April 7, 2016: Lessons from Michigan, Finding the Party, Myopia Strikes Deep

 

For years the Ionia Democratic Party has held its annual ‘G. Mennen Williams’ memorial dinner on the infield at the Ionia Free Fair.  One such conclave, in the early 1990’s celebrated as it’s featured guest speaker one Debbie Stabenow, now senior Senator from the State of Michigan but then a State Senator known primarily for giving Rescumlican John Engler his entire first-term agenda by agreeing to shift funding of the public schools from property to income taxes.  Engler parlayed the victory into another two terms as governor continuing a campaign to further erode the well-being of the state.  Stabenow went on to the United States Senate.

I remember her appearance at the dinner, held annually under a tent on the infield next to a permanently constructed stage upon which, over the years, performed Tiny Tim, Jefferson Starship, Alabama, Willie Nelson and a host of other notables.  After her speech, I had occasion to engage in a rather lengthy exchange with the state Senator.

Kevin Phillips had recently published his work “The Politics of Rich and Poor”, declaring in decisive and convincing terms the abject failure of Reaganomics.  I brought up the subject, prefacing the author’s role as the architect of Nixon’s ‘Southern Strategy’.  I could see her eyes glaze over at the mere suggestion of anything of importance being associated with Republicanism this, after all, being a partisan occasion.  Nevertheless, given her willingness to work with even the most abject swine (Engler), I found myself confused.  It was clear, however that no matter the extent to which I tried to drive home the point that ‘trickle-down’ is not, has not, and never will work, the work of ‘rendering the obvious, obvious’ was lost upon our intrepid politician.  Alas, Michigan’s now senior Senator is a part of the ‘generation of swine’ that emerged in the 1980’s and affiliated itself with the Clinton-led Democratic Leadership Council.  She along with former Michigan Governor Jim Blanchard, best known for “putting Michigan behind bars” by incarcerating so many of the state’s citizens that for the first time the Department of Corrections became the largest state agency dwarfing even the monies spent on roads and schools, was part of the emerging Democratic Political Elite that did it’s level best to ape the Republicans by not only ratifying the Reagan Reaction but appropriating the Republican agenda itself.  Clearly, I sensed, I was wasting my breath.

But there was more.   During the course of the exchange the conversation included several other members of the local party some expressing gratitude that the senator (albeit at state rather than federal level) had condescended to travel to central and western Michigan.  You see we don’t see much of our elected Democratic office holders here in this part of the state.  Stabenow replied that the visit is a notable exception, that the real effort to win elections in Michigan involve concentrating along the I-75 corridor, from Detroit and Ann Arbor through Flint, Saginaw, Pontiac and Bay City.  Here, it is held lies the keys to Democratic victory and dominance in the State.

For generations now this has been the prevailing view.  Not since Williams himself and his cohorts Neil Stabler, Phil Hart and Frank Kelly built the modern Michigan Democratic Party in the 1950’s have our Democratic representatives paid much attention to Western Michigan or much of Michigan beyond the I-75 corridor, with disastrous consequences.  

Detroit, once a city of 1.5 million now has less than half that population.  Flint, as recent headlines concerning the state-sponsored water crisis demonstrates, is equally not only in dire straits but likewise has lost much of its population.  The votes, consequently the political power, has shifted elsewhere, primarily to Western Michigan and out of state.  Grand Rapids, the second largest city in the state, has long been Democratic but you would never know it given the level of recognition the city receives from the state’s Democratic elites or, for that matter, the national Democratic Party.  The city is only sporadically recognized by even presidential campaigns as they make their quadrennial sojourn across the nation.   John Kennedy in 1960, Robert Kennedy in 1968, Dukkakis at a rather modest forum at the Meijer center in 1988, John Kerry in 2004.  As a result, the party has never had the support necessary to field an effective organization.  Often, mostly, there isn’t even a Democratic Headquarters except in the waning months of a national campaign.  Not even in the state’s second largest city.  Trying to find the party can sometimes be a daunting task.

The problem is further complicated by the shifting demographics as today cities like Muskegon, which has been a Democratic stronghold since the 1950’s but has not seen a Democratic president or presidential candidate since John Kennedy in 1962, are entirely ignored; but places like Holland—dominated by the Dutch Reformed Church and formerly a bulwark of political conservatism—are now voting Democratic.  In fact, in 2008 rural counties in West Michigan like Oceana and Mason voted for Obama.  Has the party done anything to build on those electoral returns?  Of course not.  Myopia strikes deep.

