Back from my visit to Victoria, let’s do a quick roundup.
Healthcare: I remain convinced that nothing that will come out of this Congress won’t be pretty awful. My current belief is that what will be passed will mandate everyone buy insurance but because of inadequate cost controls and subsidies will leave ordinary people forced to buy insurance which will increase in price faster than wages. The optimistic view would be that once everyone is in the system, pressure will build to make the system actually work. We’ll see, even if true, there’ll be a lot of pain in between.
Unemployment: According to the BLS, the economy lost 274,000 jobs, but the unemployment rate dropped from 9.5% to 9.4%. Welcome to the world of statistics that don’t mean what you think they do. People who want jobs, but who are convinced they can’t get one and so aren’t looking actively don’t count as unemployed. So the number of employed people can go down and the unemployment rate can go down. In other words, we’re a long way from things getting better, they’re just getting worse more slowly.
Resistance: The American right has decided on a policy of resistance to Obama which can be summed up as “thuggery”. People are being trained and financed to go out and shout down Democrats or intimidate them. There has already been some violence, there will be more. The Obama administration thought they could avoid the rise of the refusnik right by refusing to act on most social issues, which is why they abandoned their promises to gays and have generally been unwilling to move on other social issues. They took the lesson of the Clinton administration to be “don’t inflame the fanatics on the right—avoid social issues, and don’t slash the military”. They were, of course, wrong: the radical right (and there is hardly a non-radical right left) will oppose Obama no matter what he does and if Obama is unwilling to use to the full might of the administrative apparatus against them, they will simply take advantage of his weakness to escalate. Tactics which are seen to work, will not be abandoned, to the contrary, they will be used more and more.
Obama: Obama’s active period is about over. Health care “reform”, if he gets it through, will probably be the last major policy. While there are rises and falls, his overall popularity is trending down and that will probably continue. The “honeymoon” is over, and it was used primarily to shove through a lousy stimulus that won’t lead to enough of a recovery, and with luck (for him) a bad global warming bill and health reform that isn’t. Fortunately, banks and financial firms have been bailed out and are making lots of money, and should be in a position to reward Obama with significant funding in future elections.
Unless they decide that the Republicans will give them everything they want, too.
Add to that Republican weakness, and Obama’s inner circle may think they’re still cruising for reelection. I’m not so sure. Counting on your enemy’s weakness is a dangerous tactic, especially when you are doing little to ensure that they remain weak or that you remain strong.
ballgame
I think you meant to say: “So the number of unemployed people can go up and the unemployment rate can go down.”
One major misleading aspect of the president’s popularity is that it’s used as bellwether for the relative strength of ‘the’ two parties, and the fact that both parties are essentially corporatist is conveniently ignored. (And by “conveniently” I mean “deliberately.”) I strongly suspect that a very large portion of those increasingly disaffected with Obama are not ‘centrists disappointed with how left wing Obama is’ but ‘progressives and populists disappointed that Obama is continuing Bush’s evisceration of the constitution through things like the expansion of executive privilege, preventative detention, the continued imprisonment of foreigners and the creation of a kangaroo court process to put the veneer of legality on their predetermined guilt; and the continued massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to elite bankers, etc.’
But there can be little doubt that the MSM will spin Obama’s declining popularity as somehow indicating a preference for the ghouls who run the Republican party.
Ian Welsh
Congressional preference is about even now, too. Which is a better gauge of how the party’s are viewed.
Thanks for the catch on unemployment. Woops.
Foxwood
Ratting on your fellow citizen if your against the healthcare bill? It’s Chicago thuggery at it’s best. I really hope the ignorant wake up.
http://animal-farm.us/change/the-constitution-and-the-piece-of-crap-called-healthcare-555
tjfxh
Obama has dumped his campaign hype, becoming Clinton II and punking the progressive movement. Unlike the GOP, the DINO’s are trashing the base and sucking up to the oligarchy. Real health care reform, real regulation and oversight, etc., have all been thrown under the bus, if they were ever contemplated at all. Then, there’s military escalation and extending the Bush attacks on the Constitution? This is change?
Progressives need to take the gloves off and go after the Dem Establishment pronto, before Obama and his minion walking us off the plank. Without a raucous mutiny, the progressive movement is toast in this administration.
Mandos
And then? After said raucous mutiny, what will happen? More ponies?
gtash
This past week the story broke about Obama enlisting the aid of Big Pharma thinking he could diffuse the effect of conservative resistance in August—i.e., Town Hall meeting with spine are not good enough to win the day in the face of T-buggers. The deal was evidently struck over a month ago (when the Blue Dogs put on their display), which might explain his slow reaction to Republican protest. It might also explain his dependence on Rahm to deal with Blue Dogs and his latest display of Chicago Way expletive-laced tongue lashing of anyone who doubted the Administration’s sincerity. And I was unaware until this week how Rahm’s brother was so influential in the White House design of health insurance reform.
