On 2011-07-21, at 10:16 AM, // ravi wrote:
> On Jul 21, 2011, at 9:15 AM, Marv Gandall quoted Fred Branfman from TruthDig:
>> Democrats were united on one issue in the 2008 presidential election: the absolute disaster that a John McCain victory would have produced. And they were right. McCain as president would clearly have produced a long string of catastrophes: He would probably have approved a failedtroop surge in Afghanistan, engaged in worldwide extrajudicial assassination, destabilizednuclear-armed Pakistan, failedto bring Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu to the negotiating table, expanded prosecution of whistle-blowers, sought to expand executive branch power, failed to close Guantanamo, failed to act on climate change, pushed both nuclearenergy and opened new areas todomestic oildrilling, failed to reformthe financial sector enough to prevent another financial catastrophe, supported an extension of the Bush tax cutsfor the rich, presided over a growing dividebetween rich and poor, and failed to lower the jobless rate.
>>
>> Nothing reveals the true state of American politics today more, however, than the fact that Democratic President Barack Obama has undertaken all of these actions and, even more significantly, left the Democratic Party far weaker than it would have been had McCain been elected. Few issues are more important than seeing behind the screen of a myth-making mass media, and understanding what this demonstrates about how power in America really works—and what needs to be done to change it.
[…]
> Underlying this analysis is the axiom that big money is united and Obama is a tool of big money in the same sense that McCain would have been. But somehow, to this axiom there is the corollary that the Democratic party would rise to represent the people via a public option demand.
Branfman is distinguishing between the leadership of the party which is tied to big money and its supporters, who are not, and who by and large remain opposed to the extension of the Bush administration policies described above and in favour of changes to the status quo in accord with their diverse interests. This is why the DP and the social democrats are more contradictory political formations than the conservative parties, whose supporters are as tied to the status quo as their leaders or even further to their right in longing for restoration of the old status quo, real or imagined.
Any deepening polarization between the rank and file of the two parties would see DP and RP supporters moving further to the left and right of their respective leaderships, hints of which have been apparent over the past decade. I don't think there's much doubt that if McCain had won, there would be a continuing demand for a universal medicare program like that north of the border, and that the DP leadership in opposition, as you would expect, would not be discouraging but fanning this and other progressive demands emanating from its base.
[…]
> One could go the other way and talk of the Supreme Court nominees that McCain would have appointed (given Senate Democrats's demonstrated willingness to cave on that matter), the full on crazy he might have brought to the war in/on Pakistan, etc.
I agree. The difference between the two parties is most evident lower down and behind the scenes - in appointments to congressional committees, government departments, regulatory agencies, and the judiciary. That's the reason, IMO, why the unions and social movements remain tied to the DP and social democratic parties, despite their frustrations with them. Unless a third party to the left of the DP is able to acquire the power to make or shape appointments, starting from the bottom up, it will have a difficult time attracting support, whatever sympathies there may be for its program and candidates. The political system, of course, is structured so as to greatly inhibit this development.