[Peace-discuss] The Twilight of Obama-time
C. G. Estabrook
galliher at illinois.edu
Sat Oct 30 00:42:41 CDT 2010
"...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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