This year, as in years past, the Nader campaign counsels “voting one’s conscience” (or sometimes “one’s values”). Cynthia McKinney, this year’s Green Party candidate, has said the same. I will probably vote for one or the other of them – most likely Nader. But I won’t be voting my conscience. I’ll be doing what nearly everyone else does in our political system – voting for the lesser evil. However, unlike many others, I won’t be voting for the lesser evil because I want my candidate to win; that is a plain impossibility. Neither will I be voting for Nader or McKinney because Barack Obama doesn’t pass some “tolerable lesser evil” threshold; though I must say that, with each passing day, he increasingly falls short of the mark. Consider just his plan to shift quagmires, from Iraq to Afghanistan, in the so-called War on Terror. That would be reason enough to vote against him, were he not running against someone much worse. Nader’s and McKinney’s politics are better, vastly better, than Obama’s. In the end, that’s why I probably will vote for one or the other. However, the sorry fact is that having better politics is not a compelling, principled reason to vote for one or the other of them, though, in some cases, it can be a good enough reason. Let me explain.
First, though, a comment on “voting one’s conscience.” Measured against any plausible normative theory of democratic institutions, or even in comparison with other so-called democracies, American institutions fail miserably in this respect: they deny many (perhaps most) citizens the opportunity to vote anything like “their conscience” – in other words, to register even some pale approximation of their real preferences through electoral processes. The higher the level of the office in contention, the more this is so, but the problem doesn’t just afflict the federal and state governments; it is evident at regional and municipal levels as well.
The situation is worse here than elsewhere for two reasons: first, because it is more difficult than elsewhere for choices reflecting real preferences to be represented; and, second, because most of our elections are not genuinely competitive. It is all but impossible for many (perhaps most) voters’ real preferences to be represented because we have an entrenched duopolistic party system that makes it so – mainly, but not only, by making ballot access difficult for all but Democrats and Republicans. The reason why many, indeed most, of our elections are not competitive is similarly the duopoly’s fault: thanks to their gerrymandering electoral districts, the outcomes of most legislative contests are known in advance. Then, in the case of presidential elections, there is the problem of the electoral college – dividing the country up into red and blue states. [To repeat a complaint I’ve voiced several times before: how is it that the more heinous party gets the color red!] Of course, the political coloration of an electoral district or of a state can change over time. We are very likely to find, this year, that much has changed since 2004 and even since 2006. But in the weeks leading up to an election, very little changes. Reasonably informed people in most, but not all, electoral districts, will know, before they vote, who the winner will be – because the parties will have chosen their voters, rather than vice versa. More importantly, voters in most states will know in advance which presidential candidate will get their state’s electoral votes. Needless to say, the corporate media is utterly complicitous in these undemocratic machinations.
Foreclosing all but Republican and Democratic voices forces a particularly virulent form of lesser evilism upon us. It would be different if we had run-off elections, instant or otherwise, proportional representation, or even fusion. But except for fusion in a handful of states, we have none of that – and, in any case, fusion seldom addresses the problem in presidential or state-wide electoral contests. Therefore, for the most part, we can only vote for or against Democrats or Republicans on the grounds that one will be less bad than the other. In almost all cases, the Democrat, no matter how awful, will be the lesser evil.
* *
Why bother to vote, if the outcome is already determined? There are reasons. Voting has an expressive dimension, irrespective of its effect on outcomes. This can be valuable for more than just the psychological equanimity of voters. Protest votes can be useful – not for picking winners, but for affecting what the winners will say to gain office and even what they will do once they are in office. There can also be some point in putting up a good fight, especially if you believe that circumstances are changing so that the party sure to lose today will become a serious contender tomorrow. For example, it is widely believed that although Texas is still a safe Republican state in 2008, Democrats will have a chance there in 2012. If that’s true (or even if it is only believed to be true), Texas Democrats, though sure losers in the contest this year for their state’s electoral votes, have a reason to make as good a showing as possible for Obama – for the sake of elections to come.
It’s against this background that one must decide how to vote. A few people probably will be able to “vote their conscience.” Many more of them will be Democrats than Republicans. Could John McCain be anybody’s real preference? Perhaps Joe Lieberman’s and the neo-cons. But people who think like they do are hardly worth engaging – unlike people who are disposed to vote for McCain because they think he is the lesser evil. Some of those people, this year, are racists, but the majority are not moral or intellectual reprobates – they’re just misinformed and/or obviously wrong. Obama’s case is different. There is a kind of liberal (I use the term pejoratively) for whom he evidently is a close approximation of the ideal. Then there are others, quite a few it seems, whom he’s adept at fooling into voting for him, and not just against McCain. It is urgent that those people be engaged too – in order that the Obama presidency will be as good as it can be (which will probably not be very good at all).
* *
What then are we on the left who are unable “to vote our conscience” to do? The default answer, of course, is to vote for the lesser evil, Obama. But it isn’t always quite so simple.
One relevant factor is how “safe” one’s state is. Those of us who live in safe states have less reason to vote for Obama than those who live in “battleground” states. But the implications are not always clear cut: first, because nobody really knows how one’s own state will go; and then because, even in battleground states, abject lesser evilism isn’t necessarily the best strategy. Voters, especially progressive voters, can be too clever by half. Had progressives voted less strategically in 2000, the Greens would have probably gotten what they were after – enough of the popular vote to assure future ballot access and public funding. Then, even with Al Gore’s Democrats letting George Bush steal the election, we’d all be better off today. Had voters voted less strategically in the 2004 Democratic primaries, perhaps the Democrats would have fielded a better candidate than John Kerry. Then maybe Bush and Cheney would not have been quite so able to steal that election too. [Arguably, they stole the 2004 election “fair and square” (that is, within the limits of “normal” chicanery); in 2000, with a little help from their friends among the Supremes, they just plain stole it.] So far, strategic hyper-shrewdness does not seem to have been a factor in Obama’s successes. But that was then. Now there is a looming strategic choice for voters who are to Obama’s left and who are tempted by one or the other of the more progressive candidates in the race. Most likely, many of them will again be too clever by half.
Voters who can indeed “vote their conscience” by voting for Nader or McKinney will have an easier time of it than I will. As I said, I’ll probably vote for Nader even so. To the extent that I’m “undecided,” it’s more between him and McKinney than between one or the other of them and Obama. Only if my state, Maryland, suddenly becomes unsafe would I consider voting for Barack Obama.
I’d like to vote for Cynthia McKinney mainly because she has all the right enemies. Also, for those who care – as I do, somewhat – she’s (unambiguously) African American, female, and outspoken. But, lets face it, the more she says, the clearer it becomes that she won’t do the progressive cause well. She’s too much of a flake. Her running mate, hip hopper Rosa Clemente is even worse. [Am I the only one who finds it remarkable that, this year, the Green Party is not all that interested in green causes? It is more interested, it seems, in becoming what the Rainbow Coalition, under Jesse Jackson’s leadership, might have been; a voice for the excluded. But, for that, it would need an articulate and charismatic leader, like Jesse Jackson and unlike Cynthia McKinney or Rosa Clemente.]
Nader is, by far, the more forceful and articulate proponent of progressive ideas. I wish he were running as a Green, as he did in 2000. Then there’d be a “party building” reason to vote for him. But I have no problem with making him my lesser evil; and not just because he too has all the right (liberal Democratic) enemies. [I would have had no problem even with the more progressive of the “electable” Democratic contenders for the nomination, John Edwards or even Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd, though their views are far to the right of Nader’s. My lesser evil standards are not very high!] Nader is good; but his views don’t represent my “conscience.” They are, so to speak, neo-New Deal Democratic. As Democrats should (but don’t), Nader seeks left alternatives within capitalism. That makes his positions infinitely better than Obama’s. But they don’t address the “conscience” or “values” of anyone who, like me, thinks that capitalism itself, not just inordinate corporate power, is the problem.
Still, there is something to be said for casting a protest vote, especially from within a safe state. There is probably no defensible principle that mandates it. But my intuitions tell me that, all things considered, I can do more good voting for Nader than by adding to Obama’s (likely) “mandate.”
