Tipping the Scales for Clinton?
The Democratic split between the Sanders and Clinton wings is widening because
many Sanders’s backers see party chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz tipping the
scales for Clinton and corporate interests, say Bill Moyers and Michael Winship.
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
To paraphrase the words of that Scottish master Robert Burns, the best laid
plans of mice, men — and women — go often astray, or “gang aft agley,” as they
say in the Highlands. No one knows this better than Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Twice now, the flight of her presidential aspirations has been forced to circle
the airport as other contenders put up an unexpected fight: In 2008, Barack
Obama emerged to grab the Democratic nomination away and this year, although all
signs point to her finally grabbing the brass ring, unexpected and powerful
progressive resistance came from the mighty wind of the Bernie Sanders campaign.
Certainly, Hillary Clinton is angered by all of this, but the one seemingly more
aggrieved — if public comments and private actions are any indication — is
Democratic National Committee chair and Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a
Hillary surrogate who takes umbrage like ordinary folks pop their vitamins in
the morning.
As we recently wrote, “She embodies the tactics that have eroded the ability of
Democrats to once again be the party of the working class. As Democratic
National Committee chair she has opened the floodgates for Big Money, brought
lobbyists into the inner circle and oiled all the moving parts of the revolving
door that twirls between government service and cushy jobs in the world of
corporate influence.”
And that ain’t all. As a member of Congress, particularly egregious has been her
support of the payday loan business, defying new regulations from the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that would rein in an industry that soaks
desperate borrowers. As President Obama said, “While payday loans might seem
like easy money, folks often end up trapped in a cycle of debt.”
In fact, according to an article by Bethany McLean in the May issue of The
Atlantic, “After studying millions of payday loans, the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau found that 67 percent went to borrowers with seven or more
transactions a year, and the majority of borrowers paid more in fees than the
amount of their initial loan.”
A recent editorial in the Orlando Sentinel notes that 7 percent of Florida’s
population “must resort to this predatory form of small-dollar credit – nearly
the highest rate in the nation.” What’s more, “Based on a 14-day loan term, the
typical payday loan … had an annual percentage rate of 278 percent. Many lenders
advertise rates of more than 300 percent.” Let us repeat that slowly… 300
percent!
So why has Wasserman Schultz been so opposed to the CFPB’s proposed rules? She
has said, “Payday lending is unfortunately a necessary component of how people
get access to capital, [people] that are the working poor.”
But maybe it has something more to do with the $2.5 million or so the payday
loan industry has donated to Florida politicians from both parties since 2009.
That’s according to a new report by the liberal group Allied Progress. More than
$50,000 of that cash has gone to Rep. Wasserman Schultz.
But we digress. It’s the skullduggery going on within the Democratic Party
establishment that’s our current concern and as we wrote in March, Rep.
Wasserman Schultz “has played games with the party’s voter database, been
accused of restricting the number of Democratic candidate debates and scheduling
them at odd days and times to favor Hillary Clinton, and recently told CNN’s
Jake Tapper that superdelegates — strongly establishment and pro-Clinton — are
necessary at the party’s convention so deserving incumbent officials and party
leaders don’t have to run for delegate slots ‘against grassroots activists.’ Let
that sink in, but hold your nose against the aroma of entitlement.”
Now Wasserman Schultz has waded into the controversy over what happened or
didn’t happen last weekend when Sanders supporters loudly and vehemently
objected to the rules at the Nevada State Democratic Convention. In truth, some
behaved badly at the event and others made trollish, violent and obscene threats
to Democratic state chair Roberta Lange via phone, email and social media.
There’s no excuse for such aggressive, creepy conduct, and Sanders was quick and
direct in apologizing for the behavior of the rowdies and bullies.
But there is a double standard at play here. Why, pray tell, shouldn’t the
peaceful majority of Sanders people be angry at the slow-motion, largely
invisible rigging of the political process by Wasserman Schultz and the Clinton
machine — all for the benefit of Secretary Clinton?
Wasserman Schultz claims the party rules over which she has presided (and
manipulated) are “eminently fair.” She told CNN on Wednesday morning, “It is
critical that we as candidates, we as Democratic Party leaders, everyone
involved needs to make sure that we can take all the steps that we need to, to
ensure that the process is not only run smoothly but that the response from the
supporters of both candidates is appropriate and civil.”
In response to the DNC chair’s remarks, Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver
talked to CNN, too, and said Wasserman Schultz had been “throwing shade on the
Sanders campaign since the very beginning. … Debbie Wasserman Schultz has really
been a divider and not really provided the kind of leadership that the
Democratic Party needs.”
The Nation’s Joan Walsh, a Clinton supporter critical of the Sanders campaign,
concurs: “Once again, Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman
Schultz escalated a conflict that she should have worked to defuse,” she writes.
“Wasserman Schultz is not helping her friend Hillary Clinton with her attacks on
Sanders. Just the appearance of fairness can go a long way in assuaging worries
about fairness. Wasserman Schultz’s defiant rebuke to the Sanders camp has made
it worse.”
So, too, has her abolition of the restraints that had been placed on corporate
lobbyists and big money — now they can write checks bankrolling what doubtless
will be swank and profligate parties during this summer’s Democratic National
Convention.
At The Intercept, Lee Fang and Zaid Jilani report that a number of the members
of the Philadelphia host committee “are actively working to undermine
progressive policies achieved by President Barack Obama, including health care
reform and net neutrality. Some … are hardly even Democratic Party stalwarts,
given that many have donated and raised thousands of dollars for Republican
presidential and congressional candidates this cycle.”
This is a slap in the face to progressives calling for a halt to big money and
allowing lobbyists to buy our elected officials. And it’s contrary to what
Hillary Clinton herself has said about money and politics on the campaign trail.
The Sanders movement has shown that lots of cash can be raised from everyday
people making small donations. His supporters and all of us should be outraged
that Debbie Wasserman Schultz and convention officials have kowtowed not only to
the corporate wing of their own party but also to those high rollers who back
the opposition and ideas antithetical to a democracy.
Rep. Wasserman Schultz is facing a primary challenge for the first time this
year, her opponent a law professor, activist and progressive Sanders supporter
named Tim Canova. But the primary’s not until late August, long after the
Democratic National Convention. Unless she steps down now or Hillary Clinton has
her removed, Philadelphia will be dominated by someone who represents everything
that has gone wrong with the Democratic Party and Washington.
At the convention’s opening session, Debbie Wasserman Schultz will be bringing
the gavel down squarely on progressive hopes of returning the party to its
legacy as champion of working people and the dispossessed.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Time for her to go.
Bill Moyers is the managing editor of Moyers & Company and
BillMoyers.com. Michael Winship is the Emmy Award-winning senior writer of
Moyers & Company and BillMoyers.com, and a former senior writing fellow at the
policy and advocacy group Demos. Follow him on Twitter at @MichaelWinship.
http://billmoyers.com/story/democrats-cant-unite-unless-wasserman-schultz-goes/
Sanders Takes Case to California
Despite calls from many pundits and pols for him to quit, Sen. Bernie Sanders
continues to rally thousands of Americans to a program of profound social and
economic change, reports Rick Sterling.
By Rick Sterling
Vallejo is geographically close but economically far from more affluent San
Francisco Bay Area cities to the south. In 2008, the city of Vallejo filed for
bankruptcy. On Wednesday, the Bernie Sanders campaign came to Vallejo.
The gathering was held in a huge grassy area alongside the water estuary. The
area was enclosed with security fencing so that audience members all had to pass
through metal detectors. Ninety minutes before Sanders’ speech, the line to go
through the security screening was half a mile long. Yet spirits were high with
a buzz in the air.
The audience of 8,000 to 10,000 was mostly young, students or working class and
ethnically diverse. Many had only learned Sanders was coming via Facebook that
day or the day before. I chatted with people patiently waiting as the line
slowly advanced. I asked two young African-American women why they supported
Sanders.
