The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Repudiating Liberalism or Obama

We’re coming up on the midterms, and the Republicans are cruising.  Odds are very high that  they will retake the House, there is an outside chance they will retake the Senate.  This is being spun as, is being seen as, a repudiation of liberalism and progressivism.

Back in early 2009 I told others in the blogosphere that we had to come out against Obama.  And by early, I mean late January.  The reason was simple enough: having seen what he did on TARP and then seeing his stimulus bill, I knew for a fact that he wasn’t going to fix the economy.  His “negotiating” strategy, if it was that, indicated he wasn’t going to take Republicans on, and that he was either spineless or essentially a right winger, just not crazy right wing.

Given these facts, it was clear that his policies were going to be seen to fail.  Quibble all you want about the stimulus, the bottom line is that it didn’t kick the economy out of the recession (in large part due to the bail out the banks policy which TARP symbolized, even if it was not the largest part of that policy.)

If Obama was seen as liberal, and his policies then failed, liberalism would be discredited.  It must be made clear, starting as soon as possible, that he was not a liberal and that liberals and progressives repudiated him.  A few people doing it in 2010, mostly half-heartedly, when he had already been seen to fail, simply looks like rats deserting a sinking ship, as it did when conservatives in 2007 started saying Bush wasn’t actually a conservative.

I lost that argument.  Frankly, opinion leaders aren’t willing to take those risks.  They saw that Obama was popular with the base, that everyone was still in “hope without reason” mode, and even when they agreed (and some did) that his policies were a failure, that he’d betray unions, that he was going to be a disaster on civil rights, they wouldn’t do it. “The audience isn’t there yet.”

The art of opinion leadership had become “see where the mob is going, get out in front and pretend you lead them there.”

So be it.

What is done is done.  What needs to be done is this.  The liberal wing of the Democratic party must be SEEN to take out Obama.  There must be a primary challenge.  If there is not, liberalism will be discredited for at least a decade, time America cannot afford, since liberal solutions work and conservative solutions,  whether pushed by right wing Dems or Republicans, don’t.

Are you a liberal first, or a Democrat?  You can’t be both.

The Lesser Evil Argument: I’ll discuss the fear-monger “Republicans are so bad” defense of supporting Dems no matter what at greater length in a later post, for now, the short version is this: Republicans ARE going to to  win again, Dems are not going to stay in charge for 20 years.  If Dems don’t do the right things when they can, the country will still slide into ruin.  The status quo of Dems moving slightly to the right, then Republicans rocketing to the right leads America to ruin.  All “Dems at all costs” partisans are doing is making the process go on somewhat longer.  That’s fine if you’re 70, or younger and in really bad health, but if you don’t expect to die soon, all you’re doing is putting off the catastrophic meltdown of America, not doing what is necessary to stop it from occurring.)

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127 Comments

  1. Albatross

    The US is a bus heading towards the cliff. Republicans want to stomp on the gas pedal as proof they’ve been driving the right way all along. Democrats want to do anything that doesn’t involve turning or braking. Anyone who suggests it might be a good idea to turn the bus or step on the brakes is accused by the Democrats of being disloyal.

    Until somebody has the sense or the power to push aside the Democrats and Republicans and grab the wheel, the United States is destined for the cliff.

  2. guest

    No, you were right, it wasn’t hard to see, even before TARP (FISA sealed the deal for me). The guy kicked off his campaign with a homophobic militant christian, and all the Obamabots told me don’t worry, he’s really a liberal. “You’re such a cynic”. Before he even announced his candidacy Obama ben Liebermen was his well earned nickname in “cynical” circles. Americans are just fucking stoopid, and really there is no way to save them (or all of us) from themselves. I thought I’d get more satisfaction watching the idiots take it up the ass, but it’s really sad. Just tet a sixty something mover/truck driver who lost his house, lives in his truck, and will never be able to retire. He blames liberals/liberalism for his problems. I guess it was liberals that forced the banks to lend money to idiots like him. He really deserves his fate, but in person it was incredibly pathetic to see up close. Hopefully as I meet more people like that, my unfortunate liberal empathy will die out completely. Or maybe I’ll become a shut in.

  3. jcapan

    Ian, almost in complete agreement here. But given that you’ve said America’s headed for it’s fascist moment/collapse, how much does it matter at this point? I understand fighting the good fight, but if liberals have any hope of averting disaster, are moral victories like a timely rejection of our republican president even worth the breath?

  4. Formerly T-Bear

    It does look like a chrystalnacht moment, and liberals are the new demons. Bet it does not end like “The Lord of the Flies”.

  5. Fine, then: repudiate Obama. Never mind that liberals have no one to run in his place that isn’t somehow also beholden to the same system, nor the institutional wherewithal to make such a thing “stick.” Let’s pretend that such things will come in due course.

    But do this in 2012, not in 2010, when all you’ll do is create a Republican congress for Obama to run against and win against, while simultaneously giving a moral victory for the worst parts of the right wing.

    If you can find a primary challenger for Obama who is a serious challenger and can replace him and win an election, more power to you. But don’t forget that that last part is the most important part: winning an election. If your challenger can’t win the election, then s/he will be viewed as a mere McGovernish paroxysm that threw away control of the White House.

  6. Hominds. The United States is already in one of its authoritarian moments. It is not headed there; it is in it. Now, this has one upside: the situation is probably not going to get much worse. Unfortunately, it is already bad.

    I’m not so sure the Republicans are going to retake the House. The core of tea-party-ism, the convinced believers, are a tiny elderly group. Their ideology is being pushed out through the media and, for the moment, a larger minority believes, but come the next election, that belief will be gone, and it may not even dominate this election. The only reason tea-party-ism has become even this “popular” is because a huge amount of money is being pumped into propagandizing it. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, the deep-pocketed contributors will decide they aren’t getting what they are paying for, and will give it up, if they are not outright bankrupted. (I also like Jane Hamsher’s “Top 10 Reasons the Democrats Might Do Better In 2010 Than You Think,” here. The Republican leadership is also capable of fumbling the moment.)

    This does not make for a good situation for progressives, though. I think there are some parallels with the early Truman administration, when progressives were marginalized, and the country fell into an earlier period of authoritarianism. In the coming decade, the radical right believers will age and lose much of their influence. It is to the following decade and the younger voters, I think, we must turn. We must, especially, begin to construct convincing political arguments for our side. There is rich material for this: radical-right “capitalism” has failed dramatically.

    Time to get started.

  7. tatere

    Do you see any parallels to Kennedy vs Carter?

  8. Ian Welsh

    As usual Mandos, you miss the important point. This throw of the dice isn’t great odds, but if you continue current trend lines, you get a catastrophic collapse in America. Low odds or none, you keep choosing none, to just delay the inevitable by a few more years. Stupid, ’cause you aren’t going to win the death bet, but I guess you figure you can flee the collapse, so eh.

  9. “He really deserves his fate, but in person it was incredibly pathetic to see up close. ”

    Really? He deserves to inhabit a terrible economy because, why–he told the financiers to gamble our country’s money on credit default swaps?

  10. alyosha

    @The Raven – Nate Silver gives the Republicans a 73 % chance of taking the house, see the graph on the lower right.

    Also you wrote: …now, this has one upside: the situation is probably not going to get much worse. Unfortunately, it is already bad.

    Oh, I could see it getting a LOT worse. As bad as thing are, a loaf of bread or a gallon of gas still costs about the same as it did last month. The food trucks still keep the store shelves well stocked. As armed to the teeth as many of its citizens are, there isn’t open warfare with live ammo being exchanged between the various factions in the US. I still feel relatively safe where I live.

    I think the problem with Ian’s idea – if this really is a problem – is something Mandos hit upon. There is no obvious alternative on the left, apart from maybe Kucinich, not even considering whether the alternative would succeed or not. Without a viable alternative, it’s easy to be paralyzed by the “Republicans are so much worse” fear, and cling to Barry as Our Only Hope.

    To me, the critical point isn’t even winning the election (although that is important), it is repudiating the whole conservative philosophy of Reaganism. This is the reigning philosophy that’s been programmed into most people’s heads for the last 30 years. It’s the assumptions and rules that everyone, including the Democrats play under. Until someone comes along and can provide a serious challenge to this narrative – and deprogram the population – it’s all uphill regardless of who comes in.

    This is my own particular disappointment with Barack Obama – not his policies, not his BushLite stances (as bad as they are). But it’s his inability or unwillingness to use his tremendous oratorical and intellectual gifts to up-end the disastrous dogma that’s so obviously failed, and yet which has most of the country in thrall, to this day.

    Conservatives learned decades ago, that to control a country, you have to control the stories that are being told. It doesn’t matter whether stories have any basis in reality. There may be great progressive ideas out there, but they’re no match for the stories that people believe about the country.

  11. Deneb

    This is my own particular disappointment with Barack Obama – not his policies, not his BushLite stances (as bad as they are). But it’s his inability or unwillingness to use his tremendous oratorical and intellectual gifts to up-end the disastrous dogma that’s so obviously failed, and yet which has most of the country in thrall, to this day.

    Everything I’ve seen so far suggests to me that Obama has no significant disagreement with said dogma, and the same could be said for the basically whole of the current American leadership. They don’t “up-end” it because as far as they’re concerned it’s already the right way up.

  12. Deneb

    “…for basically the whole…”

  13. b.

    “disown Obama”

    A-men.

    b.

    p.s.: stumbled over this

    “End the wars, and bring the troops home. Even if Obama didn’t cut a dollar from the defense budget, all the money spent on the troops, and all of the money that they spend, would be spent in the United States, and that money would circulate in the United States, boosting aggregate demand and creating jobs.”
    http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/10/12/alan-grayson-what-obama-could-do-now/

    Isn’t that in violation of Posse Comitatus? NOLA and all?

  14. Pepe

    [1]To me, the critical point … is repudiating the whole conservative philosophy of Reaganism.

    [2] it’s Obama’s inability or unwillingness to use his tremendous oratorical and intellectual gifts to up-end the disastrous dogma that’s so obviously failed, and yet which has most of the country in thrall, to this day.

    Gee, 2 might be related to 1 somehow …

  15. dakinikat

    I’m hoping that Russ Feingold will take him on from the left. I doubt Feingold will hold his senate seat and he can probably thank the democratic leadership for that.

  16. guest

    “Really? He deserves to inhabit a terrible economy because, why–he told the financiers to gamble our country’s money on credit default swaps?”

    He deserves to inhabit a terrible economy because he is a mindless twit who believes what faux news tells him. Who took/takes advice from idiots on CNBC, such as buying a house he could afford was a good idea and there was no bubble and real estate is a great “investment”. Because he believes that the rich are taxed enough. Because he believes we can afford to wage two endless wars, but we can’t afford to provide universal health care. And that’s how he votes too, so yes, he put his blessing on all of it, or at least as much as his little pea brain could wrap itself around. Yes he deserves all that and more. And more should be showing up here any day now.

