pushy, rough-edged, brilliant and honest to a fault. He brings up ideas
like no one else and demands answers. Try it,. you won't forget it, or him.
Ed
http://www.indypendent.org/2010/11/17/midterm-elections-puncture-illusions/
Midterm Elections Puncture Illusions: Liberals Are More Afraid of Mobilizing
Their Own Base Than They Are of the Right
By Stanley Aronowitz
TheIndependent.org November 17, 2010 issue
The drubbing of Obama and the Democrats in the midterm elections offers many
lessons. There are obvious ones, such as confirmation of the old saying,
"All politics are local." While the polls were akin to a civil war slaughter
with an electoral battlefield stained blue, the Democrats did manage to
defeat some right-wing and Tea Party candidates on the two coasts even as
virtually the entire South and large portions of the Midwest gave the
Republicans a heavy boost.
The second lesson is a "New" New Deal is not possible under the current
political configuration. If we are lucky, the next two years will be a time
of gridlock in Washington. For if the right prevails, hang on to your
wallets and head for the high ground. If the Obama administration buckles
under on oil drilling in the Gulf Coast and Arctic, thereby putting
environmental issues on the back burner, and "compromises" on Social
Security, like Bill Clinton's signature on the Welfare Reform Act 15 years
ago, we are in for another huge puncture in the 75-year-old social programs,
and the climate apocalypse will be nearer.
A less obvious lesson is that Obama (and many Democrats) hates politics. He
refuses to accept that politics involves choosing one's enemies and pursuing
them to the final victory. In his characteristic tin-eared fashion,
President Obama responded to the election rout by calling for a new era of
cooperation between the two parties. If Obama finds a partner, it is likely
to be on the partner's terms. Will the hard right have the temerity to
follow through on its promise to curb Social Security and Medicare, which
remain the third rail of American politics? Or will Obama clear the path for
them by reviving his lame post-politics line, a stance he temporarily
abandoned as his party was drowning?
THE LIMITS OF JOBS
For many on the left the failure of Obama and the Democratic-controlled
Congress to address the jobs crisis - favoring huge bank, insurance and auto
industries bailouts instead - set off the electoral avalanche. But could the
economic malaise have been remedied by better policies alone? Would Obama
have avoided disaster if he had focused on jobs instead of healthcare?
While the two parties drone on about jobs, they remain silent about stagnant
wages and private-sector job growth that is overwhelmingly in low-paid
sectors such as food and home services, the repository for many undocumented
immigrants. If Obama had a jobs program would it have been a direct
injection into people's pockets rather than bank coffers? That is what the
ballyhooed plan to staunch millions of foreclosures turned out to be:
another bank bailout.
Lesson number four is that liberals are more fearful of mobilizing their
base than they are of the right or of the consequences of the Obama
administration sacrificing popular needs in order to serve finance capital
and the war machine. German filmmaker Rainer Fassbinder summed up the
current liberal mindset in the title of his powerful 1974 film Ali: Fear
Eats the Soul. A few liberal economists like Nobel Prize laureates Paul
Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz support more stimulus programs directed to
ordinary people, but cannot bring themselves to call for a "New" New Deal.
Labor, civil rights, feminist and environmental movement leaders are
unwilling to find ways to force the administration's hand. It took nearly
two years of right-wing organizing at all levels before the AFL-CIO and its
allies finally mounted a demonstration, the "One Nation" rally in
Washington, D.C., on Oct. 2. Safely tucked in the Democrats' fold, the
liberal groups refused to criticize Obama and the rally degenerated into
cheerleading for the Democrats.
FRANCE AND GREECE IN THE STREETS
Contrast the absence of mass demonstrations in the United States with France
and Greece. When Nicolas Sarkozy's government proposed raising the minimum
retirement age from 60 to 62 and extending the age of full benefits from 65
to 67, it provoked strikes, street demonstrations, factory occupations and
road blockages. For the first time since 1968, students joined workers in
the streets and universities ground to a halt. The three major unions united
to sponsor the strikes and street actions, joined by virtually all parties
on the left, from the centrist Socialists to the Communists and the
Anti-Capitalist Party who previously could not agree on anything. In Greece
demonstrators filled the streets after the Socialist government announced
new austerity measures to shift the crisis onto public employees.
While defensive struggles, these mass mobilizations went beyond relatively
narrow issues. Unions and left organizations correctly understood these
governments were trying to reverse the post-war compromise - which even
center-right administrations agreed to in the past - of exempting the social
welfare state from draconian cuts. Sarkozy and Greek Prime Minister George
Papandreou's hubris is certain to reignite the struggle for power, though it
might be confined to parliamentary alternatives. In France some are talking
about radical change and are re-imagining what a new French Revolution might
look like. While the Greek Socialists emerged from the direct action phase
with victories in local elections, the political situation there has become
increasingly unstable.
For two years, flanked by his neoliberal team of head economist Larry
Summers, Fed chief Ben Bernanke and as Treasury Secretary, the grim Tim
Geithner, Obama has adopted the discredited trickle-down policies of the
Bush and Clinton administrations of which Summers and Co. were architects.
Economic growth has inched forward as the federal government poured
trillions into corporations, but joblessness remains devastatingly high.
In the United States, the "U6 rate" - which tracks unemployed, underemployed
and discouraged workers - is at 17 percent of the active labor force. Add to
that another 3 percent or so who have dropped out of the labor force
entirely, have never held a job or were forcibly retired on small Social
Security benefits and even tinier pensions, and you have a real unemployment
rate nearing Great Depression levels.
