California Gov. Jerry Brown was recently confronted by a reporter from the Washington Times, aka, the Moonie Times. He wound up asking the reporter an appropriate question (Jerry Brown takes on Washington Times reporterLos Angeles Times 02/26/2012). The Duran in these quotes is Gil Duran, a Brown spokesperson:
Reporter: No, actually, because when Reagan came in later on, things actually changed.
Brown: No, Reagan came before me. Reagan came after my father and then I came after Reagan.
Reporter: And then you actually lost your term thereafter, no?
Brown: No, I’m the only Democratic governor in history to serve three terms. In fact only two governors have ever served a third term.
Reporter: So why is it then, that we’re seeing from the bankruptcy though...
Duran: There is no bankruptcy. That’s a lie. You’re lying.
Brown: California has a $2-trillion economy.
Reporter: Why am I a liar?
Brown: Last year... Are you a Moonie by any chance?
Reporter: Sir...
Duran: And your facts are totally wrong. I can prove it to you.
Brown: Because your incisiveness is kind of suspect. Anyway. California, the economy is doing better, it’s coming back. The private economy added $90 billion, and that feeds into the public sector as well. There are deficits because there’s been excesses in the last decade, brought on principally by the mortgage bubble and breakdown. And we're now cleaning up after that mess. It does take a while to do that. I'd say we’re on a very positive course. Not as rapid as I would like, but the trajectory is all in the right direction. [my emphasis]
Joan Walsh and Charlie Pierce have recently taken on Rick Santorum's dishonest revisionism about John Kennedy's position on freedom of religion and the separation of church and state.
MR. GREGORY: Senator, you called that in the past a, quote, "horrible speech" in part because you felt that he was too rigid about the separation of church and state. There's a concern within the party, and certainly to a lot of other voters, where your faith ends and your presidency would begin.
FMR. SEN. SANTORUM: Yeah. The original line that you didn't play that got--that President Kennedy said is, "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute." That is not the founders' vision, that is not the America that, that made the greatest country in the history of the world. The idea that people of faith should not be permitted in the public square to, to, to influence public policy is antithetical to the First Amendment which says the free exercise of religion--James Madison called people of faith, and by the way, no faith, and different faith, the ability to come in the public square with diverse opinions motivated by a variety of different ideas and passions the perfect remedy. Why? Because everybody's allowed in. And the idea that people of faith have to keep it a private affair, my goodness, what does that mean, that the only place that--the only thing you're allowed to bring to the public square is secular ideas or, or not, or things that are not motivated by faith? Look at all of the great movements in this country that led to great just--you know, to, to righting wrongs that exist in this country, the slavery movement, the, the, the civil rights movement, all led by people of faith bringing their faith into the public square that all men are created equal...
MR. GREGORY: Fair enough. OK, but....
FMR. SEN. SANTORUM: ...and they have God-given rights. So this idea that we need to segregate faith is, is, is a dangerous idea. And, and we're seeing the Obama administration not only segregating faith but imposing the states' values now on churches, which is even a bigger affront to the First Amendment. [my emphasis]
One of the Christian Right's favorite complaints is a variation of the endless White People's Whine that them mean libruls are pickin' on us. In this version, Santorum complains that John Kennedy wanted to drive "people of faith" out of "the public square". (Just as an aside, does anyone ever encounter that phrase "the public square" being used by anyone except Christian Rightists whining about how Christians are persecuted in America?)
Santorum has been using several variations of this JFK spiel over the last several days.
Charlie Pierce addresses this in Rick Santorum Goes After JFKEsquire Politics Blog 02/27/2012. Pierce makes it a point to say after the first mention of Rick Santorum in any of his posts, "and have I mentioned recently what a colossal dick he is?" He says this of Pierce's JFK story:
Leave aside for the moment that Santorum's argument there is a bunch of dead leaves pretending to be a tree. Nobody — N-O-B-O-D-Y — is arguing anything like the kind of positions that Santorum alleges there. It certainly doesn't follow from anything Kennedy said in 1960. All Kennedy was doing was trying to convince the theological goobers who ministered to thousands of Southern Democrats — the very people who eventually would evolve into the Republican base with whom Santorum is currently pitching woo — that he wasn't going to be taking orders from John XXIII once they elected him. While unquestionably eloquent, Kennedy's speech was also a masterpiece of pure realpolitik, a calculation just as political as the one, say, that Rick Santorum made in voting for No Child Left Behind.
But it's important not to forget history just because Rick Santorum likes to play mumbledy-peg with it. Kennedy's speech came late on September 12, late in what would be a historically close campaign. He needed the votes of the people to whom those ministers in Houston spoke every Sunday, and a great number of them actually believed that, once inaugurated, Kennedy would receive his marching orders from the Vatican. The reason that whole thing sounds silly now is because Kennedy gave that speech in Houston in which he said, "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute." Rather than saying that people of his faith "had no role in the public square," Kennedy in his speech made possible the inclusion of Catholics in our national affairs at the highest levels by denying the power of the most prominent myth that had kept them out, the myth of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" that Samuel Burchard had hung on the Democratic party in 1884, the myth that had crushed Al Smith, the first Catholic presidential candidate, in 1928.
Actually, that Rum Romanism and Rebellion slogan was used against the Democrats even in the 1850s, referring to the religious affiliation and perceived drinking habits of Irish immigrants and to the seditious tendencies of the pro-slavery Democratic Party back then.
Let me start by saying: Santorum sounds literally hysterical. It’s a troubling sign of the GOP’s desperation that he’s virtually tied with Mitt Romney for the lead in the 2012 primaries. It pains me to actually have to take him seriously.
Of course, there’s no place in Kennedy’s speech where he said “people of faith are not allowed in the public square,” or anything close to that, and Santorum’s saying it three times doesn’t make it true. ...
It is absolutely clear that Kennedy accepts “people of faith in the public square” – his goal is to make a place for people of every faith in our public life. Kennedy doesn’t even go as far as Christian right hero Reagan, who actually said the separation of church and state protects the right of non-believers, too.
Kennedy doesn’t say he won’t consult with faith leaders; he says he won’t take “instruction on public policy from the Pope.” In fact, he confided in and took advice from Archbishop Philip Hannan, whom he befriended when he was first elected to Congress; Hannan gave the eulogy at Kennedy’s funeral. Sadly, Hannan died last September, after a long career as Archbishop of New Orleans, or else he might be able to refute Santorum from experience.
