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Lessons of the Obama Debacle
The problem with us progressives at this time of crisis is not that we lack an alternative paradigm to pit against the discredited neoliberal paradigm. No, the elements of the alternative based on the values of democracy, justice, equality, and environmental sustainability are there and have been there for sometime, the product of collective intellectual and activist work over the last few decades.
The key problem is the failure of progressives to translate their vision and values into a program that is convincing and connects with the people trapped in the terrible existential conditions created by the global financial crisis. This fluid process is preeminently political. It requires translating a strategic perspective into a tactical program that takes advantage of the opportunities, ambiguities, and contradictions of the present moment to construct a critical mass for progressive change from diverse class and social forces.
We must look at the political experience of the global progressive movement in order to understand why our side has been derailed and how we can fight back to political relevance. The experience of the Obama presidency is rich in this regard. In the U.S. political context, Obama is a social democrat, and the broad left supported his candidacy. Although he was no anti-capitalist, still we expected that he would initiate a program of recovery and reform similar in ambition to Roosevelt’s New Deal. The electoral base that brought him to power, which cut across class, color, gender, and generational lines -- was full of potential. Obama’s ability to bring this base together on a message of change achieved what was then thought impossible—the election of an Afro-American as president of the United States—and showed how smart political leadership can shape social and political structures.
Two years after his spectacular electoral victory, President Obama and the Democrats face a rout in the U.S. polls in early November. Indeed, Obama and his party are like a rabbit on the railroad track that is hypnotized by the light of an oncoming train. Whereas Obama seemed to do all the right things in his quest for the presidency, he seemed to make all the wrong moves as chief executive.
His prioritizing of health care reform, a massively complex task, has been identified as a key blunder. This decision certainly contributed to the debacle. But other important factors related mainly to his handling of the economic crisis, a primary concern of the electorate, were perhaps more critical.
Six Reasons behind the Debacle
Obama’s first mistake was to take responsibility for the economic crisis. In his quixotic quest for a bipartisan solution, he made George W. Bush’s problem his own. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan never made this mistake. They took no responsibility for the economic problems of the 1970s, heaping the blame entirely on their liberal predecessors and eschewing any bipartisan alliance with those they considered their ideological enemies. Roosevelt, too, slammed – and slammed hard –his ideological foes, those he termed “economic royalists.”
Insofar as Obama and his lieutenants identified villains, this was Wall Street. Yet saying the financial elite brought on the crisis, while bailing out key Wall Street financial institutions such as Citigroup and AIG on the grounds that they were “too big to fail,” involved Obama in a terrible contradiction. The least that he could have done was to remove the existing boards and top managers of these organizations as a condition for government funds. Instead, unlike the case of General Motors, the top dogs stayed on board and continued to collect sky-high bonuses to boot.
The strong sense of disconnect between word and deed was exacerbated rather than alleviated by the Democrats’ financial reform. The measure did not have the minimum conditions for a reform with real teeth: the banning of derivatives, a Glass-Steagall provision preventing commercial banks from doubling as investment banks; the imposition of a financial transactions tax or Tobin tax; and a strong lid on executive pay, bonuses, and stock options.
Third, Obama had a tremendous opportunity to educate and mobilize people against the neoliberal or market fundamentalist approach that deregulated the financial sector and caused the crisis. Although Obama did allude to unregulated financial markets as the key problem during the campaign, he refrained from demonizing neoliberalism after he took office, thus presenting an ideological vacuum that the resurgent neoliberals did not hesitate to fill. No doubt he failed to launch a full-scale ideological offensive because his key lieutenants for economic policy, National Economic Council head Larry Summers and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, had not broken with neoliberal thinking.
Fourth, the stimulus package of $787 billion was simply too small to bring down or hold the line on unemployment. Here, Obama cannot say he lacked good advice. Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate, and a whole host of Keynesian economists were telling him this from the very start. For comparison, the Chinese stimulus package of $580 billion was much bigger relative to the size of the economy than the Obama package. For the White House now to say that the employment situation would now be worse had it not been for the stimulus is, to say the least, politically naïve. People operate not with wishful counterfactual scenarios but with the facts on the ground, and the facts have been rising unemployment with no relief in sight.
Politics in a time of crisis is not for the fainthearted. The middle-of-the road approach represented by the size of the stimulus was the wrong response to a crisis that called for a political gamble: the deployment of the massive fiscal firepower of the government against the predictable howls of anger from the right.
Fifth, Obama and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke deployed mainly Keynesian technocratic tools—deficit spending and monetary easing—to deal with the consequences of the massive failure of market fundamentalism. During a normal downturn these countercyclical tools may suffice to reverse the downturn. But standard Keynesianism could address such a serious collapse only in a very limited way. Besides, people were looking not only for relief in the short term but for a new direction that would enable them to master their fears and insecurities and give them reason to hope.
