Some of you may have noticed that I haven’t posted anything about my running regmine this week. Taht’s because I hurt my neck on Friday and haven’t been able to get it loose or to relieve the pain since. I’ll be going to the chiropractor on Saturday and, after two days of more intense pain, the ache does seem a bit lighter today.
That said, I hope to get out sometime next week. But it does mean I have to pass on Sunday’s Run with the Vikings 5K in South Brunswick.
Dispatches is up, on the school consolidation study about to go forward in Middlesex County that would involve Cranbury and Jamesburg.
David Sirota comments on something that I think is going to become an issue come January — something that ties into the concerns I raised yesterday about Barack Obama and progressivism.
Basically, Sirota raised concerns about Bill Clinton’s potential impact on an Obama presidency, given some comments that Clinton made yesterday that had Fox and some conservatives talking about Obama as offering a third Clinton term. (I’m not sure that Clinton was implying that, but impressions are everything in politics.)
Sirota, who spoke on Fox about the Clinton speech, rightly concludes that “Clinton’s entire narrative is the starting gun of what will be a very intense effort by the larger pool of Clintonites to infiltrate an Obama administration.” That, were it to happen, it would undercut Obama’s argument of change and populist economics.
If we can step back and look honestly at the economic situation, then we have to admit (as I admitted on Fox) that Clinton officials had a hand in the key deregulatory policies that led to the financial meltdown, and the key free-market fundamentalist policies (rigged trade deals, corporate tax loopholes, etc.) that are hollowing out the economy. These same people are now going to try to use an Obama presidency to reassume the posts they had in a Clinton administration. And the fact that, according to Bill Clinton, Obama is already potentially letting them – well, that’s really disturbing (if unsurprising).
The hope is with a big enough election mandate, Obama will feel more empowered to sweep out the Clintonites and start fresh – both in terms of personnel, and in terms of ideology. Because if he doesn’t, not only could it stunt his policy agenda, it could also create political problems for him. The media – and especially outlets like Fox News – are going to be looking for weak points that allow them to tar and feather an Obama presidency as just “more of the same.”
Obama, in winning the primaries and potentially the general electon, will have taken control of the Democratic Party — and, by extension, will have relegated Bill Clinton to the history books.
But , as I wrote yesterday, there is a tension apparent in Obama’s political makeup that has him shifting between the progressive/liberal and Clinton wings of the party. Which is why, as I wrote yesterday and as Sirota writes today
it’s important for progressives to start laying down markers about what we should and should not cheer on – what we should and should not expect from an Obama adminstration. In my opinion, it doesn’t help Obama win the election, nor will it help his administration, to be painted as a mere second act for the last Democratic administration.
Making the Obama presidency the third term of Bill Clinton’s presidency is both substantively inappropriate to the times, and politically dangerous/tone deaf. I hope that’s not the path a President Obama takes, should he win the White House.
And it’s a path we shouldn’t allow him to take.
I felt that the presidential primary here in New Jersey in February, when I outlined my reasons for backing Obama over Hillary Clinton, which came down to this:
In the end, I’ll be voting for Obama for two reason: Iraq and Iran. While both Obama and Clinton promise to end the war, only one has been right on the war from the beginning — Obama. Clinton voted to authorize the war with Iraq and, no matter how much she tries to explain it away, I can only view it as either a lack of judgment or a vote of political calculation, neither of which speak well for a candidate who repeatedly says she is the one who will be ready on day one to be president and commander-in-chief.
Her rhetoric on Iran raises some concerns, as well. While she is committed to diplomacy (as is Obama), she has no intention of sitting down with Iranian leaders — which would appear to make diplomacy impossible. Obama is prepared to meet face to face, a willingness that could be likened to Nixon’s opening to China or Reagan’s face-to-face meetings with Gorbachev. Iran is the United States’ chief rival in the Middle East; it is irresponsible not to talk.
I am more comfortable with that decision now than at any time since this seemingly endless presidential race began, my trepidation fading as Obama has weathered the standard political nonsense — Bill Ayres, the Rev. Wright — and shown himself to have a fairly strong grasp of what ails the economy and a real sense of who is hurting most.
While the punditocrisy tends to dismiss left-leaning economic populism as an unwinnable position in presidential politics, Obama has pushed hard in that direction since tying up the nomination and especially over the last two months as the economy has tanked big time.
