Jane Smiley at Huffington Post (h/t Avedon):
The underlying question of this primary and this election and the next four years is this — was it the Clintons themselves who aroused the ire of the rightwing to such an extent that the administration they formed was unmercifully harassed from before the inauguration of 1992 to after the 2000 election, or were the Clintons simply the Democrats who happened to be there when the rightwing decided to take over? Everything the rightwing (and the media) latched onto about the Clintons, from Travelgate to the runway haircut to Monica Lewinsky seemed to me at the time to be merely a gambit in a slow-moving coup d’etat that was crowned in 2000 with the Supreme Court selection of the unelected George W, Bush. [...] It would actually be nice if the Fellow Wehner is telling the truth, that it is the Clintons personally that are the problem, because then the election of Obama would indeed signal a change. But if the goal of the corporatocracy is what it has seemed to be — the permanent replacement of American democracy with a global imperialist empire and oligarchy of wealth, then Obama doesn’t have a chance — he will either be corrupted or destroyed.
Go read the whole thing. Your thoughts?
I believe that Obama is a 46-year-old man; if he is corruptible, it has already happened. If Obama were to win the nomination, I would look to a campaign like the one Clinton waged against Bob Dole, with hints at Goldwater scariness and lots of bridgebuilding to the 21st century. Also some Karl Rove-inspired “that guy’s a little crazy” a la South Carolina, vintage 2000 primaries. In that context Obama could win. Assuming an Obama win, unless and until the Big D got a filibuster-proof senate and effective control over the corporate-funded DLC weenies in the House, it doesn’t appear that Obama would be able to get: 1) his agenda into legislation, 2) important cabinet and other seats filled, or 3) judicial nominees seated. In fact, the Republicans could well derail each and every bill as it comes down the pike, and we should realistically expect no less from them. Obama seems to be moving toward a national election where stumping for Democratic candidates would be mutually beneficial, and could change the dialogue in a way that puts the heat on McConnell-related obstructionism. That he hasn’t really taken a lot of heat yet is a weakness; anything that comes up is “news” and you know our liberal media will knock him as best it can while ignoring McCain’s weaknesses.
One of Hillary’s advisors is actually Terry McAuliffe–yuck. And the conservative echo chamber is just drawing its breath in to give her another round of blistering, fact-challenged innuendo. But nothing they can come up with will be new, and those criticisms may well backfire, as it appears they did in New Hampshire. Her appearance in debates has also been impressive, and not only could she best McCain, but she could address the list of manufactured scandals and slanders against her and put them to rest; nothing they brought up against her in the 1990s had any basis in fact. Her offense against McCain might be similar to above, but she’d probably throw in some sharp elbows about how he is an honorable man who sold out and did anything to become president. Either candidate would hang GWB around his neck like a giant lead boat anchor–there’s really no downside to that at all. How many 28-percenters do you really want to try to attract?
A general McCain campaign also has a lot of problems–he’s turned off a lot of conservatives, and is campaigning with a former Democrat, Joe Lieberman. He doesn’t speak to social conservatives other than to throw them the bone of “strict constuctionist judges,” the Xenophobes mistrust him for his immigration bill, and the Supply Side crazies like Grover Norquist think that in a crisis he just might raise taxes (cf. “read my lips”) because he initially didn’t support the Bush tax cuts.
If I were a campaign triangulator, I would send demographic-targeted mailers supporting McCain’s “prinicipled stands” on those issues to the people whom it would piss off the most: Immigration to the anti-immigrant Lou Dobbs crazies, fiscal responsibility to the tax cheat crazies, moderate social stance to the homophobes, criticism of the conduct of the war to the neocons.
This is my biggest fear of an Obama administration. Of course he’s not a kid, he cut his teeth on Chicago machine politics, and he may very well be so bloody inspirational and unifying that he succeeds.
But I doubt it. I’ve seen no evidence, not a bit, that he can do anything but pander–to the youth vote, yearning for another JFK/MLK, to the Reagan democrats who feel kinda bad about the whole Iraq thing (see also Markos, Josh Marshall, Andrew Sullivan), and to the Kennedy family.
My fear is that the entrenched republicans, the ones who are deep in the bowels of the White House right now, the corporatists, the neocons, the pundits, will eat him for breakfast.
Quite frankly, their die is already cast. The relative pass given both Obama and Clinton from the press, while they heaped derision and dismissal on who promoted substantive change, suggests to me that the fix is already in. The corporate strategy is to regale the electorate with unsubstantiated rhetoric wrapped in a package that they really, truly want to believe represents ‘change’ and then fuck America just as hard as Bush did.
What Ron said. Changes will be minimal. We are down to a one-party system, the Business Party. They do have a left hand and a right hand, and each hand uses a different strategy or ideology, to cover up the real goal, but the goal remains the same: shovel money up from the masses to the few.
The Shrub just did it so flagrantly that nobody who was awake could miss it. And he doesn’t care. Why should he? Who’s going to do anything? Congress? The Supremes? Most of them are in on it.
He doesn’t care about mine workers, he doesn’t care about death-row inmates, he doesn’t care about teen pregnancy, he doesn’t care about veterans, he doesn’t care about childrens’ healthcare, he doesn’t care about teachers, he doesn’t care about anybody who is not a member of his clubhouse.
The only hope was to have somebody who was willing to fight the corporate greed and do what is right for the people in this country, ALL the people., but our crusader was quickly dismissed by the corporate media. The message was extinguished. Not enough of us heard it in time to build an effective grassroots movement.
What are we going to tell our grandkids and great grandkids someday when we look back on the first decade of the new millenium and they ask, “But why didn’t you DO something?”
1. The Republican Attack Machine will go after Obama.
2. Obama in 2008 is not Bill Clinton in 1992. 46% of the DEMOCRATS in the NY Primary in April 1992 didn’t think Clinton had the integrity to be President. 2/3 of the Democrats at the time wanted a different choice between BC and Jerry Brown. 29% voted for Tsongas in that primary, even though he had dropped out of the race. Turnout in many primaries that year were abysmally low. Several unions refused to endorse him during the primaries, because they didn’t trust him. Some super-delegates refused to endorse him, because of the integrity issues. While the Republicans were particularly vicious towards him, the Democrats weren’t very happy either. Here’s the NY Times, from their endorsement of BC in April 1992:
The Republic hit squads won’t spare Obama, but it’s not reasonable to compare 1992 and 2008. For one thing, Obama is able to attract votes from moderate Republicans in a way Bill or Hillary never could. Not to mention Independents. That’s going to be especially important if the opponent is McCain.
3. I’m a little concerned by the argument among some Liberals right now - including Krugman - that basically says: “Vote for Hillary or the (Republican) terrorists will win.”
4. Expecting either Obama or Hillary to implement some genuinely Left agenda in the White House is unreasonable. They’re both problematic DLCers whose policies won’t differ very much. While we’ve seen how much damage to the Republic a bad president can do, I think we place too much hope and expectation on Presidential politics. Which candidate will do the least amount of damage to the country? That’s about all we can hope for. Bringing about real change is up to the rest of us, in our always neglected and sometimes small efforts to organize within the community.