It would probably be better were the progressive protest vote not split. But the situation may not be as bad as it appears. Despite his politics, Nader has never done well among voters “of color.” Perhaps McKinney, aided by Clemente, can make some inroads there. The more serious problem, in communities of color and in the constituencies that Nader has been successful in reaching, is Obamamania. It is likely to make both campaigns more than usually futile. But both Nader and the Greens are determined to push forward; and the quixotic aspect of their efforts is no reason to gainsay their determination.
One further point bears mention. Were the Democrats at least nominally better than they are – were they more like the pre-Blair Labour Party in Britain or like almost any European Social Democratic Party – there’d be a reason to be loyal to the party even for people in “safe” districts. It would be a way to voice solidarity with a certain (largely abandoned) militant tradition and its values. I’m not sure how compelling such a reason would be (it would depend on the circumstances), but it would be a relevant consideration. However, Obama is running on the ticket of a party that has almost nothing in its past that is even remotely estimable, except that it has been reliably the lesser evil. Yes, for a few years in the mid-30s, after popular pressure forced the New Deal to take off and before the enemies of progress – and then World War II -- succeeded in stalling it in its tracks, the Democrats were, for the most part, a force for good. But that was little enough and long enough ago not even to count as a relevant, much less a compelling reason to be loyal to the party of Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and, worst of all, Bill Clinton. Except for Carter who, out of office, has shown an unseemly tendency to tell the truth (most recently about Israel/Palestine), these are the Democrats’ role models. They are a truly villainous lot who offer nothing worth emulating. For them, as for Obama, the best that can be said is that the alternatives to them that our very undemocratic institutions permitted were even worse.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Monday, July 21, 2008
Prickly Liberals
Was it the magazine cover or was it the fact that Ryan Lizza’s New Yorker article about Obama’s years in Chicago politics revealed the Democrats’ presumptive nominee to be just an ordinary pol, not a messiah in the making? In any case, Lizza and The New Yorker were invited off the press plane accompanying Obama on his campaign trip (aka “fact finding mission”) to Afghanistan and Iraq, and then to Israel, Jordan, Germany, France, and the UK. This piece from The Guardian reports on liberal bloggers complaining about “retribution” for “unfavorable coverage.” But, of course, for anyone with a brain screwed on right The New Yorker cover was pro-Obama or, at least, anti-rightwing caricatures of him. Needless to say, prickly liberals don’t have their their brains screwed on right. Needless to say too, there are plenty of sound reasons to oppose Obama that have nothing to do with him being an unpatriotic secret Muslim out to wage “jihad” and/or get whitey.
Needless to say too, none of these reasons come close to reasons for hoping John McCain’s Republicans defeat him in November. Our institutions force lesser evilism upon us -- and, compared to McCain, even a turnip would be a lesser evil. But this does not mitigate the plain fact: that Barack Obama, like Hillary Clinton, is, at best, a kinder, gentler and more competent proponent of the politics George Bush and Dick Cheney ought to have brought into profound disrepute. Unfortunately, thanks to a media as much in the thrall of the regime as our two semi-official parties are, those criminals have only brought disrepute upon themselves – not the politics for which, as it were, they stand.
That leaves it up to we, the people: to wean ourselves and each other away from the illusions of Obamamania and, to the greatest extent possible, to force President Obama to do the right thing (or at least not to wallow in the wrong thing, as the beneficiaries of the regime in place would like).
Needless to say too, none of these reasons come close to reasons for hoping John McCain’s Republicans defeat him in November. Our institutions force lesser evilism upon us -- and, compared to McCain, even a turnip would be a lesser evil. But this does not mitigate the plain fact: that Barack Obama, like Hillary Clinton, is, at best, a kinder, gentler and more competent proponent of the politics George Bush and Dick Cheney ought to have brought into profound disrepute. Unfortunately, thanks to a media as much in the thrall of the regime as our two semi-official parties are, those criminals have only brought disrepute upon themselves – not the politics for which, as it were, they stand.
That leaves it up to we, the people: to wean ourselves and each other away from the illusions of Obamamania and, to the greatest extent possible, to force President Obama to do the right thing (or at least not to wallow in the wrong thing, as the beneficiaries of the regime in place would like).