  17. Guest, I just believe the suffering people like that are undergoing is far beyond the scope of what he did wrong. He’s homeless, penniless, and may never hold a job again–his life is virtually ruined. Believing Glenn Beck is a mistake, but I don’t think it’s *that* bad of a mistake. And how should he know better? How many Democrats are making a case for the opposite position? Our “leadership” in the White House sure isn’t. Let’s explain to people like that where they went wrong and get their help instead of writing them off.

    Now, if you say that Glenn Beck deserves to be broke, homeless, and ruined, that is not only agreeable, but praiseworthy.

  18. Alyosha cites Nate Silver on a huge potential Democratic loss. Think about pollster’s articles is that they’re a little like financial reports: sometimes the most interesting things are the qualifications at the bottom. In Silver’s article we have:

    It is also important to remember that there are some factors, like the fact that many pollsters do not include cellphones in their sample, that could potentially result in the polls underestimating the position of Democrats. Our model assumes there is a chance that the overall “consensus” of polling could be off, which could affect the results in a great number of individual districts. This is one reason that it thinks such disparate outcomes as a 70-seat Republican gain or a mere 30-seat gain are not exceptionally unlikely. But such systematic bias in the polling could run in either direction.

    Problem is, we no longer know how to poll. So there’s a lot of uncertainty. Also, the Dems (it is said) are going to go negative in the last two weeks of the campaign and, well, the teabaggers have plenty of negatives. Even more uncertainty.

  19. Ian,

    As usual Mandos, you miss the important point. This throw of the dice isn’t great odds, but if you continue current trend lines, you get a catastrophic collapse in America. Low odds or none, you keep choosing none, to just delay the inevitable by a few more years. Stupid, ’cause you aren’t going to win the death bet, but I guess you figure you can flee the collapse, so eh.

    The problem is that you have your odds backwards. You seem to think that electing Republicans is throwing the dice, and electing democrats is not.

    Consider that the *only* reason why we are having this conversation at all is that there is a Democratic president and congress. If McCain had been elected, would we even have been talking about liberal demands, third parties, etc. Was there significant movement on this front under Bush? Under Reagan? On election of a Republican president in 2012, we cast this all into the fire.

    But electing a Republican congress in 2010 is even worse, in some ways. Not only does Obama pay little price, unless he has a sex scandal hiding in his trousers—but he reaps the benefit of a real, known, well-defined opponent to run against. An opponent who will reveal a depth of crazy against which it will be much easier for Obama to run in 2012. Not only will this discussion disappear, the very roll of the dice you seem to want—a sweeping clean of the upper echelons of the party—has zero chance of happening. At least in 2012 you would have accomplished a decapitation.

    Under Obama, the American left has a chance to learn what it needs to do, and what the American right knows very well how to do: walk and chew gum at the same time. Be simultaneously able to create and destroy politicians, instead of just destroy.

  20. dougR

    I’m afraid Obama could not have been more effective in handing the country over to the crazies if he had been an actual Manchurian candidate. Ian is right: Obama is Herbert Hoover, if not worse. In pretending to service both traditional Democratic liberalism and the memory of Saint Ronald Reagan, Obama trashed the former and gave pride of place to the latter, and governs with a complacency that suggests my worst fears: in all that talk of transforming the way Washington does business, candidate Obama knew on some level that president Obama planned to do none of it. What contempt both those Obamas must feel for regular Americans.

    But Mandos is right too: you think the last twelve years were bad, just wait: privatized national parks, an end to legal abortion, mass disenfranchisement of people of color via Justice Department-sponsored “voter integrity” scams, Christian religious symbols displayed in public buildings, Lindsey Graham as attorney general…well, I’m sure everyone here can fill in the blanks. Just don’t underestimate what’s coming, folks. Government by the crazies is going to be very, very bad. And it will come to us in no small way courtesy of Obama himself.

    We do need to differentiate (and rescue) liberalism from Obama-ism. They’re nothing alike. We also need to become fighters, and back fighters to win. We also need a simple, clear, cogent, compelling, morality-based, fairness-based set of principles to stand on: perhaps that can evolve over time. (We all “know” what that means, but a central set of core principles to run on, in PUBLIC, is yet to be received widely enough to gain traction.)

  21. Oscar Leroy:

    Guest, I just believe the suffering people like that are undergoing is far beyond the scope of what he did wrong. He’s homeless, penniless, and may never hold a job again–his life is virtually ruined. Believing Glenn Beck is a mistake, but I don’t think it’s *that* bad of a mistake

    Thank you, yes. I continue to maintain that a patient’s lack of knowledge of medicine is not a justification of malpractice.

  22. But Mandos is right too: you think the last twelve years were bad, just wait: privatized national parks, an end to legal abortion, mass disenfranchisement of people of color via Justice Department-sponsored “voter integrity” scams, Christian religious symbols displayed in public buildings, Lindsey Graham as attorney general…well, I’m sure everyone here can fill in the blanks. Just don’t underestimate what’s coming, folks. Government by the crazies is going to be very, very bad. And it will come to us in no small way courtesy of Obama himself.

    It’s not really the specific details that matter so much to the trends that rightly concern Ian. Even with Obama, we are getting some measure of these things, though at a slower rate (which is not to be discounted). But the direction of the trend is the same. What is different is the way that people think about it, and that’s the most important thing of all.

  23. This is being spun as, is being seen as, a repudiation of liberalism and progressivism.

    I see this as part of the larger trend of American politics moving right. Politics are moving right here because that’s where the money is, and because progressives are too disorganized or soft-headed to demand that their politicians support us in return for giving them support. Until at least one of those things change, I think any excuse to move right will do.

    Of course, it does look bad when folks in the nominally progressive blogs and institutions didn’t repudiate his policies early and often, but even if they had, I suspect this would still be the message that we hear from pundits, and there would still be lots of folks buying it.

  24. BDBlue

    I do think there’s something to the point that until the left repudiates Obama, it won’t have a candidate to run. Politicians are basically opportunists. So long as Obama looks like he’ll win in 2012, nobody will challenge him because it will be seen as political suicide. But the weaker he gets, the more likely he’ll get a challenge. If you want it to be from the left, then it’s better the left be the one to weaken him because that’s where the opportunity will seen to be. If we simply sit back and let the GOP do it, not only do we continue to let Obama’s actions undermine liberalism, but it makes it more likely he’ll be challenged by someone from the right – because that’s where his weakness will seem to be.

    I’m all for building social movements outside of the Democratic Party. But for folks who want to try to take back the party from the inside, it has to start with taking down Obama. So long as Obama is in charge, too much of the rest of the left will follow him.

  25. BDBlue

    Or to put it another way, you can’t attract people to any kind of anti-corporate* or lefty movement so long as Obama is the face of that movement. And he’ll remain the face of the movement for most Americans so long as he goes unchallenged by the left. So the idea that you can’t take on Obama until you have a movement with a leader is – in the end – defeating because you aren’t going to get a movement or a leader until you take on Obama. At least not on a national level.

    * I think there is a lot of anger on both sides of the political spectrum at corporations (for example, the banks). So I’m not sure we need a “left” movement – thank god because career liberals pretty much suck – just an anti-corporate one (which, of course, is a challenge from the left, but doesn’t have to be defined AS the left).

  26. BDBlue

    Sorry for the spam, but I meant to include a link to Chris Hedge’s piece March to Nowhere. I’ve linked to it a couple of places, but I don’t think I’ve done it here. The basic thrust of it is that, to the extent the left wants to save America, it can’t do it so long as it embraces the Democratic Party. For starters, nobody is going to listen to a movement whose primary advice in the face of a complete failure by our elite class is “more and better Democrats.”

  27. Ian Welsh

    The next years will be worse, yes. Now, spin me a scenario where the Republicans never get control again.

    That’s NOT going to happen. They will get control again. And when they do, they will do all the things you fear. All you are quibbling about is how soon they do them. They are not getting less crazy, and their start point is not getting significantly to the left (in fact in many ways it is moving to the right.) Dems move to the right every administration, so do Republicans. Dems do it slightly (from the last Republican administration, as with Obama not just embracing George Bush’s civil rights abuses but extending them), and Republicans move radically to the right.

    Until you get Dems who move radically to the left when in power and who fundamentally challenge Republican narratives, this dynamic does not change. All you are discussing is how soon you get to a catastrophic meltdown of America.

    I don’t know how to explain this more clearly, though I’ll probably try again.

  28. dougR

    What’s really difficult in discussing putative progressive candidates to challenge Obama is that they almost have to be WILLING TO LOSE–i.e., to care more about what’s good for America than what’s good for themselves. They’d need to be willing to run on, and advance, straight progressive principles, articulate them fearlessly and endlessly, and pretty much assume they’re going down the tubes on election day, simply because the machinery of elections in America gives the mantle to major party anointees–that’s just how it works.

    Slightly off topic but maybe not: there’s a documentary on Hubert Humphrey making the rounds on PBS stations, and worth watching because folks: THAT’s what a fighter looks like. I disdained Humphrey at the end of his public career because of his fervent embrace of pro-war policies–but prior to that, his spirit, intelligence, and guts were responsible for landmark social legislation usually credited to Kennedy and Johnson. But watch him–THAT’s what a fighter looks like. I don’t know that we have one of those right now. Grayson, maybe–but is he willing to take a beating to keep the message pure? I fear not, and I think that’s part of the qualifications for progressive candidacy these days.

  29. Eureka Springs

    Agree with Ian… but we must leave the Democratic party (I already have). We need to utilize the Green party apparatus or an independent run like Perot. We have to assume the willingness to be a spoiler at best for now if we can. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t back good candidates to win… but first we need to learn how to stand up for ourselves or we will never gain a megaphone, much less a modicum of respect.

    Discussing Obama is as self defeating as discussing teabaggers. It simply sucks all of our ability to unite behind issues/solutions/good folk.

    I too think we are already off the cliff in a free-fall… the only plan now should be what to do after the bipartisans hit bottom.

    We need a ten point or less platform… It should literally fit on one page or less. Something many folk who know little or have little time can follow with ease.

    The top three in no particular order should be:

    1) Restoration of rule of law. (the criminal banksters (should have their heads on pikes) are the best demons an organized bunch of liberals could possibly have, yet we continue to negotiate with real terrorists in our midst.
    2) Gainful employment demands. (Ian’s list of broadband, green grid and energy supply, mass transit build outs have always been spot on, imo)
    3) Public campaign finance. (stop the current incessant negotiations with errorism on secrecy or foreign influence as if these are only minor problems now due to Citizens United… Seize the day and demand real solutions which might actually work)

    If a Democrat signs on and follows it to every measurable point, fine.. but we should be as willing as wingnuts (NRA) to turn on dissenters or hedgers in order to get what this country desperately needs.

  30. tom allen

    Growing up, I used to wonder how Herbert Hoover, in the face of the Great Depression, could continue the policies of his predecessors. I love Hoover as a man — very intelligent, saved millions of Europeans from starvation following WWI, a really nice guy. (A fellow Iowan, in fact.) But he was committed to the conventional economic wisdom. Like a current president you have mentioned.

    Don’t know who our FDR might be. Feingold? Franken? I wish it were Krugman, actually.

