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.

Worse than Clinton!

It had to happen sooner or later. It happened sooner – Barack Obama has now moved to the right of Hillary Clinton! It had to happen because, unlike in most other “capitalist democracies” (if I may be permitted that oxymoron), it’s the American way for candidates to betray their base before they are elected. For this, we have our unusually undemocratic electoral institutions to thank. With two semi-institutionalized Business parties competing with each other, the wisest electoral course is to go for the middle; or so our candidates believe. [This is not a strategy that has worked out particularly well for Democrats in recent decades, but Democrats, including Obama, evidently believe in it nevertheless.] Needless to say, the middle has been moving ever more rightward at least since the waning days of the Carter administration; a trajectory our electoral institutions has encouraged. Thanks to the incompetence of Cheney and Bush and the majority (Republican) party, there was an opportunity to change course this electoral season. But the paymasters and functionaries of the Democratic Party, and the media hacks who legitimate their doings, held their ground. The rightward drift is therefore still alive and well.

Thus Obama voted for the new FISA bill (and, in the end, for giving telecom companies retroactive immunity for having clearly violated U.S. laws). In other words, he voted against freedom (ostensibly for the sake of “security”). He voted with each and every Republican. Among Democrats, he was not alone. Only 26 of them voted against cloture and only 28 voted against the final FISA bill. Hillary Clinton voted on the right side both times.

These Democrats did the right thing for once: Akaka, Biden (yes, Biden!), Bingaman, Boxer, Brown, Cantwell, Cardin, Hillary Clinton, Dodd, Dorgan, Durbin, Feingold, Harkin, Kerry, Leahy, Levin, Lautenberg, Murray, Reed, Reid, Sanders, Schumer, Stabenow, Tester and Wyden.

These Democrats voted like the pusillanimous enemies of liberty they are: Bayh, Carper, Casey, Conrad, Dorgan, Feinstein, Innuoye, Kohl, Landrieu, Lincoln, McCaskill, Mukulski, Nelson (Neb.), Nelson (Fla.), Barack Obama, Pryor, Rockefeller, Salazar, Webb, and Whitehouse.

I must therefore correct what I have been saying. In earlier postings, I several times ranked Obama better (less right-wing) than Joe Biden or Clinton and, of course, worse than John Edwards, Bill Richardson, and Chris Dodd. [Needless to say, he was and is also much worse than the “unelectables” – Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel.] After today’s vote, that assessment cannot stand. Whether thanks to circumstances or character defects or both, Barack Obama is now the worst of the lot. Of course, he’s still better than John McCain -- though McCain at least had the decency to be out of town for the vote! But increasingly the race between those two is boiling down to a contest to see which one will be the less dangerous Bush Three.

What a Difference a Month Makes

One good thing about the Clintons’ obstinacy this past spring: it delayed Barack Obama’s not so slow but steady rightward drift. This thought was driven home when I read Eliot Weinberger’s very useful “Obama v. Clinton: A Retrospective” in the July 3 London Review of Books. Weinberger’s article articulates what many liberals were thinking as recently as a few weeks ago -- back when it was so much easier for proponents of “change” to delude themselves about Barack Obama. No doubt, there are still many Obamamaniacs who remain deluded. The farther away they are from American shores, the easier it is to keep the delusion going. This is why, from abroad, Democrats have always looked better than they are – compared to the “competition.” Thus I recall many a spirited argument with foreigners who should know better in the early days of the Clinton administration -- before it turned comically rotten and when memories of Ronald Reagan and Bush the Father were still very much alive – about the Man from Hope.

[It may be relevant too that European, especially British, audiences are inclined to go gaga when an American President is bright and not “linguistically challenged.” The latter affliction runs in the Bush family (along with ignorance and stupidity); in the case of the family's current avatar, all three afflictions have run amok. Thus the contrast could hardly be sharper.]

In any case, where Obama is concerned, it is becoming harder to indulge in wishful thinking. The current issue of The Nation (July 21/28) contains an informative article by Robert Dreyfuss on what can be ascertained about Obama’s foreign policy. It is sobering to read. Dreyfus is not yet ready to despair; he thinks Obama is still a work in progress. Perhaps, but the prognosis is becoming worse day by day.