It all adds up to a huge drop in the chances of a public option and of an Obama re-election. I do not see the American people who favor single payer or a “robust” public option working up enough of a sweat to defend themselves. The conservatives think what they are doing is the legal and moral equivalent of hippie protest and yippie Dada-ism. I think a lot of people generally agree with that, and therefore are too paralyzed or ashamed to get involved.
I think the right thing to do is swarm the Capitol in protest. I really do. It’s old fashioned. It’s out of vogue. It is risky. It would come on the heels of many a failed protest over the last 20 years. Maybe people will be angry enough in September to feel threatened to finally do something. They are clearly unable or unwilling to organize locally to defend against these local attacks.
gtash
Or—-
“Say a Prayer. Single-Payer.”
Jim
gtash, “I think the right thing to do is swarm the Capitol in protest. I really do.”
I am not sure. Maybe getting a bigger hammer is not the answer. Maybe getting smarter is the answer. Can progressives think outside the box or are we boxed in by old doctrine?
By doctrine, I mean a guide to dealing, in a general way, with some aspect of objective reality. As that reality changes, doctrine must change accordingly. For example, until the end of the Civil War, mass infantry attack was the basic military doctrine. The invention and use of the machine gun forced the military to abandon that doctrine and adopt the doctrine of dispersal.
What is it that progressives want? Capitalism to be kinder and gentler? The democratic party to lead the way? Is this even possible? Do we even understand our enemy?
“Therefore I say: Know your enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy, but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril.”
– Sun Tzu, The Art of War
tjfxh
Mandos: “After said raucous mutiny, what will happen? More ponies?”
Grassroots progressives and progressive orgs like Move.on, as well as progressive blogs, need to hit the streets just like the opposition in order to send a message not only to the Obama administration and the DINO’s, but also to progressives in Congress to just say no. Only the progressives in Congress can stop this travesty by telling Obama that they will not vote for sell-out.
Dems have to understand that any bill will not suffice other than in the very short term. The plan has to actually work, both providing real healthcare reform and also stopping the hemorrhaging of dollars into the pockets of the healthcare industry. If not, all Dems will pay the price down the line, as they will also if they Don’t get a real handle on climate change, including stopping of the hemorrhaging of dollars for oil.
This is not about progressives being persnickety and obstreperous. It’s about national and global survival. Economic neoliberalism and political neoconservativism, which the Obama administration has bought into, is taking the world over a cliff. The progressive wing of the Democratic party is Congress is pretty much standing by and letting this happen. Grassroots progressives and progressives organizations have to energize them to start throwing their considerable voting wight around and putting their foot down before the Obama administration wastes its political capital and loses the mandate it received from voters based on campaign promises that are now being broken right and left.
If progressive continue to be punked, they won’t be there actively in the next election, and many people who are disillusioned will just stay home instead of voting.
Don’t think that Obama can lose the next election? This crisis is far from over. The deleveraging hasn’t even begun in earnest, and it is very doubtful that the Treasury and Fed will be able to continue to pump up assets while keeping rates low through increasing government debt and monetizing a good portion of it as other creditors cut back. The US is headed for a double dip recession, if not an L-shaped one, and that doesn’t bode well for Dems in coming elections. Without palpable economic change, it’s going to look like conservatives were right after all.
The Obama administrations only hope to cut the ties to Wall street and industry — the village aka oligarchy — and get real about the real problems America and the world faces. We cannot keep transferring wealth to the oligarchy and to petro-states through financial gaming, healthcare price inflation, energy profligacy, and military spending. Only progressives have the power to bring the change we can believe in, but the progressives in Congress have to be motivated to do it.
There are a lot of means to put the pressure on, and progressives should use all of them. But at a certain point, it becomes necessary to become extremely visible in order to up the pressure. Now is the time, IMHO. Almost every news cycle is being dominated by right wing street theater. That doesn’t bode well.
Mandos
Oh, I’m sure that Obama can lose in 2012. I mean, anything can happen. But some things are more likely than others. So, you threaten Obama from the left. And then? The same blackmail works. Republican pres. in 2012.
An electoral threat is hollow.
tjfxh
Mandos: “An electoral threat is hollow.”
There is only one thing that politicians attention more than money and that is votes. US politics is dominated by money, and progressives are not in that mode. Even if they had the money, buying influence would violate fundamental progressive principles about good government. The only leverage progressives have is influencing voting numbers, both at elections and by pressuring the administration and Congress to back progressive measures and to vote against sell-outs..
