THE BEGINNING OF HER END? / SEEING THE FOREST THROUGH THE SLEAZE
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(Tue, 13 May 2008 11:56:31 -0500 (CDT)) ---
THE BEGINNING OF HER END?
Socialist Worker May 7, 2008
Barack Obama's strong victory in the North Carolina primary and narrow
defeat in Indiana may have finally knocked the legs out from under the
campaign of his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary
Clinton.
Clinton's last tenuous claim to the nomination--that she was the new
favorite with Democrats who had soured on Obama over the course of the
primary season--depended on continuing her "momentum" by winning big in
Indiana and staying close in North Carolina. Instead, by the end of the
night, NBC political analyst Tim Russert was calling Obama "the nominee"
of the Democrats.
The other big loser besides Clinton was the media establishment and its
prized conventional wisdom. A closer look at the results showed that
primary voters--who turned out in both states, once again, in record
numbers--confounded the stereotypes the press had attached to them.
SocialistWorker.org columnist Lance Selfa followed the returns as they
came in on election night and provided this analysis of some of the key
issues in the Democratic primaries.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton waves by her campaign
bus outside a polling place. (Stan Honda | AFP)
HILLARY CLINTON: CLASS WARRIOR?
One of the most amazing transformations in this primary season has been
Hillary Clinton's shift in personas from heir apparent to scrappy fighter
for the working class.
Remember the Hillary who appeared at the 2007 Yearly Kos blogger
convention and heard boos when she defended accepting large sums from
lobbyists? That was the Clinton who was positioning herself as the
"inevitable" nominee and wouldn't "pander" to Democratic activists.
Today, according to the New York Times' Jodi Cantor, Clinton not only
claims to be "a champion of ordinary Americans in a troubled economy,
[she] has also tried to cast her rival, Senator Barack Obama, as an
out-of-touch elitist. She has made her case at all the right stops (an
auto-racing hall of fame) and used all the right props (lately delivering
speeches from pickup-truck beds)."
This is certainly rich (pun intended). Hillary Clinton and her husband
made $109 million since they left the White House in 2001. Clinton is
second only to Obama in the millions in campaign contributions she has
pulled in from a number of major industries--including Wall Street firms
she targeted for criticism at an Indianapolis campaign stop, saying "Why
don't we hold these Wall Street money brokers responsible for their role
in the recession?"
The same Hillary Clinton got, earlier in the campaign, a Fortune front
cover with the headline "Business Loves Hillary"--and regularly vacations
in the Hamptons with the Hollywood set.
One of Clinton's attack lines against Obama is that he voted for a part of
the Bush administration's bankruptcy legislation, and for energy policies
that amounted to giveaways to Big Oil. All of which is supposed to show
how out of touch with working people Obama is.
Fair enough. Obama deserves all the grief he gets for these craven actions
on behalf of Corporate America.
But if Clinton were consistent, she could say the same and more about her
chief surrogate in Indiana, Sen. Evan Bayh. Bayh, rumored to be on a short
list of vice presidential candidates if Clinton were to somehow win the
nomination, is one of the most right-wing Democrats in the Senate.
A darling of the right-wing Democratic Leadership Council, Bayh voted for
the 2005 bankruptcy "reform" legislation that took from ordinary people in
debt the rights corporations retain--of wiping out their debts and
starting over. Instead, Bayh supported onerous provisions like limiting
the amount of home equity a debtor could protect and forcing debtors not
only to attend credit counseling, but pay for it, too!
Bayh also voted for Bush's 2003 energy bill and supported most major
pieces of free trade legislation--and this isn't to mention his hawkish
and anti-abortion voting record as well.
Which is just more evidence that Hillary's populist posing is as phony as
the idea that she drinks shots of whiskey in hunters' bars.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
WILL WHITES VOTE FOR OBAMA?
In the 1990s, the right-wing Democratic Leadership Council talked a lot
about the necessity of Democrats winning over the "Reagan
Democrats"--white working-class and lower-middle-class voters. The
argument from DLC types was always the same: the Democrats had to be more
"centrist"--or more like Republicans--to attract the white male "swing
voters" who were the key to the election.