There was hope, in the run-up to the 2008 election cycle, when the Democrats put Howard Dean in charge.  Dean insisted that the Party abandoned the blue vs. red dichotomy and become a truly national party challenging the Rescumlicans in nearly every congressional district.  This made the opposition defend its territory not only putting more congressional seats in play but tying down resources otherwise free to spend pushing Democrats against the wall in places like Michigan.  With the election of Obama, Dean was pushed out as head of the party and things reverted back to ‘normal’.   We are living with the consequences.  Not only have the Dems lost control of both houses of Congress but literally hundreds of state legislative seats allowing the scums to gerrymander the House into a solid reactionary bloc, with little hope of mounting a successful challenge.

In this context the recent returns in the Democratic Primary are illustrative.  Hillary, following the strategy long adopted by the mossbacks of the party, concentrated her efforts as usual along the I-75 corridor.   Bernie concentrated on the rest of the state, places like Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Traverse City.  In Muskegon, for instance, campaign workers came to my door, asked who I was supporting, put a Sanders yard sign in my yard, as well as that of my neighbor who was supporting Clinton.  Clinton’s campaign, here in a city that on election day will have no Republicans running for local office on the ballot, was nowhere to be seen.  Accordingly, Bernie handily won the rest of the state, including the former Democratic congressional district comprising the northern lower peninsula and the entire upper peninsula, now held by the Rescumlican Tea baggers.  

What the election demonstrates is a troubling dynamic within the contemporary Democratic Party, a party bereft of imagination not only regarding solutions to the countries myriad problems but in terms of organizing itself and, therefore, its subsequent ability to function as a political party by organizing, in turn, political opinion.  Here Bernie not only defeats the rear-guard apparatchiks representing as they do the remnants of the old DLC and all it stands for, but he does it by organizing in greater numbers a countryside long left fallow by the party regulars.  This should be a wake-up call to those in the party and progressives about the as-yet unrealized potential to fully materialize into a transformative movement.  

 

March 9, 2016: From the Jaws of Victory, Cries from the Rustbelt, As If For The First Time

 

“To date the Democrats have proven adept only at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory”

                       ----from “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this, but something happened on the way to the forum.  After battling Hillary to a dead heat in the Iowa Caucus, Bernie Sanders administered a sharp blow to the ‘Once and Future Queen’ by crushing her in Vermont and New Hampshire.  But, schooled in inspired stupidity, the mossbacks running the Democratic Party erected a ‘firewall’ against any progressive insurgency by first selecting over 700 so-called, ‘super delegates’ composed of elected officials and party big-Whigs, and secondly but creating “Super-Tuesday”, the first of the great primary nights, duly front-loaded in early March so as to insure that the insurgent candidate doesn’t have enough time, should he or she do well in the early contests, to raise enough money and field an effective ground-game operation.  Moreover, this event is concentrated in the deep South, shortly on the heels of the snake pit in South Carolina, a sure fire way to thwart any would-be challenger to the status quo.  Or so it seems.

Emerging from his stunning performance in Iowa, in which the outcome was quite literally decided by the tossing of coin, and his crushing of Clinton in New Hampshire, Sanders had a tough hill to climb in the Southeast, the area of the country that although it benefited greatly from the New Deal has, because of Civil Rights, proven in the last half century increasingly hostile toward liberalism. Here is the bulwark erected by the party apparatchiks to prevent the emergence and nomination of another George McGovern and these primaries have—scheduled as they are in the primary sequence and grouped together into a loose ‘Southern Bloc’, have indeed produced the likes of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, southern political practitioners that have, on balance, proven to be material accomplices in the dismantling of the New Deal.  Carter by introducing and legitimizing the fundamentalist voting bloc, beginning the process of wholesale deregulation, increasing defense spending as a percentage of GDP, taxing unemployment benefits and, most notably calling the progressive tax code a ‘disgrace to the human race’.  Clinton, of course, repealed Glass-Steagall, continued deregulation, ratified Reagan’s destruction of the progressivity of the tax code, as well as committing the country to trade agreements that hollowed out the manufacturing base of the country, balanced budgets on the backs of the working people, began the policy of wholesale incarcerations, and signed off on the telecommunications act of 1996 which created the corporate dominance of the media we have now.  Given when the primaries are held and the order in which they held any would be insurgency from the political left, in either party, risks being snuffed at its inception.   

Accordingly, Hillary, resting her campaign upon her strengths with the African-American community, as well as what is left of the old party machinery, ran up some impressive victories in Dixie, from South Carolina through Georgia and Alabama, all the way to Louisiana.  But Bernie, of late has come back with victories in Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska, those areas that were the hotbed of the old prairie fire that fueled the progressive movement and the New Deal.  But the press, determined to anoint the anointed one had all but written off the Sanders insurgency.  Then came Michigan.

