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Turning Point

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As we approach Election Day, many commentators are confirming an observation used as the theme of my posting from September 6:

The steps taken by the Obama administration during its first few months have released massive, long-lasting fallout, destroying the re-election hopes of Democrats in the Senate and House.

Too many people whom the President thought he could count among his supporters have become his biggest critics.  One might expect that after eight years of outrage over the antics of the Bush administration, Maureen Dowd would be thrilled about the work done by the Obama White House.  Nevertheless, her most recent discussion of Obama’s performance was less than flattering:

In 2008, the message was him.  The promise was him.  And that’s why 2010 is a referendum on him.

With his coalition and governing majority shattering around him, President Obama will have to summon political skills — starting Wednesday — that he has not yet shown he has.

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With the exception of Obama, most Americans seemed to agree that the “right” thing to do until the economy recovered was to focus on jobs instead of getting the Congress mired for months in making over health insurance and energy policy.  And the “right” thing to do was to come down harder on the big banks for spending on bonuses instead of lending to small businesses that don’t get bailouts.

Contrary to the President’s expectations, the voting public has not overlooked the administration’s refusal to heed the advice of Bill Black, Robert Reich, and the roster of economists that included Adam Posen and Matthew Richardson advocating the use of the so-called “Swedish solution” of putting the zombie banks through temporary receivership.  To the dismay of everyone in the world (outside of Obama’s inner circle) the new President chose to follow the advice of Larry Summers and put the welfare (as in corporate welfare) of those insolvent, too-big-to-fail banks ahead of the nation’s economic health.  When President Obama appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on October 27, Stewart began the discussion by asking Obama to explain the rationale underlying his appointment of Larry Summers (a retread from the Clinton administration) as director of the National Economic Council.  President Obama fell back on his two-year-old claim that to follow any course other than that recommended by Summers, would have resulted in the failure of at least 100 banks.  Obama’s claim that the cost of the financial crisis was less than 1% of GDP did not slip past Yves Smith of the Naked Capitalism website.  Ms. Smith (who voted for Obama in 2008) didn’t pull any punches in refuting that claim:

I’m so offended by the latest Obama canard, that the financial crisis of 2007-2008 cost less than 1% of GDP, that I barely know where to begin.  Not only does this Administration lie on a routine basis, it doesn’t even bother to tell credible lies.  And this one came directly from the top, not via minions.  It’s not that this misrepresentation is earth-shaking, but that it epitomizes why the Obama Administration is well on its way to being an abject failure.

*   *   *

The reason Obama makes such baldfacedly phony statements is twofold:  first, his pattern of seeing PR as the preferred solution to all problems, and second, his resulting slavish devotion to smoke and mirrors over sound policy.

*   *   *

But Team Obama is no doubt rationalizing this chicanery:  if they can keep from recognizing losses until the recovery takes place, then the ultimate damage will be lower.  But Japan’s post bubble record shows that doesn’t work.  You simply don’t get a recovery with a diseased financial system.  You need to purge the bad assets, only then will meaningful growth resume.

Financial risk management guru, Chris Whalen, recently expressed his anguish over the administration’s unwillingness to restructure the zombie banks:

The reluctance comes partly from what truths restructuring will reveal.  As a result, these same large zombie banks and the U.S. economy will continue to shrink under the weight of bad debt, public and private.  Remember that the Dodd-Frank legislation was not so much about financial reform as protecting the housing GSEs.

Because President Barack Obama and the leaders of both political parties are unwilling to address the housing crisis and the wasting effects on the largest banks, there will be no growth and no net job creation in the U.S. for the next several years.  And because the Obama White House is content to ignore the crisis facing millions of American homeowners, who are deep underwater and will eventually default on their loans, the efforts by the Fed to reflate the U.S. economy and particularly consumer spending will be futile.

The idea that Obama sees “PR as the preferred solution to all problems” surfaced again in a great piece by Peter Baker of The New York Times, which included this observation:

Rather than entertaining the possibility that the program they have pursued is genuinely and even legitimately unpopular, the White House and its allies have concluded that their political troubles amount to mainly a message and image problem.

Baker’s article focused on the most recent gripe made by Obama at another one of his highbrow fundraisers.  Remember the blowback from the President’s recent diatribe at a fundraiser hosted by the appropriately-named Rich Richman?  Well, something similar happened again.  The setting this time was a $15,200-per-ticket affair for doctors at the home of a wealthy hospital executive in Boston.  While addressing this audience, the President explained that the reason why the voters have not embraced the Democrats during this election cycle is because the voters are having trouble thinking clearly, as they are “scared”.  Not surprisingly, this re-ignited the controversy focused on Obama’s elitism.