The answer: “He seems real; he seems consistent; and because the others will
take us to hell!”
I asked three Latino young adults why they support Sanders. The answer: “Bernie
will help the working class. Because we need affordable education.” I noticed he
said “working class,” not “middle class.” A young Hispanic couple responded
simply “Why support Bernie? The future.” Other answers were “climate change,”
“criminal justice,” “education” and “he’s got vision.”
As the event began, an African-American organizer from Oakland spoke, then the
Filipina President of California Nurses Association, then San Francisco
Supervisor Jane Kim followed by organizers from the Bernie team advising the
audience about voting in the California primary on June 7. Cenk Uygur of The
Young Turks revved up the crowd then Sanders took the stage.
Toward the front, the crowd was packed together with shorter people unable to
see beyond their neighbors. let alone the stage. The sun was starting to set and
a breeze came off the water. It had been an unusually hot day. Sanders spoke for
nearly an hour. He recalled how the pundits had dismissed his campaign from the
start, saying his ideas were “too bold and radical.” Sanders said he has won 46
percent of the pledged delegates to date, with six states remaining including
the largest in the country.
Sanders delivered his speech saying:
–the campaign finance system is corrupt and undermining democracy
–the economy is “rigged” with the rich taking it all
–the infrastructure is collapsing with school children in Flint, Michigan,
poisoned by tap water
–corporations have taken away good jobs by moving manufacturing outside the USA
–the criminal justice system is broken, with the government spending $80 billion
locking up 2.2 million people
–police departments have been militarized
–graduating students are saddled with monstrous debts
–why does the government always have money for wars but not to rebuild inner
cities?
–we are destroying the planet – what kind of legacy is that?
–healthcare should be a right not a privilege – we need Medicare for all
–workers needs a living wage which is $15 per hour minimum
–we need immigration reform and end to deportations
Sanders spoke of the need to “Stand up and fight back. … With unity of black,
brown, gay, straight, male, female …. There is nothing we cannot accomplish. …
We are going to the convention to win the nomination.”
Not Conciliatory
It did not sound like a conciliation or “let’s make up” speech to the Democratic
Party establishment. Sanders said his message to the Democratic Convention is
“We are the campaign to defeat Donald Trump.”
Six months ago I was skeptical of Bernie Sanders campaign. Not anymore. He has
been tremendously successful in showing the world there are huge numbers of
Americans, especially youth, who want major changes in society and government
policy. He has raised the consciousness of millions, sharply contrasting Wall
Street’s wealth at the expense of working people.
He does not speak much on foreign policy, but what he does say indicates a
significant improvement. In Vallejo, his only foreign policy comments were
asking why we are rebuilding Afghanistan when we should be rebuilding inner
cities at home. It’s a good point, which matches his overall position of
stopping a foreign policy of aggression and “regime change.”
Will Bernie Sanders fold up his campaign, corral his supporters and cheer for
the Democratic Establishment after they have made some token changes in their
platform? It’s possible, but I doubt it. Why? Because I think what some of the
young people said is likely true: He is consistent and he does have integrity.
His campaign has been based around the needs of working people versus a corrupt
Establishment which the Democratic Party is part of. Sanders has highlighted the
class nature of our economic system and media. He has focused a bright light on
Wall Street and Hillary Clinton’s complicity. These lessons are not going to be
forgotten or easily retracted.
For those on the Left who disparage Sanders, I say take another look. Listen to
his words and more importantly talk with his crowds of supporters. They are the
future and we should be working with them. Not preaching dogmatically, but
listening. The thousands in Vallejo shouting “Bernie! Bernie!” seem to be doing
so because they want the “bold and radical change” previously dismissed by
pundits.
Rick Sterling has been an organizer and activist for about 45 years. He
currently works with Task Force on the Americas, Mt Diablo Peace & Justice
Center and Syria Solidarity Movement. The views expressed in this article are
his own. He can be contacted at [email protected]
Democrats, Too Clever by Half on Clinton
Exclusive: Democratic Party honchos who wanted Hillary Clinton’s coronation are
having some regrets as her weaknesses become obvious, her poll numbers sink, and
Donald Trump surges toward the lead, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
Last year when Democratic insiders looked forward to Election 2016, they
expected a run-of-the-mill Republican, possibly even legacy candidate Jeb Bush.
So they countered with their own “safe” next-in-line legacy candidate, Hillary
Clinton, who would supposedly win by playing up the prospect of the first woman
president.
In such an expected match-up, the concern of rank-and-file Democrats about
Clinton’s hawkish foreign policy would be negated by the GOP nominee still
defending President George W. Bush’s Iraq War and again surrounded by neocons
pounding the drums for even more wars. With both parties putting forward war
candidates, anti-war Democrats would accept Clinton as the lesser evil, or so
the thinking went.
The likely Republican nominee also would be burdened by reactionary domestic
proposals, including GOP plans for privatizing Social Security and Medicare. By
contrast, centrist Clinton would look reasonable in promising to protect those
popular programs, albeit with some modest trimming of benefits to please the
budget hawks.
But the Democratic insiders didn’t count on the unlikely emergence of populist
billionaire Donald Trump, who repudiated Bush’s Iraq War and the GOP’s neocon
foreign policy and rejected Republican orthodoxy on “entitlement reform,” i.e.,
slashing Social Security and Medicare.
The unabashed Trump also has made clear that he is not afraid of countering
Clinton’s “woman card” by playing his own “man card,” including attacks on her
troubled marriage and her tolerance of Bill Clinton’s notorious womanizing, even
claiming that she was her wayward husband’s “enabler.”
At first, the Democratic hierarchy couldn’t believe its luck as the Republican
Party seemed to splinter over Trump’s disdain for the GOP’s
neocon interventionism and rejection of the party’s cutbacks in Social Security
and Medicare. Trump’s mocking attacks on his rivals also shattered the decorum
that Republican leaders had hoped would mark their primary campaign.
So, the Democratic insiders initially rubbed their hands with glee and imagined
not only an easy presidential victory but major gains in the House and Senate.
However, new polls show Trump running neck-and-neck with Clinton nationally and
in key battleground states, while other polls reveal strong public doubts about
Clinton’s honesty, thus wiping the premature smiles off the Democrats’ faces.
Panic Mode
Indeed, some Democrats reportedly are slipping into panic mode as they watch
Clinton’s poll numbers tank and the Republican Party come to grips with the
Trump phenomenon. The new storyline of Campaign 2016 is the tale of top
Republicans reconciling to Trump’s populist conquest of the party. At least,
these GOP leaders acknowledge, Trump has excited both average Republicans and
many independents.
The obsessive media coverage of Trump’s meetings on Thursday with senior
congressional Republicans made the narcissistic real estate mogul and reality TV
star look like some major world leader being received in Washington as a
conquering hero. And, with the GOP rallying behind Trump, the likelihood is that
his poll numbers and favorable/unfavorable ratings will continue to improve.
So, instead of Democratic dreams of a landslide victory, the party insiders are
worrying now about their decision to coronate a deeply flawed and wounded
candidate in Hillary Clinton. Not only could she lose to Trump but she could
take many of the House and Senate candidates down with her. It’s dawning on some
Democrats that they may have squandered a historic opportunity to realign
American politics to the left by promoting the wrong person in 2016.
At a moment when the American people are demanding change – even willing to risk
entrusting the White House to the unorthodox and inexperienced Donald Trump –
the Democratic Party may be stuck with an uninspiring status quo candidate who
also is pro-war, indeed far more hawkish than President Barack Obama.
Thus, in the fall election, not only would Trump be in a position to bait
Clinton about her dysfunctional marriage, reminding the nation of the messy
scandals of the 1990s, but he could challenge her on her warmongering positions,
including her years of support for the Iraq War and her hawkish policies as
Secretary of State, including her instigation of the disastrous “regime change”
war in Libya. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Yes, Hillary Clinton Is a Neocon.”]