If you have evidence that there are any more effective solution, Mandos (or anyone else) , please, let’s hear it. But doing nothing is not working. As it stands, progressives are being sold out by the people they supported and worked hard to elect.
gtash
I agree that now is the time to become “extremely visible” per txfxh. What will become “visible” is a bunch of commercials by Big Pharma if I read the latest news stories correctly. That is the wrong message and the wrong messager. I understand what Jim is saying too, but I think Bruce Lee has it over Sun Tzu at this moment in time. The flow of the fight is now.
ballgame
You make a lot of good points, but please be careful when you talk about this, tjfxh. Republican policies of deregulation and free trade were directly responsible for our current economic collapse, and in a rational country people would be ashamed to ever admit they voted Republican, much less actually try to rule as one. The notion that the ‘conservatives were right after all’ couldn’t be more laughable.
I think what you meant to say was, “The corporate media will try to spin this as if the conservatives were right after all.” I think the phrasing here is important, lest we unintentionally appear to give creedence to The Big Lie that the MSM will surely try to shove down our throats in the coming year.
Mandos
Actually, I’ve lately gotten a little Trotskyish, because I think the Electoral Moment has been tried, the best possible within this media environment achieved, and still the worse-than-useless option is the best achievable.
It must appear to about 60% of the population that their health care, personally, is not going to be served. It hasn’t hit home. Until that happens, little on any front is achievable. Right now, the key sectors of the American public are concerned that illegal immigrants will take their jobs. The grassroots-level part of the opposition to substantive health care change appears partly motivated by the fear that the undeserving will get care at their expense. “If only my taxes would go down another 2%, I personally will be OK.”
That is the siren song that has continued to be sung.
tjfxh
ballgame: “You make a lot of good points, but please be careful when you talk about this, tjfxh. Republican policies of deregulation and free trade were directly responsible for our current economic collapse, and in a rational country people would be ashamed to ever admit they voted Republican, much less actually try to rule as one. The notion that the ‘conservatives were right after all’ couldn’t be more laughable.”
Of course, I agree about the reality, but as the GOP well knows, as far as the public is concerned, perception is reality. That’s why they have no trouble with the Big Lie(s).
The problem is that many people are overstretched and are deleveraging, if not throwingin the towel. They see the government going deeper and deeper into debt, on the other hand. Worse, they see Wall Street still pillaging.
It won’t take too much convincing to get the public to perceive that this mountain of debt is both bailing out the bad guys and also funding “spending.” Most people are programmed to think that government spending has to lead to higher taxes down the road.
While this is economic hogwash, most people aren’t anywhere sophisticated enough to figure it out, especially when the media (owned and run by the oligarchy) is hammering the Dems. How many “folks” watch KO and Rachel?
The GOP’s strategy is clearly to be a white populist party and win by capturing the center. After they;ve stoked up the base, they will tack to the center and try to capture dissatisfied independents and conservative Dems. This won’t be all that difficult to do if the economic situation has deteriorated in 2010 and/or 2012, provided they don’t run an absolute nut job in 2012 that turns off the center. There are a lot of Reagan Dems and moderate Republicans out there that can be persuaded to “come home.”
Subtract the activism of a disenchanted progressive base, and you’ve got trouble for the Dems. I’m not the only one of the left sounding the alarm. Lots of people are pretty pissed off at getting punked. If we continue to sit on our hands, we are going to continue to get rolled.
CathiefromCanada
I must disagree — Obama isn’t perfect, but he’s doing a good job of leadership so far on a large number of issues, particularly in the people he is appointing all over the American government. He’s going to tackle immigration next and I expect this will take some of the focus off of health care as the media and the wingnuts flit after the new butterflies.
Meanwhile, when it comes to health care, Obama now has Big Pharma on side, as well as the AARP and the American Medical Association. Yes, things were chaotic in July, I agree, but now that the legislation is finally just about finished, what Obama is going to achieve with this reform is coming into focus: as Krugman described it, regulation of insurers, so that they can’t cherry-pick only the healthy, and subsidies, so that all Americans can afford insurance; what it means for the individual will be that insurers can’t reject you, and if your income is relatively low, the government will help pay your premiums.
Meanwhile, the most hated corporations in America, the health insurance companies, are joining forces with the least liked political party in America, the Republicans, to make up ridiculous stories about killing grandma. In the end, this unholy alliance is not going to be popular. Only in the Bizarro world of Fox News and the TV pundits would they trumpet this as bad news for Obama.
I have been worried about whether this reform attempt will make it, but now with the pharmaceutical companies getting on-side, I am heartened and encouraged.
It’s not the end, nor the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning.
senecal
To shift the perspective just slightly, here’s a comment on current Republican “grassroots” tactics, compared with Democrats’ general attitude toward their base:
(quote)When the evening newscast the other night was showing footage of the chaos at another one of these town meetings, I told my wife that it reflected the basic difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. The Democrats do everything they can to demobilize their base, who are seen as inconvenient and extraneous to their main way of getting things done, namely through closed door meetings with corporate executives and nonprofit honchos over how to screw the American people while giving the opposite impression. Meanwhile, the Republicans are much more reliant on an activist base because their social support is much narrower. As a party that rules directly and openly in the interests of the moneyed elite, it requires all sorts of grass roots organization to push its filthy agenda forward.
But in practice, this means that the grass roots is almost always reliant on seed money from deep-pocketed foundations and corporate benefactors. Conservatives for Patients’ Rights takes credit for interventions at these town meetings. A character named Rick Scott, who is a millionaire investor and formerly head of the Columbia/HCA health-care company, leads CPR. A fraud investigation in the 1990s resulted in the Columbia/HCA pleading guilty to charges that it overbilled state and federal health plans. It ended up paying a record $1.7 billion in fines. According to Politico, CPR has raised $20 million to fight health care reform. You can bet that this is more than enough to pay for transporting mobs from one town hall meeting to another, including the one that just got the heave-ho from trade unionists in Florida.
It is impossible to predict what the next four years have in store but you cannot rule out such confrontations being repeated with some regularity given the sharpening of class tensions in the U.S. over what looks like a protracted L shaped recession. Even though the Dow-Jones index is heading toward the 10,000 level, the job and housing situation remain bleak.
Obama will do everything in his power to convince those who voted for him to remain patient while he carries out what amounts to a third Bush term, but there will be more and more defensive measures by the poor and the working class in defense of its own class interests. One can be reasonably assured that the level of discontent in the US will rise despite the African-American President’s clear gift for demagogy and deception.
And as the workers and the poor begin to fight for their rights, the retrograde social forces churned up from a capitalism in decay will become more and more violent and inclined to direct action.(enquote)
louisproyect.wordpress.com (The Unrepentant Marxist)
tc
The reason they won’t go with “Medicare for all” is that the conservatives want to trash Medicare and Social Security too (even if the “creamed corn mafia” is too stupid to figure out which side their toast is buttered on). And I’m not so sure Obama and the Vichy Dems aren’t a Social Security and Medicare enemies as well. They seemed pretty eager to discuss “reform” with the enemy before.
S Brennan
If you look at his earliest supporters, if you look at what little there is of his voting record, if you look at his advisers and you remember his FISA vote none of this should come as a surprise…what does surprise me is how easily he is able to to hold onto those that he fooled…I guess few of those who have been conned want to admit it..huh?
If i didn’t have to share in the tragedy created by fools I’d be free to laugh, but I’m not laughing…please write please write and let your Reps & the WH know, you’ll go third party if this Insurance hand out passes. BTW, I expect to see some serious folks run third party, maybe even Dennis [looks like…death warmed over] Kucinich.
PS Why can’t true liberals find a good looking candidate…is it that much to ask that a candidate doesn’t scare small children?
Barry
“Unless they decide that the Republicans will give them everything they want, too.”
Of course – no matter how much a centrist Democratic president will give them, a GOP president will *always* give them much, much more.
Chris Watson
“They were, of course, wrong: the radical right (and there is hardly a non-radical right left) will oppose Obama no matter what he does and if Obama is unwilling to use to the full might of the administrative apparatus against them…”
[/sarcasm]
Okay there, Commissar Welsh – perhaps you’re advocating ‘reeducation’ camps that have worked *so* well for your Communist allies in Asia? Pack all of us overly loud, demonstrative Right Wingers off to the camps and gas chambers? Perhaps use the section of the Health Care Bill that would identify us as unworthy of continued medical care – in this case because of our lack of ideological impurity?
[/sarcasm off]
When you take the position that dissent is somehow wrong, it scares people. We all have a First Amendment right to free speech and assembly and I am sure that you dissented loudly against GW. Why do you advocate the silencing of those who oppose what is obviously a badly written bill?
Ian Welsh
Folks taking guns to meetings and screaming down other people is what I’m opposed to. Want to go and protest, go for it. Want to take a gun, or scream down other people in what’s supposed to be a meeting where people talk to each other – not for it. If you want to scream in the street – any street – including at Obama himself, go for it. If you want to go to Obama meeting and protest, go for it. But don’t stop other people from speaking in a town hall.