In a sense the press had it right.  Michigan was a must-win for Sanders, for it is difficult to see where he had to go had Clinton won, especially if she had won decisively. If he could not win in Michigan, a state savaged by the economic legacy of the first Clinton Presidency, where could he win?

Then came the cry from the Rustbelt.  Alas, this was not supposed to happen.  “The most recent poll had Clinton ahead by 27 points. The RealClearPolitics average had her winning by 21 points. Even the most optimistic poll had Sanders trailing by 13 points”. (1)  Nate Silber’s much heralded “FiveThirtyEight.com” was stunned, observing in the aftermath: “to find an upset on the same scale as what Sanders achieved in Michigan, you’d have to go back over 30 years. Those polls that put Illinois and Ohio out of Sanders’s reach look a lot less reliable today. And if Sanders wins in those states, it won’t be his viability as a candidate that is in question.” (2)

Once again, as eight years ago, large segments of the Democratic constituencies are recoiling at the prospect of a Clinton restoration.  And for good reason.  Where were the Clintons in the fight to keep those good paying jobs from leaving the country?  Where were they on welfare reform, on re-regulation, on anti-trust, on a whole host of issues.  Most of what they ‘accomplished’ was either a ratification of the Reagan reaction or ‘improvements’ upon it becoming by degrees material accomplices in the ongoing dismantlement of the New Deal.  And, like their conservative mentors presided over yet another recovery to which the Middle Class was not invited. 

Presented with yet another challenge the Clinton’s go about what they have always done, smearing their opponent.  With Obama it was dog-whistle racial innuendo, questioning his ability to be ‘commander-in-chief’ and lending initial credibility to the ‘birther’ nonsense.  Eight years later, and once again in full-panic mode, they are about smearing an opponent’s record, questioning his commitment to Civil Rights by pointing out that he represents lily-white Vermont.  Here the Clinton’s demonstrate their remarkable political dexterity.  Eight years ago when Obama had locked up the black vote, the Clinton’s were campaigning like George Wallace in order to carry West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. Now, confronted with a challenge from an old white Jew they present themselves as the champion of minorities, denigrating Bernie’s involvement in the Civil Rights struggle.  It hasn’t fooled everyone, Ben Jealous for instance, the former head of the NAACP has endorsed Bernie, but the strategy worked well enough for Hillary to win big victories in the South where blacks represent a much greater percentage of the Democratic vote—especially if the turnout is low—then they represent in the general population.  The other narrative is, of course to paint him as some wild-eyed radical, a hopeless idealist, advocating some ‘pie-in-the-sky’ radical agenda when all Bernie is suggesting is that we restore the New Deal and the tax code of Dwight Eisenhower.  As I remind my Democratic colleagues, most of whom support Hillary, of course we can do it, our ancestors did it back in the day when we believed and therefore invested in ourselves.  This is ‘revolutionary’ only in the original meaning of the term, that is things have gone ‘full circle’.  Past as prelude.  We have made this journey to find ourselves at the point at which it all began, and to see it as if for the first time.

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(1). “Why Bernie Sanders’s Win in Michigan is Huge” The Nation. http://www.thenation.com/article/why-bernie-sanderss-win-in-michigan-is-huge/

(2). Ibid.

 

 

September 17, 2015: To Lead is To Teach, Preparing the Ground, Reason to be Proud

 

In the spring of 1968, appearing before a group composed largely of medical students at Indiana State University Robert Kennedy, campaigning for the presidency, gave an impassioned speech about the need to make this a better country.  Citing statistics concerning urban and rural poverty, the need to expand the food stamp program, and especially the need for a national health care, Kennedy knew that this largely white middle class audience was not his natural constituency.  The poor had, by this time, largely come to be seen by white America as a ‘black’ problem. The majority of the poor had always been white in America, but in the minds of most white Americans, especially those in suburban and rural America, when they saw in their minds the face of poverty, it didn’t look anything like what they saw in the mirror.

 

Kennedy spoke from conviction on that bright spring day.  When he finished speaking one of the students raised his hand.  When asked to speak the young man asked the Senator “Whose going to pay for all this?”

 

“You are”, replied Kennedy, who then went about explaining the responsibility that those who are blessed have to the less fortunate.  By most accounts, the message was not received with the enthusiasm of the usual campaign event, but that was not the Senator’s purpose.  There is more to campaigning for the presidency that rallying support. 

 

To lead is to teach, and campaigning for the nation’s highest office presents an excellent opportunity to teach the nation lessons it may not want to confront.  It presents an opportunity to jog people out of their false sense of security and their deeply ingrained certitudes.  It presents an opportunity to begin a dialogue with those with whom one does not necessarily agree and create the conditions for the long and arduous process of breaking down social barriers and creating a common ground upon which all parties can reach a workable compromise. 

