After his disappointing loss to Michele Bachmann in the Iowa Straw Poll, Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty officially withdrew from the 2012 Presidential campaign. Pawlenty finished third with 14% of the votes. Bachmann picked up 28% and Congressman Ron Paul was right behind her with 27%. Despite the fact that Rick Santorum finished fourth with a paltry 9.8%, the Pennsylvanian has not discussed abandoning his own Presidential bid.
Santorum has not held public office since his humiliating defeat in the 2006 election, at which point he lost his Senate seat to Democrat Bob Casey, Jr. by a 59%-41% margin – the worst defeat for an incumbent Senator since 1980. One might assume that such a bidetory washout would forever purge Santorum from that zone within the Beltway. Nevertheless, Santorum apparently believes he will have greater success with a national campaign in post-Tea Party America.
Strangely enough, Santorum’s fourth-place finish in the Ames Straw Poll is being spun as a victory. Dan Hirschhorn reported for Politico that Santorum’s fourth-place showing helped grease the candidate’s fundraising efforts:
Still underfunded, the campaign enjoyed its strongest overnight online money haul in the hours after the straw poll, and is planning to step up its fundraising efforts in Pennsylvania, his financial home base after two Senate terms.
Nevertheless, as Daniel Larison discussed in The American Conservative, Santorum’s fourth-place finish was solely a result of the candidate’s persistent, lingering presence in Iowa:
The reality is that Santorum has been living and campaigning full-time in Iowa for weeks, he ought to be rallying social conservatives to him in much larger numbers than he does, and his fourth-place finish out of a field of six direct competitors is confirmation that his campaign is going nowhere. Beating out Herman Cain and Thad McCotter on the ground does not mean much at all. His presidential bid has always seemed to be a vain effort to re-fight the battles of his failed 2006 re-election campaign.
Michael Falcone of ABC News observed that Santorum “has been languishing near the bottom of national polls”. The question remains as to whether a candidate, whose agenda is so tightly focused on conservative “values voters” could gain momentum in a campaign dominated by financial issues. As George Will pointed out, Santorum has repeatedly emphasized that “… America’s debt crisis is, at bottom, symptomatic of a failure of self-control …”
Dan Hirschhorn noted at the conclusion of his Politico report, that Santorum’s “end game” remains a mystery. I suspect that Santorum’s true objective could be to secure the number two place on the Republican ticket as the GOP’s Vice-Presidential candidate.
It’s reasonable to assume that the presence of Santorum on the back end of the Republican ticket could provide their campaign with a frothy mixture of enthusiasm, including support from social conservatives who would not otherwise vote for a less-polarizing Presidential nominee.
Meanwhile, Santorum continues to swim upstream, while jumping down the throat of the hard right’s newest rising star, Texas Governor Rick Perry, who refused to advocate a relativistic interpretation of the Tenth Amendment. Governor Perry provided this response to Santorum’s blast:
“You either have to believe in the 10th Amendment or you don’t,” Perry told reporters after a bill signing in Houston Wednesday. “You can’t believe in the 10th Amendment for a few issues and then [for] something that doesn’t suit you say, ‘We’d rather not have states decide that.’”
You can probably see the problem exposed by this dust-up. If the Republican Party can’t wash out Santorum, the remaining GOP Presidential hopefuls will begin to appear liberal.
Dr. Drew Westen is a Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University. After receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree at Harvard, Westen picked up a Master’s in Social and Political Thought from the University of Sussex in England. He earned his PhD in Clinical Psychology at the University of Michigan.
The idea of the mind as a cool calculator that makes decisions by weighing the evidence bears no relation to how the brain actually works. When political candidates assume voters dispassionately make decisions based on “the issues,” they lose. . . .
In politics, when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins. Elections are decided in the marketplace of emotions, a marketplace filled with values, images, analogies, moral sentiments, and moving oratory, in which logic plays only a supporting role. . . . The evidence is overwhelming that three things determine how people vote, in this order: their feelings toward the parties and their principles, their feelings toward the candidates, and, if they haven’t decided by then, their feelings toward the candidates’ policy positions.
The people at Fox News have been operating from this premise for years. On Fox, the news is presented from an emotional perspective (i.e. fear and outrage about terrorism, indignation about government spending, patriotic devotion to whomever or whatever principle is singled out for such allegiance). Opposition political candidates (Democrats) are usually portrayed as contemptible, flawed individuals. As a result, Fox has enjoyed tremendous success at shaping public opinion and influencing the electorate. Dr. Westen’s book appears likely to help one understand why.
The 2008 candidacy of Barack Obama presented a unique challenge to Fox News: A Democrat finally had a campaign based on an emotional appeal, conveyed with the single word, “Hope”. Despite the rational campaign strategy developed by Mark Penn for Hillary Clinton, (and continued by the McCain campaign) which posed the question: “Who is Barack Obama?” – the voters followed their emotions and voted for “Hope”.
At this point in the Obama Presidency, people from across the political spectrum (especially the Left) are still pondering Mark Penn’s 2008 question: “Who is Barack Obama?” As I have frequently pointed out on this website, Obama has been repeatedly criticized (by his former supporters) as a cynical, narcissistic individual, who has carefully created a Rorschach-esqe public image, shaped by whatever characteristics the individual audience members would choose to project back onto their perception of the man himself. Obama has been able to conceal his flexible, mercenary agenda behind the Rorschach screen and until recently, few have bothered to peek behind it.
