Lincoln Mitchell

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This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell

Posted in: US Politics

Four Things You Might Not Want to Know About the Conflict in Ukraine →

Russia's invasion Ukraine has set off paroxysms of frustration, anger and incredulity in the west, not least in Washington. Some policy makers and pundits are struggling with ways to constructively address the problems raised by Russian action, others struggle to ensure that somehow President Obama is blamed for these events, and many are trying to figure out the complexity, context and background of these events. Understanding the conflict in Crimea, and the best way forward for the US, requires holding several, conflicting, and often unappealing, ideas in one's head at the same time. These are four of the most important of these ideas.

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Remember A Month Ago When the Democrats Care About Income Inequality? →

In the last two months, income inequality has quietly fallen out of its brief prominent place in the public debate and discussion. It still mentioned by some economists and some progressive pundits, but something has changed. A few months ago the President of the United States was making speeches about income inequality; the new Mayor of New York placed that issue front and center in his inaugural address; and the Pope, of course, was drawing the most attention the issue by pointing out the contradictions between dramatic income inequality and the teachings of the Catholic Church. All that seems like a long time ago now.

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Marijuana, Human Rights and the US Image →

The debate about legalizing marijuana is beginning in earnest. It is a debate about individual rights, criminal justice, medicine and economics. It is also a debate where a lot of money is at stake. There are people who stand to lose a lot if the prisons are not full and if new ones are not being built. Those who have profited from the prison-industrial complex will fight hard to ensure that marijuana remains illegal because they know that legalizing it is the first step towards a drug policy that is more rational and humane, although less profitable for them.

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A Tale of Two Ukraines →

Yet, the West rarely recognizes that Russia, like countries in the West, has its own interests. To Westerners, Russia’s actions are part of a storied narrative: It consistently acts in outrageous ways to thwart not Western interests, but also moral and political good in Ukraine. There’s a big problem with that view: By recasting a struggle between two political forces and interests as one simply between right and wrong, the West makes it more difficult to understand and combat Russian influence. If the U.S. and Europe want to change Russia’s behavior, they must toss those antiquated, Cold War notions, and accept that modern tensions are substantially based on economic and political interests, not just on latent Russian anger, or its alleged inferiority complex. That means accepting, for example, that scolding Russian leaders for breaking Western rules and expectations won’t provoke changes in Moscow. More dramatically, it may require the U.S. to recognize the limits of its ability to influence outcomes in Ukraine or other countries where Russia also has interests at stake.

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What Mitt the Movie Tells Us About the Republican Party →

This is not just an observation about why Romney lost in 2012, but explains what has happened to a party where certainty and partisan inflexibility have not only become more important than governing or problem solving, but have been elevated as values that trump analytical rigor our sound strategic thinking. The Republican Party has become one where certainty and faith are among the most cherished values of both the leadership and the base. The same is true of the Democratic Party, but to a much smaller degree. President Obama's almost freakish commitment to the concept of consequence, for example, stands in stark contrast to his predecessor's incessant boasting about his certainty. The leap between being surprised on Election Night in 2012 and believing climate change is a hoax is not that big. In both cases, eschewing scientific approaches leads to fundamental misunderstandings of reality. In 2012 it helped cost Mitt Romney the presidency. In the policy arena the consequences for the anti-science approach could be much higher.

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Is a Non-Competitive Primary Really What the Democrats Need? →

As the 2016 election approaches and the question of whether or not Hillary Clinton runs becomes an even bigger topic of discussion among the punditry, it is likely that we will also be told that having a clear nominee early in the process, rather than a hard fought, and potentially nasty, campaign for the nomination will be good for the party. This idea is intuitively appealing as contested primaries can make it hard to unite behind one candidate in the general election and can damage the eventual nominee. It is additionally something that we frequently hear from front-runners hoping to avoid a tough primary. This idea is intuitive and attractive, but it should be noted that it also completely false.

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Chris Christie's Problems Are Not Going Away →

Much of the discussion in recent days has been about whether or not Christie is a bully. Being seen as a bully is not something that will prevent Christie from being a strong candidate, particularly because a portion of the population is inevitably going to think somebody who looks and talks like Christie is a bully anyway. If the scandal only reinforced the worst thing that some people thought about Christie, it would not be a big deal. However, the scandal makes is impossible for Christie to take advantage of the best thing that people used to think about the New Jersey governor, that he could put partisan issues aside to address real problems facing people.

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The Income Inequality Discussion →

Addressing income inequality will require legislation, but it will also require changes in our society and, indeed, our values. Before we address income inequality, we must recognize that it is a problem and that, for example, this is now a country where most children born into poverty, live their whole lives in poverty and where the opportunities enjoyed by the children of the wealthy are dramatically different from those of poor children. Recognizing this is a first step towards solving our economic woes, so it is no surprise that the resistance to even acknowledging this remains intense.

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Income Inequality in 2014 →

The American political system as it is currently constructed is wildly unprepared to focus in any meaningful way on income inequality. The fact that a few platitudes by a Democratic president qualified as a major statement on income inequality is evidence of this. The political system is defined by one party that is committed essentially to making the economically powerful richer and more powerful, and another that is too timid and too dominated by moneyed interests of their own to be able to take a strong position on income inequality. Democrats may be more willing to address issues like marginal tax rates or extending benefits to the unemployed, but these proposals, while generally positive, clearly do not seek to address the fundamental problem of income inequality.