 

It is a function of a university in a republic to bring together those of opposing views providing a place for the civil advocacy and exchange of ideas. Indiana State University, in the heart of conservative Hoosier country, knew that inviting the junior Senator from New York would serve the purpose of stretching the horizons of many of those in attendance.  And Kennedy, addressing an audience that at the time was not old enough to vote and from which he probably wouldn’t recruit a great many campaign workers, nevertheless took the opportunity to appear before the assembled students; for here was a chance to talk to the next generation; here was a chance to teach; here was a chance to make perhaps the campaigns most significant and lasting impact.

This week found Bernie Sanders standing before a large and attentive audience in Lynchburg, Virginia at perhaps America’s most conservative fundamentalist institution of higher learning.  Before an audience of perhaps ten thousand or more in the field house at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, Sanders began his remarks by acknowledging that much of what he represents would find little favor here.  “We are different”, he began.  But, he continued, there is much more common ground than one might think between this white Jewish liberal Senator from a northeast state and the convictions taught at one of evangelism’s most celebrated universities.  Calling inequality ‘immoral’ and the moral imperative of meeting the needs of the least among us, Sanders spoke at length about the common ground upon which they could perhaps reach consensus.

 

By most observers, the reception given the Senator was polite, respectful and reserved.  Still, in post-event interviews with those in attendance the audience was not entirely dismissive with some expressing agreement with the senator on several issues.

 

Reporters asked the respondents if they were likely to vote for the Senator or join the campaign.  The response was tepid, only a few expressing outright support.

 

But this is not the issue.  By taking his campaign and his message into the precincts where the pundits would least expect him to go, Sanders is not only working to create a truly national movement, but more importantly is beginning the dialogue necessary to prepare the ground upon which the future can be built.

 The story isn’t, as the press would have it, that Sander’s is here exhibiting the courage of Daniel by going into the proverbial Lion’s Den. Nor is the story that he had failed in his effort to convert the assembled to liberalism.   It is that in the context of today’s bitterly partisan political climate Liberty University provided a much needed public service by hosting a forum in which a reasoned, civil discussion of our agreements as well as our disagreements can take place.   Jerry Falwell would have every reason to be proud; and so should the nation.

 

 

 

 

August 30, 2015: Best New Deal Tradition, In Search of Social Justice, Transcends the Left.

Early dismissed as a modern-day Don Quixote, Bernie Sanders has mounted his Rocinante (1) and, speaking in the best New Deal tradition is making his charge demonstrating as he does that the much vaunted Clinton Machine is nothing more than an aging mill twisting, like a helpless weathervane, vainly in the wind. For this is no Knight-Errant off in search of adventure, but a true populist in search of social justice. Accordingly, he has sparked a prairie fire that now threatens the ramparts of the Democratic ‘Mossbacks ‘seeking to extend the legacy of Bill Clinton into its fifth term.  Attracting tens of thousands to campaign rallies, 29,000 at a recent rally in Portland Oregon, and finding himself in a statistical dead heat with Clinton in the State of New Hampshire, the Sanders campaign now has many long-time political activists pondering the recently unthinkable.  As Professor Robert Reich posted today on Facebook:

So could it be a President Sanders after all? A new survey by Ann Selzer, Iowa’s most respected pollster, shows Hillary Clinton’s lead over Bernie in Iowa has shrunk to just 7 percentage points, while Donald Trump’s favorability with Republicans has sharply increased. Meanwhile a Quinnipiac poll released Thursday shows that in a hypothetical general election match-up, Sanders tops Trump 44% to 39%. 

By the way, here’s what Bernie said this morning on CNN’s “State of the Union," in response to Jake Tapper's question about whether Hillary would take on the billionaire class:

 "I think that the business model of Wall Street is fraud. And I think these guys drove us into the worst economic down turn in the modern history of America. And I think they’re at it again. I believe when you have so few banks with so much power you have to not only re-establish Glass–Steagall Act but you’ve got to break them up. That is not Hillary Clinton’s position. I believe that our trade policies with NAFTA, CAFTA, PNTR with China have been a disaster. I am helping to lead the effort against the Trans-Pacific Partnership. That is not Hillary Clinton’s position. I believe, along with Pope Francis, and almost all scientists, that climate change is threatening this planet in horrendous ways and that we have to be aggressive in transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel, and defeat, and defeat the Keystone pipeline, that is not Hillary Clinton’s position. I believe that as opposed to my Republican colleagues who want to cut Social Security, I believe we should expand Social Security by lifting the cap on taxable income. That’s not Hillary Clinton’s position. I believe that we’ve got to raise the minimum wage over a period of several years to $15 an hour. Not Hillary Clinton’s position. I voted against the war in Iraq. Hillary Clinton voted for it."