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Bring Bush to Justice?
Not likely; not if our Democrats have anything to say about it. With CNN and its ilk framing what counts as political discourse in the Land of the Free, justice for the Bush crime family is far from the public mind. According to our manufacturers of acquiescence, all that matters, this week, is how “presidential” Barack Obama looks as he visits the troops (as in their trope “support the troops”) and meets with imperialism’s increasingly recalcitrant servants (Hamid Karzai and Nouri al-Maliki).
But without an enraged citizenry clamoring for it, justice for Bush and Company would be bad for the regime. Such, it seems, is the Democratic view, identified and explained here, in Glenn Greenwald’s latest column on salon.com. Democratic thinking reduces to this: let principle be damned and the rule of law as well! What matters more is that we (the political class) “just get along” so that the regime we administer continues unperturbed. This, I might add, is what the paymasters of both parties want; and it is their dollars that the Democrats are shamelessly chasing. Note, especially, Greenwald’s gloss on the position of New York’s “civil libertarian” Senator Charles (Schmucky Chucky) Schumer and the views of that archetypical Obamian liberal Cass Sunstein, ace legal philosopher and recent bridegroom of the (temporarily) deposed Hillary name caller and “humanitarian interventionist” Samantha Power.
In 2000, the still cowed Al Gore, aided by the hapless Warren G. Christopher, Bill Clinton’s first Secretary of State (now a senior Obama advisor), let George Bush and Dick Cheney, aided by the far more able Bush family fixer James Baker, steal the presidential election. Although the facts were on their side, the Gore campaign put up a miserable fight. In the end, though, it wasn’t just incompetence and/or timidity that permitted Bush and Cheney to take possession of the Oval Office. The Democrats caved mainly for the sake of “harmony” within the political class. This is the same reason that will permit Bush administration leaders and functionaries, the beneficiaries of the old Gore’s quest for harmony, to get away with crimes far worse than murder.
Will not future generations see Gore’s capitulation as emblematic of the Democratic political style? And will they not appeal to the disposition it illustrates to explain what is bound in time to seem almost incomprehensible: why Bush and Cheney and the criminals they let loose upon the world were never tried by competent courts and, in consequence, obliged to live out the remainder of their miserable lives in orange jumpsuits under conditions more humane (for how could it be otherwise!) than those they (illegally) imposed upon others?
But without an enraged citizenry clamoring for it, justice for Bush and Company would be bad for the regime. Such, it seems, is the Democratic view, identified and explained here, in Glenn Greenwald’s latest column on salon.com. Democratic thinking reduces to this: let principle be damned and the rule of law as well! What matters more is that we (the political class) “just get along” so that the regime we administer continues unperturbed. This, I might add, is what the paymasters of both parties want; and it is their dollars that the Democrats are shamelessly chasing. Note, especially, Greenwald’s gloss on the position of New York’s “civil libertarian” Senator Charles (Schmucky Chucky) Schumer and the views of that archetypical Obamian liberal Cass Sunstein, ace legal philosopher and recent bridegroom of the (temporarily) deposed Hillary name caller and “humanitarian interventionist” Samantha Power.
In 2000, the still cowed Al Gore, aided by the hapless Warren G. Christopher, Bill Clinton’s first Secretary of State (now a senior Obama advisor), let George Bush and Dick Cheney, aided by the far more able Bush family fixer James Baker, steal the presidential election. Although the facts were on their side, the Gore campaign put up a miserable fight. In the end, though, it wasn’t just incompetence and/or timidity that permitted Bush and Cheney to take possession of the Oval Office. The Democrats caved mainly for the sake of “harmony” within the political class. This is the same reason that will permit Bush administration leaders and functionaries, the beneficiaries of the old Gore’s quest for harmony, to get away with crimes far worse than murder.
Will not future generations see Gore’s capitulation as emblematic of the Democratic political style? And will they not appeal to the disposition it illustrates to explain what is bound in time to seem almost incomprehensible: why Bush and Cheney and the criminals they let loose upon the world were never tried by competent courts and, in consequence, obliged to live out the remainder of their miserable lives in orange jumpsuits under conditions more humane (for how could it be otherwise!) than those they (illegally) imposed upon others?