So if Clinton is using populist rhetoric now to appeal to working people,
how come she and her husband deliberately steered away from "populism" in
favor of "centrism" during their time in office? The reason was that
"centrism" wasn't really a strategy to attract working-class voters or
Reagan Democrats or "NASCAR dads." "Centrism" was about attracting
corporate support for the Democrats.
Today, the white male swing voter is back as Clinton claims that Obama's
weaker showing among this group proves he's headed for defeat in November.
Not so subtly, Clinton surrogates like Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell
suggest that white people won't vote for a Black candidate. Hence, the
Clinton campaign's effort to pigeonhole Obama as the "Black candidate" and
stoke the media frenzy around Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
The tragedy is that all of this newfound interest in the working class is
racially divisive--and when not divisive, merely superficial.
There are plenty of working-class people of all colors who would respond
to a program from any candidate that took the issue of class
seriously--that argued for making higher education more accessible,
guaranteeing health care and pensions as a right, and supporting union
rights and wages. Instead, we get silly spectacles of bowling outings and
braggadocio about firearms training.
Indiana was supposed to be the big test case for Clinton. In a Midwestern
industrial state devastated by auto industry layoffs and industrial
decline, Hillary was supposed to be able to ride the white working class
vote to a smashing victory over the "elitist" Obama.
But the exit polls available from CNN on election night show that while
Clinton had the edge, it was hardly overwhelming. In fact, there was
essentially no difference in the 52 percent-48 percent margin in favor of
Clinton based on income, whether the dividing line was $50,000 in
household income or $100,000. While Obama won households making between
$75,000 and $100,000, Clinton carried the $100,000 to $150,000 group even
more solidly.
Clinton had the edge over Obama among union households (54 percent to 46
percent), but they essentially tied 50-50 with non-union households.
Finally, the racial divide noted in previous primaries emerged in Indiana
as well. But a greater percentage of whites voted for Obama in Indiana (40
percent) than in either Ohio (34 percent) or Pennsylvania (37 percent),
suggesting that Obama is improving his standing--and this after all the
hoopla surrounding Rev. Wright.
One thing bears remembering when hacks like MSNBC's Patrick Buchanan
predict that Obama's second-place finishes to Clinton among white,
working-class voters will spell doom for him against John McCain: Most of
these dire predictions are made on the basis of data from primaries
involving overwhelmingly Democratic voters--the majority of whom can be
expected to vote against McCain no matter who the Democratic candidate is.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
GAS TAX FOLLIES
One of the big issues that was supposed to demonstrate Clinton's
commitment to ordinary people was her call for a "federal gas tax
holiday."
In one carefully arranged photo op, Clinton showed up to pump gas at an
Indiana gas station. It was a wonder she knew how, since she has lived the
last two decades of her life with government-provided chauffeurs.
Clinton wasn't the originator of the gas tax holiday proposal--John McCain
was. Clinton embraced it and coupled it with a demand for a "windfall
profits tax" on oil companies, which she knew George Bush would never
sign. Whether a President Hillary Clinton would implement such a policy is
doubtful, but candidate Hillary Clinton thought she had a winning issue.
Most economic experts thought the gas tax holiday was a dumb idea.
Economist Dean Baker cogently explained why:
We have a fixed amount of gas entering the market, [so] the question is
simply what price clears the market. In this context, if we reduce or
eliminate the gas tax, the price doesn't change; the lower tax will simply
allow Exxon and other oil companies to keep more profits (unless, of
course, they were lying about running their refineries at capacity).
Obama opposed the gas tax holiday. But his case against it had all the
hallmarks of the middle-class "goo-goo" ("good government") reformer who
lectures working people about what's good for them (sort of like Hillary
Clinton in a former incarnation).
The gas tax holiday would amount to only $30 per person and divert money
away from the federal highway fund, Obama said. He didn't make oil company
profiteering central to his opposition.
