Over at The New Republic today, John Judis argues that the stimulus package is less than we need and worse than it could be because "there is not a popular left movement that is agitating for him to go well beyond where he would even ideally like to go." Labor, he says, is weak and fractured. They are desperate for Barack Obama's support. Not vice versa. The Campaign for America's Future and MoveOn.org both concentrated their fire on Republican opposition and centrist intransigence. "What," asks Judis, "would have been the result if these groups had gone after Obama and Reid--and in the case of the so-called Americans United for Change--the self-appointed centrists? They would have certainly incurred the wrath of the Obama administration...But they would have also moved the political debate to the left, so that the center no longer resided somewhere in Susan Collins or Ben Nelson's heads, but considerably to their left." I think that's possible, particularly if they'd settled on specific goals -- this percent of GDP, this much for transit, etc -- during the period when the stimulus was being developed. When Obama challenged the Krugman's of the world to bring him their ideas, they should have had reams of ideas waiting. This has shown itself to be one of the signal differences between the left and the right: In times of crisis, the left tries to quickly decide what new policy it should advocate and secure. The right decides which old tax cut -- and it's usually capital gains, as far as I can tell -- they can advocate and secure. They lose less time than we do. On the other hand, it would be a bad thing if the left adopted that approach to governance. So it's a tough question. But I will say that though a more aggressive left might have strengthened the bill, they wouldn't have disrupted this feeling of letdown. Importantly, the center didn't reside in Nelson and Collin's heads. It resided in their votes. They didn't release a white paper last year entitle "$800 Billion in Stimulus: A Moderate Strategy for an American Recovery." The center is whatever they decide it to be. And the composition of the Senate ensures it will stay that way. Which means lefty pressure has to engage before the Collins and Nelson hold the keys to cloture. Not after. Indeed, aggressive lefty agitation had started the stimulus at $1.2 trillion, they might have moved it to $900 billion. If it had begun at $1.5 trillion, we'd be pumping $1.3 trillion into the economy. The compromises might still have felt exactly as wrenching. The center would still be whatever Collins and Nelson said it was. But the bill would be better.
