Years of Poems and Spirits

NYT coined the term “Spitzerism” in its Sunday magazine article (by Noam Scheiber, a senior editor at The New Republic).

Spitzer has “practiced a brand of prosecutorial politics that is less about securing indictments of evildoers than about shining a light on structural defects in corporate institutions.” (i.e. new brand of Ralph Nader-ism through law enforcement)

A hint to the rest of the Demos: “is Spitzerism useful only in the narrow context of Democratic law-enforcement officials running for higher office? Or is there, lurking somewhere in Spitzer’s experience, an approach that Democrats around the country could mine for political success?”

“Spitzer has so far resisted indicting a single company despite exposing case after case of corruption” NYT’s spin: so he does not “appear as if they’re punishing success”. (Or not to burn a bridge?)

“One question … asked respondents who they wanted to see take a larger role in solving the nation’s problems - government or business and individuals. … middle-class voters who owned stock in some form were 5 percentage points more likely to favor a larger role for government than middle-class voters who didn’t.”

Cowan of Third Way is less coy. “At the heart of our economic issues …, as we continue to globalize, risk is going to be the defining concept,” he says. “I think that if Spitzer is able to translate the particular work he did around risk associated with investment in the stock market. . .into a larger narrative for Democrats about … risk associated with pensions, health care, employment - that “could help forge the bond with the middle class that we’ve lost.”

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