Oppenheimer and the Problems of Today's Politics: A Need For New Framing of Issues

 Was Oppenheimer A Communist?

Was J. Robert Oppenheimer a communist or at least a sympathizer? It hardly matters now, but reading the recent New York Times review of this question reminded me of the anti-communist hysteria of the late 1940s and early 50s. I grew up in that period, and one of my early political memories is of watching the Army-McCarthy hearings on TV. As I read the article, it dawned on me that in some ways today's political atmosphere is similar to the political atmosphere of that time as I remember it.

Both periods may be characterized by extreme political divisions and by political views that are held with almost religious fervor. In those days, the supporters of the anti-communist crusade thought that their opponents were deluded, and the opponents of the crusade believed the same about the crusade’s supporters. People on both sides felt that their opponents were a danger to the survival of democracy in our country. Then as now, the political right used lies and inuendo to make their case to the public, and the left was ill-prepared to counter that strategy effectively.

People's Views Harden

The anti-communist investigations conducted by HUAC and by Joe McCarthy were political circuses designed mainly to further the political careers of the politicians who conducted them. The investigations ruined the careers of many people who were no danger to the security of the United States. Many people knew that, and the result was that all of the investigations' findings were thrown into doubt. Oppenheimer may have been a communist. I don't know, and it hardly matters now, but at the time, it was easy to dismiss the accusation because so many such accusations were known to be false. Attitudes toward HUAC and Sen. Joseph McCarthy hardened into quasi-religious beliefs that have endured until today. Hardly anyone who is old enough to remember the anti-communist hysteria of the 1940s and 50s is likely to change his/her views based on new evidence.

The Same Thing Has Happened Today

We can see a similar dynamic at play in the current controversy over the 2020 election. Trump and his supporters have repeatedly claimed that the elections of 2020 were rigged. Numerous investigations have found no evidence of such rigging, but to the believers, that merely proves that the evidence is being covered up by elites or by the deep state. To the rest of us, Trump’s supporters seem either deluded or dishonest. Attitudes toward the question of whether the elections of 2020 were rigged have hardened into quasi-religious beliefs, and hardly anyone is open to changing his/her views. People who are still alive 60 years from now will probably believe just as they do today.

We Cannot Sove Big Problems Because of Ideological Divisions

None of this would matter if it were not for the fact that today as in the early 1950s, intense, ideological conflict has made it hard for us to deal sensibly with real problems. In the 1950s, the anti-communist hysteria made it impossible for us to deal sensibly with crucial issues in foreign policy like the communists’ victory in China or the defeat of the French in Vietnam. We undertook diplomatic and military commitments that led us ultimately into the war in Vietnam and that may soon lead us into another war in the South China Sea.

Today, the intense ideological conflict makes it impossible for us to deal sensibly with a warming world, with our immigration crisis or with the high and rising cost of health care. What is worse is that both sides have interests in maintaining and intensifying the conflict. On immigration, the right mobilizes its troops with visions of rapists and murderers crossing our border, while the left accuses their opponents of racism. Neither side talks about the elephant in the room, which is the millions of undocumented immigrants who have been here for decades. Our discussion of climate change and healthcare are similarly emotional and unproductive.

We Need New Framing To Move Ahead

We will be able to break out of this trap only if we do something that the left did not do in the 1950s. We will have to find new ways to frame our discussions. New frames would provide new perspectives on the key issues that we face. Such new perspectives could be important because while it is rarely possible to change people’s views of an issue through direct argument, it is sometimes possible to get them to see the issue in a new way, and that can cause them to change their positions on the issue. New frames can shake up the electorate and cause it to divide in new ways, and if we can accomplish that, we may be able to find a way around our current ideological impasse.  I have suggested that some of our big issues can be framed in terms of equality of opportunity, but that will not do for everything. I invite my readers to think about suitable frames for the big issues that confront us. The only requirement for a frame is that it must draw on a widely shared moral principle that can be used to drive the discussion in a new direction.

What Happens If We Win?

What Will Happen and What Should We Do?

It is looking very likely that Kamala Harris will win the election in November. There is still a lot of work to do to make her victory a reality, but it seems likely enough that we should ask, “What happens then?” What will the long-term result be, and what should we do?

The Republican Party Will Return to Its Business Roots

If Trump loses, he and his MAGA allies will probably lose control of the Republican Party. Their control of the party has always been based on their ability to bring in votes, and if they cannot do that, they will lose control, which will return to the business interests that controlled the party before Mr. Trump arrived. That will change the way the party presents itself to the voters. With Trump in control, the party has been able to present itself as the party of ordinary working Americans, but without Trump, the party will no longer be able to do that. It will be again the party of business.