And, as Matthew Yglesias pointed out earlier today, Obama is
running on a platform that promises universal preschool, dramatic cuts in carbon emissions and investments in clean energy infrastructure, health insurance that would be affordable for all, comprehensive immigration reform, substantial labor law reform, large new spending on K-12 initiatives, and tax reform to make the federal code much more progressive overall. Is it as left-wing as what John Edwards ran on in the primaries in 2008? No. But it’s much more robustly progressive than what John Kerry offered in 2004, what Al Gore offered in 2000, or what Bill Clinton offered in 1996, and somewhat more ambitious than the Clinton ‘92 program. Presumably, that entire agenda won’t actually be enacted.
But if it were enacted, it would be the most dramatic shift in national policy since the high tide of the Great Society.
It also happens to be true that Obama ran a progressive general election campaign. It is one of the ironies of this election season that Obama flipped the usual formula – run to the Left in the primaries and run to the Center in the GE. Obama has done the opposite. He ran to the Center (really he ran to nothing – he ran to the Post Partisan Unity Schtick) during the primaries and to the Left during the general election.
I was late coming to Obama too. I thought too many progressives viewed him as a human Rorschak, reading into him their own desires and transforming him into something that he isn’t. He is, for the most part, a cautious, somewhat moderately liberal politician with good instincts who I think can be turned by more progressive factions and made to do what’s right. I worry, though, that he might just as easily be influenced by the people who had surrounded Clinton and the conventional wisdom people who always argue that things cannot be done. So we will see. That said, I will be voting for him without reservations knowing that he probably is the first major-party candidate in my voting lifetime (going back to Carter-Reagan) that I feel I can truly be supportive of and feel good about voting for.
Seth offered this response:
I gave Kucinich a few bucks after he wrote up articles of impeachment for Cheney and then a few more bucks when he announced that he had seen flying saucers (or some such) while at a party at Shirley MaClaine’s home. That second donation wasn’t really made to help keep his campaign going as much as it was intended as a small reward. Sort of like a prize for just being Dennis Kucinich. So I was pretty lonely until I overheard Sean Hannity going on about Reverend Wright and how no one could seriously argue that Obama could have sat and listened to his sermons for the better part of twenty years unless he was essentially at peace with the leftist
politics of the Black Church. Pretty soon I found myself sneaking into the other room to listen to Hannity’s radio show and in a matter of days he had me convinced that underneath Obama’s cool and hopeful charm there was hiding a genuine lefty like no other in the Democratic party. The son of a bitch might be right! Well, I never looked back. So when Obama caved on the FISA bill I shrugged it off. When he
says he plans to expand the army and get tough with Pakistan I Ignore it. When he supported the bailout I accepted it as politically expedient. So here I am for the first time in my political life suspending my usual critique of the Democratic Party’s long-running capitulation with the Right and fully expecting that the real Obama will emerge on January 20th to the horror of everyone else in Cranbury just as Sean Hannity has predicted. Desperate times….
What does all of this mean? well, I think Norman Solomon sums it up in a column on Alternet, in which he says that an Obama victory would be “a clear national rejection of the extreme right-wing brew that has saturated the executive branch for nearly eight years.”
What’s emerging for Election Day is a common front against the dumbed-down demagoguery that’s now epitomized and led by John McCain and Sarah Palin.
That said, progressives — those on the left side of the political spectrum — cannot sit on their hands and assume that an Obama presidency will magically transform the world, that it won’t bring us a repeat of the Clinton years and their capitulation and triangulation, their promise and disappointment.
Progressives are mostly on board with the Obama campaign, even though — on paper, with his name removed — few of his positions deserve the “progressive” label. We shouldn’t deceive ourselves into seeing Obama as someone he’s not. Yet an Obama presidency offers the possibilities that persistent organizing and coalition-building at the grassroots could be effective at moving national policy in a progressive direction.
Progressives need to remember, he says, that there will be just as much work to do after the election as there has been up until this point. The left needs
to mobilize for a comprehensive agenda including economic justice, guaranteed healthcare for all, civil liberties, environmental protection and demilitarization.