  31. Lori

    Hillary Clinton is our FDR and unlike Obama, she has the personal resume to prove it. Further, she brings with her the working class of America, who trust her. Despite all the blather about her being a corporatist, it’s not there in her voting record. it simply isn’t. She has votes I disagree with, but she’s a solid lefty who warned us about Obama and kept running when the media had turned against her.

    And if you’re going to claim that I’m wrong, then please, link to an assessment of her entire voting record that proves she’s a fairly reliable vote for corporate interests. Without that, the claim is just one more tired talking point from the Obama camp.

  32. Bernard

    yes the speed to the cliff is the only difference between the R and the D. and Obama is a R!! anyone who praises Reagan is no Democrat. That was enough to foretell the end of the Republic.

    the Zombie messages of the St. Ronnie’s era are deep within the minds of the idiot Americans.
    only a great crash, like the Great Depression will cause enough pain to allow for any re-thinking.
    the willful ignorance of the American public is beyond grasp of most of us “thinkers.”

    unless there is a great divide between Obama and the LEFT of whatever name, the Democrats will be seen as the cause for all the problems the Republicans gave us through St. Ronnie. That St. Ronnie started this whole paradigm shift is clue to the depth and gravity of the situation. and Obama praised him in his victory speech.

    not like anyone on the right cares about anything or anyone. The Republican party is the Free Lunch party. No taxes , no Government, no Society, nothing that would include the “other”.
    Nobody matters in this Right wing world except themselves. they worked for it and this is their Due! the Free Lunch is what the rest of us give to them that allows them to never pay into or for the Society they once were a part of. until we stop giving the Republicans the Free Lunch to destroy the world we ALL live in we are screwed.

    here in America, we are their LUNCH. and have been for the last 40 years. so i would like to get this meal over as soon as possible. we are feeding them by upholding the pretense of the sham of an opposition called the Democrats.

    but the PR campaign and the zombie messages are so incalculated into the subconscience of the ignorant idiot Americans, so much so it is not ever apparent anymore.

    Peace through War, and all those oxymorons. oxymorons for morons. fits perfectly in the Madison Ave war on the “us vs. them” campaign of buying cars, TVs, houses, clothes, food. the whole nine yards.

    talk about good PR campaign, YOU BETCHA!!!

  33. Ian,

    The next years will be worse, yes. Now, spin me a scenario where the Republicans never get control again.

    That’s NOT going to happen. They will get control again.

    You know, if I and whatever tiny fraction of your regular readers agrees with me actually claimed or believed that the Republicans could be prevented from reaching power ever again, it would indeed be a very silly belief. I mean, as the number of coin flips approaches infinity, the probability of tails approaches unity. Keeping Republicans out for the sake of keeping Republicans out is not the point. Obviously, it’s when and how they come back into power that matters, and how the alternative behaves when they do, as you touch on here:

    They are not getting less crazy, and their start point is not getting significantly to the left (in fact in many ways it is moving to the right.) Dems move to the right every administration, so do Republicans. Dems do it slightly (from the last Republican administration, as with Obama not just embracing George Bush’s civil rights abuses but extending them), and Republicans move radically to the right.

    I mean, that’s the entire point. Not only is the Republican baseline sinking to the right (I prefer to think of it as a floor rather than a window), it is sinking into the Bottomless Well of Crazy. That is in fact *why* the Democrats can and do move slightly to the right—the Republicans are *making* the room to move to the right. That is the connection you are missing. Win or lose, the Democrats have no reason not to move to the right—there is so much space being made there, all the time.

    And the left in the USA is not deep enough to replace the Democrats from the left—it can only defeat candidates here or there, whereafter the party establishment need only wait a cycle or two, and then say, hovering delicately above an even more right-wing Republican baseline. “Had enough now? Or do you want to try this again?” I mean, that was the entire pattern played out during the Bush administration, the entire political lesson.

    The root cause is the Bottomless Well of Crazy which you yourself seem to acknowledge.

    Until you get Dems who move radically to the left when in power and who fundamentally challenge Republican narratives, this dynamic does not change. All you are discussing is how soon you get to a catastrophic meltdown of America.

    Absolutely. And in the absence of a means or wherewithal to replace existing systems wholesale, left-wing electoral activity in the USA must learn to walk and chew gum. It must learn to keep Democrats in power while building up its own power base. Obviously, there will be times where there will be Republican governments. However, two years into a Democratic administration, even as awful as this one, is not the right time to do it. It’s also losing an opportunity to put, at least temporarily, a harder floor on the bottomless well of crazy.

    I don’t know how to explain this more clearly, though I’ll probably try again.

    I don’t think you need to explain it more clearly. I think everyone understand what you’re saying, and in the way of the blogosphere these days, your regular readers are the ones most likely to agree with you, and most of them appear to in one way or another. I happen to think you’re wrong. Not about policy, perhaps not in your electoral prognostications (we’ll see), but about politics/political mechanics. Unfortunately, a left that learned to do politics simultaneously inside and outside the system is absent (walk and chew gum), peculiarly absent in the USA more than any other developed nation.

  34. jcapan

    What Eureka Springs said. A primary challenge from the left is no threat to Obama. He knows that. We know that. It’s a nice, deserved slap in his face, but it serves no one. Beyond that, it’d continue to sublimate the left’s estimable talents and energy (not to mention correct policies) beneath the duopoly’s stranglehold on power. We can either begin building a movement outside existing institutions of power, local to national, or remain passive whingers observing the lovely cratering of society.

    You want to challenge Obama, get an articulate, likeable liberal with great resources to run as an indy/green etc. That’s a fucking threat, people. Split us off from the bourgeois dems-first, and the GOP walks into the WH.

    A primary run might make him shift L temporarily, only to rapidly resume Reagan’s perch in the oval office Jan 2013. A 3rd party challenge presents a clear and present danger that might cost him his legacy, and nothing spells fail like one term.

  35. Iridium

    Consider that the *only* reason why we are having this conversation at all is that there is a Democratic president and congress.

    Yes, if there weren’t a Democratic President and Congress we wouldn’t be discussing the lack of progress under a Democratic President and Congress.

    If McCain had been elected, would we even have been talking about liberal demands, third parties, etc. Was there significant movement on this front under Bush? Under Reagan? On election of a Republican president in 2012, we cast this all into the fire.

    Indeed, just as ever since Obama was elected no-one has been talking about conservative dema–hang on a minute…

    Well, okay, but I still have to grant you that the right has made no headway within the Republican party now tha–oops, doesn’t quite work either does it?

    Under Obama, the American left has a chance to learn what it needs to do, and what the American right knows very well how to do: walk and chew gum at the same time. Be simultaneously able to create and destroy politicians, instead of just destroy.

    I don’t have the foggiest clue what you’re talking about. “instead of just destroy”?!

    I mean, that’s the entire point. Not only is the Republican baseline sinking to the right (I prefer to think of it as a floor rather than a window), it is sinking into the Bottomless Well of Crazy. That is in fact *why* the Democrats can and do move slightly to the right—the Republicans are *making* the room to move to the right. That is the connection you are missing. Win or lose, the Democrats have no reason not to move to the right—there is so much space being made there, all the time.

    I couldn’t have written a more damning indictment of the Democratic Party had I done so myself. Is fact that their right-wing policies are doing tremendous harm not a good enough reason not to pursue them? How could anyone have any confidence at all in party that tells them, in effect, that it will hurt them to the fullest extent that its power permits? If the Democrats really think this way, then isn’t it guaranteed that they will, as Welsh says, ignore anyone who they can rely upon to vote for them regardless of what they do?

  36. Frankly, I think there aren’t that many liberals in the blogosphere. They are merely rooters for the home team, which happens to label itself with a “D.” If they had Principle 1, they would have repudiated Obama after the FISA vote. I agree that FISA was the biggest brick that could have dropped on their heads, and yet, they refused to see it.

    What I would love to see is the Democratic Party leadership recognizing that Obama is a complete failure, and requesting that he not run again in 2012. And yes, I think they should ask Hillary to run instead. No matter what people believe, if you look at her policy proposals from 2008, she was very far to the left of Obama on domestic issues. (She was against the TARP and proposed a completely different approach to the mortgage crisis, for example.) She would definitely yank the Party back around to the left.

    I also agree that liberalism and Obama need to be separated. It will probably take the blogosphere another couple of years to do it, though, and by that time it will be far too late.

  37. Joe Beese

    To the extent that anyone still sees the respective electoral fortunes of the Republicans and the Democrats as some kind of “contest”, they are still awaiting enlightenment.

    Chris Floyd:

    “But oh my gosh, oh my lord, we have to support Obama! What if those Tea Party Republicans get into power? What would happen then?” What would happen? The same goddamned thing that’s happening right now, that’s what. More and more war, more and more murder, more and more domination by a militarist kleptocracy. As Glenn Greenwald notes this week, Obama and the Tea Partiers (and the neocons, and the liberal hawks, and the Bush Regime war criminals) are in lockstep (even goosestep) on keeping the War Machine stoked and rolling.

    That’s why the opposition to the Tea Party Republicans has been so anemic, focused almost entirely on personality flaws or asinine comments or resume padding or stupid things they did in college. The Democrats can’t possibly attack them on substance — i.e., the fact that the Tea Partiers are rabid warmongers who delight in murder, torture and repression and believe that the poor, the sick, the old, the weak, the unlucky, and the vulnerable should just eat shit and die already — because these are the same positions the Democrats hold! Who “reformed” health care into a gargantuan, guaranteed boondoggle for rapacious conglomerates? Who bailed out the bankers and left millions in the hands of savage “robo-signers?” Who set up the “Catfood Commission” and stocked it from top to bottom with long-time, deep-dyed haters of the poor and the weak? It wasn’t Dick Cheney, bub.

    I don’t want to see the Tea Partiers in power. But I’m not going to support one faction of murderers and plunderers just to keep out another faction of murderers and plunderers.

  38. Bernard

    amazing. the idea that since the Right is going batshit fascist, the Democrats “need” to become “right” to fill the gap. Now that is truly an awesome thought, in and of itself. lol. Keep Republicanism alive, damn the torpedoes!!!

    an Eisenhower Republican or Lincoln Republican would work in their own eras. this concept of being the “savior of Republican ideas” is not what i view as “humane.” lol. getting rid of the Republicans would allow common sense, as in “humanity” to begin to be an acceptable concept, once again. hello… anyone home!!!

