This is a time of great angst and soul-searching amongst progressives in this nation, and indeed for most members of the Democratic Party. It is a difficult realization to confront, but the accumulated evidence leads to the inescapable conclusion that the nominal leader of the Democratic Party, President Barrack Obama, has no loyalty to the key Democratic economic positions and policies that have been the core of the Democratic Party since FDR.
Moreover, his direct actions across a wide range of policy issues have led to significant set-backs for many of those core Democratic positions, and portend much more dramatic set-backs in the future. Progressives and Democrats more broadly have some serious thinking to do about how to protect and preserve those core values, policies and programs.
The first stage in coping with grief is to overcome denial. The purpose of this article is to summarize some of the litany of examples of President Obama betraying long-held Democratic positions, in hopes that Democrats will come to understand "he’s just not that into you".
The initial chapter in this sad tale was laid out in an essay I posted back in January 2009, just before Democrats astonishingly lost Ted Kennedy’s senate seat in Massachusetts. The signs of our current predicament were evident even then, although many in the progressive community were not ready to hear it.
<snip>
One Year Later - - What went wrong
Sun Jan 17, 2010 at 03:56:47 PM PST
AN HISTORIC OPPORTUNITY SQUANDERED: INCOMPETENCE OR INTENTION?
On election night 2008 Republicans must have been in a state of panic. The Democrats had just achieved a landslide election of a charismatic progressive president, and had captured overwhelming majorities in both the Senate and House. The Republican ‘brand’ was widely and robustly discredited after the disastrous Bush-Cheney years, and progressive Democrats were rightly poised to achieve "once in a generation" scale policy advances.
What happened next is a story for the history books.
The reality of what has transpired since election 2008 is an unprecedented and epic tale of squandered opportunity. Through a mind-boggling series of terrible political appointments, inexplicable policy judgments, and simple failure to lead, that once-invincible political advantage for Democrats has been completely fumbled away. Just one year after sweeping into Washington in an electoral tidal wave, Democrats have fallen so far they are facing the prospect of an unthinkable loss of Ted Kennedy’s senate seat in Massachusetts.
What the hell happened????
To begin, Obama immediately abandoned his central campaign theme of "change", and proceeded to make a series of crucial political appointments that delighted his Republican opponents and stunned his Democratic base. The man who many fervent supporters believed was to usher in a new era of progressive foreign policy, decided to keep most of the Bush-Cheney senior military and national security team in place. Whether this was a result of timidity or political miscalculation, the results have been devastating in terms of the political effect. The activist base of the Democratic party has watched in anguish as Obama has basically continued the Bush-Cheney policy of ever-expanding military occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan....and ever-soaring military budgets. Meanwhile, any political gain anticipated in the "center" by appearing "tough" on foreign policy has been negated by steadfast Republican criticism regardless of the policy direction, aided in no small part by well-timed leaks and press manipulation by those same senior military commanders Obama decided to retain from the Bush Administration. Obama’s moves on Iraq and Afghanistan have been bad policy as well as bad politics, and have squandered the opportunity for Democrats to lead the nation in a new direction.
Similarly, Obama’s selections for his top economic team were taken directly from the same corporate titans of Wall Street that got us into the economic collapse of the past decade. At a time when the public was ready for strong re-regulation of the financial world, and a re-balancing of interests away from Wall Street and toward Main Street, Obama’s appointments and subsequent policy actions (and inaction) have failed miserably on both counts. Following eight years of the worst possible corporate give-aways under Bush-Cheney, it is incredible that just one year under Obama has produced a climate where the public now perceives the Democrats as the party that is cozy with Wall Street and doing nothing to help the middle class. (In fairness, the Democratic leadership in the Senate shares blame for this travesty, for their utter failure to establish a strong middle-class policy priority in the Senate.)
