legally donate to a candidate, so it’s very clearly individual donations.
It’s not surprising that the top two recipients of donations from employees of Oil & Gas Industries live in the state of Texas, and had elections in 2018.
The point that Sirota is trying to make though is that somehow O’Rourke is tainted because of these donations. He doesn’t link to any votes O’Rourke has made as a 3 term Representative that might show he’s overly chummy with oil and gas friendly legislation. Nope, that’s not what he did, instead he was using a frequent cudgel to passively label O’Rourke ahead of 2020. He took a perceived strength of O’Rourke’s — that he only accepts individual donations, and is trying to turn it into a weakness. A common method of campaigns, but there are times it goes too far.
The last decade we’ve seen an escalation of rhetoric about campaign contributions. With each new cycle it seems that some have narrowed the scope of what’s considered an appropriate donation. It’s bad to have wealthy people donate to someone’s campaign, or people that work in Healthcare, or as in O’Rourke’s case, Oil & Gas. Or only individual donations, no PAC money, unless you make an exception for certain PACs for your campaign because you have their support.
My questions about these unwritten, arbitrary rules are who gets to decide what’s appropriate, and what’s not? How much wealth is too much? Does it include income AND assets? Is it ok if they’re wealthy but live in Nebraska, and not on one of the coasts? If someone works in the Insurance industry but perhaps they work for a car insurance company, are their donations welcome by Democrats? Why can’t a VP for a particular industry donate to a Democrat running for Senate or President, or House, or Mayor? Is it ok for those making <$50,000 but work for Exxon, or Pfizer, or United Health Group to donate to a Democrat? What if they work for Kaiser Permanente are they less bad than another health insurance company, so donations are welcome from those employees?
I hope you can see my point. These are all arbitrary distinctions and often used to differentiate one candidate from another candidate. We may not have the campaign finance regulations we’d like to see in place, but what we have already helps us. We can review O’Rourke’s votes to see if these donations made a huge difference in how he voted. That’s what this information is designed for; but that’s not what Sirota did. Instead he just clobbered him over the head with the information, and insinuated it was bad. It wasn’t until two days later that he tweeted something about a No vote he made on a bill from 2016 that would have allocated no funds for the research, investigation or study of offshore drilling in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico.
The other cudgels we’ve seen weaponized are words like neo-liberal, corporatist, or centrist.
Let’s start with neo-liberal, and this definition from a Canadian professor and author of the book, A Research Agenda for Neo-liberalism,
Neoliberalism is generally associated with policies like cutting trade tariffs and barriers. Its influence has liberalized the international movement of capital, and limited the power of trade unions. It’s broken up state-owned enterprises, sold off public assets and generally opened up our lives to dominance by market thinking.
theconversation.com/...
Later in the same piece, he has this to say,
Neoliberalism is criticized for giving markets too much power over our lives. Yet in light of the rise of Donald Trump and other nativist, anti-trade populists, there is a growing chorus of people extolling the virtues of neoliberalism.
What’s most evident from this growing popular debate about neoliberalism – whether from left-leaning critics or right-leaning advocates – is that there are many different views of neoliberalism; not just what it means politically, but just as critically, what it means analytically.
emphasis mine
I’m not even going to try and understand this enough to explain it. The bottom line is that it does have a real meaning, but it’s a precise term that is used imprecisely the past several years. It’s now used to describe someone we think isn’t progressive enough, and honestly, I’m not sure what grading scale is used.
Next on the list...
Salon has a decent piece written in 2014 about the use of corporatist in political discussions. It’s titled, The “corporatist” confusion: Why a prominent political term needs to be retired. The author describes it’s most common, current usage this way:
Corporatism as “crony capitalism” or the corruption of public policy by special interests. This is the most common usage of “corporatism” in contemporary debate. Those who denounce the “corporatist wing” of the Democratic or Republican parties are objecting that policymakers are sacrificing the common good to the short-term objectives of particular businesses or industries.
www.salon.com/...
The author cautions the left to think twice before throwing the word around too frequently and too casually,
Just as American progressives are not small-producer populists, so they are not socialists. The progressive ideal is not state ownership of the economy but rather the mixed economy — an economic system in which different functions are carried out, as appropriate, by the government, the nonprofit sector, the household and the private sector. The private sector, moreover, is divided among competitive markets, where intense competition and small firms are the norm, and imperfect markets in which economies of scale tend to produce large oligopolistic or monopolistic firms. The task of progressive economic policy is to nurture a forest with different shapes and sizes of trees, and to prune them when necessary.
emphasis mine
I couldn’t have summarized my thoughts on this any better than this closing statement in the article,
Many goals of today’s opponents of “corporatism” are legitimate and must be part of any program of economic and political reform. But those goals can be pursued using other terminology. The phrase “corporatism” is so ruined by multiple meanings and misuse that it ought to be dropped from the political lexicon.
Again, it’s primarily used to label politicians deemed not worthy of our vote or consideration.
I’m going to skip covering what a centrist means, because I think that’s fairly clear. I imagine that the 2020 primaries will bring another set of words and actions that will be used to tag politicians as impure.
My dream for 2019 and 2020 is that we can avoid labels, purity tests, and overly simple solutions to complex issues and problems. That we’ll be able to see the difference between a candidate who accepts donations, for example from Oil & Gas industry employees, and votes in a reasonable way and one that doesn’t. In my mind we should start with a voting record, and go from there when considering if donations are influencing votes. That we will consider the context when someone is quoted, or when their donations are reviewed, or their votes. Did we get the full quote? What percent of the total donations did the ones questioned represent? Was the vote/s in question the full scope of their votes on a particular issue or a narrow slice?