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Out-Republicaning the Republicans: Obama Revives Clinton's Disastrous Triangulation Strategy
"It was Bill Clinton who recognized that the categories of conservative and liberal played to Republican advantage and were inadequate to address our problems," President Obama wrote in his book The Audacity of Hope. "Clinton's third way...tapped into the pragmatic, non-ideological attitude of Americans."
Clinton's "third way" was "triangulation," a term and strategy invented by his pollster Dick Morris. Triangulation is a candidate's attempt to position himself above and between the left and the right. A Democrat, Clinton insulated himself from Republican attacks by appropriating many of their ideas.
Obama is even more of a triangulator than Clinton.
Triangulation can work for candidates in the short term. Clinton got reelected by a landslide in 1996. (It failed, though, for Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004.) But triangulation hurts parties, which sell an ideological point of view. Clinton worked so hard to out-Republican the Republicans that he forgot he was a Democrat. He also forgot that Democratic voters expected to see liberal policies.
Clinton's greatest achievements ended up being Republican platform planks: free trade deals like NAFTA and the WTO, welfare reform, balancing the federal budget on the backs of the poor and working class.
By the way, Dick Morris is now a Republican. Maybe he always was.
Because of Clintonian triangulation, the liberal base of the Democratic Party saw the 1990s as a squandered opportunity: eight years of unprecedented economic expansion with not one new social program, not even national healthcare, to show for it. They got the message: voting Democratic doesn't guarantee Democratic policies. Unenthused, liberals stayed home or voted for Ralph Nader in 2000. Liberal disgust for triangulation (they called it "selling out") sufficiently reduced Al Gore's margin of victory to allow George W. Bush to steal Florida and the national election. It took the Democrats six years to begin to recover.
Obama ran as a centrist. It would come as little surprise if he were governing as one.
But he's not a moderate president.
Obama is a Republican.
A right-wing Republican. Thanks to triangulation gone wild.
In his first year Obama chose to continue numerous Bush Administration policies, many of which originated in the far extreme wing of the GOP. Each of the following asterisks represents a broken campaign promise:
- Keeping the Guantánamo torture camp open*
- Continuing the war against Iraq*
- Expanding the war against Afghanistan
- Renewing the USA Patriot Act*
- No-string bank bailouts
- Continuing "military commission" kangaroo trials*
- Reserving the right to torture*
- Continuing the NSA's "domestic surveillance" program of spying on innocent Americans' emails and phone calls*
It took over a year, but Obama can finally point to two legislative achievements: healthcare reform and reducing private banks' role in the issuance of student loans. The student loan bill, though a step in the right direction, is liberal but too modest. Student loans ought to be replaced by grants. Ultimately, universities and colleges will have to be nationalized.
Obama's revamp of healthcare, on the other hand, goes too far, perverting the liberal desire to provide healthcare for all Americans into a transfer of wealth from poor to rich that the hard right never dreamed of.
Buying into the classic, flawed, American assumption that a bad system can't get worse (ask the Iraqis and Afghans), ObamaCare entrusts 30 million new customers, to the tune of roughly ten grand a year each, to the tender mercies of private insurance companies.
ObamaCare pours hundreds of billions of dollars, some from taxpayers, the rest from poor people, into the gaping coffers of giant corporations. Once people find themselves paying even more for visits to the same crappy doctors and hospitals they can't afford now, they'll hold the Dems responsible at the polls. If Republicans stopped to think, they'd love it.
And if Democrats stopped to think, they'd hate it.
Most Americans, and almost all liberal Democrats, want socialized medicine. Like they have in the rest of the world. Failing that, they were willing to settle for single-payer. When Obama let it be known that Mr. Audacity was going to lead as anything but, they prayed for a "public option."
What they got: zero.
Actually, less than zero: We were better off before. Taxes will go up for the already insured. For those about to be forcibly insured, they'll have to pay more. And here's the kicker: not only will the insurance companies be making higher profits at our expense, so will the federal government.
The Congressional Budget Office, invariably described in pieces like this as "the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office," projects that the U.S. Treasury will come out ahead by $130 billion over 10 years.