The Democratic Party Will Have an Opportunity

The working-class votes that have supported Mr. Trump will be up for grabs. That will be an opportunity for the Democratic Party, but it is not clear that the party will be able to take advantage of the opportunity. To see, what kind of an opportunity the Democrats will have, we must first remember that the working-class voters who support Trump have real, legitimate grievances. 

When Mr. Trump says that “elites” despise the working class and ignore its interests, working-class people know in their bones that he speaks the truth. When he says that he will be a voice for voiceless people, those people flock to his banner. His populist rhetoric has always been a fraud, but for people who feel that our politicians have abandoned them, the fact that he appears to speak for them and to feel their pain is attractive, and it draws them in. 

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has gotten out of the habit of talking in terms of class interests. We talk about race; we talk about gender; and we talk about age; but we do not talk about class, and we do not address the concerns of working-class people as such. The lack of concern for working-class interests expresses itself in many ways. For example, we enthusiastically support a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion, but we do not bring nearly the same enthusiasm to the support of a national healthcare system. We worry endlessly about the admission policies of elite universities that serve a tiny number of people, but we do not work seriously to provide a way for a working-class person to acquire a college degree or a technical certification without taking on a heavy burden of debt. We debate intensely the morality of Israel’s war in Gaza, but we do not bring the same intensity to the debate over the minimum wage.

Can Democrats Seize the Opportunity?

If we are to win back the allegiance of working-class voters, we will have to change our priorities and the way that we talk. To find our new priorities we will have to listen carefully to what people like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others on the left wing of our party are telling us. We will have to focus on issues of real concern to working-class people. If we do that, we may win back the support of working-class voters. Changing our priorities will not be enough. we will also have to figure out how to frame our proposals in a way that can appeal to the working class. Perhaps, we can use Harris's "Opportunity Economy," as I suggested in an earlier post. 

If we do not focus on the interests of working-class people and learn to frame those interests persuasively, our party will be weakened, and the alienation of the working class will remain a problem for our political system. If working-class people continue to feel that their interests have no voice, they will continue to look for leaders who will speak for them. If they feel that democracy does not work for them, they will support demagogues who promise an alternative that will work for them. 

What We Should Do

If we focus on working-class interests and if we learn how to frame them effectively, we can become the party that we should be. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have made a start with their strong support of labor unions  and with their industrial policies, but much more remains to be done. I wrote about some of the things we can do to make the Opportunity Economy real for our people in an earlier post on this blog.  If we fail to build on what Biden and Harris have done, the working-class alienation that has fed Trump’s power will remain, and another populist demagogue will surely emerge to attract the votes of the alienated and to threaten the survival of our democratic, political system.

The End of the Republican Party We Know?

A Business Party 

Are we seeing the end of the Republican Party as we know it? I think that is very possible because the level of dissension within the party is tearing the party apart. Dissension within a party is nothing new because American political parties have never been ideologically unified. They are electoral coalitions, and as such, they have always been big tents that sheltered groups with very different beliefs and agendas. That works reasonably well as long as the intraparty differences are not too large.

The differences within the Republican Party used to be manageable.  The party has been the party of business at least since the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. The party has been strongly supported by organizations like the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. Before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the party supported isolationism and opposed the entry of the United States into World War II. However, that changed after the Japanese attack. During World War II and during the Cold War the party supported America’s role as “the leader of the free world.” In that role, we maintained a very large military establishment (“the military-industrial complex”), and we intervened aggressively in countries as diverse as Guatemala, Congo, Iran and Vietnam. Those interventions were all supported by Republicans. 

 A Party Torn by Internal Dissension

Today, Republicans are deeply divided over both domestic policy and foreign policy. On domestic policy, some Republicans are seeking the support of labor unions. In addition, leading Republicans have claimed that our political system is rigged against ordinary people. Some leading Republicans also claim that our elections are not honest.

A party cannot indefinitely be supported by the National Association of Manufacturers and also by major industrial unions. Moreover, a party supported by business cannot indefinitely claim that our political system is rigged against ordinary people. After all, businesses are among the main beneficiaries of our political system. 