The Tea Party spokespeople aren’t the only ones who are accusing President Obama of elitism.  The Progressive-oriented TruthDig website, recently published an interesting essay by Chris Hedges, author of  Death of the Liberal Class.  Hedges points out that elitism is exactly the problem afflicting not only Obama, but the entire group, referred to as “the liberal class”.  Consider his argument:

The liberal class, which once made piecemeal and incremental reform possible, functioned traditionally as a safety valve.  During the Great Depression, with the collapse of capitalism, it made possible the New Deal.  During the turmoil of the 1960s, it provided legitimate channels within the system to express the discontent of African-Americans and the anti-war movement.  But the liberal class, in our age of neo-feudalism, is now powerless.  It offers nothing but empty rhetoric.  It refuses to concede that power has been wrested so efficiently from the hands of citizens by corporations that the Constitution and its guarantees of personal liberty are irrelevant.  It does not act to mitigate the suffering of tens of millions of Americans who now make up a growing and desperate permanent underclass.  And the disparity between the rhetoric of liberal values and the rapacious system of inverted totalitarianism the liberal class serves makes liberal elites, including Barack Obama, a legitimate source of public ridicule.  The liberal class, whether in universities, the press or the Democratic Party, insists on clinging to its privileges and comforts even if this forces it to serve as an apologist for the expanding cruelty and exploitation carried out by the corporate state.

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As long as the liberal class had even limited influence, whether through the press or the legislative process, liberals were tolerated and even respected.  But once the liberal class lost all influence it became a class of parasites.  The liberal class, like the déclassé French aristocracy, has no real function within the power elite.  And the rising right-wing populists, correctly, ask why liberals should be tolerated when their rhetoric bears no relation to reality and their presence has no influence on power.

As Maureen Dowd pointed out, Wednesday is going to be a big day.  If President Obama thought he had his hands full going into this election   .  .  .  wait until the aftermath.



How The Democrats Self-Destruct

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June 29, 2009

For the past few days, we have been inundated with news reports detailing the self-destructive behavior of the late singing sensation, Michael Jackson.  Perhaps it is this heightened awareness of self-destruction that is causing people to take a closer look at the self-destructive behavior taking place within the Democratic Party.

Most notable is the behavior of President Obama.  As his Inauguration approached, many people were surprised to learn that some principal players selected for Obama’s economic team were the same people responsible for creating this mess during the Clinton years.  The most prominent of these is Larry Summers, who is expected to replace Ben Bernanke as Chairman of the Federal Reserve in January.  On June 24, Robert Scheer, on his Truthdig website, bemoaned the fact that Obama is following the “trickle down” strategy of bailing out the big banks, while doing nothing to really solve the mortgage crisis:

It’s not working.  The Bush-Obama strategy of throwing trillions at the banks to solve the mortgage crisis is a huge bust.  The financial moguls, while tickled pink to have $1.25 trillion in toxic assets covered by the feds, along with hundreds of billions in direct handouts, are not using that money to turn around the free fall in housing foreclosures.

*    *    *

Here again the administration, continuing the Bush strategy, is working the wrong end of the problem.  Although President Obama was wise enough to at least launch a job stimulus program, a far greater amount of federal funding benefits Wall Street as opposed to Main Street.

*    *    *

Why was I so naive as to have expected this Democratic president to not do the bidding of the banks when the last president from that party joined the Republicans in giving the moguls everything they wanted?  Please, Obama, prove me wrong.

If President Obama doesn’t prove Robert Scheer wrong, Obama might find himself facing some hostile crowds at the “town hall” meetings as 2012 approaches.

