The Lesson for Democrats: Any Republican Will Do
He blew it. Two days before the United States was officially set to default on its debts on August 2, President Barack Obama had the Republicans where he wanted them.
All he had to do was announce that he'd trudged the last half mile towards a deal, but that there is no pleasing fanatics who reject all possibilities of compromise. Fanatics who are ready and eager to shut down the government, to see seniors starve and veterans denied their benefits.
Obama could have proclaimed he was invoking the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which states that the "validity of the public debt of the United States...shall not be questioned."
Obama could have done that, but he didn't. At the 11th hour and the 55th minute, he threw in the towel and gave the exultant Republicans 95 percent of what they wanted: cuts in social programs and a bipartisan congressional panel to shred, at its leisure, what remains of the social safety net.
As America plummets into phase two of the double-dip recession, Obama's deal has stripped the country of all available remaining defenses: no job program and no hope of stimulus money for stricken states and cities across the country.
It's as bad as the Republicans' onslaught on Franklin Roosevelt's Great Depression programs—an onslaught that launched the terrible downturn of 1937, from which America was extricated only by the vast war spending after Pearl Harbor.
Why did Obama do it? Like all first-term presidents, he thinks first and foremost about re-election. The thinking in the White House is that the all-important, independent voters are eager for deficit reduction, however ruinous it may be for the economy.
If Obama and his advisors think that this sell-out will yield rich political rewards, current polling is not encouraging. Eighty percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, and a majority think Obama is doing a bad job. This is scarcely surprising since 30 million Americans are without work or work part-time.
But beyond coarse political calculation, it's plain enough that Obama is a quitter by nature. As someone joked bitterly last week, he turns up for a strip poker session already down to his shorts. In the crunch, the weapon he snatches from its scabbard is the white flag, which he flourishes at the bankers, the Pentagon and America's billionaires.
It was clear in 2006—the first time I looked at his record—that Obama was gutless and devoid of principle. By 2008, before his victory, he was already reassuring the establishment that he was set to "reform" Social Security and Medicare - i.e., to hand these entitlement programs over to Wall Street and the insurance industry.
Indeed, the best outcome for the left in 2008 would have been a victory for McCain, Obama's Republican opponent. Under Bush's two terms the spirit of opposition throve; the antiwar movement was flourishing; the labor movement fierce in its organizing; African-Americans militant. Bush's hopes to privatize Social Security were dead within months of the start of his second term in 2004. But since 2008, a Democratic president has neutralized all these constituencies.
Even after last week's frightful betrayals, there's been barely a fretful bleat from Democrats about running a challenger to Obama in the primaries. Much like the late Ted Kennedy mounted against Carter, another Obamian sell-out, in 1979.
The time to launch a third party left challenge to Obama was back in January of 2010, when the writing was on the wall. In these very columns I remember imploring ousted progressive U.S. Senator Russell Feingold to do just that. Now, it's far too late.
In 2013, we could be faced with Republican majorities in both houses and the prospect of Obama spending four years catering obediently to their requirements—defusing all liberal and left opposition. We need a Republican in the White House. But who?
Michele Bachmann is popular mostly with Tea Party ultras, Jon Huntsman with the Washington elites. Governor Rick Perry of Texas has yet to enter the race and is loathed by the Bush clan. The only candidate within reach of Obama is Mitt Romney, the Mormon millionaire businessman whose nomination bid fizzled in 2008.
Romney kept quiet through most of the recent brouhaha about raising the deficit ceiling, aside from a pro forma nod to Tea Party ultras near the end. He plans to placate them in early primary states like Iowa.
On casual inspection, Romney doesn't seem to be marked for greatness, but greatness is not required of him. He just needs the tenacity to win the White House, therefore driving Obama out of national politics and destroying his appalling vision of bipartisanship as the way forward for America.
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"Even after last week’s frightful betrayals, there’s been barely a fretful bleat from Democrats about running a challenger to Obama in the primaries."
Ralph Nader said last week he is nearly 100% certain there will be a liberal primary challenger to Obama.
What Cockburn doesn't seem to understand (because he is a humorless ideologue) is that he has more in common with the people he derisively calls "Tea Party ultras" than he would care to admit. What exactly are the left-wingers he is trying to rally if not Daily Kos "ultras" or whatever? Tea Party "ultras" are his ally in the battle against mainstream centrism, and as such he should respect their commitment to principle (however inchoate) even if he disagrees with their politics. His name-calling strikes me as petty.
