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Moving American Politics off Dead Center
Conventional wisdom holds that political success lies in finding the center of popular opinion, which remains moderate to conservative. Coming from a media that have consistently failed to anticipate or even fully acknowledge the current economic crisis, such wisdom is suspect. Success in stable times may lie in claiming the center.
Nonetheless, in times of turmoil it can depend on recognizing that politics is not always a linear enterprise. Merely offering refined revisions of conventional wisdom fails to address fluidity and emerging trends that may presage wholly new beginnings. Centrism may not even inspire voters. Politically astute and effective leaders encourage, though they cannot control, new beginnings.
Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was a centrist endeavor, but not in the sense that term has for elite media. In the 1920s, Republicans were ardent free marketeers. Herbert Hoover's Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon viewed the crash of 1929 as a beneficent lesson to the reckless and irresponsible.
But 1920s Democrats were hardly radicals. They had moved a long way from Wilsonian progressivism. They were a muddled alliance of corporate conservatives and big city machines. In 1932, FDR ran on a platform advocating a balanced budget. The reforms for which we know FDR hardly represented a midpoint between two moribund parties. FDR's pragmatic mind-set and political astuteness lay in his response to and creative harnessing of several diverse and emerging currents.
Amid desperate Republican efforts to discredit him, powerful grass-roots efforts by Communists to repudiate the entire capitalist economy gained potency. Huey Long's Southern populist, share the wealth campaigns were even more popular. Social Security and the Wagner Labor Act both accepted market capitalism, but also added important elements of security and modest redistribution to the system. These acts, along with the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, set the terms for a reformed capitalism that would prosper for a generation.
But the very economic security it provided allowed other concerns to emerge. Both FDR and his Republican opponents had assumed that work and economic growth were the meaning of life. As long as workers received fair compensation, owners could control the workplace and working hours.
Both also had assumed the U.S. was the world's predominant power. These smooth assumptions were challenged as younger workers in the full employment 1960s demanded more of work than a paycheck. Minorities and foreign nations rebelled against a consensus that left them out.
Turmoil and stagflation in the late 60s created an opening for Ronald Reagan, another master politician, to fashion a new center. That center was a loose but potent marriage of market fundamentalists, nationalists and social conservatism that few could have foreseen fully. His conservatism endured even during the Clinton era, though with modest revisions.
To reassure voters, who had not forgotten late 60s turmoil, of his "soundness," Clinton advocated toughness on crime and ending welfare. His one modest claim to progressive credentials lay in expanded education as a way to toughen workers for participation in an international knowledge economy.
The Reagan-Clinton era emphasis on education, corporate trade deals, financial deregulation and competitiveness has left most workers in the lurch. Inequality and insecurity have grown even more under Bush.
Americans remain suspicious of welfare, but other steps to reduce inequality and improve security now have a clear opening. New polling data suggest that a majority worry more about government not doing enough to stimulate the economy than about tax increases - especially on the wealthy.
Americans now increasingly recognize that much modern wealth is not created by individual initiative but by political favoritism. Even now, President Bush and Henry Paulson are using, perhaps illegally, the bank bailout program to enrich executives and stockholders.
Congressional Democrats should continue hearings on the implementation of this bailout. If such hearings cannot force or shame the Bush administration to redirect bailout funds to the real economy, they can at least lay a foundation for tax reform under Obama. Fair capital gain and income taxes will in effect recapture some ill-gotten gains so that the costs of economic reconstruction are fairly distributed.
Activists must also pressure Obama and congressional Democrats to enact both short- and long-range stimulus programs to reduce unemployment, resource scarcity and climate change. Clinton-style triangulation in the midst of economic turmoil is unlikely to right the economy and will undermine Obama's popular support.
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Show AllIn the late 19th Century, the Populist Party advocated for many reforms, including the progressive income tax, direct election of Senators, regulation of banks and railroads, and shorter working hours. In 1892, they won five states in the Presidential election. By 1894, they had a great deal of influence in state legislatures in the Great Plains and had elected six Senators and seven members of the House of Representatives. Their threat to the two-party system forced the Democrats and Republicans to adopt most of their agenda.
During the first half of the 20th Century, Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas were the Presidential candidates of the Socialist Party. They campaigned for female suffrage, unemployment benefits, Social Security, and many of the public works programs of the New Deal. Although the Socialists never won any votes in the Electoral College, the major parties adopted many of their ideas.
Today, we need to pressure the Democrats and Republicans to adopt a progressive agenda. The Green Party has more than 200 elected officials around the country, and we will be running many candidates in 2010 to bring ALL troops home from Iraq, single-payer health care, stopping global warming, and holding the major parties accountable for getting us into our current difficulties.
This December, the Green Party of Louisiana is supporting Malik Rahim for Congress. He is a community organizer who has played a vital role in rebuilding New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. His opponent is William "Dollar Bill" Jefferson, who is under federal indictment for taking bribes ($90,000 found by the FBI in his freezer)
Join the Green Party and support an alternative to our broken two-party system:
www.gp.org
VAGreen:I'm not a Green, am at the left end of the Dem. spectrum. There's an interview with Malik Rahim on DemocracyNow, Sept.5, 2005 (transcript) that I found via googling his name. I remembered hearing him speak on the show.
Sioux Rose
VA GREEN: Thank you for the history lesson, and the work you do to broaden the prospect of real voter choice in America.
I take issue, as does Howard Zinn (with the concept), near the end of the first sentence in the article, that the American public is moderate. Polls indicate, as Chomsky has said many times, that Americans are "liberal" based on numbers in re getting out of Iraq, health care for all and other things. It's the media pundits and the politicians who insist that America is "center". Chomsky calls the gap between what the public wants and what they get from government, the "democracy gap". The title should be "Moving American Politicians and Media Pundits off Dead Center". The public is way ahead of both.