This November could be the first time in modern American history when the
Republican nominee would be the relative “peace candidate” and the Democrat
would be the “war candidate.” That changing places could lose Clinton much of
the “anti-war left,” a significant faction within the Democratic coalition with
many “peace Democrats” either voting for Trump or choosing a third party, such
as the Greens.
Of course, the Democrats didn’t have to be in this position. The party leaders
could have encouraged a more competitive primary contest instead of trying to
keep alternative candidates, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren and some younger
Democratic prospects, on the sidelines, all the better to give Hillary Clinton
an unimpeded path to the nomination. The party insiders treated Clinton like an
incumbent president seeking reelection, a foregone conclusion.
Alternatives, Anyone?
But the best laid plans of mice and politicians often go astray. How weak
Clinton is as a candidate has been underscored by her struggle to put away a
progressive challenge from Sen. Bernie Sanders, a 74-year-old “democratic
socialist” from Vermont, who isn’t even technically a Democrat, listing himself
as an Independent.
Even though the vast majority of “super-delegates” – i.e., party insiders – have
lined up behind Clinton and she leads in pledged delegates, Sanders continues to
win primaries, including recent ones in Indiana and West Virginia, and he could
roll up a series of victories in upcoming western state races.
Clinton could stagger to the Democratic convention in July with a dispirited
party lining up glumly to witness her long-delayed coronation. The onlookers
might sense that they had made a terrible mistake but couldn’t correct it. They
would be left to grit their teeth and hope that Clinton’s self-inflicted wounds,
such as her private emails as Secretary of State, don’t fester and become fatal.
Arguably, it is the Democrats who would benefit the most from a contested
convention, one that might give them an opportunity to reconsider the choice of
Clinton and either nominate Sanders, who fares much better against Trump in poll
match-ups, or pick someone else, possibly a fresh face like Sen. Warren.
While that may be highly unlikely – even if Sanders sweeps the remaining
primaries – it is beginning to dawn on Democratic insiders that their scheme
to grease the skids for a Clinton nomination might end up slipping Donald Trump
into the White House.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for
The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book,
America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon
and barnesandnoble.com).
Sanders Annoys Democratic Establishment
The Democratic establishment is growing impatient with Bernie Sanders who
continues to delay the party’s long-planned coronation of Hillary Clinton, a
vexation expressed by Paul Krugman and criticized by Rick Sterling.
By Rick Sterling
When Republicans are in the White House, columnist Paul Krugman and The New York
Times sometimes sound pretty good. But when someone starts seriously and
effectively challenging core assumptions and values of our political economic
system, the progressive veneer quickly vanishes. This is demonstrated in Paul
Krugman’s attack on the Bernie Sanders campaign in his “Sanders Over the Edge”
editorial.
Krugman does not hold back. Bernie supporters and Bernie himself are described
by Krugman as intolerant, cultish, shallow, vague, without substance, lacking
character and values, dishonest, short on ethics, really bad, petulant and selfrighteous. Wow.
Krugman’s diatribe deserves scrutiny and lampooning. The purpose seems to be to
ridicule, threaten and warn Sanders to get back in line. Instead, progressives
may intensify their support for Sanders and tell Krugman to get his facts
straight. Here are some key falsehoods in the Krugman attack:
Krugman dismisses Sanders’ call to “break up the big banks” and suggests the
financial giants did not cause the economic crash; the problem was “predatory
lending” by smaller outfits such as Countrywide Financial. This analysis is
nonsense and contradicts what Krugman himself has said in the past. The
predatory lenders were minor players in the process. The loans would never have
been issued if they were not being bought up and bundled together into
collateral debt obligations (CDOs) and other “products” by major financial
institutions such as Goldman Sachs. They were the ones driving the operation not
the individual lenders.
Krugman goes on to claim Sanders does not have any specific proposals and that
“going on about big banks is pretty much all Mr. Sanders has done” and “absence
of substance beyond slogans seems to be true of his positions across the board.”
This is untrue, easily confirmed by looking at the Sanders website. Sanders has
called for a tax on Wall Street speculation/trading, dramatic changes in the tax
code, increasing the minimum wage to $15 per hour, canceling detrimental trade
accords and imposing individual penalties for corporate crime. These are clear
and specific with similar details in virtually every policy area.
Krugman claims Sanders and supporters were ‘just plain dishonest’ when they
accused Clinton of receiving substantial funding from the fossil fuel industry.
Krugman relies on the establishment “fact checks” of the Times, The Washington
Post and NPR. However those “fact checks” have been refuted by Fairness and
Accuracy in Reporting which confirms that Clinton did in fact receive
substantial funding as claimed by Sanders. The FAIR title gives the essence:
“NPR Fact Checker can’t be bothered to check.”
Krugman gets really worked up because Sanders issued a “rant” suggesting Mrs.
Clinton may not be “qualified” to be President after taking so much funding from
Wall Street and supporting recent and past U.S. foreign aggression and
intervention which has backfired badly.
Krugman says Sanders is “really bad on two levels” — “imposing a standard of
purity “ and raising the specter that Sanders supporters may not happily support
Clinton as the “strong favorite for the Democratic nomination.”
This is the
core message from Krugman, a warning to Sanders to get back on the establishment
bus.
Krugman thinks it is hopelessly purist to expect a President who will not take
the country into new wars and sustain illegal coups such as in Honduras. Many
Sanders supporters know about Clinton’s role in Honduras, Libya and beyond,
probably better than Krugman. That’s why some will not transfer their votes to
her.
Is Krugman not aware of the reason for Sanders’s success? Sanders is calling for
radical transformation in the economy, criminal justice, health-care, education
and foreign policy. He is publicly saying this needs to be done with a populist
“political revolution.” He is winning huge support with that message and because
many see him as sincere and authentic, not a normal politician. That is clearly
troubling to Krugman and the Times.
The New York Times has endorsed Hillary Clinton and their candidate is in
jeopardy. This may be contributing to escalating attacks on Bernie and
whitewashes of Hillary.
[For more on this topic, see the Young Turks for a video take-down of Krugman
and his attack on Sanders.
Rick Sterling is base in the San Francisco Bay Area and writes primarily on
international issues.
How the Democratic Party Got Lost
Though the political odds still favor Hillary Clinton, her stumbling candidacy
and dependence on vast sums of special-interest money reflect the weaknesses of
the Democratic Party, which lost its way in the 1980s and 1990s, forgetting its
historic role as defender of the little guy, as Michael Brenner explains.
By Michael Brenner
The Clinton juggernaut is losing traction. Powered by the full weight of the
Democratic Establishment, it was designed to smoothly carry its idol across
America and into the White House. It still may get there. But now it must
traverse a far more treacherous and uncertain route than Hillary Clinton and her
entourage ever imagined.
The course is lined with the pundits, operatives and analysts who will cover the
spectacle with their usual attention to trivia and a faith in their own
perspicacity which matches that of the heroine herself.
This was all predictable. For it conforms to the parochialism and inbreeding
that for so long has infirmed the Democratic Party’s leadership as well as the
punditocracy. Fortunes could be made betting against the “Washington consensus”
whose singular talent for getting it wrong extends from the country’s endless
skein of foreign misadventures to electoral politics.
They give the impression of all sipping out of each other’s double-lattes at
Starbucks in Dupont Circle. The resulting damage done to the party’s traditional
constituents, to the integrity of national discourse and to America’s interests
in the world is incalculable and may well be irreparable.
Still, it is worth recording the pathologies that this latest bruising encounter
with reality reveal. Most obvious is the disconnect between political elites and
the country they presume to know or aspire to govern. The success of Bernie
Sanders makes that transparently clear. His greatest asset is simply that (even
though he has served in the Senate as an Independent) he ran as a “Democrat” –
that is, as representative of the party as forged in the mid-Twentieth Century
and whose precepts conform to the socio-economic interests and philosophical
truths typically held by most Americans today.