"It’s as bad as the Republicans’ onslaught on Franklin Roosevelt’s Great Depression programs—an onslaught that launched the terrible downturn of 1937, from which America was extricated only by the vast war spending after Pearl Harbor."
I believe this to be another glorious historical myth. Perhaps a few things are getting mixed together here. First, war is not productive, it is by nature destructive. Saying that doing the things we did while ramping up for WWII helped our economy is like saying a good idea now is to build a bunch of tanks and planes and push them into the Pacific.
Second, I was also under the impression that our spending in WWII almost bankrupted our country with the lingering debt (lack of gold reserves in Ft. Knox from war spending) being a strong persuasion for us to leave the gold standard in 71.
Although I am not hysterical for austerity or balanced budgets, I am equally baffled that we think the federal government can just spend our money that we don't have in an effort to jump start the "economy". It seems wiser to hack loose the decay and wasteful spending of which I am sure there is much.
Unless Mr. Cockburn's comments are meant to support our current war efforts as a jobs creator and economic stimulant. Shouldn't we be a rich nation by now?
Dare I ask if what "extricated" America during those times was a more solid and unified sense of camaraderie and citizenship, not war spending?
Left (or right) third parties are probably illusions anyway. Left and right only matter if you are taking directions in D.C. People are looking for a third party that is totally separate from the elites and their creations, not merely left or right of them.
Mr. Cockburn is wrong on his history. In 1937 the Republican caucus in Congress was a rather small minority to launch an "onslaught" on New Deal programs. In fact the first half of 1937 was taken up by the struggle over the Court-Packing Plan, in which the Republicans stayed in the background and let Democratic senators, most of whom opposed the plan, attack the president. (In the House the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee never even held hearings on the bill).
If Mr. Cockburn is looking for a leftist interpretation about the downturn in the economy, he would have to look to Roosevelt himself, who convinced Congress to cut spending to move toward a balanced budget. That's why the downturn was called the Roosevelt Recession. Other explanations have been a raise in interest rates by an inflation-wary Fed and pay hikes for newly union-organized workers, which some conservatives say took too much money away from profits.
While the wartime diversion of resources did put many unemployed people to work, the slump that lasted between 1945-48 happened because the end of the war put those people out of work.
Both these phenomenon seem to be accepted by people on various sides of the political spectrum. So I take these claims at face value, and assume that's the general consensus on the matter.
But what nobody seems to have done is put both those things together, and see whether there were more jobs before US entry into WW2 or more jobs during the lowest point of the 1945-48 slump. How else will we know whether WW2 truly people without work back to work?
"How else will we know whether WW2 truly people without work back to work?"
Where to start?
I remember taking a walking tour of the Burren, a region in SW Ireland. Our local guide told many stories, one of which was related to several examples we could see of very long, stone walls extending up hills into the clouds. Unlike the more irregular walls that obviously separated plots of land, these walls were very straight and long and seemed to just divide an entire hill. They were constructed during the potato famine (another historical myth) when a bunch of factors caused huge unemployment. So, some of the land owners or their local sergeants just ordered men to build these walls. They got paid. Jobs had been created, to say nothing of how they had been destroyed in the first place.
So it also depends on what is meant by knowing something. It might be useful to figure out if we think of the "economy" as a dashboard of metrics delivered to the greats behind the curtain so they may adjust the expression on the Wizard of Oz's face to reflect the mood? Or is the economy the agglomerated and poorly measured result of people living their lives?
How can war (or giant government programs spent from chronically mismanaged debt) create jobs? In war, men bomb cathedrals not build them.
Of course, there is a debate to be had while doing something productive between maximizing efficiency(profit) vs. the number of jobs. But I've found that is less of a philosophical debate and more of a practical one depending on context.
So it also depends on what is meant by knowing something. It might be useful to figure out if we think of the “economy” as a dashboard of metrics delivered to the greats behind the curtain so they may adjust the expression on the Wizard of Oz’s face to reflect the mood? Or is the economy the agglomerated and poorly measured result of people living their lives?
This is very telling. A worthy economist will admit that economics is far from being an exact science and acknowledge that distortions are possible and that corrections must inevitably follow.