Capsule version: Jerry was elected pledging no taxes increases without a vote of the people. His proposal in 2011-12 for balancing the 2011-12 state budget was based primarily on reductions in services and a similar amount in increased revenues to come from a referendum to increase taxes. The Republicans in the legislature refused to agree to the referendum and Jerry made sure to clearly blame Republican obstructionism for it in public. Now, he's relying on the initiative route to put his revenue measure on the ballot, which will mean gathering signatures for it. Getting it on the ballot will not be a problem. And because Jerry has been clear and consistent from his 2010 campaign until now about the real tradeoffs between services and revenue, and because he's not afraid to fight the Republicans over something like this, polls currently show it has a good chance of passing.
Now there's a new twist. Howie:
We're in the middle of the biggest movement opportunity to increase taxes on the 1% and generate more revenue than arguably ever before in California history. The Millionaires Tax of 2012, a ballot measure sponsored by Courage Campaign, California Federation of Teachers, California Nurses Assocation and ACCE that is currently circulating for signatures, polls at freaking 70% among likely voters for November-- the highest I've ever seen a tax-raising measure polled. What does the measure do? It does what it sounds like-- raises taxes by 3% on every dollar a millionaire earns over $1 million and by 5% on every dollar over $2 million. That's it. No one making less than $1 million pays a penny more. How many people does that affect? 13,000 millionaires living in California-- 0.4% of Californians. That's right, it's not even taxing the 1%, it's taxing the frigging 0.4%, not to mention all those Facebook folks about to become millionaires by virtue of the IPO.
There is a third measure being proposed by a civil rights attorney, Molly Munger, that would raise income taxes with the additional funds designated for public education. See Nicholas Riccardi, Poll: Jerry Brown's tax can pass, but not with rivals on ballot [Updated}Los Angeles Times 02/22/2012.
My concern is the one expressed in that headline. Jerry has been doing extensive education/marketing for over a year on the idea of his proposed revenue measure and has the Democrats in the legislature backing him. That in itself is important. He's moving the California Democratic Party away from cowering to Republican framing and back toward making a case for positive government and progressive priorities.
On the face of it, the "millionaire's tax" sounds preferable. But we don't really need a poll to know that two or three tax-raising measures on the ballot are likely to split support, with some people voting for the "millionaire's tax" and not for the Democratic proposal, and vice versa. And with two or three tax measures on the ballot, the inevitable flood of opposition ads from Republicans and corporations will be able to confuse the two measures in voters' minds.
I don't really like the California initiative system, though I won't rant about all the reasons here. But one features of campaigns for ballot propositions is that the "yes" vote always starts at a disadvantage, in that if people are doubtful about a measure they tend to vote "no". In other words, to get a Yes vote, you have to convince people that it's something they want. To get a No vote, you just have to raise doubts about it.
And the campaigns over ballot propositions are often ludicrous. Not only do they often exaggerate or distort the actual provisions. They often focus on some minor provision and make it sound an asteroid about to crash into the Earth. For example, if the measure contains some reference to reporting requirements, the No ads might run messages like this:
Unprecedented increase in government demands for intimate details of your private life!
The Network of Business Accountants says, "paperwork requirement are unsustainable" and "will generate thousands of pages of new regulations on business"!
The Federation of Small Family Businesses found that Proposition X will result "in thousands of family-owned businesses closing their doors"!
And with two or more tax measures on the ballot, raising confusion and doubt about all of them with such ads will be more easily achieved.
The bottom line for me is that, based on what I know, I'd prefer to see Jerry's proposal alone on the ballot.
And this is where the trust factor comes in. Howie's post talks about Jerry as though he were a California version of Obama: emotionally inclined to support the One Percent, unwilling to fight for progressive priorities, and desperately looking to compromise with intransigent Republicans. That's just not Jerry Brown.
You can read about The Millionaires Tax of 2012 at the link. I like the progressive nature of the tax. I don't like the kind of earmarking that it does, apparently designating a certain percentage of all the revenue to go to designated purposes. What those provisions do in practice in complicate the budgeting process for the entities receiving the funding, i.e., they have to show that they complied with the technical provisions. But it's to a large extent illusory. If the schools have this designated stream of funding, local officials can reduce other sources of funding to the schools.
Their website also says, "Funding for services provided by the Millionaires Tax of 2012 will be distributed at the county level. The state legislature will not be allowed to re-allocate funding for other purposes." Presumably the 24% that is designated for institutions of higher education would be directed to those bodies, although if you read the text literally it would say the counties would distribute it to them, which doesn't make sense.
But there is an impressive list of labor and progressive organizations endorsing the Millionaires Tax. Digby and Howie may be right that the Millionaires Tax would be a better proposal for the Democrats to unite behind. But I'm not convinced. The politics of ballot measures, especially ones involving tax increases, are brutal. Jerry and the Democrats in the legislature have been laying the groundwork for their proposal for over a year. Right now, that looks like the better alternative to me.
The always-insightful Andrew Bacevich writes on The New American Way of War LRB Blog 02/13/2012, describing the Obama Administration strategy of waging war with passive acceptance from the public rather than actual democratic endorsement:
Drones and special forces are the essential elements of a new American way of war, conducted largely in secret with minimal oversight or accountability and disregarding established concepts of sovereignty and international law. Bush’s critics charge him with being a warmonger. But Obama has surpassed his predecessor in shedding any remaining restraints on waging war.
How exactly the new American way of war will promote the longterm well-being of the United States is unclear. Indeed, the question goes almost unasked. All we know is that there are a lot of people out there who qualify as bad guys. And we aim to kill them all.
Bacevich is one writer who maintains a high degree of consistency outside of conventional partisanship.
The Troika of the IMF, the EU and the ECB (European Central Bank) agreed a week ago on paying the latest tranche of bailout money to Greece, in exchange for more of Angela Merkel's crippling austerity politics, with the absurd aim of reducing Greece's debt-to-GDP ration to 120% by 2020. Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Italy are all undergoing EU- and bond market-imposed austerity programs of Angienomics, in the middle of a depression when the business cycle is dropping into a new recession in Europe. Others not under immediate pressure are taking less drastic but similar steps, as the Great God Free Market demands its latest sacrifices. Angienomics will shrink their economies, damage millions of lives, worsen their debt ratios and endanger democracy.
Democracy is in abeyance already in Hungary. Greece and Italy are operating under EU-imposed governments whose democratic legitimacy is valid only the most technical of senses, i.e., they went through the motions of parliamentary approval before installing the bank-collectors-agency governments that Angie demanded.
Feiberger and Zydra write:
Die spanische Regierung hat ehrgeizige Sparziele: Experten nennen das eine prozyklische Politik. Sie verstärkt den Trend, und der ist negativ. Die Rezession verschlimmert sich. "Dabei besteht die Gefahr, dass es durch die Abschwächung der Wirtschaft zu geringeren Staatseinnahmen und damit zu einem höheren Defizit als geplant kommt", fürchtet [Ökonom Peter] Bofinger und warnt: "Wenn die spanische Politik gezwungen wird, hierauf mit erneuten Sparmaßnahmen zu reagieren, dann spart sich das Land wirklich kaputt."
Griechenland, so Bofinger, sei diesem Punkt schon viel zu nahe. "Die katastrophale Lage der griechischen Wirtschaft kann nicht primär auf die mangelnde Spar- und Reformbereitschaft Griechenlands zurückgeführt werden", sagt er. Die jetzt beschlossenen Maßnahmen wie die Senkung des Mindestlohns, Rentenkürzungen und die Entlassung von 15.000 Staatsbediensteten würden vielmehr fatal an die Notverordnungspolitik des Reichkanzlers Heinrich Brüning von 1930 bis 1932 am Ende der Weimarer Republik erinnern und die Nachfrageschwäche in Griechenland weiter verschärfen.
[The Spanish government has ambitious savings goals: experts call that a pro-cyclical policy. It strengthens the trend and that is negative. The recession will get worse. "That creates the danger that through the weakening of the economy, there will be less government income and therefore a higher deficit than planned.," fears [economist Peter] Bofinger and warns: "If the Spanish policy is compelled to respond to that with new savings measures, then the country will really save itself to death."
Greece, according to Bofinger, is much to close to that point. "The catastrophic situation of the Greek economy cannot be traced primarily to the insufficient readiness of Greece to save and reform," he says. The currently decided measures like the lowering of the minimum wage, reduction of pensions and the laying off of 15,000 public employees would more recall the emergency-decree policy of Reich Chancellor Heinrich Brüning from 1930 to 1932 at the end of the Weimar Republic, and increase the weakness of economic demand in Greece.]
Political changes immediately following Brüning's Chancellorship are not generally considered to be constructive.
The EU, whose purpose way to secure democracy and peace in Europe, is turning into a nightmare for democracy. In Greece and several others countries, the nightmare is already underway.
I just heard this speech/sermon by a fundamentalist minister, Eric Metaxas, from the National Prayer Breakfast this year, followed by a speech of President Obama's. As Metaxas actually mentions in his speech, it's sponsored by a very conservative, fundamentalist group called The Family. He scoffs at critics of The Family as being conspiracy-mongers. But the critics of which I'm aware don't call it a conspiracy, they call it a Christian fundamentalist group that quietly cultivates members of Congress and has a theocratic political agenda. (See Jeff Sharlet, Sex and power inside "the C Street House"Salon 06/21/2009)
This National Prayer Breakfast video is a sobering look at how political fundamentalism deals with contemporary American politics and social realities.
He criticizes "dead religion", saying that Jesus intended to do away with it. Probably most of his hearers understood that to mean non-born-again Christianity, which at least to doctrinaire fundamentalists is not real Christianity at all. So this is a pretty exclusionary viewpoint. Just to be clear, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists don't have any valid relationship to God at all in that outlook, either.
Burleson is bubbly about the speech:
Masterpieces of word and craft are sometimes not recognized by either the author or the audience until the passage of time. A couple of weeks ago, Eric Metaxas delivered what may one day be considered the greatest speech ever given at a National Prayer Breakfast. The National Review has written of Metaxas' address in a remarkable article entitled The President and the Prophet: Obama's Unusual Encounter with Eric Metaxas. After Metaxas delivered a speech for the ages, the President followed with his own speech, amply illustrating with his words Metaxas' mantra that "A dead religion uses the words of God to do the opposite of what God does. It’s grotesque when you think about it. It's demonic. Keep in mind that when someone says 'I am a Christian' it may mean absolutely nothing[.]"
Burleson thought Metaxas was funny. But I thought his efforts at humor are snarky at best.
He tries to identify present-day Christian fundamentalists with the early anti-slavery activists, though the continuities between today's Christian Right and the hardline pro-slavery Christians in the slave states are far stronger than any links to Abolitionists. But this is a favorite conceit and marketing image for the Christian Right.
And in another favorite marketing ploy the Christian Right, specifically with reference to abortion, is to identify themselves with German Christians during the Third Reich who opposed the anti-Jewish policy. Metaxas does this with Dietrich Bonhoeffer in this speech. He makes a specific link to the anti-abortion cause.
In other words, it's largely a whiny-white-people kind of speech. Those who take a "Biblical view of sexuality" - by which he presumably condemnation of same-sex relationships and sex outside of marriage - those mean God-haters will call you bad names.
And he encouraged everyone to love their enemies on those issues. But it was, to put it mildly, an ambiguous call. Since he had just made it clear that anyone who opposed the fundamentalists on those two issues were not practicing true Christianity.
Burleson's own comment quoted above seems to indicate that he also doesn't believe the President is a Christian. This is a favorite game of the Christian Right.
Obama gives a decent speech, included in the video above, explaining his general approach in the context of religious values. It's a careful, sensible presentation, and relates his Christian person to those of Islam and Judaism. (Pam Spaulding provides a full transcript in Transcript: Remarks by the President at the National Prayer BreakfastPam's House Blend 02/04/2012.
But such a mainstream Christian presentation, with its distinct ecumenical elements, is jarringly out of harmony with the narrow exclusivity and obvious hostility Metaxas shows. I don't see what sense it makes for a President not part of the same narrow fundamentalist perspective to lend the prestige of the Office of the President to a gathering like this with a narrow sectarian purpose and a hardline conservative political bent. Or, if he does, he needs to directly confront the narrowness and bigotry that the Christian Right practices, something he has so far steadfastly refused to do.
Sam Tanenhaus reviews three recent books on the Tea Party in Will the Tea Get Cold? 02/09/2012, including The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism by Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson. The material he cites from their book give credence to the notion that "cultural" issues like race far outweigh economic issues for those who identify with the Tea Party. Which is another name for the Republican base, which is also largely the same as white conservative Christians or the Christian Right.
Those who identify with the Tea Party are the least likely to be potential Obama or Democratic voters. But the data he cites makes me wonder how many of them pay any attention at all to actual policy issues directly affecting their lives.