Deficit negativity helped score votes among Democratic deficit hawks in Congress. But again, think about it: If the healthcare bill is making a profit for the U.S. government, where is that $130 billion coming from?
Correct: you and me. Our taxes will be higher than they should be, our health benefits will be less.
Obama, the media and many of us have forgotten what the problem was in the first place. Healthcare costs were too high. Thanks to this monster of a bill, they'll go even higher.
The government should not make a profit off sick people.
Even the Republicans wouldn't propose a tax this regressive.
Now Obama is echoing Sarah Palin, right-winger-turned-Tea-
Democrats will lose seats in Congress this fall. It may already be too late for Democrats to keep the White House in 2012. But if they continue to follow the Clinton-Obama triangulation strategy, they could destroy themselves for years to come. They might even expose the overall bankruptcy of our two-party pseudo-democracy.
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102 Comments so far
Show AllGreat article Ted Rall. Now if there would only be some way to unite the small progressive third parties into one big progressive third party so that we can build our progressive confidence and win some progressive causes.
This would be a good thing to work on. I think Greens would be open to it. In Oregon, we absorbed the Socialists when they lost their ballot line - although there are still Socialists catching on, and their national organization doesn't recognize the merger. Maybe you should talk to them.
One option is to form a coalition, endorse each others' candidates, and avoid running against each other. Oregon recently passed a law allowing co-nominations, something we and the other left-wing parties are working on.
The Green Party is far and away the largest progressive party, so we stand to benefit from mergers or a coalition.
Prior to the evolution of political correctness in the 1990s there was a term that meant the same thing as triangulation...it was called selling out.
Progressives need to work hard in fighting temptation...the temptation to vote for Democrats. After dusting off Rove's play book, Rahm forced all of the Dems to fall in line or leave the party. Any vote for Democrat in 2010 is a vote for somebody who is required to rubber stamp Obama's corporate agenda.
Yes, it was hard to see Kucinich finally brought to heel and unable or unwilling to describe the process by which it happened, for all his apologies.
It does provide some motivation, if not necessarily a determining one in every case, for not voting for anyone within the major parties ever, at all, regardless.
I couldn't say it better myself. Excellent post. Why does Obama punish his friends and reward his enemies? Why are Democrats so wimpy?
They're not wimpy, they're bought.
""Clinton's third way...tapped into the pragmatic, non-ideological attitude of Americans." If I read this before voting, I would have voted 3rd party. Never again will I vote Dem unless a radical gets the ticket, and that probably will never happen.
"unless a radical gets the ticket, and that probably will never happen."
How right you are. There is no such thing as a radical Democrat. It's an oxymoron.
If we really want - not pretend to want - a true progressive, we need to forget about Democrats. We must channel our energies in to building up a new progressive party. I suggest the Greens who already have a lot of the hard work done, ballot lines in most states, etc.
If you see imperfections in the Green Party, that's normal. Get in there and make the party better. Let me tell you, it's no easy task taking on the duopoly, finding candidates, organizing conventions - i.e., work, work, work.
The Greens need help from progressives to build up this good party. We lost too many after Gore lost in 2000. He lost by design, I might add. It destroyed 3rd parties, sending the herds back into the arms of the Democrats.
Rahm got rid of all the radical Dems.
Well done Ted! For decades I've watched our country circle the drain as both political parties have abondoned the public and moved to the far right in service of corporate power. For decades I've waited for the public to wake up to the painfully obvious fact that as Ralph Nader and Gore Vidal have pointed out, we are a one party state with two right wings.
Rhetoric is for the voter base, actual policies are for the financial base, and in the US the financial base is the one catered to, represented, of which both parties have demonstrated their allegiance too. We will never see real or progressive change from either party. They are already bought and sold by the wealthy and corporate power.
"For decades I've waited for the public to wake up ..."
Many did wake up in 2000 and it scared the hell out of the duopoly. There was a growing movement, energized and angry at Democrats. Nader got around 10% in California. That's significant because it could have at anytime taken a quantum leap. Here in Portland, OR Nader filled the coliseum to capacity and more - hundreds - were waiting out in the streets unable to get seats. The duopoly had to do something!
