November, 07 2008, 05:26pm EDT
Media Tell Obama--Don't Be a Lefty Like Clinton
Rewriting The '94 Election To Find A Centrist Moral
WASHINGTON
Immediately after Barack Obama was
pronounced the victor in the 2008 presidential election, corporate
media began to tell him how he ought to govern--in most cases, urging
him to hew toward the center. To support their argument, many
journalists pointed to President Bill Clinton's first term to find
lessons in centrism for Obama. But are media getting the history wrong?
In that "unhappy first year in office," wrote the Los Angeles Times' Doyle McManus (11/5/08),
"Democratic congressional leaders pushed a new president to the
left--leading to the party's loss of both houses in the midterm
elections of 1994."
"Though Democrats now are in a position to steamroll their policies
into place without much regard to the Republican minority, both history
and the national mood suggest a bit of bipartisanship would be wise,"
wrote Gerald Seib in the Wall Street Journal (11/5/08). Seib saw a liberal healthcare plan as Clinton's downfall:
Mr. Clinton won in 1992 with friendly
Democratic majorities in Congress strikingly similar to those Sen.
Obama will enjoy: 258 House seats and 57 Senate seats. He did, in fact,
reach across the aisle to Republicans initially to balance the budget
and promote free trade--policies that had durable and lasting support
precisely because they had a bipartisan foundation.
But he then fell into the trap of leaning on the power of Democratic
votes, and ignoring the animosity of minority Republicans, to try to
push through the single biggest domestic effort of his first term, a
wholesale remaking of the nation's healthcare system. It was an
overreach, which Republicans drove home by reminding voters that Mr.
Clinton had won office with just 43 percent of the popular vote, thanks
to the votes siphoned away by independent candidate Ross Perot.
The backlash was instant, and painful. Democrats lost 54 House seats
and 10 Senate seats in 1994, just two years after Mr. Clinton took
office.
The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus (11/5/08) saw Clinton's failure in his "Don't Ask Don't Tell" and environmental policies:
The experience of President Bill Clinton's
rocky early months--remember gays in the military? the BTU
tax?--suggests the steep political price of governing in a way that is,
or seems, skewed to the left. This risk is particularly acute for
Obama, whose opponents have painted him as a leftist extremist. The
good news is that his advisers seem exquisitely aware of this trap and
determined not to fall into it.
Dan Balz of the Washington Post (11/5/08)
turned to former Clinton adviser William Galston, who suggested that
rather than following the example of FDR's New Deal or Lyndon Johnson's
Great Society, he should instead heed the warning of "1993, the start
of Clinton's first term, when Democrats pushed another liberal agenda,
only to find that the country was resistant. Within two years,
Democrats lost their congressional majorities." Galston, Balz reported,
said there was little evidence heading into
yesterday's balloting that the country had taken a sharp left turn.
"It's hard to say substantively what mandate Obama and the Democrats
have gotten," he said. "They've gotten a chance to make their case."
Of course, it's hardly surprising that a committed centrist would argue
that Clinton's first term failure was that he was too liberal; Brookings
identifies him as a longtime senior adviser to the Democratic
Leadership Council (DLC), a corporate-backed group that exists to push
the Democratic Party to the right.
It's a long-standing myth, and a useful one for centrists and
conservatives who wish to see Democrats shift right. But there's very
little evidence that it's actually true; in fact, it's more likely that
Clinton's abandonment of leftist campaign promises led to the 1994
reversal of power in Washington.
As several commentators have pointed out, Democratic voter turnout
declined in 1994, while Republican turnout increased. Rick Perlstein (Boston Review, Summer/04)
pointed to political scientist Martin Wattenberg, who showed that
"registered nonvoters in 1994 were consistently more pro-Democratic
than were voters on a variety of measures of partisanship"--which
suggests, wrote Perlstein, that "the real triumph of the Republicans in
1994 was not ginning up any kind of new national consensus on their
issues, but in motivating their own core voters to create a temporary
mirage of such a consensus."
