Turning Points

One great consolation of senescence is that the memory of hard times past survives.  While younger people think of Tr*mpism as unprecedented, I have not forgotten "the Reagan Revolution."

Reagan conspicuously inaugurated his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers had been murdered in 1964.  He went on to slash taxes on the rich, decimate the labor movement, deregulate banking and industry, cripple environmental regulation, demean feminism, ignore the AIDS epidemic, shred the social safety net, double the military budget, finance third-world despots and their death squads, and preside over the glorification of greed.  His "base" was virtually indistinguishable from Tr*mp's: working class whites threatened by socioeconomic change.  Tr*mpian appeals to nationalism and the restoration of an imagined golden age — once known as "Morning in America" — inspire in this old man a powerful sense of déjà vu.

Reagan did immense damage; and one institution that suffered spectacularly was the Democratic Party.  Democrats responded to America's rightward lurch by empowering the Democratic Leadership Council, so-called "centrists" who led the party's stampede to the right during the Clinton years.  Only by comparison with Bill Clinton can Barack Obama be considered "progressive."  Obama came to power surrounded by the same Robert Rubin acolytes who guided Clinton era economics, and his social policy echoed rather than led cultural change that already was underway.  In the meanwhile, Republicans crippled Democratic power in Congress and in the States.

Right now, Democrats are confronting an existential choice: either continue the disastrous course of the Clintonian establishment, or line up behind populist progressives like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Keith Ellison.  The next Chair of the Democratic National Committee will be elected at the DNC's winter meeting, February 23–26.  The leading candidates are the progressive wing's Keith Ellison and the establishment's Thomas Perez.

Only a genuinely progressive agenda can reclaim the support of the "Reagan Democrats" and revitalize the Democratic Party.  I encourage serious activists to put aside their Sharpies and poster board long enough to make personal contact with Democratic leaders in their localities, and demand support for Ellison.  "More of the same" no longer is a viable option.

To Barack Obama from an old white guy

A little while ago, I posted the video you can watch above to YouTube, as a response to a video from the Obama campaign which you can watch here. If you don't find my video in the "video responses" section, it means the Obama campaign didn't "accept" it -- that is, decided they'd rather not have it associated with their video.

If you didn't have the patience to listen to me go on for close to ten minutes, here's the gist of it -- I tell Obama that what I really want him to do is undo the Reagan Revolution. I tell him he should significantly raise taxation of the very rich, re-regulate a lot of what's been deregulated over the past quarter-century, and run a government that's actively pro-union. Beyond that, I want him to put government workers back on the payroll to do most of the work that's been contracted out, and I assert that the Iraq War was started specifically so the private sector could loot the Treasury.

Yes, it's one of my usual diatribes, and if it actually appears on YouTube as a response to Obama's video, I'll be flabbergasted -- but there's at least a chance that somebody in the Obama campaign will have looked at it.

The truth is that I don't expect Obama could accomplish what I think needs accomplishment even if he wanted to. The biggest problem I see with an Obama presidency has nothing to do with Obama. Rather, it has to do with the fractious nature of the Democratic Party. Will Democrats in Congress unite behind Obama if he wins? I'm guessing they'll give him all the stunning support they gave, say, Jimmy Carter. Thanks in part to Clinton pulling the party to the right, there are quite a few powerful Democrats who are quite conservative -- and the fact that Congress becomes more and more of a millionaire's club with each election cycle won't much help either.

By the way, I tried to make the video more visually interesting than just my talking head by adding a bunch of stills and animations, some of which are moderately amusing. If you haven't watched it yet, please give it a try.

Too much goddamned money

Back during the first term of the Reagan Administration, I remember a conversation I had with a physicist who recently had immigrated from Communist Poland. He was enjoying a much higher standard of living over here, and was very happy to be living in the United States. "Back in Poland," he observed, "the government owns all the big businesses."

"Here," I replied, "the big businesses own the government."

It was still an overstatement back then. The Reagan Revolution was in its infancy, and although Reaganauts were happily slashing government's regulatory powers (anybody remember the savings and loan crisis?) and school lunches*, it would be another 25 years before the revolution was complete. (Yes, this includes participation by the Clinton Administration.)

Today, we are told, voters are clamoring for change. More than anything, they want government that is more responsive to their wants and needs. Let's have a look at one example.

According to a CBS News poll conducted in September, a majority of Americans support a single-payer system of national health insurance. Nevertheless, no viable Democratic candidate (sorry, Dennis) has proposed single-payer as a solution to our health care problems. And why not? Isn't this a democracy?

Nope. Sorry, but it isn't.

If you'd had a few competent teachers, you would know that the USofA is a republic. From time to time in our history, it is a democratic republic, in that those who govern are genuinely representative of the people. At other times, it is a plutocratic republic: those who govern represent monied interests. The plutocrats ruled during the Gilded Age, when Mark Twain remarked that we had "the best Congress money can buy." They rule again today.

The blatant abuse of power by Bush/Cheney is just the icing on the cake. The Reagan Revolution, which delivered this country into the hands of the plutocrats, was complete before George W. Bush was sworn in. What we experienced over the past seven years was just the first unabashed use of that power, with emphasis on the transfer of more and more wealth to the super-rich.

As ordinary Americans, our biggest problem is that some people just have too much goddamned money. They use it to buy political power, and they use that power to accumulate even more money -- at the expense of ordinary Americans.

The only hope for those of us in the "lower classes" is the fact that the plutocrats are not a unified block. Now that the poor have been drained dry and the middle classes are buried in debt, they are beginning to turn on each other.

John Edwards has positioned himself as a doughty David fighting the Goliath of corporate power. This makes sense, because Edwards and his most generous contributors are tort lawyers, who earned their own fortunes by suing corporations. As corporate interests become more and more powerful, they pay for legislation ("tort reform") that makes it harder for tort lawyers to sue, and much harder for them to win large settlements.

Understandably, the Edwards campaign has not received much play in the corporate media, and his chances of winning the presidential nomination are slight (although still far better than those of Dennis Kucinich, the real populist and people's representative to whom I apologized above.) Personally, I don't care what motivates the Edwards campaign -- I still see him as the best chance to undo some of the damage done over the past few decades.

Both Clinton and Obama are running to the alleged "center," and both their campaign staffs are full of neo-liberals from the Bill Clinton White House. Frankly, I don't see much difference between them. Right now, I suppose I'm hoping for a minor miracle -- but I'm not holding my breath.

If you'd like to explore who's paying for whom, try WhiteHouseForSale.org.