Sometimes it feels to me like there are too many balls in the air. Back when I was practicing medicine, a time that is quickly fading from view as I try to use the rearview mirror of memory, I would categorize my colleagues by the way they approached problems as “lumpers or splitters”. The sense was that you were inclined to one approach or the other by nature, just like being right handed or left handed. There is merit to both ways of approaching difficult problems. Sometimes we benefit by thinking about the similarities of issues, and how they can be approached simultaneously. So, we “lump” them. There are other times when reducing a complex situation to several individual problems can promote progress. So we “split” them. There are so many issues on the agenda for the 2020 election, and so many different candidates that the complexity is becoming overwhelming. One advantage that President Trump created for himself in 2016 was that everything, including locking Hillary up, was about “Make America Great Again.” He employed one huge lump. As we approach the 2020 presidential election it may be time for the Democrats to do some “lumping,” and it is interesting to consider whether the “Green New Deal” (GND) is a “lump of issues” with great merit that are best considered together. One surprise for me has been how neatly healthcare issues and policy can be “lumped” with the emerging Green New Deal. I hope what follows will convince you that all of us should consider the two together.
I was surprised in two ways by the report last October from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The first surprise was that we have only twelve years before we cross a line of “no return” in our submission to the catastrophes of global warming. The second surprise was how quickly such an ominous prediction became “old news” that a majority of the public and elected officials alike were able to ignore. It seems that we are now able to coexist with concerns about global warming with the same disregard that we once applied to the potential horror of a nuclear holocaust.
I think most readers of this blog pay more attention to the issues related to global warming than does the average person you might meet on the street. You are very likely to know that the Green New Deal (GND ) is a proposal from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party about how to effectively address the complex issues related to the human contributions to global warming and climate change. Until recently that was the extent of my knowledge about the GND. Over the past two months I have come to understand that the GND is a much more comprehenive idea. This post will attempt to share this more comprehensive view of the GND with you, and to present it as a set of ideas that include resolution of many of the chronic problems that are “lumped together” as the social determinants of health and the issues of economic inequality that threaten the health of everyone. The Green New Deal does envision focused objectives directed at reversing the process of global warming, but postulates that we can’t save the planet without paying attention to giving everyone a living wage, adequate housing, a good education, and access to healthcare as an entitlement.
What I just described is not what you have heard from Republicans. There have been many characterizations of the GND since it was introduced to Congress as a non binding proposal in early February by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts. Their introduction elicited an immediate response from Congressional Republicans who implied that it was a slippery slope to socialism. Mitch McConnell arranged for the proposal to be quickly voted down in the Senate without even referring the idea to committee for study. Perhaps that was just what the authors wanted because the Senate Republicans are now on record as being against the GND. As a strategic move, most Democrats voted “present” while Democratic senators like Joe Manchin from West Virginia and Doug Jones from Alabama, states where Trump has large numbers of supporters, voted against the non binding resolution.
The Republican campaign of misinformation about the GND has been relatively successful. The ideas in the GND were positively received by most voters of both parties when they were polled with the initial proposal just presented as a set of hypothetical ideas. That initial enthusiasm that even existed among a majority of rank and file Republicans has declined in the face of an intense Republican push back that is described in an early May article, “The GOP Campaign Against the Green New Deal May Be Working” written by Dino Grandoni in The Washington Post. Grandoni reports the length and absurditiy to which the Republican strategists have gone to undermine the GND.
Republicans honed a message of opposition to the idea. Lawmakers claimed the Green New Deal, if enacted, would ban hamburgers, air travel and even ice cream.
That tsunami of dissent came even though Ocasio-Cortez’s resolution does not mention any of those three things. Instead, an erroneous summary of the Green New Deal published by her office, but then retracted, mentioned eventually wanting to get rid of “farting cows and airplanes.”
Still, pundits on Fox News echoed that message, and they were apparently effective: support for the Green New Deal among Republicans is lower among frequent Fox viewers than it is with those who watch the network less often, according to the George Mason-Yale survey.
