> CB: No. I don't agree that what you outlined was what Obama promised
> during the campaign.
Ok. We can agree to disagree whether Obama promised "improved unemployment and other benefits for the working class,including card check, as well as major public investments in infrastructure, social services, and alternative energy."
^^^^ CB: Below I copy what you said. In your first "outline" comment you said more than in your second summary of your first "outline" comment. I don't agree that your first comment was entirely accurate. Furthermore , he _has_ done some of what is in your first comment.
Yes he campaigned on improved unemployment and other benefits. And ..tada !... he did bring improved unemployment benefits. He has not dropped support for card check. Of course, you demand that he win it in the first 9 months in office ( and everything else of course, in 9 months). He _has_ brought investments in infrastructure, social services and alternative energy as part of the Stimulus package, despite the rightwing fighting it tooth and nail. Did you forget about the Stimulus ?
No he didn't say he wouldn't prop up failing banks, insurers and auto companies, nor that he would wind them down.
CB: Your first comment:
MG: The issue on the left and even beyond was whether to prop up failing
> banks, insurers, and auto companies in the interests of investors at
> taxpayer expense, or to wind these down while a) cushioning the
> effects of joblessness through improved severance, unemployment, and
> retraining benefits and b) offsetting the job losses in these sectors
> by a massive program of public investment in infrastructure, social
> services, and alternative energy and other promising new industries.
> The administration opted to keep the zombie banks and corporations
> afloat and to heavily subsidize the entire financial industry, much to
> the dismay of it's supporters.
CB: Here is your second comment, which has less in it than your first.
MG: I simply outlined above what Obama had promised during the campaign - improved unemployment and other benefits for the working class, including card check, as well as major public investments in infrastructure, social services, and alternative energy.
CB: As far as "major", he has taken the first steps, why you demand or expect that he win all of this in the first 9 months in office in the face of viscious and rabid opposition is strange.
Why did you not mention that he also campaigned on health care reform ? Obviously, the struggle on that is dominating everyting right now, but he is fighting to carry out that campaign promise.
MG: The leadership, base and programs of contemporary social democratic parties are not significantly different than in the Democratic Party. The Gordon Browns, Segolene Royals, and Frank-Walter Steinmeiers do not run run campaigns "that far left" of Obama - or to his left at all in any meaningful way.
CB: Then that's semantics. What you are saying is that those "social democratic" parties are so in name only, that they are "liberal" parties, like the US Democratic Party of 2008. I'm saying that he didn't run on a social democratic program as that means from the heyday of social democracy.
Or maybe more specifically and accurately, social democratic or not, but definitely very left, he didn't campaign on letting the financial sector and auto sector go down, which would have necessitated nationalizing them.
MG: They equally promise to defend social programs from being dismantled by the conservative parties to their right, to cushion the impact of job losses in declining industries, and to modernize their economies and create jobs by investing in new energy-efficient and technologically-advanced industries, and don't go much beyond that. In government, they govern much the same way domestically, although, not bearing the burdens of empire, they are able to pursue relatively more enlightened foreign policies.
These parties could have run substantially the same campaign as the DP in the US so long as they, like Obama, did not admit to being either "social democrats" or "liberals". That is the only concession which they would have had to make to the more backward American political culture - but nothing in the way of program. By the same token, Obama could have campaigned on the DP's themes in Europe as a self-described "social democrat" without in any way alienating the supporters of these parties. Not for nothing do the leaders and base of the respective parties sense a deep ideological kinship with each other, as I know from my own experience in the NDP, Canada's social democratic party, where the identification of the party's leaders and base with the US Democrats predates Obama.
^^^^^ CB: Ok. I'm not wedded to the term "social democratic". Obama didn't campaign on promising to nationalize finance and auto. The other stuff you mention he has taken first steps on.
^^^^^^^
Like many US leftists lacking first-hand knowledge of contemporary social democratic parties, you perceive ideological and institutional differences with the Democrats which once existed but which have progressively disappeared in the postwar period to the point of convergence. But the fiction is a convenient one. It allows both DP critics to construct a mythical "social democratic" standard against which the American party can be judged and found wanting, and supporters like yourself to apologize for the DP's failure to move as "far left" in the American context as the social democrats are presumed to do in Europe.
^^^^ CB: Except I didn't say anything about contemporary social democratic _parties_, I just said social democratic program, meaning "social democratic" in contrast with "neo-liberal". Even the US Democratic Party was social democratic in the New Deal and Great Society.
Here's what I said, social democraic program, not party. In fact, I said "radical social democratic program", which should make it clear I'm not talking about Britain or Canada's Social Democrats today:
I'd say you have an inaccurate assessment of what was possible. We have just been through 30 years of Reaganism, 8 years of an extreme rightward swing. The campaign gave no indicaton to think that the US population which in its majority had supported all that Reaganism and rightwing shit was ready to make a giganitc lurch to the left as you describe ;or that , what can I call him, a President under suspicion for a lot of things including being a "socialist" by a whole lot of people, could win a majority of Congress, conservative ( or even liberal) Dems and Republicans for a radical social democratic program.