SYMBOLIC POLITICS
The Democrats have not figured out the fifth lesson: In capitalist
societies, in times of economic crisis, all politics are symbolic. FDR
discovered this early in his first term. While no enemy of capitalism, he
addressed rampant youth unemployment by instituting a Civilian Conservation
Corps to clean up the rivers, forests and urban dung heaps, and put many to
work in a Public Works program to rebuild the roads, the streets and public
buildings. From 1933 to 1935 the Roosevelt administration put more than 2
million unemployed workers directly on the federal government's payrolls.
With falling tax revenues, it financed these programs by increasing the
national debt, the reduction of which is a sacred cow in the current debate.
By 1932 more than a quarter of the labor force or about 13 million people
were out of work. Roosevelt understood that the prestige of his policies
depended not on solving the crisis, which is beyond the capacity of a
capitalist state, but in populist initiatives that could yield immediate
results, regardless of their actual economic impact. Politics is about
perception, not chiefly solutions. Now, as well as during the 1930s, the
state has no intention of implementing full employment, though back then the
state had the option of all-out war. Joblessness keeps wages down and
usually prevents the working class from rising up unless it is organized by
radicals.
DISAPPEARING VOTERS
If history is a guide, the Democrats would not have staved off some losses
this time even if they switched priorities. Nearly every midterm election
witnesses such slippage. But they might have held on to the House. Moreover,
the healthcare and financial regulation bills are so flawed that many
Congressmembers who voted for the bills failed to defend them during the
campaign.
One undeniable factor is the crumbling of the Obama coalition. Around 29
million voters who cast ballots in 2008 stayed home this year. Young voters,
aged 18-29, who trend heavily Democratic, fell from 18 percent of the
electorate in 2008 to a paltry 11 percent in 2010. Meanwhile, the senior
vote skyrocketed from 16 to 23 percent, and went Republican by a 21-point
margin. Fewer women, blacks and Latinos showed up, and the Democrats
suffered some gender disaffection. By every measure, the 2010 electorate was
white, older and conservative, and Republicans gained in every category. In
the Midwest the working class was either missing or shifted right,
especially in Michigan, Indiana, Missouri and Illinois.
The Democrats failed to mobilize their traditional constituents to vote
because they did not perceive enough differences between the parties. It is
not unreasonable to view the Republicans and Democrats as virtually
identical in their core beliefs - that the main problem is the deficit, that
the huge war economy and the Afghan and Iraq wars are unassailable, and that
the business of government is business. The best face on this convergence is
to charge the Democrats with timidity, which ignores the fact that they are
in the pocket of big money.
DISILLUSIONED STATE
Deeper still is the widespread disillusionment, shared by millions, with the
state - not only the government but also the education system, the unions
and many cultural institutions responsible for maintaining our sustaining
ideologies of progress. Everyday life is increasingly fraught with
uncertainty and danger. The "informal" economy of drugs, prostitution and
petty theft beckons for many young men and women who do not qualify for
military service.
Meanwhile, state and local governments, once the haven in a heartless labor
market, are shedding workers with a rapidity that wipes out prospects for a
large segment of the racially oppressed. There may be some deflation in
housing prices, but food, healthcare and rental costs are climbing. The cost
of post-secondary schooling has gone through the roof, leaving many
workingclass students, especially youth of color, behind. For millions of
blacks and Latinos, the term "middle class" remains an elusive goal. Yes,
the lives of the top 20 percent of these groups have improved since the
Civil Rights struggles forced the hand of the state, but 80 percent are
worse off.
Midwestern cities are a shambles. After decades of decline, New England is
split between relatively prosperous metropolitan areas like Boston and
Providence and industrial wastelands such as Bridgeport and Fall River and
decimated fishing and textile towns. Even the once booming South and
Southwest have witnessed the flight of textile mills and apparel industries
that once employed hundreds of thousands at lousy wages.
These are "economic" issues, but they are experienced as a vanishing horizon
of opportunity to become workers in industries that offered low wages, but
allowed young people to survive. Factory disappearance prompts massive youth
migration. But to where? How many dreams can San Francisco, New York and
Atlanta accommodate? Is the next destination for trained technical workers
Mumbai?
While hard times are not a novelty in America, this is no cyclical
recession. It marks a new era. There is no immediate prospect for the return
of decent factory jobs, and employment that is available requires
credentials and skills. Experts say that education is the key to escaping
from poverty and a life of contingency. But as jobs for qualified workers
shrink, graduation rates are declining as well. Less than half of recent
high school graduates can expect to earn an associate's degree or more. This
trend reflects a return to times when most people lived off the land or on
factory labor. But farm and industrial technologies and deindustrialization
have made chronic unemployment a reality for perhaps a quarter or more of
the work force in the coming years regardless of growth rates.
The United States is declining as a leading source of productive activities.
As personal and government debt mounts, it remains doubtful that we can
renew the economy on fictitious capital, the main form of which is consumer
credit used to buy homes and cars, and pay college tuition and health bills.
Enter war and military power. We are evolving into a militarist state. The
war psychosis absorbs a huge chunk of our national budget and has become
politically unassailable, meaning budget cuts will fall on social programs.
Arms are among our most buoyant exports. Most dangerous, the state, under
the Democrats more than the Republicans, has literally fulfilled George
Orwell's nightmare of Big Brother. In the name of the dubious war on terror,
the government has won the right to tap our telephones and spy on our
emails, Twitter, Facebook entries and electronic technologies to come.
We like to ascribe McCarthyite hysteria to the right. But the drift toward
authoritarian rule is riding a wave of Democratic initiatives.
Uncomfortable? Only for those who persist in emphasizing the few differences
between the parties and ignoring the degree to which both are in the thrall
of big capital.
Stanley Aronowitz is a distinguished professor at the CUNY Graduate Center
and the author of 25 books. He is co-author with William DeFazio of The
Jobless Future.
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