And why did Democratic voters not show up to the polls in '94? It's
doubtful that it's because Clinton went too far to the left. According
to Public Citizen (cited in Huffington Post, 9/21/07),
polling showed people were actually "upset about NAFTA's passage and
specifically about local representatives' support of NAFTA." NAFTA,
remember, is exactly the sort of "centrist," bipartisan policy that
pundits urge Obama to pursue in order to reassure voters. All evidence
suggests that for Clinton, it actually had the opposite effect--despite
the Wall Street Journal's claim that it had "durable and lasting support."
Clinton also moved to the right on the two programs that the Washington Post's
Marcus cites as scaring off voters--he had promised during the campaign
to allow gays to serve openly in the military, and he dropped the
proposal pushed by Al Gore for an energy tax. Meanwhile, Clinton pushed
through "welfare reform" and dramatically scaled back his promised
domestic programs at the urging of deficit hawk Democrats.
As FAIR has argued in the past (Extra!, 1-2/95),
this failure to address the economic stagnation that afflicted
working-class and minority voters is the most plausible explanation for
the Democrats' 1994 woes; while media raved about the "rising economy,"
real wages for the bottom 75 percent of workers continued their
downward fall in 1993 and stayed flat in 1994.
Former Clinton official Mike Lux argued (Open Left, 11/6/08)
that when the Clinton administration finally pushed healthcare to the
fore, "we failed far more because of our own political mistakes,
especially on not pursuing a more populist anti-insurance industry
message, than because voters thought we were being too liberal." Lux's
post-'94 election poll analysis found that "there was a 22-point
difference in terms of Democratic support (in the wrong direction, of
course) between those who voted [in '94] and those who had in 1992 but
didn't in 1994, thereby sealing our fate." And "disproportionately
large among those non-voters were working-class and unmarried women."
The move to the center overjoyed many in the media, but it seemed to
take the steam out of the voters who put them in office back in 1992.
Obama and the Democrats may well learn from the mistakes of Clinton's
first term, but they would be wise not to take history lessons from
corporate media.
FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986. We work to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints.
LATEST NEWS
'My Child Is Human': Palestinian American Mother Disrupts Austin Testimony
"Secretary Austin, why are you denying Israel's genocide in Gaza?" advocates asked the defense secretary at a hearing.
Apr 17, 2024
A week after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told lawmakers that the U.S. has no "evidence of genocide being created" in Gaza, peace activists disrupted the Pentagon chief's testimony on the Biden administration's 2025 budget request and demanded he acknowledge the humanity of Palestinian children.
"My child is human!" said Nasbeebah Hajjaj, a Palestinian-American woman who held up her 16-month-old son, Hamza. "Stop killing Palestinian children!"
The anti-war group CodePink said Hajjaj immigrated to the U.S. with her family when she was two months old, and has lost approximately 20 family members to Israel's bombardment of Gaza since October.
The group targeted Austin's testimony a month after the Biden administration released its 2025 budget request—a proposal that includes $1.1 trillion in military-related spending. Despite growing calls from U.S. lawmakers and rights advocates, the White House has not announced conditions for military aid to Israel, which has been widely accused of human rights violations as it has assaulted Gaza and blocked humanitarian aid from reaching Palestinians.
Israel's bombardment has killed at least 33,899 Palestinians so far, and more than two dozen people have died of starvation in recent months as international experts have warned parts of northern Gaza are facing famine.
At least 13,000 children have been killed, and the United Nations reported in February that 70% of those killed overall have been women and children—even as Israel and the U.S. have insisted Israeli forces are targeting Hamas.
The International Court of Justice issued a preliminary ruling in January saying Israel is "plausibly" committing genocide in Gaza, and lawmakers including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have expressed support for the ruling—but the U.S. has dismissed the court's findings, including at Austin's hearing last week.
While Hajjaj held up her son at Wednesday's hearing, another protester, identified by CodePink as Helen, addressed the defense secretary.
