Geoghegan Loses an Election, But May Yet Win Battle of Ideas

Tom Geoghegan, the author whose big-ideas candidacy to fill White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel's Chicago congressional seat drew broad support from writers and liberal bloggers around the country, finished Tuesday's primary with the portion that is usually accorded contenders who enter crowded contests late in the game and with modest funding.

He lost.

But while he may not have prevailed in the weighing of votes, his campaign produced proposals that ought not be counted out.

Geoghegan, a lawyer who contributes to The New York Times, The American Prospect and the Nation and who has written brilliant books on organized labor and engaged citizenship, earned plaudits from fellow writers such as Barbara Ehrenreich, Garry Wills, Naomi Wolf and The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg. But that didn't get him out of the middle of the 14-candidate Democratic primary field.

In the first special coongressional election of the Obama era, Geoghegan finished far behind the winner, Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley, a well-regarded local official who ran on his reputation as a reformer and won the endorsements of the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times.

Quigley ran as a mainstream Democrat, suggesting -- as did most of the other candidates -- that he would work closely with the Obama administration. And he'll almost certainly have a chance to do so, as winning a Democratic primary in this very Democratic district is tantamount to election.

But mainstream Democratic ideas are not likely to be sufficient in the current circumstance. And if Quigley is wise, he will take at least some of Geoghegan's big ideas to Washington.

Geoghegan was a different kind of candidate.

He did not read from a set of talking points.

He talked to voters, listened to their fears and hopes, and developed proposals that responded to them. With more time and money, he might well have clawed his way to the front of the pack. But the fact that Geoghegan was defeated as a candidate does not mean that the big bold ideas he advanced should be dismissed.

The most exciting of these ideas was a new New Deal argument that, instead of promising to "save Social Security," Democrats should supercharge the popular program -- providing recipients with a raise and creating a real national pension program.

Specifically, Geoghegan argued:

I want to expand Social Security, our public pension system, to replace, not overnight but in stages, the private pension system which has collapsed. Social Security now pays about 38 to 39 percent of your working income. In other developed countries, it averages 65 percent. That's where our fiscal stimulus should be: a commitment to reach this goal, a public pension that ordinary working people can live on.

That is not just a smart response to an economic meltdown that has left tens of millions of Americans wondering what they will retire on.

It will, ultimately, turn out to be smart politics. Indeed, when Democrats start to get serious about the current crisis, they are going to have to come up with a plan to provide for the retirements of all those hard-working Americans who believed in the the 401(k) fantasy that was peddled by Wall Street and its media amen corner.

A few more months will probably pass before members of Congress start to admit it, but at some point it is going to be accepted that the 401(k) experiment -- a mad gamble on the stock market that offered no promise of retirement security -- has failed.

There is not going to be a turnaround -- at least not one sweeping enough to guarantee the retirements of millions of Americans who are at or near retirement age.

There is not going to be an uptick -- at least not one dramatic enough to erase the consciousness that rolling the dice of the market is neither a sound nor a humane retirement strategy.

There is going to have to be an alternative. And a real national pension plan is the best alternative idea that's been presented so far.

Geoghegan's late-starting, low-budget campaign may not have produced enough votes to make him a congressman.

But it produced an idea that those Democrats -- and responsible Republicans -- who serve in the Congress would do well to embrace.

Comments (20)

1. "Geoghegan Loses an Election But Wins Battle of Ideas "

   He lost, thank God ,for those people in his district and for all tax payers in all groups won by his losing.

   Many more wins like this and the conservative will be on top.

   Posted by YourJomamma at 03/03/2009 @ 10:04pm

2. "And he'll almost certainly have a chance to do so, as winning a Democratic primary in this very Democratic district is tantamount to election. "

   Yup....no matter how voters vote for him....dead or alive...he will win.

   Posted by YourJomamma at 03/03/2009 @ 10:10pm

3. NICHOLS: "And if Quigley is wide, he will take at least some of Geoghegan's big ideas to Washington."

   When I am "wide", I usually want to do something less weighty.....Yipee......:~)

   Posted by Happy at 03/03/2009 @ 10:18pm

4. " -- a mad gamble on the stock market that offered no promise of retirement security -- has failed.