Friday, July 18, 2008
Remember the Reasons, Part 2
To repeat a point I’ve made many times before – here, for example – in the contest for the Democratic nomination, there were few discernible policy differences between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. To the extent that there were some – whether or not to mandate universal health care coverage is the most conspicuous example -- Clinton’s position was probably better. The reason to prefer Obama therefore had nothing to with “the issues.” Rather, the reasons were twofold: to hand the Clintons a measure of retributive justice for their actionable offenses (murderous sanctions, wanton bombing campaigns, illegal wars, encouragement of ethnic cleansing) and to keep the old Clinton hands, the more noxious ones anyway, from coming back into power.
There was never much justice in the offing. The Democrats won’t even impeach George Bush or Dick Cheney, let alone bring them to justice for their crimes against the Constitution or for their war crimes, crimes against the peace and crimes against humanity. What chance, then, that they’d submit their own ideological leader to the rule of law? But there was at least the prospect of popular repudiation and public humiliation. That hasn’t happened either. Instead, Obama can’t pander enough to the Clinton family and their benighted enthusiasts. His media allies have followed suit – putting hopes of repudiation to rest.
The second reason has all but faded too. In order to diffuse the Republicans’ claim that he hasn’t talked enough to world leaders and American generals, Obama is about to set off today on a European junket with trips to Israel and Jordan and, most likely, also to Iraq and Afghanistan. In anticipation, today’s (July 18) New York Times reports on Obama’s foreign policy advisors. Perhaps there are backbenchers in the group who aren’t tried and true Clintonites -- The Times is characteristically uninformative on this question -- but the higher echelons positively wreak of Clintonism. With these folks running the empire, we can probably look forward to fewer preemptive wars we cannot win. But expect plenty of similarly motivated “humanitarian interventions.”
There is still a difference, however. Hillary’s likely choice for Secretary of State, the villainous Richard Holbrooke, is not in the inner sanctum – yet. [For this, apparently, we have Anthony Lake’s animosities, not Obama’s principles, to thank.] That’s about all that’s left of the reasons for siding with Obama in last spring’s sound and fury.
There was never much justice in the offing. The Democrats won’t even impeach George Bush or Dick Cheney, let alone bring them to justice for their crimes against the Constitution or for their war crimes, crimes against the peace and crimes against humanity. What chance, then, that they’d submit their own ideological leader to the rule of law? But there was at least the prospect of popular repudiation and public humiliation. That hasn’t happened either. Instead, Obama can’t pander enough to the Clinton family and their benighted enthusiasts. His media allies have followed suit – putting hopes of repudiation to rest.
The second reason has all but faded too. In order to diffuse the Republicans’ claim that he hasn’t talked enough to world leaders and American generals, Obama is about to set off today on a European junket with trips to Israel and Jordan and, most likely, also to Iraq and Afghanistan. In anticipation, today’s (July 18) New York Times reports on Obama’s foreign policy advisors. Perhaps there are backbenchers in the group who aren’t tried and true Clintonites -- The Times is characteristically uninformative on this question -- but the higher echelons positively wreak of Clintonism. With these folks running the empire, we can probably look forward to fewer preemptive wars we cannot win. But expect plenty of similarly motivated “humanitarian interventions.”
There is still a difference, however. Hillary’s likely choice for Secretary of State, the villainous Richard Holbrooke, is not in the inner sanctum – yet. [For this, apparently, we have Anthony Lake’s animosities, not Obama’s principles, to thank.] That’s about all that’s left of the reasons for siding with Obama in last spring’s sound and fury.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Wishful Thinking
How far will Obama go to assure the ruling classes and the influential lobbies Democrats pander to that he is at least as trustworthy a steward of their interests as the doddering, war-mongering erstwhile napalm dropper John McCain?
Since defeating the Clintons – the one thing he has so far been good for – Obama seems ready to go far indeed. Upon becoming the presumptive nominee, he began his rightward trek by paying obeisance to AIPAC, the vital center of the Israel lobby. He has only gone down hill from there. Why not? He knows that he has a large base for which he is either the Great (non)-White Hope and/or the Second Coming of Jimi Hendrix. They will not desert him. With the primaries behind him, he therefore feels free to reveal himself to be the Clintonite he has always been.