    Society has been declared an unfit, unwelcome, leech on the body politic. whether the D’s or the R’s herald the concept of destroying Society in the name of Greed/Altruism, is not the kind of society i have in mind.

    the visions of Ayn Rand and the Rugged Individual is what the Republican party represents.
    a Calvinist version of Christianity is being used to weed out those who fail to meet “party guidelines/weak, unemployed, gay, black, latin, muslim, female… etc.” buying into that anti human version of society led us to where we are today.

    the real irony here is the use of Left Wing ideas by the Right to cull out the weak and poor and discredit the Left. this is so “Christ like” i often wonder if the Taliban aren’t more Christian than some of those who carry the tag American. the ability to use the lie over and over has led us into this path of anti social anti moral: My way or the Highway, used famously by John Wayne.

    the Branding of the Left was not just a Republican success story. the D’s helped by running away as they do now. Getting rid of that kind of D would be a step in the right direction. that won’t happen cause they are part and parcel of what is wrong with Congress/ America today.
    Clinton proved the D’s were for sale to the highest bidder, too.

    the Left is and has apparently always been like herding Cats, as i quote Will Rogers. the D’s need to stand for society/humanity; humane, social, community building concepts rather than the “I got mine, go Fuch yourself,” aka the Republican way.

    whatever the labels of these concept of social integration are, society is what has made America and other countries stronger. that old “united we stand , divided we fall” maxim comes to mind.

    if you are willing to live in a “Lord of the Flies” society vote Republican or Blue Dog or Obama. i’m not willing to endorse the abrogation of the human societal community contract. i therefore choose not to endorse or absolve anyone, like Obama, Blue dogs or Republicans, that chose such a selfish, unChristian, anti-human, anti social conglomeration of Alpha males/females, becoming sub-humans, cause that group of individuals won’t have any reason or capacity to stand together as a society or nation. the force of the Gun will have triumphed.

    any wonder the NRA is so popular in America. in America society is viewed as a unwelcoming, unwanted blemish that must be “permanently fixed.”this is but one result or effect of the “Rugged Individualism” so highly regarded by the Libertarian, Ayn Randian, and Republican way. I read Ayn Rand and wondered what world she lived in to come up with such “disconnected and antisocial” heroes. Heroes that belittle others. Power makes right is her bottom line. kill or be killed.

    Geezam people. the Native Indians acknowledged the Web of Life. that all things were interconnected. to break one part of the web would cause the whole to unravel. of course such wisdom couldn’t be tolerated as it was in contraindication of the “American Experience” at that time.

  39. jcapan

    OMFG, Hillary, you mean the strutting face of the empire!? Cluck all the b-s you want, but if you’re willing to be the propagandist in chief for US foreign policy you’re not in the same orbit as the left.

  40. tatere

    It would help if the American “left” would stop discrediting itself all on its own, too:
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dustin-reid/beyond-left-and-right-why_b_757568.html

    What I’d like to know is, where in the US is there a solid working *voting* majority that would agree – in advance! – with left-wing economic – not social – policies? (By which I mean only the most uncontroversial Keynesian type stuff, or rather what ought to be uncontroversial but is now apparently unknown and incomprehensible…) The “in advance” part is important because they have to be inclined to think, “Yes, that’s a good idea, let’s try it” first to give you a chance to put the policies in action. Then the policies succeed and you get more support and so on. But it has to start somewhere. People want to see it working, they’ve been told for 30 years and more that it’s all foolishness and poppycock, with precious little dispute.

    Which is to say, one of the biggest problems we have is that people simply just don’t agree with us about stuff. Yet, at least. How do you bypass television and constant BS and convince them otherwise?

  41. Ian Welsh

    There’s a majority on a lot of policy issues, from health care to not bailing out banks, actually. Americans agree with you more than you think.

  42. spin me a scenario where the Republicans never get control again.

    The Democrats take over the conservative position on the political spectrum and the People’s Progressive Libertarian Party takes over the liberal position. The Republicans dwindle to a radical-right minority party in the Southern and Mountain states.

    …now, we need to make it happen!

  43. Tom Allen, I don’t know if you’ve seen this yet but I found it very interesting:

    http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/07/0082562

    “Barack Hoover Obama: The best and the brightest blow it again”

    “Probably the moment most comparable to the present was the start of the Great Depression, and for the scope and the quantity of the problems he is facing, Obama has frequently been compared with Franklin Roosevelt. So far, though, he most resembles the other president who had to confront that crisis, Herbert Hoover.”

  44. Pepe

    And if you’re going to claim that I’m wrong, then please, link to an assessment of her entire voting record that proves she’s a fairly reliable vote for corporate interests. Without that, the claim is just one more tired talking point from the Obama camp.

    Actually, you are the one who made the claim so it is your responsibility to prove it. You support it with links.

    But as was stated here – she’s the face of Obama’s foreign policy; if she was as lefty as you think she is, she wouldn’t be.

  45. tom allen

    Heh. Yeah, Oscar Leroy, I’ve stolen many of my arguments from that article, and recommend it to everyone. Kevin Baker’s all the more wise for having made these connections over a year ago. Unfortunately, what it implies is that things are going to get much, much worse before they get better.

  46. Stirling Newberry

    “he told the financiers to gamble our country’s money on credit default swaps?”

    I’m failing to recall anything he did in the Senate that said he would stop it. Oh yeah, he co-authored a deficit reduction bill with Coburn.

    He also voted for Iraq and Afghanistan funding every time it came up, which is the other part of the crisis.

    Obama is good at implying he deplores what he is about to do.

  47. John B.

    yes, tom allen, I believe that is correct and it is called a “correction”. We are due some mighty large corrections…

  48. bob mcmanus

    Paul Rosenburg discussed his Cali precinct, which is 70% non-Anglo, and why we won’t stop Obama.

    Ezra Klein, that worthless hack, directly precedes his confusion over Obama saying “There are no shovel ready projects” with a post on Isabel Wilkerson’s Warmth of a Other Suns

    I might say that “liberalism” has been redefined to exclude class analysis and economic justice but I don’t believe liberalism was ever anything but enlightened class privilege.

    Screw liberalism. Screw Democrats. I’m a socialist.

  49. Beleck3

    i used to think there was time to deal with the lunacy the we now live in. i don’t think there is anymore.

    the ability to focus has been destroyed. seem more like a ship being tossed by swells, of a great storm. there is no one at the helm anymore. the left has given into the right and the right is fighting each other over the remains.

    the hyenas have won, now it’s just intra party disputes. who gets what part, but none of the victors will give up control. now the fight is over who gets what. Watching this on the Nature Channels as a kid, i was always disgusted at the determination of the hyenas. at how vile and resolute these creatures were.

    the Republicans remind me of Hyenas. what we have now is the splintering of the Republican party by the forces that have succeeded in overthrowing the rule of law. The Tea Partiers will probably get the remains after the carcass has been stripped of its’ major meaty sections.

    Now all i can do is watch in horror while the hyenas devour what remains of the country i grew up in. and all i hear from the hyenas is that horrendous satanic laughter as they enjoy their “kill.”

  50. stevo67

    “Hillary Clinton is our FDR and unlike Obama, she has the personal resume to prove it. Further, she brings with her the working class of America, who trust her. ”

    This is a joke, right? You do realize Hillary is serving in Obama’s cabinet as the current Secretary of State . Sorry, unless she resigns and goes after Obama like a duck on a June bug on every economic issue from now until 2012, she has no credibility, zero. And you also forget she’s married to the same corporatist (first name, Bill) who gave us NAFTA and the repeal of Glass-Steagal. We are not going to find any progressive leadership from the inner circles of the Democratic Party.

  51. jcapan

    I didn’t think anything could be more repellent than the Messianism of Obama idolators. Silly me.

  52. Z

    Lori thinks it’s a vicious lie … created by misogynists, no doubt … that hillary clinton can’t walk on water.

    You’ll have to excuse her, she’s got cds … just not her definition of it.

    Z

  53. Z

    jcjapan,

    This is what comes next for the democrat dumbasses: many of those hillary lovers who “found their principles” when obama got the nomination, will lose them again once hillary runs again becoz their “principles” are all conditional upon whether “their” candidate wins.

    Z

  54. Z

    The hillary lovers are part of the problem with this country becoz hillary herself … and her husband … is part of the problem.

    Z

  55. Remember when Left Blogistan was crowing that Obama was ushering a “permanent Democratic majority?” I was one of several commenters here who were warning everyone back then that Obama was going to destroy the Democratic brand.

    We were right BEFORE the election.

    There is a GOP tidal wave coming and it’s not our fault. We’re just a small but growing minority.

    The vast majority of lefty bloggers are still slurping Kool-aid and the media is still singing the praises of Obama. But people aren’t buying it anymore.

    Some are disillusioned and staying home. Others are disgusted and voting GOP.

    The Democratic party and Obama are going down. We can’t let liberalism go with them.

  56. The hillary lovers are part of the problem with this country becoz hillary herself … and her husband … is part of the problem.

    Yeah, that peace and prosperity thing just about ruined this country.

  57. Pepe

    Yeah, that peace and prosperity thing just about ruined this country.

    We can’t let liberalism go with them.

    Bill Clinton can be called many things, but liberal is not one of them – at least without the neo- prefix.

    Hell, Obama’s cabinet is chock full of Clintonistas, but only Obama’s a danger to liberalism? Yeah – he is, but so was Clinton (both of them).

  58. Pepe

    Bill Clinton’s peace and prosperity:
    1. dot-com bubble
    2. the peace dividend from the end of the cold war

  59. Pepe

    And the children in Iraq who were being slowly starved to death, or having cruise missiles lobbed at them might disagree as to the whole peacefulness of Clinton.

    Clinton embellished his foreign policy with “humanitarian” aims and ideals, but in Iraq and beyond, he displayed the customary indifference of US presidents to human rights and the suffering of innocents. On his watch, military aid to Turkey, engaged in a scorched earth campaign against its Kurdish minority, and to Colombia, conducting a dirty war against left-wing insurgents, skyrocketed. The embargo on Cuba was tightened. Global efforts to block the militarisation of space were derailed while a stringent, self-serving neo-liberal economic regime was promoted through NAFTA and the WTO. Hundreds of thousands perished in Rwanda without Clinton lifting a finger, but he found time to bomb a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that his officials falsely alleged was producing chemical weapons.

    http://www.counterpunch.org/marqusee11212005.html

  60. Bill Clinton can be called many things, but liberal is not one of them – at least without the neo- prefix.

    Nice trick, mixing two different comments together. I never said Bill Clinton was a liberal.

    Bill Clinton’s peace and prosperity:
    1. dot-com bubble
    2. the peace dividend from the end of the cold war

    Yeah, sure. The longest sustained economic expansion in our history was nothing but good luck on the Big Dawg’s part. That’s why the gap between rich and poor shrunk for the only time in the past 30 years.

    And the children in Iraq who were being slowly starved to death, or having cruise missiles lobbed at them might disagree as to the whole peacefulness of Clinton.

    Do you think Poppy and Dubya Bush had better solutions to the Iraq issue?

    Who is YOUR superhero president? Who should we have elected instead?

  61. John B.

    It’s stupid to argue about a man who was elected 18 years ago. Big fucking deal. We have critical problems facing us, some of them terminal and we have two corporatist dysfuctional parties that do not represent most Americans and certainly not me, a liberal. No one wants to lead, nobody is offering any solutions. I think the commentor above is pretty right on with the nature and the hyena analogy…so what’s next? Plenty of suffering, that’s for freaking sure…

  62. Z

    We paid for that “prosperity” later …

    The “clinton” economy benefited from the initial stimulus of cheap goods imported into the US from the free trade agreements… the exported jobs would take more time, the explosion of consumer credit, greenspan’s irresponsibility in nourishing a huge stock market bubble, and wall street being set lose in a major way on the world’s markets. Workers fell further behind during those wonderful clinton years in wage inequality …. even behind what they were during the republican dominated 80s.