   There is not going to be a turnaround.

   There is not going to be an uptick."

   I hope you won't mind, John... if I take issue with this sentiment. Though the stock market offers no guarantees, it is, by nature, cyclical. Crashes like these create fortunes out of panic, and downturns are inevitably followed by upturns.

   I think it is counterproductive to dwell on 'scary talk' scenarios... because when we've been through this in the past, it has generally been perpetuated by histrionics and over-reaction.

   In other words... There IS going to be a turnaround... and there will surely be an uptick.

   There is some degree of speculation going around that as soon as we have bridged this credit gap, much of the economy will stabilize. Although the financial industry is only a stage-prop of it's former steroid enriched superstar status... we are perfectly capable of working and prospering while they 'hunker down' and restructure.

   Can you grove the gist of my jive, man?;^)

   Posted by ttr at 03/03/2009 @ 11:26pm

5. The stock market is reflecting the total lack of governmental direction which changes from day to day because of the reactionary mindless gyrations of Obamanation's administration and its appointees and the Undemocrat congress's lack of a true economic stimulus package!

   After reviewing the porkulus power grab and finding NOTHING really to either sustain or advance real economic development no one in their right mind will commit capital or assume credit!

   It could not be any planner that the greed and lust for power by the Undemocrat party is destroying our nation!

   There will be more NO votes and NO confidence votes hopefully soon enough for such candidates!

   Posted by comancheamerican at 03/04/2009 @ 12:33am

6. What happens if you're depending on 401K income during a down turn? How does one survive now until the uptick?In the past ten years how many prudent workers saving for retirement have seen those savings go up in smoke when the company tanked? I hate thinking that my retirement is dependent on rolling the stock market dice. Especially since it now appears that the dice are loaded.

   Posted by bascaville at 03/04/2009 @ 12:57am

7. "Though the stock market offers no guarantees, it is, by nature, cyclical. Crashes like these create fortunes out of panic, and downturns are inevitably followed by upturns. "

   Posted by ttr at 03/03/2009 @ 11:26pm

   There are various ways to respond to situations, to life. You are making lay assumptions based on the same level and type of information (better than astrology, just) that brought us "here."

   Among the ways to remain positive in the face of adversity, is to confront such situations with at a minimum, the belief that you are their equal. Among the things putting ones head in the sand does, aside from leaving one blind, sedentary and of no help to anyone, is to deprive the brain of oxygen.

   No solutions there ...

   Posted by V at 03/04/2009 @ 01:00am

8. Posted by bascaville at 03/04/2009 @ 12:57am...

   Got a wire on my house, do ya? Well... it must not be a very good one. Its Baskerville, silly...

   Gambling and security don't mix, do they...

   Posted by ttr at 03/04/2009 @ 01:12am

9. --There are various ways to respond to situations, to life. You are making lay assumptions based on the same level and type of information (better than astrology, just) that brought us "here."--

   Posted by V at 03/04/2009 @ 01:00am ...

   Actually, V... I'm just trying to counter what I consider to be a false premise. I'm not trying to belittle the current dilemma, or waylay our need for change.

   I really didn't like scare tactics during the Bush administration... and I really REALLY don't like to see Obama supporters stooping to such sorry projections.

   Posted by ttr at 03/04/2009 @ 01:26am

10. He lost, thank God ,for those people in his district and for all tax payers in all groups won by his losing.

    Many more wins like this and the conservative will be on top.

    Posted by YourJomamma at 03/03/2009 @ 10:04pm

    the winner was someone with a reputation as a reformer and a dyed in the wool democrat, in other words a "librul." so how exactly is this a "victory" for "the conservative?" you make no sense.