On foreign policy, we have the Trump wing of the party returning to something like the isolationist position that Republicans supported before Pearl Harbor. Trump and his supporters claim that we spend too much on defending our allies, who ought to pay for their own defense. At the same time, we have other Republicans claiming that we need to increase our military spending to counter the threat of China in the Western Pacific. Finally, we have election posters everywhere saying that we should elect Mr. Trump as president, and we have Republicans in counties in swing states who are preparing to file legal challenges to the elections in the event that he does not win. At the same time, we have major Republican leaders who have said that they are going to vote for Ms.Harris because Mr. Trump is a danger to our democracy. 

In 2016, the party managed to live with these contradictions by perpetrating a fraud on the American people. Mr. Trump won the election with his populist rhetoric. He claimed to be the voice of American working people, but the biggest achievement of his administration was an enormous tax cut that benefited mainly business and the very wealthy. He got away with this egregious fraud, but he will not be able to do that indefinitely. The people who have supported him will eventually expect him to produce concrete benefits for them in return. 

The party thought that he could get away with supporting conservative economic policies as long as he made good on his promise to appoint judges who would overturn Roe v Wade, but that approach has backfired badly. In 2022, the party lost several congressional seats because women mobilized against the Republican candidates, and there is a good chance that the party will lose again this November. From the point of view of the business Republicans, Trumpism has become very costly, and from the point of view of Trump's supporters, the business Republicans are preventing the adoption of policies that might really benefit American working people. Here is an example that appeared only two days ago. Mr. Trump is calling for the impeachment of Vice President Kamala Harris while other prominent Republicans have said publicly that they will vote for her for president. 

The immigration issue is also divisive. On the one hand, we have candidates for president and vice president who have proposed a policy of deporting millions of undocumented immigrants. At the same time, the party depends for financial support on the owners of businesses that employ many of those same undocumented immigrants.

What Next?

I do not see how the party's extreme level of internal dissension can be supported indefinitely. Something has to give. If Mr. Trump wins in November, his control of the party will be confirmed, but the party will very likely lose business support because it has ceased to be a party of business. If Mr. Trump loses in November, he will also lose control of the party, but without him, the party will lose much of the working-class support that it now enjoys. Either way, the party will be weakened. I don’t know what will happen after that, but if the Republican Party survives, it will become a very different party.

Baby Bonds in the Opportunity Economy

What Are Baby Bonds?

In last week’s post on this blog, I said that baby bonds are among the things that may be needed to make Kamala Harris’s Opportunity Economy more than a slogan. Since many of my readers may not be familiar with the idea of baby bonds, I want to explain what they are and how they would work.

The idea is that each baby born in the United States would receive at birth a treasury bond that would be held in trust for the child until he or she reaches adulthood. The amount of the bond would depend on the wealth of the child’s family. Children born into wealthy families would receive smaller bonds than children born into poor families. Darity and Hamilton, who originally proposed the idea in 2010, suggested that children in the lowest wealth quartile might receive bonds worth at least $50,000, while children in the highest wealth quartile would receive a much smaller amount.

Each bond would be held in trust for the child until it reached adulthood, and the interest earned would be reinvested. When the child became an adult, the money would then become available to pay for education, to purchase a house or for any other approved purpose. While the bond was held in trust, it would appreciate considerably in value. A $50,000 bond earning 4% interest would be worth a little over $109,000 when the child reached the age of 21.

Why Give Baby Bonds?

The point of giving children baby bonds would be make equality of opportunity more real in the United States. In the United States today, wealth is very unequally distributed, and wealth can be passed on from one generation to the next. It may be passed on directly in the form of assets that are inherited, but it may also be passed on indirectly by paying for education or training. A young woman from an affluent family who wished to become an engineer, for instance, could obtain a degree in engineering without accumulating heavy debts to pay for it, because her family would be able to pay for her education. Her freedom from debt would then enable her to save money to buy a house, to fund her retirement or to pay for the education of her children, who, like their mother, would begin their professional lives without a heavy burden of debt. Thus, the family's wealth would be passed down through the generations.

In contrast, a young woman from a poor family would have to borrow a substantial amount of money to obtain an engineering degree, and the resulting debts would hamper her ability to save all through her life. She would never become as wealthy as her peer who began her professional career without the burden of debt. The poor woman would not be able to pay the full cost of her children's professional education, and so, they, too, would begin their professional lives with heavy burdens of debt. The family's situation would improve but only slowly across several generations.  The point of baby bonds is to eliminate at least some of the disparity between the young woman from an affluent family and the young woman from a poor family and to place them on a more equal footing. Thus, baby bonds would be an important element of the Opportunity Economy.

