The desire to undermine the Bush GOP and dislodge that movement from power subsumed all other objectives and united people with vastly different political outlooks and agendas. There is still a shared revulsion towards the Palin/Limbaugh Right, but that faction is too marginalized and impotent to serve the same function. With the unifying force of Bush/Cheney gone, the divisions Kilgore describes are now vibrant and increasingly potent. In addition to health care and Iraq, roughly the same progressive fault lines are seen over the bank bailout, escalation in Afghanistan, Obama’s economic team, tolerance for Obama’s embrace of Bush/Cheney civil liberties polices, and even the reaction to Matt Taibbi’s recent Rolling Stone article on Obama’s subservience to Wall Street.
As I’ve written for quite some time, I’ve honestly never understood how anyone could think that Obama was going to bring about some sort of “new” political approach or governing method when, as Kilgore notes, what he practices – politically and substantively – is the Third Way, DLC, triangulating corporatism of the Clinton era, just re-packaged with some sleeker and more updated marketing. At its core, it seeks to use government power not to regulate, but to benefit and even merge with, large corporate interests, both for political power (those corporate interests, in return, then fund the Party and its campaigns) and for policy ends. It’s devoted to empowering large corporations, letting them always get what they want from government, and extracting, at best, some very modest concessions in return.
Whether you call it “a government takeover of the private sector” or a “private sector takeover of government,” it’s the same thing: a merger of government power and corporate interests which benefits both of the merged entities (the party in power and the corporations) at everyone else’s expense. Growing anger over that is rooted far more in an insider/outsider dichotomy over who controls Washington than it is in the standard conservative/liberal ideological splits from the 1990s. It’s true that the people who are angry enough to attend tea parties are being exploited and misled by GOP operatives and right-wing polemicists, but many of their grievances about how Washington is ignoring their interests are valid, and the Democratic Party has no answers for them because it’s dependent upon and supportive of that corporatist model. That’s why they turn to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh; what could a Democratic Party dependent upon corporate funding and subservient to its interests possibly have to say to populist anger?
what he practices – politically and substantively – is the Third Way, DLC, triangulating corporatism of the Clinton era
Fuck you, Oba-- …oh, it’s something else, nevermind.
In a way, I’ll admit the title’s misleading, but I think it points back to the issues that Tabbi was making. Obama, and much of the Democratic Party, aren’t looking like much of an alternative to the Republicans. I laughed at Nader as hard as anyone else when, during the Bush Administration, he was carrying on about how there’s no difference between the parties (as he took Republican money) but I’m starting to feel less sanguine about this.
I’ve been of this mind for a while, and have been abused here for it, which is why I was much more optimistic and hopeful of Obama than I ever was of the Democrats. I thought the Republicans and Democrats in Washington are just different skins on politically power hungry SOBs doing whatever is needed to maintain their positions of power and cushy jobs, but perhaps Obama can bring a leadership to the Democrats that they will follow (albeit for the selfish motivations that America likes this dude and if we do what he says they’ll like us and keep us in power.)
But I’m not seeing anything so far in Obama that sustains my hope and optimism. It’s still early, so I’ll hope he just needs to get his sea legs and then perhaps he’ll step up and lead.
It’s still early, so I’ll hope he just needs to get his sea legs and then perhaps he’ll step up and lead.
I wouldn’t hold my breath. The split Greenwald describes seems to be between people who are invested in Washington’s institutions, and those who aren’t. Judging from the healthcare debate especially, Obama has solidly thrown in his lot with the institutions.
I figured the major difference would be the warmongering, but I’m not sure what to think of Afghanistan. It’s where empires go to die, so maybe it’s a good thing, but still… warmongering is warmongering. I would have preferred we looked at bringing in support from other countries or something, rallying support from reasonable Middle East neighbors? Egypt perhaps? It is a difficult spot GWB put us in, no doubt.
Anyway, that’s one of many issues, and Obama hasn’t sufficiently changed US policy on any number of other issues (Hi, torture) to satisfy any progressive except those with the BLINDERS XTREME model equipped. We’re building a new prison to replace Gitmo, we’re still renditioning people to secret prisons abroad, we have reformed fuck all in the financial system, our health reform is a joke, the stimulus wasn’t enough and Obama wasn’t courageous enough to demand more (or listen to Krugman), etc etc etc.
What a meek presidency after all the talk of change. Even guys like Grayson have been muted lately, so I really don’t know what we can do. The system is broken beyond repair, having collapsed beneath the weight of hundreds of millions of industry dollars. There’s too much money in being bad I suppose.
To be fair, Obama stated several times during his campaign that Afghanistan was the war he felt we were supposed to fight. He also stated numerous times that he would make some decision that would be unpopular but needed from his perspective. At least he’s following through on those promises. ;)
Obama ran as the most conservative candidate in the primary and has made a career out of joining institutions and then moving them somewhat to the left, without fundamentally changing them. This shouldn’t be a surprise.