Dreyfus does say tellingly, towards the end of his article, that “the most hopeful aspect of an Obama presidency …[may be]…the fresh face of America that he would present to the world.” True enough, and more than enough to justify opposition to John McCain. But how pathetic is it that at an historical conjuncture where, for the first time in decades, a real change of course is feasible, that’s about all there is in the offing.

Remember the Reasons

On “the issues,” it was always a wash between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton; if anything, Obama was even worse. They agreed about everything – except mandates for health insurance. Clinton was for them; Obama against. On the face of it, this made her plan better – at least for inching closer to genuine universal coverage. Her plan probably is better, but it is far from certain; there are good arguments on both sides – and far better arguments supporting a single-payer system. This is why both Obama’s and Clinton’s plans are profoundly unsatisfactory. It is why there is no case to be made for or against either of them on this account.

Why, then, was it urgent that Clinton lose? I never had much faith in the reasons Obomamaniacs have. They have at last two: that Obama is better than he seems, and that, after he’s President, this will become clear; and that the mere fact that he is half of African descent is a good thing. As to the first, insofar as there’s an argument, it’s just that Obama plainly knows better than he lets on. This is doubtless true. But, after you peel away the layers of rank opportunism that the Clintons have piled up over decades, it’s probably true that Hillary knows better too. In neither case, does it make any difference. Obama’s “real” view of, say, Israel/Palestine is probably better than AIPAC’s. But when it comes down to it, because he and his advisors think it necessary for winning the general election and then for governing, he’ll pander to AIPAC just as much as Hillary would. QED. As for his African descent, yes, that would be a good thing for Americans and the rest of the world to see – for the few minutes before reality intrudes and people come to their senses. There is no evidence at all that Obama would govern in a way that would address African American concerns better than any of his former Democratic rivals, Hillary included. In fact, there is now good reason to think otherwise -- after his “denunciation” of Jeremiah Wright and then his scolding black fathers. Neither is there any reason to think that Obama’s African descent would make his foreign policy better, or even affect it at all.

Obamaniacs still have a reed to cling to, however: the JFK argument. Kennedy too had center-right politics and his brief tenure in office was awful, at least for anyone inclined to worry about the prospect of nuclear annihilation. But, thanks to his charm and wit and overall charisma, he did help set more progressive forces in motion; he was especially “inspiring” to the young. That Obama might unleash similar forces is a hope that’s not yet discredited. But, of course, it’s not up to Obama; it’s up to those of us who know better than he does or who, at least, have different agendas. Given the state of the “peace and justice” and environmental movements in this country, I’ve never been very hopeful about this prospect. But it is still a reason for not entirely regretting how the nomination process turned out.

Anyway, my reasons for opposing Clinton were different, and never had much of anything to do with hopes or rather illusions about Obama’s merits. I had two reasons. One has already melted into the ether of our decrepit political culture. The other is rapidly following suit.

We have a Democratic Party, a POP -- a Party of Pusillanimity or, what comes to the same thing, of Pelosiites – that can’t even bring itself to impeach Cheney and Bush et. al., let alone bring them to justice. Because they think it politically expedient and/or because they are cut from the same cloth, they’d as soon let the crime family that has led us to the brink of ruin for the past eight years get away with much worse than murder; this in the case of perps whose criminality is transparent and of historical dimensions. The (Bill) Clinton administration committed many of the same crimes, though in a less obviously offensive way. It was responsible for the deaths of some million Iraqis through sanctions, and for a host of other actionable offenses – many, though by no means all, committed in the name of “humanitarian interventions.” These included an illegal war to dismember Yugoslavia, to cite just the most transparently proto-neocon example. It will be for historians in the distant future, not Democrats today or tomorrow, to mete out to them the judgment they deserve. But a Hillary defeat, I reasoned, would, in its own way, serve the cause of justice here and now; especially if it took the form of an outright repudiation.

Of course, as a rule, wives are not responsible for their husband’s crimes. And, having carpet-bagged her way into the Senate, this wife never did anything in the way of Bush aiding and abetting (her specialty!) that rises to the level of an actionable crime in its own right. Neither is it a crime (in the literal sense) to have permanently marginalized the idea of single-payer health insurance or to have set back the cause of universal coverage for a generation. These were, after all, her signal contributions to American politics before the 2000 election. So it might look like there’s no reason of “retributive justice” to deny her the office she thought her due. But, remember, that she ran against Obama and the others on the grounds that she had more “experience.” Even her diehard backers should realize that this vaunted experience came her way by being Bill Clinton’s official wife. If she wants to take credit for that, then she too should do the time. But since no time will be done, she – and her better half – can at least suffer a political judgment. This was why I hoped not for Obama’s victory, but for her abject defeat.