    Posted by kennyboy at 03/04/2009 @ 04:28am

11. Hello, Do we engage in dialogues only when we are the ones being endangered, or do we have a conscience that says that this world is a home to us all, and every nation suffering should be given a helping hand? We should understand that if some conflicts do not effect us directly, indirectly we are all effected as a species that seems to work hard against its own survival. I found some very interesting thoughts on this subject in the book called The Age of Nepotism, you should look it up and read about current affairs in the world from the perspective of Iranian American entrepreneur traveling through the Balkans. There is also a site www.theageofnepotism.com

    Posted by nikolina at 03/04/2009 @ 05:23am

12. Well, I knew Tom Geoghegan was in trouble when....

    John Nichols started betting on him!

    LOL

    Posted by Mask at 03/04/2009 @ 08:55am

13. Kennny,

    There was a statement made by a a politician or general during the Civil War, I believe, where a battle was won by one side that lost more men than the side that lost......where the winning general declared boldly,

    "we won the battle!!"

    I think it was Sherman who replied,

    " Any more wins like this, and we may not survive".....

    The far left loon who wants more govt spending into a welfare black hole lost and Nichols declares victory.... For the losing candidate!!! so, should that election where by dems loons who lose and declare victory could be a boost to conservatives in the same light as the supposed civil war quote.

    Bottom line is the voters and tax payers in that district lost because another dem hack from the Chicago machine has been greased in.

    If you still cant figure it out , then move on and forget it.

    Posted by YourJomamma at 03/04/2009 @ 09:37am

14. "He talked to voters, listened to their fears and hopes, and developed proposals that responded to them. With more time and money, he might well have clawed his way to the front of the pack."

    Where on earth do you get these ideas? Yes, fellow Harvard-Radcliffe classmates and alums such as James Fallows, Rick Hertzberg, and Katha Pollitt endorsed Tom, and yes "the liberal blogosphere" backed him, but none of these people were from or lived in Chicago and I doubt that any of them could have pointed out the Fifth Congressional District on the map.

    Tom came up with his platform and campaign *before* he talked with voters in the district. His campaign never resonated with actual voters, he was a poor campaigner and public speaker, and he was never "in the middle of the pack": He was dead last among the *seven* legitimate candidates, finishing with just 6 percent of the vote, 3,250-plus voters. Even the other book-author candidate, economist and journalist ("Naked Economics") Charlie Wheelan, edged out Tom for sixth place.

    Tom is a fine labor lawyer and writer and a provocative thinker. Despite 30 years in this most political of cities, he never involved himself in electoral politics before and decided, at the age of 60, to make a run for the U.S. Congress with almost no local support.

    He took a legitimate gamble, running in a special election where everyone was a "late starter," no one knew who the candidates would be, and where neither the Machine, the Mayor, nor the former seat-holder Rahm Emanuel, made an endorsement. He got some intriguing ideas out there, but never articulated what kind of a Congressman he would be. The winner was a known figure who works for his constituents 24 hours a day. That's a part of how actual participatory electoral politics works.

    Posted by AndrewPatner at 03/04/2009 @ 09:45am

15. Posted by AndrewPatner at 03/04/2009 @ 09:45am

    Unfortunately Mr Nichols has a deserved reputation as a political "fantasist"...and those logical and realistic points would have been lost on him.

    Posted by Mask at 03/04/2009 @ 09:54am

16. Posted by kennyboy at 03/04/2009

    KENNY,

    As you are perhaps new here, there are a couple of things you should know about JOMAMMA.

    1. In 2006, for some reason, JOMAMMA announced on this webpage that he has boy boobs. "He" constantly whines, boo-hoos and begs for sympathy, in other words, like a typical rightwing zombie.

    2. JOMAMMA is ignorant and fantatical vulgarian and the bacon stripes in his undies have more political sense than he does. He calls himself a "liberatarian" but is staunchly in favor of torture, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and impudently passing the bill for his own stupifity (voting 2x for George W Loser) onto the public at large. Nor does he even cognize that he has lost every single verbal battle that he has ever had on this webpage, pitiful routs in all cases.

