I'm usually not a big fan of "The Democratic Strategist's" James Vega but he has something to say today that puts the whole thing in perspective and can perhaps put the whole pro/anti-Obama schism in the progressive community in a new light.
His"Strategy Memo" released today lays it on the line with a rather ponderous title -
Democrats: The major reason why it’s so hard to get support for
job creation is because business and mainstream economists – who both backed Keynesian policies in the 50’s and 60’s – now oppose them. No serious Democratic strategy can ignore this reality.
He's absolutely right. Obama's fierce critics on the Left point out that Obama's a neo-liberal and compares unfavorably with FDR. I don't disagree. However, Vega's right:
The reality can be stated simply: the business community and mainstream economists—both of whom supported Keynesian policies for “full employment” in the 50’s and 60’s—now oppose them. This is the central roadblock to job creation today.
Just imagine how radically different the debate over unemployment would be if the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable were testifying in Congress in favor of policies to reduce unemployment and the leading economists in the American Economic Association were taking out full-page ads in the New York Times calling for forceful action to reduce joblessness to below 6%. Yet, in fact, in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s actions like these would have been likely to occur had the unemployment rate reached 9% and threatened to remain there.
Democrats need to understand why and how business and the economics profession have switched from support for Keynesian “full employment” policies to firm opposition. It is the vital starting point for any long-term Democratic strategy.
The question nobody on today's Left has been facing is WHY the corporations took this stance in the mid-twentieth century and why they've gone back to nineteenth-century attitudes in the twenty-first. Vega faces this question:
Business did offer very clear public statements of support for “full employment” in the 1950’s and 1960’s however, but it was based on an entirely different calculation. With Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev running around the world in the 50’s proclaiming that capitalism was doomed and socialism superior, top business leaders indignantly harrumphed to each other over their 20 year old scotches that they “were god-damned if they were going to have the evening news show U.S. unemployment creeping back up to 10 or 15% percent and give the god-damned Ruskies a huge propaganda coup all across Europe and the third world.” Occasionally they added “even though that’s exactly what that god-damned son-of a bitch Walter Reuther (president of the UAW) needs to cut him down to size.”
Grumpiness aside, there was indeed a very solid big business consensus in the 1950’s and 1960’s that as long as the U.S. was in a life or death global competition with the “Ruskies,” unemployment needed to be kept at around 4-4.5%.
With this insight, which applies even more strongly to the Thirties, we can see how FDR could get away with being a "traitor to his class". They may have cursed him in their country clubs, but deep down they knew they needed him. As I have sometimes said, the Soviet Union did create a Workers' Paradise - in the countries they DIDN'T rule.
My point here is not to defend Obama, and I will not stand for criticism that I have any illusions about him because I plan to support him in 2012 as the best available candidate.
My point is simply that the expectation that Obama would be FDR is ahistorical nonsense. FDR wouldn't - and couldn't - have been FDR without the "red menace" lurking in the background. We have no choice but to view our fight as more long-term, more difficult, and yes, less satisfying, than what our predecessors had to deal with.
We have to get used to it. We need more sophisticated, and more resilient politics than simply voting for a man and then either being satisfied or not with what HE provides. Kvetching on web sites alone is not viable politics, no matter how correct the criticisms are. We, the Netroots, with a few honorable exceptions, don't organize, we kvetch. Until we can do both, we don't deserve to be taken as seriously as we take ourselves.
The Wisconsin and Ohio Dems in the recall fights have the right idea. They are fighting for what they need without worrying about what Obama's doing. Are they disappointed in his lack of support for their cause? No doubt, but they aren't letting that stop them or wasting their breath talking about it! Which is what the "stay home in 2012" folks aren't understanding.
That is the kind of thick skin that we will need.
Go read the whole article.