Obama never pointed out that, like all sales taxes, the federal gas tax is
regressive (neither did Clinton, for that matter). It takes more money
proportionately from lower-income people than from higher-income people.
So it would seem that the "progressive" thing to do would be to support
the gas tax holiday, while pushing for a serious effort against oil
company profiteering and other policies like supporting mass transit and
subsidizing workers' travel expenses.
Did supporting the gas tax holiday work for Clinton? It was hard to say on
election night. With the race so close in Indiana, it's difficult to claim
the issue as a deciding factor. But the fact that Obama didn't go along
with the proposal tells us a lot about what we can expect from an Obama
presidency.
According to NBC's Chuck Todd, the Obama camp said it thought the gas tax
issue was a net win for them. Obama acted "presidential" by refusing to
"pander" to working-class voters. This echoed Obama's earliest responses
to the housing and foreclosure crisis, when he warned against government
bailouts of homeowners who got in over their heads.
Remember, Obama is still the candidate that Wall Street and many other
business sectors favor. They are investing in him today so that he will be
in a position to tell workers they will have to "tighten their belts" and
put aside their hopes for significant change.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
WHISTLING "DIXIE" IN NORTH CAROLINA
The North Carolina primary saw a road test of one of the chief Republican
attack lines against Barack Obama if he wins the nomination. The state
Republican Party produced a television ad using media images of the Rev.
Jeremiah Wright and Obama, aimed at two local Democratic candidates for
governor. "He's just too extreme for North Carolina," said the ad about
Wright.
The explicit message-by-association was that the two candidates, both
Obama endorsers, were too liberal. But the emotional subtext was the race
card.
John McCain publicly repudiated the ad with boilerplate e-mail: "But we
need not engage in political tactics that only seek to divide the American
people." He asked the North Carolina Republicans not to run the ad. And
they promptly ignored him.
But before anyone gives McCain too much credit, recall that he's on record
as saying that he'll use Wright against Obama in the fall as well. For the
Republicans, who have not a single Black member in their congressional
delegation, this is the way they campaign.
As the Democrats in the 1960s and 1970s jettisoned their racist Dixiecrat
wing and opened their ranks to Black voters and their electoral lists to
Black politicians, Republicans used veiled appeals to racism and other
aspects of cultural conservatism to woo conservative Democrats in the
South into their tent. This was the "Southern strategy" that GOP
politicians exploited to become the majority party in the South.
So McCain's condemnation of the ad--and the North Carolina Republicans'
use of it anyway--is standard operating procedure. The national candidate
gets credit for "taking the high road," while at the same time, he knows
that his local minions will be using every bit of filth they can.
McCain should know how this works. In 2000, George Bush defeated him in
the South Carolina primary using many of the same Karl Rove-designed
tactics. While Bush remained above the fray, Rove's local operatives in
South Carolina were spreading rumors that McCain had fathered a Black
baby. When McCain confronted Bush on the garbage spread by his surrogates,
Bush shrugged it off: "That's politics, John."
Today, a section of the Republicans is attempting to spread this strategy
westward by targeting Latinos--the most prominent object of racial
prejudice from West Texas to California--with the hope of repeating the
GOP's success in the South.
But as was the case when the Dixiecrats and the Northern Democrats fell
out, this appeal to nativism narrows the GOP's appeal to only the most
retrograde elements in society. At the same time, this makes it more
difficult for big business to get what it wants.
One final point: If McCain ends up facing Obama in the fall, you can be
sure that he'll reprise every sleazy attack, including the Wright
controversy, that Hillary Clinton has already tried. For the cash-strapped
McCain campaign, having Clinton plow this ground is a godsend.
When George Bush Sr. looked for a similar way to devastate Michael Dukakis
in 1988, he used a racist ad tying Dukakis to Willie Horton, a Black
convict who was convicted for committing armed robbery and rape after
having failed to return from a Dukakis-sponsored weekend furlough. Bush
wasn't the first politician to use Willie Horton against Dukakis. In the
Democratic primaries, Al Gore had made Horton a household name in
campaigning against Dukakis.