... fully 83% of South Dakota Tea Party supporters said they would prefer to "leave alone" or "increase" Social Security benefits, while 78% opposed cuts to Medicare prescription drug coverage, and 79% opposed cuts in Medicare payments to physicians and hospitals.... 56% of the Tea Party supporters surveyed did express support for "raising income taxes by 5% for everyone whose income is over a million dollars a year."
And he reports their more anecdotal observation:
With one exception, Skocpol and Williamson write, "not a single grassroots Tea Party supporter we encountered argued for privatization of Social Security or Medicare," pet projects of a conservative legislator like Paul Ryan and of organizations like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity. The Republican aspirants have adapted to these internal contradictions. They attack Obama for increasing government spending and at the same time for trimming $500 billion from Medicare.
Tanenhaus makes the argument that culture war issues override such concerns.
But if those numbers are true on their face, it suggests that a clear Democratic message of defending Social Security and Medicare and exploiting Republican proposals to reduce benefits could be effective in disrupting the Tea Party message and isolating them from actual independents.
But it's been true for decades that voters in general have strongly agreed with Democrats more than Republicans on a wide range of major issues. And yet Democrats seem to be constantly cringing in fear of Republicans' appeal.
I suspect there is something wrong with those poll numbers. We know from other polling that those identifying with the Tea Party in polls tend to be older and more affluent than average. I suspect that if a poll drills into these issues in more depth, the support of Tea Party supporters for Social Security, for example, would look a lot more squishy. There would probably be more of an attitude of "I've got mine and I want to keep getting it" involved. And along with a statement of support for Social Security, you would also probably get a lot of endorsement of the claims and ideological assumptions that the anti-Social Security activists and lobbyists use.
Tanenhaus' piece is the first of two, so we'll see later what his further conclusions are. And I guess this is Groan About Conventional Wisdom Day for me here. But this first part really seems to draw heavily on the very conventional assumption that the Republican Presidential contest is being fought between moderates and conservatives. He professes to find a continuity back to Wendell Willkie's nomination in 1940.
The reality of today's Republican Party is it no longer has a moderate faction in any meaningful sense of the word. Governor's Willard Romney in Massachusetts and Arnold Schwarzenegger in California could be seen as a last gasp of moderate Republicanism. But even that is misleading. Ten and fifteen years ago, the national Republican Party could swallow having someone run for Governor in blue states on a seemingly "moderate" basis on pragmatic grounds that it gave the Democrats a big pain. But Willard and Arnie as governors were outliers in a Party that had become "movement conservative". George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" was little more than a marketing slogan.
Tanenhaus is also painfully (in my mind) conventional in citing, yes, Richard Hofstadter. At least he also draws on a piece of his from the 1950s rather than just "The Paranoid Style in American Politics". I'm convinced that for some large portion of the American commentariat, that "Paranoid Style" piece by Hofstadter is the only analytic work longer than three pages they've ever read about the Radical Right. It's still relevant. I used to cite it myself until I saw how our Pod Pundits ran to it to try to understand the Tea Party. Just in the last ten years, there has been a flourishing scholarly and journalistic studies of the Radical Right.
Martin Marty and Scott Appleby edited a multi-volume series on religious fundamentalism in the 1990s. The first volume includes an essay by William Dinges, "Roman Catholic Traditionalism and Activist Conservatism in the United States". Given the role that Catholic conservative activists Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are playing right now in the Republican Party, I'm guessing even a star pundit might learn something useful from that. But it would mean reading over 50 pages not counting footnotes, so don't expect to hear Sleepy Mark Shields to be citing it when he wrings his hands over the wounded religious sentiments of the 2% or whatever portion of American Catholics give a flying flip about what the bishops say about birth control. Mark would have to have 10 or 15 siestas to get through it.
But this is an important observation, one that escaped most of the mainstream reporters who covered the Tea Party hoo-hah:
The early accounts of the Tea Party phenomenon often depicted its adherents as apolitical citizens disturbed by the recession and mounting debt and roused from their apathy to do something about it. This may be true of some, but others are seasoned activists long involved in politics. This is certainly the case with organizers like Dick Armey, the former House majority leader who heads FreedomWorks, a 2004 offshoot of an organization set up in 1984 by the billionaire Koch brothers. Jenny Beth Martin affects a pose of naiveté in her book: "If someone had told me [in 2009] that I would soon be writing a book about American politics, I would have laughed," she writes. But only a few pages later, when recounting her expert use of "Facebook, Twitter, and other social media," Martin explains that "I already had a political network, having been involved at the local and state level for many years"—and since the early 2000s she was "a full-time blogger and Republican activist." So too with the lower-profile Tea Partiers interviewed by Skocpol and Williamson: "An extraordinary number dated their first political experiences to the 1964 Goldwater campaign."
And since you would have to have been probably 15 or so to have a real political experience in the 1964 Presidential campaign, it implies that an "extraordinary number" of the Tea Parties they found would have be qualified for senior citizen discounts. Old Republican white people, in other words.
Rick Perlman commented in a speech or post I heard from him that in his research on far-right groups during the early 60s - those 1964 Goldwater campaign folks - he found that it was common for participants in their meetings to claim to the press that they were getting involved in politics for the first time. It's just kind of stuff they say.
Imagine for a few moments if the Obama Administration had done the following in its first term.
Prosecuted the torture perpetrators, civilian and military. Prosecuted Justice Department officials who had committed illegal acts as part of their segregationist attempt to concoct "voter fraud" cases out of the air. Closed the Guantánamo Gulag and processed the outstanding cases through civilian courts. Proposed a trillion-dollar-plus recovery package with the package focused on spending and little or none on taxes cuts and including a public jobs program. Put Citigroup and Bank of American through bankruptcy as he did with General Motors and used the occasion to reinstate Glass-Steagal regulations on investment banking and insist on far-reaching and effective regulations of financial derivatives. Proposed and fought for a single-payer healthcare program, and refused to settle for any compromise that did not include a public option. Gotten the Employee Free Choice Act passed and heavily promoted the value and importance of the labor movement. Used the BP oil spill to demand better safety regulations and more careful restrictions of offshore oil drilling and used it to emphasize the importance of renewable energy sources. Allowed the Bush tax cuts to expire. Aggressively defended Social Security and Medicare and called out the lies of the Peterson Foundation and other One Percent lobbies that opposed them. Relentlessly highlighted the responsibility of the previous Administration for the economic problems and adopted a reasonable policy for government transparency that would have allowed far more critical scrutiny of the failures and misdeeds of the Cheney-Bush team. And throughout his Presidency, emphasized the value of affirmative government and the irrelevance of the budget deficit instead of trying to sound as much like a Republican as possible in his framing of the issues.