The problem is that the economic mindsets of the ruling classes have become so abstract and far-removed from the real economy--production of real goods and directly useful services--that they fail to see how their Keynesian policies are distorting production and delaying a badly-needed correction. Loose monetary policy can indeed help the real economy by easing access to capital for those who need it to leverage productivity, but only to a point. Anyone who takes even a cursory look at the U.S. can see that we have long since passed that point and that the theoretical "jump-starting" translates in practical terms only to prolonged distortion.
By the way, about the US national debt:
Here is a shocking fact I learnt.
41.7% of the US national debt is...intra-held? What I mean is that nearly $5 trillion out of $12 trillion of US national debt is bonds held by state governments and governmental organizations in the US federal government in turn invested back in bonds in those state governments and governmental organizations.
A common, mutual debt? Taking the entire government together - state, federal, and government corporations - you can say that the actual debt of the US government is $7 trillion. That's because you can cut $5 trillion out of both sides of the equation.
Why did no major media house ever mention it? It seems relevant.
(This sort of mutual debt is simply an agreement where one party pays another a fixed rate of interest and the other party a floating rate. One party merely pays the difference. A state government might buy a 2.5% yield T-bond in the federal government, and the federal government might buy a LIBOR + 0.5% bond in the state government. If LIBOR is 1%, then the difference paid by the state government is 2.5% - 1.5% = 1% to the federal government.)
Regarding a primary challenger for Obama, Mike Gravel has said he will run if he can raise 1 million dollars. I don't know if this is who Ralph Nader was alluding to, or whether there are others contemplating a challenge.
Mike Gravel is a nice guy, but not a serious challenger.
I agree Daniel. My hunch is that when Nader says he is almost certain Obama will have a challenger that he knows something. Hopefully Mike Gravel is not who he had in mind.
I doubt there will be any serious primary challenge to Obama. Obama is the "very essence of a modern major liberal." Even though leftists may grumble about some of his policies, very few of them will be willing to go against the embodiment of Hope and Change.
I think that Hillary Clinton will do whatever it takes to get Obama out of her way. As Mo Udall once said, "The only sure cure for presidential fever is embalming fluid." And Ms. Clinton has that fever most intensely. At each meeting, she is probably looking at President Obama, and thinking, "That $%@&&&%%!!! is sitting in my chair!" Of course, she will use the excuse of saving the Democratic Party from from falling into the abyss due to Obama's manifest incompetence. Burning ambition has nothing to do with it...
@Mr. Berg: although one should take most conspiracy theories with a grain of salt, I have been told that, sometime in late 2007, Bill and Hillary Clinton were taken before a panel of influential international financeers, press lords and other bankrollers and told in no uncertain terms that they would not be returning to the White House in 2009. Given the MSM's role in the fabrication of Barak Obama's career, totally from scratch and the undue space it devoted to a man who had absolutely nothing remarkable beyond a Harvard degree (not uncommon among new senators), this is one conspiracy theory I am willing to believe there is some creedence to. I remember sitting in the doctor's office in late 2004 with nothing but Newsweekly to entertain me as I waited. Inside, a quarter page was devoted to profiling each new senator-elect in the country. Conspicuously, two full pages were devoted to profiling a most uninspiring and unremarkable new boy from Illinois. At that moment I knew in my heart they were going to make him our new deity in just four years and I resolved to quit the U.S. if he was elected.
And I did.
So while you may be right about Hilary's inner ambition, I have a feeling that her iconoclasm has already brought her dangerously close to the embalming fluid and that she has been duly warned. I don't think the powers that be counted on her slighting them as she did or going as far as she did, and I'm sure they'll do what it takes to stop someone who so nearly overcame them.
Steve, I don't rule out a Hillary challenge, but that would be a fundamentally different thing than the kind of challenge Cockburn and Nader are pining for. I doubt either would support Hillary over Obama.
If Obama is to have a democrat challenger it must come from his left....a pretty difficult trick since there is not much room to his left. Hilary and her hens at the State and NSC are hawks and a pushing for more military interventions in Iraq and Africa. How does she defend her immoral bellicosity in a democratic primary? She can't advocate universal health care anymore - her old stump speech - since we now have Obamacare. It could work but I believe in the end that liberal guilt would cause most to pull the lever for Obama.