####################
Seeing the forest through the sleaze
The media's obsession with the day-to-day campaign horse race is obscuring
more fundamental changes in American politics.
Soicialist Worker May 13, 2008
ELECTION 2008 has moved on--almost--to a new phase. And that transition is
bringing into sharper focus a development in U.S. politics that runs much
deeper than the presidential campaign: A general shift to the left, taking
place in different ways and showing itself in different forms.
Barack Obama's strong victory in North Carolina and his near-tie with
Hillary Clinton in Indiana has all but settled the Democratic presidential
nomination.
Afterward, the media establishment pivoted away from its stories about the
embattled Obama campaign, and the stream of super-delegates coming out for
Obama grew to a pace that should give him a clear convention majority when
the votes are counted after the next two primaries, even if Obama loses
both.
THE THREE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES
Clinton herself, of course, has yet to accept this reality. Instead, she
managed to disgrace herself again after the vote with a comment to USA
Today that "Senator Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans,
white Americans, is weakening again."
No one missed the point. "There is no way," Boston Globe columnist Derrick
Jackson wrote, "you can say in the same sentence, 'hard-working Americans,
white Americans,' without diminishing Black Americans as lazy."
It was the latest in a string of racist insults slung around by the
Clintons and their subordinates. For several months, their only real hope
for winning the nomination has rested on convincing the Democratic
super-delegates who hold the balance of power at the convention that Obama
was "unelectable" against John McCain. Any argument, no matter how
hypocritical or offensive, has been fair game--Obama is the "Black
candidate" who can't win votes from whites; he's too radical; he's an
elitist; he's too inexperienced.
This strategy has helped feed the conventional wisdom in the media that
the hard-fought primary season is damaging Obama as the likely nominee and
setting the stage for the Republicans to win in November.
But this misses the forest for the trees. If you look at the bigger
picture, the Democrats remain poised at almost every level for an
overwhelming victory in 2008--even bigger than the 2006 landslide in which
they took back control of Congress.
Sure, the Republicans are sharpening their knives, and they have the
Clinton campaign to thank for dragging their lines of attack against Obama
into the media. "Swift boat times five," promised a McCain adviser,
referring to the slimy Republican operation in 2004 to attack John Kerry's
war record in favor of the draft-dodger-in-chief.
But the claim that Obama has been shown to be vulnerable because he hasn't
won "big" states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and California doesn't add
up--and for a simple reason: The votes that went against Obama in the
primaries aren't necessarily votes for John McCain in the fall.
Opinion polls do show a growing number of primary voters who say they'll
vote for McCain if the candidate they support doesn't get the Democratic
nomination. But by November, voters' attitudes will have been shaped for
months by conclusions drawn not during the primary season, but during the
contest between Obama and McCain--a man who still supports the Bush
administration on the Iraq war and whose response to the worsening
recession is to call for more tax cuts for the rich.
Even the idea that Obama is weak among white working-class voters is more
a media invention than anything else.
"It's true that there are some whites who will not vote for a Black
candidate under any circumstance," New York Times columnist Bob Herbert
wrote. "But the United States is in a much better place now than it was
when people like Richard Nixon, George Wallace and many others could make
political hay by appealing to the very worst in people, using the kind of
poisonous rhetoric that Senator Clinton is using now."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
HERBERT'S STATEMENT touches on a more general theme that is plain enough
to see when the media commentators pull their head out of the back and
forth of the campaign. As Jim VandeHei and David Paul Kuhn wrote in the
inside-the-Beltway-oriented Politico:
In case you've been too consumed by the Democratic race to notice,
Republicans are getting crushed in historic ways, both at the polls and in
the polls.
At the polls, it has been a massacre. In recent weeks, Republicans have
lost a Louisiana House seat they had held for more than two decades, and
an Illinois House seat they had held for more than three...