"Secretary Austin, why are you denying Israel's genocide in Gaza? Why are you denying genocide in Gaza?" said Helen, who was arrested after being led out of the hearing. "The whole world sees it! You know the laws of war! You know you have blood on your hands! You have blood on your hands! We have blood on our hands."
The advocates chanted, "Shame on you!" as they were led out of the hearing room.
Outside the hearing room, Hajjaj emphasized that the Biden administration has "the power to stop" Israel's attacks on Gaza by cutting off its military aid—of which the U.S. is the largest international supplier. The Foreign Assistance Act stipulates that the U.S. cannot provide military funding to countries that block American humanitarian aid.
"They just want to continue to arm death and destruction," said Hajjaj.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Report Sounds Alarm Over Growing Role of Big Tech in US Military-Industrial Complex
The paper's author found that the five largest military contracts to major tech firms between 2018 and 2022 "had contract ceilings totaling at least $53 billion combined."
Apr 17, 2024
The center of the U.S. military-industrial complex has been shifting over the past decade from the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area to Northern California—a shift that is accelerating with the rise of artificial intelligence-based systems, according to a report published Wednesday.
The report—entitledHow Big Tech and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Military-Industrial Complex—was authored by Roberto J. González, a professor of cultural anthropology at San José State University, for the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs.
The new paper comes amid the contentious rise of AI-powered lethal autonomous weapons systems, or killer robots; increasing reliance upon AI on battlefields from Gaza to Ukraine; and growing backlash from tech workers opposed to their companies' products and services being used to commit or enable war crimes.
"Although much of the Pentagon's $886 billion budget is spent on conventional weapon systems and goes to well-established
defense giants such as Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Boeing, and BAE Systems, a new political economy is emerging, driven by the imperatives of big tech companies, venture capital (VC), and private equity firms," González wrote.
"As Defense Department officials have sought to adopt AI-enabled systems and secure cloud computing services, they have awarded large multibillion-dollar contracts to Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Oracle," he added. "At the same time, the Pentagon has increased funding for smaller defense tech startups seeking to 'disrupt' existing markets and 'move fast and break things.'"
The report highlights the rise of a new class of billion-dollar military contractors, "a combination of gargantuan tech firms like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, and hundreds of smaller, pre-IPO startup companies supported by VC firms."
"The use of drones and AI-enabled weapons systems in Ukraine and Gaza, and a feared AI arms race with China, have fueled the
Pentagon's heavy investment in advanced digital tech," González wrote.
A lack of transparency is obscuring the true value of some of the largest military contracts to tech companies.
"One estimate indicates that U.S. military and intelligence agencies awarded at least $28 billion to Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet (Google's parent company) between 2018 and 2022," the report states. "The actual value of these contracts is likely much higher, because many of the largest known contracts with U.S. tech companies are classified and withheld from public procurement databases."
González found that the five largest military contracts to major tech firms between 2018 and 2022 "had contract ceilings totaling at least $53 billion combined."
"Major tech firms are also awarded large subcontracts from relatively obscure intermediaries or 'passthrough' companies that are granted primary contracts from the Pentagon—evading scrutiny and analysis," the paper adds.
González said that multi-year software-as-a-service contracts "could make the Pentagon and CIA more dependent than ever on the expertise of technical experts from the private sector."
The risk of conflicts of interest increases as military-dependent tech companies go public.
"As just one example, since going public, more than half of Palantir Technologies' revenue has come from the federal government," the report states. "Recent Palantir contracts with the U.S. Army Special Operations Command and the Air Force are worth more than $900 million. Palantir stock rose more than 170% in 2023."
There's also the danger of a "revolving door" between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon as many senior government officials "are now gravitating towards defense-related VC or private equity firms as executives or advisers after they retire from public service."
"The traditional 'revolving door' meant that a former defense official might accept an executive position with traditional weapons manufacturers; there are more lucrative options now," González wrote. "At least 50 former defense officials are working in VC and private equity, leveraging their connections with current officials or members of Congress to advance beneficial legislation for defense tech firms in their firms' investment portfolios."
