[For a while I've been psychologically preparing myself for a possible
Obama loss and Romney win, seeing what a toss-up the US election has
become. I've been attributing my disappointment with Obama to the
functions and structure of the US presidency, rather than to his
personal failures. But this article below has pushed me over. Obama
needs to be defeated, even if it means letting Romney win for now.
Obama's presidency has weakened progressivism; progressives are now
unable to stand up for social justice causes for fear of antagonizing
a president who sells himself as a progressive, when in reality he is
not; or at least the office he occupies, does not allow him.
As a Pan-Africanist, I'm yet to fully grasp the implications of this
argument and the consequences of an Obama loss. Granted, in his first
term Obama has done nothing for Pan-Africanism, but my view has been
that it was largely because of the way the US presidency works. I
wasn't expecting anything different. But I was hopeful that Obama's
second term, when he will not have another election to constrain him,
might bring back the Obama one reads in his first autobiography,
_Dreams from my Father_, a deeply Pan-Africanist and progressive
portrait of who Obama the individual really is. Seven days to go, I'm
ready for President Romney. But only for now. Apologies for the length
of the article. Steve]
SATURDAY, OCT 27, 2012 02:00 PM SAST
The progressive case against Obama
Bottom line: The president is complicit in creating an increasingly
unequal -- and unjust -- society
BY MATT STOLLER
A few days ago, I participated in a debate with the legendary antiwar
dissident Daniel Ellsberg on Huffington Post live on the merits of the
Obama administration, and what progressives should do on Election Day.
Ellsberg had written a blog post arguing that, though Obama deserves
tremendous criticism, voters in swing states ought to vote for him,
lest they operate as dupes for a far more malevolent Republican Party.
This attitude is relatively pervasive among Democrats, and it deserves
a genuine response. As the election is fast approaching, this piece is
an attempt at laying out the progressive case for why one should not
vote for Barack Obama for reelection, even if you are in a swing
state.
There are many good arguments against Obama, even if the Republicans
cannot seem to muster any. The civil liberties/antiwar case was made
eloquently a few weeks ago by libertarian Conor Friedersdorf, who
wrote a well-cited blog post on why he could not, in good conscience,
vote for Obama. While his arguments have tremendous merit, there is an
equally powerful case against Obama on the grounds of economic and
social equity. That case needs to be made. For those who don't know
me, here is a brief, relevant background: I have a long history in
Democratic and liberal politics. I have worked for several Democratic
candidates and affiliated groups, I have personally raised millions of
dollars for Democrats online, I was an early advisor to Actblue (which
has processed over $300 million to Democratic candidates). I have
worked in Congress (mostly on the Dodd-Frank financial reform
package), and I was a producer at MSNBC. Furthermore, I aggressively
opposed Nader-style challenges until 2008.
So why oppose Obama? Simply, it is the shape of the society Obama is
crafting that I oppose, and I intend to hold him responsible, such as
I can, for his actions in creating it. Many Democrats are disappointed
in Obama. Some feel he's a good president with a bad Congress. Some
feel he's a good man, trying to do the right thing, but not bold
enough. Others think it's just the system, that anyone would do what
he did. I will get to each of these sentiments, and pragmatic
questions around the election, but I think it's important to be
grounded in policy outcomes. Not, what did Obama try to do, in his
heart of hearts? But what kind of America has he actually delivered?
And the chart below answers the question. This chart reflects the
progressive case against Obama.
The above is a chart of corporate profits against the main store of
savings for most Americans who have savings — home equity. Notice that
after the crisis, after the Obama inflection point, corporate profits
recovered dramatically and surpassed previous highs, whereas home
equity levels have remained static. That $5-7 trillion of lost savings
did not come back, whereas financial assets and corporate profits did.
Also notice that this is unprecedented in postwar history. Home equity
levels and corporate profits have simply never diverged in this way;
what was good for GM had always, until recently, been good, if not for
America, for the balance sheet of homeowners. Obama's policies severed
this link, completely.
This split represents more than money. It represents a new kind of
politics, one where Obama, and yes, he did this, officially enshrined
rights for the elite in our constitutional order and removed rights
from everyone else (see "The Housing Crash and the End of American
Citizenship" in the Fordham Urban Law Journal for a more complete
discussion of the problem). The bailouts and the associated Federal
Reserve actions were not primarily shifts of funds to bankers; they
were a guarantee that property rights for a certain class of creditors
were immune from challenge or market forces. The foreclosure crisis,
with its rampant criminality, predatory lending, and document
forgeries, represents the flip side. Property rights for debtors
simply increasingly exist solely at the pleasure of the powerful. The
lack of prosecution of Wall Street executives, the ability of banks to
borrow at 0 percent from the Federal Reserve while most of us face
credit card rates of 15-30 percent, and the bailouts are all part of
the re-creation of the American system of law around Obama's
oligarchy.
The policy continuity with Bush is a stark contrast to what Obama
offered as a candidate. Look at the broken promises from the 2008
Democratic platform: a higher minimum wage, a ban on the replacement
of striking workers, seven days of paid sick leave, a more diverse
media ownership structure, renegotiation of NAFTA, letting bankruptcy
judges write down mortgage debt, a ban on illegal wiretaps, an end to
national security letters, stopping the war on whistle-blowers,
passing the Employee Free Choice Act, restoring habeas corpus, and
labor protections in the FAA bill. Each of these pledges would have
tilted bargaining leverage to debtors, to labor, or to political
dissidents. So Obama promised them to distinguish himself from Bush,
and then went back on his word because these promises didn't fit with
the larger policy arc of shifting American society toward his vision.
For sure, Obama believes he is doing the right thing, that his
policies are what's best for society. He is a conservative technocrat,
running a policy architecture to ensure that conservative technocrats
like him run the complex machinery of the state and reap private
rewards from doing so. Radical political and economic inequality is
the result. None of these policy shifts, with the exception of TARP,
is that important in and of themselves, but together they add up to
declining living standards.
While life has never been fair, the chart above shows that, since
World War II, this level of official legal, political and economic
inequity for the broad mass of the public is new (though obviously for
subgroups, like African-Americans, it was not new). It is as if
America's traditional racial segregationist tendencies have been
reorganized, and the tools and tactics of that system have been
repurposed for a multicultural elite colonizing a multicultural
population. The data bears this out: Under Bush, economic inequality
was bad, as 65 cents of every dollar of income growth went to the top
1 percent. Under Obama, however, that number is 93 cents out of every
dollar. That's right, under Barack Obama there is more economic
inequality than under George W. Bush. And if you look at the chart
above, most of this shift happened in 2009-2010, when Democrats
controlled Congress. This was not, in other words, the doing of the
mean Republican Congress. And it's not strictly a result of the
financial crisis; after all, corporate profits did crash, like housing
values did, but they also recovered, while housing values have not.
This is the shape of the system Obama has designed. It is intentional,
it is the modern American order, and it has a certain equilibrium, the
kind we identify in Middle Eastern resource extraction based
economies. We are even seeing, as I showed in an earlier post, a
transition of the American economic order toward a petro-state. By
some accounts, America will be the largest producer of hydrocarbons in
the world, bigger than Saudi Arabia. This is just not an America that
any of us should want to live in. It is a country whose economic basis
is oligarchy, whose political system is authoritarianism, and whose
political culture is murderous toward the rest of the world and
suicidal in our aggressive lack of attention to climate change.