Dems had to lose - by design. Nader and the growing desire for a progressive 3rd party was eliminated, brought down - trashed! - not by Republicans but by Democrats, progressive Democrats! John Nichols, Robert Sheer, Eric Alterman, CommonDreams website! among others.
But low and behold, we saw Dems going along with everything the Republicans and the brutal, military empire wanted, even when they were the majority in Congress.
The empire knows what it needs in a candidate and a party. It knows very well how to twist minds, channel the weak minded, punish voters when necessary. Had Dems won the election, the agenda would have destroyed the party. Instead, by losing, they saved it.
Be prepared, the duopoly is planning future scams. Perhaps Sarah Palin will be trotted out. They're testing the waters as I type. "Does Sarah sufficiently scare them?" It's coming and unless progressives have learned something - independence, mis-trust of the duopoly - we'll be thoroughly boiled in another few years.
The two parties collude on these things. It benefits both.
I think the game is truely over now. I swear I'l not vote D again, even if it means we all go to hell in a burning 747. There were whigs & federalists; then there were dems & repus; I believe we'll see the death of R & D starting in 2010. There's NOTHING they can say to me to change my mind. And I'm DAMNSURE not staying home. I'm going to be politically "slashing their tires" from now on.
Inb,
I hear you!
Chelsea
Bless you.
Sioux Rose
RVRWALKER: Astute post and analysis. Thank you for sharing it.
"punish voters when necessary"
I noticed during the cheney administration that whenever they received bad press, gas prices went up. Financial hardship works great in diverting attention.
I thought we voted for CHANGE, not for centrism. Maybe Emanuel et al. in the white house believe we have no place else to go. That is a wrong calculation. The progressive base needs something to excite them.
Emanual knows he needs to take the Dems way to the right of centrist to get more corporate campaign contributions than the Republicans...his mission in life.
But he's not a moderate president. Obama is a Republican.
For those of us who made the mistake of supporting Obama, this would be known as "Hope-A-Dope".
"Hope-A-Dope"
LOL!
Right on the cross-hair target, Ted!
Obama, perhaps the first Facebook president in U.S. history
is indeed a spin-off version of the old slick Willie. As this
article well points out they have both accelerated the Democratic Party's selling out to Big Money for the sake
of winning back the White House. The obvious bargaining chip
in this Faustian deal is the interests of the majority of
Americans along with a saner planet. Unfortunately, in this celebrity infatuated culture of today real democracy is
conveniently sacrificed at the altar of political opportunism. Whereas the Bush years brought us a neanderthal thrust of their way or the highway, the New Democrats seem increasingly skillful in the con game of smoke and mirrors: say the right things, look the part, but the end game is just more of the same big money politics as usual. Brand Obama is really Oreo. He may look black-like but inside
he's just another white slave master.
Great article, Ted. Now draw the lesson: where do we go, instead?
www.gp.org
I knew all this prior to the election: the aftermath has only proved Third Party voters had Obama pegged as a right of center conservative/blue dog all along. Yawn.
So what else is new?
This article is OK, but I can't resist cavilling over the general sloppy use of the term "healthcare reform"-- even in analyses that go on to explain that the recent legislative atrocity is actually the antithesis of healthcare reform.
I don't expect Sensible, Serious writers to adopt terms like "No Insurer Left Behind", but I do think they ought to replace the howling mendacity of "healthcare reform" with "insurance-corporation bailout".
Thank you.
Sioux Rose
I don't understand why clear sell-out legislation is refered to as "achievements." Other than that, a decent enough analysis as far as it goes... since it leaves out plenty of other centrist cum republican initiatives taken on by a professed D-team leader all to profit a few at the grotesque expense of the many.
"I don't understand why clear sell-out legislation is refered to as "achievements." "
I think I can explain that. It goes something like this. The whole thing is totally faith based so this gives room to tout benefits that aren't guaranteed to materialize. I have had a lot of debate here on this matter with the health care scam that got signed into law. Naturally and Veritas explained why nothing of the benefits being touted were guaranteed. I can refer you to those pages if you need any help. Basically, it goes like this. A few not-guaranteed steps forward followed by a giant leap backward. It's all in the bill. It is similar to how the evangelical conservatives selectively quote the bible. See, like the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy assuming that the wealthy will actually stimulate the economy, this insurance scam bill assumes that somewhere out of nowhere Big Insurance will turn a new leaf just like that. Back when the bill was introduced, it wasn't as bad and there was a public option. I think that the people still calling it "achievement" are assuming that people think that the public option still exists and I'm not talking about the people here on this site that I debated. Another thing to consider is most people are used to taking insurance for granted unless and until they find out its limitations and/or uselessness. Again, it's the faith based ideology that's at work here.