Will Rogers once famously announced that he was not a member of an organized political party. He went on to say that he was a Democrat. That line is painfully funny because it is has often been true in the past that the Democratic Party can tie itself in knots of petty diagreement over turf and control even when there is a consensus about direction. Even though the Democratic Party has been the most consistent source of progressive public policy, it has often appeared to be disorganized and has frequently been self defeating. The Clinton campaign never was able to get a unifying message together after the contentious Presidential Primary battle with Bernie Sanders. Having Wikileaks publish Democratic National Committee emails that described the uneven playing field that existed for Sanders within the higher levels of the party did not help create party unity during the run up to the election. Clinton’s campaign will not be remembered as a focused exercise that sought to connect with all members of the party, and although James Comey gets a lot of blame from Clinton, she failed in part because Democrats failed to effectively speak to issues that concerned blue collar middle America, or excite minority voters in urban areas. Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were taken for granted. Will Rogers would have had many jokes to tell about Democratic missteps in the 2016 election if he were still alive.
My understanding of the GND has been greatly facilitated by a podcasted conversation between David Roberts, a Vox staff writer who focuses on issues related to energy and climate change and Rhiana Gunn-Wright who is one of the principle architects of the emerging set of policies that are being called the Green New Deal. The written introduction to the podcast acknowledges the confusion around the GND:
…most critics completely misunderstood the resolution [the GND]. It is not a policy document. It is a set of goals and principles meant to guide the development of policy.
The work of fleshing out the policy details is largely in the hands of Rhiana Gunn-Wright, working out of a think tank called New Consensus. Gunn-Wright is busy consulting a broad slate of experts, with the goal of assembling a policy framework that will be ready to go when/if Democrats take power in 2021. Vox staff writer David Roberts sat down with Gunn-Wright to chat about how she’s approaching this monumental task, why the Green New Deal includes social and economic goals (like full employment) alongside environmental goals, and what she makes of the criticism that the plan is “unrealistic.”
I highly recommend that you invest the time to listen to the podcast. The best way to do it may be to click on this link on your smart phone browser and then listen while you take a long walk. I have done that three times, and have learned more each time through. But since it is true that many of you will not be able to invest the time, about an hour and twenty minutes, I have transcribed Robert’s introduction which gives a great summary of the issues that were discussed. I think that I got it right. I have bolded the concepts that are important.
…Rhiana Gunn-Wright, if you haven’t heard that name yet, you probably will soon. She is the primary policy architect behind the much-discussed, much criticized, and very much misunderstood Green New Deal.
A few months ago representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts introduced a non-binding resolution to Congress. The Green New Deal resolution lays out of series of goals and principles meant to guide an intensive two year process of policy development. The idea is to have a legislative package that achieves these goals, and abides by these principles, ready to go for 2020 when Democrats retake power, or so they hope.
Among the goals, completely decarbonize the US economy. Among the principles, do it in a way that employs everyone who wants a job and protects everyone’s housing and healthcare. Needless to say, it has been controversial. Many critics jumped straight to attacking the Green New Deal on policy grounds despite the fact that it’s not policy yet. Many have characterized it as unrealistic, or pie-in-the-sky, because it includes social goals alongside carbon reduction goals. Many, especially on the right, have projected all sorts of fantasies and fallacies on to it that are nowhere in the resolution’s actual language. It does not, for instance, ban cows.
No one has actually seen the policy itself though because it doesn’t exist yet. It is being assembled by New Consensus, a think tank that spun off from Justice Democrats, the group that recruited and ran AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] among others. At New Consensus, Rihanna Gunn Wright is in charge of the Green New Deal project. She’s a Yale graduate and a Rhodes Scholar, formally the policy director for the Michigan gubernatorial campaign of Democrat Abdul El-Sayed. El-Sayed ultimately lost, but his campaign is remembered for its innovative, thorough, and thoughtful policy proposals. Much of that was Gunn-Wright. Now she’s being called upon to do something similar, to put together some sensible but ambitious plans, but on a vastly larger scale.
Meeting Green New Deal goals would mean nothing less than a transformation of the entire US economy. Saving the Earth is a lot to take on for one Chicago native…We talked about how she’s approaching this daunting task, who she’s talking to, how she keeps track of it all. We discussed what makes policies stick and endure even through the swings of polarization in US politics, and we talked about why social goals like healthcare and housing, and job guarantees belong with climate climate policy, belong with carbon policy.
There you have it. The GND is a lumper’s delight. The full agenda of the Justice Democrats is so long and ambitious that focusing on the GND is good strategy, but looking at their list of positions is instructive because if enacted we would be well on our way to the Triple Aim.