Your reaction?" (2)

This, is a great summation of the case for Bernie. Unless and until Hillary repudiates everything the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) did to the Democratic Party and this country, unless she repudiates the economic legacy of her husband's presidency by adopting a sensible and long overdue return to the economics of the New Deal, she will get little support from the progressives in this country. As the polls show, Bernie Sanders has appeal that transcends the left, as well as the Democratic Party, tapping an alienation and an anger, long bubbling under the surface, that thought it had found its champion in Obama 8 years ago and has been disappointed. Since then the groundswell has only grown and the Democratic Party must prepare itself for the inevitable realization that Hillary Clinton will not likely be its standard bearer.  The bottom line is that this windmill, even if it were to unseat the intrepid knight from his faithful horse, is a hollow, aging edifice not likely to take us anywhere.

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1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocinante.  Rocinante, the name Quixote gave to his horse, means ‘work horse’ here referring, by analogy, to the ‘commoner’ or ‘common man’.

2. Robert Reich, Facebook post 8/30/15

August 17, 2015: Note from Daily Kos, Violates the Sensibilities, Interests of the Oppressor

I just checked my inbox and to my chagrin discovered an email from Daily Kos featuring an essay by one Shaun King entitled “Why Bernie’s fake apology to black folk really bothers me”.  What bothers me is why Mr. King would take issue with how Bernie has handled the situation.  Confronted by a group of hotheads, physically taking the podium and interrupting a few of Sander’s political rallies, a campaign spokesman emailed the group suggesting that they send a responsible representative to meet with Sanders in an appropriate space. This is hardly an apology.  The media, Daily Kos among them, have responded by dismissing his “apology” as callous and insincere. Faux News is having a field day over the developments as the right-wing echo machine wrings its hands in glee hoping to witness an early snuffing of the only legitimate grass-roots ‘movement’ to arise in this country since at least the 1960’s.  Here was my response:

"So you are implying that you would respect a candidate for President of the United States that         when confronted with a group of screaming hotheads immediately falls to his knees and genuflects before them, then announces to the world that he accepts their entire agenda?

Look these people have no legitimate reason to be assaulting the likes of Bernie Sanders who is the only person presently in the Presidential race who has done anything to further the interests of those struggling in this country.  The Clintons? Are you kidding me? What have they done but savage the safety net, hanging the poor and the middle class out to dry.  The Republican field?  Why did they wait until Jeb was finished speaking before they engaged in their boorish behavior?  Why don't they go to a Trump or Cruz or Paul rally and exhibit such behavior?  Is it because they know they will get no hearing, or is it that they are afraid to do so?

Sanders owes this 'movement' no apology.  What has happened and is happening in America is and has long been a national disgrace, a disgrace that Sanders has spent his entire life trying to rectify.  To demand an 'apology' not only makes no sense, but violates the sensibilities of all those who have tried and are trying to move this country forward."

No one has responded more forcefully than Bernie Sanders on the issues of racism, police brutality, racial profiling and the wholesale incarceration of Blacks and Latino’s in this country.  No other candidate has called for the demilitarization of America’s police forces.  But it doesn’t matter to these people, who have been hell-bent on gaining national attention by disrupting the candidate in this race drawing larger crowds than all the others put together.  I suppose it’s the price one pays nowadays for taking the podium and delivering a message that rings in our ears like the Bell of Liberty.  But in attacking Bernie the forces demanding justice risk doing material damage to the only candidate now running willing or capable of delivering that justice. 

The tactics of “Black Lives Matter” remind me of the Teabaggers.  You remember them, shouting down town meetings, demanding to ‘take our country back’, while carrying placards saying “Hands Off My Health Insurance”.  Yes, you remember them, ‘populists’ purporting to defend the private insurance industry against encroachments by government.  Let’s keep those lifetime limits on coverage, those pre-existing conditions, those high premiums, and this lack of competition.  All in the name of ‘freedom’.  Shills of the capitalist cavorting as populists.  The BLM ‘movement’ adopting similar tactics and attacking the likes of Bernie Sanders are likewise demonstrating a similar political intelligence: serving only the interests of the oppressor.

July 4, 2015: Berniemania, Tuning Fork and a Sledge Hammer, Assaulting the Citadel

“The Bernie Sanders Smear Has Begun” wrote Matthew Pulver in “Salon”(1).  Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, a self-styled “centrist” and long time Hillary supporter, appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” complaining that Sanders is too extreme to win a Presidential Election. 