The forces arrayed against far-reaching progressive change are massive and unrelenting. If an Obama victory is declared next week, those forces will be regrouping in front of our eyes — with right-wing elements looking for backup from corporate and pro-war Democrats. How much leverage these forces exercise on an Obama presidency would heavily depend on the extent to which progressives are willing and able to put up a fight.
So, for those of us who view Solomon’s laundry of progressive goals — “economic justice, guaranteed healthcare for all, civil liberties, environmental protection and demilitarization” — as the key to our future, to a better future, then fight we must.
Obama has joked that he wasn’t born in a manger. He’s right. He can only be as successful at making positive change as we let him be. It is up to us as much as it is to him and to the people in Congress. We have to keep the pressure on, keep pushing, keep fighting. It is our only hope.
Gov. Jon Corzine is in Washington, hat in hand, hoping the federal government will step up to the plate and help states deal with the effects of the federal economic meltdown. Appearing before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the governor echoed comments made by New York Gov. David Paterson saying “state governments will face devastating cutbacks if they do not receive assistance” from the federal government.
Appearing before separate congressional committees on Wednesday, Mr. Paterson and Mr. Corzine said their states, like many others, have already moved to address their budget deficits. Their actions alone would not be enough, they said.
Some will dismiss the governors’ predictions or say that the states brought these problems on themselves. And, make no mistake, New Jersey is in the terrible fiscal shape that it’s in because of the actions taken by state legislators and governors of both parties dating back to the early 1990s. (Corzine, however ineffectively, is the first governor to attempt to honestly address the mess.)
But the state’s inability to handle simple math has not been the only problem. Federal budget policies enacted over the last eight years under President George W. Bush have also cut into state revenues — less federal money has been making it into state coffers in recent years, money that has not been replaced.
The brewing recession paralyzing us now has only made matters worse and cries out for federal invtervention. That’s why the two governors are seeking “assistance to support infrastructure projects like bridges and roads, and for assistance to prevent social programs like unemployment insurance from running out of money.”
“The federal government ignores state and local governments at serious peril,” Mr. Corzine said.
The type of legislation they called for would probably be in the range of hundreds of billions of dollars. Congressional Democrats have said they would like to see such legislation approved quickly, but there is doubt that President Bush would agree.
Gov. Paterson, however, in written testimony said that the reluctance on the part of the president as foolish.
“I firmly believe that if it took only two weeks for the federal government to find $700 billion to bail out Wall Street and bank executives,” he said, “then we ought to be able to find a fraction of that amount to help preserve essential services at the state level.”
He added, “The results of federal inaction could be devastating in every corner of our nation.”
How bad are things for the state? Gov. Corzine announced today that “(m)ounting state budget troubles may force New Jersey to delay plans for a $350 million expansion of public pre-school programs.”
“We’re going to fight to hold our education funding,” Corzine told about 500 delegates at the New Jersey School Boards Association’s annual workshop in Atlantic City. “That doesn’t mean there won’t be any cuts. That doesn’t mean there won’t be any freezes. But it means it will be the last thing on the table.”
Corzine is grappling with a budget shortfall of at least $400 million in the current state budget and a forecast shortfall of up to $4 billion in the spending plan he will present to lawmakers next March. That has led, he acknowledged, to concern the state will defer providing $50 million for an expansion of preschool to communities with high concentrations of needy students next year.
“I know there’s some consternation the timing of this initiative will be delayed, but certainly not the commitment,” he said. Asked if he was suggesting the preschool initiative would be postponed Corzine said: “We’ll look at it. It’s not a big budget item next year.”
And then, consider this:
Economic troubles are forcing states to scale back safety-net health-coverage programs — even as they brace for more residents who will need help paying for care.
Many cuts affect Medicaid, which pays for health coverage for 50 million low-income adults and children nationwide, including nearly half of all nursing home care. The joint federal-state program is a target because it consumes an average 17% of state budgets — the second-biggest chunk of spending in most states, right behind education.
“Medicaid programs across the U.S. are going to be severely damaged,” says Kenneth Raske, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association. He expects some hospitals nationwide may drop services and some hospitals and nursing homes may lay off employees.
The fact is that funneling money to the states for infrastructure projects, healthcare and education creates jobs, saves existing jobs and helps improve quality of life. That’s where we should be focusing our money right now — not on a quagmire of a war or on bailing out rich bankers.
Hank Kalet 