On health care Obama has shown no leadership on any of the progressive policies he appeared to support in his campaign. He and the Democratic Congressional leaders have completely botched the handling of this legislation. First, he continued to pursue a tactic of giving ground in hopes of achieving bipartisan support long after it was utterly apparent that the Republicans were unified in their determination to torpedo any legislation at all, in an effort to make health care into Obama’s "Waterloo". As always, he and the Democrats got no credit whatsoever from either the press or the public for this noble effort to be "bipartisan". Rather, they (correctly) were perceived as weak. The weakness and inaction persisted as the White House continued to signal tacit approval while a few despicable conservative Democrats in the Senate insisted upon dropping the few remaining progressive components of the legislation.
The end result is a bill that will be an albatross around the necks of Democrats. It will be rightly criticized as a heavy-handed federal mandate for average Americans of modest means to buy a lousy product from the private insurance industry cartel - - with no ‘public option’ - - and paid for by taxing middle class Americans who are lucky enough to have decent health insurance coverage now. ("Cadillac" insurance coverage indeed. Do they think we are idiots?) During the campaign, Obama correctly opposed McCain’s proposal to tax insurance plans to pay for health reform, & pledged many times to not raise taxes on the middle class. Does he or his "brilliant political team" not realize that he and the Democrats will be beaten over the head with this new "tax" on the middle class in the next election? WTF!!!!
To this sweeping list of abandonment of core Democratic policy positions must be added an equally astonishing list of failures to take corrective action to remedy Bush-Cheney legal and ethical abuses. Nothing at all has been done to prosecute, or even investigate, the litany of "national security" related abuses, such as torture, illegal surveillance, electronic eves-dropping, and the like. The Obama Justice Department has even sided with these perpetrators in several legal proceedings. The most corrupt administration in history (Bush-Cheney) has been given a complete ‘pass’ on all their legal and ethical violations.
Speaking of the Justice Department, perhaps the most egregious failure of action of all - - because it would have been so simple to implement and so easily defensible - - has been the utter failure to replace the Bush-Cheney appointed U.S. Attorneys around the nation. Even in "normal" times, the routine practice upon a change of parties in the White House has been to request the resignation of all of the previous administration’s appointees. Given the well-publicized corruption of the Bush-Cheney Administration in their appointment of politically biased U.S. Attorneys, the call for their resignation and replacement should have been a priority action on Day One of the Obama Administration. Instead, astonishingly, nearly all of the Bush-Cheney appointed U.S. Attorneys are still in place, and still harassing Democrats and advancing Republican interests all around the nation.
In sum, this abandonment of core Democratic party goals and policies, and utter failure to defend Democratic interests, leads one to ask: what is going on here?
Is this simply bad political judgment? For example, have they simply not learned the lesson that Democrats get no credit whatsoever, from either the press or the public, for trying to be "bipartisan". The current Republican Congress is without question the most lock-step, ruthlessly partisan political party in history, and yet, thanks to Democratic ineptness, the Republicans are nevertheless gaining in the polls.
Or is there something more sinister at work?
In an election where the U.S. was poised for a revolutionary sea-change in both foreign policy and domestic economic policy, the ruling corporate interests and their Republican Party lackeys must have been terrified. It was obvious from the political dynamic in 2008 that the next president was going to be a Democrat. So what was desperately needed from the ruling class perspective was a candidate who could appear populist, but at the end of the day pose no threat to those corporate interests. They needed a one-term "placeholder" Democratic president, who could return the resurgent Democratic base to its more typical state of discouragement and apathy by the next election, thereby assuring the re-establishment of Republican control in 2012.
Is Barrack Obama that secret Republican "sleeper cell" candidate, brought forth to blunt and ultimately dissolve the momentum for true change that was boiling over in 2008?
Or is the current Obama Administration just suffering from the most inept political tactics in half a century?
Let’s hear from you on this subject. Is this administration composed of closet corporatist Republicans or political bumblers. You decide.
<snip>
At the time, the response was largely hostile. I was accused of everything from being naïve to racist to a Republican troll. But I would submit that in the ensuing year, the evidence has become overwhelming. This nation is being led by a president who has no loyalty to, and no interest in protecting, the "Democratic Party" as we have known it since the time of FDR.