In other words, Obama failed to locate his Keynesian technocratic initiatives within a larger political and economic agenda that could have fired up a fairly large section of American society. Such a larger agenda could have had three pillars: the democratization of economic decision-making, from the enterprise level to the heights of macro-policymaking; an income and asset redistribution strategy that went beyond increasing taxes on the top two percent of the population; and the promotion of a more cooperative rather than competitive approach to production, distribution, and the management of resources. This agenda of social transformation, which was not too left, could have been accommodated within a classical social democratic framework. People were simply looking for an alternative to the Brave New Dog-Eat-Dog World that neo-liberalism had bequeathed them. Instead, Obama offered a bloodless technocratic approach to cure a political and ideological debacle.
Related to this absence of a program of transformation was the sixth reason for the Obama debacle: his failure to mobilize the grassroots base that brought him to power. This base was diverse in terms of class, generation, and ethnicity. But it was united by palpable enthusiasm, which was so evident in Washington, DC, and the rest of the country on Inauguration Day in 2009. With his preference for a technocratic approach and a bipartisan solution to the crisis, Obama allowed this base to wither away instead of exploiting the explosive momentum it possessed in the aftermath of the elections.
At the eleventh hour, Obama and the Democrats are talking about firing up and resurrecting this base. But the dispirited and skeptical troops that have long been disbanded and left by the wayside rightfully ask: around what?
The Right Makes the Right Moves
In contrast to Obama, the right wing understood the demands and dynamics of politics at a time of crisis, as opposed to politics in normal times. While Obama persisted in his quest for bipartisanship, the Republicans adopted a posture of hard-line opposition to practically all of his initiatives.
Unlike Obama and the Democrats, the right posed the conflict in stark political and ideological terms: between left and right, between “socialism” and “freedom,” between the oppressive state and the liberating market. The Republican opposition used all the catchwords and mantras they could dredge up from bourgeois U.S. ideology.
Finally, in contrast to Obama’s neglect of the Democratic base, the right eschewed Republican interest-group politics. Fox News, Sarah Palin, and the tea party movement stirred up the right-wing base to challenge the Republican Party elite and drive a no-compromise, take-no-prisoners politics. To understand what has happened to the Republican Party in the last few weeks with the string of tea party successes in the primaries, historian Arno Mayer’s distinction among conservatives, reactionaries, and counterrevolutionaries is useful. In Mayer’s terms, the counterrevolutionaries, with their populist, anti-insider, and grassroots-driven politics are displacing the conservative elites that have long held sway in the Republican Party.
With their anti-spending platform, the Republicans and tea partiers that might capture the House and the Senate in November will probably bring about a worse situation than today. As such, Obama and the Democrats might repeat Bill Clinton’s political trajectory when he scored a victory at the polls in 1996 because the Republicans led by Newt Gingrich overreached politically after their triumph in the midterm elections of 1994. But this is a desperate illusion. The current counterrevolutionaries and their backers are skilled in the politics of blame, and they will likely be successful in painting the worsening situation as a result of Obama’s “socialist policies,” not of drastic cuts in government spending.
Lessons for the Left
The problem lies not so much in our lack of a strategic alternative as in our failure to translate our strategic vision or paradigm into a credible and viable political program. Politics in a period of crisis is different from politics in a period of normality, being more fluid and marked by the volatility of class, political, and intellectual attachments. We should remember that politics is the art of creating and sustaining a political movement from diverse class and social forces through a flexible but principled political program that can adapt to changing circumstances.
Finally, there is no such thing as an objectively determined situation. The art of politics is using the contradictions, spaces, and ambiguities of the current moment to shape structures and institutions and create a critical mass for change. Class, economic, and political structures may condition political outcomes; they do not determine them. Who will ultimately emerge the victor from this period of prolonged capitalist crisis will depend on smart and skilled political leadership.
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274 Comments so far
Show AllThe responses by posters to CD Articles are many times more revealing than the content of the articles themselves....never boring!
Sorry to all this article's critics, but, "The problem with us progressives at this time of crisis IS . . . that we lack an alternative paradigm to pit against the discredited neoliberal paradigm." Not since Thomas Kuhn coined the expression "paradigm shift" has the American left incorporated a new idea. A major cause has been the slow death of humanities education in the U.S. This when, by their very nature, the humanities are a primary source of theoretical conceptions.
Obsessed with economic competition, however, the humanities have been continuously displaced by "math and science." Thus, generations of economists have been shaped by Paul Samuelson's judgment,
Inventions of science, of engineering, and of managerial practice have shifted the [subsistence equilibrium and factor-price frontier] curves . . . rightward and upward. . . . Such shifts have more than won the race with diminishing returns, making the Malthusian equilibrium point of subsistence unrealistic in Western economies so far. [Paul A. Samuelson, Economics, ninth edition (New York: Mcgraw-Hill Book Company, 1973), 738, 740.]
Exhibiting the force of this conception is Lawrence Summer's speculation, while President of Harvard University, of the genetic inferiority of women in respect to mathematics and science.
Now, how many of the commentators on this article have heard of John Rawls? Although philosophers consider Rawls the greatest political philosopher of the Twentieth Century, the American left appears oblivious of his work, and the ideas spawned by it. Rather, the left remains wedded to political thought which is at best sixty years old.
