Atrios has mentioned a point a couple of times that warrants repeating about the Dems’ approach to Bush’s Social Security scheme.
The Dems need to realize that Bush’s dishonest plan to destroy Social Security isn’t something which should send them scurrying for cover, as they’ve been doing for years, but something which will allow them to win in ’06. Just get smart, and most of all stick together.
I don’t think this can be repeated often enough. Dems sometimes seem unclear on what to say and how to approach this issue. Do we tacitly concede a long-term fiscal problem? Does that run the risk of playing into Bush’s hands? Should we insist that there’s no problem at all? Do we lay out a plan for modest corrections that would fix Social Security’s “flat tire”? Wouldn’t modest fixes give the White House momentum towards its goal of privatization?
This hand-wringing is unnecessary and, ultimately, counterproductive. Atrios is right; Bush and the Republicans have given us a gift that we should we embrace.
Consider: Bush wants to take the most popular and successful social program in American history and privatize it. His plan includes adding $2 trillion to the national debt and cutting Social Security benefits by as much as 46% in the coming decades.
Dems shouldn’t be apprehensive; they should be thrilled.
It’s hardly a secret that Republicans are worried about this. The GOP is in its strongest national position in 50 years thanks in large part to public support for the party’s perceived strength on foreign policy and national security. To capitalize on their newly-strengthened standing, the party’s decided to … gut Social Security? If the Dems got together to dream up the best possible way for the Republicans to overreach and misinterpret their alleged “mandate,” I doubt they could come up with a better plan.
A Republican senator reportedly told Karl Rove at a GOP retreat last month that the party’s lawmakers are “scared to death” of this. Dems can be a little slow sometimes on the strategic uptake, but this points to a tremendous opportunity. As Kevin Drum put it yesterday:
[T]his should be a message to Senate Democrats not to back off on their opposition to Bush’s plans. When your opponents are running scared, that’s the time to stick together and keep them as scared and as exposed as possible.
At least, it is if you have any intention of winning elections in the future.
Exactly. Many Republicans would probably prefer to have a legislative agenda that makes no mention of Social Security, but Bush has put this on the table. Thank goodness.
Better yet, Bush’s allies are giving hints about how to sell the scheme, which in turn, gives us hints about how to beat it.
For President Bush to succeed in his drive to let workers put part of their Social Security taxes in private investment accounts, he’ll have to persuade Republicans like Rep. Ray LaHood to vote for it, and that will take some doing.
“It’s a no-win for people in the House,” the moderate, 10-year House veteran from rural Illinois said recently. “We risk our political careers. We risk 30-second ads against you saying, ‘You voted to gut Social Security.'”
In other words, Dems need to start preparing ads that say, “Congressman So-and-so voted to gut Social Security.”
The Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes wrote an article recently with some equally good advice (for us).
To sell Social Security reform, the president has already adopted strategies associated with Republican consultant Frank Luntz and Presentation Testing’s Richard Thau. They’ve derived lessons from dozens of focus groups and polls on this issue. One is that most Americans believe Social Security needs to be fixed. That’s “axiomatic with the American public,” Thau insists. It doesn’t mean a majority agrees with the president that “the crisis is now.” But neither do they accept the idea that reform should be put off until a crisis hits. So the public is receptive to the case for reform now, if Bush can make it convincingly.
Where Bush is following the advice of Luntz and Thau is in avoiding certain poisonous words. Chief among these is “privatization.” Supporters of reform toss that word around to describe the process of creating investment accounts controlled by individual workers. To the public, however, it indicates corporate control of Social Security, which they oppose. Bush never utters the word. Instead of calling investment accounts funded by payroll taxes “private,” he calls them “personal.”
Another word dropped from the Bush lexicon is wealth, as in, Personal investment accounts would help Americans build wealth of their own. What’s wrong with this? Thau has found that most Americans don’t believe they’re capable of creating wealth. That’s for rich people. “Economists use the word ‘wealth,'” says Luntz. “Average Americans use the word ‘savings.'” And their saving produces a “nest egg.” Thus, “nest egg” has become an operative phrase for the president. Here is what he said in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention last summer: “We must strengthen Social Security by allowing younger workers to save some of their taxes in a personal account, a nest egg you can call your own and government can never take away.”
This isn’t rocket science. If they avoid the word “privatization,” we should embrace it. If they’re afraid to publicly admit to cuts in benefits, it needs to be a principal talking point for us. And so on.
This may very well be the opportunity Dems have been waiting for. It’s off to a good start — in the biggest domestic policy fight in over a decade, the GOP is telegraphic their punches and leading with their chin.