But, of course,, she didn’t go down abjectly – just gracelessly. Meanwhile, the Democrats, with Obama in the lead, can’t do enough to make nice to her and to pander to her diehards (of whom, evidently, many decades ago, there was one born every minute). Since finally bowing out, the cult of Hillary, dormant since the early 90s, is now again on the rise. It’s a sickening spectacle; not worthy even of Democrats. But it’s happening. Thus the first – retributive justice – reason for defeating her candidacy is now a lost cause. In this respect, from today’s (and probably tomorrow’s) vantage point, it might even have been better had Hillary won.

The more important reason for defeating her, though, was to prevent a Clinton Restoration. There was never any doubt that an Obama presidency would include old Clinton hands. But there was a hope that the more culpable miscreants of the old regime – the Albrights and Holbrooks and their ilk – would be replaced by others slightly less noxious. After all, Obama did surround himself with advisors, like Zbigniew Brzezinski, who, though no less imperialist than the mainstream Clinton folk, at least had the good sense to oppose the Iraq War (if not the others) from the beginning.

But this reason too is rapidly melting away. As I’ve explained in recent postings, to the delight of the corporate media and their sponsors, the Clinton campaign, advisors and all, is folding into Obama’s with astonishing – indeed, unseemly -- rapidity. Meanwhile, as the two former rivals make public lovey dovey, even the appearance of differences in style and temperament are fading. We may be witnessing the birth of a super-individual, hermaphroditic entity – a Barack-Hillary. The charismatic, personable side comes from the male member, as it were; but the politics is pure Clintonian.

The conventional wisdom mongers on NPR and in the so-called quality press may like what they see. But, for anyone with eyes, it’s not a pretty sight. And neither is it a salutary one for those of us who still think there’s a chance to turn “the ship of state” around from the disastrous course set by Ronald Reagan, Bush the Father, Hillary’s husband, and, last and worst, the criminals who now rule along with and in the name of the dimwitted Bush boy.

Democrats squandered an opportunity for real change, not plus ça change…, when they nominated Obama over John Edwards or even Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd (not to mention the unmentionable Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel). Thanks to Cheney/Bush/Rumsfeld incompetence, and the disasters they brought on, the prospects for a change of course, leading to a softer landing for the American empire, were more propitious than they had been for decades. But the opportunity is fading. The POP, for its part, is doing everything it can to assure that nothing good, only something a little less bad, will come of the November election – with Obama or rather Barack-Hillary leading the way.

Obama and the Supremes

Was it “bitterness” or crass opportunism that made Obama say that he has no problem with the latest from Clarence and the Supremes: their proclamation that the DC handgun ban is “unconstitutional”? This was a shameless flip flop for the candidate of “change we can believe in.” May Dick Cheney shoot him in the face for it!

Then there’s Obama’s flip flop on capital punishment. Well, perhaps not a flip flop, since he’s been equivocating on the death penalty for as long as he’s been in public life. But it is fair to say that once upon a time (until a few days ago), even relatively informed people assumed that, of course, Obama is a death penalty opponent who just didn’t want to make an issue of it (because of the way blood thirsty Republicans skewered Mike Dukakis on the issue). Perhaps so; it wouldn’t be the first time that Obama knows better than the positions he takes. As a state Senator in Illinois, he did work to limit, but not eliminate, capital punishment, and to make it more likely that the innocent don’t get killed. He certainly gave the impression, back then, that he’d do more, maybe even favor abolition, if the political climate was more propitious. In any case, when even the Supremes decided that it was “cruel and unusual” (unfortunately, not unusual enough) for the state of Louisiana to judicially murder someone found guilty of child rape, Obama thought it important to “disagree.” The candidate of change (of plus ça change…) is evidently not yet ready to lead the Home of the Brave into the middle of the twentieth century (according to the standards of our not very “civilized” world).

Remember how Bill Clinton interrupted campaigning in New Hampshire in 1992 so that, as Governor, he could go back to Arkansas to oversee the judicial murder of a retarded man, Ricky Ray Rector? No doubt, Obama now feels his pain.