Some States Are Doing It

The baby bond idea is actually being implemented in some states. Time magazine reports:

In July 2023, Connecticut deposited $3200 into an account for a newborn creating the nation's first ever baby bond. Over the net 18 to 30 years, the effects of time and compounding interest will give that baby up to $24,000 to pay for college, make a down payment on a home, start a business or do other things that will shape her life and build wealth. 

Baby bonds should definitely be a part of the Opportunity Economy.

Making Harris's Opportunity Economy Real

 Harris's "Opportunity Economy" Proposal

At last week’s debate, Kamala Harris presented the idea of an “Opportunity Economy,” as her approach to dealing with our country's serious economic problems. The specific proposals that she presented under that rubric had obviously been carefully chosen to appeal to the tiny minority of “moderate” voters who will decide the election in November and to counter the Republican assertion that she is too “radical.”  The proposals included:

• A tax cut for families with young children
• A tax cut for small-business startups
• A subsidy for first-time home buyers
• A commitment to go fight against price-gouging by businesses

The Proposal Does Not Go Nearly Far Enough

These are all worthwhile things to do, but they are very timid. Two of the proposals rely on tax cuts, which are right out of the Republican play book. Moreover, a tax cut for small-business startups feels suspiciously like trickle-down economics. The idea is that small businesses create jobs and therefore benefit workers. A subsidy for first-time home buyers sounds great, but it will benefit mainly real estate investors. The subsidy will probably drive up housing prices because it will increase the demand for houses without directly increasing the supply. 

Moreover, her discussion of the opportunity economy included no mention of several important issues that are related to making equality of opportunity real for working-class Americans. She said nothing about the cost of health care for working Americans. She said nothing about the way that the cost of childcare prevents working Americans from saving. She said nothing about the fact burden of student debt makes it difficult or impossible for many people to save enough to buy a house. So, her proposals, while worthwhile in themselves, will not be enough to build the Opportunity Economy.

Making the Opportunity Economy Real

In an earlier post on this blog, I argued that several progressive policies can easily be framed as policies to promote equality of opportunity, and everything that I said then fits well under the rubric of the “Opportunity Economy.” If we are serious about the idea of an opportunity economy, we will have to recognize that Harris’s proposals are far from a complete list of the things that need to be done. However, the idea of the "Opportunity Economy" is potentially broad enough to include much that needs to be done if the rubric is to be more than a slogan. Here are a few other things that we could do to turn our economy into a real economy of opportunity.

• Provide affordable childcare: If childcare were more affordable, working-class families would be able to save money to invest in their own and their children’s futures. 
• Forgive student loans and find a way to fund post-secondary education that does not require students to take on heavy debts: If people did not have to shoulder enormous debts to obtain college degrees or other advanced training, their education would bring a higher return, and they would have more money to invest in their own and their children’s futures. 
• Create a decent national health insurance system: If we had a national health insurance system, companies would not have to pay so much for their employees’ health insurance, and in that case, they would be able to pay higher wages which would in turn make it possible for workers to save money to invest in their own and their children’s futures.
• Make sure that abortions are available to those who need them: If abortions were legal in all states, working-class families would not have to fear the economic consequences of an unwanted pregnancy and could more easily save and invest for a brighter future.
• Provide Baby Bonds for all American Children: Baby bonds would go a long way toward equalizing opportunity across our social classes.

Each of these policies would make a difference by putting money into working-class people's pockets, and the money will enable them to invest in their futures and the futures of their children. Together, these policies would be a revolution in equality of opportunity. They would change the world for working-class Americans, and they might create a real Opportunity Economy. So, let's get on board with Kamala Harris's idea, and let's make sure that it is expanded to include the things that will be needed to make it more than a slogan.

Making Equality of Opportunity Real

What Do Progressive Policies Have to Do with Equality of Opportunity? 

In last week’s post, I said that progressive policies should be framed as policies that restore equality of opportunity in our country. Today, I want to explain why talking that way makes sense. What do things like national health care or affordable childcare have to do with equality of opportunity?

Getting Ahead Takes Money

In order to have equality of opportunity, we must not only eliminate barriers like discrimination based on race or gender. We must also give people the opportunity to acquire the resources needed to invest in their futures.  In order for people to get ahead, they must be able to save money to pay for training or to invest in a business. If people are living paycheck to paycheck and barely getting by, where will they find the money to pay for tuition or to start a business? If they are working two or three jobs just to pay the rent, where will they find the time to go to school?