    “Both the average wages for non-supervisory workers and the earnings of those in the lowest 10 percent of wage earners,” notes Robert Pollin, “not only remained well below those of the Nixon/Ford and Carter administrations, but were actually lower than that even than those of the Reagan/Bush years. Moreover, wage inequality — as measured by the ratio of the 90th to the 10th wage decile — increased sharply during Clinton’s tenure in office, even relative to the Republican heyday of the 1980s.”

    http://dissidentvoice.org/Sept05/Street0929.htm

    Yeah, clinton did a great job with his secretary of treasury deregulating everything in sight, carrying out polices that led to hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi children, passing welfare reform, increasing the H1-B visa limits, relaxing the limits on media ownership, preventing college students with marijuana possession convictions from getting federal financial aid, and passing The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act which helped lead to this wonderful growing police state we live in and increased the amount of inmates by 50% during his reign.

    The delusory “healthy” clinton economy was the results of easy credit, the technology boom, the initial benefits of cheap goods from the free trade agreements that he couldn’t do enough of, his abhorrent secretary of treasury, rubin, talking greenspan into exploding the money supply to reflect the “productivity miracle”, and the consequent stock market bubble. In the end, we all saw how real that was when many highly capitalized dotcom companies never developed viable business models and went bankrupt with wall street walking away rich. It was mainly based on bullshit and it started to fall apart even before the abominable bush came into office. And, also, that initial wave of corruption that finally surfaced from enron and worldcom and the like in 2002 or 2003 … that didn’t start the moment bush came into office, it started when clinton was president. It obviously got a lot worse under the worst president in our nation’s history, but the economy did not just start to fall apart in January 2001.

    Z

  63. mary

    Just a question, Z. Silly me, but isn’t this column about Obama and his administration?

  64. Z

    mary,

    Did you not read the thread? Did you not read lori’s post veering this discussion towards hillary clinton being the savior of the democratic party?

    Silly you, I guess …

    Z

  65. mary

    Lori made one comment as far as I can see. You’ve made at last five on the same topic.

    If you are a liberal, do you think it necessary to repudiate Obama? Obama. Not the Clinton who ran against Obama. Not the Clinton who was president. Obama.

  66. Z

    “Lori made one comment as far as I can see. You’ve made at last five on the same topic.”

    So? Are you writing her bitching about how she was initially off-topic? No … and that’s probably becoz she has a point of view you agree with … and with mine, you don’t.

    In case “silly you” hasn’t noticed, these discussion boards frequently go off-topic; often that’s a strength of these boards. If you are going to take on the cause of keeping internet discussion board comments on-topic, then be consistent about it. That is if that’s what you’re really concerned about … and not just comments that you don’t agree with.

    Z

  67. mary

    Z,

    I asked if you are a liberal. I am. There are many things about both Clintons that I am not a fan of. And I am not one for the cult of personality. However, Bill did not destroy the liberal brand (liberals railed against him on many fronts and still do), and Hillary is competent (take a look at how prescient she was on the mortgage fraud). And, most important, neither Clinton is running the show.

    I asked if you repudiate Obama. I do. Because he is in the process of destroying the liberal brand (allowing the media and the Republicans and the blogger boyz to pass him and his failed policies off as liberal) and because he is incompetent. In way over his head. Never really learned intellectual rigor or consistency. Doesn’t give a damn about the working stiff. Or people dying on his watch. Or ordering murders on his watch. Or bailing out the banks yet again (just you watch). Or old folk. Or sick folk. Or the LGBT community.

    The point is: forget the Clintons. Focus on Obama. He is the enemy of liberalism. I, for one, will say it loud and say it often: Obama is no liberal.

    And I believe that, if we phrase the argument as one between the haves and the have-nots, we can gain many allies who are not self-identified liberals. First step, though, is to repudiate Obama.

  68. Z

    mary,

    I answer the questions I want. And I have an open and active mind; I’m not not one that is willing to be herded into the liberal or democrat camps. If you are sincerely so interested in my opinion on obama, go to some other threads concerning him and do a search for Z.

    Z

  69. Pepe

    @Mary

    The thread veered off course because Hillary was hailed as the saviour of the Democratic party (which is beyond saving) and Bill was held up as the ideal president.

    Both ideas need to be stomped into the ground at every opportunity because they are odious, or at least should be, to anyone who considers themselves to be a lefty.

    Shit, someone even denied that Bill was a neoliberal. Cognitive dissonance much?

  70. Shit, someone even denied that Bill was a neoliberal.

    Whatever he was we need more of those.

  71. I answer the questions I want.

    IOW – you have no interest in engaging in a fair and rational debate, you just want to troll.

  72. Z

    Myi … whatever,

    I debate points that I want to debate. I have little interest in debating whether or not the liberals should disown obama … I think about the whole damn country should disown that piece of garbage. He’s a disgrace and a terrible person to boot and I’ve made my beliefs about him very clear in past posts.

    As far as being a troll and not wanting to debate, I wrote a big post above that was primarily in response to your clinton glorifying nonsense; which you have not replied to. Instead, like much of the clinton fandumb, you prefer to parrot out short slogans like “what didn’t you like, the peace or the prosperity?” And then when someone points out the evidence that the clinton economy was not all that it was banged up to be by people like you and your hero, many of you come back with childish accusations of being inflicted with cds. But that’s becoz you basically have nothing to say in response to any of that and all you can do is resort to short slogans … that you’ve been fed … or point to someone worse and say that he is better than them, although that was never the point of contention to begin with.

    And I think it’s becoz that most of you are arrogant, first order thinkers that are unable … or unwilling, due to your arrogance … to look beyond what happened during the clinton years, when the credit bubble first got blew and the economy took on the chimera of a healthy boom when it was anything but. His corporate sellout polices led to a lot of economic problems later on … something you folks never want to look at or even consider, which is why so many of you are not much better … if at all … than the obamabots and the bushites. You only find principles when your heroes aren’t in power.

    And here you are now, posturing about principles and how obama has betrayed them. Your principles about obama IMO are completely conditional … you only found them when you beloved corporatist dlc queen, that hired mark fucking penn as her chief campaign strategist for fuck’s sake, lost the nomination …which is to say that you don’t have many, if any. principles in those regards. And if she was doing the same shit that obama is doing, you’d very likely be throwing around the same childish insults of misogynism or cds at people that spoke out against her … that DO have principles … just like you do now. Becoz again, there’s little difference between you and the obamabots and the bushites. You’re fakes and that’s why I don’t like you folks.

    Z

  73. Pepe

    Shit, someone even denied that Bill was a neoliberal.

    Whatever he was we need more of those.

    Shit, son. Then why don’t you like Obama? He hired all the right people (mostly former Clintonistas); he’s putting corporations and banks ahead of people (much like Clinton); and he’s warmongering the hell out of the ME.

    Of course, the difference is that the credit bubble machine is broken. Clinton had the benefit of the CBM; Obama tried to use it, but it’s broken.

  74. Z

    myiq … who came from nowhere as far as I can tell … writes an awful lot like a coward that I know that runs corrente …

    Z

  75. Z

    Yeah, his posting name … lambert strether … has been conspicuously absent from the board recently and then all of a sudden this myiq starts posting and brings along all the terms that the coward from corrente uses so often such as “left blogastan”, “Poppy Bush” and “Big Dawg”.

    What a creep … he runs a blog that passes around the hat here for money and then uses the board to troll.

    Z

  76. ks

    Just a sidenote – myiq2zu and lambert strether are not the same person. The former is part of The Confluence blog while the latter is, as you state, part of Corrente.

  77. Bernard

    you can bless The Clintons all you like. Take them, please, anywhere, just take them.

    did you see Hillary meet with Mellon during the run offs? she went and spoke with the man who personally authorized the attacks on her and Bill during their Rule. lol. she actually went and spoke with the very same she decried as behind the “Whitewater and the rest of the Clinton era.”
    gosh how “intestinal fortitude” can that be.

    and she represents America as State. lol. enjoy your hypocrites, do you?

    part and parcel of the Obama team. what they say and what they do.

    interesting there are defenders of these “type” of humans. but i gather money does weird things to us little people as well.

  78. Pepe

    I just wandered over to riverdaughter, and this comment thread was discussed.

    PUMAs are amusing.

    The prime sufferers of CDS are the Clinton worshippers.

    If you are opposed to neoliberalism, then you should oppose it regardless of which politician you like. NAFTA was not good for the US. Repealing Glass-Steagall was not good for the US. The rampant militarism was not good for the US. The dot-com bubble was not good for the US. Bill Clinton was not good for the US, even if he was popular, or “better than Bush.”

    Better than Bush – like being the world’s tallest dwarf.

  79. Z

    ks,

    No, I can’t say with absolute certainty that they are the same person. I have no access to that information. Neither of us do. The poster on the other blog that uses that myi moniker could also be the same that posts as lambert strether on corrente … or the coward from corrente could have just chosen that screen name to use on this blog. I didn’t look back to the very beginning of this blog, but I have never noticed anyone using that screen name on this blog in the past.

    I base my belief that the two are the same on their very similar writing styles and the terms used in the posts above by myi are used almost precisely the same way as lambert strether over on corrente … which is the screen name of the person that runs corrente.

    Z

  80. Z

    To: The true cdsers

    This is going to be difficult for you to wind your brains around becoz it is a concept that is so foreign to you … so hang in there and try to follow, maybe even read it a few times if you must.:

    I just want to point out to you that one can simultaneously dislike bill clinton, hillary clinton, george bush, and barak obama. And that it is also possible to dislike bill clinton and not give a damn about the monica lewinsky situation. That’s all entirely possible if you place your principles above candidate, party, and your own personal arrogance and don’t allow that arrogance to stunt your cognitive development and impede objectivity.

    Z

  81. DancingOpossum

    How could you possibly think myiq2xu and lambert strether are the same person? Their writing styles are entirely different.

    And how is lambert a “coward”? Corrente is one of the best blogs around, and lambert was never taken in by Obama. For that matter, the Confluence is an excellent blog as well, one that called out Obama’s con man act long before the rest of the “progressive” blogosphere woke up to the con. And it, like PUMA, was founded on an extremely legitimate basis, that is, the DNC vote-stealing that went on in broad daylight and was only objected to be a handful of “screeching harpies” (oh, and anybody who gave a damn about the last vestiges of our supposed democracy being swept away).

    At this point, I frequently disagree with their staunch pro-Hillary stance and yet I still recognize that the DNC committed an enormous, irrevocable crime that day and that the beefs the PUMA folk–of which I was one–were and are valid. I was a Clinton supporter in the primaries and a fan of Bill, but I’ve developed a more nuanced view of both, and since foreign policy is a major issue for me, I have lost much of my former admiration for HRC since she is, as you note, the strutting face of empire. So shoot me, I once admired the Clintons. At least I detested Obama from the get-go.

