Begin forwarded message:
> From: Marv Gandall <marvgand at gmail.com>
> Date: November 8, 2010 3:39:24 PM EST
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Tea Party: less than meets the eye
>
>
> On 2010-11-08, at 11:31 AM, c b wrote:
>
>> CB: The situation today is not the same as it was in 1933.
>
> The apt comparison is to 1935, when the Roosevelt administration was also almost halfway through its first term and subject to the electoral verdict of the masses. The current economic crisis may not be as deep as the Great Depression, but it has been deep enough to propel a Democratic president into power with a sweeping majority and a mandate from below and from within the bourgeoisie to repair a broken system. Aggressive action by the New Deal administration to put people back to work, write down mortgages, seize failing banks, and, most of all, to confront the right using the language of class, resulted in further gains in the midterms, paving the way for further advances leading to Roosevelt's re-election. Roosevelt also had a "tea party" belonging to Father Coughlin to contend with, but his administration's actions ensured its relative isolation from the masses. The opposite in every respect has characterized the record of the Obama administration.
>
> In any case, rather than name-calling (I was devastated when you called me a "social democrat") I am still waiting for an answer (presumably others are too) as to how it is that you are critical of Obama for not declaring a withdrawal from Afghanistan or defending the teachers' unions when your overarching view is that objective conditions have not permitted the administration to take any initiatives other than the mild ones it has taken to date.
>
> Frankly, that's the DLC line, as well as the line of the mainstream commentariat which is pushing the administration to tack further to the right.
>
> Obama has already dutifully indicated that he is prepared to move closer to the Republican position on a) charter schools, b) the Bush tax cuts, and c) "tweaks" to the healthcare and financial reform packages.
>
> Should the administration bend on these issues and, if not, would it be legitimate to criticize it for doing so?