How a Frustrated Blogger Made Expanding Social Security a Respectable Idea

[Luminous Animal]

An economist and former college professor, Black—who goes by the pseudonym “Atrios” online—is one of America’s most popular political bloggers; his typical output consists of short, snarky quips on the news from a liberal perspective. But in late 2012 he embarked on a sustained crusade, on his blog and in a series of columns for USA Today, to inject a single idea into America’s policy discourse: “We need an across-the-board increase in Social Security retirement benefits of 20 percent or more,” he declared in the opening of a column for USA Today. “We need it to happen right now.”

....

For years, bloggers and activists like Black in the online progressive movement have been fascinated with something called the Overton Window, a theory of how ideas enter the political mainstream and eventually become policy. The theory was coined by the libertarian thinker Joseph Overton, who argued that the public can only countenance a fairly narrow “window” of acceptable views on a given subject at a given time. Politicians, in order to be seen as viable, generally have to endorse views within that narrow range. However, savvy members of a political movement can work to move the Overton Window. By endorsing proposals that split the distance between views that are inside the window and the movement’s ultimate goal, activists can gradually drag the window toward their desired end position. To change policy, the idea goes, you change the political environment.

American liberal groups, by contrast, have arguably lost their feel for setting out a vision and moving the country towards it. According to Representative Raúl Grijalva, a Democrat of Arizona and a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, liberals have spent too much time trying to protect what remains of the social safety net, becoming dangerously accustomed to mobilizing in opposition. “When you’ve been at the barricades for the last decade, it’s hard to get on offense,” he said. Where Social Security is concerned, this has meant fighting tooth and nail to defend the existing meager benefit, even though it isn’t sufficient to forestall the looming retirement crisis.

For the past several years, the right has been especially skillful at moving parts of its agenda into the public consciousness and onto the law books this way. For example, instead of pushing for an outright ban on abortion—an ultimate goal that many GOP leaders endorse—Republican state legislatures have passed things like parental notification requirements, or partial bans on abortion after 20 weeks of gestation, or targeted regulation of abortion providers (known as TRAP laws) to restrict access. Sometimes the legislators overreach, and a proposal that falls too far outside the Overton Window gets promoted—like the Virginia GOP’s politically disastrous attempt to force abortion-seekers to endure a transvaginal ultrasound. But even such blunders can move the window in the desired direction, by making other, more “moderate” ways of restricting abortion access seem more palatable.

http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/frustrated-blogger-made-expanding-social-security-respectable-idea-67226/

[polichick]

1. "American liberal groups, by contrast, have arguably lost their feel for setting out a vision...

and moving the country towards it."

snip

"When you’ve been at the barricades for the last decade, it’s hard to get on offense,” he said.



True. Seems that for decades liberals have been the little boy with his finger in the dike, always trying to hold back some disaster. But that's really not enough.

[Eleanors38]

2. Damn good post. If the Innertubes are to replace MSM

as a means of legitimizing a social agenda, this may be a good start.

[lumberjack_jeff]

3. Exactly right.

I want to punch everyone who uses the phrase "politically possible". It's our job to change what's possible.

[Luminous Animal]

5. I am doing my all to advance imcreasing SS

at every opportunity.

[mainer]

4. OMG, I used to correspond with Atrios years ago

Always used to love his snappy emails!