Caught up in American anti-intellectualism, the American left is paying the price.
philandrel October 12th, 2010 5:58 pm
Graet post philandrel. You said in a nutshell what I have been trying to say on CD for a while. But the left mind-set in the US, informed by the humanities that have been streamed away from science and math, is Luddite and incapable of intellecting the upward-rightward shift in production technologies. Their economics is still informed by the two factor labour/capital ancient history spewed out of the London School of Economics by old Marxists and sociologists. When I first entered into economics as a doctoral student nearly 40 years ago, after being a successful mathematician and physicist, I was struck by the naivetty of the literature on "political economy", which still insisted that Malthus was relevant and diminshing returns to scale would bring the world to a collapse of over-population and too few resources. An august body of humanities intellectuals was formed called the "Club of Rome" to make this hokum look respectable.
At that time, I asked my macro-economics professors, a couple of whom were big wigs in two factor models, that wasn't it time to include the most important factor in Western economies since Newton, and that was KNOWLEDGE about the workings of nature and the incredibly productive technologies that come from the sciences that Malthus, Ricardo, Marx, even Adam Smith or others had no clue about in the in the 1800's? After all, a technological innovation shifts the production curve from reaching a saturation point and entering a diminshing returns region by the up/right shift you are talking about. They looked non-plussed at me since their orthodoxy addled brains could not envision an convex, increasing returns to scale production function. About 10-15 years after my Ph.D.,(about 25 years ago) I wrote up a paper that crystallised these ideas by drawing a series of upwards and rigtwards shifting curves with each curve jumping to the next level by an advance in science and technology so that the peak always kept on increasing. Then I drew an envelloppe of the curves and presto - - you had a new mega curve on production that had INCREASING returns to scale. This lasted until competitors began to copy the innovation or improve on it so that natural monopolies could not form. publicly funded universities and research institutes were essential as public goods to be a brake on monopolization by adding new competitors into the patents system as free knowledge.
Two countries used this model succesfully in their industrial strategies - - Sweden and Germany. Japan did the same in the 1980's calling it "continuous improvement" or KAIZEN and wiped the floor with American manufacturers in electronics, autos and cameras. Japan, unlike Germany and Sweden, faltered in the 1990's beacuse how much small incremental improvement can you have on a particular TV technology? Japan, being like South Korea, a "PRACTICAL" nation with everybody's "feet on the ground" and no scientists working at the THEORETICAL frontiers of quantum physics/optics, biology and molecular genetics and biochemistry, chemistry, computer algorithms and logic, network architectures etc. as in the US, collapsed in its march to conquer the world. The US came roaring back in the 1990's with lasers, fiber optics, bio-technology, great software and the INTERNET. Japan had nothing remotely like that incredible portfolio of new ideas and technologies and went into a 20 year recession that still lingers on.
If the left wants to be relevant, they have to have a vision of a green economy not made up of people living in stone-age houses and small plots of land doing subsistence farming, but a bold use of ambition and imagination of building highly energy efficient cities and energy generation and transport infrastructure, with green areas that are well managed with all that science has to offer. Lefties fixated on science is the enemy and mumbo-jumbo new age plastic toy spiritualisms do not have a vision that provides mental and economic energy to the masses. The right-wing in the US are so religiously crazy and so hateful of intellectuals in general and the sciences in particular, that they will actually reach the Middle Ages well before Islamo-fascists do in Saudi Arabia. And the plutocracy today such as the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch and others is so insanely inhuman, venal and uncultured that they like to live as gangster overlords in a drugs-ruined country, their mansions and family surrounded by goons and high fences. They have no civic spirit to endow their wealth (except for a few such as Buffet and Gates) to live a legacy of vision rather than that of a petty warlord.
If the US stops the wars and uses the funds (about $400 billion annually) so released for a massive green infrastructure/city renovation-rebuilding/education and research for knowledge accumulation, taking knowledge as the most productive capital input, then the country can become pre-eminent again in 10-15 years in a positive way. The brain power is still here, but not for long. The profits made by the MIC in wars could be with intelligent planning and a long term view be replicated in lead sectors of the green economy. Nobody has explained this to the self-centred, egotistis CEO's of MIC and the banks, who unlike the CEO's in Germany and Sweden are vastly overpaid and more ill-informed, uneducated and highly opinionated.
It is up to the shareholders of these corporations to organize and win proxy battles to remove these pests. The shareholders are you and me with our investment in retirement savings and pension plan mutual funds.
Admittedly, i am writing this without having read other posts here...yet.
However. Perhaps, just maybe, obama lied when he campaigned. How is that for a straight forward analysis?
Gee. He isn't doing the things he promised he would do. How surprising to discover that candidates are not honorable.
There is such irony in an article written with such political detail and analysis - yet the writer just doesn't get the most basic reality about politicians. Sort of like flying to L.A. to get from NYC to Newark. But never getting out of California. (Or something like that!)
