c b wrote:
> Most of the Dems who voted for
> Obama don't have the left positions you describe and aren't going to
> vote for Republicans.
I expect most Democrats vote for the party out of traditional loyalty, trust their leaders, and don't spend much time reflecting on their policies. That's true of all political parties. It's typically the minority of activists and intellectuals who critically examine their party's direction. I think there is plenty of evidence that liberal activists and intellectuals are critical of the administration, even though they will obviously vote for it rather than the Republicans, in the absence of any alternative.
^^^^^ CB: Yes, my main point would be that I would not attribute the drop of the Democrats and Obama in the polls to their failure to carry out radical left reforms. I wish it were so that the majority of the US electorate today would support a New, New Deal, or a Jesse Jackson-style Rainbow Coalition ( the march he just led in Detroit had the slogan Jobs, Justice and Peace). All indications were that they haven't come that far out of Reaganite LaLa land yet. Jesse Jackson certainly isn't popular. The rise of the seeming popularity and influence of the Tea Party seemed to indicate otherwise. The Tea Party was the most vigorous response from "rank-and-file" Americans to the national health care and that was a rightwing response, not leftwing. Maybe the majority of the working class would have united over racist division, but it didn't appear that way and still doesn't
> Do you have any criticisms to make of the administration's
> performance, any at all?
>
> ^^^^^
> CB: Yes, and I've made them on the lists before. The main two would
> be sending more troops to Afghanistan and supporting right-wing school
> policy; supporting or engineering the coup in Honduras; saber
> rattling at Iran.
Agreed, and I would add capitulation to the Israelis on Palestine. But is education policy the only domestic issue on which you part company with the administration?
^^^^^ CB: "My" domestic (and foreign) "policy" is for all around radical reform; shorter work week with no cut in pay, constitutional amendment for a right to a job, ERA, 90% taxation of the highest income brackets like in 1950, Repeal Taft-Hartley etc. But I wouldn't pose that against the Obama admin efforts which are mild reforms as a beginning of stopping the march of Reaganism and beginning to reverse it. In other words, I support the O administration as the only realizable level of change right now until the American people get a political brain transplant somehow, someway.
^^^
What about the four core issues - financial restructuring and regulation, healthcare, mortgage relief, and spending on job creation? You think the administration could not have advanced any farther? That it was, as it claims, stymied by the Republican minority in the House and Senate?
^^^^^ CB: Yes, I think they were stymied by the Reps in the Senate with the really anti-democratic fillibuster rule; and by the right-wing Democrats. Then there was the lying ass, phony Tea Party uprising which was promoted by the monopoly media; but which had influence because the media gave it play.
But I'd say that Obama's assessment was that he did not have the political strength to be anymore left than Clinton. Even during the campaign , he never criticized Clinton's administration. He strictly spoke of the "last 8 years". It is disappointing to me that that was his assessment, but then I didn't figure out enough about the political arena today to get elected President while being Black. That indicates Obama knows more about what's going on in the real politics today than I do. He may have been too cautious, but it would have been hard to say don't be cautious at the time. He won in the election by being cautious and "moderate"/centrist.
If we take the personality of Obama out of it and make a more structural analysis, we might see his election as a minor reform, and the collapse of his popularity as partial failure of a reform ( I'm not sure his popularity won't swing back given how quickly it fell) That's what we expect from reforms of capitalism; that they will fail. Their failure is supposed to be the basis for arguing that more radical changes are necessary. I think failure of the Obama admin would constitute an aggravation of political crisis for the ruling class. The giant swing from Obama being so popular to unpopular in such a short period of time is instability. The Presidency may be weakened by such heavy hits on a President. Weakening the Presidency is a good thing. Do Tea Party types offer a viable alternative ? I doubt it. A Republican controlled Congress could create quite a gridlock and crisis. A Republican Congress isn't going to pass anything that helps ameliorate the economic crisis by our Keynesian predictions, which implies longer term stagnation; that's crisis for US capitalism.