Sioux Rose
STANLEY: Thank you for your post. So you're saying that the author BUYS this idea that these quasi-legit proposals truly qualify as achievements? My idea of an achievement is doing something that has innate merit or value. The items mentioned under the banner of "achievement" do NOT qualify. However, I appreciate your response.
Sioux Rose, I do not think that Ted Rall calls those proposals achievements whatsoever given what he wrote on what he thought of the health care bill Obama just signed. If anything, I believe that unlike most supporters of the bill, Rall read it thoroughly and he would not believe for one second that an additional 30 million people getting covered would have been because of the bill. It is totally unpredictable as to how many more people or less will actually benefit regardless of the coverage but the risks associated with these insurance companies have been socialized. Of course, socializing the risks almost always correlates with socializing the losses.
I would definitely love to see true achievements instead of being told to accept something that holds virtually no guarantee of achievement especially if the stakeholders involved have had very bad records. Unfortunately, most Americans don't share our values of true achievements.
Actually, when Ted Rall starts to mention health care, he calls the recent bill an achievment but only on the first sentence of that issue.
"It took over a year, but Obama can finally point to two legislative achievements: healthcare reform and reducing private banks' role in the issuance of student loans."
Ironically, he proves that it is no achievement for people who need access to affordable health care. He forgot to mention that this bill was an achievement for the insurance industries who controlled the makeup of this bill from its inception. This bill was also an achievement for the drug companies and some of the religious right when it comes to denying coverage on abortion and funding abstinence-only sex education.
It's Orwell's doublespeak, changing truth as they go, a preemptive strike.
They have declared the Insurance Profit Bill historic and it is just that;
legislated fascism.
If we go back to the origin of Green Party mentality, it is with the Iroquois Confederation of Nations, that Franklin and all were very familiar with, and gave us the foundation for our democracy (after going to Europe and England, rethought, rewrit and reimported). A system of real checks and balances with real shared leadership and consequences for behavior that did not benefit the people's best interests and survival. To make this a source of pride for our indigenous people and acknowledge the value of all people of all colors to gain participation in our society and not be subject to the whims and greed of whitey and his minions... could be a good start...
Now you are talking. The Iroquois Confederation, the Sioux Nation and most other early North American social structures were based on the rights of the individual. Franklin, Paine and others made special trips to learn their systems. The whole concept of a union comes from the Iroquois and is represented as the arrows being clutched by the Eagle on paper currency. Caucus is an Algonquin word for the gathering of sachems.
But, the concepts were perverted from the beginning to accommodate the wealthy, a ruse.
I like the idea, ala Paine, of starting over, culling the perverse and adopting the best of all cultures to form a new style of government to fit the new times. The time has come to think not just globally, but Universally, maybe form A League of Life.
Blaming Bill Clinton for Obama doesn't work.
Clinton ran for president following the "Reagan Revolution," twelve years of deficit-financed tax cuts, the transformation of journalism into corporate media, and the take-over of the public agenda by right-wing think tanks. A successful national propaganda campaign had convinced the people that regressive tax policies, and roll backs of civil rights, public health and safety, and environmental protections were in the national interest. The public bought Reagan's "small-government, fiscal conservatism" swill, not knowing that in fact he nearly tripled the national debt.
By 1992 the Democratic brand had been tarnished, and Clinton and the New Democrats' triangulation strategy was nothing more than a move towards the "business-friendly" Republican Right, designed to re-capture zombie "Reagan Democrats."
Clinton was elected in a three-way race, with less than a majority of the vote.
