[Peace-discuss] Cockburn on the 3rd debate

[LAURIE SOLOMON]

You would not have had an inkling from the presidential candidates' third
and final debate last night that the Amerikan electoral process and the
presidential debates had lost more than 25 % of their value and are
predicted to lose another 50% their value by the time of the election.

-----Original Message-----
From: peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net
[mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of C. G.
Estabrook
Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2008 1:23 PM
To: peace-discuss
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Cockburn on the 3rd debate

"Voters are disgusted with the entire system and the direction the country
is 
taking. Disapproval of Bush and of the Democrats running Congress is at the
same 
high level. Yet Obama and McCain share many positions, starting with the 
bail-out and continuing with endorsement of a belligerent foreign policy
from 
Georgia to Iran, total fealty to Israel and a ramp-up of the doomed Afghan 
campaign."

	Where is Ralph Nader when we need him?
	Another weak debate advertises the absence of
	an effective third force in American politics

You would not have had an inkling from the presidential candidates' third
and 
final debate last night that Wednesday had been a day of fearful carnage on
Wall 
Street, throwing into question the desperate efforts of the US Treasury and
the 
Federal Reserve to stabilise the situation.

You would not have known that in a month the Dow Jones industrial index has
lost 
25 per cent of its value. You would not have known that in the considered 
estimation of many economists, the United States could well be entering a 
prolonged recession without much chance of recovery for many years.

There were, to be sure, dutiful references by both Obama and McCain to
crisis, 
but mostly it was as though they were talking about a troublesome traffic 
accident a couple of blocks away. McCain flourished a proposal to bail out 
homeowners. Obama claimed that the bankers' bail-out bill for which they had

both voted contained exactly such provisions.

Then the two retreated to mechanical reiteration of their tax plans, their 
health plans, their plans for energy independence, all of them topics 
interminably raked over in the earlier debates.

Three instant polls showed that the all-important independent voters thought

Obama had had the best of it. After a spritely beginning, McCain soon looked

puffy and tired. His little jabs at Obama sounded peevish rather than
fierce. 
Obama somewhat unconvincingly assumed the role of genial sparring partner, 
plastering a smile across his face as McCain flailed away.

Given the political news yesterday, Obama could afford to smile. A poll 
conducted by the New York Times found the Democrat with commanding leads in 
crucial states. The margins are beginning to suggest a stampede to Obama and
the 
Democrats.

The morning of the third presidential debate a friend of mine in Landrum,
South 
Carolina conducted an informal survey of voter sentiment in this rural town
in 
the heart of Dixie. He pulled over at a convenience store-cum-coffee shop,
and 
walked in with a wad of McCain/Palin stickers. "Don't you bring those things
in 
here," said the man behind the cash register.

My friend strolled among the regulars sipping their coffee, most of them 
retired, and could find no takers. "Not one, and these were people who voted
100 
per cent for Bush in 2004. They're angry." Why? After a terrible summer of 
soaring gas prices and plunging stock portfolios "a lot of them have lost
their 
retirement funds and health savings". He added that all the talk about
Obama's 
links to terror, to Islam, to bombers, has also had the effect of
intimidating 
elderly Republicans from even putting McCain-Palin signs in their yards.
They 
fear Obama's Islamic bully boys will come knocking on their doors.

My friend's experience in Landrum came amid the inglorious tailspin of the 
disastrous strategy of trying to sink Obama by hanging former Weatherman
Bill 
Ayers round his neck.

When Republican consultants like Mary Matalin and Steve Schmidt first
pondered 
this tactic in the late summer, it must have seemed to them like a
no-brainer.

In the final weeks of Campaign 2008, Barack Hussein Obama would be hit with 
accusations (actually first aired by Hillary Clinton last April) of being an

alien radical with intimate ties to a man who had tried to blow up Congress
and 
the Pentagon.

It might have worked, but for the fact which apparently escaped the notice
of 
the McCain campaign - that Americans are entirely consumed by the worst
economic 
crisis since the Great Depression. There has been a total disconnect between
the 
financial hurricane hitting America and some archaeology about a Sixties
radical 
sitting with Obama on the board of a non-profit foundation.

Across the three debates Obama has been the default winner, if only because 
McCain has been irritable and repetitive, a cranky old geezer. But has the 
Democrat taken command, persuading his vast audiences that amid the loom of 
adversity and ruin for many Americans he is prepared to lead and has a plan?
The 
answer here is surely no. He's got less inspiring as the weeks tick by.

This election has advertised not only McCain's political ineptness, but also
the 
absence of an effective third force in American politics, at a moment when
the 
credibility of both parties and of both major candidates is open to sweeping

challenge.

Voters are disgusted with the entire system and the direction the country is

taking. Disapproval of Bush and of the Democrats running Congress is at the
same 
high level. Yet Obama and McCain share many positions, starting with the 
bail-out and continuing with endorsement of a belligerent foreign policy
from 
Georgia to Iran, total fealty to Israel and a ramp-up of the doomed Afghan
campaign.

Ralph Nader is a man for whom the economic crisis has come as total
vindication 
of everything he has been proclaiming for decades: about the corruption of
Wall 
Street, the ties between Wall Street and Congress, the economic sell-outs of
the 
Clinton era, from free trade deals to the repeal of Glass-Steagall.

Yet Nader has no party and so despite being on the ballot this year in over
40 
states suffers from hugely diminished political purchase on everything from 
volunteers to finance to media presence, at a moment when his message could
have 
resonated hugely with the furious and fearful electorate.

The political groups and coalitions that rallied to Nader in 2000 are all 
shadows of their former selves. Eight years of Bush have pushed the 
environmental and labour lobbies back into the Democratic Party, where their

voices are inaudible and political influence scarcely visible to the naked
eye.

Has Obama changed the political landscape? On September 23 he stated on NBC
that 
the crisis and prospect of a huge bail-out required bipartisan action and
meant 
he likely would have to delay expansive spending programmes outlined during
his 
campaign for the White House. In addition, he said that his proposed
economic 
stimulus program "is not necessarily something that we should have in this
package".

Thus did he surrender power even before he gained it. As an instigator of 
beneficial change, the Clinton administration was over six months after
election 
day 1992, when Clinton turned to Al Gore and said, "You mean my re-election 
hinges on the Federal Reserve and some fucking bond traders?" Gore nodded
and 
Clinton promptly abandoned his economic plan to follow the dictates of Wall 
Street tycoons like Robert Rubin, now a top advisor to Obama. Assuming he
wins, 
Obama beat the speed of Bill Clinton's 1993 collapse by almost seven months.

FIRST POSTED OCTOBER 16, 2008
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/45649,opinion,where-is-ralph-nader-when-we-nee
d-him-asks-alexander-cockburn
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