- TRANSFORM OUR ECONOMY: We need a bold economic vision that will both reclaim lost capital and put money back in the pockets of hard-working Americans, and create millions of new jobs for those who have been left out of the workforce.
- GREEN NEW DEAL: Scientists are sounding the alarm on climate change…It’s time to drastically and immediately move away from fossil fuels, develop the technologies of the future, and create prosperity for all of us — not just those on top. The Green New Deal is a mass mobilization to dramatically expand existing renewable power sources and deploy new production capacity with the goal of meeting 100% of national power demand through renewable sources. The Green New Deal will also provide all members of our society, across all regions and all communities, the opportunity, training and education to be a full and equal participant in the transition, including through a job guarantee program to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one and ensure a ‘just transition’ for all workers, low-income communities, communities of color, indigenous communities, rural and urban communities and the front-line communities most affected by climate change, pollution and other environmental harm including by ensuring that local implementation of the transition is led from the community level and by prioritizing solutions that end the harms faced by front-line communities from climate change and environmental pollution.
- SECURE A LIVING WAGE AND TIE IT TO INFLATION
- ENACT A FEDERAL JOBS GUARANTEE
- REBUILD OUR CRUMBLING INFRASTRUCTURE
- BLOCK BAD TRADE DEALS
- END TAX DODGING AND LOOPHOLES
- END UNNECESSARY WARS AND NATION BUILDING
- PROTECT OUR RIGHTS: The growing disparities in income and wealth among our nation’s people have long-term impacts on our population — for wealth accumulation, debt reduction, and educational attainment.
- MEDICARE FOR ALL: The United States should catch up to every other modern nation and implement a single payer, Medicare for All system. It’s time to end the destruction of American health care by rapacious, price gouging, for-profit, private health insurance middlemen.
- FREE PUBLIC COLLEGES AND TRADE SCHOOLS
- DEFEND AND EXPAND SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE, AND MEDICAID
- ENSURE PAID VACATION TIME, SICK TIME, FAMILY LEAVE, CHILDCARE
- FIGHT FOR RACIAL JUSTICE
- PROTECT WOMEN’S RIGHTS
- COMBAT HOMELESSNESS
- POLICE REFORM
- ENACT COMMON-SENSE GUN REGULATION
- VOTING RIGHTS
- DEFEND OUR DEMOCRACY: We cannot afford to continue partisan jockeying on these issues; there is too much at stake. Americans must be provided a better chance to succeed in the face of rising income inequality and continued machinations by corporate giants.
- ABOLISH ICE: ICE was created in 2003 as a reaction to 9/11. Since then, it has turned into a state-funded terror group that regularly violates basic human rights. We don’t need a special enforcement agency for undocumented immigrants. We can rely on our existing criminal justice agency to arrest those who have committed a crime, just like we did before 2003.
- END CORRUPTION
- REFORM OUR CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
- IMPLEMENT COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM
- STOP SELLING ARMS TO HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATORS
- END THE FAILED WAR ON DRUGS
- ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY
- DEMOCRACY REFORM
- OPPOSE BIGOTRY
- DEFEND NET NEUTRALITY
The Justice Democrats are obviously earnest, and I am sure their list is well considered. I would vote for everyone of their ideas, but I am concerned that they have chosen to be “splitters.” They should be advised that there is no way to get thirty policy planks into a thirty second campaign ad. Focusing their efforts on the Green New Deal would be a good strategy. In the 2018 election there were six new Congress members who were elected espousing the platform of the Justice Democrats. I am sure that they will add to that number in 2020 and become a growing and increasingly effective progressive voice for the environment, economic equality, and universal healthcare.
It should be clear that there will be great resistance to the Green New Deal. Many of the planks of the platform of the Justice Democrats will require legislation, but some would require only a change of president to accomplish because they are administrative decisions. Others like ENACT COMMON-SENSE GUN REGULATION and PROTECT WOMEN’S RIGHTS are already favored by a significant majority of Americans.
Whether you are a “lumper” or a “splitter,” I hope that you will begin to ask yourself about what combination of ideas will support diminishing economic inequality and improving the health of the nation. These two issues are “unsplittable” and I believe they will work nicely as part of the Green New Deal to improve and protect the health of the nation.
