On 2010-11-08, at 8:04 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> Marv: "only last month you were puzzled and dismayed that the Obama
> administration wasn't "bashing" its enemies on the right,"
>
> [WS:] Yes, indeed, and I am still puzzled by it. However, I do not assume
> that these are stupid or treacherous, evil people - as some on the more
> loony fringes on the American right and left claim. On the contrary, I
> assume - unless proven (by facts, not opinions and interpretations)
> otherwise - that these people knew what they were doing and if they did
> something that baffles me, they probably had a reason for it that is not
> apparent to me at the moment. While of course none of us knows for sure, I
> think that my conjecture of O's administration pursuing what they saw as a
> realistic course of action and settling for what they saw as achievable
> under the circumstances is far more rational than gutter populist
> attributions of stupidity, treachery or ill intentions that the loony
> American government haters love to circulate.
This is largely true, although some people would disagree that you should abstain from passing moral judgement on your political opponents and enemies if their personal failings are egregious and apparent. Still, I agree venomous attacks tend to impair the credibility of the speaker or writer and detract from rather than advance political clarity.
However, leaders should still expect to be held accountable for miscalculating what is "realistic" and what is not in the circumstances, and for the consequences of such miscalulation. In my view, the administration mistakenly tried to split the Republican party and expand its foothold in traditionally Republican states by wooing Republican moderates and blue dog Democrats with policy choices palatable to them. This was incompatible with bolder measures required to resolve the jobs, housing, health, environmental, and foreign policy crises which its Democratic and independent supporters, whose support the administration (again, mistakenly) took for granted, were expecting, and whose consequent alienation contributed to a right-wing Republican revival.
Class considerations are also absent from your analysis. The Democratic leadership mainly comes from a more affluent bourgeois stratum of the population than its working class base and has class-based collegial ties to the Republicans across the aisle and to Wall Street and other corporate lobbies. It's naive to assume therefore that their actions would be wholly reasonable and disinterested. Many of assumed the opposite: that contradictions would quickly appear between the bourgeois Democratic leadership tilting one way and its expectant working class base tilting the other following the election. That was and always is a good starting point for understanding the nature of the DP and social democratic parties based on the trade unions, minorities, and liberal intelligensia. These contradictions did surface, but there was not an organized left as there was in the 30's to lead the base in exerting any significant pressure on the leadership. In retrospect, that was my miscalculation.
>
> Just one thing to consider - legislative process is not the end of a
> political reform. The fact that a legislation passes the congress and is
> signed into a law does not mean that it will survive court challenges. So
> if you seriously consider passing a reform - instead of engaging in
> grandstanding buffoonery of "making a statement" not followed by any action
> - you would take the potential judiciary challenge to your reform very
> seriously, and you would not expend the political capital you currently have
> on something that will be likely killed by courts later. Instead, you would
> go for what you see as having a better chance of survival - even if it falls
> short on the ideal. This is called realism.
>
> This is what I think happened during the two years of O's administration.
> Of course, I could be proven wrong and Obama may turn out to be an alien
> implant to subvert this or that aspect of America - as the loonies on the
> right and the left claim - but I do not think it is likely. A more likely
> alternative is that O's admin misjudged their opposition - as you claim -
> and they could have gained more had they been more aggressive. Or not. But
> then, everyone has 20/20 hindsight vision.
>
> Wojtek
>
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 7:26 AM, Marv Gandall <marvgand at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On 2010-11-07, at 5:32 PM, Wojtek S wrote:
>>
>>> It is utterly naive to expect any political party
>>> to side with those who have no power against those who have a lot of
>> power.
>>> Any political party in this situation would go with the dictates of
>> power.
>>> If anything, O's administration deserves a credit for accomplishing what
>>> they did in this situation - they faced a force majeure and they softened
>>> the blow a bit.
>>
>> Yet only last month you were puzzled and dismayed that the Obama
>> administration wasn't "bashing" its enemies on the right, and had no
>> objections then to my criticisms of the administration's policies which were
>> identical to those I and others have since made in the aftermath of the
>> election.
>>
>>
>> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20101011/013063.html
>>
>> The power imbalance has not been as extreme as you suggest above. I've
>> previously alluded to support within the ruling class, outside of the
>> Democratic party, for restructuring rather than bailing out the banking
>> industry, for mortgage writedowns to clear the housing market, and for
>> fiscal stimulus directed at job-intensive projects which would both boost
>> consumer spending and modernize the economy.
>>
>> Had the administration signed on to these rather orthodox capitalist
>> reforms, mobilized its base, and engaged in the "massive public relations
>> blitz" you advocated last month, it's more likely than not Obama would have
>> boosted his congressional majority as Roosevelt did two years into his first
>> term.
>>
>> There is no credit owing to the administration for ostensibly facing down a
>> "force majeure", as you have now decided, nor has not it produced any
>> meaningful change - only an electoral debacle which has now almost certainly
>> eliminated any possibility of overdue reform and the raising of the
>> political level of the general population which would necessarily accompany
>> it.
>>
>>
>>
>> ___________________________________
>> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk