Stop Me Before I Vote Again

This item in the New York Times made me cackle like a Rhode Island rooster:

Here Come the Economic Populists
By LOUIS UCHITELLE

FOR years, the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party, exercising a lock on the party's economic policies, argued that the economy could achieve sustained growth only if markets were allowed to operate unfettered and globally.... the Clinton administration vigorously supported free trade agreements like Nafta .... Over time, this combination - called Rubinomics after the Clinton administration's Treasury secretary, Robert E. Rubin - became the Democratic establishment's accepted model for the future.

Not anymore. With the Democrats having won a majority in Congress, and disquiet over globalization growing, a party faction that has been powerless - the economic populists - is emerging and strongly promoting an alternative to Rubinomics.

Not only do we get treated to this slow boat ride past the allegedly foundering good ship Bobby Rubin, but also this piece of buffoonish braggadocio by one Ron Blackwell (AFL-CIA chief economist) on the supposedly restored clout of something called the "labor movement," after the wildly successful November hill top charge by the donkery:

We feel we have a stronger voice now in the deliberations of the Democratic Party.

Why? Well, the pie's staffery helped turn out voters in key districts, and and, well, besides that, the economy has been so bad for industrial jobs and general wages, and and and besides that ... blah blah blah. In short, the usual wishful thinking.

Attention, job nation: don't wait around for the huge gravy wave. Even if the "populists", or at least these old manatees of unionhood, think they're back in the great game. They can't hit their weight. Let the evil bastards up there throw 'em a few big league curve balls and they'll be as hapless as a blind Dutchman. In fact the Times piece gets around to saying pretty much the same thing, by the end:

...[D]espite their relentless criticisms of President Bush's tax cuts, neither the populists nor the Rubinite regulars would try to roll them back now, risking a veto that the Democrats lack the votes to override.

... The threat of a Bush veto affects another piece of the Democratic agenda - an increase in the minimum wage. Both Democratic factions support a bill, to be introduced in January, that would raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour from the current $5.15. The increase would come in three steps, spread over more than two years, with the final $7.25 not reached until spring 2009 at the earliest.

That is the same $7.25 that would be effective today if Congress had given its approval when Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts first proposed the increase in 2004. Yet Mr. Kennedy is the chief sponsor of the new attempt to raise the minimum, his strategy being that the $7.25, stretched out to 2009, is mild enough to be acceptable to Mr. Bush and many Republicans.

... Representative Maurice D. Hinchey, a Democrat whose New York district includes Kingston and other economically struggling cities, asserts that the federal minimum should be $10 an hour now. Going that high right away is unrealistic, he acknowledged, but in the Congressional debate over the Kennedy proposal, Mr. Hinchey will push to have the $7.25 effective no later than the spring 2008, not 2009.

"If I went out on the street in Kingston," Mr. Hinchey said, "and said to people that the minimum wage is not going up to $7.25 until 2009, they would say to me, 'That is all the Democrats are going to do? Why did I vote for you?' "

Hell of a good question, too, Hinchey.

Even so, one must say, my my, how big media preceptions can revolve. Wasn't long ago Bobby Rubin was the dreadnought nonpareil of donk economic policy, and now, suddenly, scaley helot serpents spring from the depths!

Ya, ya, I know, we're just being taken on a cruise around the big circle back to nowhere -- but don't it pick up the story some, though?