Altogether, that sounds like a radical Administration in the context of politics as of February 2012. But all of those individual measures were discussed as practical policy alternatives in real time. All of them were measures that the Democratic base would have largely welcomed and would have been either broadly popular or popular with a significant plurality.
If that had been the case, would James Fallow be writing the following as he does in Obama, Explained for the March 2012 issue of The Atlantic?
Chess master, or pawn? That is the question I asked a variety of political figures last year, starting when the Obama administration was wrangling with Republicans in Congress to avoid a damaging default on the national debt. I spoke with current and past members of this administration, officials from previous administrations, current and past members of the Senate and the House, and some academics. Compared with the last two times a Democrat was in the White House - during Jimmy Carter’s administration in the late 1970s and Bill Clinton’s in the 1990s - I found Democrats much more careful about criticizing their own party’s president during an election year. It’s not that Democrats have become so much more disciplined, nor, obviously, that they have no complaints, but rather that they seem more worried about the risks of helping the other side. I asked someone who has been close to Obama if I could interview him about his experiences. He said, "I’m not going to say anything that might hurt during the campaign." At the Capitol, I asked one prominent Democratic legislator what he had learned about Obama as a leader and a person that the general public did not know. He sat for nearly a full minute and then replied, "I would rather not say." But other people I spoke with—from Congress and inside and outside the administration - volunteered sincere-seeming flattering accounts of the Obama they had observed in informal discussions and strategy sessions. [my emphasis]
Maybe he would be writing something similar. But I doubt it. Blue Dog Democrats like Ben Nelson would be howling at what a wild-eyed radical Obama turned out to be. In the Citizen's United era, there would very likely have been some kind of conservative challenger in the primaries.
Instead, we have a Democratic Party that should be challenging Obama on a number of fronts, publicly criticizing him on the ways his economic programs have fallen seriously short, attacking him for any hint of considering a "Grand Bargain" to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits, and holding Congressional hearings on dangerous and reckless programs of questionable legality in military affairs like targeted assassinations, drone strikes in countries with which we are not at war, and the reported Special Forces operations in dozens of countries.
Fallows' article is interesting, not least because it's likely to be influential among the punditocracy. But much of it is devoted to dismissing what Democratic criticism Obama is receiving as not even worth considering on the subject:
Another harsh reality of the modern presidency is one we conveniently forget when thinking about new presidents. Without exception, they betray their followers—and must do so, to stay in office and govern. In Obama’s case, this started with the forgiving approach to Wall Street and continued with his recommitment of troops to Afghanistan and extension of other Bush-era security policies.
However jarring, this is part of a historical norm. George W. Bush’s name was barely mentioned in the recent Republican primaries, because a party that professes concern about debt, deficit, and big bailouts cannot easily talk about what happened on his watch. Bill Clinton now reigns as the Democratic Party’s sun king and savior. ... In this he compares unfavorably to George W. Bush." Anything that bitter liberals have said about Barack Obama’s weakness and willingness to compromise was said more bitterly about the previous Democratic president.
Would those "bitter liberals" be the ones who now gripe about Obama's proposals to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits? I'm not sure in what part of the Democratic world that Bill Clinton is regarded as "sun king and savior." Clinton's respected for being a fighter in a way that Obama is not. But Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign showed dramatically that many Democrats have lasting regrets over the inadequacies of Clinton's policy choices. Fallows in operating in the "horse race" comfort zone of establishment political reporting when he writes stuff like that.
Fallows seems to think of "bitter" and "liberal" as practically a conjoined pair of words, bitterliberal. He also writes, "Jimmy Carter so antagonized the left that its champion, Teddy Kennedy, waged a bitter primary fight against him and badly weakened him for the general election." Jerry Brown also made a significant primary challenge that year, but maybe he's a nonentity in the Beltway Village memory banks.
It's worth remembering that it's a well-entrenched piece of conventional wisdom that Kennedy's primary challenge cost Jimmy Carter his re-election. It's easy to see why those participating in Carter's re-election drive would find that explanation attractive. But at most, it was one factor among many. Remember the Iranian hostage crisis? Neither Ted Kennedy or Jerry Brown caused that. Economic determinists among the pollsters more typically look at the state of the business cycle in 1980, whose course had something to do with the very tight money policies applied by Federal Reserve Carter appointee Paul Volker.
At best, that assumption about the 1980 election is highly questionable. In any case, it shouldn't stop Democrats from challenging incumbent Democratic Presidents. Primary challenges force the frontrunners to sharpen their game and engage the interest and enthusiasm of activists. It's hard to imagine that Obama's 2008 general election campaign would have been as strong as it was if he hadn't had a very strong primary challenge from Hillary Clinton. Given his combination of caution and devotion to destructive one-percenter economic policies, a liberal primary challenge in 2012 would likely have made him a stronger candidate in the general.
Fallows' argument is largely a defense of Obama's first-term performance, based heavily on both unnamed sources and named ones like Tom Daschle, the former Senate Majority Leader and healthcare industry lobbyist who Obama wanted to head his effort to enact healthcare reform. It's detailed enough and sufficiently drenched in conventional wisdom assumptions that it is likely to become a quick reference for other journalists, especially his list of Obama successes and not-so-much-successes to date.
Dany Cohn-Bendit is the leader of the Green Party caucus in the European Parliament and has been a committed "European," i.e., an advocate of the European Union and its continued development and political integration.
But his attitude toward the Angie-fied, neoliberal version of the EU, which German Chancellor Angela Merkel is now using a vehicle to impose her disastrous austerity politics on all of Europe, has him taking a different aprpoach.
The current official negotiating group dealing with Greece to solve their sovereign debt issues is known as the "troika": the International Monetary Fund (IMF), The EU Commission acting for the EU, and the European Centra Bank (ECB). The ECB is run by a committed Angiebot, and the other two are agreed on pushing the neoliberal austerity plan Angie is demanding.
In case of the latest Greek bailout the troika just agreed upon this past Monday, they came up with yet another solution that won't solve the Greek debt problem but will actually make it worse. Paul Krugman characterizes the latest agreement this way (Greece 02/21/2012):
What can I say? As Felix Salmon says, this really isn’t credible. The problem with all previous rounds here has been that austerity policies depress the economy to such an extent that it wipes out most of the topline fiscal gains: revenue fall, so does GDP, so the projected debt/GDP ratio gets, if anything, worse.