Working-Class People Lack the Money

Today, we live in a time where a large and increasing share of the national income goes to a small upper class and to a patrimonial middleclass. For working-class people, wages have not kept up with the cost of living. Many people work two or even three jobs and still live paycheck to paycheck. Saving money to invest in a better future has become harder and harder for many people. Young people who come from families in the upper class or the patrimonial middle class have a much easier time acquiring college degrees and marketable skills. We cannot really say that there is equality of opportunity between the upper classes and the working class when the playing field is so steeply tilted against the latter .

Progressive Policies Have Everything to Do With Equality of Opportunity

In order to make opportunity more equal, we have to make it easier for working class people to save the money that they need to invest in their futures, and that is where the link between progressive policies and equality of opportunity may be found: 

• If childcare were more affordable, working-class families would be able to save money to invest in their own and their children’s futures. 
• If people did not have to shoulder enormous debts to obtain college degrees or other advanced training, their education would bring a higher return, and they would have more money to invest in their own and their children’s futures. 
• If we had a national health insurance system, companies would not have to pay so much for their employees’ health insurance, and in that case, they would be able to pay higher wages which would in turn make it possible for workers to save money to invest in their own and their children’s futures.
• If abortions were legal in all states, working-class families would not have to fear the economic consequences of an unwanted pregnancy. Working-class families could more easily plan for a brighter future.

Each of these policies would make a difference by putting money into people's pockets. Together, they would be a revolution in equality of opportunity. They would change the world for working-class Americans.

Equality of opportunity does not exist for people who do not have and cannot obtain the resources to invest in their futures or in the futures of their children. So, if we want equality of opportunity to be more than an empty promise, we must create the conditions that make equality of opportunity real. In order to create those conditions, we must persuade America's voters that the real purpose of progressive policies is to create those conditions. By framing our policies in terms of equality of opportunity, we can help the voters to see that we can make equality of opportunity real again in our country.

Equality of Opportunity as a Frame For Progressive Ideas

Recognizing a Contradiction 

Equality of opportunity can provide a strong frame for progressive ideas. To see why, we can begin by recognizing that - as I said in last week’s post on this blog - our people are suffering from a crisis of meaning and identity because of a deep contradiction between our values which stress opportunity and achievement and the reality of life in our country. That reality is that the structure of our economy limits opportunity and makes achievement extremely difficult. 

Fortunately, there are policies that would reduce the contradiction by changing the circumstances under which our people live. We can restore equality of opportunity. Things like a national health system or a better way of financing post-secondary education would make success easier by making people’s financial lives more secure. However, implementing such policies will be difficult because the Republican Party is strongly opposed to them.

Framing Our Ideas Using Widely Held Values to Persuade Voters

In order to overcome that opposition, we have to persuade a lot of voters[1] to support the kinds of reforms that we support, and to do that, we must frame our proposals in terms of values that the voters already accept. It has been shown that people vote their values. They do not vote directly for programs or policies; they vote for the values that they believe those programs or policies represent. Successful political appeals make use of values by claiming that certain widely accepted values demand that we enact certain policies. Successful political appeals repeat the claim over and over again in many different contexts until it becomes a part of what “everyone knows.”

We can appeal to the widely held values of fairness, a level playing field and equality of opportunity to frame the policies we support. Here is an example:

We believe that everyone ought to have the same opportunity to succeed, but our system has become rigged against hardworking Americans. Today, the children of rich people have a much better chance of succeeding than regular, hardworking Americans do, and that is unfair. We need to restore a level playing people that gives ordinary folks a chance to succeed, and to do that, we need to provide affordable childcare to give families a chance to get ahead.

Thus, we can counter the Republicans' claim that such a program would be a giveaway that unfairly taxes hardworking people to provide unearned benefits to lazy people.

Repetition is the Key

We need to state this over and over and over until it becomes part of what “everyone knows.” The reason for doing this is to get the voters to see affordable childcare from a new perspective. However, we wouldn't use this framing for affordable childcare only. We would use it in the same way for each of our policy proposals with the result that we would not merely be proposing affordable childcare, national health insurance or forgiveness of student debts. We would be proposing to restore equality of opportunity. We would be proposing to unrig a rigged system.

We Might Really Win

By framing our policy proposals in terms of widely accepted values, we would accomplish two things. First, we would acknowledge the lived reality of working-class Americans. They know that the system is rigged against them, and by framing our policies in terms of equality of opportunity, we would be saying that we understand the unfairness of their lives. Second, we would offer them the possibility that their lives could really be improved. Our narrative would be a believable alternative to the narrative presented by the MAGA Republicans. With such a narrative, we might really open the door to restoring equality of opportunity.

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[1] We don’t need to persuade everyone. We only need to persuade a small percentage of the voters because elections are won by small margins.