NEWMAN! said: "This is truly bizarre in the "folks can dish it out but they can't take it" category. . . . "
>I am more put out by the historic and prospective marginalization
>campaign of progressives by Clinton/Goroids, which is partly
>personal. This dovetails with the support of Gore for an
>intellectual framework (and a legion of intelletual supporters)
>that I would sum up as follows:
>a) government should be smaller
>b) free trade is the basis for economic development
>c) welfare reform is a great success
>d) the national debt should be paid off as soon as possible, in part to
>avert a disaster in Social Security and Medicare;
>e) the Federal Reserve as presently constituted is a legitimate steward of
>the economy
>Any one of the items above makes social-democracy much more difficult. All
>of them together make it unthinkable.
>In this *specific* respect, THERE IS NO FUCKING DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GORE AND
>BUSH.
Within that restrained set of issues, you are mostly correct, although Bush promotes the idea that someone individual investment in the stock market will promote better yields for future retirees -- a really idiotic addition to neoliberalism. And as the recent Jordanian trade pact shows, Clintonism has conceded the need for some degree of international labor and environmental standards - a position Bush absolutely opposes.
But where I disagree with your analysis is on the deeper issue of what makes social-democracy possible. Better policy position papers is not what leads to better social policy. What leads to better policy is a stronger working class movement that can fight for its rights, regardless of the official policy of the political parties. And on the base score of homicidal tendencies towards organized worker organizations, the GOP is dangerous beast that seeks relentlessly to destroy working class power, whether through right-to-work and "paycheck protection" laws at the state level or promoting the TEAM Act and other antiunion laws at the federal level, along with selecting antiunion judges and NLRB members.
To restate this, three times in the last generation, a Democratic House has passed and a Democratic President has been ready to sign pro-union reform legislation only to see Republicans in the Senate filibuster the laws to death. The results have been, by a recent study, an average of 20,000 workers per year losing their jobs for trying to organize a union, something on the order of one out of ten workers trying to do so each year.
This continuous and constant assault on workers rights to organize is the fundamental barrier to social democracy in the United States. No amount of nice-nice policy pronouncements, whether from Nader or EPI or even Gore will change that. What will change it is hard organizing in the face of terrible laws. And what will defeat that change is a GOP victory across the board that will usher in even more repressive legal and judicial changes.
Voting for Nader is voting for nice sounding words. Voting for Gore is voting for defense of unions against the GOP seeking to smash them. Throw in the Supreme Court and who to vote for is clear to me.
-- Nathan Newman