Sanders is the first presidential candidate to do so since Walter Mondale in
1984. Mondale’s defeat convinced many pols that the future lay with the Reagan
smorgasbord of discredited nostrums and myths repackaged by skillful political
craftsmen as the new Revelation. Market fundamentalist economic models, a
cartoonish version of American individualism a la Ayn Rand, financial
libertinism, muscle-flexing abroad in the mantle of democratic proselytizing,
and anti-government demagoguery were fashioned into an intoxicating cocktail.
It worked to the extent that the cheap high that it produced tapped latent
racism, jingoism, evangelical Christian passions, and a new-found greedy
selfishness which was the mutant offspring of 1960s liberation.
Disoriented Democrats badly miscalculated the danger, and in the process lost
sight of who they were. Most damaging, many found a comfortable niche in this
new world of hallucination. Among them are the careerists, the trendy
intellectuals*, and the ambitious politicians who thought that they had
discovered the one route to recouping power and glory.
Together, they reshaped the Democratic Party into a me-too auxiliary to a waxing
conservative movement. Today, it is radical reactionary Republicans who sweep
elections at state and local levels, who hold an iron grip on the Congress, who
have used their power to ruthlessly transform the judiciary into an active ally.
True, Democrats have won the White House twice. Bill Clinton did thanks to Ross
Perot and then retained it against feeble opposition. In the process, he moved
progressively to the Right in policy and philosophy (“the era of Big Government
is over”). Republican ascendancy followed.
Only the Bush era collapse into disaster abroad and at home made possible Barack
Obama who presented himself not as the embodiment of Democratic values but as a
transcendent bipartisan healer — with just a few vermilion strokes. A prophet
without message or mission. Whatever liberal ideas he had sounded were swiftly
abandoned in what is surely the most shameless bait-and-switch in American
political history.
This was predictable. After all, he thrice cited Ronald Reagan as the man who
most influenced his view of the Presidency. His administrations arguably were
oriented to the Right of Richard Nixon on civil liberties as well as on economic
and social programs. Look it up.
His White House actually took delight in maligning “Progressives” as made
manifest in Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s cursing out of their representatives
personally within its walls.
That was the administration of which Hillary
Clinton, the born-again “progressive,” was a mainstay.
The cause already was abandoned in his first months in office when the Democrats
held majorities in both houses of Congress. Indeed, Obama’s embrace of the Wall
Street barons was what allowed the Tea Party to channel popular anger and fear
into a well-financed anti-government, know-nothing movement which nowadays
dominates the political landscape. Hence, Obama drove the final nails into the
coffin of the old Democratic Party.
This evolution of American politics in effect disenfranchised something like 20
percent of the electorate. They are Bernie Sanders’s constituency. It’s as
simple as that. Personalities do play a role, but it is a secondary one. Sanders
as a person stands out for his integrity, his earnestness, for his truthtelling, for his transparent decency. It is the message, though, that counts
above all.
An old Brooklyn Jew who advertises himself as a “Socialist” is not a compelling
figure on the political stage. Intelligent and well-informed on domestic
matters, he is not a phrase-maker, not verbally nimble, an incurably respectful
gentleman, and largely disengaged from foreign policy where Hillary was
custodian of ACT II in the pageant of American failure and fiasco in the Middle
East.
In addition, Sanders feels inhibited about attacking the misdeeds of the Obama
years out of a concern for estranging black voters, and turning the President
from Hillary’s tacit ally into an active ally. Yet, he has made history with
unprecedented accomplishments in the teeth of implacable opposition from the
entire political and media establishment. At the moment, Sanders nearly has
caught Hillary in the national polls and actually performs marginally better in
hypothetical contests against the major Republican contenders.
Clinton’s shortcomings and failures are aggravated by the widespread distrust
that she engenders. That was evident a year ago. She has had higher “negatives”
in polls that any serious candidate ever. So why was she crowned even before the
contest began? Why did no other candidates present themselves? Why did
Democratic bigwigs feel so complacent at the prospect of another electoral
setback?
One common answer is that there was nobody else. Decimated at the state level,
and lacking fresh blood in the Senate, they have a very thin squad. For the
better part of a decade, Harry Reid has been the face of the Democratic Party
outside of the White House and during Obama’s romantic non-partisanship phases,
its face country-wide.
Still, someone like former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley could have been
promoted as a credible candidate had the party leaders the will to do so.
Compare him to George W. Bush in 2000. The Republicans molded that non-entity
into a winner with relative ease. Democrats had much more to work with in
O’Malley.
Or, they could have rallied behind Elizabeth Warren. Admittedly, she wasn’t
interested. Just think, though, of what could have happened had she been
persuaded to run. For one thing, she quickly would have eclipsed Hillary as the
frontrunner. Razor sharp, personable, with a blue-steel edge to her words, and
resolute she likely would have delivered the Last Rites to Clinton by Super
Tuesday.
And then imagine her against any of the Republicans hopefuls whose only chance
of winning turns on Clinton’s negatives. A Warren Republican X contest,
moreover, would have raised the prospect of a Democratic comeback across the
board that is utterly beyond Clinton’s capabilities.
The principal reason the Democratic Establishment lined up behind Hillary
Clinton in lockstep is their lack of conviction and a political timidity that
arises from 1) capture by the big donors, and 2) past failures that have sapped
self-confidence. Their uniform commitment to a flaccid orthodoxy has been
evident for all to see these past few weeks as Hillary Clinton’s supporters hit
the panic button. It has not been a pretty performance.
From the Editors of The New York Times and Paul Krugman (who now sees Hillary
Clinton as the heir to Obama whom he hagiographically refers to as “one of the
most consequential and successful Presidents in American history”) to the
feminist brigade headed by Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright, Democratic
stalwarts have embarrassed themselves by their contrived and specious arguments
for Clinton.
This is not to say that there isn’t a reasonable and logical case to be made for
voting for her. It is the falsity of the presentation by those eminences that
reveals the hollowness at the party’s core. Its leaders never miss an
opportunity to display their political obtuseness and fearfulness about leaving
their very narrow, personal comfort zone.
The blunt truth is that the Democratic leadership has been meek and fearful for
decades. They can’t stand the sight of blood especially if it’s their opponents.
It took Newt Gingrich in 2012 to make an issue of predatory hedge funds and
private equity. Reluctantly picked up by Obama, it resonated well so well that a
gaggle of Wall Street operatives led by Steven Ratner called the White House to
express vehemently their displeasure. Obama pulled the ads. (Jane Meyer Dark
Money).
Now it is Donald Trump who boldly steps forth to declare that the intervention
in Iraq was based on lies, and that it is the source of our current troubles in
the region. No Democrat, including Sanders, is ready to make that case with
equal force. None has since 2008. One can go on and on. It’s a loser’s
mentality. You don’t get to the White House by walking on eggshells.
In the end, Hillary Clinton in all likelihood will be the nominee. Equally true,
she will arrive at the convention in Philadelphia D.O.A. That is to say, D.O.A.
if the Republicans somehow free themselves from their adrenalin-soaked tantrum
to nominate a sensible candidate. For the Democrats’ one hope is that the
opposition continue on its suicidal track that runs parallel to their own. Such
is the state of American politics.
Michael Brenner is a professor of international affairs at the University of
Pittsburgh.
Shaking Up the Democratic Party
By demanding a “revolution” to shift power away from Wall Street, Sen. Sanders
is attracting millions of young Americans who want fundamental change. He’s also
upsetting the Democratic establishment which favors only incremental “reforms”
acceptable to corporate interests, as Norman Solomon notes.
By Norman Solomon
Forty-eight years ago, a serious insurrection jeopardized the power structure of
the national Democratic Party for the first time in memory. Propelled by the
movement against the Vietnam War, that grassroots uprising cast a big electoral
shadow soon after Sen. Eugene McCarthy dared to challenge the incumbent for the
Democratic presidential nomination.
