Economic and Social justice is the one issue everyone is aware of and no one wants to seriously address. It’s like a particularly obnoxious mess in the corner of the room that has grown to the point where the stench is overwhelming and the looks are enough to make you puke, so you cover up the smell with deodorants and try to hide the mess behind the furniture because it’s easier to cover it up than to deal with it.

One reason for this is that everyone admits clearly that cleaning up the mess will not be easy; It will require hard work and sacrifices if it is to be dealt with in a suitable fashion. The problem is that like a household mess, you slowly get used to it; people even find it hard to remember when it wasn’t there. I remember once entering a neighbor’s house occupied by two small, obnoxious dogs who were not housebroken. No need to describe the situation further, I’m sure you get some idea of what that house was like. But the people who lived there did not seem to mind a situation that would have had the rest of us running for the doors or doing something about those dogs.

For economic and social justice the equivalent of those dogs is the t-word–taxes. The GOP Counterrevolution’s position on this is clear since Arthur Laffer drew a curve on a napkin for none other than Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld: the progressive income tax is a bad idea that discourages innovation by not allowing the rich to partake of the fruit of their stock manipulations. Under the guise of what the present President’s father once termed “voodoo economics,” the Counterrevolution has all but made it gospel–maybe even the twelfth commandment–that we need to allow the rich to keep their money because they will spend it in ways that benefit us all by stimulating the economy.

My name for this is economic masturbation, for the rich get to engage in the equivalent of self-gratification with an occasional blow job thrown in. The somewhat salacious sex metaphor is apt, because these people view economics in the same self-centered way that others in this culture view sex. There is no concept of mutual sharing, not even a pretense of love or empathy with someone else, even if only for a one-night stand.

I doubt that there are few Americans left who do not remain unaware that the gap between rich and poor is now at its widest since the early years of the twentieth century or that the super rich now control as high a percentage of the nation’s wealth as the tycoons of the Gilded Age. Economists and political scientists have written about our growing inequality for over a decade. A few of them have even hit the best-seller lists.

Among researchers the data collected by Emmanual Saez and Thomas Picketty is perhaps the most depressing and important. What they found is best explained in their letter to the Wall Street Journal.

Our work has shown the top 1% income share has increased dramatically in recent decades and has reached levels which had not been seen since before World War II and even since before the Great Depression when including capital gains. The reduction in taxes at the top since 2001 has mechanically exacerbated the discrepancy in disposable income between the rich and the rest of us. Thus, it is obvious that the progressive income tax should be the central element of the debate when thinking about what to do about the increase in inequality. Even conservatives like Alan Reynolds would agree and that is why they prefer to dismiss the facts about growing income inequality rather than face the debate on income tax progressivity at a time of growing economic disparity.

In addition a variety of research has confirmed the characteristics of this inequality, of which the most significant is a report by a distinguished panel of the American Political Science Association. In 2004, the APSA found:

Our country’s ideals of equal citizenship and responsive government may be under growing threat in an era of persistent and rising inequalities. Disparities of income, wealth, and access to opportunity are growing more sharply in the United States than many other nations, and gaps between races and ethnic groups persist. Progress toward realizing American ideals of democracy may have stalled, and in some areas reversed.

The APSA task force pointed out four years ago:

Government is expected to help insure equal opportunity for all, not tilt toward those who already have wealth and power.

Where the Democratic Party has been as most of this has taken place is out to lunch. There has also been an explicit embracing of the pro-business philosophy of the Democratic Leadership Council.

If all this largess went to genuine innovators who promised to remake this nation rather than to the Enrons of this world, that would be one thing. No matter what you think of Carnegie, Edison, Ford, Rockefeller you can at least acknowledge these tycoons did come by their wealth somewhat honestly through innovations that made industrial America the envy of the world. Then they gave back to the country through the foundations that still bear their names and play major roles in American society.

Yet there appears to be a pact of silence not to discuss America’s growing inequality during this election season. Not a single Democratic Presidential debate featured even one question about economic inequality, There were plenty of questions about the Reverend Wright and Hillary Clinton’s New Hampshire confessional, but nothing about this nation’s growing inequality. Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain have mentioned the issue. Maybe their policy advisors don’t get it or their pollsters tell them the issue has no traction.

In past times of national crisis–especially war time–Democratic Presidents have not hesitated to call on ALL Americans to sacrifice for the common good. But this crisis is different in that the party of Wilson, FDR, and Harry Truman has not issued any ringing cries for sharing the burdens of our longest war and our increasingly problematical economy.