Clinton indeed has every reason to worry.  Bernie is drawing huge crowds at nearly every campaign stop.  In New Hampshire, the Manchester Union Leader reported on June 6^th that over 1,000 people jammed themselves into a recreational center in the town of Keene to hear Bernie speak.(2)  On July 2, over 10,000 people packed into an auditorium in Madison Wisconsin; a crowd so large that it was ‘standing room only’ with more than an additional thousand estimated to have stood outside the hall to hear the speech. (3) He is drawing crowds that, at times dwarf any other candidate on either side of the political fence.

The self-styled unabashed ‘Democratic Socialist” has a message that is resonating through the beleaguered middle class.  An early ‘straw poll’ taken at the Wisconsin Democratic Party convention in Milwaukee had Sanders within 9 points of Hillary, polling in at 41% among the party regulars to Clinton’s 49%. (4) And, by the middle of June he had closed within 12 points of Hillary in neighboring New Hampshire. (5)  Whether or not he can garner the resources to mount a full-fledged 50 state campaign remains to be seen, but clearly many self-styled ‘progressives’ are in search of a viable alternative to Wall Street’s favorite Democrat.

Sanders, has served for years as an Independent in the Congress.  His presidential campaign is nothing less than a full fledged insurgency against the staid old ‘mossbacks’ who have run the party for nearly a quarter century; the Clintonites with their ‘centrist’ agenda that has served only the interests of the investor class.

His message is a ‘progressive’ one, calling for raising taxes on the upper echelons to 90%; rates not seen since the Eisenhower administration. He stresses the need to break up and re-regulate the banks, to reinstitute the Glass-Steagall act, to enforce anti-trust laws.  He has led the fight against the looming trade agreements currently being pushed by the Obama White House in conjunction with Republicans in Congress.  He calls for the rigorous enforcement of environmental laws and the funding of renewable energy.  He wants to make education free for every student, and the raising of the minimum wage.  He advocates for the organization of the workforce into unions to ensure occupational safety and a fair return for a day’s labor.  He wants to rebuild the infrastructure, roads, bridges, rail lines, high speed internet, to create jobs and make the country more competitive.  It is a broad and encompassing agenda boldly calling for a return to the ‘golden era’ of postwar American pre-eminence, or as much of it as we can recapture in today’s world economy.

The Clinton campaign will ignore this challenge at its peril, for his message rings through the country like a tuning fork hit with a sledge hammer.  His appeal runs the spectrum from Progressives in the New Deal tradition and old Wallace and Reagan Democrats wanting a slice of the 'American Pie' to independents and tea baggers angry at the 'Eastern Establishment", the bailout of the bankers, and  anxious to reign in Wall Street. He's even getting a measure of Republican support for positions he's taken.  For instance, according to a recent CBS/New York Times Poll 80% of Republicans agree with Bernie that there is too much money in politics, over 70% of Republicans think that there should be limits to what individuals or the burgeoning Political Action Committees can be allowed to spend.  Indeed 81% of Republicans felt that the campaign finance system needed fundamental changes (45%) or a complete rebuild (36%). (6)  Sanders, if he can gather the resources to build an organization and purchase enough media to broadcast his message, now threaten to assault the citadel and capture the heart of the Democratic Party. It is a tall order but he, if anyone, is uniquely positioned to make the attempt.

Accordingly the attacks have begun.  McCaskill is but the first, but certainly not the last to take the field in effort to defend the ‘once and future Queen”.  Employing the tactics of Karl Rove, McCaskill went about the business of turning a sign of success into a liability by acknowledging, then denigrating the size of crowds drawn to his campaign.  “Well, you know Rand Paul’s father got massive crowds, Ron Paul,” she said. “He got the same size crowds, Pat Buchanan got massive crowds. It’s not unusual for someone who has an extreme message to have a following” (7) she concluded.

“Ooooh, gotcha:” wrote Matthew Pulver in “Salon” “Big crowds mean you’re an extremist. So the fewer people you have the more reasonable you are.” (7) By this standard Rick Santorum, who recently held a campaign event at which an audience of just one person emerged would, by this logic, be the most reasonable man in the field. 

Pulver went on to behold that Sander’s domestic platform is hardly extreme, or even radical. His campaign’s “bread and butter” is “mostly a return to mid-century, postwar policies, infused with social democratic ideas from places like Sweden, where social democrats gained a majority in parliament 75 years ago.”  Sweden, so terrifyingly extreme that it has become the home of: “Volvo, Ikea, Spotify, Saab, H&M, Skype, Ericsson, AstraZenaca, and many more”. (7)  Sanders, observed Pulver is hardly ‘extreme’ in the fashion of Ron Paul or Buchanan, citing Paul’s extreme libertarianism and calls to outright abolish Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and Buchanan’s Christian White-Nationalist race baiting.
 