When 1968 got underway, the news media were scoffing at McCarthy’s antiwar
campaign as quixotic and doomed. But in the nation’s leadoff New Hampshire
primary, McCarthy received 42 percent of the vote while President Lyndon B.
Johnson couldn’t quite get to 50 percent — results that were shattering for LBJ.
Suddenly emboldened, Sen. Robert Kennedy quickly entered the race. Two weeks
later, Johnson announced that he wouldn’t seek re-election.
Although the nomination eventually went to Johnson’s vice president Hubert
Humphrey — a supporter of the war who was the choice of Democratic power brokers
— the unmasking of the party’s undemocratic process led to internal reforms that
aided the Democratic Party’s second modern insurrection. It came four years
later, when Sen. George McGovern won the presidential nomination, thanks to
grassroots movements involving young people and activists of color. But any
sense of triumph disappeared in the wake of President Nixon’s landslide reelection in November 1972.
The third major insurrection came in 1988, when Jesse Jackson led a dynamic,
multiracial “rainbow” campaign for president that had major impacts on the
national stage. (His previous campaign, in ’84, had been relatively weak.) The
1988 primaries and caucuses were hard-fought, state by state, with rainbow
activists working shoulder-to-shoulder, whether focused on issues of class, race
or gender. (Back then, Jackson was a gutsy voice for social justice, for human
rights and against war — much more willing to confront the Democratic Party
establishment than he is now.)
At the contentious Democratic National Convention that summer in Atlanta, where
Jackson delegates were highly visible as 30 percent of the total, the old guard
closed ranks behind nominee Michael Dukakis.
Now, as the delegate selection process for 2016 gets underway, we’re in the
midst of the first major insurrection against the Democratic Party power
structure in 28 years. The millions of us who support the Bernie Sanders
campaign — whatever our important criticisms — should aim to fully grasp the
huge opportunities and obstacles that await us.
Of the three previous insurrections, only one gained the nomination, and none
won the presidency. Corporate capitalism — wielding its muscular appendage, mass
media — can be depended upon to take off the gloves and pummel the
insurrection’s candidate to the extent that the campaign has gained momentum.
That happened to McCarthy, McGovern and Jackson. It’s now happening to Sanders.
The last days of January brought one big-daily newspaper editorial
after another after another attacking Bernie with vehemence and vitriol. The
less unlikely his winning of the nomination gets, the more that mega-media
assaults promoting absurdities will intensify.
Meanwhile — at least as long as her nomination is threatened from the left —
Hillary Clinton will benefit from corporate biases that wallpaper the mass-media
echo chambers. The Sunday New York Times editorial endorsing Clinton could
hardly be more fanciful and hagiographic if written by her campaign.
Many of the same media outlets and overall corporate forces that denounced
Eugene McCarthy in 1968, George McGovern in 1972 and Jesse Jackson in 1988 are
gunning for Bernie Sanders in 2016. We shouldn’t be surprised. But we should be
ready, willing and able to do our own messaging — widely and intensely — in
communities across the country.
At the same time, we should not confuse electoral campaigns with long-term
political organizing. Campaigns for office are quite different matters than the
more transformative task of building progressive infrastructure — and vibrant
coalitions — that can endure and grow, year after year.
Genuinely progressive candidates can inspire and galvanize — and sometimes they
can even win. But election campaigns, especially national ones, are almost
always boom/bust. Sometimes they can help to fuel movement momentum, but they
aren’t the engine.
Election campaigns are distinct from movements even if they converge for a
while, no matter what pundits and campaign spinners say. Candidates often want
to harness social movements for their campaigns. But our best approach is to
view electoral campaigns as — at best — subsets of movements, not the other way
around.
The Bernie campaign could be a watershed for progressive organizing through the
rest of this decade and beyond. That will largely depend on what activists do —
in the next weeks, months and years.
Norman Solomon is the author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep
Spinning Us to Death. He is the executive director of the Institute for Public
Accuracy and co-founder of RootsAction.org.
A Challenge to Neoliberal Orthodoxy
Conventional thinkers say Jeremy Corbyn’s election to head Britain’s opposition
Labour Party and Bernie Sanders’s surge against Hillary Clinton are
passing fancies that will fade as the summer ends, but Nicolas J S Davies
sees the hope for an inspiring new politics.
By Nicolas J S Davies
Jeremy Corbyn, the chairman of the U.K.’s Stop the War Coalition, is now also
the leader of the U.K.’s main opposition Labour Party.
Bernie Sanders, the
independent socialist Senator from Vermont, is leading in the polls for the
Democratic Party primary in New Hampshire and the latest poll for
the Iowa caucuses.
As Corbyn told the BBC, “politics can change, and we have changed it.”
American socialist Michael Harrington coined the phrase “on the left wing of the
possible” to define the most effective position that people of conscience could
take amid the corruption of capitalist politics. Harrington had a way with words
– he is also credited with coining the term “neoconservative.” But the challenge
on the left of U.S. politics has always been to define just what is “possible.”
The Sanders campaign’s failure to stake out strong progressive positions on
foreign policy and militarism (in contrast with Corbyn in the U.K.) risks
squandering a historic opportunity to build a united front for “a new kind of
politics” in the United States, but it is not too late for him to do so.
The rise of neoliberalism in the 1970s and 1980s succeeded in marginalizing
progressive politics for a generation in the U.S. and U.K., reducing most
political activists’ view of “the possible” to focusing on single-issue advocacy
or supporting the “lesser evil” in actually existing politics – or some illfitting combination of the two.
Rationalizations abound to excuse the outrages of the Clinton and Obama
administrations. Many Democrats now subscribe to a myth of the Presidency as a
powerless office where a fine speech from the “bully pulpit” counts for more
than actual policy decisions that bring death or misery to millions –
and yet the same people still hold President George W. Bush responsible for his
actions!
Such cognitive dissonance is an essential, paralyzing element in the
marginalization of participatory democracy under neoliberalism.
People consider
themselves sophisticated for accepting the glaring contradictions and
compartmentalizations of a “political reality” that is really based on the
endless and uncritical repetition of myths and misinformation, much of it
deliberately crafted by corporate-funded think tanks and PR firms.
Political philosopher Sheldon Wolin coined the term “inverted totalitarianism”
to describe this political system in which traditional tools of democracy like
elections and the press have not been abolished but simply co-opted. Wolin
explains how this has led to a more effective and sustainable concentration of
wealth and political power than “classical totalitarianism” could ever achieve.
But the ability of the wealthy and powerful to define the limits of what is
possible in our society is finally being challenged by political developments in
the U.S. and Europe.
I had the privilege of working with Tim Carpenter during the final years of his
life. After playing a leading role in Harrington’s Democratic Socialists of
America (DSA) and serving as Deputy Campaign Manager in Dennis Kucinich’s
presidential campaign, Carpenter founded Progressive Democrats of America (PDA)
in 2004. His vision of being “on the left wing of the
possible” was always expansive and creative, opening up possibilities for
constructive action where others saw only irreconcilable differences and
insoluble problems.
For example, after PDA endorsed Elizabeth Warren for the Senate, she posted a
threatening, misinformed position statement about Iran on her campaign web
site. PDA members were divided between peace activists who wanted to withdraw
the endorsement, something PDA had never done before, and many members in
Massachusetts who loved Warren regardless.
As always, Carpenter listened to everybody’s point of view, and then he united
PDA in a campaign to educate Warren on Iran and urge her to change her position,
which she eventually did. By the time she came to consider the agreement with
Iran as a U.S. Senator, she was a firm vote for diplomacy on every whip list.
Tim Carpenter and PDA may have been the first national group to ask Bernie
Sanders to run for President as a Democrat, with a “Run, Bernie, Run” campaign
that began in 2013. I remember making the case for this campaign to a skeptical
PDA steering committee in Miami. The Democrats were putting all their eggs in
one basket with Hillary Clinton.
If and when her campaign would implode from the cynicism of her neoconservative
foreign policy record, the corruption of the Clinton Foundation or a dozen other
liabilities, Bernie Sanders could be left standing as the de facto front-runner
for the nomination. Neoliberal power-brokers would scramble to draft somebody
else – as they are now doing – but anyone acceptable to them risks taking more
votes from Clinton than from Sanders.
Tim Carpenter tragically died of cancer in April 2014 after a long and
characteristically courageous struggle. But today’s headlines vindicate
his principled and expansive view of what is “possible” in politics: a nuclear
agreement to avert war on Iran; the rise of Corbyn, Sanders and like-minded
new political leaders in Spain, Greece and elsewhere; a new ceasefire in Ukraine
brokered by France, Germany and Russia; huge rallies all over Europe to welcome
refugees fleeing U.S.-backed wars; and a world starting to wake up to what is
“possible” beyond the injustice, violence and chaos conjured up by the
neoliberal wizards of Washington and Wall Street.
Nicolas J S Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion
and Destruction of Iraq.
He also wrote the chapters on “Obama at War” in
Grading the 44th President: a Report Card on Barack Obama’s First Term as a
Progressive Leader.
The Trump/Sanders Phenomena
Exclusive: The prospect of another competition between the Clinton and Bush
dynasties has sent activists from across the political spectrum searching for
someone new and leading to the unlikely emergence of unorthodox candidates,
billionaire Donald Trump and socialist Bernie Sanders, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
As outlandish as Donald Trump is as a presidential candidate, it’s pretty
obvious why he’s topping the polls of Republican voters: he’s tipping over the
carts of “politics as usual” that Americans understandably hate. In a much more
responsible way, Bernie Sanders is doing the same with Democratic voters though
he’s still trailing Hillary Clinton in most polls.
One of the strongest arguments for Trump and Sanders is that they have refused
to prostitute themselves in the scramble for million-dollar donations, a core
corruption of the U.S. political process. Trump, a real estate mogul and
reality-TV star, boasts about how he rejects big-money donors because he can
finance his own campaign.
Sanders relies heavily on small donations and turned down an offer to create a
“super PAC” that could have raised millions of dollars from wealthy supporters.
Sanders’s campaign says its average donation is $31.30 as Sanders has tapped
broad support among progressives in raising $15.2 million as of July, an
impressive sum but still “far behind Mrs. Clinton’s fund-raising juggernaut,”
the New York Times reported.
Neither Trump nor Sanders has competed in what many political analysts consider
the key initial test for any “serious” candidate the “silent primary” of lining
up super-rich Americans who pour millions of dollars into campaign war chests so
candidates can hire high-priced consultants and finance negative TV ads to tear
down opponents. That process has made candidates from both parties dependent on
special interests.
Ironically, for a nation that denounces Iran, Cuba and other countries for
having special panels of religious elders or party leaders who approve rosters
of acceptable candidates, the United States now has a political system that
requires most candidates to parade themselves before billionaires who then
select the finalists much like the judges do at one of Trump’s beauty pageants.
Trump is not wrong when he bluntly describes how this process works, noting that
the wealthy donors are sure to show up after the election with their hands out
for favors if their hand-picked candidate wins. The presidency and pretty much
every elected office in the United States are up for sale.
Americans across the political spectrum are rightly disgusted by this corrupt
system and thus Trump stands out as someone whose personal wealth and almost
comedic self-confidence make him harder to buy than, say, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker
or almost any of the other Republican candidates. For different reasons,
democratic socialist Bernie Sanders does too.
Clinton’s Style
Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton is part of a political dynasty that has
made an art form out of vacuuming up money from Wall Street, Hollywood and
everywhere in between as well as faraway lands. Bill and Hillary Clinton have
sucked up million-dollar bundles of campaign cash, six-figure speaking fees from
mega-corporations, and massive donations from foreign potentates to the Clinton
Foundation.
With the Clintons, it seems like everything is for sale, leaving much of the
public dubious about where their true allegiances lie. They appear to move
through the political landscape triangulating as they go, calculating what is
most advantageous to say at each moment and then immediately recalculating for
the next moment.
As a U.S. Senator and as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton either showed
extraordinarily bad judgment or simply substituted this family process of
endless triangulation for what passes as judgment. For instance, she voted for
the Iraq War in 2002 not apparently out of any firm conviction that it was the
right thing to do for U.S. national security but rather what looked best then
for her political career.
At nearly every juncture, Hillary Clinton has opted for what seemed like the
safe play at the time. Indeed, it is hard to think of any case in which she
showed anything approaching genuine political courage or statesmanlike wisdom.
Here is just a short list of her misjudgments after the Iraq War:
–In summer 2006, as a New York senator, Clinton supported Israel’s air war
against southern Lebanon which killed more than 1,000 Lebanese. At a pro-Israel
rally in New York on July 17, 2006, Clinton shared a stage with Israel’s
Ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman, a renowned Muslim basher who
proudly defended Israel’s massive violence against targets in Lebanon.
“Let us finish the job,” Gillerman told the crowd. “We will excise the cancer in
Lebanon” and “cut off the fingers” of Hezbollah. Responding to international
concerns that Israel was using “disproportionate” force in bombing Lebanon and
killing hundreds of civilians, Gillerman said, “You’re damn right we are.” [NYT,
July 18, 2006] Clinton did not protest Gillerman’s remarks.
–In late 2006, Clinton fell for the false conventional wisdom that President
George W. Bush’s nomination of Robert Gates to be Secretary of Defense was an
indication that Bush was preparing to wind down the Iraq War when it actually
signaled the opposite, the so-called “surge.” Later, to avoid further offending
the Democratic base as she ran for president, she opposed the “surge,” though
she later acknowledged that she did so for political reasons, according to
Gates’s memoir Duty.
In the early months of the Obama administration, with Gates still Defense
Secretary and Clinton the new Secretary of State, Gates reported what he
regarded as a stunning admission by Clinton, writing: “Hillary told the
president that her opposition to the surge in Iraq had been political because
she was facing him in the Iowa primary [in 2008]. She went on to say, ‘The Iraq
surge worked.’”
–In 2009, Clinton joined with Gates and General David Petraeus to pressure
President Barack Obama into a similar “surge” in Afghanistan which like the
earlier “surge” in Iraq did little more than get another 1,000 U.S. soldiers
killed along with many more Iraqis and Afghans while extending the bloody chaos
in both countries.
–Also, in 2009, Clinton supported a right-wing coup in Honduras, overthrowing
left-of-center President Manuel Zelaya.
–In 2011, Clinton helped spearhead the U.S.-backed “regime change” in Libya,
which led to the torture/murder of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi as Clinton
chuckled, “we came, we saw, he died.” Like the “regime change” in Iraq, the
Libyan “regime change” left the once-prosperous nation in bloody anarchy with
major gains by Islamic extremists, including the Islamic State.
–Also, in 2011, Clinton pressed for a similar “regime change” in Syria adopting
the popular though false notion that a “moderate opposition” would neatly fill
the void after the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad. The reality was that Al
Qaeda and its spin-off, the Islamic State, stood to be the real beneficiaries of
the U.S.-supported destabilization of Syria. These Islamic terrorist groups now
have major footholds in all three Arab countries where Clinton supported “regime
change” Iraq, Syria and Libya.
Neocon Fellow-Traveler
Throughout her time as Senator and Secretary of State, Clinton supported the
aggressive foreign policy prescriptions of the neoconservatives and their
liberal-interventionist allies. In each of these cases, the neocons and liberal
hawks were dominating Official Washington’s debate and it would have taken some
political courage to stand in their way. Hillary Clinton never did.
The enduring mystery with Hillary Clinton is whether she is a true neocon or
whether she simply judges that embracing neocon positions is the “safest” course
for her career that by parroting the neocon “group think” she can win praise
from the national-security elite and that big donors who favor a hard-line
strategy for the Middle East will reward her with campaign contributions.