The Democratic Party, whose very heart and soul once lay in its commitment to equity and those whom Franklin Roosevelt termed the “forgotten man” has lost its moral compass and instead triangulates by a kind of political dead reckoning that calculates the position of the Counterrevolution and then move a millimeter towards that mythical American “center.” The most depressing part of this disowning of the party’s heritage is that a goodly number of Democrats have become tacit if not open converts to the Counterrevolution (i.e. the notorious Blue Dogs). Their banner is no longer the ringing phrases of FDR or Woodrow Wilson, but Arthur Laffer’s napkin.

We can talk about the importance of a Democratic victory in November for the Supreme Court, hoping we will see no more Scalias, but if a Democratic victory means only more of the same then it will prove a hollow victory. A Barack Obama Administration will obviously not be a McCain Administration, but without a platform that revives the Party’s commitment to equality an Obama Administration and the Democratic Party will continue to wander aimlessly.

So if this platform is to mean anything, I would recommend each committee member take a short course in American history and read four speeches that defined the American Century: Bryan’s “Cross of Gold, Wilson First Inaugural, FDR’s “Forgotten Man,” and Harry Truman’s Kiel Auditorium speech. In those words they will find what the Democratic Party once stood for, in those words they will find the Party’s lost moral compass, in those words they will find what made the American Century or what Henry Wallace defined as the “Century of the Common Man.”:

Some have spoken of the “American Century.” I say that the century on which we are entering - The century which will come out of this war - can be and must be the century of the common man.

Wallace’s speech would inspire one of the most important and recognizable works of the American Century, Aaron Copland’s, “Fanfare for the Common Man.” Copland explained:

It was the common man, who, after all, was doing all the dirty work in the war and the army.

The centerpiece of the Democratic Party’s lost soul lies in two actions the Party assented to and in essence sold its soul for what Party officals thought would be the votes of the American people: tax cuts and the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Banking Act.

Taxes and financial reform in the form of the mortgage crisis will be the main issues of this campaign. Already the Counterrevolution is dusting off the old rhetoric even as it rehearses over and over again the punch line of “tax and spend.”  I predict you will see more ads about the Democrats raising your taxes or spending too much of “your” money than any human should be asked to bear. Karl Rove is again back at the center of this campaign while somehow managing to con his way onto Faux News where he will espouse his belief that America must return to the days of William McKinley.

That the chief strategist for the Counterrevolution should evoke not Reagan or Eisenhower or Teddy Roosevelt, but the mediocre William McKinley, he of the “front-porch campaign,” shows how absurd American politics has become. That he should do so openly and have no Democrat attack him for it is a national disgrace.

The pundits do have one thing right: this election represents a national watershed. For all Barack Obama’s rhetoric about change, this election hinges not on change but on the lack of it. In the Democratic Platform we will learn whether the Party as we know it is dead or still has a heartbeat.

Will it abandon the Republican Lite, the me-too philosophy it has adhered to for a decade, a philosophy that has cost it the last two Presidential elections? Will the gains of 2006 seem an aberration caused by the Iraq War? As Harry Truman used to say, “if the choice is between a Republican and a Republican, they will take the real Republican every time.”

As FDR, Wilson and Truman all recognized, times of crisis and critical historical turning points call for bold solutions. Thus far the Democratic Party has seemed far from bold. It has behaved like a team protecting a big lead in the final stages of the game. So how can the Democratic Platform recover its Party’s lost moral compass?

Above all, it needs to stand unequivocally for equity. That means framing this election as a battle between William McKinley and FDR, between those who believe in a Social Darwinist “survival of the fittest” ideology and those who believe in a level playing field.

As FDR would recognize, like the Great Depression the current crisis will require a wide degree of experimentation to resolve it as it did in the early days of the New Deal. What is more important is what principles guide that experimentation.

In the case of the 2008 Democratic Platform, equity is one area where specific proposals will not matter. In fact I will make another prediction–Karl Rove would love to lure the Democrats down to the proposal level because his tactic all along has been to let the Democrats propose program after program and then take the debate to the level of principles. “Tax and spend” works because no matter what programs the Democrats throw out there, the GOP can evoke its shopworn mantra that represents a classic example of the old truism that if you repeat something often enough people will believe it.

The Democrats and Barack Obama can end run Karl Rove by making the campaign a battle of philosophies not a battle for proposals. John Kerry tried the proposal route and lost. He had a phone book-thick list of proposals and no one read it. He would refer to the phone book and his web site constantly in the debates. American did not want a phone book then and they don’t want a phone book now. They yearn for principles.

About the time the leaves start falling, this country will see the true impact of the mortgage crisis. Disasters will be falling all around us like the leaves from the trees.

A platform of proposals written in August is likely to be out of date by October, but one centered around principles will not. The American people want to know what will guide their President as he deals with the next surprise the mess throws up. They want to know what moral compass he will use to lead us out of the morass.

Now is the time for the Democratic Party to recover and reaffirm its lost moral compass. Otherwise a year from now we may be complaining about President McCain’s latest blunder.

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