For media pundits, it’s a win- win- strategy. Waxing Clintonite will assuage the Democrats’ paymasters and the kinder, gentler War Democrats who lead the party and populate its House and Senate caucuses. According to the conventional wisdom, it will also draw “independents” into the Obama fold. By this, the pundits do not mean the people who are too (small-d) democratic to vote for Democrats or who make the reasonable but ill-advised decision not to vote at all. They mean the mindless “moderates” who are either too uninformed, too apolitical, too morally debased, or too stupid to realize what lesser evilism requires.
[As I have argued repeatedly, our un-democratic electoral institutions force lesser evilism upon us. To get beyond it, it is not enough to “just say no,” though the Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney (Green Party) campaigns make that prospect tempting (and, for persons living in “safe” states, reasonable). To diminish lesser evilism’s hold upon our political life, the institutions that stifle the expression of voters’ real preferences must themselves by changed.]
If Obama’s VP pick is someone even to the right of himself, Hillary Clinton or one of her close allies or one of Joe Lieberman’s many Democratic co-thinkers, it will be clear that there are no limits to his rightward drift. I’d wager – say, 3 to 1 – that this is the case.
But there is a chance, a small but non-negligible one, that having shored up his “fascist pig” credentials, Obama will choose someone with better politics than his own (or rather with better politics than Obama is willing to fess up to). John Edwards is an obvious example; so too, these days, is Al Gore. Even Bill Richardson or Chris Dodd would do. There are other, more imaginative, possibilities. Were Obama to do so, he just might, for a while longer, “keep hope alive,” as one of his more illustrious out of favor supporters might say.
But, of course, this is wishful thinking. Obama won’t change for the better, unless he is compelled to do so either by circumstances or by a militant Democratic base. If, in the next few months, the economic situation deteriorates rapidly or the Bush wars worsen, circumstances might force Obama onto a better track. Unfortunately, this is more likely than the more welcome alternative – that Obama’s base will revolt. With Obamamania still rife, there is little reason to expect Democratic voters to rise to their responsibilities. But who knows? As Obama careens into full-fledged Bush/McCain territory, he just might overreach. Then a deceived and outraged electorate might just force him to do the right thing.
As I suggested in the entry that precedes this one, Obama very likely does know better than appearances suggest. The problem is to get him to act accordingly. It won’t be easy. But a decent running mate -- for example, one who puts the elimination of poverty and/or environmental security at center stage -- would make the task a lot easier. Too bad it’s so unlikely to happen.
Since defeating the Clintons – the one thing he has so far been good for – Obama seems ready to go far indeed. Upon becoming the presumptive nominee, he began his rightward trek by paying obeisance to AIPAC, the vital center of the Israel lobby. He has only gone down hill from there. Why not? He knows that he has a large base for which he is either the Great (non)-White Hope and/or the Second Coming of Jimi Hendrix. They will not desert him. With the primaries behind him, he therefore feels free to reveal himself to be the Clintonite he has always been.
For media pundits, it’s a win- win- strategy. Waxing Clintonite will assuage the Democrats’ paymasters and the kinder, gentler War Democrats who lead the party and populate its House and Senate caucuses. According to the conventional wisdom, it will also draw “independents” into the Obama fold. By this, the pundits do not mean the people who are too (small-d) democratic to vote for Democrats or who make the reasonable but ill-advised decision not to vote at all. They mean the mindless “moderates” who are either too uninformed, too apolitical, too morally debased, or too stupid to realize what lesser evilism requires.
[As I have argued repeatedly, our un-democratic electoral institutions force lesser evilism upon us. To get beyond it, it is not enough to “just say no,” though the Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney (Green Party) campaigns make that prospect tempting (and, for persons living in “safe” states, reasonable). To diminish lesser evilism’s hold upon our political life, the institutions that stifle the expression of voters’ real preferences must themselves by changed.]