Obama is also backtracking on renegotiating NAFTA, on corporate taxes and on increasing taxes on capital gains. Can backtracking on withdrawing from Iraq in sixteen, unconscionable months – Obama’s Pelosi-Reed style “anti-war” policy -- be far behind?

Not only is Barack Obama melding his campaign with Clinton’s; he’s morphing into her. My advice: unless you’re in need of a powerful emetic, don’t watch today’s spectacle in Unity, New Hampshire where the two of them (or are they now one super-individual entity?) will be campaigning together.

It is remarkable how, even in late June, we are already so deeply in the throes of trying times for lesser evilists. As well-meaning “liberals,” always ready to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, acquiesce, the situation will only get worse.

Obama Slouches Rightward, part 2

Lets be ultra-charitable and forgive Obama for doing what he thinks he must to get elected. If he doesn’t want to be pictured with Muslim women wearing headscarves, as happened at the Gore endorsement rally in Detroit, that’s reprehensible, but OK. In a better possible world, public displays of godliness would be as offensive to the vast majority as public displays of same-sex love are to the godly in this possible world. But, in our time and place, the exclusion of those women makes public relations sense – notwithstanding the plain fact that it represents a concession to the most rampant form of contemporary xenophobia. A Democrat’s gotta do what a Democrat’s gotta do. Ditto for rejecting public financing. Ditto even for abject pandering to right-wing Cubans and Zionists; though that’s even more blatantly reprehensible because it wouldn’t happen in that better possible world where the godly would feel compelled to act out their superstitions and ignorance in private. One could even forgive Obama’s likely acquiescence in the Pelosiite “compromise” on Bush war funding when it comes to the Senate. I’ll bet he finds some way to absent himself when the time come to vote. If he doesn’t, my guess is that he’ll vote like the Pelosiite he is. What is least likely, the way things are now going, is that he’ll side with the minority of Democrats who are finally willing to join the handful of their more principled colleagues who were in the opposition from day one, by insisting that enough is enough. Ever since Bush and Cheney launched their campaigns of murder and mayhem, Democrats have been falling over themselves to “support the troops” (by keeping them in harm’s way and forcing them to perform unspeakable and often criminal acts). Don’t count on Obama to put that perceived public relations “necessity” in jeopardy any time soon.

What I find more troubling, precisely because it is so plainly unnecessary, is Obama’s incorporation of Clintonites into his “Senior Working Group on National Security.” About the only redeeming feature is that Richard Holbrooke isn’t included – yet. But Madeleine (Mad Maddy) Albright is. Our former Secretary of State is at least as guilty as her boss of actionable offenses in Iraq (killing at least a half million children and many more adults through sanctions), Yugoslavia (illegally promoting the disintegration of the country, causing wanton devastation and encouraging ethnic cleansing), and wherever else it seemed expedient. So is the hapless Warren G. Christopher, Clinton’s first Secretary of State and the “mastermind” of Al Gore’s strategy in the Florida vote recount. There is also Tony Lake, Clinton’s national security advisor; Georgia’s former right-wing Senator Sam Nunn of fund-the-military-industrial-complex fame; and Oklahoma’s David Boren, lifelong friend of the “intelligence” community. There are others equally bad. Read about them here.

During the primary season, when the worst of the Clintonites still had a Clinton to work for, Obama, whether by necessity or conviction, assembled a slightly less motley crew of foreign policy advisors, comprised of people who at least had the good sense to oppose the Iraq War and otherwise to fault the Cheney/Bush/Rumsfeld crew for their rank incompetence. Thus we had the likes of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Clarke, Larry Korb, and “humanitarian interventionist” (and other woman’s other woman) Samantha Power running the show. It was, on the whole, a lesser evil. But now even that improvement over the Hillary group is slipping away, as the Hillary group is melded into the Obama fold.

It could get a lot worse too. There are many indications that the Bush government will soon give Israel the green light to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. If that happens, all hell will break loose. Who can say how much worse the situation in the Middle East will then become, or what the effects will be on the American economy. All that is predictable is that instead of slouching rightward at his present, ever accelerating pace, Obama, eternal friend of the Promised Land, will go into full gallop mode – with the worst of the Clintonites in tow.

