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Obama's Bad Bargain
The most distressing outcome of the deficit hysteria gripping Washington may be what Barack Obama has revealed about himself. It was disconcerting to watch the president slip-slide so easily into voicing the fallacious economic arguments of the right. It was shocking when he betrayed core principles of the Democratic Party, portraying himself as high-minded and brave because he defied his loyal constituents. Supporters may hope this rightward shift was only a matter of political tactics, but I think Obama has at last revealed his sincere convictions. If he wins a second term, he will be free to strike a truly rotten “grand bargain” with Republicans—“pragmatic” compromises that will destroy the crown jewels of democratic reform.
The president has done grievous damage to the most vulnerable by trying to fight the GOP on its ground—accepting the premise that deficits and debt should be a national priority. He made the choice more than a year ago to push aside the real problem—the vast loss and suffering generated by a failing economy.
As a conservative reformer, Obama embraced a bizarre notion of “balance.” The budget cuts he first proposed would have punished the middle class and vulnerable three times with a big stick, shrinking Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits while hitting the wealthy only once with a modest tax increase. When Democrats complained that this wasn’t fair, Obama adjusted the “shared sacrifice” to a dollar-for-dollar ratio. Take a dollar from working stiffs who need these programs, take a dollar from the superrich who don’t need a tax break. How fair is that?
Obama’s facile arithmetic essentially scrapped the Democratic Party’s longstanding commitment to progressive taxation and universal social protections. The claim that cutting Social Security benefits will “strengthen” the system is erroneous. In fact, Obama has already undermined the soundness of Social Security by partially suspending the FICA payroll tax for workers—depriving the system of revenue it needs for long-term solvency.
The mendacity has a more fundamental dimension. Obama helped conservatives concoct the debt crisis on false premises, promoting a claim that Social Security and other entitlement programs were somehow to blame while gliding over the real causes and culprits. Social Security has never contributed a dime to the federal deficits (actually, the government borrows the trust fund’s huge surpluses to offset its red ink).
This mean-spirited political twist amounts to blaming the victims. There should be no mystery about what caused the $14 trillion debt: large deficits began in 1981, with Ronald Reagan’s fanciful “supply side” tax-cutting. Federal debt was then around $1 trillion. By 2007 it had reached $9 trillion, thanks to George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy and his two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus the massive subsidy for Big Pharma in Medicare drug benefits. The 2008 financial collapse and deep recession generated most of the remainder, as tax revenues fell drastically. Obama’s pump-priming stimulus added to the debt too, but a relatively small portion.
Whatever supposed solutions Congress eventually enacts, the misleading quality of the debt crisis should become widely understood once the action is completed. The debt and deficits will probably keep expanding, because the economy will remain stagnant or worse, with near 10 percent unemployment and falling incomes, and that is fundamentally what drives deficits higher. It should become obvious that deficit reduction did nothing to revive economic growth or to create jobs. In fact, cutting federal spending may make things worse, because it withdraws demand from the economy at the very moment when demand for goods and services is woefully inadequate.
At some point, then, the president will have to change his tune. Instead of mimicking the penny pinchers, Obama will have to say something about the nation’s real problem—the sick economy and the terrible consequences facing millions of families. But it’s not clear he will have much to say beyond small-bore suggestions and the usual pep talks. If he does a sudden about-face and proposes big ideas for job creation, will anyone believe him?
The White House evidently thinks it’s good politics for 2012 to dismiss the left and court wobbly independents. Obama no doubt assumes faithful Democrats have nowhere else to go. It’s true that very few will wish to oppose him next year, given the fearful possibility of right-wing crazies running the country. On the other hand, people who adhere to the core Democratic values Obama has abandoned need a strategy for stronger resistance. That would not mean running away from Obama but running at him—challenging his leadership of the party, mobilizing dissident voices and voters, pushing Congressional Democrats to embrace a progressive agenda in competition with Obama’s.
To be blunt, progressives have to pick a fight with their own party. They have to launch the hard work of reconnecting with ordinary citizens, listening and learning, defining new politics from the ground up. People in a rebellious mood should also prepare for the possibility that it may already be too late, that the Democratic Party’s gradual move uptown is too advanced to reverse. In that event, people will have to locate a new home—a new force in politics that speaks for them.
105 Comments so far
Show AllOh, dear, how this is garbage. Obama is doing exactly what he wants. And this is nonsense:
"To be blunt, progressives have to pick a fight with their own party."
Sorry, ain't my party, nor the party of any real progressive!
I'm a member of the Green Party. The only complaint I have is that there aren't nearly enough of us. For the life of me, I don't fully understand why not. Maybe it's because there aren't enough members to do more serious recruiting. And the Greens don't have state of the art technology, the psyops professionals, the media, the money. All we have are thinking people who want a better world for all earth's inhabitants.
I left the Democrats when they stopped representing me, around 40 years ago. It seemed like a no brainer to me but millions didn't agree and stuck with the Party of Habit and Fear, claiming over and over again until I had to plug my ears and cover my eyes to avoid it: "An independent progressive party is NOT VIABLE!" So why not join up and make it viable? "It's too LATE!" "This is not the TIME!" they cried. (this was at least a couple of decades ago, in the 80s and 90s)
All very well put, rvwalker!
Obysmal is a disaster, his dishonest embrace of right wing narratives on every issue was demonstrated by his early campaign embrace of RONZO, the only prior president he ever references.
It should have been a signal to anyone paying attention that his political hero was RONZO, not FDR.. FDR said in a speech in regard to the "malefactors of great wealth", that he "welcomes their hatred"
Obama welcomes their advice.
what he really wants is one of their membership cards. Deep down he just wants to out-Cosby Cosby.
Excellent way of putting it!
When I learned that Obama's political hero was not FDR but Ronald Reagan I was astonished and depressed beyond belief -although the signs were there all along. Since then, in countless ways, he has manifested his belief in "trickle-down" economics and the corporate state.
Sadly, it now looks like that "traitor to his class," FDR, was an historical accident and the thirty or forty year rule by the New Deal and its successors was the only "golden era" we are likely to see in our lifetimes.
1. Create a financial panic in 2008 and get bailed out with trillions,
2. lay off and outsource jobs creating downward pressure on wages,
3. hoard cash
4. Create another financial panic by shutting down the USA gov driving stock prices down which in turn leads to 2 things -->
5. Use their cash holdings to buy up stocks on the cheap
6. Drive interest rates up for loans and T Bills
Rinse and repeat except add in Social Security etc next time.
## 5 and 6..
SO SOMEONE WANTS TO BENEFIT FROM THE DEBACLE? PLEASE EXPLAIN WHO AND HOW. (I don’t doubt it.)
Hello Michigan woman,
The wealthy and powerful. The people at the ultimate top of the pyramid and the corporations (many multinational/global and foreign). The Waltons (not John Boy , etc.), The Koch's, Bill Gates, GE, Monsanto, Walmart, Pfizer, Columbia /HCA etc. Both lists are too long to give even a truly representative amount of names. How by capturing the government and running it like a personal unlimited source for almost if not completely free money supply. I do not know if this helps or not but others could offer a better explanation than I have tried to give you.
Buy low and sell high. Get out of the market now and buy in again when its about 5000. Dump those T Bills now and buy in again when they reach 8% interest rates--brilliant. For them- the hedge funds will do great..
"If he does a sudden about-face and proposes big ideas for job creation, will anyone believe him?"
Huh? That ship has already sailed. Brand O's first "stimulus" package was so weak, it had the duplicitous effect of proving to the mainstream punditry that you can't spend your way out of a recession/depression.
All that's left is deficit reduction and eventual capitulation to voodoo economics.
Yup. The first "stimulus" was tailor-made for failure.
True, Jill, but what really saved the banksters wasn't the piddling recovery and stimulus bills from Chimpy and Ohblahblah, but the serveral trillions of dollars of interest-free loans given to said banksters, not a penny of which has been repaid, nor ever will be.
They then loaned that money BACK to the Government at an interest rate several points higher.
What a CON job........It a better scheme then any crime I have ever read about.
I didn't get 'poor confused Obama' from the article, Jill. Nor do I think it is garbage. In fact I think it shows a liberal who is beginning to wake up. He does conclude that "it may already be too late, that the Democratic Party’s gradual move uptown is too advanced to reverse. In that event, people will have to locate a new home—a new force in politics that speaks for them."
I would heartily agree with his conclusion and say, It IS too late to make the Democratic Party stand for progressive principles. Time for a new, third party that speaks for the people.
I think that among the commenters here, the user "nohobear" most succinctly responds to Greider, who still wants us to be loyal Dimocrats. He may actually believe it's possible that "it may already be too late," but he has a lifetime and a career staked on precisely the opposite. Besides, if he doesn't back down and tell us all to vote for Oblahblah and the Dims next year, Katrina vanden Dimshill will 86 him.
I agree, corvo. I wonder about some of these more smart liberals, if their job security isn't based on continuing to support the Democrap Party. Greider would doubtless lose his position if he advocated third party. And Katrina vanden Dimshill is one of the few 'progressives' allowed onto the circuit of corporate media pundits, which means she is a strong supporter of the duopoly.
Jill, I suspect you are right. I didn't follow Obomber much during the 2008 election. I had moved to Costa Rica and written off the U$A as a lost cause. I never viewed him as a progressive, but I'm told he campaigned on protecting Social Security and Medicare, and didn't advocate cutting them, as he has since shown a willingness to do--in fact, he's already done it with Medicare, and to an extent with SS to, with the payroll tax holiday, which defunds it.
Yes, it's all a 'good cop/bad cop' game, with the outcome predictable in advance: a 'compromise' that includes big and unnecessary cuts in entitlement spending, with perhaps a few token tax increases for the wealthy. It will be lauded as 'shared sacrifice' and a 'necessary compromise'.
'People are now being asked to again ignore what Obama both says and openly does. I hope this will not work, but I know how much propaganda is thrown at everyone...'
Equally important, Jill, is the fear factor, whereby the oligarchy sends in the republican clowns to frighten most Americans into submitting to the cool and collected Obama, 'the only adult in the room.' As you say above, the 'good cop, bad cop' routine.
It's so extraordinarily, and overtly, Orwellian. When the political class finally does eviscerate the safety net, many democrats will actually be thanking Obama for saving the crumbs that are left.
"I had moved to Costa Rica and written off the U$A as a lost cause."
Fantastic- how does one go about doing that, if you don't mind me asking? I see that there is just about "no chance" for the USS Titanic to change course, and would LOVE to leave it, and Costa Rica is one of the more interesting places that I have thought about, although I have never been there. I do speak Espanol...
Thanks, if you can spare the time!
Slim, It's way off topic, but if you email me at bigskymind1@yahoo.com I'd be happy to share what I know with you. In general, I would recommend someone go there and try it out for 6 or 8 months before selling all your belongings and going, as I did. (Don't worry, people aren't all going to be corralled into concentration camps here next year.) I spent 2 years there and learned a lot, don't regret it, but the culture shock was big.
Thank you very much!
Hello Memory_Hole,
Since we seem to be stuck to a nominal two party system it is time for the DumbOcartic Party to become the WHIGS of the 21st century. IOW gone and only remembered by those who like history.
Brand O's first "stimulus" package was a GREAT SUCCESS for the banksters who own the Pres and all the corrupt bastards holding federal office. Sheee it! Trillions of dollars with no strings attached? Wow!! That was wonderful for them!
Urging lefties to stay with the Dimocraps and reform them from within is counterproductive advice. Leave that bunch of corrupt bastards and vote non corporate! But, really, I don't think voting will mean much at all. You know they cheat on the vote count, don't you? We need to get out on the streets. Google October 6, 2011 and consider going to Washington D.C. to stay for a bit.
nationbabble as we move inexorably towards dictatorship..
Honestly, is there anything in The Nation besides Jeremy Scahill that ISN'T garbage?
mr greider's book
"One World, Ready or Not, " a national bestseller, Wiliam Greider focuses his incomparable reportorial skills on exposing the myths and the realities of the global ecnomy in terms of human struggle. Drawing on in-depth investigations and interviews with factory workers, corporate CEOs, economists and government officials around the world, he contends that the global economy is sowing "creative destruction" everywhere: while making possible great accumulations of wealth, it is also reviving forms of human exploitation that characterized industry one hundred years ago. Greider warns that if the system isn't reformed it will threaten not only our middle-class lifestyles but also social peace in rich and poor countries alike."
http://books.google.com/books/about/One_world_ready_or_not.html?id=lC7ytrzQFxEC
its about 10 years old and in it he foresaw or current mess
its is a tribute to the american economy that it has taken so many evil men so long to kill it but kill it they have
i saw a piece of news a couple of years ago about a guy in detroit who shoots racoons, skins them, cooks them and sells them on his front lawn to the community
man times is rough
"The People of Detroit is an ongoing photodocumentary focused on people who live in, work in, or otherwise have a significant impact on the City of Detroit. I started the project in April 2010 after seeing a Dateline NBC documentary wherein metro-Detroit ex-pat and child molester inquisitor extraordinaire Chris Hansen profiled a man in Detroit who hunts, cooks and sells raccoons"
http://www.thepeopleofdetroit.com/p/about.html
and still the gates/rothschild/rockefeller debt prison tells us we "got it too good" that we need to "tighten our belts"
in america marie antoinette doesn't say let them eat cake - she says let them eat them damn dirty disease ridden varmints - like the racoons
ouch..........
"in america marie antoinette doesn't say let them eat cake - she says let them eat them damn dirty disease ridden varmints - like the racoons"
And in amerika, "marie antoinette" should remember what a guilottine is for. OFF WITH THEIR HEADS.
Thats a good point that I was going make myself: there's nothing uniquely American about what is happening right now (and since about 2000), its happening all over the world. First came a housing bubble, inflated by cheap credit and predator loans. Turns out banks were repackaging these loans and lending them out as new credit all over the world. When this house of cards crashed, the banks knew they would be first to the gov't trough, thanks to friends in high places. But someone had to pay. In 'austerity measures', what we have is the other shoe dropping. Since 2008, the Fed gave $16 trillion to the banks. Someone's going to have to pay for this, or the dollar is worthless, and that someone is us. Unless we do without SocSec, public programs, etc, the economy will tank, or our credit rating will fall and we'll spend billions more on interest. Again, this entire program is occuring all over the world: its a globalized finance sector takeover. Just because the people of Greece, Ireland, Spain, etc are the first in line to be fleeced, doesn't mean we Americans aren't going to get our fleecing. Globally, this is much too coordinated to be anything but planned.
another tired theme of "make them do the right thing". Sorry, I'm not putting a dime or an ounce of effort into the dim-oh-craps. Greider hopes all the progressive "fuc*&% retards" try to change the party from within instead of focusing energies on a third party to challenge the duopoly.
Reid, Pelosi, O-bomber, sell outs all ... actions have consequences.
Yep. Pretty useless. I thought Greider was above this kind of crap. Guess he's just another mouth of the of the Professional Left's Save Obama Coalition.
"Obama no doubt assumes faithful Democrats have nowhere else to go. It’s true that very few will wish to oppose him next year, given the fearful possibility of right-wing crazies running the country."
That's one big, fu**in' assumption you're making, Greider. I wish to oppose him, even if it means we have some GOP nastiness to contend with. First of all, the sooner we get a GOP President trying to steamroll this country, the angrier we will be. Witness Wisconsin. This slow operation of death by a thousand cuts that the Democrats are performing deflates and defeats us in a much more insidious and cruel way. Second, Obama needs to be punished in order to show him and anyone else who betrays the American people like Obama did cannot and will not get elected. Third, no one in good conscience--whether they call themselves Democrat or Independent, Progressive or Libertarian--can vote for this man and still stay true to his/her core beliefs.
Anyone who votes for Obama because he's scared of a Republican is a coward.
Greider says Progressives should be "pushing Congressional Democrats to embrace a progressive agenda in competition with Obama’s." When we were less informed and much more naive, we did that. Now we know that we could make phone calls every single minute of every single day and make an infinite number of visits to every politician, and it wouldn't make a bit of difference. All Greider and others like him are doing is making busy work for the "Loyal Democrats" and "Loyal Progressives." Greider and other so-called "leading voices" don't know what else to do now, and they want to stay relevant. They lost relevancy a long time ago.
People at The Nation, so-called Progressive websites whose "leading stars" won't commit to anything, and groups like MoveOn have failed. They were having too much fun rubbing elbows with the politicians and cable t.v. "stars" and getting their egos stroked to fight back when the fighting would have counted. Now they're essentially patting people on the head and telling them to call, write, and visit. These people are worthless now. They have nothing to offer.
lefttown, I agree that there is nothing to fear in not voting for Obama. I didn't vote for him in 2008 and certainly won't vote for him next year, regardless of who he runs against. But I think we should at least acknowledge that Greider concludes with "it may already be too late" (to save the Democratic Party). Liberals are generally pretty clueless, but we ought to try to encourage them to wake up, rather than contemptuously dismiss them. The only people more clueless are conservatives and tea baggers. But I understand the anger. All the energy that is currently devoted by groups like MoveOn, the Center for American Progress, and other liberal groups, would be much better directed into forming a new, third party, one that genuinely reflects the interests of working people. We have to leave behind utterly the politics of fear, of lesser-evilism.
Nicely stated. I have been thinking along the same lines. There may be more results having a Republican president against a Democratic House and Senate. At least this scenaro will perpetuate the same dysfunctional legislative grid-lock and standards as having a Tea Party Nut case House, and status quo Senate. Under such a plan, the Democrats can go back to the "opposition" Party rather than finding themselves rubber stamping Obama's various and sacred capitulations.
"Given the fearful possibility of right wing crazies running the country". Is this guy nuts?
Right wing crazies are running the country right now, because the Big Pussy in the White House refuses to challenge them. Just as Mr. Bompansiero in the Sopranos betrayed the family, the one in Washington has betrayed the people who elected him. Life mimics art or art mimics life, who really gives a shit?
this will only be resolved through dictatorship... better to prepare now, like the medieval and pre-medieval monasteries where truth can be saved and protected,..and/or underground resistance
'..............People in a rebellious mood should also prepare for the possibility that it may already be too late, that the Democratic Party’s gradual move uptown is too advanced to reverse. In that event, people will have to locate a new home—a new force in politics that speaks for them.'
'may' already be too late.......? Is Greider out of his mind?
If I had my way, I would get the hell out of Dodge, renounce American citizenship and move north. Regretably, I am too old and have too many health issues for Canada to allow me to move to their country. I guess that I have just given up. The sad thing is thinking how thrilled I was when Obama was elected. I cannot believe what a traitor he turned out to be to his progressive base. I doubt if I will ever vote for a major party candidate again.
Moving north is not an option. Stephen Harper is just as bad, and has no real opposition.
I tried moving to Canada in 2002. Took an exploratory trip to BC, but just couldn't figure out how to make it work. Didn't have enough 'points' on their point system to emigrate legally. Then I went to a third world country which was interesting but I couldn't see spending the rest of my life there. It's just damned difficult, isn't it? We are stuck living in the belly of the beast--the psychotic atomic empire--in its last dying stage.
I recently met a gay couple who are seriously considering Uruguay. Reasonably progressive, not as chaotic as Brazil, and a bit too small and lacking in lucrative resources to be high on our shit list (unlike, say, Chile, which is now once again governed by a Pinochetista; and Paraguay, where the Bush Family recently bought one of the world's largest aquifers).
Memory_Hole,
I would love to share my experiences with you and many other posters here living overseas. Still there for over a year and now back to the State visiting my wife. She will join me later. There are vast differences, no doubt. Fewer bills and still able to save from the miserable Social Security on which I depend. I also sacrifice many things I like and the way of life. I am reluctance to tell all. BTW, it cost over $300/mthly, with the depreciating US dollars, it is still less than $400. Doctor visit including prescription drugs less than $15 per visit.
"To be blunt, progressives have to pick a fight with their own party. They have to launch the hard work of reconnecting with ordinary citizens, listening and learning, defining new politics from the ground up. People in a rebellious mood should also prepare for the possibility that it may already be too late, that the Democratic Party’s gradual move uptown is too advanced to reverse. In that event, people will have to locate a new home—a new force in politics that speaks for them."
While a left-leaning rebellion from within the Democratic Party and an even more left-leaning rebellion from without it are both good notions in terms of dragging the Democratic Party kicking and screaming back towards the working-class--and possibly in the direction of nullifying and replacing the Party itself--a left-wing reformist rebellion from within the Party has been for many years and remains highly unrealistic.
Rachel Maddow is a perfect example of the kind of upper-middle-class, corporatist DLC apologist, run-amok-militarism-coddling dweeb that is emblematic of pwogwessives clinging to and most personally benefiting from the degenerate Democratic Party. They push unexamined lists of Obama policy treacheries with happy sounding names as evidence of his "good policies." They wring their hands about a few of his overwhelmingly bad policies then pile on excuses and portray him as "under siege by the Republicans and Tea Partiers" or "doing the best he can." They dissemble, outright deny or flee confrontation with hard facts about Obysmal's solid record of complicity in the worst right-wing policies of Clinton and Bush II of the last two decades, let alone his own nightmarish policy initiatives.
As Dave Lindorff and others (including me) have suggested, a better idea is to organize an authentic populist progressive, pro-working-class, national movement or Third Party from outside the failed Democratic Party and push members of the Democratic Progressive Caucus and Black Caucus to leave the Party (while they still sit in Congress) since their constituencies have been increasingly abandoned by the DLC Party leadership for a quarter century.
They should be urged to join with disaffected labor unions and their families, public sector workers and their families facing hundreds of thousands of layoffs, elderly Americans alienated by Obama's open attack on Social Security and Medicare, alienated youth voters suffering extremely high unemployment, the 26 million-plus real unemployed, the early 50 million without health coverage, minorities who've learned by hard experience that Obama has done nothing about their deepening poverty, and American citizen families with undocumented worker breadwinners who've been rounded up and deported despite having no criminal records--including folks with green cards who've lived in the U.S. for ten to twenty years as hard working tax payers.
Obama just got down and gave a naked Romulan hot oil body massage to the Third Rail of American politics--needlessly terrorizing tens of millions of elderly voters receiving Social Security, SSI disability benefits and Medicare. They and the union rank & file have woken up to the fact that he and his fellow corporatist Dems can't be trusted to do anything but back-stab them repeatedly on a long-term basis in the present status quo.
All these huge voter cohorts I list above are casting their eyes about in growing desperation looking for a better alternative.
It's up to us to give that to them. We have no time to waste.
TIME FOR A NATIONAL INDEPENDENT PROGRESSIVE/LABOR LEADERSHIP SUMMIT TO ORGANIZE A NEW MOVEMENT AND THIRD PARTY!!!
I heartily agree with you, metal. I posted yesterday, in response to a Thom Hartmann video on this site, why I think his repeated calls for progressives to take over the democratic party, is not realistic, and reveals a crucial misunderstanding he has about the realities of class warfare in America.
Some questions...
1. Some would say, we already have the Green Party, why start a new one?
2. Is there already an organization or group actively working on setting up this summit?
3. Would it be explicitly 'progressive' or would it try to unite left and right around banner issues on which populists from both sides can unite?
I have talked here recently about starting a 'Common Dreams Party.' I have even started drafting a platform. The first thing that came up for me was how to answer question #3. I really think we need a coalition movement more than another 'progressive party.' We need to find the two or three crucial issues which can unite disaffected independents and disaffected Democrats, and other progressives.
To answer your questions one by one:
(1) I think a new movement would be free from the baggage that some groups like the Green Party bring (in their case because of the lingering acrimony over Ralph Nader's presidential campaign). But that new movement should appeal to Green Party organizations around the country to join with the labor unions to help build a national populist Labor Progress movement and there is no reason why the Greens shouldn't keep doing their thing and then lending support to our movement at the national level if they want.
(2) No, unfortunately there is not. That's why I'm calling for one. The closest thing to it are regional meetings of multiple labor unions who are discussing the creation of a broader national independent labor movement to unite across as many unions as possible--a movement that no longer guarantees support to Democratic politicians and/or the Democratic Party but makes them earn it. I think they need to take the next step and become the nucleus of a new movement and/or Third Party.
Bernie Sanders has held some closed door meetings to discuss running a candidate to the left of Obama in the primaries. That is something that could and shouuld be built on as well. Elizabeth Warren is one name that has been suggested.
I encourage folks to call and write local progressive organizations of all kinds in their communities and suggest that their leaders communicate with one enough via email blasts to organize a national populist progressive/organized labor summit for the purposes of organizing a new national movement and/or Third Party. I've been doing so for a while with little success, but if more and more people do it as the economy worsens I think more and more progressive and labor organizations will start to listen.
(3) Ultimately, we need to build a broader coalition like the one you suggest. But in the chronology of building toward such a wide coalition it is my opinion that we need to build a big enough epicenter of authentic left-of-DLC-people first. This is because getting authentic progressives together is like herding cats as it is.
If there is no clear core to such a movement with some easily identifiable, large constituent groups that are linked in economic and political solidarity (such as labor unions and Social Security recipients who are predisposed to support government programs of social uplift) it will be easily divided and then shattered.
I think the center of such a movement should be public and private sector labor unions and it should build out from there to reach out to first, left-leaning people hurt by the economy (a potentially vast group that includes many sub-groups on its own).
Once there are at least 3 million (and 5 million would be even better) people, we should reach out to Democrats who are increasingly alienated by their rotten Party--including members of the Progressive and Black Caucuses--and big money liberals and progressives who are increasingly estranged by the DLC "leadership" of the Dim Party. Then we should reach out to pro-working-class, pro-middle-class, pro-social welfare safety-net (but otherwise fairly conservative) elements to create that potential wide coalition you point at.
If the union rank & file would push their leaders to really follow through on the AFL-CIO's call for a national independent labor movement, the AFL-CIO alone could deliver 11 million members plus many of their family members. Then there's AFSCME, the IAF, the UAW, nurses and teachers unions, SEIU, skilled trades unions (electricians, plumbers, etc.), CWA, etc., etc., and many of their family members. Unions and their family members who would support them--if they united in true SOLIDARITY--could provide anywhere from 15 to 60 million people to such a movement as a solid core to build upon. They just need to remember their power and how effective it was in the 1920s and 1930s and the rank & file need to dispense with overpaid fat-cat union leaders who've been too co-opted by DLC Dimocrats for 25 years and who've delivered nothing substantial and LASTING to their rank & file but "free trade" offshoring and plummeting availability of jobs that pay a decent middle-class wage to support a family.
From the onset, though, I think we should shape our ideas and policy planks to appeal to the common needs of ALL working-class people who want to live a basically secure (not fancy) life. We need to appeal to the basic needs that every working-class person has: Adequate safe and nutritional food, decent clothing, decent shelter, timely access to good medical care, affordable and safe prescriptions, good mass transportation systems, good public infrastructure (roads, electrical grid, sewage & sanitation systems, clean water supplies, bridges, tunnels, rail networks, communications systems, energy paradigm, etc.), public education that prepares children for the real economy and real ecology of the real world, and a sense of civil solidarity and civic mindedness that takes our civic duties seriously in a much more dedicated way.
We shouldn't shun the people who might be the first visitors from a potential wide coalition. We should welcome them. But we might want to wait a bit at first to reach out to them en masse until a labor union-based core has gotten organized and found legs.
I've stopped listening to Rachael. Sure, she's witty and terse and the spectacle in front of here is rife with comic opportunity and of course I like the depiction of the Republican side but I notice that after a few cheap laughs this progam and really all of MSNBC in the evening leaves me with a depressive hangover. I am depressed by the overwhelming subtext that this is really the best we can do, that there is no way out, and that certainly Rachael has nothing to add to the deliberation about solutions. A host like Cenk Uygar who showed some anger instead of Rachael's detached bemusement was yanked from the line up. Anger is getting a little to close to actually taking action.
I support both the protest movements in Egypt and their echoes in Spain's Indignatos. But look at what is happening to that fractious movement in Egypt. The military and old regime goons are attacking it with successive spectacles of public violence. The core youth protesters have not sufficiently organized to offer a strong clear movement OR Party alternative to the old Mubarak neo-liberal dictatorship or the Muslim Brotherhood and are paying a price for it.
Los Indignatos are practicing radical democracy. But they have yet to offer up a clear policy platform or any partisan or institutional means to democratically politically advance, maintain or expand it, either.
The tent encampment movement is coming to America in a little over a month. It will be influenced by those two earlier movements. I support this trend. But this is just the beginning of building a broad enough coalition to create a big enough and energetic enough movement, let alone Third Party, to either field candidates against the existing tri-partisan Machine or revolutionarily replace it and the entire set of institutions which it has usurped and completely twisted.
That 70% of which you speak is extremely divided on solutions to present problems, with fundamentally opposed concepts of the purpose and function of governance. One key example is the fundamental difference between American libertarians and American Keynesian progressives or socialists. Libertarians want an overall reduction of government spending and the elimination of all social programs. They believe the government's two legitimate obligations are national defense and maintenance of the U.S. Postal Service.
But they would oppose the subsidies the founding fathers granted via the Postal Service for mailing even bitterly opposed newspapers to the public so it could be better informed on the great issues of the day from several differing points of view. That would be socialism.
Keynesian progressives believe in the fundamental idea that good governance bears with it an inherent obligation to "promote the general Welfare" and that that justifies government welfare social safety nets.
Any alliance between libertarians and Keynesian progressives would be doomed from the onset to crumble in short order once the struggle to enact actual legislation occurred.
But Obama just potentially handed those left-of-the-DLC one of the largest and most dedicated voter cohorts in the electorate by openly assaulting the Social Security and Medicare of older voters. That plus all the other left-leaning subsets of society suffering from a rapidly worsening economy and ecology will be a much bigger potential coalition of people than any of the existing failed Parties will soon be able to muster.
maciek says: "But first things first: get rid of the current crops of fascists."
Easier said than done. What are your ideas on this, considering they are the richest best armed fascists on the planet and control all three branches of the federal government, the mass media and many of the State governments?
"The outstanding CDS debt is 500 Trillion plus."
If you are referring to the global derivatives black market that includes, among many other "investment instruments," credit default swaps, that market is somewhere well over $600 Trillion now. That $500 Trillion dollar figure dates back to the late 1990s when Brooksley Born was still head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
That's not debt in a conventional sense but a vast mixture of gambling chits of varying and secret risk packaged in a multitude of ways. The global banking system is now such a secretive and crooked mafia cannibal casino that a crash of that system would yield both global economic devastation and secretive write-downs of massive gambling debts to protect only the most well-connected (read: oil or weapons-backed) players, which would in turn necessitate central bank and big bank collusion on a historically unprecedented scale.
All the official books would be doctored and all the off-balance and shadow bank books would be kept secret for decades if not forever. All the big players are in on the fix as well as all the top politicians. There is no way under present and likely future conditions for the economies of the nations of the world to pay off a crash of the global economy including the global derivatives black market via bottomless "austerity." Either the "too big banks" spinning the roulette wheel will all have to take rusty razor haircuts with plenty of scalp and tetanus; the surviving plutocrats will have to be heavily taxed for decades (and they know it, which is why they're piling on every form of wealth they can right now by hook or crook while the casino's still in business), all military, health care and discretionary spending will have to be severely reduced, or there will be global revolutions that will play out for decades that will make the current Arab Spring look like dust mites on Hillary Clinton's ass pimples and may be coming soon to a city near you.
There won't be the wherewithal to "clear" that big a global collapse by means of "taxes, fees, asset stripping, rent extraction and more wars" after that big an implosion. Even conjuring wealth on computers won't restore the U.S. to good global credit standing any time soon. We would see an instant conversion to a global basket of reserve currencies to replace the U.S. dollar as the key global reserve currency (as is sought by the BRIC nations and Shanghai Cooperative Organization by 2018 anyway). The overwrought, over-extended U.S. empire would be yesterday's cheese encrusted McDonald's wrapper tumbling through an empty parking lot.
"One way to get circumvent huge schisms would be to devolve more power to local governments. Send far less taxes to Washington, eviscerate their unaccountable power, by reducing it to a bare minimum necessary to protect our borders—no more empire!"
The only way to give States the ability to deficit finance using their own bonds issued at the State level and to dedicate annual stimulus loans for public infrastructure and other projects for the common good at the State level would be if there were many more State banks like the one in North Dakota. All States should be required to have one of these banks and if Wisconsin and Michigan had had them there would have been no excuse to strip collective bargain rights from public sector workers and start the "emergency financial manager" Mussolini-esque, privatized local government fascism begun in Benton Harbor.
But there are some problems too big to be solved at the State level and this country has many many. The need for a fully modernized electricity grid is one. A national nuclear waste storage facility is another. Common regulation and oversight regarding carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions is another. Regional environmental clean-ups of major industrial "accidents" are another. Interstate commerce rules would break down. Negotiated on a State-by-State basis all these things could take decades that America no longer has to piss away with 19th century libertarianism in a 21st century world that is piling on a billion more people every 13 years now.
The Bill of Rights enumerated the same fundamental guarantees of rights as a legal commonality in all States so various State officials couldn't withhold or extend them based on arbitrary and capricious legal definitions that would vary in each State and could be easily subject to cronyism. Even before the Bill of Rights debates, marriages outside the Anglican faith were not recognized in some States affecting related inheritance laws. The founding fathers have already worked through all this. Read the State level debates between the Federalists and Anti-federalists about the Bill of Rights during the move to ratify the Constitution. We don't need to break it all down to some juvenile libertarian Animal Farm in each State and then let them all start running experiments on withholding or extending differently defined fundamental rights. Primitive agrarian libertarianism could only work on a very small town scale but would probably not survive the turmoil of the Amurkan empire in its true death throes. It might spring up after blood and dust all settle--which could take decades--but then conditions would be SO primitive it would be like something like a cross between Little House on the Prairie, The Postman and Water World.
Giving too much political power to too many increasingly divided States in the present and near- to mid-term future is asking for a multi-factional civil war and possible Balkanization. What Americans need right now is more of a sense of commonality, not surrendering to cultural or literal secessionists. It may already be too late to prevent it, though. Too many are ignorant of history. Too many are lazy minded and willfully ignorant. Too many crave only fairy-tales piled on top of more fairy-tales.
Nice summary, metal.
Possibly because I've never had cable (or satellite, etc.) TV service, I never really warmed up to the "MSNBC liberals".
I liked some of Olbermann's "Special Comments", especially in the beginning when they were a sound for sore ears and didn't have the ring of shtick. Dylan Ratigan, though erratic, has his moments.
But it just seemed painfully obvious that these teevee celebrity liberals were forced or contrived "Opposite Numbers" to FOX and wingnut talk-radio demagogues. Almost Bizarro demagogues, in a way.
That said, I've wondered "aloud" here in recent months what became of the nascent "primary Obama!" proto-movement that made some noise at the beginning of the year, IIRC.
I don't feel like digging it up now, but there was at least one ad hoc organization, perhaps little more than a website, that published an open letter or manifesto urging that Obama be rigorously "primaried" if he didn't dial down his imperialism, security-state authoritarianism, etc. I remember being mildly surprised that Rabbi Michael Lerner was one of the signatories.
I vaguely expected at least intermittent CD articles referencing this movement, if not outright advocating it. But it just faded away.
Assuming that this manufactured Debt Ceiling pseudo-crisis is resolved by some stinky eleventh-hour "compromise" swindle, there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the progressive, liberal-lite commentariat and so-called grassroots organizations.
Depending on what else happens in the world between now and next year, there will be a constant noisy discussion about whether the "left" should and will support Obama in next year's campaign. There will be no end of fussing and flouncing and quibbling and recrimination.
Meanwhile, absent some catastrophic scandal or self-destruction, Team Obama will keep piling up millions in the re-election campaign chest.
And slowly but surely, the "sensible", "realistic", "pragmatic" liberal opinion-makers will "reluctantly" urge support for Obama after all.
They'll even drag in quasi-endorsements from people like Noam Chomsky, who made an unfortunate passing remark early this year along the lines that, all things being equal, left-leaning voters had no alternative but to hold their noses and vote for Obama.
Kucinich will get on board too, regardless of rhetorical qualifications.
In short, even guys like Greider will be overruled as "too radical" or extreme for the desperate Democratic Party leadership.