Many will claim that Obama was stymied by a Republican Congress. But
the primary policy framework Obama put in place – the bailouts, took
place during the transition and the immediate months after the
election, when Obama had enormous leverage over the Bush
administration and then a dominant Democratic Party in Congress. In
fact, during the transition itself, Bush's Treasury Secretary Hank
Paulson offered a deal to Barney Frank, to force banks to write down
mortgages and stem foreclosures if Barney would speed up the release
of TARP money. Paulson demanded, as a condition of the deal, that
Obama sign off on it. Barney said fine, but to his surprise, the
incoming president vetoed the deal. Yup, you heard that right — the
Bush administration was willing to write down mortgages in response to
Democratic pressure, but it was Obama who said no, we want a
foreclosure crisis. And with Neil Barofsky's book "Bailout," we see
why. Tim Geithner said, in private meetings, that the foreclosure
mitigation programs were not meant to mitigate foreclosures, but to
spread out pain for the banks, the famous "foam the runway" comment.
This central lie is key to the entire Obama economic strategy. It is
not that Obama was stymied by Congress, or was up against a system, or
faced a massive crisis, which led to the shape of the economy we see
today. Rather, Obama had a handshake deal to help the middle class
offered to him by Paulson, and Obama said no. He was not constrained
by anything but his own policy instincts. And the reflation of
corporate profits and financial assets and death of the middle class
were the predictable results.
The rest of Obama's policy framework looks very different when you
wake up from the dream state pushed by cable news. Obama's history of
personal use of illegal narcotics, combined with his escalation of the
war on medical marijuana (despite declining support for the drug war
in the Democratic caucus), shows both a personal hypocrisy and
destructive cynicism that we should decry in anyone, let alone an
important policymaker who helps keep a half a million people in jail
for participating in a legitimate economy outlawed by the drug warrior
industry. But it makes sense once you realize that his policy
architecture coheres with a Romney-like philosophy that there is one
set of rules for the little people, and another for the important
people. It's why the administration quietly pushed Chinese investment
in American infrastructure, seeks to privatize public education,
removed labor protections from the FAA authorization bill, and
inserted a provision into the stimulus bill ensuring AIG bonuses would
be paid, and then lied about it to avoid blame. Wall Street speculator
who rigged markets are simply smart and savvy businessmen, as Obama
called Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon, whereas the millions who fell
prey to their predatory lending schemes are irresponsible borrowers.
And it's why Obama is explicitly targeting entitlements, insurance
programs for which Americans paid. Obama wants to preserve these
programs for the "most vulnerable," but that's still a taking. Did not
every American pay into Social Security and Medicare? They did, but as
with the foreclosure crisis, property rights (which are essential
legal rights) of the rest of us are irrelevant. While Romney is
explicit about 47 percent of the country being worthless, Obama just
acts as if they are charity cases. In neither case does either
candidate treat the mass of the public as fellow citizens.
Now, it would not be fair to address this matter purely on economic
grounds, and ignore women's rights. In that debate with Ellsberg,
advocate Emily Hauser insistently made the case that choice will be
safe under Obama, and ended under Romney, that this is the only issue
that matters to women, and that anyone who doesn't agree is, as she
put it, delusional. Falguni Sheth argued that this is a typical
perspective from a privileged white woman, who ignores much of the
impact that Barack Obama's policies have on women, and specifically
women of color. And even on the issue of choice, you could make a good
case, as she does, that there's less of a difference between Obama and
Romney than meets the eye.
Sheth's piece is persuasive. Barack Obama is the president who hired
as his lead economic advisor Larry Summers, a man famous for arguing
that women are genetically predisposed to being bad at math.
Unsurprisingly, Anita Dunn, a White House adviser, later called the
Obama White House a "hostile work environment" for women, in large
part because of the boys club of Rahm Emanuel and Larry Summers. Obama
is the president who insisted that women under 17 shouldn't have
access to Plan B birth control, overruling scientists at the FDA,
because of his position "as a father of two daughters." Girls, he
said, shouldn't be able to buy these drugs next to "bubble gum and
batteries." Aside from the obvious sexism, he left out the possibility
that young women who need Plan B had been raped by their fathers,
which anyone who works in the field knows happens all too often. In
his healthcare bill, Obama made sure that government funds, including
tax credits and Medicaid that are the key to expanding healthcare
access to the poor, will be subject to the Hyde Amendment, which
prohibits their use for abortion. It's not clear what will happen
with healthcare exchanges, or how much coverage there will be for
abortion services in the future.