Obama Slouches Rightward

Because our electoral institutions are so much less democratic than those of most other “democracies,” they afford little room for the expression of dissident voices. In practice, this means that positions that fall outside the center-right to more extreme but still respectable right spectrum are marginalized. It means, in other words, that most voters have no voice.

It would be different if we had some of what other countries have: genuine public financing, guaranteed media access, easy ballot access, instant run off voting, proportional representation, and so on. Instead, we have winner-take-all elections contested within the framework of a duopolistic party system. A consequence is that here in the Land of the Free, candidates have little incentive to play to their party’s base – not even in the (just concluded) primary season, but then especially after the nomination is secure. Each of the two semi-official parties is sure of some votes, no matter who its nominee is. So it is “independents” that matter. Neither party can flagrantly diss its base – to the point where they lose many votes. But, in the circumstances, with only the alternative party in contention, that’s hard to do. Thus Democrats and even Republicans play to the handful of potential voters who have managed, either through intellectual laziness or sheer indifference, to find, or think they have found, a space in between the two parties. Finding that space is likely to be easier this year than it usually is, unless the Democrats flub spectacularly even by their own standards -- because John McCain, being a war-mongering neo-con more than a “maverick,” will, by November, be seen as tied inextricably to the Cheney/Bush administration. This year, therefore, the Democrats have even more incentive than usual to go after the flatulent middle.

The half or more of the electorate that doesn’t vote is much less in play. No one knows how many don’t vote because they realize there’s nothing to vote for or how many don’t vote in an effort to abstain. It’s probably a large number. In any case, being bought and paid for by corporate malefactors and nefarious “special interests,” neither of the two parties is institutionally capable of going after this mass of voters in a serious way. This year, though, there may again be a partial exception -- so long as Barack Obama continues to “inspire.” As the once and present Rorschach candidate, he stands a better chance than most of attracting those who would otherwise not vote at all.

That the system empowers those who care least is bad news, needless to say; despite this year’s (very partial) exceptions. But there is a silver lining. Unlike in other “democracies,” Democrats (and Republicans too) usually don’t wait until they gain office to betray their constituencies. They betray them from the get go. The 2006 elections were a partial exception. Voters thought they were voting against the Iraq War. Instead they empowered Pelosiites – Clintonites (proponents of Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush politics) who talk like (soft) “progressives” and then act like Clintonites of the old school. [Thus today the Pelosiites are about to assure Cheney and Bush everything they want to conduct their wars, as Congress votes to fund them without restrictions. Of course, the Pelosiites stress that they fought the good fight. For their troubles, they won a few milquetoast “concessions” about funding for veterans and the unemployed.] Nevertheless, the general rule still holds. In our duopoly system, betrayals of hope begin before elections, not after. This way, at least, voters know for sure – not just on the basis of past experience – what they’ll be getting.

So it is with Obama. Since winning the nomination, he has pandered shamelessly to right wing Cubans and to supporters of Israel’s collective punishment of Gazans and its Apartheid occupation of the 22% of mandate Palestine that the international community concedes to the Palestinians. Then, on Father’s Day, before conservative black church-goers, he denounced the irresponsibility of black men – sounding, for all the world, like a partisan of “benign neglect,” blaming the victims of racism for the sins of the system. That’s not the least of it – as he incorporates old Clinton hands, like Patti Solis-Doyle, into his expanding campaign structure, and as he calls on “national security” advisors and Middle East experts from the Clinton days. In the interest of honesty and to continue the new (flip-flopped) Bush/Cheney strategy of making nice to the French, Obama should consider changing his slogan from “Change We Can Believe In” to “Plus Ça Change, Plus C’est la Même Chose.” [The more it changes, the more it stays the same.] The liberals who believe in him won’t know the difference.

The conventional wisdom is that the appointment of Solis-Doyle to the group assigned to find and vet VP candidates makes a VP role for Hillary less likely. She’s on the outs, it seems, with the Lady Slickster. That’s good news, I suppose. But the struggle against Clintonism – and its Pelosiite version – has never just been a struggle against the Clintons. As Obama assumes the Clintonite mantle, he and the people around him are fast becoming nearly as great a menace.

Still, given our undemocratic electoral system, with McCain as the only alternative, the least bad outcome is still an Obama victory, even as he slouches ever more rightward. But the time to hold his feet to the fire is long past due. After Obama wins the White House, the struggle will only just have begun.