After his election, the "eight years of unprecedented economic expansion"—including five consecutive years of progressively smaller budget deficits and three consecutive years of progressively larger budget surpluses—was not achieved "on the backs of the poor and working class," but primarily by a return to sound fiscal policies, including closing military bases, reducing military spending, rolling back the Reagan tax-cuts for the wealthy, and targeted increases in domestic spending (stimulus).
Yes, Bill Clinton also presided over some regressive changes that are indefensible, except perhaps to say—as he himself said just yesterday—that he had been sold a bill of goods on the idea of "world trade" being the mechanism to lift third-world countries into prosperity. (He said that in the context of third-world agriculture, and Haiti in particular.)
Contrast Bill Clinton, with Obama, who ran for president following eight years of disastrous Republican policies, at a time when the Republican brand was severely tarnished, after nearly two decades of experience had proven "world trade" a failure, and whose landslide election had given him a public mandate that Bill Clinton never had. Yet, as president, Obama leads his party and the country even further to the Republican Right.
Rall is correct in saying that Obama is worse than Bill Clinton, that he is a right-wing Republican, that he chooses to "continue numerous Bush Administration policies," and that his Health Deform bill is "a transfer of wealth from poor to rich that the hard right never dreamed of," and that we "were better off before."
But, he is wrong to blame Obama on Bill Clinton. Obama's role model was never the flawed Bill Clinton, but instead the truly reprehensible Ronald Reagan. Reagan, Obama said while campaigning for president, was a transformational figure who "changed the trajectory of America in a way that ... Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path [opposing] the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s ... and [restoring a] sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing."
Yes, and what exactly were those "the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s"? The guy's just as much of a dickhead as he let on when he made his statement about Reagan during the campaign; on this count he wasn't acting.
This is a whitewash of Clinton's record, who boasted that he had 'cut bureaucracy', i.e., thrown people out of civil service, some after decades of work. Likewise, Clinton's 'prosperity' was purchased at the expense of small businesses & sectors, like small community bookstores like those I worked at, in order to inflate the profile of the big box stores. The anti-trust division simply vanished.
And then there was the ending of Glass-Steagall . . .
No, Obama is Clinton on steroids. And Clinton's embrace of Papa Bush during BabyBush's regime shows just where his loyalties always were . . .
Bill Clinton didn't seem so bad when I voted for him twice. I have had to consider revisiting his record as well thanks to Obama. The Democrats might have been a little better had Gore won in 2000 or Kerry in 2004. It always seems that the longer the Democrats lose, the more to the right they go by the time they do actually win.
Sioux Rose
NATURALLY: Interesting, thought-provoking comments. Thank you for posting.
Good post.
I rarely find such a long post worth the space, but your contrast of Obama and Bill Clinton is insightful and analytical. Thank you for taking the time to post.
On one issue there is a great similarity between O and Bill: both men came to the rescue of the Military Industrial Intelligence complex in its time of need.
Bill was elected on the promise of a peace dividend that would come from cuts to the Pentagon budget resulting from the end of the cold war. Clinton broke that promise and increased military spending.
Similarly Obama was swept into office on a wave of popular enthusiasm for peace and an increasing public perception that we could not afford Bush's out of control war spending. But Obama also rode to the Pentagon's rescue with record high war "budgets" and increases in the number of soldiers in combat.
Another similarity is their coziness with the CIA. Both condoned CIA abuses. Bill's ties to the Company went back to his college years. The scholarship is lacking regarding O's ties to the Company, but the CIA is definitely completely out of control under his presidency.
The reason the US keeps the "two party system" in perpetuity is because it is easier for the big money boys to buy off two parties than more than 2. The big corporate interests hire the lobbyists and finance the campaign industry to keep this incestuous relationship continuing on and on and on.
At this point, both David Axelrod and President Obama have publically stated that the HCR is essentially the same as Romney's HCR bill for Mass. In other words, it is essentially a Republican bill.
The bill itself, which contains a mandate for each citizen to buy health care insurance, but does not offer a public option, and transfers billions of taxpayer dollars to the private health insurance industry, is a travesty.
However it does confirm the reality that there is no real Democratic Party with substantial policies that actually differ from the Republicans, but rather there is a quasi-democratic party that offers up only progressive rhetoric, and nothing more. Since third parties are for all intents and purposes locked out of the electoral system, it provides Americans a choice of voting for either a bad option or worse one.
