On 2011-09-12, at 7:06 AM, Julio Huato wrote:
>
> That I do not mean to excuse Obama's personal behavior can also be
> inferred from my reference to Michael Moore's or Paul Krugman's cases.
> Those guys were also rocking the boat on their own ways, and they
> were forewarned, and they pushed on. That's where my admiration lies.
> Not with Obama. I thought that was clear.
It was clear to me, Julio.
However, I'm reluctant to place the lion's share of the blame for the administration's failings on either Obama's personal behaviour - his weakness or mendacity or both - or on the constraints of the system, the two most commonly offered explanations.
The system is not so inelastic that it could not have allowed for at least a public option health care plan, fiscal stimulus more directly targetted at job creation, mortgage relief for homeowners, the expiry of the Bush tax cuts, the closure of Guantanamo, and other measures promised during the 2008 campaign. But Obama and his advisors tailored their policies to wooing and consolidating the Republicans and independents to their right who jumped to the DP ticket in the election. This wasn't a new strategy or unique to American politics. Since the historic decline of the labour and socialist movement, the Democrats and kindred social democratic parties outside the US have been wholly able to take their liberal core base for granted and have sought to broaden it by moving to the right.
So long as the economy is expanding and living standards are rising, this is not necessarily a losing electoral strategy. But it is a disasterous strategy in a serious crisis in which jobs and homes are being lost and incomes are falling. It's doubtful the Roosevelt administration would have won a second term with a record majority if it had largely emulated the policies of the Hoover adminstration and appeased Wall Street rather than breaking sharply with both in rhetoric and practice.
There's no reason to believe the Obama administration could not have used its decisive majority in similar fashion to turn around unemployment and pass overdue social reforms, perhaps even attracting in the process a part of the desparate Republican base which found its way instead to the tea party. Rising unemployment typically results in the governing party being evicted from office unless it is able to pin responsibility on an obstructionist opposition tied to the moneyed elite. But the administration never anticipated the depth of the crisis and consistently ran behind it. In any case, to have properly addressed it would have implied a similar willingness as the New Deal to be criticized for engaging in "class politics", which ran counter to the administration's strategy of wooing "moderate" Republicans and independents by "rising above partisanship".
The Democrats, it can be expected, will revisit the themes of the 2008 campaign as they gear up for 2012, but too many have lost their jobs and too many more of those who voted for Obama in 2008 no longer take his speeches seriously.