Now we have another round of austerity — which is assumed not to do too much damage to growth. The triumph of hope over experience.
OK, nobody here is an idiot (although see my next post). What’s happening is that nobody is prepared to take the plunge into either of the paths that might eventually lead out of this: sustained aid (not loans) to Greece, or departure from the euro, leading eventually to higher competitiveness and faster growth. Both options would be politically catastrophic, which means that they can’t be taken until there is literally no alternative.
The more serious deficit in the EU isn't on the government financial statements. It the democracy deficit that is a bigger problem.
The Troika not only blackmailed the Greek government into accepting its ruinous, unjust conditions for the current tranche of the bailout. They even made the leaders of the two major parties sign written agreements that they would stick to those conditions regardless of the outcome of parliamentary elections in Greece in March.
Propping up undercapitalized banks - still the basic problem in the sovereign debt crisis - and imposing Angie's secular-Protestant vision of virtuous economic austerity have become higher priorities for the EU than defending democracy.
It's pretty sad that it actually is news in the United States when a journalist for a major news service acts like a journalist in public.
In this unfortunately rare case, Jake Tapper of ABC challenged White House press flak Jay Carney on the Obama Administration very aggressive policy against whistleblowers and journalists who report on their revelations, as Bmaz discusses in Jake Tapper Flummoxes Jay Carney On White House Press Policy HypocrisyEmptywheel 02/22/2012.
As Bmaz explains:
It is an easy out for Carney to say he cannot talk about defendants and cases, but he can sure be questioned about the consistent policy of chilling reporters such as Jim Risen and Siobhan Gorman.
If you really want to show the hypocrisy, there is the story that is not emphasized enough. The Bush DOJ had subpoenaed Risen in the Sterling matter for the grand jury phase, but dropped it when he moved to quash. The Obama Administration, once again going to extremes even the much maligned Bush/Cheney one would not, reinstated the effort to haul Risen in front of a grand jury on Sterling and break his source protection. Judge Leonie Brinkema quashed the effort rather sharply.
But the DOJ has now gone after Risen a third time in their effort to squelch the ability of reporters to interact with sources, and protect the relationship. Even after Brinkema granted limited questioning of Risen at trial, that was not enough, the DOJ has appealed to get more. The thing is, the government does not need more from Risen to try Jeffrey Sterling, and that finding was made and supported well by Judge Brinkema. It is gratuitous and meant to chill the press, not just leakers. It is not just me saying that, it is a coalition of 29 news organizations, including ABC News.
The Obama Administration's position on government secrecy is the most extreme ever, worse than the Cheney-Bush Administration, and that's saying a lot. I have no doubt that Presidents Romney and Santorum would be even worse. But this is a real problem with the Obama Administration.
Among the various serious problems of our mainstream press in the US is the scarcity of foreign affairs and international coverage, which means that reporters, editors and publishers are even more susceptible to spin from the government and various narrow interest groups. Stephen Walt looks at one consequence of the NATO regime change operation in Libya, which was sold to the public - and to the the UN - as a humanitarian mission to protect civilians in Will victory in Libya cause defeat in Syria?Foreign Policy 02/06/2012. Russia and China recently vetoed a proposed UN Security Council resolution addressing the repression in Syria. Walt writes:
You'll recall that UN Security Council Resolution 1973 authorized military action in Libya to protect civilians. The resolution was directly inspired by the fear that Qaddafi loyalists laying siege to the rebel town of Benghazi were about to conduct some sort of massacre there. In response, Res. 1973 authorized member states "take all necessary measures…to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory." France, the United States and other foreign powers quickly went beyond this mandate, using airpower and other forms of assistance to help the rebels defeat Muammar Qaddafi's forces and oust him from power.
One can argue that this was the right course of action anyway, because getting rid of a thug like Qaddafi was worth it. That's a debate for another day, although I would note in passing that post-Qaddafi Libya remains deeply troubled and the collapse of the regime seems to be fueling conflicts elsewhere. But what if the Libyan precedent is one of the reasons why Russia and China aren't playing ball today? They supported Resolution 1973 back in 2011, and then watched NATO and a few others make a mockery of multilateralism in the quest to topple Qaddafi. The Syrian tragedy is pay-back time, and neither Beijing nor Moscow want to be party to another effort at Western-sponsored "regime change." It is hardly surprising that Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin condemned the failed resolution on precisely these grounds. In short, our high-handed manipulation of the SC process in the case of Libya may have made it harder to gain a consensus on Syria, which is arguably a far more important and dangerous situation. [my emphasis]
He makes a number of qualifications, e.g., the obligatory reference to Qaddafi being a bad guy, Russia and China doing themselves and the UN Security Council some harm by vetoing the anti-Syria resolution.
But his basic point is important. The US is pursuing a global-dominance strategy, which Walt would prefer to see replaced by an "offshore balancing" strategy requiring a less massive military and considerably less military intervention.
The current strategy assumes that the United States can and should intervene to change governments where there is a perceived pressing need and the target country does not possess nuclear weapons (Iraq, Libya - and Iran?). National sovereignty in those cases is treated as a short-run annoyance to be overcome, not as an important basic element in international relations.
But for all the rest of the nations of the world that are not the sole superpower, those questions are important. And it's perfectly understandable that even more powerful nations like Russia and China are very hesitant to support a UN humanitarian resolution that they have reason to believe could be used for another NATO regime-change war.
And, as Walt's post emphasizes, it is a setback for anyone genuinely concerned about the "obligation to protect" that is now part of international law. In a better-organized world, there would be some standards by which an international operation could be authorized to stop a genocidal operation.
But in a world still so addicted to war as ours is, and with the US pursuing a policy that involves considerable disregard of sovereignty and far too much willingness to engage in acts of war and subversion against regimes we consider undesirable, it's hard to see how the "obligation to protect" can be meaningfully enforced by the UN. I don't mean to dismiss what the UN does accomplish in its peacekeeping and humanitarian missions. But what it can accomplish, even through powerful members states, in cases of civil war or massive civil disturbance is often limited to minimizing the harmful consequences, not fixing the problems that are generating them.
While Germany's Angela Merkel is trying to reduce most of Europe to colonial status via her corrupted and increasingly authoritarian EU, there still are actual colonies in the world, recognized as non-self-governing territories (NSGT) by the United Nations. There are 16 of them, of which 10 are controlled by Britain (Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands (Malvinas), Gibraltar, Montserrat, Pitcairn, St. Helena, and the Turks and Caicos Islands). Of the remaining six three are controlled by the United States (American Samoa, Guam and the US Virgin Islands), and the others by France (New Caledonia), New Zealand (Tokelau) and Spain (Western Sahara, still in a formal process of transition to independence).
Argentina and Spain are both making significant diplomatic pushes at the moment over the Malvinas (called Falklands by Britain) and Gibraltar, respectively.
Argentina has built an impressive coalition of diplomatic support demanding that Britain negotiate the return of the Malvinas to Argentina sovereignty, which Britain refuses to do. The conservative, Angiebot austerity government in Spain is making a similar demand over Gibraltar. Britain is responding by smugly insisting that the decision is up to the residents of those islands.
Britain knows that this is not how national sovereignty works: colonize someplace, fill it with colonists supportive of the colonial country, then pretend to be honoring the self-determination of the people of the colony. In the case of the Malvinas, the residents there enjoyed only limited rights under British rule until after the Argentine military junta's failed attempt to take the islands by force in 1982.
Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron has seen fit to do a lot of huffing and puffing and threatening over the Malvinas, sending a warship and a nuclear submarine to the area. Britain's sad excuse for an opposition party is interested only in out-posturing the Conservatives in defense of their colony: Simon Hoggart, Labour sabres still rattle loudest for the Falklands, 30 years onGuardian 02/20/2012. Here's the sad sample Hoggart gives:
And as 30 years ago, when the old peacemonger Michael Foot cheered the task force on its way, it was Labour MPs whose sabres rattled loudest.
Sir Gerald Kaufman, one of the few MPs left from those distant days, insisted that "if there is any sign from this crew ..." (he pronounced the word "crew" as if it was something he had just scraped off his shoe) "in Buenos Aires that they are going to try it on again, they must be stopped!"
Mr [Defence Secretary Philip] Hammond, as befits a modern day defence secretary, sounded as if he might have a fit of the vapours at all this spear-shaking and shield-bashing. "The 'crew' in Buenos Aires are quite a different crew from 1982," he said. "We are dealing now with a democratic Argentina that has publicly eschewed the use of force." ...
Gisela Stuart pointed out that already the Falklands supply lines were severely impeded. Would they be able to obtain fresh food, or should they lay in emergency stockpiles of mint sauce for the long, lamb-munching months to come? (She didn't actually put it like that, but that is what she meant.)
Denis MacShane, another Labour MP, banged the drums again. Various military chiefs, including admirals Woodward and West, plus General Sir Mike Jackson, had pointed out that there wasn't much the government could do if Argentina did invade, since we had no naval aircraft carrier on the high seas. "We are in the worst position in five centuries of naval history!"
The United States officially supports Argentina's position that Britain should formally negotiate with Argentina over the Malvinas. But the Pentagon, which is generally concerned to preserve all conveniences in global force projection, may have it's doubts because Britain's control of the islands puts them and their territorial waters under the control of a NATO ally. And, in Britain's case, one whose main foreign policy priority seems to be to kowtow to whatever the United States wants.
The Malvinas have only about 3000 inhabitants, "kelpers" as they are known. There are valuable fishing rights at stake. But also oil. Which always raises the stakes considerably.
The great wave of decolonization that followed the Second World War had a huge effect on international politics in the 1950s and 1960s. The Soviet Union and China competed to see which of them could lead anti-imperialist national-liberation movements, hoping to weaken the relative global position of the United States and win more international allies.
It would be hard to say whether meddling in such struggles in the developing world did more harm to the US or the Soviet Union. But whatever conflicts of a similar type continue to occur, the remaining areas that are formal colonies/NSGTs in the way that India and Southeast Asia once were are unlikely to produce anything like the same level of conflicts.
But that's not to say they aren't important. For one thing, a good argument can be made that Tibet should be considered a colony of China, and a conflict over Tibet could become significant. The CIA ran some black ops in Tibet in the 1950s to encourage revolts against China, operations that illustrate more the foolishness and arrogance of the US at the time than anything about the (more than dubious) talents of the CIA in promoting "regime change".
President Obama came to national prominence with a unity theme. At the Democratic National Convention in 2004, Obama was a state senator in Illinois running for the US Senate. He instantly defined himself in the minds of Democrats as a potential participant on the national ticket. He was willing to strike Democratic campaign themes:
And fellow Americans, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, I say to you tonight: We have more work to do -- more work to do for the workers I met in Galesburg, Illinois, who are losing their union jobs at the Maytag plant that’s moving to Mexico, and now are having to compete with their own children for jobs that pay seven bucks an hour; more to do for the father that I met who was losing his job and choking back the tears, wondering how he would pay 4500 dollars a month for the drugs his son needs without the health benefits that he counted on; more to do for the young woman in East St. Louis, and thousands more like her, who has the grades, has the drive, has the will, but doesn’t have the money to go to college.
He struck Democratic themes in that passage: but he was careful to frame them not as Democratic themes but as ones crossing all ideological borders. Now, it´s normal for speakers at a Democratic National Convention to make at least ritual calls for Republican support. But here he wasn´t saying that the Democratic Party will do this for you and the Republican Party won´t. He delivered the message without drawing the partisan line.
And it´s notable how he followed immediately that passage with this one, which accepts the Republican framing of the proper role of government, a neoliberal framing with a hint of concern about Pentagon "waste" thrown in to distinguish it from the more typical Republican framing:
Now, don’t get me wrong. The people I meet -- in small towns and big cities, in diners and office parks -- they don’t expect government to solve all their problems. They know they have to work hard to get ahead, and they want to. Go into the collar counties around Chicago, and people will tell you they don’t want their tax money wasted, by a welfare agency or by the Pentagon. Go in -- Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach our kids to learn; they know that parents have to teach, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. They know those things. [my emphasis]
I´ll say it again: this was Republican framing of the proper role and capabilities of government. Yes, the public employees known as school teachers do teach kids how to learn, and teach them actual facts and skills, as well. Tossing in "alone " after " government " doesn't make it any less Republican framing. Nobody ever claimed that schools alone could teach kids the learning skills they need, whether they are public or private schools. This was a typical Republican strawman, and Democrats shouldn´t be using such framing, not in 2004 and not in 2012.
And it surely seemed like clever politics at the time to our Pod Pundits, who almost to a person accept this neoliberal framing (though perhaps a dull-witted version of it). But what´s the first thing that wastes "tax money " in Obama´s famous 2004 speech? Welfare. So now in 2012 when the Republicans call him the "food-stamp President ", will he straightforwardly defend public assistance for those thrown into poverty by the depression? Or will he make a defense and then pepper-spray in the next breath by talking about tax money being wasted on "welfare " and how black people are so stupid and racist that they tell they tell their children that learning to read is too "white"?