Whatever the case, Clinton has carefully curried favor with key neocons,
including consulting with Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the neocon Project for
the New American Century, and promoting his wife, Victoria Nuland, making her
the State Department spokesperson and putting her on track to become Assistant
Secretary of State for European Affairs. In that post, Nuland orchestrated
“regime change” in Ukraine, which like other neocon targets has descended into
bloody chaos, but this adventure also has precipitated a dangerous showdown with
nuclear-armed Russia.
Kagan has become a big Clinton booster. According to a New York Times article on
June 16, 2014, Kagan said his neocon views which he has redubbed “liberal
interventionist” will have a strong standing in a possible Hillary Clinton
administration. The Times reported that Clinton “remains the vessel into which
many interventionists are pouring their hopes.”
Kagan was quoted as saying: “I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy.
If
she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue it’s something that might
have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it
that; they are going to call it something else.” [For more, see
Consortiumnews.com’s “Is Hillary Clinton a Neocon-Lite?”]
Clinton has won praise from another leading neocon, Max Boot, who wrote in a
review of Gates’s book that “it is clear that in [Obama] administration councils
she was a principled voice for a strong stand on controversial issues, whether
supporting the Afghan surge or the intervention in Libya.”
In other words, Democrats will have to decide if they wish to nominate a “closet
neocon” to be the next president, someone who will triangulate her way into
appointing the likes of Kagan and/or Nuland as key advisers or possibly to
senior State Department posts. So far the Democratic campaign has focused
overwhelmingly on domestic issues, giving Clinton and even Sanders a pass on
their foreign policy positions.
Meanwhile, on the Republican side, the more traditional candidates all have
embraced hawkish positions on international issues with the limited exception of
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has shown less enthusiasm for foreign
interventions while still trying to avoid the “isolationist” label that was
stuck on his father, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.
But the rest of the traditional field has criticized President Obama for alleged
weakness and some have attacked Trump for supposedly lacking foreign policy
expertise. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, who has been one of the most
consistent neocons, lectured Trump about his supposed ignorance of the Middle
East, a region that Graham and his fellow travelers have thoroughly messed up.
Given all that, is it so surprising that many conservative Republicans as
disgusted with Official Washington as many progressives are would prefer a
renegade like Trump to the bland cast of grubbing politicians who are regarded
by the mainstream press as the “serious candidates”? The bigger question is
whether progressive Democrats are ready to make a similar break from the pack
and make Sanders that sort of alternative, too.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for
The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book,
America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon
and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush
Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The
trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click
here.
America’s Pseudo-Democracy
U.S. pundits mock countries, like Iran or China, where candidates are screened
before they go on the ballot, but America has a similar approach, with
candidates needing approval from plutocrats and special interests. But that’s
just one problem of U.S. democracy, says Lawrence Davidson.
By Lawrence Davidson
Given the dangerous results of the recent election in the United States – one
that saw the Republicans, a right-wing party increasingly populated with neocon
warmongers, reactionaries and plutocrats take control of both houses of Congress
– it might be time to take a look at a sober look at U.S. democracy.
We can begin be taking note of the generic observation made by Winston
Churchill: “Democracy is the worse form of government, except for all the other
forms that have been tried from time to time.” The implication here is that
democracy is really not the God-blessed system so many of Americans take it to
be.
For instance, the public in a democracy is just as vulnerable to manipulation by
various elites and interest groups as are those in non-democratic environments.
The difference is that a democracy has a built-in procedure that allows citizens
to have second thoughts about past manipulation. Thus they can kick out the
bastards they were originally persuaded to kick in – even if it is often only to
replace them with a new set of bastards.
This repeated procedure results in a time limit on the damage elected leaders
can do. It is, of course, possible that democratically elected politicians can
come close to ruining a nation (their own as well as others) even given their
limited tenure.
The Recent Election
The recent election results tell us a lot about the weak points of democracy as
practiced in the U.S. For instance, there is the fact that, at any particular
time, one-half to two-thirds of Americans are paying little or no attention to
what is going on in the public realm. They do not know, and maybe they don’t
care, who is making policy for their community, be it in the mayor’s office, the
state house or the White House.
Yet, despite this disregard, they can be readily manipulated by their
politicians using the media. This is often done through scare tactics involving
innuendo and outright lies about things of which the populace is ignorant:
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, barbarian Russians in the Ukraine,
terrorists in Israel/Palestine, and a more recent one, the danger of an
allegedly pending Ebola plague in the U.S. The extent to which this sort of
misinformation can be used to sway the opinion of an otherwise uncaring public
is limited only by how much money candidates and their parties have to spend on
media advertising.
Even with millions upon millions of dollars spent on campaigning, moving
Americans to the polls, particularly in a mid-term election like the recent one,
is like herding cats. In the last election only 36.4 percent of eligible voters
turned out, the lowest turnout in 72 years. Such turnouts give an edge to those
who have best mobilized their constituency. Both parties certainly do try to do
this, but Republicans appear to have an edge.
That edge comes from an ideological orientation that drives many Republicans to
actively oppose causes ranging from gun control, to abortion, to the regulatory
power of the federal government, all of which is pursued in the name of maximum
individual “freedom.” To exert such negative influence, hardcore Republican
voters will turn out in great numbers, particularly in the U.S. South and
Midwest.
There are other unseemly weaknesses as well, such as the gerrymandering of
voting districts by whatever party controls a state legislature so as to
minimize the number congressional districts controlled by the opposing party.
Through gerrymandering you can win most of the congressional seats while losing
the overall popular vote. This is actually a form of cheating, but to date it is
legal.
And there is a certain level of stupidity that seems particular to the
Democratic Party. The Democratic leadership has a real knack for designing
platforms and campaigns that ignore the working class, rural poor and much of
that part of the U.S. population that is left of center. We know the left-ofcenter folks are out there and active because during most national elections, a
number of progressive local ballot initiatives are passed into law.
In more general terms what does this all tell us of U.S. democracy? Well, it
tells us that, just like more authoritarian forms of government, it is a system
that is open to officially sponsored deceit. It tells us that this lying and
other forms of corruption have been so persistent over time that millions of
Americans are alienated from the political process.
And, finally, it tells us that democracies are not immune to the harmful
consequences of ideologies that quite often override national needs. One can see
this in the influence of those who, for ideological reasons, stand in the way of
rational gun control or seek to prevent the federal government from asserting
necessary financial, business and environmental regulation.
Democracy and Foreign Policy
We should also remember Churchill’s observation that democracy is not a flawless
political system when we consider the dubious claims made for popular government
in the realm of foreign policy. For instance, the claim that democracies don’t
war against each other.
This claim is not well thought through and therefore, at best, an oversimplification. For if democracies do not often wage open war against each
other, the stronger ones seem to have no compunction about subverting weaker
ones for strategic and/or economic reasons.
This behavior includes frequent efforts to transform independent democracies
into compliant dictatorships. The United States has quite a record in this
regard – an ironic fact because it proclaims that a central goal of its foreign
policy is to spread democracy. If that were true, how would Washington account
for the following?
In 1953 the U.S. government destroyed through subversion the democracy in Iran.
In 1954 it did the same thing to the democracy in Guatemala. In 1956 the U.S.
refused to go along with United Nations-sponsored free elections in Vietnam and
instead backed an unpopular authoritarian regime in the south of that country.
In 1958 Washington sent marines onto the beaches of Lebanon to support a
minority Christian party’s attempt to subvert that country’s constitution. In
1973 the U.S. was complicit in the overthrow of the elected government in Chile.
Since the late 1990s the U.S. has been engaged in an effort to subvert the
democratic government of Venezuela because it disapproved of Hugo Chevez, the
elected president, and his successors. And, of course, the U.S. actively
subverted the free and fair election held in Palestine in 2006.
There are other examples of this sort of behavior that can be given but these
are sufficient to establish the fact that democracies do act with hostility
toward one another. Thus, the proposition that if all the world’s nations were
democracies there would be no armed conflict is very naive.