    I think you’re being grossly unfair to both myiq2xu and lambert, who are both terrific writers unafraud to stake their positions, and I don’t know where your hostility is coming from. They are not thread disrupters and sad apologists for the current regime like some others I could name but won’t…

  82. Z

    dancingopossum,

    I don’t agree that the writing style and phrases used by the myi poster above and lamberts over on corrente differ much at all.

    lambert is a coward IMO that threw around a lot of provable falsities about Jane Hamsher and Gleen Greenwald in a recent post … most unfair and damaging towards Hamsher … and couldn’t back them up so he avoided the debate and slinked away hiding behind snark. He … she … whatever … is a coward in my book.
    https://www.ianwelsh.net/leftists-should-take-credit-for-bringing-down-democrats/#comments

    I have nothing against people that once liked clinton … fuck, I voted for him once … but I do with those that are too arrogant to re-examine their beliefs and try to stifle debate in regards to him by responding with silly phrases … that they’ve been fed … and snark.

    Z

  83. Wow!

    Should I be insulted or should Lambert? Complimented?

    That would be a pretty good trick writing numerous posts under two different aliases at two different blogs for over two years (Lambert has been writing a lot longer than that.)

    Z needs to get out more.

  84. Z

    Dancingoppossum,

    But I was wrong when I wrote with certitude that the myi poster and lambert from corrente are one in the same. I obviously have no way of being absolutely sure of that.

    Z

  85. Z

    myi,

    Oh, I surely wouldn’t be complimented … and that certainly wasn’t the intention. I guess you’ve developed a keen appreciation of someone that you claim threw you off of their blog. Ha ha ha.

    If you ain’t the same person, you’re two peas in a pod … and both eerily alike in your cowardice. You cross post this thread over on that blog and mis-characterize my point of view and then don’t have the guts to post my retort. Just like lambert …

    Z

  86. Z:

    I posted your words – I didn’t mischaracterize them because they speak for themselves.

    Your comment at TC got deleted because you were rude and insulting. I gave you the opportunity to repost your comment minus the insults but you chose otherwise.

    Boo-fricking-hoo.

    You don’t know nearly as much as you think you do. Try spending more time reading and less time displaying your ignorance and obnoxious attitude. A little maturity wouldn’t hurt either.

  87. On last thing – despite my differences with Lambert I take having my writing compared to his as a compliment.

  88. I can either be a liberal or a Democrat?

    Either/ or, huh? That sounds like a fallacy to me. How about a third option like “none of the above”.

    Evidence has it Obama is guilty of many war crimes. He’s a Company man, stoking the Company war machine. Like him, the Democratic Congress loves the Endless War and is largely bought by the bank$ters, too. Don’t give me all that silliness about Hillary. She, and her Big Dog before her, were simply slicker than Obama. Don’t forget who brought Larry Summers to the table in the first place. Don’t forget who started blowing the financial bubbles in real estate, with the help of Cisneros.

    But I voted for that Dog twice, and Al Gore, too, although I think Al Gore is a fraud. But I’d vote for him again, or Hillary, if she ran against a Republican.

    Yes, voting for the Democrats is simply putting off the day the Republicans get control of the national $ecurity state again, voting the Democrats in will only allow the fascists to tighten their grip unnoticed by the main$tream.

    Why do I want to vote for the Democrats? Over Republicans?

    Because the deterioration of society accelerates faster under the Republicans. Because it really is the economy, silly. Because with time under Democratic administrations a greater fraction of the people are able to feed their kids. Because this isn’t a perfect world, and although I’d damn sure vote for one if it was out there, I think the $ystem is owned by the Company.

    I don’t think you can be part of the $ystem if you aren’t.

    There is a real difference between politicians who know they’re evil, rue it, and try to muddle through the best they can, and politicians who are simply ignorant and evil, or intelligently sociopathically evil.

    FDR lied us into World War II and brushed aside civil rights. He also helped create jobs that fed a desperate nation, regulated the bank$ters, planted a billion trees as part of the Civilian Conservation Corps, effecting a massive ecological change that likely kept the midwest from becoming the same kind of desert as the middle east and (unbeknownst to him) delaying global warming.

    Or maybe he only slowed down the inevitable- the feudalization of American society, the pauperization of a nation, the decay of the environment. Maybe we should just lie down, slash our wrists, and let the crocodilian Republicans devour us.

    I think the way to avoid the inevitable is to, you know, avoid it.

    Vote Democratic in November. Maybe we’ll pithe the big reptiles when they aren’t looking.

  89. Z

    myi,

    Yeah, besides your tendency to defend the clintons by parroting out short slogans … and little else, you both are overly proud of your writing.ability. You two got a lot in common. I’m glad that you were able to patch up your differences.

    Z

  90. Cloud

    kelley b:

    Hmm … Obama is no FDR or LBJ, though.

    I’m not so sure that D administrations are even marginally better anymore, on balance. Because there’s the “only Nixon could go to China” principle at work as well. Any congressional opposition to Catfood Commissions and corporatism in general and murder overseas is more neutered.

    Additionally, if we’re to get very utilitarian and anti-Kantian about it — allowing the stipulation that the moral odiousness of voting for murderers is not a factor in this argument, in other words — it seems to me that the following is still the case: Fascism breeds the fastest under “liberal” leaders who are not in fact liberal.

    I suspect that the total discredit to “liberalism” that ordinary people will be and are coming away with from this administration is as dangerous as the marginal relative evilness of the Republicans.

  91. Z

    myi,

    If you’re not the same person, you are embarrassingly similar.

    Z

  92. DancingOpossum

    One thing I will say is that I lived through the Clinton years and anyone who did–perhaps Z is too young–remembers those years as a kind of Golden Age. And for good reason. Clinton (both Clintons) have many faults but the Clinton years were incredibly good years to live in this country. Bill Clinton was hamstrung by a rightwing-Repub Congress and a 24/7 hostile press, under which circumstances even the slightest progressive advances were remarkable achievements. Those were facts, and they remain facts, just as Hillary’s record of achievements that helped ordinary Americans remain real and historical fact.

    To deny that is equal parts ignorance and CDS in my opinion.

    Obama has absolutely NOTHING in his record pre- or during his presidency that indicates anything remotely resembling a non-rightwing bent. So Z, do you denounce Obama as vehemently as you do the Clintons?

  93. Pepe

    Obama and Clinton are bookends. The Golden Age was actually Peyrite. The implications of Clinton’s deregulatory schemes and welfare reforms and free trade agreements were delayed. You can only make so many bubbles.

  94. Pepe

    Again, neoliberalism is bad for ordinary people. Clinton was a neoliberal. Clinton was bad for ordinary people.

    Don’t fall in love with politicians. Love is blind.

  95. Z:

    Yeah, and weasels “could” fly out of my butt.

    Sweet Jeebus, what a splendid display of analytical ability. As the moderation rules at Corrente make clear, Corrente is not an open forum. Some commenters make it, some don’t. You didn’t, for reasons that are in ample display here.

    Wouldn’t it be better for Ian’s open forum if you just let that go? It’s a big blogosphere, after all.

  96. Pepe writes: “Clinton was bad for ordinary people.”

    This is false in fact. American Prospect:

    The real wage for the typical worker rose by 6.6 percent in the Clinton years. By contrast, wages have risen by just 1 percent in the Bush years and are now falling. At the current rate of decline, real wages will be lower in January 2009 than when President Bush took office in 2001. The typical family’s income rose by 15.3 percent under Clinton and fell by 1.6 percent under Bush.

    Needless to say, Obama’s worse than Bush in this regard.

    One shouldn’t mistake Clinton’s ability to deliver concrete material benefits during his term for the general failure of the neo-liberalism as a project. One might consider the Clinton wing of the D party as “neo-liberalism with a human face.” Sadly, the human face isn’t on offer with The Big O.

  97. Dancing Oppossum writes:

    I lived through the Clinton years and anyone who did–perhaps Z is too young–remembers those years as a kind of Golden Age.

    Yeah, I had dental insurance back in the day. Now my teeth are rotting. Self-indulgent, I know, but if you’re aging and have bad teeth it’s really hard to get work.

  98. Pepe

    neoliberalism with a human face.

    Clinton’s policies were castles made of sand.

    But at least you had a good smile back then.

  99. Z

    strether,

    Oh, you’re back. Someone named myi … something or another … thinks very highly of you. I really don’t know what’s worse: that you may use two aliases that each attest to how great the other one is or that so many of the clinton fandumb sounds so much alike … so much like the same dumbass that can’t … won’t … see beyond the first order effects of clinton’s rein.

    While you are here voicing your concerns about Ian’s board, do you want to take the opportunity to indirectly … and cowardly … lay another 45K deaths a year on Jane Hamsher, tell us how she doesn’t work on “lunch pail issues” like Prop 19, doesn’t do a damn thing that the “ramen noodle constituency” would care about such as fighting for student loan reform, or continue on about how Glenn Greenwald only writes about executive power issues … all while linking to your blog that advertises itself an refuge from all those nasty things all those other blogs do?

    Z

  100. Z

    I wonder if the people that can’t get welfare right now thanks to welfare reform, which bill clinton very much drove (just like his secretary of treasury and summers drove the repeal of glass-steagall), have dental insurance? I wonder how their teeth are doing? Yeah, it’s too bad that the corporate lap dawg wasn’t able to hold together his deal with gingrich to “reform” social security. I’m sure that would have worked out well for seniors’ teeth too.

    Oh, those higher order effects, they’re so confusing to the clinton fandumb …

    Z

  101. It’s so hard to imagine that anyone would dislike Lambert. Is it because he is pretty?

  102. Ian Welsh

    Let’s keep the personal attacks down folks.

  103. Pepe (and Z) have and can have, of course, no response to the factual point that real wages rose during the Clinton era (see above for link); rising wages mean that, on the whole and on the average, people were better off in terms of concrete material benefits then, as opposed to now. Apparently, Pepe (and I assume his tag team partner, Z) define “bad for ordinary people” as a bigger paycheck. Perhaps they’re closet Austerians?

    In any case, to speak to Pepe’s especially loathesome crotte of snark about a “pretty smile,” see this from a review of Unemployed in America:

    According to Sered and Fernandopulle, people who lack or lose access to health care become a separate caste. They use the word caste deliberately and in its traditional sense to describe a group of people who are characterized “by the absence of mobility” and by “recognizable external markers.” When health affects employment and appearance, people lose the middle-class markers that define success in this country:

    In a broader sense, the death spiral serves as a metaphor for the deep changes taking place in American society as the demarcation between rich and poor — a traditionally fluid distinction in our society — hardens into a static barrier between the caste of the healthy and the caste of those who are fated to become and remain sick.

    Teeth are one of those caste markers. Healthy, white teeth are a sign of middle-class success. Almost everyone in the book said that if they were suddenly given health care coverage, the first thing they would is go to the dentist.

    Please, deliver me from a “left” that thinks delivery of concrete material benefits to ordinary people isn’t important, and that mocks those who can’t afford dental care!

  104. Pepe

    Neoliberalism with a human face. And that face was – Bob Rubin’s.

  105. Formerly T-Bear

    I see Ian’s post has been hijacked by the usual suspects again in their infantile nattering of pseudo and intellectualistic nabobery (h/t Spiro T. Agnew).

    A mature cognizant reader recognizes opinion when encountered and accords that opinion whatever weight it deserves toward the tendered post, dismissing those opinions of little consequence.

