Carrol Cox wrote:
I think you need a more core sense of what the DP problem is, beginning at least with Stevenson and deepening with each election such. They have a really fundamental agreement with their opponents as to the twin necessities of maintaining profits at home and capitalist hegemony abroad. (The latter usually but not always is simple U.S. imperaiialism). On the other hand, they need to appeal to a base (and actually to a large number of the so-called independents) whose interests are quite different. Grssp this and you can begin to understand the rhetoric of DP presidential candidates. For example, "New Frontier" = policy in both domestic and foreign affairs somewhat to the right of Eisenhower. "Change" excites people. The not-so-small print announces the actual conservative (not neo-con, a mere flutter in u.s. politics) core. It is easier this time than usual because of the unpopularity of the Bush Administration people are more willing to accept completely empty rhetoric.
-- I think that the financial world is divided into sectors, like the world of industry and largely corresponding to it. No matter how much cross-ownership there may be, the strategic interests of the sectors themselves remain distinct : the 'petrodollar-weapondollar coalition' (to borrow a term from Bichler & Nitzan) requires one set of conditions, while the light and consumer industries require an opposite set of conditions. When a major crisis erupts, as presently, the cross-ownerships have to be dissolved. I think that the 'mad dog' imperialists, as Doug calls them, are actually tried to the GOP partisan establishment, via the majority of their investment links, and will now have to take back seats, along with the GOP itself, while the opposing sectors of the US economy, which have been forced to cluster behind the Dems, get their four years (at least) in the sun.