There is a recent study by researchers at Princeton University that concludes
that the U.S. is no longer a democracy of voting citizens. Rather, it is an
oligarchy of “rich, well-connected individuals on the political scene [who] now
steer the direction of the country, regardless of or even against the will of
the majority of voters.”
My take on this is only slightly different. Long ago I came to the conclusion
that the United States was in fact a “democracy” of competing interest groups
whose parochial goals override the national interest and/or those of ordinary
citizens.
The average voter is an important constituent of his congressperson, senator,
governor, or even mayor only for that short period of time when he or she must
be convinced to cast a ballot. When that time is over, the voter recedes into
the background and the real constituents are now powerful interest groups with
the money to buy political access and influence. Those who control and represent
these interest groups are part of this country’s ruling oligarchy.
Such is the pseudo-democracy most Americans hold so dear. It still has its
virtues relative to more authoritarian forms of rule. However, these too may be
shrinking.
After 9/11 the rule of law and freedom of speech in the U.S. have been
compromised. You can still write an essay like this one, but if you work for the
government or the mainstream press and divulge the government’s criminal
excesses, you are likely to end up in jail or exile. These are precarious times
and they don’t show American democracy in a very good light – a sobering picture
indeed.
Lawrence Davidson is a history professor at West Chester University in
Pennsylvania. He is the author of Foreign Policy Inc.: Privatizing America’s
National Interest;　America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from
Balfour to Israeli Statehood; and Islamic Fundamentalism.
Obama’s Last Chance
Exclusive: For six years, President Obama has bent to the will of Official
Washington by reneging on promises to the American people for “transparency” and
operating instead as an out-of-touch “insider.” Now, the Democratic election
debacle offers him a last chance to remember why he was elected, writes Robert
Parry.
By Robert Parry
The Democrats clearly deserved to lose on Tuesday, though the Republicans may
not have deserved to win. Indeed, there was almost a yin-yang quality to the
Democratic rout/Republican victory in which the Democrats played into almost all
the Republican themes, making the outcome feel inevitable.
Most notably, President Barack Obama and the Democrats shelved all the
“contentious” issues that might have rallied their “base” to turn out and vote.
Immigration reform was put on hold; release of the Senate report on “torture”
was postponed; what to do about “global warming” was ignored; the argument about
the value of activist government was silenced; etc., etc., etc.
On a personal level, supposedly polarizing “liberal” candidates, such as actor
Ashley Judd in Kentucky, were pushed aside in favor of supposedly more
“electable” candidates, like Alison Lundergan Grimes. Unwilling to say whether
she had voted for President Obama in 2012, Grimes managed to win only 41 percent
of the vote against the perennially unpopular Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell.
Obama himself was virtually sidelined from many races in what was an implicit
Democratic admission of the Republican theme that Obama was a failure and that
he deserved an electoral repudiation. The smell of fear pervaded the Democratic
ranks and panic is not the most inspiring of emotions.
In some states, the Democrats seemed enamored with what might be called the
“nepotism strategy,” counting on the “magic” of political names and family
connections to somehow overcome their lack of message and their image of
timidity: Pryor in Arkansas, Grimes in Kentucky, Nunn in Georgia all went down
to decisive defeat.
In the bigger picture, the Democratic failure seems part and parcel with the
broader weakness of progressivism in the United States. The Right continues to
dominate in areas of media and messaging, investing billions upon billions of
dollars in a vertically integrated media apparatus, from the older technologies
of print, radio and TV to the newer ones around the Internet. The Right also has
layers upon layers of think tanks and other propaganda outlets.
By comparison, the Left has never made anything close to a comparable
investment. And, even the ostensibly “liberal” network MSNBC and the purportedly
“liberal” New York Times fall into line behind neoconservative foreign policy
initiatives at nearly every turn, such as the “regime change” campaigns in
Syria, Iran and Ukraine. So, too, do many of the supposedly “liberal” think
tanks, such as the Brookings Institution and the New America Foundation.
Indeed, a remarkable reality about U.S. policy circles is that six years after
the end of George W. Bush’s disastrous neocon-dominated presidency, the neocons
continue to dominate America’s foreign policy thinking, albeit sometimes
rebranded as “liberal interventionism.”
A ‘Closet Realist’
Though President Obama may be something of a “closet realist” hoping to work
quietly with foreign adversaries to resolve international crises he has never
taken firm control over his own foreign policy.
Obama apparently thought that neocon holdovers from the Bush years, like Gen.
David Petraeus or Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria
Nuland, and Democratic neocons, such as his first Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, would somehow drop their ideological certitudes and cooperate with his
approach.
Instead, the neocons and their “liberal interventionist” allies burrowed deep
into the foreign policy bureaucracy and pop up periodically to press for their
war-mongering agendas. A distracted President Obama always seems outmaneuvered
from the 2009 Afghan “surge,” to the 2010 stand-off over Iran’s nuclear program,
to the 2011 civil wars in Libya and Syria, to the 2014 Ukrainian coup d’etat.
Arriving late at each new crisis, Obama usually signs off on what the neocons
want, although he intermittently pushes for his “realist” approach, such as
collaborating with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in avoiding a U.S. war on
Syria in 2013 and negotiating a peaceful settlement to Iran’s nuclear program,
which could be completed in 2014 if Obama doesn’t lose his nerve.
The big question now is whether the Democrats’ humiliating defeat on Nov. 4 will
teach Obama and the party any meaningful lessons or will the Democrats just kid
themselves into thinking that “demographics” will save them or that they will
prevail in 2016 by avoiding controversial stands and putting up another famous
“name,” in Hillary Clinton.
Will Obama finally realize that he has to revert back to his inspiring messages
of 2008 on issues such as his promise of government transparency? For the past
six years, transparency has worked only one way: the government gets to look
into the secrets of citizens while the citizens have no right to know about the
government’s secrets.
There is a fundamental disconnect between this image of an intrusive federal
government spying on everyone and the progressive concept that an active federal
government is necessary to address fundamental problems facing the American
people and the world, such as what to do about global warming, income
inequality, corporate power, racial injustice, etc.
What I’m hearing from many young progressives is that they are so resentful of
government intrusions into their lives that they are veering more toward
libertarianism, even though it offers no solutions to most environmental,
economic and social problems. If Obama hopes to stanch this flow of progressive
youth to the right, he needs to finally recognize that the people need
transparency on the government and the government must learn to trust the
people.
An obvious first step would be to override CIA objections and release the report
on torture during the Bush years. And while Obama is at it, he should make
public the secret pages from the 9/11 report relating to Saudi funding for alQaeda terrorists.
I’m also told that Obama has information that contradicts his administration’s
early claims blaming the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack on the Syrian government
and faulting Russia for the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight
17 over Ukraine. Those two incidents fueled dangerous international
confrontations with the United States nearly going to war against the Syrian
government in 2013 and starting a new Cold War with Russia in 2014.
If Obama has U.S. intelligence information that points the finger of blame in
different directions, he should correct the impressions left by Secretary of
State John Kerry and other U.S. officials. The neocons won’t like that and some
“liberal interventionists” may have egg on their faces, too but misleading
propaganda has no place in a democracy. False information must be removed as
quickly as possible.
Similarly, Obama should commit his administration to expediting release of
historical secrets. Currently, it takes many years, even decades, to pry loose
embarrassing “secrets” from the U.S. government, often allowing false historical
narratives to take hold or creating a hot house for conspiracy theories. It’s
way past time for the U.S. government to give the American people their history
back.
By releasing as much information as possible about important topics, Obama could
finally begin to win back the people’s trust, not just in him but in the
government. Nothing is as corrosive to democratic governance as a belief by the
people that the government doesn’t trust them and that they, in turn, have no
reason to trust the government.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for
The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book,
America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon
and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s
trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives
for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on
this offer, click here.