    Not so, this covey of jejune jerks, wrapt in self-importance and self-esteem, gnawing on fleshless bones and old grievances as if their growling mattered. One suspects it is the sound of their rattling keyboards that motivates their endless, pointless fracas; the rattling keyboards giving meaning to their dull existence.

    The mature reader quickly discerns their “its all about me” and tries to keep, not always successfully, the distraction they create from deflecting the object of the original post. The consequence of these endless assaults is the commentator whose observations are made, many times of significant value, but overcome in this onslaught of needless, and sometimes worthless words trying to validate insignificant opinions.

    Most of the foregoing comments are nothing more than a waste of Ian’s valuable bandwidth. Please show the host some manner of consideration.

  106. Yes, Pepe. Yes, Yes. Let me try this more slowly. Yes, Clinton was a neo-liberal (to the left end of the spectrum of acceptable neo-liberalism) just as Obama is (to the right end). What gave the Clinton era its “human face” was the concrete material benefits that Clinton delivered, and that Obama isn’t. The increase in real wages (link above) that you believe was “bad for ordinary people” (your words). Yes, neo-liberalism has to go. But I think it makes sense — unless you don’t want to appeal to “ordinary people” — to look at why they might look back at the Clinton era as a better time. Does that help?

    * * *

    I am glad you’re not making fun of poor people for having bad teeth, though. For somebody on the “left”, that’s a rather ineffective talking point…

  107. lambert, my love: you’ve made it. you officially have crazies making up conspiracy theories about you. damn. i’m sort of jealous.

    hey Z: talk about lambert’s questionable sexuality. and how much money he’s making f4om the republicans. also: his asian hareem of sex slaves. he’s got all that too. get serious about your oppo research, man.

  108. Pepe

    Do you qualify for medicaid? I believe there are dentists who accept medicaid, depending on your state. There are even free dental clinics in some major cities (like Chicago).

    Clinton’s economic policies were better than Obama’s, but there were a whole host of other conditions worldwide that created the perfect storm for Clinton’s strong dollar, and at the end, his policies were losing steam. If oil was cheap today, if foreign money was seeking protection of the dollar, if there was a dot-com bubble, if there were no major wars ongoing, then Obama might be looking pretty rosy right now himself. After all, it’s essentially the same economic team.

    There were losers to Clinton’s policies, from manufacturing due to offshoring, from poor folks kicked off welfare, to Mexican farmers who were outpriced in Mexico by cheap American produce.

    I don’t hate Clinton; I voted for him twice (I held my nose the 2nd time). I do hate nostalgia, generally speaking. Nostalgia is a fucking liar.

  109. Pepe, thanks, yes, I’ve done my due diligence on dental care.

    Yes, there were losers in Clinton’s policies. On the average, “The real wage for the typical worker rose by 6.6 percent.” Not nostalgia, since the material concrete benefits were real. I agree that NAFTA was teh suxx0r — yes, neo-liberal policies were responsible, and the Clinton administration is on that spectrum.

    As for the dot com bubble, one difference between that bubble under Clinton and the real estate bubble under Bush and Obama was that there was actual value produced during the dot com bubble (as there was during the railroad and canal bubbles, say, and not during the tulip bubble, say). Google, et cetera, aren’t negligible achievements (though they aren’t on the par with the achievements of the industrial era). But the real estate bubble is just out and out control fraud — elite criminality. I don’t think it’s the nature of the economic team that’s makes the difference, but a transition from normal ruling class rapaciousness to out-and-out looting in broad daylight. I think that has a lot to do with our ability to come out of the recession — “we” literally can’t clean up the balance sheets of the big banks because if we do, a lot of banksters are going to jail. Can’t have that. Not the case in 2000.

  110. I too remember the Clinton era as a kind of a minor Golden Age. Even though I was living in Canada under Clinton’s partner-in-crime Ti-Jean, but it was much of the same dish served up, and the US tech boom had a big ricochet in Canada too. I’ve no doubt that some of it was Clinton’s policies and that he and Gore really did invest in and encourage the tech sector, leading a typically Randroid SV-associated population to become a fairly loyal Democratic constituency.

    But it’s not enough to forget that he willingly watered older neoliberal trees and planted new ones that are now bearing fruit, and this wasn’t *just* because he was forced to by Congress (credit some people are willing to give Clinton but somehow not Obama). Many of us seem to have forgotten the Seattle confrontation and why it happened—and it was big news back then. Some of us seem to have forgotten why there was a Nader/LaDuke run in the first place even as they rush to embrace non-Democratic electoral politics…

  111. Hugh

    Just wandering by. I counseled, like you, early on opposition to Obama. Obama was not only not progressive. He was anti-progressive. Yet progressives were going to be blamed for him and his policies. It was such an obvious case of us being left holding the bag. I would say the one thing that has changed about this is that we can extend Obama’s anti-progressivism to the entire Democratic party, at least all of its officeholders.

    This brings up a point I have been trying to press. The liberal orgs and liberal orgs have not gone into opposition because if you look at who runs them you will find many Democrats. Obama and the Democrats can’t really control the hoi polloi but they do effectively control these groups. There may be some grumbling and some opposition to some Democrats but not an outright rejection of them all. Obama and the Democrats can’t use the considerable organizing capabilities of these groups to energize the left. That’s a sell even these groups can’t make. Obama and the Democrats are just too obviously not progressive. But what they can do, and have done, is neutralize their ability to organize against them via the large Democratic representation in the leadership of these groups.

    As I have written elsewhere, look what a few Tea Party kooks have done on the political scene, and then compare that to the near absolute absence of anything similar on the left, despite all of these great political organizing groups and the huge potential they represent.

    It’s not that the liberal orgs and elite blogs are unaware. It’s that they are co-opted and tied into the Democrats. How then can they oppose them, except here and there, on this issue or that candidate?

  112. Hugh

    Re the dot com bubble, perhaps the most salient difference was that the risk remained in one place, principally the NASDAQ. While with the housing bubble, the risk migrated throughout the system and multiplied itself as it went. It’s sort of the difference between a bubble in the system and the system as a bubble.

  113. KLCarten

    I am gonna chime in on the Clinton Era and then on Obama. I know in my personal experience is that wages rose, I started as a I.B.E.W. apprentice in the late 80’s. Seen both of my parents lose jobs in manufacturing during Reagan and Bush, and knew that if I couldn’t afford college, I had to either go the trade school route or into a factory that would be iffy at best. So went to trade school and because I am a woman got into the apprenticeship pretty easy. I put my time, watched and learned a trade, worked and made a decent living, but construction is hard on a body. Construction work is iffy also, but if you got a trade you could make a bit on the side if times are tough. I figured if it don’t work out, I would know what to do at my own house, wouldn’t have to hire someone and trusted that they did a good job.

    So, well in the trade, during the Clinton years, it was booming, worked local, mostly car plants at 7 days a week 16-18 hours a day I was tired with a nice healthy saving account, in 94 our local did a fine job on the contract, we would be making $21 an hour with retirement added another buck in benefits ( $2 in retirement an hour with time in half and double in holidays and sundays and anytime after midnight which would be $4 an hour) so in real terms we were doubling what our retirement benefits would be and five bucks in wages during the three year contract. The first year we would receive $2, the following $1 and the final year $2, the old timers said that was about what they received before Carter cut the unions throats. My dad who worked for the Teamsters agreed with what the old guys were saying. So, for me, as a Union Member, actual wage increased which were flat or had cuts just to stay working. Every one I knew was working overtime, and was pretty happy with being able to buy a new car or just go to the store and buy what they wanted. Now, its pick and choose what you really need and what is a want, and you get what is NEEDED. There is no going and buying crap just to buy. So, this bullshit about Clinton era is just that, there were real concrete wage increases. What people need to remember is we had a Republican Congress that had the members to override a veto in some of those years. The Dems only had the house for the first two years of the first administration. Call Clinton a DLC, call him anything you want, but be honest, people did make increases in real wages, and that the job market was a employee not a employer market. If you wanted or able to work there was a job, period.
    Now onto Obama, he is a conservative, and its all about him, its not party its about Obama. I thought well the worse will happen is that he is another Carter. Not a total fuck up, just kind of blah, kind of like you just can’t catch a break, not that he would fuck up attentional just his I am above all the bullshit type of thing he does. Was I so wrong, its like he sold his soul to the banks, investor class, and the super rich , the billionaires because millionaires are not even close to the uber rich. I figure he do what they require and he will get his pay day after he is out, to me the tell was when he said he rather have one good term instead of two dismal terms or something like that, was on 60 min. and I thought fuck, were screwed.
    So a garden was put in and all my cheapness came out, I can squeeze every penny out of a dollar. Sure its hard, and it sucks to be poor, but then I have a house paid off and only one car but it will be paid off in two years. I don’t know if I will be able to afford another car, I am kind of out priced on things now. I buy union and american when ever possible, not much out there anymore. Growing up, you bought american made products, my dad would say, the job you save might be your own, this is what we lived by.

  114. Z

    No shit there were wage increases during the clinton years … fuck, damn near anyone with a internet dream could find financing for an ipo during those early bubble years … thanks to wall street and greenspan’s bubble economy, which was very much encouraged by clinton’s wall street-centric secretary of treasury. Those companies did have to hire people after all. So therefore there were wage increases becoz there were more people being hired due to the bubble. Bubbles are created by money after all and they DO create jobs (didn’t the housing bubble create jobs?) but then they turn out to be malinvestments and cause future problems becoz the economy has been focused on ventures that, overall, don’t turn a profit. And in the end, we saw just how sound the foundation was to these wonderful years … which again, were also helped out by another ultimately damaging clinton policy, free trade, that initially benefited the economy with the influx of cheap goods … the jobs would leave later … when so many of these highly capitalized companies went bust becoz they couldn’t produce a profit.

    And it wasn’t just the dotcoms themselves that were involved and recipients in that malinvestment, it was the telecoms like worldcom that was able to sell shaky bond deals … with the help of wall street … that wouldn’t have been possible without accounting fraud. These bond deals, based upon a criminal inflation of their true financial health, helped fund the build out of the internet infrastructure … which ended up being far overbuilt … to keep these bond deals rolling in to the telcos and the balls in the air in those companies’ ultimately fraudulent financial “health”.

    And all this corruption regarding wall street with their rigged ipo deals, wall street’s merging of their research and sales divisions to sell these deals, and the corruption with the telcos began during the clinton years although the damage and the fraud didn’t primarily surface until 2002-2003. But, of course, that is lost on the clinton fandumb who conveniently can’t see past 2000-2008. The economy was also on its way down in the last year of the clinton era, another fact frequently overlooked by his admirers … it didn’t start falling apart the moment that bush came into office.

    The bubbles that began during the clinton years: the stock market bubble (the nasdaq doubled in a single year!) and the related dotcom bubble and telecom bubbles … were very much facilitated by clinton’s secretary of treasury, robber rubin who got into the ear of greenspan, who then bought in the productivity miracle and increased the money supply to reflect those beliefs. That led to a credit bubble where people’s dogs could get credit cards during those years. The effects of that money supply increase were hidden by the cheap goods that were coming in due to those free trade treaties becoz they kept down inflation. wall street used their additional leverage to go wild upon our markets, which again was very much facilitated by rubin … who didn’t, by the way, fall like an asteroid from the sky into clinton’s cabinet. Hell, clinton and co. also allowed them to go wild and loot Russia as well, causing a ton of financial damage in that country too. rubin’s strong dollar policy … which helped lead to the deportation of so much of our manufacturing … also added to wall street’s leverage in the world markets, of which there was some significant turmoil in during those wonderful clinton years.