If Obama’s VP pick is someone even to the right of himself, Hillary Clinton or one of her close allies or one of Joe Lieberman’s many Democratic co-thinkers, it will be clear that there are no limits to his rightward drift. I’d wager – say, 3 to 1 – that this is the case.
But there is a chance, a small but non-negligible one, that having shored up his “fascist pig” credentials, Obama will choose someone with better politics than his own (or rather with better politics than Obama is willing to fess up to). John Edwards is an obvious example; so too, these days, is Al Gore. Even Bill Richardson or Chris Dodd would do. There are other, more imaginative, possibilities. Were Obama to do so, he just might, for a while longer, “keep hope alive,” as one of his more illustrious out of favor supporters might say.
But, of course, this is wishful thinking. Obama won’t change for the better, unless he is compelled to do so either by circumstances or by a militant Democratic base. If, in the next few months, the economic situation deteriorates rapidly or the Bush wars worsen, circumstances might force Obama onto a better track. Unfortunately, this is more likely than the more welcome alternative – that Obama’s base will revolt. With Obamamania still rife, there is little reason to expect Democratic voters to rise to their responsibilities. But who knows? As Obama careens into full-fledged Bush/McCain territory, he just might overreach. Then a deceived and outraged electorate might just force him to do the right thing.
As I suggested in the entry that precedes this one, Obama very likely does know better than appearances suggest. The problem is to get him to act accordingly. It won’t be easy. But a decent running mate -- for example, one who puts the elimination of poverty and/or environmental security at center stage -- would make the task a lot easier. Too bad it’s so unlikely to happen.
More on The New Yorker Cover
To the ranks of liberal pundits who are nearly as dumb, and every bit as reprehensible, as the people the July 21 New Yorker cover satirizes, add MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. Fresh back from vacation, he joined in on last night’s “Crossfire.” Olbermann’s was the first anti-Bush voice to find a home in the corporate media. Needless to say, it didn’t happen until long after it might have done more good than it does now when only the most benighted still think well of the Torturer-in-Chief. Even so, for breaking through the media haze, we are all in Olbermann’s debt. But, now that Bush bashing has become the norm, Olbermann’s rants have become predictable and tiresome – making his lack of depth, and inability to appreciate irony, more striking.
Olbermann and the others would do well to look beyond the magazine’s cover. The “offending” issue contains a fine piece by Ryan Lizza on Obama’s years in Chicago and Illinois politics; it is called, appropriately, “Making It.” If Lizza’s detailed and subtle account is on track, Obama’s instincts are better than most, but he’s nevertheless a thoroughgoing opportunist – as any serious Presidential candidate would have to be. As such, he courted elite interests in Chicago from the outset. But he was and probably still is more than usually vulnerable to pressure from the base.
How to provide that pressure, and how to force Obama to focus his mind on it, is the challenge we will face between now and November – and, more importantly, after January 20, when Obama’s longstanding political ambitions are finally consummated.
Olbermann and the others would do well to look beyond the magazine’s cover. The “offending” issue contains a fine piece by Ryan Lizza on Obama’s years in Chicago and Illinois politics; it is called, appropriately, “Making It.” If Lizza’s detailed and subtle account is on track, Obama’s instincts are better than most, but he’s nevertheless a thoroughgoing opportunist – as any serious Presidential candidate would have to be. As such, he courted elite interests in Chicago from the outset. But he was and probably still is more than usually vulnerable to pressure from the base.
How to provide that pressure, and how to force Obama to focus his mind on it, is the challenge we will face between now and November – and, more importantly, after January 20, when Obama’s longstanding political ambitions are finally consummated.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Dumb and Dumber
One question raised by The New Yorker cover depicting the Obamas as Afro-Muslim terrorists, burning the American flag in the Oval Office under a portrait of Osama bin Laden, is who is dumber – the liberal pundits and bloggers who find the cover “racist” and “offensive” or the people (as many as 13% of the voting public, according to some accounts) who believe that the Obamas are pretty much as the cover depicts? The rightwing “blogosphere” and Fox News have much to do with the views of folks in the latter category; they planted the seed and cultivated the flower. But in the end we have to face the fact – 13% of potential voters are morons. Prickly liberals are another matter. Presumably, they understand the concept of satire at some level; it’s just that irony is beyond their ken. Or maybe they’re simply buffaloed – like the Democrats who supported (and effectively still support) Bush’s wars and who won’t say anything even remotely critical of “the troops”(torturers included) or the godly (so long as they’re Christians or Jews, no matter how benighted), and who won’t do or say anything that certifiable morons might deem “unpatriotic.” These liberals might not be dumber than the people The New Yorker cover satirizes, but they’re every bit as reprehensible.
