On 11/27/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> [Sometimes I wonder what planet these things are filed from. What
> about the Dem party makes Greider thinks they're likely to listen to
> any of this? Ankle-biting enforcers?]
>
> <http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20061204&s=greider>
>
> The Nation - December 4, 2006
>
> Watershed
> by WILLIAM GREIDER
>
> The Democratic Party was not really ready for this. Democrats have
> been in the wilderness so long--since Ronald Reagan launched the
> conservative era twenty-five years ago--that older liberals began to
> think it was a life sentence. Bill Clinton was the party's rock star;
> he made people feel good (and occasionally cringe), but he governed
> in idiosyncratic ways that accommodated the right and favored small
> gestures over big ideas. The party adopted his risk-averse style. Its
> substantive meaning and political strength deteriorated further.
>
> Then George W. Bush came along as the ultimate nightmare--even more
> destructive of government and utterly oblivious to the consequences.
>
> The 2006 election closed out the conservative era with the voters'
> blast of rejection. Democrats are liberated again to become--what?
> Something new and presumably better, maybe even a coherent party.
>
> This is the political watershed everyone senses. The conservative
> order has ended, basically because it didn't work--did not produce
> general well-being. People saw that conservatives had no serious
> intention of creating smaller government. They were too busy
> delivering boodle and redistributing income and wealth from the many
> to the few. Plus, Republicans got the country into a bad war, as
> liberals had decades before.
>
> On the morning after, my 6-year-old grandson was watching TV as he
> got ready for school. He saw one of those national electoral maps in
> which blue states wiped away red states. "Water takes fire," he said.
> Water nourishes, fire destroys. How astute is that? It could be the
> theme for our new politics.
>
> With Democrats in charge of the House and the Senate, we can now
> return to a reality-based politics that nourishes rather than
> destroys. The party's preoccupation with "message" should take a back
> seat to "substance"--addressing the huge backlog of disorders and
> injuries produced by conservative governance. This changeover will be
> long and arduous. But at least it can now begin.
>
> Republicans lost, but their ideological assumptions are deeply
> embedded in government, the economy and the social order. Many
> Democrats have internalized those assumptions, others are afraid to
> challenge them. It will take years, under the best circumstances, for
> Democrats to recover nerve and principle and imagination--if they do.
>
> But this is a promising new landscape. Citizens said they want
> change. Getting out of Iraq comes first, but economic reform is close
> behind: the deteriorating middle class, globalization and its
> damaging impact on jobs and wages, corporate excesses and social
> abuses, the corruption of politics. Democrats ran on these issues,
> and voters chose them.
>
> The killer question: Do Democrats stick with comfortable Washington
> routines or make a new alliance with the people who just elected
> them? Progressives can play an influential role as ankle-biting
> enforcers. They then have to get up close and personal with
> Democrats. Explain that evasive, empty gestures won't cut it anymore.
> Remind the party that it is vulnerable to similar retribution from
> voters as long as most Americans don't have a clue about what
> Democrats stand for.
>
> The first order of business is taking down Bush. The second front is
> the fight within the Democratic Party over its soul and sense of
> direction. These are obviously intertwined, but let's start with Bush
> and how Democrats can contain his ebbing powers. This is not a
> philosophical discussion. Events are already moving rapidly.
>
> Everyone talks up postelection bipartisanship, and voters are weary
> of partisan cat fights. But that doesn't mean selling them out to get
> along with the other party. If Bush wants compromise, let him start
> by promising not to nominate any more hard-right-wingers to the
> federal judiciary. Harry Reid, the new Senate majority leader, could
> respond by promising not to confirm any nominees if Bush doesn't keep
> his word.
>
> The tables are turned now. Democrats will control the pursestrings of
> government. Beyond keeping post offices open, they can kill anything
> Bush proposes. They have the high ground, but they can now also be
> blamed for what goes wrong. For the first time in a dozen years,
> Democrats have the power to alter the governing fundamentals.
>
> Ending the war cannot be compromised. Voters want out "now," as soon
> as possible. They did not endorse a couple more years of US
> occupation, many more lost lives and wasted billions. If Democratic
> leaders get that wrong, it becomes their war too, and Americans will
> not be forgiving. A coherent alternative that deserves bipartisan
> support may emerge from the Baker-Hamilton group. But, if not,
> Democrats should be principled critics and draw up their own road map.
>
> Let Iraqis decide their own fate. Telling them to split up into three
> parts sounds like more colonialist intervention. Iraqis are robbed of
> true sovereignty as long as occupying Americans are present.
> Democrats can come up with a plausible timetable for withdrawal,
> accompanied by rational foreign-policy steps like direct talks with
> Iran and other Middle Eastern powers to defuse the sectarian violence
> and to arrange a manageable exit for the US military.
>
> Congress cannot command troops, but it has enormous leverage to coax
> and prod Pentagon policy through appropriations and other
> legislation. Cutting off funds in the midst of war is not going to
> happen--it never has in US history--but the military itself could
> become a valuable source of strategic ideas, both in hearings and
> through back-door communications. Bush's promised "victory" in Iraq
> is not an option.
>
> The Pentagon, in fact, is especially vulnerable to Congressional
> pressure, because its spending is scandalously out of control.
> Rumsfeld allowed it, and the services took advantage of his open
> checkbook. Emergency "war" spending is headed toward $507 billion and
> covers numerous projects with no relevance to Iraq or Afghanistan.
> House and Senate committees can force out the facts and expose this
> outrage now. If they don't, it will haunt them later when they try to
> reduce federal deficits.
>
> When Democrats take up their commitment to reducing Bush's budget
> deficits, they face a big problem up front. The economy is heading
> toward recession. Shrinking federal deficits would only make things
> worse. Dems need to back off that pledge and consider stimulative
> spending instead.