I never thought he was that far left a candidate, but here’s a big difference between being a candidate on whatever stripe and simply giving the industry everything they want. In theory, anyway. I especially raised an eyebrow at how quickly he reneged on his health care promises (public option, no back-room deals, etc) to wrap his lips around the insurance lobby’s engorged phallos.
Perhaps the most nefarious part of it all is that he’s almost certainly going to look good from a reelection standpoint. This means no option for a less bought candidate for a looooooong time.
I can’t say I’m particularly shocked by this kind of behavior from a Chicago political machine candidate but I was hoping for better, particularly after he got the party nomination.
Imagining you were going to go to a European-style robust public option straight from the state we were in is dreaming. The progressives/Firedoglake/Kos Kiddies are doing the same thing that the Repubs did. This nation governs from the center. This nation elects from the center. If you represent the center better, you’re going to get elected.
For the last few years of the Bush election, the hard-righters tried to take over, thinking there was a fundamental shift. There wasn’t. That led to the current situation. Now, the far-lefters are making the same issue.
Are we going to eventually get to a public option, etcetera? Yes. But not quick, not easy. Take it step by step, and shift the country to the left slowly, not try to pick up Sisphyus’s rock and carry it to the far left. That way lies the equivalent of a Democratic hernia, and the rock rolling back to the center for the Repubs to pick up
I’m sorry, but that sounds rather ridiculous. The public option is a centrist, or at least very weak centre-left option. It’s what the people who voted for Obama wants. If anything, the enforced tack to the idiot centre (let’s make it work worse, because that’s centrist!) is what decreases/will decrease the popularity of this bill. Now, if the “left” was running on single payer, then you might have a point (though the equivalence with the far right is still false: the wars led us to this situation, and the abandon of all sense by the Republican mouthpieces - not the governing, per se). The problem for those wanting to kill the bill from the left is that people want this bill to pass for what it does (or would, if completely informed - however, successful legislation is likely to get government support just for passing) more than they want to kill it for what it doesn’t do, even if they would indeed prefer that it did more.
If anything, the country seems to govern from the feel-good position. Reagan made people feel good, so the entire discourse shifted right. The Senate makes the people feel bad, because it exposes a dysfunctional system, so people turn less hopey/changey.
You really think that if Obama, if he had the power to do so, made great regulatory changes from the left that were seen as punishing Wall Street, would have become less popular?
The public option, compared to what we have now, is no where near the center. It’s a fundamental shift to a nation enamored with capitalism and the (admittedly misguided notion) that the market solves all issues.
In the left kills the bill, they won’t get this close again in a quarter century. You have a virtually unprecedented opportunity (WH, both houses of Congress, 60 members of the Senate!). This is the high point. It’s almost certainly downhill from here.
I do understand where you’re coming from about the “feel-good position”, and I agree to a point, but I also have a caution. I see the left starting to attach the same purity test
as the right.
Bob Herbert via Greenwald on the healthcare debate.
Today, The New York Times’ Bob Herbert has an excellent column giving the lie to those tactics from the President’s most loyal supporters. Herbert explains why the health care bill – with its reliance on taxes on so-called “Cadillac” plans – is far more likely to end up burdening the middle class and reducing health insurance coverage for tens of millions of people:
[quote]In fact, it’s a tax that in a few years will hammer millions of middle-class policyholders, forcing them to scale back their access to medical care. Which is exactly what the tax is designed to do. . . .
Within three years of its implementation, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the tax would apply to nearly 20 percent of all workers with employer-provided health coverage in the country, affecting some 31 million people. Within six years, according to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, the tax would reach a fifth of all households earning between $50,000 and $75,000 annually. Those families can hardly be considered very wealthy. . . .
The idea is that rather than fork over 40 percent in taxes on the amount by which policies exceed the threshold, employers (and individuals who purchase health insurance on their own) will have little choice but to ratchet down the quality of their health plans. . . . These lower-value plans would have higher out-of-pocket costs, thus increasing the very things that are so maddening to so many policyholders right now: higher and higher co-payments, soaring deductibles and so forth. . . .
Once again, this bill is BS. Those who say “Oh, pass it because it’s better than nothing and we’ll never get another chance” are what people in the counseling profession call “enablers” to the Dems. There’s no reason to not tell our people in Congress to either retool this thing and get it right, and if it takes a few months to do it, fine, or just scrap it and start over.
It’s a false dichotomy, I think, to argue that the political split should be pro- and anti- corporate. It isn’t the communist party vs. the capitalist one. To say that they are “extracting, at best, some very modest concessions in return” is to simply wave away the actual debate by calling it “modest concessions” in order to paint the two parties as closer together than they really are. Yes, Obama is not going to tear down the corporate edifice or beat all those evil CEOs into philanthropists. Would doing so actually improve the country?