The larger question, though, is how is it that right-wing bloggers and Fox could rustle up anything like 13% of the population? Why can’t people who have their heads screwed on right and who got enough oxygen in utero do that? Think how much better the world would be if, say, the Green Party and/or Ralph Nader got 13% of the vote! If it were the case that there are many more stupid and ignorant people out there than reasonably progressive and enlightened ones, the question would be easy to answer. But that’s almost certainly not the case. Therefore the question is anything but easy.
One thing is clear, however: that though they play some role, the “manufacturers of consent” in the corporate and corporate-friendly media are not the main culprit in the disorganization and decapacitation of the Forces of Light. It’s the institutions – the ones that channel holders of centrist and left of center positions into the cesspool that is the Democratic Party. In this crime against (small-d) democracy, we are all complicit to some extent. That’s why a first order of business, now and after Obama trounces the increasingly bathetic John McCain, must be to think hard about how to break out of the prison house our duopolistic politics has become.
Unfortunately, there’s no simple answer. Especially for people living in “battleground” states, voting for Cynthia McKinney and/or Ralph Nader (yet again) is problematic – given the institutional arrangements that constrain our politics. But perhaps we shouldn’t be too hasty in dismissing “third” (actually, second) parties or independent campaigns. They can’t “win” and neither can they restructure political life (unless circumstances change radically). It’s not even clear that they are useful as “educational” vehicles – since the media only mocks or derides them, when they pay attention at all. But there is still the expressive side of politics. Its importance shouldn’t be dismissed, even if protest votes have only a negligible effect on outcomes. For those of us who live in “safe” states, it is looking increasingly like casting a protest vote against Obama may make more sense than adding to the “mandate” of that Clintonized (center-right, empire and military friendly, shamelessly opportunist, bought and paid for) but “inspiring” Democrat.
The larger question, though, is how is it that right-wing bloggers and Fox could rustle up anything like 13% of the population? Why can’t people who have their heads screwed on right and who got enough oxygen in utero do that? Think how much better the world would be if, say, the Green Party and/or Ralph Nader got 13% of the vote! If it were the case that there are many more stupid and ignorant people out there than reasonably progressive and enlightened ones, the question would be easy to answer. But that’s almost certainly not the case. Therefore the question is anything but easy.
One thing is clear, however: that though they play some role, the “manufacturers of consent” in the corporate and corporate-friendly media are not the main culprit in the disorganization and decapacitation of the Forces of Light. It’s the institutions – the ones that channel holders of centrist and left of center positions into the cesspool that is the Democratic Party. In this crime against (small-d) democracy, we are all complicit to some extent. That’s why a first order of business, now and after Obama trounces the increasingly bathetic John McCain, must be to think hard about how to break out of the prison house our duopolistic politics has become.
Unfortunately, there’s no simple answer. Especially for people living in “battleground” states, voting for Cynthia McKinney and/or Ralph Nader (yet again) is problematic – given the institutional arrangements that constrain our politics. But perhaps we shouldn’t be too hasty in dismissing “third” (actually, second) parties or independent campaigns. They can’t “win” and neither can they restructure political life (unless circumstances change radically). It’s not even clear that they are useful as “educational” vehicles – since the media only mocks or derides them, when they pay attention at all. But there is still the expressive side of politics. Its importance shouldn’t be dismissed, even if protest votes have only a negligible effect on outcomes. For those of us who live in “safe” states, it is looking increasingly like casting a protest vote against Obama may make more sense than adding to the “mandate” of that Clintonized (center-right, empire and military friendly, shamelessly opportunist, bought and paid for) but “inspiring” Democrat.
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