doesn't even mention president Obama and his policies until the final,
weak paragraph. Unfortunately, dear readers, that is the crux of this
ongoing and developing disaster, and must be faced. He began his
presidency with majorities in both houses and huge mass support
which could and should have evolved into the movement he demanded
press him on agenda. He now continues his obeisance to Wall Street,
the Pentagon and A.I.P.A.C., desperately looking for 'common ground'
with hostile, intractable Republicans determined to destroy him, and us.
And good liberals still rationalizing it all.
-Ed
http://www.laprogressive.com/economic-equality/sarah-palins-presidential-strategy-economy-depends/
Sarah Palin's Presidential Strategy, and the Economy She Depends on
Robert Reich
LA Progressive: November 25, 2010
Monday night, Sarah Palin watched from the audience as daughter Bristol
danced on ABC. Twenty-three million other Americans joined her from their
homes. Tuesday, the former vice-presidential candidate started a 13-state
book tour for her new book, "America By Heart," which has a first printing
of 1 million. Her reality show on TLC, "Sarah Palin's Alaska," is in its
third week. Last Sunday she was the cover story in the New York Times
magazine.
It's all part of The Palin Strategy for becoming president in 2012 - or 2016
or 2020.
Republican leaders don't believe it. "If she wanted the Republican
nomination she'd be working on the inside," one influential Republican told
me a few days ago. "She'd be building relationships with Republican Senators
and representatives, governors, and state party officials. She'd be
smoothing the feathers she ruffled by backing Tea Party candidates. She'd be
huddled with GOP kingmakers." When I suggested she has a different strategy,
the influential Republican smiled knowingly. "That's how it's done - how
McCain, Bush, and everyone has done it. That's the only way to do it. But
all she really wants is celebrity."
The Republican establishment doesn't get it. Celebrity is part of The Palin
Strategy - as is avoiding the insider game. She doesn't want to do what
Huckabee, Pawlenty, Gingrich, or Romney have to do. She has an outside game.
Palin's game plan is directly related to America' white working class, and
the economy it faces - and the economy it's likely to continue to experience
for years.
No prospective candidate so sharply embodies the anger of America's white
working class as does Palin. And none is channeling that anger nearly as
effectively.
White working class anger isn't new, of course, nor is the Republican
Party's
use of it. Apart from the South, where the anger came in response to the
Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, the more widespread working-class
anxiety began in the late 1970s when the median male wage that had been
rising for three decades began to stagnate.
As I noted in "Aftershock," families responded by sending wives and mothers
into the paid workforce, working longer hours, and then, finally, going deep
into debt. These coping mechanisms allayed but did not remove the growing
anxiety.
Over the years, Republicans have channeled the anxiety into anger, through
overt appeals to a so-called "silent majority" that were overlooked by
Democrats and liberals; through "tax revolts" by working and middle-class
families that couldn't afford to pay more; and in subtle and not-so-subtle
appeals to racist fears (Willie Horton).
But now that the Great Recession has eliminated the last coping mechanism -
ending the easy borrowing, and ratcheting up unemployment - the working
class's economic insecurities have soared. A recent Washington Post poll
showed 53 percent of homeowners worried about meeting their mortgage
payments. Home foreclosures have slowed largely because of bad paperwork on
the part of banks, but the threat remains. Housing prices are still
dropping.
The white working class has not benefitted from the recent rise in corporate
profits and stock prices. To the contrary, both have been fueled by foreign
sales of goods made abroad and by labor-saving technologies that have
allowed American companies to do more with fewer workers here at home.
Joblessness among the white working class is far higher than the 9.6 percent
average for the nation. While the unemployment rate among college grads
(most of whom are professionals or managers) is around 5 percent, the
average unemployment rate for people with only a high school degree or less
(blue-collar, pink-collar, clerical) is almost 20 percent.
All of this is spawning a new and more virulent politics of anger in the
nation's white working class, stoked by Republicans - anger against
immigrants, blacks, gays, intellectuals, and international bankers (consider
the latest Fox News salvos against George Soros).