The Obama Debacle occurred for a reason; the American Electorate at large learned absolutely NOTHING from the G. W. Bush and/or the Reagan, Nixon or Clinton years.
Maybe so, but none of the aforementioned characters misrepresented themselves quite to the radical extent Obama did.
40% of Obama supporters are no longer fans or support him. That means that 60% still support him. Incumbents are still going to walk away with victory. Primaries did not purge incumbents. You can talk until you are blue in the face but this electorate is years away from supporting independent candidates to break the two party control. It isn't that Americans are trapped without options, they don't want those options. They didn't want Nader, they didn't want Gravel. The problem is the people. Never mind all the evil doers, they wouldn't survive without the political incompetence of the people.
I confess i must agree with you ......
I disagree.
The system is rigged by the Democrats and Republicans to make it difficult for independents to win (ie., with electoral laws and lawsuits). M$M is complicit in molding the opinion into people's minds that the 2 party option is the only option.
Years away? Only because people talk themselves into it. And in these elections, the naysayers said don't waste your vote independents, nevertheless independents got decent results. It is the Dem's and Rep's that push the myth that voting independent is a waste of a vote.
1980 - Anderson (independent) received 5.8M votes
1992 - Perot (independent) received 20M votes, Bush received 34M and Clinton 45M.
1996 - Perot got a respectable 8M votes.
2000 - Nader got nearly 3M votes.
Now imagine if people weren't so negative. Even if independents don't win, they influence the public debate (and in Europe, they influence policies).
It is also rigged within the parties to help candidates that the leaders support, e.g., they funnel the money to candidates they support and are complicit in having so called fringe candidates kept out of debates. The parties are corrupt.
I agree with everything you say, and for the reason you mentioned - "Only because people talk themselves into it."
But I also agree with the post above - i have been waiting and arguing for folks to change their minds about the duopoly for well over a decade, I keep thinking "Surely now ...", but frankly I don't see them being any more ready to do it now than then .....
Yes, it is very difficult for third parties and the system is rigged. However, why is it acceptable to say it is the fault of the media? Can't they think for themselves? No, they can"t.
You cannot blame the everyday people. Besides it being reactionary it is inaccurate.
In many places, third parties are not on the ballot. In most places, the third parties have no way to reach the voters. In other cases, third parties make no effort to reach a broad segment of the public. When third parties do reach the public, the message is often esoteric or incomprehensible.
Most of the people are mot looking for a personal alternative "choice" in any case, and do not obsess over their own individual symbolic statements, because they are not as individualistic and self-absorbed as the activists are and they don't have the luxury of indulging themselves in that sort of thinking. They want a message, and they want to be part of something bigger than themselves.
In this poor rural county, we have five choices - all of them aristocratic factions who do not speak to or for the working poor and do not care about the working poor - which is most of the people. That is no choice at all. The 10% or so of people here who are better off are all excited of course - they side with the tea party people, Dems, Republicans, Libertarians or Greens - and tell us that it really, really matters how we vote. It may make a difference in their lives, but not in ours.
They don't have the luxury of thinking this way.....
Thinking any way is not a luxury. It doesn't cost money and if they have time for TV they have the "luxury". Thinking is necessary if you want to solve problems. There is a big problem at hand. The thinking is still missing.How can you excuse such mental laziness by saying they are not like activists? Well duh. Of course they are not. They need to be because they are being robbed. I have news for you, the oligarchy or plutocracy has contempt for the people. They see them as laborers with little motivation, ambition, or intelligence and justify their wealth on the basis of their own perceived superiority.It is hard to defend the people when they have trouble making change on a ten dollar bill and many can barely read. A very large segment of the population doesn't even understand that evolution is every bit as real as gravity.What can I say when one third of the people thinks god tells them what to do? How can one expect them to be able to defend themselves politically? hopeless I tell you.
Pink,
IMO, It isn't just that there is a "lower level of education" or even a "lower level of intellect", some of the "smartest" folks around are those less "educated" or whose "IQs" are lower. Some of the "intelligent" "well educated" "elites" make the same political mistakes, as some, on occasion, will now admit. The problem, IMO, is that people simply were not paying attention - they treat(ed) politics as if it were "American Idol" or the Kentucky Derby. This attitude is of course fostered by the MSM that doesn't want folks to pay attention, but, frankly, by too much of our "progressive" media as well, that, after giving "serious consideration" to the issues, nevertheless winds up adopting, and promoting, a "winner" mentality when it falls back on "the lesser of 2 evils" argument.
But there are other factors, IMO, at work as well. The well honed "can't win" label tattooed on indy/3rd party candidates, or the "spoiler" label when the above threatens to weaken, are major examples. And then, of course, there is the argument, foisted by some here, that electoral politics is a waste of time in any case, which, IMO, is particularly insidious.