On history of FDR's move to the New Deal, short form of:read again, that great article by Frances Fox Piven, on CD, "Obama Needs a Protest Movement" Nov. 15,2008. I have sent it to many friends. Also, Howard Zinn's articles on CD (CommonDreams) about FDR and the New Deal.
I feel honor bound to disagree. The American public has not moved left. They are indeed mostly in the center and they are mostly moderate. Many people I believe are liberal on social issues and conservative on economic issues. I would surely say getting out troopps out of Iraq is not just a liberal issue now.
Chomsky is simply wrong again. Thats nothing new though.
Unlike you, Chomsky provides references and facts to back up his assertions. Frankly, simply stating that another is in error without providing proof nor references is the approach used by the neocons and Rush Limbaugh. Here is a reference on the approach: http://mediamatters.org/items/200502180006
Its the Zogby polls, http://www.zogby.com/ and the Post-ABC polls, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x311478 ...
Among others that Chomsky uses, very well, to support his statement that the majority of the country is left of the government and corporate owned media. Polls done by very 'conservative' organizations.
Perhaps you picked the screen name Thomas More because, like him, you wish for a strict hierarchy, exemplified by the neocon George Bush. And you see all challenges to uniformity and hierarchy as grave dangers, as More did. Sorry not many storm-trooper clones on CD. Just fact-based heretics. Try some facts, critical thinking, and reasoning sometime, you might like it.
The moment you use Storm Trooper, Nazi, etc, you identify your frame of reference. And if you don't know enough about Chomsky (he's been around forever) to know the many times he was wrong.
One instance of course was his total mistake on Communism.
Thomas More:I think Rene blew it with the last, odious paragraph, but the point made that Chomsky uses/used mainstream sources is accurate (altho called "conservative" in the reply). Chomsky doesn't need defending from me. I have had many pleasant comments back and forth with you. However, I still think you need to prove what I asked you to back up, a couple of replies back/above.
Thomas More: I salute your honor. Prove your point that "mostly in the center and mostly moderate". Who said, do you think, that the American public has moved left? Not I. I said the public has been more progressive or liberal, according to polls for some time. Zinn also has noted that several times. The evidence for my argument are polls where folks say in large majority that they want health care for all (can't recall if single payer, but definitely universal health care), social security to remain nonprivatized, etc. What are you referring to?
Ronald Reagan, another master politician . . .
Please. Reagan was like a doofus who stumbles across a dead man in the street with a brief case next to him. Inside the briefcase is a million dollars. That's all. He won the lotto. He was in the right place at the right time and told the post- Vietnam, post-Watergate, post-Jimmy Carter American public that The USA was still The Big Man With An Iron. His bastard son, Bonzo, grew up to become George Wanker Bush.
Buell sez: "... Bush and Henry Paulson are using, perhaps illegally, the bank bailout program to enrich executives and stockholders."
***
PERHAPS illegally?!?
The unitary deciderer's very presence in the federal goverment is illegal and, by extension, so is every bill, signing statement, proclamation and appointment he's had a hand in — including Paulson.
Right after Obama fixes the economy, which should take only eight years or so, I'm certain he will then turn his attention to investigating this crime gang.
Preventing new beginnings is precisely what the Constitution is all about.
First, by recognizing that being in the center is the same as being dead. Even just wanting to be in the center is suicidal. Then you jump out of the box you have been living in. When you land you will see that your country is indeed in serious shit. Then go search the internet for Thailand protest and see how people move things off center. Watch the Thai people doing what the America people should be doing to their own government. Then sit back and watch on TV as Obama decides who he will listen to. Will he listen to the people we really put him there with their votes, or will he listen to those who put him there with their money? So far it isn’t even close. His team is part of the problem, and have been for decades.
Corporate media obviously has a vested interest in seeing Obama succeed. They will be the beneficiaries of all the political capital that Obama will spend. And that’s one thing he has, political capital. He’s friends with everybody. He has eight years to make enemies of both the American people and also his fellow politicians. Unless Obama turns around and becomes a true statesman, America will stay in the center, slowly dying.
Hoa binh
Isn't timing going to be very important? Not saying that Obama has a hidden agenda of progressiveness.
But if he ran any more to the left he would have lost. And if he tries to pull to far to the left now he won't get anything accomplished. So it seems to me we should at least give him a year before we burn him in effigy. If he even mentions to many progressives idea's he will not be re-elected. And with the media we have, anything that goes wrong will instantly be blamed on him and other left wing followers. And we will spend another 16+ years digging out of the whole to try and get someone elected that has progressive or even just slightly left ideals.
It's like we know what would happen if he tries to be a progressive president. But we want him to try and fail, then complain the next few decades about how horrible things are now that the Reps. have gained control again. As much as we don't like it. Politics is a game. Unless we change the rules of the game, we can't expect the players to play by any other rules.
Lets not be in to much of a rush. This is more about our children's chances than it is ours. Lets put his feet to the fire for sure. But lets also look at it as a stepping stone for a more leftist president in the next time around.
If this administration is seen as running a leftist Government and problems don't get solved, we can kiss our progressives dreams out the window. Because the next president will be as much of a rightist as he can be, and everything he says will make the public swoon.
Terms of Right/Left ideologies are one dimensional, defining only an 'x' axis of method that harbors an inherent fallacy.
Lacking is some sort of descriptive component indicating commitment within economic strata, a 'y' axis, if you will. Applying a Top/Bottom metric towards the policies of the emerging Obama administration would indicate positions very much skewed towards the top and nowhere near the center of economic interests for the majority of American people.
Hence, the concept of Obama centrism is nothing more than a canard.