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The Imaginary War on Christmas →

Limbaugh and O'Reilly and others have, to a large extent, built their careers by making their listeners and fans feel like victims and, equally importantly, presenting powerful and, implicitly non-Christian, interests as the powers causing the problems. The War on Christmas fits so perfectly into this framework that if it did not exist, these victimhood entrepreneurs would have to create it themselves, which come to think of it, is exactly what they have done.

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Can the US Stop Itself from Widespread Surveillance? →

The political climate following September 11th, when concern about terrorism briefly for some, and not so briefly for others, trumped democratic rights and even common sense, was not on its own enough to usher in a surveillance program on the scale of what the NSA has done. The new technologies over the last decade or so have also made this possible. Twenty years ago monitoring the phone habits of every American would have been an extremely burdensome task. Forty years ago, it would have been insurmountably difficult. Today, the technology exists to make this much easier. This means both that citizens and their representatives should be even more vigilant about protecting our rights and defending the constitution. Unfortunately, that has not been the case in recent years.

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A Closer Look at Reactionary Posthumous Attacks on Nelson Mandela →

Many of these right wing attacks are offensive and extremely disrespectful to the memory of a truly great man, but they should not be so quickly dismissed as just the rantings of angry right wingers. These comments about Mandela are also echoes of what many said about him when he was alive, particularly before he became president of a free South Africa.

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Did President Obama Just Realize Income Inequality Is a Problem →

Obviously, it is good that the President saw fit to address this very serious issue, but it is, frankly, outrageous that it took him almost five years into his presidency to address an issue that has been a growing problem in the US for decades and that was brought unmistakably to the fore by events that occurred in the last months of the 2008 campaign. While it is interesting that Obama quoted the Pope in his speech, it is almost as if Obama waited for some kind of political cover from the Pope before publicly addressing the issue of income inequality; either that or the depth and impact of the problem had not occurred to him until the Pope tweeted about it.

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Are Working Americans Serfs of Citizens? →

The Hobby Lobby case has generally been framed as being primarily about the freedom of employers to exercise religious views. The freedom of the worker to do whatever she wants to with the compensation she has earned by her work, however, seems to be overlooked in that paradigm. Health insurance is not some kind of largesse bestowed upon workers by generous employers. It is something that employers over a certain size are required by law to provide, like social security payments of a minimum wage. In this regard it is part of the basic compensation package for employees.

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Hillary Clinton's Outsider Insider Candidacy →

In a year when, even more than most, the Democratic Party, and indeed the country, may be looking for an outsider, Clinton is about as far from being an outside as possible, except for one thing. Clinton would have a real chance at being the first woman president. That alone makes her different from every other previous president as well as every other nominee from a major political party. Thus, Clinton is a consummate insider with one very substantial outsider credential. That alone may not be enough, but it is something on which Clinton can build a successful campaign.

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What Do Obama's Bad Poll Numbers Mean?

During his last years in office, Obama will have several items on his agenda, but fixing the ACA should be at the top of that list. The administration has framed the ACA as the signature legislative accomplishment of Obama's presidency. Fixing the ACA will not be easy, as clearing up computer problems is only part of it. The broader problems of ensuring that people can keep their insurance policies and that younger healthier people sign up for health care through the program are more important. Making progress, or even to be seen as working hard to make progress can begin to turn Obama's poll numbers around. The state of the Republican's in congress makes this somewhat easier for Obama as his political opponents are discredited outside of their own partisan base.

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Bill de Blasio and the Future of Progressive New York →

The last time New York was governed by a Democratic mayor, it was a very different place. When David Dinkins took office in 1990 maybe 1,000 New Yorkers had an email address, people who rode bikes were considered weird even by progressives, racial tension was at the center of city politics and climate change was known as global warming and was not an issue anybody but a few scientists and environmentalist discussed. Most significantly, the people in the city were very different, age replacement, immigration and other population movements have changed the city a great deal. Joe Lhota learned this the hard way as he and former mayor Rudy Giuliani sought to scare people by painting a fear mongering and inaccurate picture of Dinkins, a mayor who many New Yorkers don't remember at all.

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The Future of the Health Insurance Policy →

The bigger problem is that for the ACA to work financially, healthy people, particularly young childless healthy people, need to sign up for insurance. In any health insurance system, these young healthy people keep the cost down for others. While this may not seem fair, any American who has received health care through their employer has been part of a similar system. At a big company, the young healthy workers subsidize the older and less healthy workers. The difference is that people who get health insurance through their jobs are mandated to participate in the program. Of course, everybody is mandated to buy health insurance, but it will soon become clear that the enforcement of this mandate will not be strong.

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The Myth of the Republican Civil War

The primary reason for this is that there already has been a civil war in the Republican Party; and the far right won. The situation in the Republican Party today is very different than at various points in the 20th century when liberal or moderate Republicans fought with right wing for control of the party. Today, there is no battle between the moderate and far right wing of the Republican Party. That fight ended years ago with the moderates losing. Although there may be a small handful of centrist Republicans remaining in the party, they do not have a lot of power and move quickly to the right as they become national figures. The most recent obvious example of that was Mitt Romney who had governed Massachusetts as a moderate, but ran for president as a unapologetic conservative. Even people like Chris Christie who are said to represent the moderate wing of the party are, in many respects, conservatives who either have had to govern or who come from the northeast.

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Contempt for President Obama is Behind the Shutdown

The government shutdown is not driven by a Republican desire to overturn the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Nor is it about trying to reign in government spending or limit the national debt. It is, at its core, the latest act in an effort by the far right of the Republican Party to delegitimize the presidency of Barack Obama.

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