[Peace-discuss] The Twilight of Obama-time

[C. G. Estabrook]

"...So far as the US Senate is concerned, the Tea Party has been the prime 
factor in keeping Democrats in certain states in any sort of contention ... one 
can make a convincing case that purely on the basis of cui bono -- who stands to 
gain -- the Democrats surely invented the Tea Party out of whole cloth ... 
Contrary to a thousand contemptuous diatribes by the left, the Tea Party is a 
genuine political movement, channeling the fury and frustration of a huge slab 
of white Americans running small businesses -- what used to be called the 
petit-bourgeoisie ... The President's aides are already confiding that the White 
House will move right. The question is: will his liberal base tolerate their 
hero colluding with Republicans in seeking to destroy Medicare ... in the 
interests of political survival? If that is the course Obama takes, look for a 
serious challenge to him from another Democrat, as we head towards 2012..."


_The Twilight of Obama-time_

The sun will rise next Wednesday on a new American landscape, the same way it 
rose on a new American landscape almost exactly two years ago.

That was the dawn of Obama-time. Millions of Americans had dined delightedly on 
Obama's rhetoric of dreams and preened at his homilies about the inherent moral 
greatness of the American people.

Obama and the Democrats triumphed at the polls. The pundits hailed a "tectonic 
shift" in our national politics, perhaps even a registration of the possibility 
that we had entered a "post-racial" era.

The realities of American politics don't change much from year to year. The 
"politics of division" which Obama denounced are the faithful reflection of 
national divisions of wealth and resources wider today than they have been at 
any time since the late 1920s.

In fact the "dream" died even before Obama was elected in November 2008. Already 
in September that year Senator Obama, like his opponent, Senator McCain, had 
voted, at the behest of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson (formerly of Goldman 
Sachs) and of Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, for the bailout of the banks. Whatever 
the election result, there was to be no change in the architecture of financial 
power in America.

Two events are scheduled for next Tuesday. If we are to believe the polls, the 
voters will install Republicans as the new majority in the House of 
Representatives. A longer shot - they may even win the Senate.

If that happens, Obama will be in exactly the situation that Bill Clinton found 
himself on November 9, 1994, the day after the Republicans won control of both 
houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

Also on Tuesday or maybe Wednesday, chairman Bernanke and the Open Market 
Committee of the Federal Reserve Board will convene in Washington and decide on 
how much money to create -- "quantitative easing" - and hand to the banks, in 
order to lift the country out of a Depression which has 30 million Americans 
either without a job, or working part-time. Their deliberations will be more 
consequential, at least in the short term, than the verdicts of the voters in 
the democratic contest.

The November 2 election will at least settle a simple question: will the Tea 
Party movement, as nutty a bunch as has diverted America since the Goldwater 
movement of 1964, have any sort of decisive political effect?

So far as the US Senate is concerned, the Tea Party has been the prime factor in 
keeping Democrats in certain states in any sort of contention.

Even though persuasive detective work by CounterPuncher Pam Martens and others 
has established that a couple of oil millionaires from Wichita, Kansas, the Koch 
brothers, have been sluicing money into Tea Party-related political 
organizations, one can make a convincing case that purely on the basis of cui 
bono -- who stands to gain -- the Democrats surely invented the Tea Party out of 
whole cloth.

If it wasn't for Tea Party maiden Christine O'Donnell, the Republicans would be 
counting victory in Delaware as a sure thing. But in a primary race, O'Donnell 
defeated the orthodox Republican and courtesy of her jaunty admission that she 
had once dabbled in Satanic practices -- something this very religious nation 
takes as a serious disqualification for political office -- she now lags far 
behind Democrat Chris Coons who, by the way, is already pledging that when 
elected he'll be working to keep the Bush tax cuts for the super-rich.

There are other states - Colorado, Nevada, Alaska and Kentucky - where Democrats 
may survive because of whacko performances by their Tea Party opponents. Joe 
Miller in Alaska has confessed to so many lies that Alaskans may well try to 
revert to Lisa Murkowski. But as a write-in candidate she labors under the 
burden of many Alaskans being unable to spell her name, so the Democrat, 
McAdams, might squeeze through.

In Nevada, Harry Reid may live to lead the Senate majority another day because 
of Sharon Angle's racist ads, targeting Hispanics. Dan Maes, a Tea Party man 
battling to win the Colorado governorship, has impaled his candidacy with the 
charge that Denver's pro-bicycle program (espoused by Democrat gubernatorial 
contender, Hickenlooper, currently the mayor of Denver) is part of a one-world 
conspiracy promoted by the UN. Maes is probably right, but as a conspiracy it's 
not drawn voters to his cause. Rand Paul's security guards in Kentucky were 
photographed stomping on the head of a liberal protester. Also on Wednesday, Tea 
Party Nation founder Judson Phillips came under fire for an Internet column 
published over the weekend in which he called for the defeat of Rep. Keith 
Ellison (D-Minn.) because he is Muslim.

If the Tea Party may yet save the Senate for the Democrats, in House races its 
candidates may have had the effect of juicing up Republican voters. Or not. A 
lot of the electorate clearly can't make up its mind about which of their houses 
should be more plague-ridden.

Contrary to a thousand contemptuous diatribes by the left, the Tea Party is a 
genuine political movement, channeling the fury and frustration of a huge slab 
of white Americans running small businesses -- what used to be called the 
petit-bourgeoisie.

The World Socialist Website snootily cites a Washington Post survey finding the 
Tea Party to be a "disparate band of vaguely connected gatherings." The WSW 
sneers that the Post was able to make contact with only 647 groups linked to the 
Tea Party, some of which involve only a handful of people. "The findings suggest 
that the breadth of the tea party may be inflated," the WSW chortles, quoting 
the Post. You think the socialist left across America can boast of 647 groups, 
or of any single group consisting of more than a handful of people?

Who says these days that in the last analysis, the only way to change the status 
quo and challenge the Money Power of Wall St is to overthrow the government by 
force? That isn't some old Trotskyist lag like Louis Proyect, dozing on the 
dungheap of history like Odysseus' lice-ridden old hound Argos, woofing with 
alarm as the shadow of a new idea darkens the threshold.

Who really, genuinely wants to abolish the Fed, to whose destruction the left 
pledges ever more tepid support. Sixty per cent of Tea Party members would like 
to send Ben Bernanke off to the penitentiary, the same way I used to hear the 
late great Wright Patman vow to do to Fed chairman Arthur Burns, back in the 
mid-70s. Who recently called the General Electric Company "an opportunistic 
parasite feeding on the expansion of government? " Who said recently, "There are 
strains in the Tea Party that are troubled by what they saw as a series of 
instances in which the middle-class and working-class people have been abused or 
hurt by special interests and Washington." That was Barack Obama, though being 
Obama he added, "but their anger is misdirected."

In 1995 Bill Clinton clawed himself out of the political grave by the politics 
of triangulation -- outflanking the Republicans from the right, while retaining 
the loyalty of his progressive base. Can Obama display similar flexibility? The 
President's aides are already confiding that the White House will move right. 
The question is: will his liberal base tolerate their hero colluding with 
Republicans in seeking to destroy Medicare (more likely than an onslaught on 
Social Security, which the Democrats may want to run on in 2012) in the 
interests of political survival? If that is the course Obama takes, look for a 
serious challenge to him from another Democrat, as we head towards 2012...

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn10292010.html
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