[Peace-discuss] CounterPunch on the Democrats

[Morton K.Brussel]

It seems to me that there is an effort by Cockburn and others to heap 
scorn on Kerry.

Fine, he (and most Democrats) deserve it, but to what end?

Is it Cockburn's intention to dissuade folks from truly participating 
in the next election our of disgust? What is his recommendation for the 
coming election? Bush et al? "An enemy we know?" Nader? He seems  to 
have contempt for Nader as well. Not voting? Encouraging others to not 
vote?

The trouble with Cockburn is that he doesn't show an effective path to 
anywhere. It seems that he yearns for catastrophe and the revolution it 
could conceivably provoke. Is this being too harsh on him?

I like his iconoclasm, but think he's often counterproductive.

MKB


On Apr 16, 2004, at 11:27 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> [Amusing, disturbing, and I think largely correct. Come hear Cockburn's
> CounterPunch colleague at my place on Saturday afternoon at 3pm -- 
> Jeffrey
> St. Clair will talk about "Dime's Worth of Difference: Beyond the 
> Politics
> of Lesser Evils."  --CGE]
>
> 	The Capitulation of the Left is Almost Unprecedented
> 	Bush, Kerry and Empire
> 	By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
>
> As one who regards Gerry Ford as our greatest president (least time
> served, least damage done, husband of Betty, plus Stevens as his
> contribution to the Supreme Court) Iâ•˙d always imagined the man from
> Grand Rapids would never be surpassed in sheer slowness of thought. 
> When a
> reporter asked Ford a question it was like watching that great 
> sequence in
> Rosselliniâ•˙s film about Louis XIV, when a shouted command is relayed 
> at
> a stately pace through a dozen intermediaries from the kitchen to the
> royal ear. In Fordâ•˙s case, to watch a message negotiate the neural 
> path
> from ear to cortex was to see a hippo wade through glue.
>
> But I think Bush has Ford beat. Had he ever made a mistake, the 
> reporter
> asked at that White House press conference last Tuesday. The 
> presidentâ•˙s
> face remained composed, masking the turmoil and terror raging within, 
> as
> his cerebellum went into gridlock. It should have been easy for him. 
> Broad
> avenues of homely humility beckoned him on. ╲John, no man can stand
> before his Creator as I do each day and say he is without errorâ•œâ•ˇ
> Reagan would have hit the ball out of the park. But the President 
> froze.
> He said heâ•˙d have to think it over.
>
> Indeed, accounts of Bushâ•˙s comportment by former associates such as 
> Paul
> Oâ•˙Neill suggest a Ford-like core to the man, of tranquil inertness,
> penetrated in Fordâ•˙s case by the evil counsels of Kissinger, and in
> Bushâ•˙s by the advisories of all his malign viziers. Why bother
> impeaching Bush, as Nader is now wasting our time urging? Leave Bush
> alone. Impeach Scalia and indict Cheney, two realistic and useful
> political objectives.
>
> Behind the liberal hysteria over Bush, as a demon of monstrous, 
> Hitlerian
> proportions, I get the sense of a certain embarrassment, that the man 
> is
> bringing the imperial office into embarrassment and disrepute. Hence 
> all
> the plaintive invocations of the distress of ╲Americaâ•˙s allies╡,
> hopefully to be cured by a competent rationalizer of the empireâ•˙s
> affairs, like John Kerry. But should not all opponents of the American
> Empireâ•˙s global reach rejoice that but would not the world be a safer
> and conceivably a better place if the allies saw separate paths as the
> sounder option? Gabriel Kolko, that great historian of American empire,
> has been arguing powerfully (most recently in our CounterPunch 
> newsletter)
> to this effect and I agree with him.
>
> With leadership of barely conceivable arrogance and incompetence 
> (Bremer
> alone is a case study in the decline in quality of such American 
> leaders
> in the past 50 years) the US has managed the amazing feat of uniting
> Iraqis in detestation of their presence, and of leaving itself with 
> zero
> palatable options. Amid this bloody disaster, with popular distaste for
> the occupation of Iraq swelling up in the polls Kerry, with McCain at 
> his
> elbow, has been goading Bush into sending more troops. As a prospective
> supervisor of empire, Kerry sends forth the word that the Democrats are
> the Second Party of War.
>
> Given Naderâ•˙s aversion to a strident stance on a straight anti-war
> platform, it looks as though the only decent option is Harry Browne of 
> the
> Libertarians. Kucinich? As he himself recently put it, heâ•˙s a
> ╲tugboat╡ hauling castaways back into Democratic port in time for 
> the
> fall regatta. I heard him on NPR the other day, first saying that he 
> was
> staying in the race to show There Is Another Democratic Path, then
> refusing the interviewerâ•˙s invitation to criticize Kerry.
>
