How the Koch Brothers Hijacked the Middle Class Revolt and How To Take It Back

I often have asked myself why, given the huge income inequality that exists in the US, the wage stagnation that has left most middle-class workers with a much lower standard of living than they had 40 years ago, the increased unemployment among middle-age, middle-class men since the recession, the foreclosure crisis, and a host of other economic-related problems … why hasn’t the American middle class risen up in revolt, either by taking their anger to the streets, to the ballot box, or through some other means.

Recently though I realized that they have revolted, just not in the direction I would have thought given their issues and problems.  Instead of rising up against the financial and big business interests that control our government and society, and that caused the recent recession, they have instead risen up against government and Democrats.

Why?  Because they have been convinced by slick Tea Party propaganda that the government is controlled by liberals (e.g. Democrats) and has no interest in their welfare.  That the government is spending too much money helping the poor rather than helping them.  And who has largely financed the Tea Party movement?  The Koch brothers.  

So the Koch Brothers, the ultimate conservative, corporate, environmental and economic aggressors, who represent almost everything that is wrong with American society and politics today, have convinced the victims of their actions and philosophy that the cause of the victims’ woe are the very forces that actually seek to protect the middle class at least to some extent, but which are the foe of the Koch brothers and which they seek to destroy.  If ever there was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, they are it.

I would agree in many ways that the force the middle class should protest against is government.  But not for the reasons put forth by the Tea Party.  The problem is not that the government is too liberal, the problem is that the government and the political parties, both Republican and Democratic, are controlled by the money and forces of industry and finance.  And so, most of what is done by government either directly benefits these forces rather than the average American, or limits the impact on these forces of measures meant to protect the average American and the public good.

The purpose of government, according to the Declaration of Independence, is to enable citizens to fulfill their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  It is not to make a privileged group rich.  Lincoln’s motto was “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” not “government of the people, by industry, and for industry.”

President Eisenhower, a Republican, warned in his farewell speech that “ we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”  That proved to be a wise and unfortunately unheeded warning.  If he were to give that speech today, he would certainly add the financial sector to his list.

So what should the middle class do to improve their economic situation?  At a minimum, they should vote Democratic and not Republican.  While Democrats are also too beholden to the money of industry and finance, they at least push measures that help the middle class, the average American, and the public good.  

However, I would argue that the middle class should go further.  They should protest in the most visible way, en masse, the influence that the big business and finance sectors have on government, both in the legislative and executive branches.  

President Obama when he campaigned in 2008, said he would limit the power and access of corporate lobbyists.  That didn’t happen.  In staffing his economic team to deal with the recession and see that its causes were fixed, he brought in finance insiders who were present before and during the financial collapse and did nothing to prevent it.  He has pushed for authority to enter into more free trade area agreements of the type that have increased globalization and brought its negative impact squarely down on the shoulders of the middle class while benefitting primarily multinational corporate owners.  He has done nothing to push federal financing of campaigns.

This is not an area where one can seek a middle ground and expect to come out with anything meaningful.  Big business and finance interests should know without question that they are and will continue to be considered of vital importance to the health of the American economy and the welfare of the American people.   And government should support them as appropriate. 

But they must also know that in the future, those very two interests … what I would refer to as the public good … will always trump the narrow financial interests of the corporation and its shareholders.  Corporations are creations of the law and they should be allowed to exist primarily because of the benefit they provide to the greater good, not to their own interests.

Somehow, the Democrats need to find a way to get the middle class to understand that they are the party who has the interests of the middle class more at heart; that Republicans only protect the interests of  big business and the finance sector, both of which are major donors to their campaigns.

But beyond that, some leadership needs to rise up from within the middle class to arouse their compatriots to engage in a united, visible, powerful, and ongoing protest against the influence of the big business and financial sectors.

How Democrats Lost an Election They Should Have Won

Despite the low popularity of President Obama and people’s concerns about the economy, this was an election Democrats should have won big ... that is, if the campaign had been run well.  But as so often has been the case, the Democrats did not run a good campaign.  What would have been a good campaign?

1.  Use Obama to lead the charge.   Because of his low standing in the polls, most Democratic candidates stayed as far a way from Obama as possible.  The Senate candidate in Kentucky wouldn’t even say whether she voted for him in 2012!

This was plain stupid.  They forgot that although he was down in the popularity polls in 2012, he won that election handily.  He and his people know how to run a disciplined campaign and get out the vote.  But this campaign wasn’t run by him; indeed he hardly participated.

The people who truly dislike Obama weren’t about to vote for a Democrat regardless what the candidate did or said.  The lines are very clearly drawn in their minds.  However, without Obama as cheerleader-in-chief, the Democratic base of blacks, latinos, youth, and women were less likely to vote historically in a midterm election.  Without getting out that vote, Democratic candidates were bound to lose any close election.   And that’s what happened.

2.  They should have run a very positive campaign that told people clearly where Democrats see the country going and how they propose to get us there … a clear vision statement with legislative particulars, geared to the average voter ... the put-upon middle class ... and communicated in a way that the average voter will get. This should have been the main thrust and the counter to Republican laissez faire, let the market take care of itself, policies.

The middle class has been suffering for decades, but the past few years have taken an even greater toll on their standard of living.  Democrats should have made it clear that they understand their pain and had policies to turn things around.

3.  At the same time, Democrats should not have let the public forget who has kept our current economic problems from being solved.  That should have been easy since Republicans in Congress are held in even lower esteem by voters than Obama.  

And Democrats should have nailed Republicans for being the hypocrites they are … they pose as the party of the people but really are the party of big business and the rich. Those are the interests they are protecting.  Those are the legislative positions they are advancing.  This is not playing class warfare, this is speaking the truth.

But since the Democrats did not run the campaign this way, Republicans were effective as usual at defining the terms of the campaign, making it a referendum on Obama.  Their base was motivated, and they really worked their get-out-the-vote campaign better this time than ever before, ironically learning from Obama.  The Democratic base on the other hand was dispirited and just didn’t vote in sufficient numbers.

Democrats Better Pay Attention To The Needs of The Middle Class

Why are Tea Party people so angry and fearful? Yes, right-wing demagogues aided by right-wing funders like the Koch brothers have stoked their fears and anger to a fever pitch, but why were they angry to begin with?  Why are they and many in the broader population so receptive to the lies and fear-mongering?

President Jimmy Carter posited that their fear is of a changed social order evidenced by the election of a black president. While I’m sure that is part of the answer, is it really so simple as the color of Obama’s skin and his progressive policies? No, the answer lies elsewhere.

Feeding this fear of a changed social order, racism, and the Tea Party’s resonance has been a sea change in the wellbeing of America’s middle class. The middle class is made up mostly of nonprofessionals … people with only a high school degree. As manufacturing and other middle class jobs have disappeared over the past 30 years, their standard of living and the quality of their lives has been drifting downward.

The recent recession only exacerbated the trend. In March 2011, 12 percent of those with only a high-school diploma were unemployed compared to 4.5 percept of those with college degrees and 2 percent for those with professional degrees. The greatest impact has been on men … in 1967, 97 percent of men 30-50 years old in this cohort were employed; in 2010, just 76 percent were.

The issue is not just unemployment.  For those employed, their wages have stagnated since the 1970s as a result of numerous factors but primarily the impact of globalization, having to compete with low-cost overseas workers - corporations will shift production overseas without much concern if it increases their profit by saving costs of production.

Not only has the combination of unemployment and stagnating wages resulted in economic problems for these men and their families, these pressures have brought about greater interpersonal stress, with a resulting increase in divorce rates and other examples of social dysfunction. The greater income inequality that developed during this period has also resulted in heightened actual and felt lifestyle differences between the middle class and those with more income and education.  (All data from, Don Peck, “Can the Middle Class Be Saved,” The Atlantic, September 2011)

The world as the middle class knew it since WWII has been turned upside down.  Small wonder they are scared, angry, and alienated. Yet this important shift in the American social fabric is never discussed, even by Democrats. Politicians talk vaguely about the need to protect the middle class, but the evisceration that has already occurred is not mentioned.

If the Democratic Party wants to win in 2012, it must clearly let the middle class know that it is aware of their pain, that it feels their pain, and that it proposes a series of interrelated policies to restore the lot of the middle class. It's a complex economic and social engineering question that will require the attention of our best and brightest. Obama and the other candidates must share their vision for where they want the country to go and how they propose getting there.