In hindsight, we should have seen this coming when candidate Obama pointed to Ronald Reagan as his idea of a great "transformational" president. At the time this irritated some in the Democratic base, but was shrugged off as a bit of political pandering. Now the implications are more chilling. The four most significant "transformations" accomplished by Reagan were: (1) "trickle-down" economics; (2) the destruction of unions; (3) a public disdain and disrespect for government social programs: and (4) a massive military build-up. President Obama through his own actions has explicitly or implicitly reinforced every one of the Reaganite positions.
Let’s briefly take a look at each of those policy areas, starting in reverse order.
Military Build-up
In addition to keeping most of George W. Bush’s top military leadership team in place and being essentially subservient to their wishes regarding military strategy, Obama has presided over continued huge increases in military spending, and has been much more aggressive than George W. in escalating the war in Afghanistan; in the use of drone attacks in Pakistan; and in covert incursions into places like Yemen. It is impossible to detect any aspect of Obama’s military policy and military spending that is more ‘progressive’ than George W. Bush.
Disdain for Government Programs
Obama’s actions and rhetoric in this area are of course much more subtle than Ronald Reagan’s, but the implications of his actions (and inactions) are clear. For starters, when confronted with the worst economy since the Great Depression, Obama has shown no interest or support for one of FDR’s primary policy responses: direct federal jobs programs. Even his vaunted "stimulus package" was much smaller than progressive economists called for, and was structured in many respects around Republican policy ideas (e.g., nearly one-third tax cuts and most of the rest structured as various financial incentives to businesses).
His approach to the federal budget deficit issue has been even more discrepant from traditional Democratic values. Without calling for any new federal revenues, or demanding any concessions from Republicans, Obama has unilaterally called for freezing non-military discretionary spending and freezing the wages of non-military federal employees (both classic Republican policy positions). Before even starting budget negotiations with the incoming Republican House, he has already given away two key tactical positions, and has effectively reinforced the GOP political issue "frame" that "government spending" is the problem. Finally, and most ominously, Obama stacked his so-called "Deficit Commission" with well-known anti-tax, anti-government spending ideologues (who in the face of record federal deficits, astonishingly and shamelessly called for further reductions in income taxes for the wealthy).
Given this unmistakable pattern, it is hard to conclude anything other than the fact that Obama is ready and willing to preside over massive cuts in domestic spending.
Destruction of Unions
Of all the core constituencies of the Democratic ‘base’, none has been more disrespected and abused than labor. After playing a huge role in the election of Obama and the large Democratic majorities in the House and Senate in 2008, labor was essentially told to sit down and shut up. They were told that their most prized policy objective - - the "card-check" policy to make unionization efforts more fair and easier to accomplish - - needed to be put on the ‘back burner’ while the President pushed for health care reform. To make matters worse, labor’s positions on health care were not only ignored, labor was insulted by the inclusion of the so-called "Cadillac health insurance tax" (another Republican idea) which largely harmed workers whose unions had negotiated strong health insurance coverage in their contracts. Meanwhile, "card check" has fallen so far off the back burner that it is lost behind the stove.
But beyond the little insults and the complete neglect of labor’s interests, there is a much more devastating blow to labor, and to the working class in general, that has received far too little attention. As a part of the automaker rescue plan, Obama’s team insisted upon and achieved an astonishing concession from the United Auto Workers union. "New hires" in the auto industry would be paid only one-half the wage of existing members....a mere $14 an hour. While Republican senators were bellowing for wage concessions from labor...Obama delivered wage cuts that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce could only have dreamed about.
Moreover, this two-tier wage approach is a particularly insidious policy because it creates serious divisions between older and younger members of the union. (I predict we will see similar "divide and conquer" strategies when it comes to gutting Social Security and Medicare, by the way.)
The implications here for labor are profound. The UAW, which for decades has been the "gold standard" for setting the pattern for good wage levels for U.S. workers, has now established a new precedent for industrial sector wages of just $14 per hour. In case you haven’t done the math, that is equivalent to only $29,000 per year....just barely above the poverty level for a family with a few children. Welcome to the new "middle class" under President Obama.