In the polls, they are setting records (and not the good kind). The most
recent Gallup Poll has 67 percent of voters disapproving of President
Bush; those numbers are worse than Richard Nixon's on the eve of his
resignation. A CBS News poll taken at the end of April found only 33
percent of Americans have a favorable view of the GOP--the lowest since
CBS started asking the question more than two decades ago. By comparison,
52 percent of the public has a favorable view of the Democratic Party.
There are many more indicators that show the same thing, taking place
within the confines of mainstream politics and more broadly outside of
it--a political shift to the left as a consequence of the crackup of the
Bush administration and the right-wing agenda it pressed ahead with for
the past seven years.
At one level, Obama's success in getting this far down the road to the
White House in a country that was built on racism is, by itself, an
indication of a change in U.S. society. Polls today show that the number
of people who would never vote for a Black candidate for president has
fallen as low as 3 percent.
This shift in attitudes has been underway for years, but others have
emerged because of the campaign and the excitement that has built up
around both Democrats, Obama in particular. As the Indianapolis Star
noted, "[W]hile many Democrats fear the sniping between Obama and Clinton
will leave their party divided and weakened, imagine how many activists,
volunteers and young supporters this process has created."
Then there's the crisis of the Republicans. This is another piece of
evidence: The utter irrelevance of George Bush--supposedly, the "most
powerful man in the world."
Bush is treated like a lame duck because of the spiraling crisis of the
economy, the disastrous occupation and the discrediting of the right's
policies of divide and conquer. The vast majority of people in the
U.S.--including a majority of the ruling establishment, whether in
Corporate America or in Washington--expect something different from the
next president.
No wonder John McCain is trying in every way he can to distance himself
from the Bush administration and its record. The whole tone of the
campaign is different from 2004, when Bush ran as a "wartime president"
and John Kerry continued the Democrats' GOP Lite strategy of following the
Republicans to the right.
Nevertheless, Obama's rhetoric, as appealing as it clearly is to millions
of people, isn't matched by his actions or his political positions--and
that's been clear during the primary season, too.
It's preposterous that Clinton--a multi-millionaire and as secure an
inhabitant of the Washington political elite as anyone in American
politics--can present herself as a "fighter" for working people. But Obama
never challenged Clinton's pose--because he is in basic agreement with
Clinton on almost every issue.
Thus, when Clinton joined McCain in pushing for a "gas tax holiday" this
summer, Obama didn't challenge her by demanding a measure that would
punish the oil company profiteers instead. Rather, he acted as the
"responsible" adult, warning about government deficits--which was no doubt
reassuring to the growing ranks of business interests getting behind his
campaign.
For many Obama supporters, even those volunteering to work for his
campaign, the contradiction between their candidate's rhetoric and his
actual politics is understood. They will almost certainly vote for Obama
in November, but in many cases, they will be open--after and before the
election--to discussions about this gap, and what else needs to be done to
win the changes they want to see in politics and society.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE IMPACT of political developments outside mainstream politics is even
more important to understand.
Grassroots struggles never stop completely for elections, and they are
even less likely to now, when the issues that people want to organize
around are so urgent. The last several weeks alone have seen important
protests and fightbacks, some small and some not-so-small--May Day
immigrant rights marches around the country, a rapid response protest
against ICE raids in the Bay Area, outbursts of protest in New York City
against the not-guilty verdict in the trial of the police officers who
killed Sean Bell.
But even where the sentiment for change doesn't find an immediate
expression in activism, there are openings for dialogue and debate--in
other words, the building blocks of the struggles to come, no matter who
sits in the White House.
Many people who are looking forward to the end of the Republicans and the
promise of a new administration will vote for Obama with enthusiasm, but
their political interests don't begin and end with that vote. They can be
open to a discussion about issues that go well beyond what Obama is
willing to talk about.
The crackup of the right-wing political agenda and the impact of the
social and economic crisis must inevitably open up new questions for
greater numbers of people--and that presents opportunities for engaging
those people on the question of what needs to be done and how to do it.
It will be important for socialists and activists to not miss these
chances to build relationships--both for the short and long term--with
people becoming radicalized by the world around them.
MichaelP (papadop@peak.org).
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