>
> They can look for money elsewhere. One promising source lies in the
> many investigations and hearings Senate and House committees are
> planning to expose war-profiteering--Halliburton's no-bid contracts,
> obscene subsidies and tax breaks for Big Oil and Big Pharma, the rank
> corruption that has essentially looted government programs. Properly
> managed, these inquiries can produce popular anger and demands for
> recovering the public capital carried off by private interests.
>
> The straightforward way to achieve this is taxation. For three
> decades, Washington has been cutting taxes for corporate and
> financial interests, not to mention the wealthy. Democrats have to
> find ways to stop intoning this conservative tax-cutting mantra by
> showing that government has been robbed and ordinary families are the
> losers. Will voters be upset that Democrats are recovering public
> money by raising taxes on the plunderers? I think they will cheer.
>
> Representative Charles Rangel, the next chair of the House Ways and
> Means Committee, has said he will not attempt to repeal Bush's
> outrageous tax cuts for the wealthy--but instead let them expire in
> 2010. That kills estate-tax repeal and puts other measures in
> terminal jeopardy. Democrats should go on the offense and develop a
> tax-shift strategy that increases taxes on corporations and capital
> in order to finance tax relief for struggling families, middle-class
> and below. Last-Ditch Bush may veto this, but let's see how many
> nervous Republicans vote against it.
>
> All this depends, however, on the question of whether Democrats have
> the stomach for a fight, not only with Bush and the GOP but with the
> business and financial interests that underwrite both parties. We
> don't know yet, but a test case may come soon. Corporate leaders,
> investment bankers and the insurance industry are lobbying to gut the
> modest regulations enacted after Enron and to disable investor
> lawsuits against fraud on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms.
>
> Which side will Democrats be on? In the 1990s leading senators
> supported big money against the interests of injured investors,
> including pension funds. Deviating Democrats included Chris Dodd, Joe
> Lieberman, Charles Schumer and Joe Biden, to name a few. If they are
> on the wrong side this time, voters should hear about it.
>
> This tension between liberal economic values and the center-right
> economics of Clinton is the party's great divide. Clintonistas-in-
> waiting--awaiting Hillary's White House--still dominate party affairs
> in Washington. But the facts have changed. Voters expressed their
> contempt for Republicans in 2006. They did not suggest they want the
> same behavior from Democrats.
>
> Is the new Congress reflected in economic populists like Senator-
> elect Jim Webb of Virginia and free-trade critics like Senator-elect
> Sherrod Brown? Or pro-gun, antiabortion conservatives from the South
> and Midwest who might pull the party rightward? Both before and after
> the election, major media, led by the New York Times and Washington
> Post, repeatedly emphasized that no leftward ideological shift would
> occur, because Democrats are moving rightward. This was bogus, way
> too simplistic. It overlooked the fact that 100 or more candidates
> ran aggressively on liberal or populist economic issues--against
> unregulated free trade and the offshoring of American jobs, against
> special interests, corporate excesses and social abuses. The Blue Dog
> and New Democrat caucuses will expand, but the Progressive Caucus
> will, too, and will remain the largest--at seventy-one members.
>
> The spin originated with DLC types, and a principal source was
> Representative Rahm Emanuel, chair of the Democratic Congressional
> Campaign Committee, who recruited many of the candidates. "Emanuel
> and other top Democrats told their members they cannot allow the
> party's liberal wing to dominate the agenda next year," the Post
> reported. If Speaker Nancy Pelosi intends to be in charge, she might
> not want Representative Emanuel standing at her back.
>
> The party's ideological debate is under way privately at a more
> serious level. Robert Rubin, the influential former Treasury
> Secretary and executive chair at Citigroup, launched the Hamilton
> Project this past spring to head off the rising rebellion within
> party ranks against corporate-led globalization. He is proposing
> various measures, but holds fast to "free market" principle: Don't
> interfere with the global markets and multinationals.
>
> Organized labor has taken up Rubin's invitation to talk and is
> countering with its ideas for fundamental reforms. Labor leaders do
> not expect to change Rubin's mind. Their objective is to show
> Democratic incumbents that they are caught in a serious bind--between
> their injured voters and multinational investment bankers. Democrats
> will have nothing meaningful to say to them as long as the party
> adheres to the economic orthodoxy. They need debate and an aggressive
> agenda that stanches the bleeding for Americans and saves the global
> system by reforming it.
>
> Nancy Pelosi has the power to break through the risk-averse habits.
> She and liberal allies like Representative George Miller are playing
> shrewd, not reckless politics. But the Democrats don't have forever
> to establish bona fides with the electorate. A year from now, if the
> party looks like the same old timid crowd, Democrats will be in
> trouble of their own making.
>
> This is where activists can develop influence inside Congress. They
> have to work on persuading Pelosi, Reid and key House and Senate
> chairs to take the larger risks. The breadth of the Democratic
> victory gives them license to push a more ambitious agenda. The weak
> public regard for Democrats gives them an incentive. The House-Senate
> majorities enable the party to pass a lot of urgent progressive
> reforms--regulating global warming, for example--that may not become
> law but would create forward momentum and draw "nay" votes from
> reactionary Republicans.
>
> Progressives must develop an inside-outside strategy that engages
> this new Democratic Congress intimately while it rallies citizens at
> large to add their voices, too. This is going to be a hard, long
> struggle. Turning around a political party and politics isn't
> accomplished in one or two election cycles.
>
> But some newly elected Democrats found a smart formula in 2006. Talk
> to people about their lives and really listen to what people, not
> polls, say. Then offer solutions, not just rhetoric, that might work.
> If they learn to do this conscientiously, pretty soon Democrats might
> begin sounding like a political party.
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <../attachments/20061127/a6301182/attachment.htm>