The politics of benefits

Earned benefits are robust. 

[Note:   I am traveling and this post is written, literally, on the fly.  Beware of typos.]

Yesterday this blog suggested readers visit Bill Clinton's comments on Sister Soljia, a black rapper who had said it was payback time and blacks should even the score.   Bill Clinton said that murder was just plain wrong and that this sounded like David Duke in reversed color.  

Some liberals criticized him.  He wasn't a real liberal, some said.  Real liberals stand by their friends and have empathy for their situation, they don't criticize them.   Here is what he said, in a two minute clip, repeated from yesterday:  Click Here  

Some criticism focused on it being cynically calculating, which it undoubtably was. He was accused of playing up to white voters, and indeed it was noticed by white voters.  Our experience watching Donald Trump showed us Bill Clinton did something that voters seem to notice and like.  He doubled down.  He asserted he was right.

Yesterday I got pushback on this in Facebook, and off line, with readers critical of Bill Clinton, saying he sounded like something a conservative would say.  I consider it something a liberal can say, and should say.  

The pushback also criticized Bill Clinton for pushing for a work requirement tied to public assistance.   That is not liberal, said the pushback.  

There is a long history of safety net programs being controversial.  The New Deal Works Progress Administration created jobs for some 8.5 million people during the decade of its existence.  It paid a minimal wage, but it was work.   Hard physical work.  Rules of the program required 90 % of the money to be spent on wages, which meant that everything was hand built; little was purchased.  People criticized the program for being an unnecessary giveaway.   A joke at the time was that WPA stood for "We Piss Around".   Sweat equity made it an earned benefit.

In the economic collapse following the financial meltdown of 2008 voters put a governing majority of Democrats in place.  They had a House majority, a fragile 60 Senators, and Obama in the White House.  Unemployment skyrocketed amid the Great Recession and Democrats responded.  Democrats got extension on unemployment benefits.  Democrats worked for mortgage relief work-outs.  They advocated infrastructure spending.  They established tax cuts.  Food stamp numbers climbed.  Disability claims climbed.  

In the 2012 election Mitt Romney referenced the 47% of takers.  In hindsight it is noteworthy for what it was not--a heavily dog-whistle of racism.  Things changed after 2012. Newt Gingrich coined a phrase that got growing traction with Republicans:  Obama was a "Food Stamp President."   The attack combined the age-old concern that needs-based benefits stifled the work ethic with a dog whistle of racial resentment.  Notwithstanding the fact that most food assistance goes to white Americans, the attack suggested that Obama was coddling "the other," his black and brown voting constituency, the voting blocks that Hillary was counting on to vote their ethnicity.

There is rising interest on the left for Medicare for All.  Medicare is popular.  It is relatively simple, it it efficient to operate, it include essentially everyone over age 65.  Medicare seems "fair" to people. Medicare is an earned benefit; people pay into it.  

Progressive messaging on health care needs to deal with the reality that people are suspicious of the work ethic and worthiness of others, especially those getting needs-based benefits. A frequent and assured applause line for Republican candidates in 2016 was criticism of Obama-phones.  Some of the resentment of immigrants comes from the notion that American-ness is being changed, but the resentment is heightened by the notion that immigrants, both legal and illegal, are a financial burden.

As Democrats work through their language and messaging on health care they need to take note of which programs survived past one good election cycle.  Benefits that appear to be tied to work, or public service, or financial buy-in, survive. 

There is no groundswell of applause lines suggesting we repeal and replace Medicare.