Overreaching?

Are there are Republicans even worse than Cheney and Bush? The ones who obstructed the “rescue” loans for the Big Three auto companies are good candidates. The least of it is that, following the money, they’ve switched their allegiance from domestic to foreign capital. The worst: that they’re outright, unabashed union busters, who just can’t stand the idea of institutions that, no matter how feebly, empower workers and raise their standard of living.

I concede that my judgment is untrustworthy since what seems like obvious overreaching to me often gets a free pass from the leaders of the Lesser Evil party – especially when reacting appropriately might give cause for Republicans of the Bush-Cheney grade or worse to castigate them for their “liberalism,” or when they fear displeasing their paymasters. Israel’s depredations in Gaza and the other (illegally) Occupied Territories, and its wars of choice in Lebanon, are examples. But this latest assault on organized labor seems so over the top that I find it hard to imagine that Obama and Co. could let pass without some salutary reaction. But then I remember that for the Better than Bush sector of our political class to do the right thing, even with overwhelming popular support, they need a backbone – and, while the GOP does at least have that, backbones are and always have been in short supply in the Party of Pusillanimity, the POP.

With Inauguration Day so far off, we can still hope, along with liberals on an Obama high, that the overreaching this time will encourage Democrats to move closer to the aspirations of the constituencies who vote for them -- notwithstanding the fact that the writing is splashed across the wall that the new administration will be a Clinton administration redux. We can still hope that Obama and Company will enact programs that strengthen labor -- to the dismay of those southern Senators. Organized labor asked for nothing from Obama, and that may be what it will get. But, in this instance as in so many others, circumstances may force Obama to do the right thing. High on the list is rethinking the entire framework within which unions organize and operate. Repealing Taft Hartley would be a good place to start – practically and symbolically.

Putting repeal of Taft Hartley on Nancy Pelosi’s abstemious table, the one that had no place for impeachment, would also be a good place to start – practically and symbolically – for remaking the Democratic Party. Recall that Taft Hartley was passed over Harry Truman’s veto. Clintonites can’t venerate Harry Truman enough, but for all the wrong reasons. They like his “muscular,” indeed nuclear, foreign policy, his multilateralism, and his role in forging international institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that reinforce American hegemony. But just as Cheney and Bush made Democratic victories belatedly inevitable in 2006 and 2008, the overreaching of Republicans even worse than Cheney and Bush might just force the “victors” to embrace the (few) good things associated with Harry Truman’s presidency: not least his recognition that a strong labor movement is indispensable for freedom, equality and social solidarity – an item in desperately short supply for more than a quarter century.

Obvious

Could anything be more obvious? To “solve” America’s health care problems, we must get rid of private insurance (except perhaps in niche markets for supplements, not replacements, for what is provided to all citizens and permanent residents by right). Then the government or some quasi-government entity established for that purpose could handle administrative issues at far less cost to citizens, as is the case almost everywhere else in the world. But since money talks and since the vested interests have lots of it which they generously disburse to the political class, no Democrat taken seriously will dare state, much less act on, the obvious; least of all Barack Obama. [Dennis Kucinich has never been taken seriously; neither was Paul Wellstone, though he got much better press than Kucinich.] Back in her (unelected) First Lady days, Hillary Clinton ignored the obvious too. If anything good will come from her becoming Secretary of State, it is that she and health care reform, allegedly the “cause” of her life, will part ways. Last time she took charge of that issue, she set the cause back a generation. Life isn’t long enough for her to get another chance.

It’s equally obvious, despite decades of indoctrination in free market theology, that the “solution” to the problems posed by the imminent collapse of the American auto industry is to nationalize General Motors and perhaps the other failing Big Three corporations as well, and to utilize their resources to produce the energy-saving vehicles we need in the face of an impending environmental catastrophe -- even if, for some indefinite period, there are no profits to be made in doing so. Environmental considerations require it; so does the welfare of American workers. Let the shareholders get the (current) market value of their assets but, by all means, stop the “furloughs” and layoffs and give-backs. The paramount task must be to strengthen unions; not hasten their demise.

In all likelihood, though, no help will come from the feds; it is even clearer that if help does come, it will not be worker-friendly. The Bush government and the Republican Party have seized upon the crisis to escalate their union busting efforts – and, as is their wont in nearly all matters of grave concern, the Democrats are going along. Unlike Democrats, when Republicans see an opening, they go for it. This is a case in point. Top executives at the Big Three will do well for themselves, no matter what. Why, then, should the (more) favored party of the ruling class throw good money after bad, especially in a period of “bailout fatigue” and at a time when organized labor, having demanded nothing from Obama or anyone else, is too weak to stand up for itself (even if its leadership had the will to do so)?

Of course, the answer to that question is obvious too, not that it matters in the least. The reason to save the U.S. auto industry, by the most efficacious and least costly means available, nationalization, is that workers matter. Democrats gesture towards organized labor when elections loom, and then diligently ignore their interests. But even if they were less contemptuous of the constituencies that vote for them, it’s still not clear that Democrats would find it within themselves do the right thing in this instance. After all, for our lesser evil party, nationalization has never exactly been “on the table,” as the peerless Pelosi might put it.

In short, it hardly matters that some ways forward are obvious. Nevertheless, it’s worth pointing the obvious solutions out, over and over again, as conditions change. In the past month, “change we can believe in” has revealed itself to amount to nothing more than “change” only gullible liberals can delude themselves into believing in. But there are forces at work that just might, at great cost in pain and suffering, move the center-right, where Obama has situated himself, slightly more towards a point where Obama will have no alternative but to acquiesce in some pale approximation of the obviously right thing. Remember, though, that in the POP, the Party of Pusillanimity, backbones are in short supply. It will be up to “us” to steel their resolve. But that isn’t going to happen until more of “us,” many more, get past the obviously false idea that Obama and his “competent” appointees and advisors are somehow part of the solution.