[Zzlist-deux] Looking Back: Five Years after the Obama Election

[zzlist-deux at lists.people-link.net]

A new posting -
Looking Back: Five Years after the Obama
Election<http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2014/01/looking-back-five-years-after-obama.html>
- from Zoltan Zigedy is available at:
http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/


If you do not wish to receive these notices, e-mail: *
zoltanzigedy at gmail.com <http://mc/compose?to=zoltanzigedy@gmail.com>*
with "unsubscribe" in the subject box.




 By 2008, the US electorate was fed up with George Bush. In fact, the US
ruling class was fed up, too. Internationally, US prestige was at a low
point, thanks to the Bush administration's brazen and failed military
aggressions. Domestically, the bottom had fallen out of the US economy. It
was time for him to go. His failings cast a shadow over the system's
legitimacy.
 Anyone with even a passing understanding of US history understood that
“regime change” was in the cards. That is, it was the moment for the
two-party juggernaut to spit out a fresh face untainted by the previous
administration, vigorous, and promising a new direction. It was essential
that new leadership appear different, self-confident, and representative of
policies contrasting with the old regime.
 We saw this before.
 Franklin Roosevelt was such a figure. He came forward as a clean,
untainted alternative to the failed Hoover administration. Disgust with
Hoover was so great, that merely by avoiding large, looming issues, FDR was
able to capture the Presidency with a virtual* carte blanche* to rescue the
sinking capitalist economy. Yet he was, as a leading commentator of the
time, Walter Lippmann, observed before Roosevelt's election, *“... an
amiable man with many philanthropic impulses, but he is not the dangerous
enemy of anything. He is too eager to please.... Franklin D. Roosevelt is
no crusader. He is no tribune of the people. He is no enemy of entrenched
privilege. He is a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications
for the office, would very much like to be President**.**"* All historians
agree that Roosevelt was, first and foremost, practical. If policies worked
or were popular, he supported them.
 Over time, a myth arose that Roosevelt was a savior, a messianic figure
who arose and smote the rich and powerful. Those who organized the bonus
marches, the unemployment councils, the general strikes, the tenant and
share cropper actions of the Depression era, like those who built the
industrial unions that made up the powerful CIO, were swept under the
historical rug. Acknowledging that they were the source or driving force
for New Deal reforms was an inconvenient truth. That said, Roosevelt's
pragmatism, his respect for new ideas in desperate times, marked him as an
uncommon political leader.
 The New Deal myth sustained the Democratic Party for decades, even though
Party leaders began a retreat from the New Deal upon Roosevelt's death.
After 1944, the “New Deal” label fell into disuse as both political Parties
rallied around anti-Communism and a relatively benign social compact.
Political leaders willingly conceded a modest social contract with labor
for cooperation in the anti-Communist campaign and business unionism.
 Anti-Communist excesses (so-called “McCarthyism”), overt and institutional
racism (segregation), setbacks in foreign policy (Cuba, the U-2) tarnished
the US reputation internationally and stirred discontent at home by the end
of the 1950s.
 Once again, a new face, representing religious diversity, youth,
cosmopolitan life style, and change, emerged as an alternative. John
Kennedy, like FDR, injected vigor into a two-party landscape driven by the
now dominant medium of television. Again regime change was in order and the
appearance of regime change was achieved. Despite the mythology of the
Kennedy Camelot-- and sealed by his assassination-- Kennedy's
administration was ruled by the continuation of the Cold War and
lip-service to domestic discontent. While some opportunistic adjustments
were forced on his administration, Kennedy largely sought to construct a
more compassionate, tolerant face to US capitalism; his assassination
obviously shows that this was not acceptable to many important, powerful
members of the old club.
 Months after the Kennedy assassination, left pundit I.F. Stone captured
Kennedy's role: “ *...Kennedy, when the tinsel was stripped away, was a
conventional leader, no more than an enlightened conservative, cautious as
an old man for all his youth, with a basic distrust of the people and an
astringent view of the evangelical as a tool of leadership.”*
 Less than a decade later, with the criminal implosion of the Nixon
administration, the credibility of the US political system was undermined.
Resignations, criminal charges and Impeachment bred an unprecedented
cynicism and challenge to two-party legitimacy.
 A fresh face entered from the wings: Jimmy Carter, neither a Senator nor a
corporate attorney, but an obscure Southern Governor and a peanut farmer.
Like Roosevelt, Carter brought a fresh, unstained image to the political
game, a much-needed contrast to the sleaze of his predecessors.
 I wrote in 2008 of the 1976 election: *“Most citizens looked to the then
forthcoming elections with a profound desire for a new course. The
Democrats chose a political outsider, Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia.
Carter promised to make the government 'as good as the people.' Pundits
hailed Carter as a departure from the old politics and a fresh, honest
voice for change (e.g. **The Miracle of Jimmy Carter**, Howard Norton and
Bob Slosser, 1976).”*
 I went on to note that Carter proved to be a prophet of false hope and
absent change. He quickly turned his back on the most progressive
Democratic platform since the New Deal and ushered in economic policies
that were soon to be dubbed “Reaganomics.”
 It was this historical backdrop that prompted me to suggest that candidate
Barack Obama might well be another postured savior at a moment of crisis in
the two-Party system, a carefully crafted, groomed alternative to a
bumbling, embarrassing regime.
 *There are some striking and illuminating parallels between this election
season and the Presidential election campaign of 1976... Like the eight
years of the Bush administration, the eight years of Nixon/Ford produced an