Trickle-Down Economics
President Obama’s shameful conduct on the recent legislation extending the Bush tax cuts tells you all you need to know about his real position on trickle-down economics. Despite campaigning strongly in 2008 against the Bush "tax cuts for the rich", he not only caved in to Republican threats...he actively undercut efforts to stop that tax give-away. With a strong and courageous effort, Democrats in the House passed legislation that only extended the middle class tax cuts. This was not only Obama’s claimed preference, and a position supported by a strong majority of Americans, it was also a tactic that Democratic strategists noted would put Republicans in a bad light for insisting on tax cuts for the rich. Yet within hours, Obama held a White House press conference that cut the House Democrats off at the knees, saying that their effort was futile because Republicans in the Senate would not agree, so he was going to pursue his own negotiations with the Senate. He then proceeded to shut out his own party and directly negotiate a horrible deal with Senate Republicans, not only extending income tax cuts for the rich but also containing a surprise extra gift for Republicans - - a cut in what would have been the new inheritance tax levels. In exchange for this, he got a couple more tax cuts that Republicans would have supported anyway, and a short-term extension of some unemployment benefits, which many experts believe the Republicans could have been pressured into supporting irrespective of the tax bill. There are a number of other terrible elements to the bill (e.g., a cut in Social Security payroll taxes that some see as a ‘foot-in-the-door’ to privatizing Social Security).
From a Democratic perspective, Obama took lemonade and made lemons. Many Democratic strategists pointed out that the Democrats had the upper hand in terms of their position vs. the Republicans, with strong public support for middle class tax cuts and little support for the rich. The "Democratic" play would be to follow the House lead and pound the GOP to pressure them to yield on their support for the rich. Instead, Obama teamed with the Republican senators and reversed the framework, forcing Democrats to vote for a bill that is fiscally irresponsible and sets terrible precedents (e.g., the Social Security payroll tax cut), or else be blamed for "allowing" taxes to rise on the middle class. The end result: Democrats are bitterly divided and progressive Democrats are left to defend against future attacks on their vote in the next election (e.g., "Representative Smith voted against the middle class tax cut"), while Republicans are laughing and gleefully celebrating their victory. Just as in the health care debate, Obama took what should have been a Democratic advantage, chose to promote a Republican policy instead (e.g., the core approach of requiring citizens to ‘purchase’ health insurance from private companies was first proposed by Bob Dole and later championed by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts); and then browbeat his own party into supporting that essentially Republican policy at their own political peril. There is simply no way to characterize this recent tax bill as anything other than a huge Republican victory.
Damaging the Party
For those who have concerns for the Democratic Party as an institution, beyond current policy details, Obama has done lasting damage in that regard as well. At the symbolic level, it has certainly been frustrating to see Obama steadfastly refuse to criticize the Republicans in Congress, who have taken obstructionism and vicious partisan attacks to unprecedented levels. On the contrary, he has repeatedly gone out of his way to refer to these Republicans as "well-intentioned". What is particularly galling is that at the same time, this Administration has been more than willing to publicly rebuke the progressive wing of his own party ("the professional left", "sanctimonious" liberals, etc.). Unlike his predecessor, there has been a complete absence of any attempt to use the White House as a ‘bully pulpit’ to advance the interests of his own party...or even to pressure the opposition party to stop it’s obstructionism. Some may write this off as mere Clintonesque "triangulation", but the damage to the Party is real, and the policy ground being ceded to the GOP is tangible - - not just rhetorical.
