Bloggers et al notice that Republicans can win in 2010 and 2012

Well written post Ian.

First: The congressional democrats lobotomized their leadership structure in a new member pique against seniority when Tip O’Neill was Speaker IIRC. The republicans never followed that path and have consistently held party discipline over rhyme and reason and as far as treason. Since the Nixon-Ford administration, any semblance in congressional republican vote to public sentiment on any question, is a typo in the public record; the republican discipline would make a fascist envy – oh wait …

Second: The only political playbook in use was produced by the Chicago School of Economic Phrenology, aided and abetted by Harvard School of Business Eugenics. As you well know the level of economic knowledge existing in America is in even greater negative figures than their level of knowledge on history, or geography, or of social science, or of practically any other intellectual endeavor you care to point to. The brain drain the world experiences is American outsourcing their intellectual capacity. There is no possible way the failure of education for forty years can produce the reasoning capacity to conduct a country let alone run a republic, let alone a self-described democratic republic; how will history’s first case of self-lobotomy turn out? How will it be possible to devise an alternate understanding of economics and be widely disseminated and be publicly understood and agreed upon, and politically act upon, that mountain would make Sisyphus quail.

Third: The intellectual bankruptcy that impels the American empire assures the collapse of that empire. All manner of false images will be sacrificed to appease hubris dealing doGs, e.g. term limits on public officeholding, class war upon wealth, evisceration of the corporation to disable “person-hood”, and whatever chimera some demagogue will indicate; it will not end well and what will be destroyed will not be restored. The now inevitable collapse of America and its hegemony has begun. Last month China started divesting of US Treasury bonds, it has already called for a basket of currencies to replace the US dollar in international trade and finance, but the band plays on, the same simple tune on the decks of Wall Street and Washington. The iceberg of the housing bubble has holed the ship of state from stem to boiler room, and the band still plays on. Twill not end well. Lies, fraud and ignorance do not float.

Sad as all that is, sadder still is that the only part of it that resonates with most progressives is that Dems may lose upcoming elections.

The fact that Obama is deliberately governing that way, and always intended and promised to, is somehow beyond their range of hearing… or at least beyond their range of speaking, and was painfully so when there was still time to do something about it.

Ian, I’m almost 60 and felt that I had cultivated a decent “bullshit detector”, to borrow from the Hemingway quip. There WERE things in Obma’s past that gave me hope: his intrepid, adventerious mother, his seemingly empathetic and smart companion Michelle, his membership in the congregation of the spot-on Jerimiah Wright, and his work as a “Community Organizer” (on this last point, I’m now trying to figure whether this was some part-time “pro-bono” gig, while he toiled as an associate in some big corporate law firm?). Silly me, I thought that Obama was trying to fool THEM (the corporate/ war- mongering establishment) and not us!
I realize that Obama was deeded the Augean Stables, but the words of the old Appalachian writer Joe Bageant keep ringing in my ears: ” Obama’s brought in the same damn folks who fucked it up to fix it”!
One thing that still intrigues me, Ian. There is a schism ongoing in the Jewish community between progessives (hell, even neo-liberals such as Joe Klein and Tom Freidman) and the ossified AIPAC types. Is Obama trying to expliot this opening by reaasuring moderate American and Israeli Jewry via his appointments and the maintenance of a muscular foriegn policy? In the end though, who is doing the co-opting?

Thanks for the kind words, Ian (and for fixing the link).

Democrats’ hype about health care reform will hurt them

The above is a Jun 4 article by Kip Sullivan at the PNHP blog, and was addressing events at the time. But the overall message still holds.

The most interesting aspect to this article was Obama claiming that certain “things” would bring down costs, when in fact they would not. So, bear that in mind as your read

This is why I repeatedly advised people to give money to and work for liberal Congressional candidates rather than Obama. It was at that level that the left could make a real difference, not at the Presidential level where such donations were drops in an ocean and plenty of volunteers were already available.

Me, too, for whatever good it did. Unfortunately, I really think there are lots of people running around this country who don’t understand that Congress makes the laws, and figures out how the money is supposed to be spent. They’re the ones who only show up to vote every four years.

If this health care reform thing has proved anything, it’s that we don’t have enough progressives in Congress, particularly in the Senate. That’s what we need to keep focused on, I think. What legislation Obama can get passed will help to define his options.