Sanders can only appear ‘extreme’ in the context of the degree to which the Democratic Party, led by the Clintons, has wandered to the political ‘right’. 

“We have no way of knowing”, writes Pulver, “whether or not the Clinton team signed off on this means of attack, if this Sanders-as-extremist line will be something returned to as his success continues.  If so, it will be hard for some to hear from the political family most responsible for making Sanders fairly standard postwar liberalism an extreme position.  Bill Clinton helmed the rightward turn of the party in 1992, and now Hillary can call anyone who didn’t follow Bill’s lead ‘extremist’  It compounds the already problematic dynastic dimension of Clinton’s campaign.  The Clintons, preparing for the coronation, also get to police what is acceptable in the party with Hillary the enforcer of the law Bill laid down?  Continuing to call Sanders an ‘extremist’ might only convince many Democrats that the Clintons consider the party theirs.” (7)

It is more than that.  Clinton must know that the insurgency is not a flash-in-the-pan; but she cannot confront the challenge head on. The devil, as they say, is in the details.   By speaking in the tradition of the Party’s history, Sanders is claiming the mantle of FDR, Truman, JFK and LBJ and for Hillary to openly confront Sanders by drawing distinctions between them only serves to demonstrate the gap between her professed ‘progressive’ politics and the ‘real deal’.  She will pale by comparison. By forcing Hillary to take the mantle from him, Sanders threatens to lay bare the shortcomings of Hillary’s progressivism and demonstrate that here stands no FDR or Truman or JFK.  The attacks come instead from surrogates, she will attempt to stay above the fray, opting out for generalities, talking the talk but unwilling, and unable, to take the first step in the walk.

Hillary recently gave a major policy speech on the economy.  Economist Robert Reich gave her excellent grades on recognizing the problems, but failing grades on her remedies.  She, like her husband before her, will rail against Wall Street, and speak using the terminology of progress and reform, but will not utter a single word in terms of specifics toward remedy. To do so threaten not only the financial underpinnings of her campaign but require the outright repudiation of her husband’s legacy.  As with the pending trade agreements she comes out opposed to ‘fast-track’ authority, not when she could have used her voice in the arena to help shape public opinion but at the very moments the Congress was moving to enact it, when weighing in on the question would be seen by her Wall Street supporters as having negligible influence.  Significantly, she did not at the same time speak in opposition to the TPP and other trade agreements, but remained silent. It is this reticence, this unwillingness to champion an issue or a cause, this unwillingness to fight to redress grievance that has characterized the Clintons from the beginning.  Though they talk like the Roosevelt’s they act like the Hoovers and this is what has drawn Bernie Sanders into the arena, and this is what he threatens to expose.

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1)  http://www.salon.com/2015/07/02/the_bernie_sanders_smear_campaign_has_begun_how_his_opponents_will_try_to_take_him_down
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(2)  http://www.unionleader.com/article/20150607/NEWS0605/150609347/1010/news06

(3)  http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/thousands-expected-to-gather-in-madison-for-latest-sanders-rally/2015/07/01/c116019e-2018-11e5-aeb9-a411a84c9d55_story.html
(4)  http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/wisconsin-straw-poll-surprise-a-narrow-clinton-win-118727.html
(5)  http://onpolitics.usatoday.com/2015/06/15/new-hampshire-poll-clinton-44-sanders-32/
(6)  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/03/1390254/-POLL-finds-80-of-Republicans-AGREE-with-BERNIE-SANDERS#
(7)  http://www.salon.com/2015/07/02/the_bernie_sanders_smear_campaign_has_begun_how_his_opponents_will_try_to_take_him_down/ emphasis mine.

 

 

May 13, 2015: Where Is Hillary? On the Sidelines, Terms Of Debate

 

“Hillary Clinton is Wall Street’s least objectionable Democratic alternative.”

                        -----from “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

 Yesterday the United States Senate by a vote of 52-45 declined to take up debate on granting the president the so-called ‘fast-track’ trade authority needed to expedite two looming trade deals, the details of both of which are currently a guarded secret.  On a near party-line vote with a couple of troubled Republicans joining nearly all the Senate’s Democrats the Senate balked in the first attempt by this administration to ram through the trade agreements.  The vote was a victory for senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and Al Franken of Minnesota, the most vocal critics of both the trade agreements and the ‘fast-track’ authorization. 

