> Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> wrote:
>
> "I think that either one
> of them can beat McCain, and either one of
> them as president would prove to be a great
> disappointment to their progressive supporters.
> Thus, I can't understand people who go gaga
> over Obama,"
>
> I am Hillary-phobic myself, mainly because of her blatant pandering to
> Israel. But that's not a reason to think she'd be any worse or better as
> President than O...
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This is crisis of leadership theory, which rests on the assumption that the
impatient masses are being held back by their leaders, who always disappoint
and betray their hopes. But is this just inherited dogma on the left or does
it have a factual basis? Americans, especially Democrats, are clearly
worried and unhappy and hoping for relief from the the economic slowdown,
the war in Iraq, rising health care, food, and energy costs, falling home
prices, indebtedness, tightening credit, global warming, and a host of other
problems. Obama and Clinton are rolling out detailed policy prescriptions in
all of these areas. The politically interested - the liberal intellectuals
and the layer of activists in the unions and the social movements (for want
of a better term) who support and work for the Democrats - pay attention,
but most Democratic supporters, busy with other things, don't.
How can we be so certain that this large Democratic base will be "greatly disappointed"? Is the thought here that there will be no movement at all in any of these areas from a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President or even a Democratic Congress and a President McCain? I think it's safe to say there will be SOME movement - not because promises have been made to the voters, but mostly because these are urgent systemic needs around which a "bipartisan" consensus has already formed at the top. I'm confident we'll see the beginnings of a staged withdrawal from Iraq, more Americans offered more affordable health care, some measure of mortage relief and protection against foreclosure in order to provide a floor under the housing market, efforts to regulate the environment and financial sector, use of the tax and spending power to maintain mass purchasing power, etc.
How much or how little reform is impossible to predict. It will depend on how these crises evolve. But the policy direction seems clear, and even the most modest movement is bound to be seen as marking a departure from the foreign adventurism and domestic stagnation of the Bush years. Such measures will never satisfy those of us who want a radical restructuring of the capitalist system of power and property relations, and oppose US imperialism as it manifests itself in manifold ways other than by naked military aggression. But this is not true of the very great majority of Americans, including the activists concentrated in and around the DP. They're neither anti-imperialist nor anti-capitalist, and support any measures aimed at purging the system of it's worst excesses. It's only if the crises in foreign and domestic policy deepen to the point they can no longer be managed that it will be possible to reasonably anticipate a widespread loss of confidence by the people in their existing parties.
It's well to remember that the crisis of leadership thesis was forged in the heyday of class struggle, when revolutionaries were embedded in the mass-based workers parties and there was a sizeable constituency receptive to the idea that capitalism was in terminal decline and that their reformist leaders were leading them up a blind alley. Today, there are no longer any revolutionaries in the mass parties, and the system has been stable and delivered growth for so long that working people have been conditiioned to expect recovery from crises rather than collapse.
So while they may grumble and express disappointment when individual politicians "break their promises" and frequently replace them with clones, but they have not yet expressed the kind of "great disappointment" the left has been anticipating for nearly so long as it has been awaiting the "final crisis'. As the left's losing battles in unions and political parties over the generations, and it's own "great disappointment" at the replacement of one bourgeois party with another, will attest, the people have not yet lost confidence in their existing parties and leaders. Until such time as the system exhausts its capacity for reform and there is palpable evidence of a rupture developing between leaders and led, attacks on these parties and their leaders, especially when launched from outside, will be met with indifference or hostility.
This reality needs to be taken into account in assessing these parties and their leaders and how to relate to them. It has nothing to do with going "gaga over Obama" or any other politician.