Its the economy

In the fall of 1988, I was curious about the Texas Democrats, the college political group at the University of Texas at Austin. I went to a meeting in a classroom where I took biology courses. The speaker was Paul Begala, who was a Texas alum and was working on Frank Lautenberg’s re-election campaign for New Jersey governor at the time. Begala had a tall, weird-looking dude with him who had a distinct coon-ass drawl. I didn’t know that was James Carville, or that he mattered. He was clearly too old to be a student. Two years later I would have not only recognized him but I would have been mentally restraining myself from punching him in the face.

1990, Ann Richards was running for governor. On the democratic side, her opponents were Mark White, a former governor whom I knew personally from his loyal patronage at the Texas Chili Parlor, a restaurant close to the capital where I worked (and while he was governor served as my “family” home–I got my mail there, the address was on my driver’s license, but that’s another story), and Jim Maddox, a stinking load of dung who had served as Attorney General. I also knew the people around Maddox a bit from the Chili Parlor, and really didn’t like them. His people were entitled red-neck fuck-ups and they didn’t tip. Maddox would have loved Ted Cruz, but I digress.

James Carville worked for Maddox as a consultant and advised him to campaign on the economic lift that the Texas Lottery would bring. Maddox ended up accusing Ms. Richards of being a drug addict, enjoying both cannabis and cocaine. Ann Richards was about as rowdy as the nuns I partied with in high school. She, as they, would have a drink and a laugh, but that was as wild as it got with her.

I’ll tell you where cannabis and cocaine was enjoyed–The Texas Chili Parlor, which was literally on the edge of the capital grounds and occupied the same physical structure as Mark White’s law practice (he was out back near the parking lot). I smoked a great deal of weed in the alleyway between the Chili Parlor and Mark White’s office. Ms. Richards’ campaign HQ was about 500 feet away, a couple of blocks up LaVaca, next to the Half Price Books. Her campaign staff were frequent patrons as well.

So, I know where Maddox’s non-tipping goons got the idea that Ann Richards had an occult political target in being a party girl, but there was absolutely no truth to it. I didn’t know her well, but we were briefly on a first name basis when I was a campaign office volunteer and we were subsequently years later briefly re-united when we both worked on The Gates project in Central Park. I had lunch with her (and a table of about a dozen others) in the Boat House one afternoon. She enjoyed one bourbon, but she still didn’t not offer me any weed or coke, dammit.

State Lotteries were too unfamiliar to the Texas voting public for Mr. Carville’s political advice to take hold. Ann Richards won the primary and went on to beat the Republican candidate, Clayton Williams, who had made a series of gaffes that included comparing bad weather to sexual assault, that is, rape being comparable to something that one just has to endure from time to time in order to be civil around others. It was something like “Aw shucks, this rain is like rape, sometimes it is best to just lay back and enjoy it.” Williams was a wealthy oilman who thought he could buy the election. Had he talked less and smiled more, he might have.

In any case, that’s a long walk to explain that I am no fan of Mr. Carville’s but I have to give him one thing. He has been talking about the value of running political campaigns on an economic message for at least 35 years, before Zohran Mandami was born. Also, I doubt he was in any way responsible for Jim Maddox’s smear campaign against Ann Richards. Carville is a political professional, not a dirtbag. Still, I would have wanted to punch him in the face in 1990, and my leftover rage at his affiliation with a Jim Maddox was one reason why I was not an early 1992 supporter of Bill Clinton’s. I was on Team Brown, largely because of my affiliation with Jesse Jackson, whom Jerry Brown promised to nominate as VP.

But Carville was right about the economy then, and he is right today. It is always the economy, stupid. US voters collectively care about their pocketbooks first and foremost. Everything else is secondary. If you can convince voters that you will make their lives better economically, you can win elections. If you can’t, you won’t.

What Mandami got right was stubbornly keeping his message on the economy. I think that may be singularly why he was awarded one of the most powerful political offices on planet earth. I don’t know what he will do, or if he will accomplish any of his signature goals, that’s not what I’m writing about.

He got in power. He got in power by promising to improve the economic condition of working people, and not by the voodoo of incentives for investment in partnerships with private equity investing in tax-sheltered entities that are well-connected politically, he frankly says the rich are going to have to pay up. They took the money from working people, we are going to get it back.

He speaks the truth. More than fifty trillion dollars has been transferred from the bottom 50% of the population to the top 1% over the last 40 years. It isn’t trickling down. It is being hoarded. It is being used to buy political influence. It is being used to buy luxury goods and services that do not create jobs or economic growth. It is being used to buy real estate in safe havens. It is being used to buy yachts and private jets. It is being used to buy art that is then hidden away in freeports. It is being used to buy tax shelters.

The rich are not job creators. They are wealth hoarders. They are parasites on the economic system. They are sucking the life out of the economy, and they have been for decades. It is time to stop them. It is time to make them pay their fair share. It is time to invest in the people who actually create value in the economy–the workers.

That’s the message, and for anyone who pays attention, that’s what the Biden administration had actually started doing, they were just bad at messaging about it.

In other words… it’s still the economy, stupid.