XPost: alt.culture.neoism, alt.politics.democrats, sac.politics   
   XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.guns   
   From: nospam@ix.netcom.com   
      
   When Vice-President Kamala Harris lost the election to Donald Trump, it   
   was clear that her economic message failed to break through with most   
   voters. Still reeling from the effects of inflation and a cost-of-living   
   crisis, Americans did not believe a Democratic president would deliver   
   the change they sought. Five days later, Senator Chris Murphy, a   
   Democrat from Connecticut, posted a postmortem of sorts to X. “Time to   
   rebuild the left,” read one post in part. “We are out of touch with the   
   crisis of meaning/purpose fueling MAGA. We refuse to pick big fights.   
   Our tent is too small.” The left, he added, “has never fully grappled   
   with the wreckage of fifty years of neoliberalism,” and should become   
   “less judgmental,” he concluded.   
      
   Elected to the House in 2006, then to the Senate in 2012, the liberal   
   Murphy was an early supporter of the Affordable Care Act and stronger   
   gun laws following the Sandy Hook elementary-school shooting in Newtown.   
   Over the past several years, he’s also fashioned another identity as a   
   critic of the neoliberal consensus. In a 2022 piece for The Atlantic, he   
   wrote that Democrats must “do the work that would make us the natural   
   favorite for Americans who want government to act in their interests —   
   not merely as the facilitator of some dreamy neoliberal ideal.”   
      
   I spoke with Murphy this week about neoliberalism in crisis, the   
   failures of Democratic rhetoric, and how he thinks the party should   
   expand its big tent. This interview has been edited for length and   
   clarity.   
      
   Over the last several years, you’ve often warned that the postwar   
   neoliberal order is breaking down, and I was curious to know how you   
   define neoliberalism and how you’ve reached that conclusion.   
   Neoliberalism is a belief that markets and in particular global markets   
   will work for the benefit of the common good with light adjustments here   
   or there by the government. I think neoliberalism is also about the   
   belief in the individual as the hero of every story as opposed to the   
   community or the collective. And so as a result, both Democrats and   
   Republicans have been very reluctant over the past 40 years to do   
   anything to disrupt existing markets, in particular international   
   markets, and have sort of let society and culture and our economy slide   
   away from a focus on the common good, instead believing that we should   
   just align incentives so that each individual is able to have a shot at   
   material wealth. So that to me is kind of the definition that I use in   
   my head.   
      
   Many would argue that neoliberalism has become a core tenet of   
   Democratic Party politics and remains so today. Do you think that’s   
   true? And if so, why did you decide to become so critical of it?   
   I think there’s a fight inside the Democratic Party today about whether   
   or not neoliberalism has permanently failed. There are still plenty of   
   market believers and market fundamentalists inside the Democratic Party,   
   but I would argue Joe Biden made a pretty material break from neoliberal   
   orthodoxy. His unabashed public support for labor unions, his   
   revitalization of industrial policy, albeit targeted industrial policy,   
   and his work to rebuild American antitrust power was all a recognition   
   that we needed to move beyond our neoliberal failures. And one of my   
   frustrations is that President Biden and Vice-President Harris didn’t   
   lead their economic messaging by talking about their break with   
   neoliberalism, their belief in the need to break up corporate power,   
   their belief in the need to revitalize labor unions. So the policy was   
   really good. I just don’t think the rhetoric always matched the policy.   
      
   You’ve also written of “a very real epidemic of American unhappiness.”   
   When did you first conclude that there was such an epidemic, and how   
   does that epidemic manifest itself?   
   There was no ignoring the fact that all of our traditional public policy   
   metrics were heading in the right direction in 2022 and 2023. GDP was   
   growing, inflation was coming down, unemployment was at a near   
   structural low, crime was dropping, and yet people were just as if not   
   more pessimistic about the direction of the country. And self-reported   
   rates of happiness were plummeting. So clearly, we have made this   
   assumption that having a job and national GDP growing would lead to   
   happier people, and that wasn’t turning out to be true. And I think it’s   
   because we fundamentally misunderstand what makes people happy. A job is   
   important and income is important, but material success is not actually   
   what is most relevant to people’s sense of fulfillment. Connection is   
   really important, and connection’s harder today than ever before because   
   of decisions that the government has made.   
      
   People want to feel power over the arc of their lives, and the   
   concentration of corporate power has eroded people’s personal economic   
   agency. And then people want to feel like they’re part of something   
   unique. They want to have a unique national identity or a unique local   
   identity. Our borders started to get erased and our culture started to   
   become flattened, and we all belong to the exact same transnational   
   economy. Life began to feel very empty and hollow and far too homogenous   
   for a lot of Americans. So that’s a hard conversation for government to   
   have about the lack of connection, lack of life power, lack of meaning   
   and purpose. But I think that’s the story as to why people were feeling   
   pretty shaky, even amidst the economic data telling people that they   
   should feel good.   
      
   How does the government go about addressing that? Is it something that   
   government’s even fully capable of addressing?   
   Well, listen, I don’t think government is ever responsible for   
   delivering the last mile of happiness. But I do think we’re supposed to   
   create a foundation in which happiness is a little bit easier to find.   
   Actually, that’s what the Declaration of Independence says. And so,   
   yeah, we should be consciously thinking about social connection policy.   
      
   How do we make it easier for people to be in communion with each other?   
   If we were thinking more aggressively about the importance of social   
   connection policy, we would’ve regulated social media the minute they   
   started to dominate our family’s lives. We would’ve not allowed our   
   downtowns to become stripped bare and our entire economy to move online.   
   We would’ve pushed people back into in-person employment much more   
   quickly instead of allowing the entire economy to be run from people’s   
   kitchen tables. So yes, I think that … I’m talking about this narrow   
   issue of people’s lack of connection, but that’s an example of a feeling   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)