As Sheth also notes, there is a lot more to women's rights than
abortion. Predatory lending and foreclosures disproportionately impact
women. The drug war impacts women. Under Obama, 1.6 million more women
are now in poverty. 1.2 million migrants have been deported by the
Department of Homeland Security. The teacher layoffs from Obama's
stimulus being inadequate to the task disproportionately hit women's
economic opportunity. Oligarchies in general are just not good for
women.
In terms of the Supreme Court itself, Obama's track record is not
actually that good. As a senator, Obama publicly chided liberals for
demanding that Sen. Patrick Leahy block Sam Alito from the Supreme
Court. Meanwhile, Obama-appointed Supreme Court Justice Sonya
Sotomayor has in her career already ruled to limit access to abortion,
and Elena Kagan's stance is not yet clear. Arguing that Romney
justices would overturn Roe v. Wade is a concession that Senate
Democrats, as they did with Alito and Roberts, would allow an
anti-choice justice through the Senate. More likely is that Romney,
like Obama, simply does not care about abortion, but does care about
the court's business case rulings (the U.S. Chamber went undefeated
last year). Romney has already said he won't change abortion laws, and
that all women should have access to contraception. He may be lying,
but more likely is that he does not care and is being subjected to
political pressure. But so is Obama, who is openly embracing abortion
rights and contraception now that it is a political asset. In other
words, what is moving women's rights is not Obama or Romney, but the
fact that a fierce political race has shown that women's rights are
popular. The lesson is not to support Obama, who will shelve women's
rights for another three years, but to continue making a strong case
for women's rights.
The Case for Voting Third Party
So, what is to be done? We have an election, and you probably have a
vote. What should you do with it? I think it's worth voting for a
third party candidate, and I'll explain why below. But first, let's be
honest about what voting for Obama means. This requires diving into
something I actually detest, which is electoral analysis and the
notion of what would a pragmatist do. I tend to find the slur that one
need be pragmatic and not a purist condescending and dishonest; no one
ever takes an action without a reason to do so. Life is compromise.
Every person gets this from the first time he or she, as a kid, asks
his or her dad for something his or her mom won't give him. If you are
taking action in politics, you have to assume that you are doing it
because you want some sort of consequence from it. But even within the
desiccated and corroded notion of what passes for democracy in 2012,
the claims of the partisans to pragmatism are foolish. There are only
five or six states that matter in this election; in the other 44 or
45, your vote on the presidential level doesn't matter. It is as
decorative as a vote for an "American Idol contestant." So, unless you
are in one of the few swing states that matters, a vote for Obama is
simply an unabashed endorsement of his policies. But if you are in a
swing state, then the question is, what should you do?
Now, and this is subtle, I don't think the case against voting for
Obama is airtight. If you are willing to argue that Obama, though he
has imposed an authoritarian architecture on the American system, is
still a better choice than Romney, fine. I can respect honest
disagreement. Here's why I disagree with that analysis. If the White
House were a video game where the player was all that mattered, voting
for Obama would probably be the most reasonable thing to do. Romney is
more likely to attack Iran, which would be just horrific (though Obama
might do so as well, we don't really know). But video game
policymaking is not how politics actually works — the people
themselves, what they believe and what they don't, can constrain
political leaders. And under Obama, because there is now no one making
the anti-torture argument, Americans have become more tolerant of
torture, drones, war and authoritarianism in general. The case against
Obama is that the people themselves will be better citizens under a
Romney administration, distrusting him and placing constraints on his
behavior the way they won't on Obama. As a candidate, Obama promised a
whole slew of civil liberties protections, lying the whole time. Obama
has successfully organized the left part of the Democratic Party into
a force that had rhetorically opposed war and civil liberties
violations, but now cheerleads a weakened America too frightened to
put Osama bin Laden on trial. We must fight this thuggish political
culture Bush popularized, and Obama solidified in place.