unparalleled collapse of support for the Republican Party. The Watergate
scandal coupled with the failure of the US military in Vietnam and an
economic crisis left the Republican Party wounded and regrouping.*
 *Similar to 1976 Presidential candidate J. Carter, his presumptive 2008
counterpart, Barack Obama, is viewed as a Washington “outsider”. He has
campaigned as a candidate of change. Pundits hail him as a fresh voice
untainted by the vices of the establishment.*
 *Obama must contend with similar issues: a brutal military adventure,
collapsing mass living standards, and an economy exhibiting more and more
of the symptoms of “stagflation**.**” Like Carter, his campaign is geared
to appealing to the mass base of the Democratic Party: the working class,
liberals, and African-Americans. His campaign strategists will likely
recommend - as Carter’s advisors did - that the candidate tack to the right
to garner center-right and independent votes going into the general
election. Every Democratic Party Presidential candidate since has employed
a similar strategy. Despite this maneuver, Carter managed to lose his huge
lead in the polls and eke out a narrow victory in the November election.
Nonetheless, this failed approach continues to seduce Democratic Party
tacticians. *(ZZ, *2008: A Reprise of 1976?* Fall, 2008)
 Obama represented a constant of modern US politics: political crisis or
threat to legitimacy spawning a face-lift, cosmetic changes, and a
re-kindling of “hope” and “change” in the form of a vigorous, youthful,
well-spoken Democrat. And Obama, as an African American, had the special
appeal of breaking through racial barriers and perhaps sharing some common
sensibilities with diverse peoples outside of the US.
 While contemporary history taught that appearance generally belied actual
change, liberals and most of the US Left succumbed to the allure, putting
aside their picket signs, marching shoes, and petitions to open their
pocketbooks and enthusiasm to the Obama campaign.
 With the November, 2008 victory under his belt, Obama's unprecedented
campaign contributions from the financial sector, his lame, discredited
cabinet appointees, and his blatant, shameless, scandalizing of his
home-town pastor, Reverend Wright, left the adoring Left unfazed.
 *By fitting Obama with the mantle of progressive change, the leadership of
the broad left - much of the peace movement, liberals, environmental social
justice activists, etc. - surrendered their critical judgment,
independence, and influence to a blind trust in a fictitious movement for
change. In the history of social change in the US, every real advance was
spurred by independent organization and struggle**,** unhampered by the
niceties of bourgeois politics. From the Abolitionist movement to the Civil
Rights movement, from the Populist movement to the Great Society, from the
Anti-imperialist League to the Anti-Vietnam War movement, the initiative
for change sprung from committed, independent activists who defied the
caution and inertia of elected officials. Why have these lessons been
ignored?* (ZZ, *Let* *Obama be Obama?* December 29, 2008)
 Yet everyone from the Hollywood liberal set to the Communist Party USA
hailed Obama as the Second-coming of FDR, if not Lincoln.
 Over the top, but representative of the self-delusional moment, one
hopped-up “progressive” wrote in a widely disseminated 19-page *homage* to
the election of Barack Obama: "*...hundreds of millions-Black, Latino,
Asian, Native-American and white, men and women, young and old, literally
danced in the streets and wept with joy, celebrating an achievement of a
dramatic milestone in a 400-year struggle, and anticipating a new period of
hope and possibility*."
 Leaving aside the hyperbole (less than 130 million people voted for BOTH
candidates and 400 years takes us back to well-before there was a USA),
this screed correctly captured the unjustified euphoria that swept through
the Left.
 Seemingly, every generation of the Left surrenders to the false hope of
the Democratic Party; every generation repeats the same mistake.
 Tragedy? Farce?
 Today, the Obama administration owns the betrayal of the EFCA promise to
labor, an untenable healthcare system borrowed from Mitt Romney, 800
hundred deaths a month in the failed state of Iraq, an Afghani nation that
may kick the US military out before it plans to leave, the destabilization
of Libya and Syria, a broken promise on Guantanamo, widening income and
wealth gaps, crumbling infrastructures, a host of unfulfilled promises, a
legacy of corporate coddling, and cowardly and illegal (drone) murders. The
shattering of a racial barrier-- the election of the first African American
President-- has shamefully served to cover the criminal neglect and decline
of the well-being of African Americans.
 And everyone knows it. In 2013 alone, Obama's approval rating dropped nine
points to 43%; the percentage believing that Obama is honest and
straightforward has dropped ten points to 37%.
 And this is the candidate embraced by the broad Left in 2008?
 With three years left-- two years before the 2016 Presidential campaign
begins in earnest-- Democratic Party influentials are pressing Obama to
establish some kind of legacy to energize the base, to charge up the
“respectable” Left and labor for future elections. As a lame-duck, he will
likely make numerous gestures towards the social, life-style issues valued
by the upper-middle strata-- the petty-bourgeoisie. There may even be a
highly publicized, but feeble attempt to raise the minimum wage. But expect
no serious changes in ruling class foreign or economic policy. Liberals
have demonstrated that they will not hold elected Democrats to any promises
on these questions.
 Will this herd the sheep-like liberals and soft-Left back into the fold?
Will they repeat again the slavish loyalty of the past? Will they drink the
Kool-aid?
 Or will people finally recognize the Democratic Party trap and begin to
construct a movement towards independent politics, perhaps rallying around
Jill Stein and the Green Party? Will there be a long overdue departure from
bankrupt ideology and shameless opportunism? Will the idea of people power
and the companion notion of socialism take root?
 We have a new year to find out...

 Zoltan Zigedy
 zoltanzigedy at gmail.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.people-link.net/pipermail/zzlist-deux/attachments/20140104/fc7dd7f3/attachment-0001.html>