HCR is Well Point's bill too written coutesy of Liz Fowler.
BOYCOTT HEALTH INSURANCE!
But ya have to admit, it IS fun watching the GOPathologicals rant and rave against their own proposals and policies.
Whatever Obama is, he's got the R-nuts all kinds of f**king confused...
They are not confused. They are acting. It is a role, so that some see them as protagonists and others as antagonists.
"Politics is the entertainment branch of industry." Frank Zappa
Let's ask a question: What do Democrats actually do when they win?
They pass legislation the republicans want but cannot enact. They maintain the empire. They represent the same business/finacial interests.
And when they are done they turn things back over to Capitalism's A team, the republicans.
Carter made it safe for Reagan, Clinton made it safe for Bush and now Obama is making it safe for Palin. What a record!
I'm tired of being disappointed when Dems lose and then being even more disappointed when they win. It's time to jump ship!
Who said "Given a choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, the public will choose the Republican every time"? I though it was Harry Truman, but I can't find it in his list of quotes.
FWIW, Wikiquote lists this Truman quote: "The people don't want a phony Democrat. If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don't want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign."
See: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Harry_S._Truman
______________________________
It's also frequently attributed to former Senator Paul Simon, apparently apocryphally.
Perhaps the most damaging thing about triangulation is that it shifts the acceptable range of debate inexorably toward Republican positions.
This is the first time I've understood why it's called "triangulation," the claim being that it places the "leader" between and above Republicans and Democrats. In actuality, the version of "triangulation" we see in Clinton, Obama and the DLC places the "leaders" between and BELOW Republicans and Democrats. The focus is on re-election, which requires 1) raising the most money and 2) winning the independent voter. But independents in general are the least engaged, thoughtless, most easily led portion of the electorate and therefore most easily influenced by the corporate media that serves corporate interests. Plutocrats therefore dominate politics both directly through campaign contributions and indirectly through their influence on voters who believe themselves to be "centrist" and "reasonable" but are in reality ignorant and pliable. Republocrats who succeed in being elected have no ideological principles to which they are committed; legal bribery is rampant. "Extremists" at both ends of the political spectrum are marginalize, afraid to vote their conscience for fear of allowing the "lesser of evils" to win elections.
It doesn't have to be that way. Principled people at opposite ends of the political "spectrum" have far more in common with one another than they do with the corrupt, neocon, neoliberal, corporatist center of the Republocrat Party. The foremost commonality is a sense of morality and ethics. In addition, progressives, libertarians and traditional conservatives all oppose empire, militarism, our interventionist foreign policy, torture, rendition, assassination, unbridled executive power and corporate welfare. We agree on electoral reform and ballot access, suspicion of the Fed, the right to privacy, the rule of law and openness in government. Even in areas of apparent disagreement, the disagreements vanish at the Federal level if we agree to devolve power to the states. Education and health care are issues best left to the states to solve. If Vermont wants socialized medison, Maine and Minnesota want single payer and Louisiana wants the status quo, the Federal Government should get out of the way and let the states showcase what can be achieved. The Federal Government shouldn't be using stimulus funds to blackmail states into increasing charter schools or scapegoating teachers. And the Federal Government certainly shouldn't be throwing up roadblocks to prevent state Attorneys General from investigating fraud.
The talk of uniting all "leftist" parties under one banner does not go far enough. We need to unite principled progressives, libertarians and traditional conservatives under a big tent that can draw votes from both wings of the Republocrat Party. This will both nullify the charges of "spoiler" and provide enough voting strength that a few principled people may even get elected. Elsewhere, I have suggested an Anti-Federalist Party. That name would appeal to large numbers of people who are familiar with American History. Perhaps an Anti-Republocrat Party would also appeal.William Rood, patriotic citizen of the world
The last champion of the working people that the Democrats nominated was George McGovern, a class act all the way. The American people had a choice between this good man and the embodiment of evil, Richard Nixon. Like the idiots they are, they chose Nixon. And if that isn't pathetic to remember, consider this: Nixon was more liberal than any Democratic nominee since he resigned. As the genius George Carlin observed, disaster can be an entertaining spectator sport.