> With hardly a backward glance --or forward look --the bulk of the
> surviving American left has blithely joined the Democratic Party 
> center,
> without the will to inflict debate, the influence to inform policy or 
> the
> leverage to share power. The capitulation of the left --a necessarily
> catch-all word --is almost without precedent. By accepting the premises
> and practices of party unity the left has negated the reasons for its 
> own
> existence.
>
> Let me produce a rabbit from its hat. I wrote that preceding paragraph,
> the one beginning ╲with barely a backward glance╡, 20 years ago 
> with
> Andrew Kopkind in a piece we did for The Nation in the summer 1984 
> about
> Mondaleâ•˙s candicacy, where we noted the Democratic Partyâ•˙s 
> commitment
> to ╲the essential elements of Reaganism: continued military 
> expansion╜
> further degradation of the welfare system, denials of black demands for
> equity; and unqualified submission to the imperatives of the corporate
> system.╡
>
> Any words you think should be changed?
>
> And talking of the imperatives of the corporate system, Kerry 
> announced on
> April 7 that his primary economic policy initiative would be deficit
> reduction. Welcome back, Robert Rubin, the man who ran Clintonâ•˙s
> economic policy on behalf of Wall Street. Kerryâ•˙s economic advisers,
> Altman and Sperling, acknowledge they consult with Rubin all the time. 
> If
> you still foolishly believe that the economy in Clinton-time was 
> properly
> guided for the long-term benefit of the many, as opposed to short-term
> bonanzas for the wealthy few, I strongly urge you to read Robert
> Pollinâ•˙s Contours of Descent, which I hailed here last November. In 
> line
> with that analysis, and after some useful exchanges with Pollin, let me
> note major problems with the Kerry program.
>
> Deficit reduction will do nothing to directly promote the growth of 
> jobs,
> the lack of which is now the fundamental problem in the economy. As 
> Pollin
> remarks, ╲It is also a political disaster for the Democrats to again
> latch onto deficit reduction rather than jobs as their major economic
> theme. The false premise of Rubinomics is that deficit reduction itself
> promotes economic growth, and thereby jobs, by lowering long-term 
> interest
> rates. This is what Rubin and company think happened in the 1990s. But
> they are wrong. What actually happened in the 1990s is that we had an
> unprecedented stock market bubble. Because of the bubble, rich people 
> and
> corporations engaged in a huge wave of borrowing and spending that 
> drove
> the economy upward, only to crash back down when the bubble 
> collapsed.╡
>
> Even if Rubin were right about deficit reduction stimulating growth of
> GDP, what is clear in the current "recovery" is that GDP growth alone 
> does
> not promote job growth. That is exactly what we mean by the "jobless
> recovery". The Democrats should instead be talking about a major jobs
> program, through refinancing state and local government spending in
> education, health, and social welfare. Aside from the social benefits 
> from
> these programs, they also provide the biggest expansion of jobs for a
> given dollar amount of spending. A million dollars spent on education,
> Pollin calculates, would produce roughly twice the number of jobs as 
> the
> same amount spent on the military.
>
> But Kerryâ•˙s other shoe, war on the deficit as well as war in Iraq, 
> has a
> more sinister import. Deficits arenâ•˙t intrinsically bad, and the 
> current
> one is scarcely unparalleled in recent US economic history. But 
> Bushâ•˙s
> deficits, amassed in the cause of tax breaks for the very rich and war
> abroad, provide the premise of a fiscal crisis to starve social 
> spending.
> Itâ•˙s the Greenspan Two Step: endorse the tax cuts, then say, as the 
> Fed
> chairman did in February, that the consequent deficits require an
> onslaught on social security. Remember, Bill Clinton was all set to 
> start
> privatizing social security, until the allurements of the diviner 
> Monica
> postponed the onslaught.
>
> There are progressive ways to close the deficit. For example, Pollin
> reckons that if we imposed a very small tax on all financial
> transactions-i.e. all stock, bond, and derivative trades, starting 
> with a
> 0.5 percent tax on stocks and scaling the other appropriately - we 
> could
> raise roughly $100 billion right there, or roughly 20 percent of next
> year's projected deficit, even if we also assume financial market 
> trading
> fell by an implausibly large 50 percent as a result of the tax.
>
> A tax on financial transactions? Now youâ•˙re talking, but not about
> anything you might expect from the Democratic Party or John Kerry.
>
> 	***
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.cu.groogroo.com
> http://lists.cu.groogroo.com/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
>