[Peace-discuss] What the Democrats are doing

[E. Wayne Johnson]

The crux of the biscuit:
> Obama has no viable primary challenger.
The Dems have been warned off.

There is no viable opponent on either head of the neck.

On 1/13/2011 10:59 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> By Matt Stoller, the former Senior Policy Advisor for Rep. Alan 
> Grayson. His Twitter feed is @matthewstoller
>
> Since the 1970s, Democratic elites have focused on breaking public 
> sector unions and financializing the economy. Carter, not Reagan, 
> started the defense build-up. Carter, not Reagan, lifted usury caps. 
> Carter, not Reagan, first cut capital gains taxes. Clinton, not Bush, 
> passed NAFTA. It isn’t the base of the Democratic party that did this, 
> but then, voters in America have never had a lot of power because they 
> are too disorganized. And there wasn’t a substantial grassroots 
> movement to challenge this, either.
>
> Obama continues this trend. It isn’t that he’s not fighting, he fights 
> like hell for what he wants. He whipped incredibly aggressively for 
> TARP, he has passed emergency war funding (breaking a campaign 
> promise) several times, and nearly broke the arms of feckless liberals 
> in the process. I mean, when Bernie Sanders did the filiBernie, Obama 
> flirted with Bernie’s potential 2012 GOP challenger. Obama just wants 
> policies that cement the status of a aristocratic class, with crumbs 
> for everyone else (Republican elites disagree in that they hate anyone 
> but elites getting crumbs). And he will fight for them.
>
> There is simply no basis for arguing that Democratic elites are 
> pursuing poor strategy anymore. They are achieving an enormous amount 
> of leverage within the party. Consider the following. Despite Obama 
> violating every core tenet of what might have been considered the 
> Democratic Party platform, from supporting foreclosures to destroying 
> civil liberties to torturing political dissidents to wrecking unions, 
> Obama has no viable primary challenger. Moreover, no Senate Democratic 
> incumbent lost a primary challenge in 2010, despite a horrible 
> governing posture. Now THAT is a successful strategy, it minimized the 
> losses of the Democratic elite and kept them firmly in control of the 
> party. Thus, the political debate remains confined to what neoliberals 
> want to talk about. It’s a good strategy, it’s just you are the one 
> the strategy is being played on.
>
> A lot of people think that Obama is a bad poker player, but they miss 
> the point. He’s not playing with his money, he’s playing with YOUR 
> money. You are the weak hand at the table, he’s colluding with the 
> other players.
>
> There are parts of the Democratic elite that don’t believe in 
> neoliberalism, but they are a modest portion of that structure. So 
> often what comes out of the party is garbled. Most Democrats support 
> our reigning institutions, they believe in paying taxes, they believe 
> in government power. Given a choice, they’ll grumble, but they are 
> more willing to believe that this government is good than to support 
> structural change. By contrast, the Republicans are unified in their 
> desire for a more brutal and more plutocratic though otherwise 
> unchanged institutional arrangement.
>
> This makes the GOP seem more committed, more professional and more 
> change-oriented. This isn’t poor strategy or coordination from 
> Democratic elites. The lack of willingness to fight on behalf of the 
> public isn’t the same of an unwillingness to fight. It’s just their 
> unwillingness to fight anyone but you.
>
> http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/01/matt-stoller-understanding-the-strategy-of-the-democratic-power-class.html 
>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
>
>