The President might also be surprised to encounter large-scale Democratic grassroots disappointment over his proposed “overhaul” of the financial regulatory system.  As I pointed out on June 18, President Obama’s financial reform proposal, released on that date, drew immediate criticism for the expanded powers granted to the Federal Reserve.  On June 24, The Nation (which prides itself on having a liberal bias) ran a harshly critical piece by William Greider, entitled:  “Obama’s False Reform”.  In addition to criticizing the expanded powers granted to the Federal Reserve, Greider emphasized that the proposal did not contain any significant measures, or “hard rules”, to reform the financial system.  Beyond that, Greider took Obama to task for the false claim that the regulatory system was overwhelmed by “the speed, scope and sophistication of a 21st century global economy”.  The article emphasized the need to “slow down the rush to weak solutions” by taking the time to find out about the root causes of the breakdown and then to address those causes:

Give subpoena power to Elizabeth Warren the Congressional Oversight Board she chairs.  Hire some of those investigative reporters who have no political investment in digging deeper into the mulch.  What exactly went wrong?  Who has bloody hands?  Where are the fundamental reforms?  If the economy returns to “normal’ rather soon, the ardor for serious reform might dissipate with much left undone.  That is a small risk to take, especially if the alternative is enacting the bankers’ pallid version of reform.

President Obama is now taking pride for the passage in the House of Representatives of the “climate change bill” (H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009).  Despite the claim of House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) that the bill’s passage in the House was “a transformative moment”, 44 Democrats voted against the bill.  One harsh critic of the bill is Democrat Dennis Kucinich.  Here’s some of what Mr. Kucinich had to say:

It won’t address the problem.  In fact, it might make the problem worse.  It sets targets that are too weak, especially in the short term, and sets about meeting those targets through Enron-style accounting methods.  It gives new life to one of the primary sources of the problem that should be on its way out — coal — by giving it record subsidies.  And it is rounded out with massive corporate giveaways at taxpayer expense.

*   *   *

.  .  .  the bill does not require any greenhouse gas reductions beyond current levels until 2030.

Worse yet is the Democrats’ fumbling and bumbling with their efforts at healthcare reform legislation.  Polling wiz Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com, did a meta-analysis of the polls conducted to assess public support for the so-called “public option”in healthcare coverage, wherein people have the option to buy health insurance from the government.  The insurance companies obviously aren’t interested in that sort of competition and they have launched advertising campaigns portraying it as controversial and flawed.  Nevertheless, Nate Silver’s report revealed that five of the six polls analyzed, demonstrated lopsided support for the public option, exceeding 60 percent.  Despite the strong popular support for the public option, Mr. Silver pointed out in another posting, how there is a great risk that Democrats might oppose the measure due to payoffs from lobbyists:

Lobbying contributions appear to have the largest marginal impact on middle-of-the-road Democrats.  Liberal Democrats are likely to hold firm to the public option unless they receive a lot of remuneration from healthcare PACs.  Conservative Democrats may not support the public option in the first place for ideological reasons, although money can certainly push them more firmly against it.  But the impact on mainline Democrats appears to be quite large:  if a mainline Democrat has received $60,000 from insurance PACs over the past six years, his likelihood of supporting the public option is cut roughly in half from 80 percent to 40 percent.

Awareness of this venality obviously has many commentators expressing outrage.  On June 23, Joe Conason wrote such an article for The New York Observer:

If Congress fails to enact health care reform this year –or if it enacts a sham reform designed to bail out corporate medicine while excluding the “public option” — then the public will rightly blame Democrats, who have no excuse for failure except their own cowardice and corruption.  The punishment inflicted by angry voters is likely to be reduced majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives — or even the restoration of Republican rule on Capitol Hill.

*  *  *

The excuses sound different, but all of these lawmakers have something in common — namely, their abject dependence on campaign contributions from the insurance and pharmaceutical corporations fighting against real reform.

*  *  *

Whenever Democratic politicians are confronted with this conflict between the public interest and their private fund-raising, they take offense at the implied insult.  They protest, as a spokesman for Senator Landrieu did, that they make policy decisions based on what is best for the people of their states, “not campaign contributions.”  But when health reform fails — or turns into a trough for their contributors, who will believe them?  And who will vote for them?

Those Democrats inclined to oppose the public option don’t appear to be too concerned about public indignation over their behavior.  Take California Senator Dianne Feinstein for example.  Do you really believe she gives a damn about voter outrage?  She was re-elected in 2006, despite criticism that as chair of the Senate Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee, she helped her husband, Iraq war profiteer Richard C. Blum, benefit from decisions she made as chair of that subcommittee.  So what if MoveOn.org is targeting her for ambivalence about the issue of healthcare reform?  MoveOn.org is also targeting other Democrats who are attempting to eliminate the public option.  If these officials have so much hubris as to believe that they can get away with scoffing at the public will, they had better start looking for new jobs now  . . . because the market isn’t very good.