According to the right-wing narrative, the calamity that's befallen the
white working class is due to the global and intellectual elites who run the
mainstream media, direct the government, dispense benefits to the
undeserving, and dominate popular culture. (The story and targets are not
substantially different from those that have fueled right-wing and fascist
movements during times of economic stress for more than a century, here and
abroad.)
Sarah Palin has special appeal because she wraps the story in an upbeat
message. She avoids the bilious rants of Rush, Sean Hannity, and their ilk.
But her cheerfulness isn't sunny; she doesn't promise Morning in America.
She offers pure snark, and promises revenge. Over and over again she tells
the same snide, sarcastic, inside joke, but in different words: "They think
they can keep screwing us, but (wink, wink), we know something they don't.
We're gonna take over and screw them."
The Palin Strategy is to circumvent the Republican establishment, filled as
it is with career Republicans, business executives, and Wall Streeters.
That's
why her path to the Republican nomination isn't the usual insider game. It's
a celebrity game - a snark-fest with the nation's entire white working
class. Vote for Bristol and we'll show the media establishment how powerful
we are! Buy my book and we'll show the know-it-all coastal elites a real
book directed at real people! Tune into my cable show and we'll show the
real America - far from the urban centers with immigrants and blacks and
fancy city slickers!
As I believe will become clearer, the Palin Strategy will involve a
political threat to the GOP establishment: Deny her the nomination she'll
run as independent. This will split off much of the white working class and
guarantee defeat of the Republican establishment candidate. It will also
result in her defeat in 2012, but that's a small price to pay for gaining
the credibility and power to demand the nomination in 2016, or threaten
another third-party run in 2020.
Once nominated, her campaign for the general election will be purely
populist. She'll seek to broaden her base to become the candidate of the
people, taking on America's vested Establishment.
More than anything else, the Palin Strategy depends on the continuing fear
and anger of America's white working class. She's betting that their
economic prospects will not improve by 2012, or even by 2016 and beyond.
Sadly, this is likely to be the case. On Tuesday, the Fed issued a gloomy
prognosis. Even if the U.S. economy began to grow at a rate more typical of
recoveries than the current anemic 2 percent, unemployment won't drop to its
pre-recession level for 5 to 7 years. A minority of the Fed thought this was
too optimistic.
The disturbing truth is the bad economy is likely to continue for most
Americans beyond 7 years - maybe for ten or more - because of a chronic lack
of aggregate demand. Apart from inevitable inventory replacements and the
necessary replacements by consumers of cars, appliances, and clothing that
wear out, nothing will propel the U.S. economy forward. So much income and
wealth have now concentrated at the top that the broad middle and working
class no longer has the buying power to do so. The top will resume buying
but their purchases won't be nearly enough.
Japan lost a decade of economic growth after its real estate bubble
exploded. It seems entirely probable that the United States will suffer the
same fate. Our economic structure - how we now allocate the gains of growth,
the yawning gap between Wall Street and Main Street, the incentives
operating on large corporations to pare American payrolls and expand
abroad - almost dictates it.
We might change that structure, of course. But at this point that doesn't
seem in the cards. The President seems unable or unwilling to provide the
clear narrative that explains what's happened and what needs to be done, and
Republicans are at this moment ascendant.
It all fits into Sarah Palin's strategy.
Robert Reich
***
To: epearlag@earthlink.net
Sent: Friday, November 19, 2010 11:57 AM
Subject: Re: Robert Scheer
Monday, November 21 at 7:30 p.m.
Skylight Books
1818 N. Vermont Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 660-1175
www.skylightbooks.com
Robert Scheer, editor-in-chief of the award-winning internet magazine
Truthdig.com, co-host of "Left, Right, and Center" on KCRW, and "one of the
best reporters of our time" (Joan Didion) will discuss and sign his new
book, The Great American Stick-Up.
In The Great American Stickup (Nation Books), Scheer uncovers the hidden
story behind the Wall Street financial crash of 2008 and the consequent
global recession. Instead of going where other journalists have gone in
search of this story-the board rooms and trading floors of the big Wall
Street firms-Scheer goes back to Washington, D.C., a veritable crime scene,
beginning in the 1980s, where the captains of the finance industry, their
lobbyists and allies among leading politicians destroyed an American
regulatory system that had been functioning effectively since the era of the
New Deal.
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