    As far as the clinton economy was concerned, there also was a legitimate technology boom that clinton had very little to do with that boosted the economy and would have happened no matter who was president. It wasn’t as if clinton created a manhatten project during those years that set that off the technology boom.

    Z

  115. Z

    strether,

    Laying any portion of the real estate bubble on obama is utter fucking nonsense.

    Z

  116. Z

    And by the way, to make my position completely clear, this is the way that I see our three most recent presidents: clinton > obama > bush … with the jury still being out on obama being any better than bush; in fact, he may end up being worse, as unimaginable as that was at one point. But I don’t grade presidents by a no-president-left-behind standard and say everything above the abominable bush baseline is okay. It’s not. They were/are all unacceptably poor presidents that heavily favored corporate interests over the populace’s. I think we’ve probably had three of our worst presidents in American history back-to-back-to-back … and look where we are.

    And, also, if someone with a time capsule put a gun to my head and hijacked me back to 2008 and forced me to make a choice between hillary clinton and barak obama, I would DEFINITELY choose clinton based on the reasoning that obama has been so deplorable that I can’t imagine her being any worse … and, in fact, the odds favor her being better. I’d BET on her being better, if I could. But I don’t believe that ms. dlc would have been BETTER ENOUGH to make the changes necessary to produce an acceptably equitable society … to me … and neither do I see anything in her past to suggest that she would rattle the power structure of this country to the extent that it needs to be in order for us to make significant progress against the forces that are covertly waging class warfare against over 98% of the country.

    Z

  117. Z

    Another amusing tale told by the true cdsers: clinton played little role in the welfare reform and the repeal of glass-steagall becoz the bill that hit his desk was veto-proof. Clinton made welfare reform a PRIORITY … and ran to “end welfare as we know it” … and I find it highly doubtful that the welfare reform movement in congress veered very far off of what he wanted and that he couldn’t have pressured enough congressional dems to stop it from reaching those veto-proof majorities if he really wanted to. He was pretty proud to sign it.

    robber rubin was very much involved in the repeal of glass-steagall and yet so much of the clinton fandumb wants to pretend that the bill just hit bill’s desk out of the blue and went down similar to this:

    clinton: Oh, what the hell is this? The repeal of glass-steagall? Who would have thought that? I wonder why bob didn’t tell me about this? Ah, he’s been so busy hanging out with sandy weil lately, I guess he just didn’t get around to it. Oh well, I guess there’s nothing I can do about it now.

    Hell, if you want any accounts of clinton’s deceitful deals with the congressional republicans … and against the best interests of the people … clinton’s odious and unnecessary deal with gingrich over social security “reform”, aka cut benefits to seniors, is fairly well chronicled at this point. It appears that only the corporate lap dawg’s personal political survival, that was endangered due to the Lewinsky affair, got in the way of that.

    Z

  118. Z

    Correction on a post above:

    But, of course, that is lost on the clinton fandumb who conveniently can’t see past 1992-2000.

    I had originally wrote:
    But, of course, that is lost on the clinton fandumb who conveniently can’t see past 2000-2008.

    Z

  119. Z burbles:

    Laying any portion of the real estate bubble on obama is utter fucking nonsense.

    As we have come to expect, Z is full of — let me play at being Canadian here — merde.

    Obama is playing the end game (that being “any part” of the real estate bubble). By whipping for TARP, Obama ratified and consolidated the bailouts that Bush’s Treasury and the Fed had already performed in 2008. And by refusing to recognize accounting control fraud by the “savvy businessmen” banksters, Obama is allowing them to escape with their ill-gotten gains.

    Youth or inexperience may excuse ignorance of the past; but surely not ignorance of the present?

  120. Z

    strether,

    Okay, here is the sentence that you wrote:

    “As for the dot com bubble, one difference between that bubble under Clinton and the real estate bubble under Bush and Obama was that there was actual value produced during the dot com bubble (as there was during the railroad and canal bubbles, say, and not during the tulip bubble, say).”

    The bubble did not develop or begin its collapse during obama’s reign, so I don’t think it is fair to imply that it also was his bubble … any portion of it … or that it came under his leadership. That’s nonsense. The bubble was blown and busted before obama came into office.

    I don’t agree with obama’s actions regarding its “clean-up” … or maybe more accurately termed: his “white wash” … so we do have a general agreement on that.

    Z

  121. Z

    strether,

    By the way, I don’t need a tag team to defend myself against your dreamer team. And I don’t think pepe does either. The vast majority of the facts support our positions. In contrast, you true cdsers need a tag team that consists of:

    lori, who actually believes hillary, of tarmac infame, knocked on reagan’s office door and talked him out of cutting a legal program for the poor. Note that the other principals are dead, Reagan and Vincent Foster, and can’t refute hillary’s likely fable. But who knows … it could have happened, though it sounds an awful like a chopping down a cherry tree story to me and it takes a true cdser to outright take that at face value and buy into it as fervently as she does. Especially since, again, the same heroine in this story also was a “heroine” in another story involving a tarmac that was demonstratably false. But I guess that so many bullets have whizzed by hillary’s ear that she’s done lost track of where they all occurred at. lori also never answers retorts to her nonsense such as hillary took a stand against the iraq war … while voting for the aumf (which didn’t require her vote to pass, but she voted in favor of it anyway in a valiant, pragmatic … AGAIN, IT DIDN’T REQUIRE HER VOTE TO PASS … attempt to maintain leverage over the bush administration’s lust for war … even though she voted against another bill that would have been more effective in insuring that, which hillary, graduate from yale law school, claims she misunderstood (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/us/politics/02check.html )). And she buys hillary’s claims that she was against nafta when she was actively working to promote it. (http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/03/hillary-clint-1.html). She has no response to any of this, becoz ideologues are known to have a profound distaste for facts that don’t support their position.

    Silly little mary, who postures that she is taking on the cause of keeping internet boards on-topic while blissfully overlooking lori’s opening salvo in this argument. Of course, like most true cdsers, her principles are entirely based upon whether or not someone supports her hero, hillary. She then runs over to a pro-hillary board and writes about how she can’t believe the irrationality of the clinton haters over on Ian’s board. Well, at least she stayed on topic on that post becoz …

    myiq goes over there and initially posts my response on the board and completely mischaracterizes my position as being one of those “lefty purity trolls (who) HATE Bill and Hillary more than than they dislike Reagan, Bush, Bush II or Bush III.” Note that this hillary enthusiast pulls out the old lefty purist troll canard … just like the obamabots do … to characterize those that stick strong to their principles. But, again, there is little fundamental difference between the hillary fandumb and the obamabots and the bushites … it’s just a different brand of the same bullshit … except that the clinton fandumb uses misogynism insults instead of racism in the case of obama and cds instead of bds in contrast to the bushites. Myiq then yanks my clarification to my position and then comes over here and denies mischaracterizing my position and saying that he only posted what I did … I guess his aforementioned comments at the end of his post slipped his little mind.

    And then, of course, bringing up the ass end of the clinton fandumb caravan comes lambert, who once argued that clinton deserved a huge hand for winning elections fairly … well, there was that little scandal about the Thai temple fundraising and foreign funds being funneled in thru there, though it is hard to quantify how much those illegalities effected the election and I personally doubt that he would have lost against the corpse he ran against anyway … and that clinton also deserved credit for discrediting the right wing nut jobs during the Lewinsky scandal. Some discreditation there, they somehow recovered from the corporate lap dawg’s bite and went on to capture the oval office twice … well, at the very least, they got close enough to steal it … and then went on to gain majorities in congress from 2002 to 2006. And now he thinks clinton deserves credit for putting a smiley face on neo-liberalism. Oh, boy …

    So yeah, it’s quite a crew you gals and guys got there, but I don’t need any help from any tag team to hold up against your coalition … whose arrogance is only usurped by its ignorance … that is heavily armed with delusion, but very weak on facts, objectivity and cognition. Collectively, you comprise a very simple, single mind.

    Z

  122. Z:

    How old are you?

    I ask that because your comments strike me as coming from someone who was too young to really remember the nineties.

  123. Ian Welsh

    Ok folks. No more personal attacks. I will start deleting comments or shutting down comment threads if I must. I have avoided mandatory registration or author approval comments, and I’d prefer to continue to do so (not least because this blog is a cost, not a revenue generator), so I’d greatly appreciate it if you would self-police.

  124. Pepe

    Chris Hedges: “Bill Clinton is the greatest traitor to the working class that this nation has ever produced.”

  125. Z

    Ian,

    Sorry, it was primarily my fault … I started most of it. I’ll lay off the insults.

    Z

  126. wow lambert, what a weird thread. i’m almost afraid to join the pile on, but my impulse control is not good enough to refrain from replying to this:

    One shouldn’t mistake Clinton’s ability to deliver concrete material benefits during his term for the general failure of the neo-liberalism as a project. One might consider the Clinton wing of the D party as “neo-liberalism with a human face.” Sadly, the human face isn’t on offer with The Big O.

    jmo, but i think the human face some people saw in the Clinton administration is the same one some people see with the Obama administration. just different versions of a very similar propaganda.

    re clinton. i don’t know how to do an accurate count, but it’s quite possible that the policies of his administration killed more people than bush’s if one includes economic warfare as well as the bombing kind.

    a short list, just off the top of my head:

    nafta (especially chapter 11), welfare “reform,” repeal of glass steagall, CFMA 2000 (includes the enron loophole and prohibition of otc financial derivative regulation), global financial deregulation (WTO’s Financial Service Agreement) including capital flow liberalization and IMF demands (asian financial crisis anyone? the back story on geithner on that one is fascinating) — and the resulting perceived need for countries to accumulate dollar reserves in self defense which means unless the usa runs a massive current account deficit, we’ll force deflation on the rest of the world.

    and that increase in real wages? doesn’t distribution matter? if this post is accurate, take a look at where that increase in real wages went: http://openleft.com/diary/15272/the-one-percent-economy-part-one-the-what. what did matter was there was a short lived time of full employment – but it was built on bubble economics and a massive increase in non productive non-gov sector debt. just because clinton was around for part of the upside of a bubble but not the downside doesn’t mean his administration doesn’t bear some responsibility for the downside as well.

    and don’t get me started on the looting of the post soviet states. in my book larry summers is a mass murderer.

    when i look at the “human face” of the clinton administration, i see the face of corporate globalization, especially financial corporate globalization.

    ……..

    disclaimer: before someone calls me an obamabot (on this thread is seems almost anything is possible), i didn’t even vote for obama because as soon as it looked like he won the D nomination, he 1) repudiated his promise on FISA and lead the effort to immunize the telcos and 2) started loading up his economic advisors with the worst kind of neoliberals.

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