Bernie Sanders, the self-avowed “Democratic-Socialist” independent Senator from Vermont has recently declared himself to be a candidate for the Democratic Presidential Nomination.  A harsh critic of Wall-Street manipulations, the concentrations of power in the financial and telecommunications markets, the maldistribution of wealth, and the savaging of the social safety net, Sanders stands out as a critic of all things Republican and most things Clintonian promising to make the upcoming contest for the party’s nomination an interesting one.  The results of last week’s first Senate vote was a victory for Bernie and will enhance his stature as a bona-fide challenger to the Clinton juggernaut. 

Clinton has been campaigning for over a month now and the press has, as yet, not been allowed a single question.   Assuming a ‘low-profile’ she is at once attempting to appear as ‘one of the folks’ showing up at fast-food restaurants and similar venues to rub elbows with the ‘huddled’ masses; and, assuming the nomination if not the election, she is attempting to simultaneously be ‘above the fray’ not condescending to go down into the trenches by getting into nasty political squabbles.  This is not a sound strategy.

First, as noted in previous posts, assuming the nomination and the inevitable elevation to the presidency is a dubious path to the White House.  Ask Ed Muskie, Robert Taft, or any one of a number of presidential wannabees.   Ask Hillary Clinton herself, for she should have learned that lesson 8 years ago when the inevitability of the ‘once and future Queen’ was given rude treatment by a young upstart named Barrack Obama.  As any philosophy student will tell you, assuming one’s own conclusions is the ultimate tautology.

Secondly, Clinton’s behavior in the battle over the terms of the looming trade agreements begs the central question: just what has she ever championed? Name one piece of legislation with her name on it when she was in the Senate?  Name one policy initiative that she was able to achieve?  Once again, as a presidential campaign begins to heat up in which she figures to be a central player, we find her silently sitting on the sidelines.  She could have easily come to the support of her president in his squabble with Senators Warren and Sanders, or she could have sided with the president’s Democratic critics.  To do that she would have to chose, side with the president, Wall Street, and the national and multinational corporations driving these deals—or side with the liberal critics, labor unions, and their Democratic constituencies.  Instead she has chosen, to date, to do neither of the above but instead to remain silent in the hopes that she will not have to say anything even remotely critical of her financial backers bankrolling her campaign, in the end counting on the notoriously short memory of the electorate.  This is not leadership, by any standard definition.

2016 is obviously not 2008, nothing remains the same and, as they say two years in politics is an eternity.  But a strategy that didn’t work eight years ago is, in this observer’s view, much more likely to fail this time around.  Basing a campaign on ‘inevitability’ is bad enough, but to support it with vague bromides and platitudes about the need to ‘invest in our economy’ and ‘support the middle class’, rings hollow after the nation has witnessed Washington make a complete hash of the country’s hopes and dreams.  Hope and Change ring hollow in our ears because Washington has made a mockery of hope and change. 

Despite all the millions, indeed billions of dollars spent every election cycle, things change only on the margins.  What is remarkable is that whatever each party says about what is at risk in every election we end up, no matter who wins, with much the same thing.  Bill Clinton not only ratified Reagan but improved upon his very bad ideas.  It was under Clinton that not only were the banks freed from the last of the New Deal firewalls by repealing Glass-Steagall and allowing banks to invest in speculative markets, but Bill also signed off on the telecommunications bill that created “Faux News”, as well as the conglomerates controlled by Rupert Murdock and Clear Channel Communications.  In short, the so called ‘achievements’ of the Clinton years were classic Republican politics: deregulation, mergers and acquisitions, and an ever growing economic disparity between the top 10 percent and the rest of the country.  In this context, Obama has fit right into the pattern.  Employing Bill’s old advisers from Rubin, and Gueitner, to Summers and Rahm Emmanuel, Obama has continued the legacy of Republican economics in Democratic administrations.  The trade deals now pending before Congress are more of the same.

As stated in previous posts Hillary, in order to be successful, must break with this past.  She must put some distance not only between herself and Obama (for American’s are loath to vote in a 3^rd term in any case), but by extension between herself and the policies of her husband’s administration.

Bernie Sanders is already claiming the territory and, by so doing, is moving to control the terms of the debate.  He is doing it not only by critiquing previously failed policies but by fighting breathtakingly stupid new initiatives—these pending trade agreements—and leading the fight for raising the minimum wage, breaking up the big banks, reversing the Supreme Court decision in ‘Citizen’s United’, taxing wealth, enacting environmental regulations, regulating Wall Street, helping workers to organize, and a host of liberal alternatives to the mess the conservatives have made of this country.   

Lastly, the tenor of the debate has changed in this country from one of optimism to increasingly one of desperation, frustration and anger.  “Yes, We Can!” is being replaced by“Kick Some Ass”, and until Hillary can demonstrate that she can lead the fight she risks becoming irrelevant.  The Middle Class is longing for a champion; at this early date this looks to be the old curmudgeon from Vermont.