More cynicism masquerading as a political strategy

An nyt op-ed asks, "How liberals win," and the answer is apparently, "By losing to corporations 2/3 of what they were originally seeking."

This is not really untrue. "Progressive" elected officials have immense difficulty accomplishing anything against the wishes of the business class. I like, by the way, how the author waves away everything accomplished by FDR in the "Second New Deal" over the implacable opposition of capital on the back of a huge labor upsurge.

Roosevelt may be remembered for his combativeness toward corporations; he famously said, “I welcome their hatred.” But he said that in 1936, only after key New Deal legislation had passed with the help of the United States Chamber of Commerce and the American Bankers Association.

The thing is, NIRA wasn't really all that "key" in the long run: it failed to end the Depression and its labor provisions were essentially a dead letter. Maybe they helped to feed the strike wave that set the environment for the passage (and survival under challenges) of the NLRA. (Also, Johnson's signal achievements were a tax cut, some environment regulations, and the department of transportation? Riiiiight...)

So yes, absent that, it's immensely difficult to get anything done that corporations are intent on opposing relatively vigorously and unanimously. This doesn't actually mean that "working with" them, as Obama did, generated better outcomes. The criticism of Obama from the "progressive" wing of the Democratic party is not that he makes concessions, it's that he makes them pre-emptively and excessively. Sorry, but the stimulus and obamacare were not the New Deal. There's a difference between giving up a few things to get the big stuff through and giving up everything in return for a symbolic win.

This is a better response:

You see, giving corporations total control of politics does come with certain difficulties. Corporations are accustomed to getting their way on everything, but the problem with that is that they aren’t always good at compromising with each other. So what happens when one corporate interest comes into conflict with another? What happens when every corporation can’t win on every issue every time? It doesn’t happen often, of course, but occasionally it does happen. Here is where we still need the semblance of a government by and for and of the people: to cast the tie-breaking vote and figure out which corporate sector will get to have everything they desire. The health insurance industry wanted a health care law requiring citizens to buy its products, but the Chamber of Commerce represented businesses that didn’t want to take away from workers’ life and death dependence on their employers for health care. It was quite a pickle! Luckily, the helpful hand of the US government was able to step in and negotiate a compromise.
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But despite this utterly reasonable state of affairs, there is one minor fly in the ointment: because things we want are simply not possible to achieve, we run into the problem that the word “win” threatens to fall out of common usage. Once we’ve accepted permanent defeat, what would that word be used to indicate? Luckily Scher has the answer: we’ll just change its meaning. We will use the word “win” to describe “whatever it is our side manages to do.”