    3. The self-appointed libertarian is also a viscous Anglo-Saxon chuavinist obsessed with *other people's* reproductive patterns. Take a whiff of this recent JOMAMMA posting that is vintage John Birch: They "enter the country or live there and breed like crazy..Europe is hitting 25% Islamic soon, and US is hitting 35% Hispanic..PLUS..they are draining the social system of cash and resources while putting nothing back in of equal or greater values...plus being illiterate in their own language, the added pressure of the host country to "help" them is over bearing... ..add to this the fact that the liberals in the host country actually sue in court to give the invaders(un resticted and illegal immigrants) more rights than the host citizens, like push 1 for English and native language voting ballots, in state tuition...it won't take long and the Israelis will be voted out of their own country..legaly... learn from the Muslims in Europe and the Mexicans in the US how to..."

    Posted by PhilMcCrevice at 03/04/2009 @ 10:52am

17. Some of the most open liberals are beginning to see that the "Emperor has no clothes"-from Maureen Dowd March 3rd, NY Times

    "Team Obama sounds hollow, chanting that "the status quo is not acceptable," even while conceding that the president is accepting the status quo by signing a budget festooned with pork.

    Obama spinners insist it was "a leftover budget." But Iraq was leftover, too, and the president's trying to end that. This is the first pork-filled budget from a new president who promised to go through the budget "line by line" and cut pork.

    On "Face the Nation" on Sunday, Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, dismissed the bill as "last year's business," because most of it was written last year.

    But given how angry Americans are, watching their future go up in smoke, the bloated bill counts as this year's business.

    It includes $38.4 million of earmarks sponsored or co-sponsored by President Obama's labor secretary, Hilda Solis; $109 million Hillary Clinton signed on to; and $31.2 million in earmarks sought by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood with colleagues.

    (Even Barack Obama was listed as one of the co-sponsors of a $7.7 million pet project for Tribally Controlled Postsecondary Vocational Institutions until he got his name taken off last week.)

    And then there are the 16 earmarks worth $8.5 million that Emanuel put into the bill when he was a congressman, including money for streets in Chicago suburbs and a Chicago planetarium." http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/opinion/04dowd.html

    Posted by antisocialist at 03/04/2009 @ 11:32am

18. But given how angry Americans are, watching their future go up in smoke, the bloated bill counts as this year's business.-----Posted by antisocialist at 03/04/2009 @ 11:32am

    So it really must be biting into Obama's approval ratings and helping the fortunes of the Repubs, huh?

    Posted by Mask at 03/04/2009 @ 11:56am

19. So it really must be biting into Obama's approval ratings and helping the fortunes of the Repubs, huh?

    Posted by Mask at 03/04/2009 @ 11:56am

    It will. If you look at the details of recent polls, while Obama enjoys high personal ratings, the public is beginning to disagree with his politics.

    the NBC poll yesterday showed that 59% believe that the govt is spending too much on and not caring enough about the deficit.

    Similar findings are found on that and other polls.

    What it shows is that Obama's charisma and speaking ability are distracting people from thinking through their negative reactions to the substance of events.

    Not unsual whenever you have a dictator like Chavez or a leftist politician like Obama. They count on the people responding to the emotional rather than an objective response. That was Bush's greatest failure in that he lacked that polish to carry the emotional response. As others have commented regarding Clinton; he carried his popularity with the "orgasm" emotion of sexual identity rather than the facts at hand. And stories have already come out showing the same thing happening with Obama as women write of their fantasies of a sexual relationship with Obama.

    We will see how it plays out with Obama. It depends on whether the markets correct this year or in a year or two as Buffett and others are saying. If it's the latter, Obama will be in political trouble.

    Posted by antisocialist at 03/04/2009 @ 12:54pm

20. AndrewPatner's comment is dead on. The lack of knowledge of many of these out-of-state supporters was exceeded only by their dismissiveness of the alternative candidates. I mean, in most cases it was little better than 'my progressivism is bigger than your progressivism'.

    The results speak for themselves.

    Posted by leoklein at 03/05/2009 @ 9:37pm