Beyond symbolism, Obama’s specific actions have also shown wanton disregard for the overall strength of the Democratic Party. Again, the signs of this were evident from the earliest days of his presidency. Far from supporting Howard Dean’s "50-state strategy" for building the Democratic Party, Obama took active steps that directly undermined that approach. Not only did he immediately dismantle his remarkably successful national grassroots campaign organization and banish Howard Dean to the political wilderness, he seemed to deliberately take actions that weakened the Democratic Party at the state level. Obama’s cabinet selections were amazingly damaging to the national reach of the Party. Obama took two strong "rising star" Democratic governors away from purple/red states (Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas) and stuck them in relatively obscure cabinet posts, thereby turning those states over completely to the Republicans. If you think that such tactical concerns don’t matter, consider that had Napolitano remained Governor of Arizona, no-one would have ever heard of current right-wing Governor Jan Brewer; the inflammatory anti-immigrant bill SB 1070 would never have become law; and a significant source of ‘fuel’ for the Tea Party in this last election would never have occurred. To paraphrase the old bromide: "Appointments have consequences".
Similarly, taking Hillary Clinton out of the Senate to be Secretary of State was a stroke of genius, in terms of cementing Obama’s control and weakening the rest of the Democratic Party. It silenced her as a potential critic of Obama’s actions; paved the way for the ‘wimpy’ Senate performance we have seen the last two years; and took her completely out of the domestic policy debate.
But whether by design or by accident, the results are painfully clear. The Democratic Party is splintered, the base is demoralized, and the horrendous Supreme Court decision on corporate campaign activities (which Obama has made no tangible attempts to counter) virtually assures Republican domination in elections for the foreseeable future. How ironic that Carl Rove (who should have been in jail if Obama’s Justice Department hadn’t given he and the whole corrupt Bush Administration a complete ‘pass’) ended up spearheading the massive corporate fundraising for the GOP election sweep of 2010....and may finally see that "permanent Republican majority" he sought for so long. And how tragic that this sorry state of affairs is at least in part a result of the actions of the current, nominally Democratic, president.
Looking Ahead
What is particularly scary to consider is the scenario that has now been set up for previously unthinkable changes to core Democratic policy structures established by Democratic Presidents in the New Deal and the Great Society eras. We have an unprecedented federal "budget crisis", just exacerbated by the irresponsible tax cut legislation. We have an incoming House of Representatives dominated by arch-conservative Republicans, where a clear majority of the new House has already signed a strict "no new taxes" pledge. We have a so-called "Deficit Commission" set up by President Obama, with a large majority of members being budget-cutting "hawks" - - and a majority of which are considered sympathetic toward attacks on Social Security and Medicare. And we have a nominally "Democratic" president who has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to team up with Republicans to browbeat Democrats into supporting fundamentally Republican policies.
It has long been said that a Republican president would never be able to overturn Social Security and Medicare (witness George W. Bush’s ill-fated attempt to privatize Social Security), and that it would take a Democratic president to accomplish that. We now have exactly the scenarios where such an unthinkable policy change is possible: an aggressive ‘hard right’ House; a weak and conservative dominated Senate; a nominally Democratic president with a demonstrated willingness to abandon core historical Democratic policies; and a new political landscape where corporate financial interests can unleash unlimited political and campaign spending to advance their economic interests.
Taken together, these fundamental factors suggest we are poised to be hit with dramatic attacks on the social safety net structure we have enjoyed for half a century. My immediate advice to Democrats is: don’t weaken the Senate rules regarding the filibuster! A core of "real" Democrats in the Senate may be all that stands in the way of truly draconian changes to the social safety net in the next two years. (As a historical lesson, recall that Democrats repealed the "special prosecutor" law after Republican abuses against Bill Clinton, only to lament the absence of that law a couple years later during the corrupt George W. Bush administration. Don’t make the same mistake again.)
For quite some time, many Democratic faithful have tried to excuse President Obama’s actions, and blame them on "bad strategy", "bad advisors", or being "too nice". Baloney. Obama is too smart, and the pattern has been too consistent across too many policy areas to conclude anything other than that these are the policy results that Obama in fact wants. For progressive Democrats, who literally carried Obama to victory in the primaries, and turned out in record numbers in November 2008, this is a bitter pill to swallow. We have been ‘had’. We have witnessed one of the greatest political ‘con jobs’ in U.S. history. But while moving past the ‘denial’ stage is important, the crucial questions now are: can we rally sufficiently to limit the damage in the short term, and what can be done to return our nation to a progressive track in the longer-term?