Max wrote:
>>Lloyd Bentsen used to say that focusing on children was the only way
>>he thought progress could be made--that the idea of the frontier and
>>the self-reliant individual was just too strong in America for there
>>to be a durable majority coalition that worried about the single
>>working poor. Brad DeLong
>
>One data point: when I introduced my idea about a
>mega-kiddie-credit to a group of progressives, who
>shall remain nameless, they said the problem with it
>was it had nothing for families without children.
I'm a bit confused by Brad's line. Earlier he said we should focus on expanding government programs for the poor, and implied that supporting the Dems was the way to achieve this result. Now he seems to say that you can't help the single working poor because there isn't enough public support (which is probably true). Perhaps he's trying to make the point that you can only help the single poor by helping poor families with kids, but the Repukes can always ram through some amendments that target assisstance to the child-bearing poor.
This is precisely where BE (as far as I can tell), and myself, and perhaps the progressives Max is talking about split off from the Dems. The Dems want to win, so they will abandon the single working poor, and champion other measures I would vociferously oppose, in order to try to win the election. I'd rather take a principled stand and lose (at least initially) in an effort to try to either move the Dems left or create a legitimate progressive political movement.
Question for Max: did this group merely criticize the kiddie-credit for not going far enough, or actually OPPOSE it on those grouds?