But can a third-party candidate win? No. So what is the point of
voting at all, or voting for a third-party candidate? My answer is
that this election is, first and foremost, practice for crisis
moments. Elections are just one small part of how social justice
change can happen. The best moment for change is actually a crisis,
where there is actually policy leverage. We should look at 9/11,
Katrina and the financial crisis as the flip side of FDR's 100 days or
the days immediately after LBJ took office. We already know that a
crisis brings great pressure to conform to what the political
establishment wants. So does this election. We all know that elites in
a crisis will tell you to hand them enormous amounts of power, lest
the world blow up. This is essentially the argument from the political
establishment in 2012. Saying no to evil in 2012 will help us
understand who is willing to say no to evil when it really matters.
And when you have power during a crisis, there's no end to the amount
of good you can do.
How do we drive large-scale change during moments of crisis? How do we
use this election to do so? Well, voting third party or even just
honestly portraying Obama's policy architecture is a good way to
identify to ourselves and each other who actually has the integrity to
not cave to bullying. Then the task starting after the election is to
build this network of organized people with intellectual and political
integrity into a group who understands how to move the levers of power
across industry, government, media and politics. We need to put
ourselves into the position to be able to run the government.
After all, if a political revolution came tomorrow, could those who
believe in social justice and climate change actually govern? Do we
have the people to do it? Do we have the ideas, the legislative
proposals, the understanding of how to reorganize our society into a
sustainable and socially just one? I suspect, no. When the next crisis
comes, and it will come, space will again open up for real policy
change. The most important thing we can use this election for is to
prepare for that moment. That means finding ways of seeing who is on
our side and building a group with the will to power and the expertise
to make the right demands. We need to generate the inner confidence to
blow up the political consensus, against the railings of the men in
suits. If there had been an actual full-scale financial meltdown in
2008 without a bailout, while it would have been bad, it probably
would have given us a fighting chance of warding off planetary
catastrophe and reorganizing our politics. Instead the oligarchs took
control, because we weren't willing to face them down when we needed
to show courage. So now we have the worst of all worlds, an inevitably
worse crisis and an even more authoritarian structure of governance.
At some point soon, we will face yet another moment where the elites
say, "Do what we want or there will be a meltdown." Do we have enough
people on our side willing to collectively say "do what we want or
there will be a global meldown"? This election is a good mechanism to
train people in the willingness to say that and mean it. That is, the
reason to advocate for a third-party candidate is to build the civic
muscles willing to say no to the establishment in a crisis moment we
all know is coming. Right now, the liberal establishment is teaching
its people that letting malevolent political elites do what they want
is not only the right path, it is the only path. Anything other than
that is dubbed an affront to common decency. Just telling the truth is
considered beyond rude.
We need to build a different model of politics, one in which people
who want a different society are willing to actually bargain and back
up their threats, rather than just aesthetically argue for shifts
around the margin. The good news is that the changes we need to make
are entirely doable. It will cost about $100 trillion over 20 years to
move our world to an entirely sustainable energy system, and the net
worth of the global top 1 percent is $103 trillion. We can do this.
And the moments to let us make the changes we need are coming. There
is endless good we can do, if enough of us are willing to show the
courage that exists within every human being instead of the
malevolence and desire for conformity that also exists within every
heart.
Systems that can't go on, don't. The political elites, as much as they
kick the can down the road, know this. The question we need to ask
ourselves is, do we?
--
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http://freireproject.org/users/steve-sharra |
http://www.zeleza.com/blog/stevesharra |
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| http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/author/steve-sharra/ |
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http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevesharra |
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