Do I even need to ask rhetorically whether Obama´s willingness to frame things in such a way, in 2004, in 2008 and throughout his Presidency, has made Republicans less willing to attack him as, say, ¨the foodstamp President¨?
And how did he address the policies and priorities of the Cheney-Bush Administration in that now-legendary 2004 speech?
People don’t expect -- People don't expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all. [my emphasis]
With just a slight change in priorities. That´s not drawing contrasts. It´s apologizing for expressing any difference at all.
And this is peroration that the pundits loved so much, even though he suggested a mild criticism of them:
It is that fundamental belief -- It is that fundamental belief: I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family.
E pluribus unum: "Out of many, one."
Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us -- the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of "anything goes." Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there's the United States of America.
Again, it sounds lovely for an Inaguration speech or a Sunday morning sermon. But there are different Americas with different priorities and needs who expect different things from government. There is a 99% and a 1%.
His 2004 Senate election saw him facing an exceptionally weak Republican opponent, Alan Keyes, so it didn't require him to draw strong contrasts.
He did have to find ways to distinguish himself from Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primaries and caucuses, and that forced him to highlight distinctions such as his early opposition to the Iraq War. And he was willing to draw some distinctions with the Cheney-Bush Administration in the 2008 election. But his main distinction in the general election is that he wasn't George W. Bush, wasn't John McCain and wasn't a Republican. And even in that election, he was remarkably skittish about appearing too sharply partisan, like when he disassociated his campaign from Wesley Clark after Clark made a pointed comment about McCain's experience as a pilot being very different than executive experience.
The first three years of his Administration have shown again and again the degree to which he has been willing to almost desperately appeal to Republicans in pursuit of post-partisan harmony. The Republicans, on the other hand, have become even more bitterly partisan.
Which brings me to two very worthy posts by Charlie Pierce at Esquire Politics Blog.
In The GOP Farm Team Brings the Wingnut Once More 02/14/2012, he describes how the Republican Party is moving further and further away from a democratic party of compromises, and doesn´t care if the Democrats keep moving more and more to the Republican position:
They do not stop, even when they're losing. The country told them, through the 1998 midterms, that it didn't want Bill Clinton impeached. Bill Clinton got impeached. In 2005, everybody including their Democratic colleagues told them that they were going off the cliff in their meddling in the life and death of Terri Schiavo. There were gobs of polling data to back them up. The Republicans kept meddling even after Ms. Schiavo passed.Is there any evidence that the Republicans are moving "toward the middle" in their presidential contest? Ask poor Willard Romney if that's the case. The current frontrunner [Rick Santorum] is a nutball ultramontane Catholic who lost his last race by 18 points, at least in part because he was one of the more noxious of the Schiavo meddlers.
The fact is that the presidency is not really that important to them. They have found a way to make it impossible for any Democratic president to govern as a Democrat. Their real goal is in the legislatures, federal and state, where they have been able to exercise their power on the issues they care about. They will not change themselves. They are going to have to have the wingnut flogged out of them over several losing election cycles, and they've arranged things in the states so that may not be possible. The president should not be talking about "Congress" and "Washington," and expect the country to clue in that he's nudging and winking in code about the Republicans. He should make it clear that one of our two major political parties is now an extremist party from its lowest levels to its highest echelons. This should be an issue in the campaign as imporant as income inequality or campaign finance, but it won't be. Barack Obama's just not built that way. And, out in the states, things are getting crazier by the day. [my emphasis]
And he explains why it´s important for Obama not to just be on the more popular side in confrontations, like he was and is on the birth control issue right now, but also to draw the contrasts sharply (The Obama Budget Farce 02/13/2012):
The budget is a campaign document. As such, it's a pretty good one on which to run. As a governing document, it would solve a lot of the nation's problems. But campaigning is as far removed from governing at this point as swimming is from camel-driving. This is a result of the endless propagandizing, not only that all "government" is bad and useless, but also that any participation in the political process is a game for suckers because They'll steal all your money, and They don't care what you think, stout yeoman. ...
Did people "feel guilty" about the benefits they were getting from the GI Bill? Did all those generations of elderly who survived because they had Social Security "feel guilty" about not starving to death? The breakdown in the national consensus that we must be a political commonwealth was deliberate and determined, and it's worked so well that now you have people seriously arguing that The Other who is wasting all our money is themselves. The doctrines of the modern Right have engendered not only selfishness and anger, but a profound self-loathing.
We have had nearly four decades of preaching that self-government is merely a marginally interested spectator sport. The roads are still broken because our politics are broken, and because our politics are broken, the country is broken, and it's everybody's fault. [my emphasis]
And it certainly won´t be changed by the Democrats campaigning on the idea that the deficit is a problem we need to be worried about now. Or pretending that there´s no Red America and Blue America. Or meekly pleading for just a slight change in priorities.
There are important differences between the Democratic and Republican Parties in the Presidential election: on business regulation, on the environment, on women's rights, on public education, on war with Iran.
But Obama isn't running this time as a kind of blank slate into which voters can simply project their hopes for an alternative to a highly unpopular Republican Administration, which was the case in 2008. Obama has a continuing depression with high unemployment as the social context of this year's Presidential election. And the legal context of the Citizen's United ruling which removes all meaningful restraints on the power of the wealthy to spend on partisan campaign advertising. Obama's continuing reluctance to draw sharp distinctions with the Republicans could lose him the Presidential election, even against Rick Santorum, especially if the economy takes another turn for the worst, which is a distinct possibility.
The larger problem for progressives and for anyone who takes the reform traditions of the Democratic Party seriously is just what Pierce describes: the Republicans "have found a way to make it impossible for any Democratic president to govern as a Democrat." Until the Democratic Party can be revitalized to fight for pro-labor ends, and until there are strong enough social movements outside the Democratic Party to keep pressure on it to act like a democratic party, the dogmatic theology of the Free Market, which most of the world calls neoliberalism, will continue to dominate our politics in America.
I'm a Jacksonian Democrat - as in Andy Jackson don't-let-the-bankers-and-secessionists-take-over Democrat. Also a lifelong political junkie. One of my longtime interests has been the interaction betwee politics and religion, and I'll be doing quite a few posts on that here. I'm originally from Mississippi and have lived for years in California. So your likely to hear both Southern and West Coast references in my posts.