All these factors combine to keep folks from realizing that they do, indeed, have to pay attention, and take the time to seek out information. The fact that that information, especially re indys, is often hard to get does, indeed, make it more difficult. But i think "less educated" folks can do it just as well as the "more educated" can, once they, "educated" and "uneducated" alike, understand the need to pay attention. "Uneducated" folks are quite capable of, in fact in many ways are better at, "paying attention" to many things, out of the sheer necessity of doing so in order to stay alive. It's just that they, as well as too many of the "educated", don't have a sense that politics are worth the time or effort paying attention requires.
That, to me, is one of the great tragedies of our era - the fact that folks have allowed themselves to become convinced that democracy is not worth the diligence it takes to make it work well ....
Beautifully put. Very good.
Yes, the oligarchy has contempt for the everyday people. So do most commentators here, and all throughout what passes for the Left in this country.
It is not hard for me to defend the every day people. We judge people differently, I suppose.
Whether or not your scathing indictment of your fellow working class people is accurate, it is political dead end.
You know what though, pink? 40%, while not the majority, is a considerable amount, and anything could happen between now and 2012, regarding elections and the presidency.
Economic Man empirePie October 12th, 2010
Economic man: “Say what’s your plan?
What sort of change is in the can?
Have you been sold short shrift and left adrift;
to ponder better binges while time is left to sift?”
Economic man: “Say what’s your plan?
Is it randy, rational, or Rand ?
Does the benefit exceed the cost?
Are the values loaded positive with the norms in tow?
Where you gonna stow your dough?”
Economic man: “Say what’s your plan?
Can you lever what you’ve lost ‘the Man’?
Does the land forgive the hand?
Was empathy for Adam Smith quite grand?
Do you buy ‘No Name’ ... is it bland?
Does scarcity need to have a brand?”
Economic man: “Say what’s your plan?
What sort of change is in the can?"
Good poem.
I read today that in the last 4 years, WallStreet profits are down 20% (neglecting the small matter of their bankruptcy and rescue by the American people), while WallStreet executive compensations are up 20% in the same period of time.
Say it with me: Socialism is alive and well in America! Dont ya just luv that 'free market'?
Ubrew: Thanks.
You are right the casino capitalism of Wall Street has turned out to be a global weapon of sorts, what Michael Hudson refers to as a global financial world war. http://counterpunch.org/hudson10112010.html
Glendon Wayne
I realize it is the masochist in me that proffers this observation, as i realize that it is likely to bring the wrath of no-god upon me, but i can't help saying that i don't know whether it is mildly amusing or profoundly depressing to note that it appears even the socialists can't get their act together ....
Judean Peoples Front vs Peoples Front of Judea
some things never change...
I think it is refreshing, and probably a good sign to see the internecine warfare between different Socialist factions. It has been a long time since I saw that to any extent.
They will never "have their act together." It is the "acts" that have been "gotten together" that are the problem. However, the time is rapidly approaching when there will be concerted and militant mass action, and the factional feuding brings that day closer. We need a little upsetting of the applecart, a little freedom from the constraints of "putting on a good act" if you ask me.
After decades of petty and bitter feuding about how to get the existing social structure and power hierarchy to "work," how to "fix" Capitalism, I think it is pretty great to see people debating how to create something new. No one ever said "gee the Capitalist apologists don't seem to be able to get their act together" even though it has been much more true of them than it will ever be about the Socialists.
The times are changing, and changing fast now.
Interesting that you mention the Monty Python scene. That was right about the time that it became trendy and fashionable to mock the Left for being passe and no longer stylish, as the movement collapsed. We reaped decades of right wing nightmares as the result of that abandonment of the Left. Was that worth the smug and self-satisfied chuckles, the feeling of superiority that people got from that? I think not. But those days are over now.
Good post, thanks.
"No one ever said "gee the Capitalist apologists don't seem to be able to get their act together" even though it has been much more true of them than it will ever be about the Socialists."
Oh, it seems to me the Capitalist apologists have "gotten their act together" pretty well indeed. Isn't that the gist and the complaint of so many posters here?
Obama is definitely NOT a "social democrat." In fact, he is far to the right of Europe's big center-right parties. His presidency simply represents a continuation of Bush's administration. Its time for the US left to break with the reactionary two-party system and build a new major party that represents the bottom 90% of the population's economic interests:
http://fosterhall.blogspot.com/2010/08/usas-2010-election-reject-capitalist.html
"Whereas Obama seemed to do all the right things in his quest for the presidency..."
All the right things?
Is Walden Bello nuts?
Obama (and the democrat's leaders) did all the right-wing things!
This article is disgusting.
These are the same lessons that should have been learned from the Clinton debacle but were ignored and forgotten. But there are too many lessons not learned that get repeated too soon. Here's a list to think about. Let me know what else to add.
1. Lessons not learned from NAFTA as CAFTA passes although a closer vote.
2. Lessons not learned from Reagan's tax cuts for the wealthy as Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy repeats history.
3. Lessons not learned from Vietnam war as Iraq and Afghanistan continue.
4. Lessons not learned from the Great Depression as the Great Recession is likely to become our next Great Depression with the possibility of going permanent.
5. Lessons not learned from the S&L crisis of the 1980s as the 2008 mortgage meltdown took place and the country is still lingering from it.
Bello presents a solid analysis of the flaws in Obama's tactics, but fails to analyze the motivations behind these errors. Obama is unable to challenge neoliberalism because fundamentally he is a neoliberal. As a member of the ruling elite, he genuinely believes that what's good for the corporations and Wall Street bankers is good for all Americans. If you study his actual actions rather than the rhetoric, this is the obvious conclusion.
He didn't listen to Krugman because Krugman is not a part of the ruling elite. The dominant liberal narrative that Obama was too cowardly to confront the right misses the fact that to a large extent he agrees with them. He may qualify his agreement, but on most points he is at one with the Bush agenda and even pushes it further in certain directions. Face it, he appointed Sen. Simmons to head the committee on the deficit.
Were these actually mistakes? They seem a little too consistent to be simply tactical errors. If they were simply mistakes, then he would have had a few hits as well. But every action he has taken follows a formula - a few symbolic concessions to the common good and massive cash infusions for the emerging corporate rulers.
Bello ably sums up what is likely to be the obituary on the Obama administration from the liberal viewpoint. Unfortunately, this viewpoint lacks insight into the underlying class dynamics that undermines even the smartest and most skilled political leadership.
"He didn't listen to Krugman because Krugman is not a part of the ruling elite."
I question that notion. There hasn't been much of a populist slant in any of his economic essays. Are you sure he isn't part of the ruling elite or am I totally misunderstanding something?
Does Obama really think that "what's good for the corporations and Wall Street bankers is good for all Americans?" I am not so sure. He may think that what's good for the corporations and Wall Street bankers is good for a few Americans, the better ones, the smarter ones, and not so good for the rest of us, but that the rest of us don't count for much and don't matter.
Reagan may have sincerely believed that. But not Obama. Obama is too smart to think that. He knows better. Reagan may not have known better.
Why does everybody buy the idea that Obama is intelligent? Immoral behavior is not intelligent. An intelligent person realizes the consequences to all of society of immoral behavior. I refuse to call a mass murderer and war criminal intelligent. I understand that psychopaths can be cunning but not intelligent. Obama's actions are those of someone with limited intelligence.Finally, being intelligent is not a feature of any US president.
OK, "cunning."
Mr. Bello is a true propagandist for the global elite. Their "game" is to push the illusion that Obomber and the Donkeys made "mistakes", had a "Debacle", etc. when in reality they are accomplishing their goal of deindustrializing the U.S., robbery of the U.S. Treasury and population reduction through homelessness, lack of healthcare, unemployment, malnutrition, etc. For those of us who are paying attention this is a criminal enterprise of epic proportions. At no other time in world history has robbery and murder been carried out so clearly out in public view. It is truly amazing how many people choose to ignore the evidence and live in denial as they lose their homes,jobs, healthcare, etc.
The people denying it are the people who are not harmed by it. The other 70-80% of the people know what is happening.
To believe that someone losing their home or job is in denial because they vote Republican, let's say, suggests that they would not be in denial if they voted some other way.
The people who are blaming the general public, who are saying that they are all in denial, who keep maintaining that we can vote our way out of this mess and that the system can be made to work are the ones in denial.
"who keep maintaining that we can vote our way out of this mess and that the system can be made to work are the ones in denial.
And the ones who undermine the concept that voting, when used as a tool by an informed public, has tremendous potential to change "the system", are in denial ......
I understand what you are saying, but when did this ever happen? what is the evidence that i could happen now?
Let's take one example - Emancipation. Lincoln and the Republican party only loom large, it only seems that voting freed the slaves when we ignore the everyday people's history and only look at the history by, about, and for the rulers. I would say that there are over a hundred people who were far more powerful in bringing about Emancipation than Lincoln was, or then all of the politicians in the Republican party combined were. I would also say that electing Republican, or Lincoln, would have been of absolutely no value had 99% of the work not already been done, and that that work would have led to Emancipation no matter how people voted. Being a 40 year student of that era, I cannot see how any credible contrary case can be made.
Now, in 1850 would I have said "don't vote" or "don't vote Whig" or "don't vote Free Soil?" No. I am not saying that now, although you keep hearing that. But I would have said - and events would have proven me right - that voting and partisan electoral politics were not going to end slavery. And they didn't. The work - massive amounts of work by thousands of people working outside of partisan electoral politics - forced a change in partisan electoral politics, not the other way around.
There were people in the 1850's saying "don't vote for the duopoly, the Whigs are no better than the Democrats." True enough. But electoral politics is not where the work was getting accomplished, not where results were ultimately achieved.
"There were people in the 1850's saying "don't vote for the duopoly, the Whigs are no better than the Democrats." True enough."
Luckily, enough folks listened and voted 3rd party. If they had bought into your concept that voting could accomplish nothing, Lincoln would not have been elected. I realize that you think it wouldn't have made any difference who was elected, but that is a hypothesis you cannot even test, let alone prove. Your only theater for this proposal is in the "what if" scenario realm, which make for interesting and thought provoking reading but are of not much use, IMO, as a guide to action.
"I would also say that electing Republican, or Lincoln, would have been of absolutely no value had 99% of the work not already been done ..."
That crucial 1% ....
"and that that work would have led to Emancipation ...."
When, TA, when?
"no matter how people voted."
No matter how people voted in 1860, or how they ever voted? Do you think that, had Lincoln not been assassinated, Reconstruction would have played out differently?
And what about the 14th Amendment?
I have been thinking about this the last couple of days and posted about it above.
Yes, people started falling off the Whig party bandwagon in the 1850's, and people fell off the Democratic party bandwagon as well. I myself have fallen off the party bandwagon recently. That is part of the larger drama, a small part, and an effect not a cause. Conditions are driving partisan politics, not the other way around, just as they did in the 1850's.
Some voted Free Soil -
"The Free Soil Party was a short-lived political party in the United States active in the 1848 and 1852 presidential elections, and in some state elections. It was a third party that largely appealed to and drew its greatest strength from New York State. The party leadership consisted of former anti-slavery members of the Whig Party and the Democratic Party. Its main purpose was opposing the expansion of slavery into the western territories, arguing that free men on free soil comprised a morally and economically superior system to slavery. They opposed slavery in the new territories and sometimes worked to remove existing laws that discriminated against freed African Americans in states such as Ohio."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Soil_Party
Others voted "Know Nothing" -
"The Know-Nothing movement was a nativist American political movement of the 1840s and 1850s. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to Anglo-Saxon values and controlled by the Pope in Rome. Mainly active from 1854 to 1856, it strove to curb immigration and naturalization, though its efforts met with little success. Membership was limited to Protestant males of British lineage over the age of twenty-one. There were few prominent leaders, and the largely middle-class and entirely Protestant membership fragmented over the issue of slavery. Most ended up joining the Republican Party by the time of the 1860 presidential election."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing
Voting third party in the 1850's did not, could not have driven the Abolition movement. It was the other way around. The Abolition movement relentlessly and aggressively drove the Republican party. Even after the Republicans were in power, they had to be pushed, and events drove policy, not the other way around. Lincoln himself said many times that this was exactly what was happening.
There was no "end slavery" choice on the ballot in the 1850's. Some Whigs, such as Seward, moved to the Republicans very late in the game (1858) and Seward was one of the strongest anti-slavery politicians. Some Democrats, such as Chase were strongly anti-slavery. Chase became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court without there ever being any bother with aligning his partisan allegiance to his values, and the first thing he did was to swear in the first African-American to argue a case in front of the court.
By 1868, there was a "no slavery" choice on the ballot - after the battle had been won. That is always how this works.
Mr. Bello is a true propagandist for the global elite. Their "game" is to push the illusion that Obomber and the Donkeys made "mistakes", had a "Debacle", etc. when in reality they are accomplishing their goal of deindustrializing the U.S., robbery of the U.S. Treasury and population reduction through homelessness, lack of healthcare, unemployment, malnutrition, etc. For those of us who are paying attention this is a criminal enterprise of epic proportions. At no other time in world history has robbery and murder been carried out so clearly out in public view. It is truly amazing how many people choose to ignore the evidence and live in denial as they lose their homes,jobs, healthcare, etc.
Having read a small sample of the comments on this topic I find the discussion useless and unproductive.
A simple improvement:
This is not a recession. It is not "the great recession". It was and is the near total destruction of our entire economy easily explained by 10 million foreclosures in a four year period 2010 to 2014.
"We" saw it coming and put it 4 weeks (the market crash) off in mid August of 08.
The presidents prime mistake was to call it a recession.
The remediation attempted would have dealt with a recession.
When the DJ drops 900,800, 700, 600, 500 (approx)in five straight days thats NO recession.
What I reccomend we do for the next 10 years is to keep on the the Right wing "slime" with mind bending political warfare.
We do equally to the R's and TP's dirty and unrelenting politics.
You THEY are simple if you think we can undo in 18 months what it took "them" 10 years to destroy.
Every issue has to be us vs. them, starting with raising taxes on incomes >250,000. Fill in the remaining issues.
The R's are , yes they are presently self destructing.
The piece is over bearing, juvenile and simple and makes useless points.
elfersdon -
Having read your comments on this topic I find them useless and unproductive.
Your opinion is over bearing, juvenile and simple and makes useless points.
Otherwise...spot on!
I know I'm on my own, with this concern, but the republicans have a special, and I mean special concern with Bill Clinton. This obsession is profound. Every chance they get, the right wing, look for any possible chance to put him down. No other president gets even close to this obsessiveness. I've observed this neurotic preoccupation since Clinton came to power for two terms. It's going as strongly as ever. Clinton continues to be blamed for every disorder, every problem, every disaster in the world. Republicans are presently trying to pin the current failing economy on Clinton; as if everyone in the world, since Clinton did whatever the hell he was supposed to have done, including 3 intervening presidential terms, were in a state of paralysis, as they watched our economy collapse over the past ten years, and were not able to do anything about it.
INDEPENDENTMINDED, stop the pretense. In response to the same CD article, Lessons of the Obama Debacle, you used the same tactic twice, in two different posts, inserting Clinton's name between Reagan and Bush, to appear level-headed. In fact, you're just another Clinton hater, desperately blaming him for every disaster. You may not be aware, but Clinton is "currently," according to a poll taken a few days ago, the most popular politician in this country, in fact, the most popular politician in the world. I can't help but think that this stunning popularity may be at the root of this republican mania, this republican envy. When Clinton came on the scene, he was unlike any previous president, democratic or otherwise. He wasn't a stodgy, hidden, secretive, elitist, like previous presidents, much like Obama. He was a "new" kind of president. Brilliant, immensely popular, naturally optimistic, fiercely devoted to his work, in spite of it. You had to bring this guy down, and you certainly tried. But you failed, and you'll continue to fail. Try as you may, you won't be able to diminish one iota, the admiration felt for Clinton. The other Clinton, Hillary, would have been the best choice available to us in 2008. But the corporations had other ideas in store, and we had Obama forced on us.
Well, there are "Obamabots" and then there are "Clintonbots" .......
i guess it's not too early for the "Hillary for Pres." folks to reappear ....
No different to the left obsessing on Reagan as the root of all evil.
Not so fast, johncp. Clinton repealed the Glass-Steagall law that kept the banks in check and prevented them from engaging in the kind of runaway behaviour that they've engaged in since, he put in NAFTA and CAFTA, and he bombed the crap out of Kosovo. Having said all of the above, here's a suggestion: Don't romanticize Bill Clinton. His policies, too, helped get us into the mess that we're presently in.
Correction. The Republican-controlled Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, and it was given to Clinton to sign into law on Dec 24, 3 weeks prior to him leaving office. Clinton has since said that it was the biggest mistake of his career.
If Clinton hadn't signed it, Bush would have 3 weeks later.
Just want the facts to be clear.
Boyd R. Collins. I've read your post about Obama's neo-liberalism, and see it somewhat differently.
I've watched, over the past months, as the house immediately next to mine, a completely delapidated shack, was purchased by a speculator at a low price, then a contractor rebuilt it from the ground up, putting it on the market for twice the money. No architect was necessary. The contractor simply followed the original plan for the house, down to the last stud. This seems closer to what Obama has done. The man is no political architect. Obama strikes me as an intellectual mediocrity. He followed the Bush plan exactly, down to the last stud. But here, even the contractor analogy breaks down. Obama didn't have to hire his help. The contractor that rebuilt the house next to mine, knew his stuff. Obama doesn't seem to know anything substantively about the political scene. It has all been handed to him. He seems to have been inserted in the White House, in lieu of genuine presidential material, and the White House came with instructions to be followed to the letter.
I like your analogy and it fits his behavior. His political inexperience may explain why he relied so exclusively on Clinton retreads and adheres so closely to Bush policies. But his financial backers were probably quite aware of his idealism and inexperience and it suited their purposes nicely. Someone who sincerely called for "bipartisonship" could easily be manipulated into supporting corporate interests in a way that would be less divisive than the "take no prisoners" philosophy of the Bush crowd.
Indeed, the White House comes with a set of instructions and deviations are severely punished, as JFK discovered a little too late. We Americans have been deeply instilled with images of powerful Presidents - Lincoln, FDR, JFK - independent figures who charted a whole new course for our nation. But the reality today is far different and that kind of leadership doesn't fit into "managed democracy" (read Sheldon Wolin's Democracy Incorporated if you want the political details). Instead we have presidents like Obama and Bush, who play their designated role and receive the career rewards their obedience deserves.
Who is going to win seems to depend a lot on whether the person making the statement is right wing or left wing. The most recent polls are showing that many of the races are turning in favor of the Democrats.
Are the Dems headed for a rout, or are they going to pull victory from the Jaws of Victory, for a change?
Seems like a lot of voters are starting to wake up to just how STUPID and CRAZY the Republican't candidates are.
Take our own races in Oregon. The guy running against Peter DeFazio is a certified nutcase, from what I saw on Rachel Maddow the other night. John Kitzhaber is running against Chris Dudley, whose only voter recognition is that he played center for the Portland Trailblazers during part of his NBA career. His "financial consulting" career has not benefited most Oregonians. The man has no qualifications, and has worked hard to prevent voters really knowing where he stands on the issues. He refused to participate in most of the traditional gubernatorial debates and was demolished in the one he did attend.
If I was in Eastern Oregon, I would be working HARD against Greg Walden, the only Republican "Party of No" obstructionist in our Congressional delegation.
As it is, I'm supporting Rick Staggenborg, a Progressive who is running against Senator Ron "Let me sell you some insurance" Wyden, the former Gray Panthers advocate who wrote the mandatory insurance section of the health INSURANCE "reform" law, and is now the 50th richest man in Congress.