"The implications are significant: The new 'revolving door' will accelerate military and intelligence agency funding for early-stage defense tech startups," the report states.
González details how "overblown, inaccurate, ideological talking points are driving defense funding for Big Tech," including "grandiose claims about the effectiveness of artificial intelligence; the overestimation of China's military and technological capabilities; the idea that America has the ability and duty to protect the world's democratic societies; and a steadfast belief that the best way to preserve U.S. dominance is through a free market that prioritizes corporate needs."
"These perspectives boost demand for military AI, and are promoted by a network of tech executives, venture capitalists, think tank analysts, academic researchers, journalists, and Pentagon leaders," he wrote.
Finally, the report warns that "aggressive Big Tech business models" can rush the development of weapons, endangering both combatants and civilians.
"Members of the armed services and civilians are in danger of being harmed by inadequately tested—or algorithmically flawed—AI-enabled technologies," the paper states. "By nature, VC firms seek rapid returns on investment by quickly bringing a product to market, and then 'cashing out' by either selling the startup or going public. This means that VC-funded defense tech companies are under pressure to produce prototypes quickly and then move to production before adequate testing has occurred."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'A Big, Big Deal': Chattanooga Volkswagen Workers Begin Voting in Key Union Election
"Looking back, you could see this being the first domino in something that changes the entire South," said one labor journalist.
Apr 17, 2024
Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee began voting Wednesday on whether to join the United Auto Workers, a closely watched election seen as a critical test for the emboldened union's ability to organize in the U.S. South.
The election kicked off a month after workers at the Chattanooga plant filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) formally requesting an election to join the UAW, which secured record-breaking contracts at the Big Three U.S. automakers last year after a historic six-week strike.
Following the hard-fought contract victories, the UAW launched what's been described as the largest union organizing drive in modern U.S. history, targeting nonunion car manufacturers such as Tesla, Toyota, and Volkswagen.
The Chattanooga election marks the third time in a decade that the UAW has tried to organize the Volkswagen plant, which currently has around 4,300 workers. Voting concludes on Friday.
"This election is a big, big deal—probably the most important union election that this country has seen in years," labor journalist Hamilton Nolan said in a Democracy Now! appearance on Wednesday. "Looking back, you could see this being the first domino in something that changes the entire South."
About 4,000 Volkswagen workers in Tennessee are voting on whether to unionize with the United Auto Workers. Labor journalist @hamiltonnolan says it's the most important union vote in years and could be the "first domino" in a wider push to organize the auto industry in the South. pic.twitter.com/RWFnO5KznI
— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) April 17, 2024
Chattanooga workers voiced confidence that this election will be different than 2014 and 2019, when Volkswagen employees voted against joining the UAW by narrow margins.
"We're going to win," Lisa Elliott, a quality control worker at Volkswagen, toldThe Guardian's Steven Greenhouse. "We have the momentum. I know this will be a historic event."
In addition to the Chattanooga effort, the UAW is trying to organize Mercedes-Benz workers in Vance, Alabama. Earlier this month, a supermajority of Mercedes workers in Vance submitted a petition to the NLRB requesting an election to join the UAW.
UAW's organizing efforts have drawn national attention—and ire from anti-union politicians, including the Republican governors of Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and other states in the U.S. South.
Joseph McCartin, a labor historian at Georgetown University, told Greenhouse that "a victory at Volkswagen would make a victory at Mercedes much more likely."
"Victories at both Volkswagen and Mercedes would be nothing less than an earthquake," McCartin added. "This would be the biggest breakthrough in private-sector organizing in decades. It would mean that the anti-union citadel [in the South] that has repulsed effort after organizing effort has been breached."
University of California, Berkeley professor Harley Shaiken echoed that assessment in an interview with The New York Times.
"It would be a revolution for the UAW and for the auto industry," Shaiken said of a UAW win. "It would break the glass ceiling for unions in the South, and would mean more purchasing power for working-class people in that region."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular