Como’s still busy destroying unions and crushing standards of living in New York. I’m so pro-gay marriage I once didn’t talk to my father for 6 months because of an argument over it, but it is not the only issue, and it does not make Cuomo a good governor any more than any other single issue does. He is still the enemy of anyone who believes economic justice, a fair wage or a good economy.
This, by the way, is another example of the shiny and how “progressives” get distracted by it. The corporate financial interests, aka. the people who are destroying your standard of living and denying you universal health care, are cool with gay marriage and other socially progressive issues. They don’t care whether you’re black, red, white, brown, pink with purple polka dots, or married to a man, woman, or someone in between, all they care is that you’re a debt slave or wage slave, squished firmly under their feet. Cuomo firmly follows the policies of that class of people, he has nothing against gays, he has everything against making bankers and rich people pay for destroying the economy and intends to force the poor and middle class to pay the entire freight.
But hey, you’ll be married to the man or woman of your choice when you get kicked out of your house or apartment after you lose your job.
Shiny!
The Raven
I know progressives who have thought well of Cuomo for decades, so there may be more to the man than you see.
It’s way easy to do things politically, so long as the people who pay for the campaigns aren’t offended. I suppose we need a constitutional amendment, now, to make it possible to get money out of campaigning. Thank you Warren Burger.
…and what will happen if the Roberts Court rules on gay marriage?
Ian Welsh
He’s systematically attacking unions as part of an austerity drive. It is his first priority. Who thinks well of him is as much of interest to me as who thought the housing bubble wasn’t a bubble, and as far as knowing people goes, I know people who know him personally.
Push has come to shove, and he has shown his true beliefs. He’s pro-gay marriage, great. Try and pay your rent with that.
Progressives, you can always split them by appealing to social markers. “First black president! ”
“But he’s for gay marriage!”
Alrighty then.
The Raven
It’s everyone who can be split on social markers: consider Sarah Palin. Don’t go attacking your own side for a universal failing.
I wonder what my progressive friends think of Cuomo now?
Ian Welsh
Cuomo is not on my side, and people who can be split are not following rule #1: solidarity. Everyone cannot be split, only some people can. Unfortunately they are enough people to ensure that the left is always split. This was not always the case.
The right’s splits are not severe enough to keep them from achieving their policies aims: like breaking unions with the help of Cuomo and other Dems like him.
And I certainly WILL attack those who can be split, it is them who ensure the left is weak and ineffective and constantly rolled, the result being loss after loss on core issues. It’s because of them that we have seen a steady decline in standards of living. It is because of them that a woman’s right to choose is being constantly weakened.
Sorry, they aren’t “on my side” if they run away on key issues. I’m there on gay marriage, I’m there on abortion rights, I’m there on economic issues. They are not seperable, and when they are we get screwed, big time. Anyone who’s willing to sell out the rest of the coalition is not on “my side”.
Everythings Jake
I think another fine illustration of Ian’s point is this unusually frank and excellent article in Time on how quickly the middle class has abandoned the labor movement in Egypt:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2079605,00.html
I know it’s tempting to think that’s a remote case, couldn’t happen here, but that’s denial. The levels of inequality in this country are stunning, and if we don’t attend to them, these progressive “gains” will be rolled back violently by an ascendant Christian right seizing on the economic fears of an increasingly angry (and exponentially larger) underclass. It’s Weimar stupid.
Sam Adams
Bachmann/ Palin 2011 — the single knife stroke is better than a death by a thousand cuts.
Jonathan Versen
Hi Ian, this essay from Joe Bageant’s website from 2008 might interest you. Bageant claimed that he didn’t write it and that it was in fact a contribution from an anonymous political operative, and I suppose that might be true. Regardless, it’s worthwhile, and the writer discusses how liberals and others get distracted.
“Life in the post-political age”
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2008/07/life-in-the-pos.html
PurpleGirl
I agree with you about Cuomo, Ian. I’m quite glad that we have marriage equality in NYS now.
But Cuomo still intends to cut education funding to localities, still wants to cut state workers’ pensions (and we’ve had a two tier system in NYS for several decades now), he wants a cap on property taxes which are used to fund education (can you say, Californiafication) and he refuses to institute a surtax on millionaires. His health care plan will change who can get Medicaid and the status of health care facilities; that the unions signed on with him doesn’t mean the changes will be good for the common people.
The Raven
I was referring to my friends, with impeccable progressive credentials. As I said, I wonder what they think of Cuomo now.
“Screw the Judean People’s Front! Splitters!”
anon2525
This, by the way, is another example of the shiny and how “progressives” get distracted by it.
Agreed. This will be used, along with the repeal of DADT, to demonstrate the lesser of two evils, even though it required the majority vote of a republ-controlled state senate. Some are still claiming that there was a reform of the medical industrial complex (AKA, “health care”). That obama’s poll has him supported by well over 40% of voters indicates how ill-informed people are.
Even less shiny than the class war is the ecological destruction that is ongoing. That would explain why there wasn’t “wall-to-wall coverage” of the report this past week by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) that we are in the process of creating the next major extinction event in the oceans. link
anon2525
Bachmann/ Palin 2011
Or even 2012.
Maybe it could be like the election of Lincoln–an election of candidates so grievously disagreed with that it would start the next civil war. (By the way, I think a civil war is more likely than a revolution. Many of those who are descended from those who lost last time never have accepted that loss. Racism and the culture war live on. Combine those with ignorance or even acceptance of the class war and you have many who would side with the wealthy against their own interest.)
beowulf
“this essay from Joe Bageant’s website from 2008 might interest you.”
Boy that guy called it.
At the precise moment that the intellectual underpinnings of conservative free market ideas that have dominated politics for the past 30 years are crumbling across the globe. Obama calls for a post ideological and partisan world.
At the time when the American military industrial complex is despised around the world, he is a front man out of central casting which will buy it more goodwill and new room to maneuver…
anon2525
At the precise moment that the intellectual underpinnings of conservative free market ideas that have dominated politics for the past 30 years are crumbling across the globe. Obama calls for a post ideological and partisan world.
Meanwhile, the Tea Party doubles down on those same failed ideas.
At the time when the American military industrial complex is despised around the world, he is a front man out of central casting which will buy it more goodwill and new room to maneuver…
It is past time for observers to notice more than the military industrial complex (MIC). They’re not even the biggest complex. There are also the financial industrial complex, the medical industrial complex, the media industrial complex, the telecom industrial complex, the fossil-fuel industrial complex, the prison industrial complex, and the education industrial complex. Did I leave anyone out? The agricultural industrial complex.
Michael
“It is past time for observers to notice more than the military industrial complex (MIC). They’re not even the biggest complex. There are also the financial industrial complex, the medical industrial complex, the media industrial complex, the telecom industrial complex, the fossil-fuel industrial complex, the prison industrial complex, and the education industrial complex. Did I leave anyone out? The agricultural industrial complex.”
To be fair the essay adresses a lot of those as well.
Kim Kaufman
I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t that excited about this passing. But Ian nailed it. Sure, gay marriage is fine, great, and sort of a poke in the eye to Obama who doesn’t even want it. But the left is using this wedge issue the same way the right did — to distract, in this case the left, from the fact that the “left,” just like the right, are stripping away all of our other civil liberties as well as all the financial underpinnings which gave us a middle class. And when it’s time for gay divorce, it’ll still be ugly.
anon2525
To be fair the essay adresses a lot of those as well.
I didn’t see that in the essay, but in the interest of fairness I think it is more important to note that it was written in 2008, so we have more knowledge than the writer did then.
I have two complaints with the essay. One, it is was mostly backward looking. It makes linkages between events that have occurred and then provides causes for those events (by the way, we do this all the time as casual, unpaid, non-professional observers). The linkages sound convincing because they are juxtaposed with the events/facts. But many alternative linkages could be written and it is up to the reader to decide whether he agrees with them. They’re only authentic if we can use those linkages to anticipate how events will play out going forward.
The second complaint is with the one observation that ends the essay:
Barack Obama is in short order a far more reassuring prospect for the continued dominance of the financial elite than another four years of neo-conservative rule which in an almost historically unique combination of greed, ill will, incompetence and stupidity have brought the country to the edge of disaster.
“…An almost historically unique combination of greed, ill will, incompetence and stupidity have brought the country to the edge of disaster.” What is the point of this observation? Isn’t it to say that whatever might be thought of obama, he’s not going to be a continuation of the previous eight years. That he will in some way be better and not a neo-conservative on foreign policy? And yet obama has brought even more of the same. And obama is a neo-conservative on foreign policy.
It strikes me that this shows a lack of insight about obama (which, given his lying during the campaign, many people shared). And that lack makes me more skeptical of the linkages that the observer made when looking backwards.
Michael
“‘…An almost historically unique combination of greed, ill will, incompetence and stupidity have brought the country to the edge of disaster.’ What is the point of this observation?”
I think the point is to try and explain why obama was selected by the ruling class. It sets up the background (the disasters created by the neocons) to explain the emergence of obama (a new face to rehabilitate the image of the american empire.) I don’t think its trying to excuse obama rather I think taken as a whole the essay is meant to be a warning, that as long as electoral politics remain trapped in this post political paradigm were doomed to just get more and more obama’s.
Alli
@Kim Kaufman: You been listening to Rachel Maddow, eh? This was not a poke in the eye to Obama. He didn’t fight against gay marriage, never fought against gay rights at anytime in his career. How is this a poke in his eye? ridiculous statement. Look to your right sweetie. It was a poke to those who spend their money and their denying gay people their rights.
Kim Kaufman
@Alli. No, I stopped listening to Rachel after she went to lunch at the White House and then lauded OFA and declared Obama a historic legislator on her show. Gag. Now I listen to Virtually Speaking and look forward to hearing Ian Welsh again. Obama was on record — recently — as saying he supported civil unions, not gay marriage. Just because he didn’t fight against it, he didn’t help it either. Obama didn’t actually fight against putting the cramdown provision in the bankruptcy legislation after he first got elected but he certainly could have used his bully pulpit to say he thought it should be in the legislation for, you know, helping all the people facing dire foreclosure — on their primary mortgage only — if you had a second or third house, well, OK, then, you’re good.
Kim Kaufman
@Alli. Oh, and again, Ian is right that the gays don’t vote and don’t give money when they don’t get what they want. This is campaign ploy for Dems and doesn’t cost them anything. They can still kill unions, reward bankers, cut social security and medicare. The left is using this as a wedge issue just like the right. All any of them want is the money. All of it.
StewartM
Ian Welsh:
Cuomo also leaves a lot to be desired on civil liberties as well as economic justice. He’s not my idea of any “leftist”.
-StewartM