Pursuant to the apparently spamulated previous post, there appears to be a condition among all flavours of progressives, particularly bloggers, that there is some kind of Strategy that will make them Effective and achieve their political goals. I am coming to the conclusion that, in fact, attempting to plan a Grand Strategy to achieve progressive goals is kind of futile, as futile a predictive exercise as economics.

The analysis itself is useful in that, if there is any Grand Strategy that might work, it involves educating oneself and discussing with others. But beyond that, what we should have supported, should not have supported, should have voted for, donated to—is largely a pointless discussion as we have no way to verify our claims.

And contrary to what you might think, I *don’t* believe that I am espousing “learned helplessness”. What I am suggesting instead is that the time scale for change is much greater than the opportunities presented by a single election. With a primary field in which Obama and Clinton topped the list, where exactly was the leeway for anyone of any note to hold the (D) party’s feet to the fire? As blogs go, the A-listers and progressives and what have you have many flaws, but I’m not convinced that their strategy during the election was one of them.

Now, you might say as you did that the focus should have been on congressional seats. The role of Congress, at the moment, has been to hobble policy concocted at the executive level, not to promote policy, for any number of reasons. At least since 1994 that has been its role. I can’t think of a major new program or department or policy that has been created all on their own accord.

Consequently, what of Obama’s agenda would a more progressive Congress of obstructed? We have a crisis of inaction here, not action.

…if he had pushed a simple healthcare plan that was easy to understand and couldn’t be demonized so easily (ie. Medicare for all), he might not be losing support so badly.

I went to a town hall meeting yesterday in Montara, outside of San Francisco, featuring my representative, Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo. There was, among the crowd of 700, the usual assortment of right-wingers, waving signs about “government takeovers” and booing occasionally (including one guy who earned the derisory laughter of the crowd by claiming, in some sort of delusion of alternative history, that “Bush inherited two wars”).

The most interesting part was when one person asked Speier about allowing people to buy into Medicare, rather than creating an entirely new administrative structure. (He didn’t refer to it by name but his idea sounded like Thom Hartmann’s proposal.) The crowd, which had previously reacted noisily to whoever was speaking, was stunned into silence for at least a few seconds. It was as if everyone experienced some sort of epiphany, or at least, some couldn’t immediately peg that idea as being on one side of the ideological divide or the other. (One woman, who later stood up and railed against “the government,” heartily endorsed that Medicare “buy-in” approach.)

Speier’s response was a bit hesitant, saying something like (my paraphrase), “Oh, yes, at a few other town hall meetings, some people have asked that. The problem is that that would quickly turn into single payer,” because, presumably, everyone would defect to it—which, of course, is sort of the “too popular” argument in another context.

Now, here was a plan, immediately understandable and not easily demonizable (it’s Medicare, after all), arguably revenue neutral (by design), that Speier could critique only by saying, inferentially, that too many people would like it, not exactly a strong argument against. For the record, I’m all for a single payer plan, also, but I think that speaks, admittedly anecdotally, to your point.

Yes, the Republicans are going to do very well in 2010. Besides Obama’s corruption and incompetence, the anti-semites have made the left a repugnant international laughingstock that no decent person can stomach. And rather than accept responsibility for their idiocy and bigotry, the Demos are going to blame the Republicans and Jews for everything. Anything except accepting responsibility for their actions.

Ian:

This is pretty hypothetical. But I contend that a significantly increased number of Actually Progressive Democrats in the H of R and/or the Senate would actually be indicative of something rather revolutionary in the air, not merely that a few more progressive foot soldiers worked for downticket candidates. Otherwise we’re talking about, what, 15-20 more left-wing Democratic seats? And you think this was going to make a difference?

See, there’s an underlying premise here in all of these hypothetical situations that I’m not sure I agree with. That premise is that there was a lot of unnecessary surplus labour going to the presidential race. It is taken as a given in certain quarters—that after Bush, the Democrats could have elected a cricket or a slice of cheesecake to the presidency.

I used to think that in early 2008, but by late 2008 and the election I was not so sure. At this point, seeing what has transpired lately, I’m convinced that is quite wrong.

But I mean, either way it’s pretty hypothetical: “if my grandmother had wheels…”

However, if the election of a Democrat was more tenuous than some people are willing to admit, why would that be so? It is because at this point, the gatekeeper to election is not the boots on the ground. This is also true to a lesser extent at the Congressional level, of course.

As for Hillary, well, it’s telling that she was the only other candidate, because I don’t think anyone really contends that she is outside the Acceptable Mainstream of US politics. I mean, who seriously thinks that she’d have rammed through a single-payer health care system (or really any system, even a Singapore-style one, that approaches universal coverage)? Who thinks that she wouldn’t have reappointed Ben Bernanke? I know who thinks it: the terminally blinkered, and the sort of people who think that Sarah Palin could have been pushed to the left or something like that.

Mandos — the people who think Hillary would have been better are the ones who were hearing her proposing an HOLC to help Main Street the summer before Obama et al gave us TARP.

Ah, yes. I heard the “HOLC HOLC HOLC” mantra from certain quarters all through that period. But lo and behold:

*BOOP*

Doesn’t sound like a Champion of the People to *me* at least. Not when it counted.

And this sort of thing really gets my goat:

They’re also the ones who know that health care was practically the raison d’etre of her campaign — so whether or not she would have been successful, she’d at least have brought passion to the issue, something clearly lacking in Obama — as well as leadership. You can quite clearly see the passion and engagement she brings to issues she cares about in her work as SOS — how much she’s done to deal with the desperate situation of women around the world, how clearly and successfully she’s put women’s advancement on the foreign policy agenda.

You say this, and then you have the audacity to accuse the Obama side of projecting their emotions and wishful thinking onto a template (“suckered in”). Do you even realize how much this sounds exactly like them? “Passion and engagement”. Faith and reverence.

I’ll tell you what’s getting “suckered in”: worshipfully, reverently saying that HRC has “clearly and successfully…put women’s advancement on the foreign policy agenda.” Not so long as the Afghan war continues, it doesn’t. We’ve known this for a long time now. And Hillary Clinton is Secretary of State of this.

You know, during the primaries I was neither moved by Obama doubleplusgood duckquacking nor did I see “passion and engagement” in Clinton. What I did see (in HOLC, in the health care plans that were so much obvious hot air) were two mainstream—and therefore, doomed to failure—politicians dancing around each other in an ancient politicianly dance. And one was a slightly better dancer and duckquacker than the other. And won.

What really gets my goat is the hypocrisy in certain quarters when they tell the Obama camp “I told you so” when they themselves were merely the objects of exactly the same political forces.

In which case…

I don’t see how any true “progressive” movement can move forward until it seriously grapples with those failures — because those failures are grounded in the very methods the power structure has long used to co-opt change.

…I totally agree. What definitely doesn’t help is one side positioning themselves as the Cassandras in all of this when they so obviously weren’t. Just because the Hillary side lost doesn’t make it more sanctified.

To claim that HRC dead-enders and PUMAs and those too…how shall we put this…modest to accept the label are particularly equipped to teach us anything about this:

The fact is, progressive walked blindly and eagerly into their own co-opting, and we (they) need to understand how and why. I think looking at that will reveal that progressives are not as historically informed as they should be, are not as well grounded in political and economic thought as they should be, and need to wrestle a whole lot more with dominant ideology (for instance, the odd libertarian streaks popping up as well as the near pervasive level of sexism.)

displays an astonishing degree of sanctimony and blindness.

And for the record: at the time, I thought Hillary Clinton should have won the primaries for no other reason that I prefer leaders to have real known enemies. But I was wrong. Obama knew how to get that special edge to win, and despite knowing the prior conditions, Hillary Clinton did not.

Whatever her FISA vote meant, she is Secretary of State in charge of implementing Obama’s foreign policy at the moment. She had the option to remain Senator and be the advocate of the people you believe she was. She chose otherwise. Her actions do not substantiate your faith in her.

But my point was not that Hillary and Obama were the same. Indeed, Hillary may have been marginally better than Obama in the way that Obama is only somewhat better than Bush—none of them herald any systematic improvement! The point was, though, that Clinton supporters are by no means exempt from the criticisms they level at Obama supporters and do not validly bear the mantle of Cassandra.

Once again, the problem lies not in which politician was elected to the presidency. The problem is that the scope of change within this system is narrow without a sea-change in the general worldview of the populace.