David Sirota recently wrote an insightful essay about Obama which began with these words:
Barack Obama is a lot of things – eloquent, dissembling, conniving, intelligent and above all, calm. But one thing he is not is weak.
I was particularly impressed by an essay about our President, written by the aforementioned Dr. Drew Westen, which appeared in The New York Times on August 6. The article was entitled, “What Happened to Obama?” and it was absolutely magnificent. Dr. Westen began by taking us back to January of 2009, when we were still in the depths of the financial crisis, shocked by the unemployment tsunami and looking to our new President for effective leadership through a gauntlet of bank bailout schemes and economic stimulus proposals. Unfortunately, what America heard from Barack Obama during his Inaugural Address was a big nothing. As Dr. Westen explained, the disappointment of Obama’s Inaugural Address was emblematic of the disappointment we experienced throughout the ensuing months:
The president is fond of referring to “the arc of history,” paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics – in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time – he has broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation.
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When Dr. King spoke of the great arc bending toward justice, he did not mean that we should wait for it to bend.
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IN contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public – a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it. Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them for more than half a century. He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer confidence by putting consumers back to work. He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it. But the arc of his temperament just didn’t bend that far.
But why did Obama turn out to be such a disappointment? Is he simply weak – or is Obama actually the inverse Franklin Delano Roosevelt described by David Sirota as “Bizarro FDR”? From his unique perspective as a clinical psychologist, Dr. Westen is well-qualified to provide us with a valid opinion. After first expressing the requisite ethical disclaimer (rarely heard from TV and radio “shrinks”) that he would “resist the temptation to diagnose at a distance”, Westen put on his “strategic consultant” hat to “venture some hypotheses”:
The most charitable explanation is that he and his advisers have succumbed to a view of electoral success to which many Democrats succumb – that “centrist” voters like “centrist” politicians. Unfortunately, reality is more complicated. Centrist voters prefer honest politicians who help them solve their problems. A second possibility is that he is simply not up to the task by virtue of his lack of experience and a character defect that might not have been so debilitating at some other time in history. Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he had voted “present” (instead of “yea” or “nay”) 130 times, sometimes dodging difficult issues.
A somewhat less charitable explanation is that we are a nation that is being held hostage not just by an extremist Republican Party but also by a president who either does not know what he believes or is willing to take whatever position he thinks will lead to his re-election.
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Or perhaps, like so many politicians who come to Washington, he has already been consciously or unconsciously corrupted by a system that tests the souls even of people of tremendous integrity, by forcing them to dial for dollars – in the case of the modern presidency, for hundreds of millions of dollars.
With the passing of time, the likelihood that Barack Obama will be a single-term President increases dramatically because Americans are now scrutinizing him from a more judicious perspective. Who will become the Independent candidate to return that forgotten emotion of hope to the disillusioned electorate?
Comments Off on Elizabeth Warren Should Run Against Obama
Now that President Obama has thrown Elizabeth Warren under the bus by nominating Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), she is free to challenge Obama in the 2012 election. It’s not a very likely scenario, although it’s one I’d love to see: Warren as the populist, Independent candidate – challenging Obama, the Wall Street tool – who is already losing to a phantom, unspecified Republican.
A good number of people were disappointed when Obama failed to nominate Warren to chair the CFPB, which was her brainchild. It was bad enough that Treasury Secretary “Turbo” Tim Geithner didn’t like her – but once the President realized he was getting some serious pushback about Warren from Senate Republicans – that was all it took. Some Warren supporters have become enamored with the idea that she could challenge Scott Brown for his seat representing Massachusetts in the Senate. However, many astute commentators consider that as a really stupid idea. Here is the reaction from Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism:
We argued yesterday that the Senate was not a good vehicle for advancing Elizabeth Warren’s aims of helping middle class families, since she would have no more, and arguably less power than she has now, and would be expected to defend Democrat/Obama policies, many of which are affirmatively destructive to middle class interests (just less so than what the Republicans would put in place).
A poll conducted in late June by Scott Brown and the Republican National Committee raises an even more basic question: whether she even has a shot at winning.
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The poll shows a 25 point gap, which is a massive hurdle, and also indicates that Brown is seen by many voters as not being a Republican stalwart (as in he is perceived to vote for the state’s, not the party’s, interest). A 25 point gap is a near insurmountable hurdle and shows that Warren’s reputation does not carry as far as the Democratic party hackocracy would like her fans to believe. But there’s no reason not to get this pesky woman to take up what is likely to be a poisoned chalice. If she wins, she’s unlikely to get on any important committees, given the Democratic party pay to play system, and will be boxed in by the practical requirements of having to make nice to the party and support Obama positions a meaningful portion of the time. And if she runs and loses, it would be taken as proof that her middle class agenda really doesn’t resonate with voters, which will give the corporocrats free rein (if you can’t sell a liberal agenda in a borderline Communist state like Massachusetts, it won’t play in Peoria either).
Obviously, a 2012 challenge to the Obama Presidency by Warren would be an uphill battle. Nevertheless, it’s turning out to be an uphill battle for the incumbent, as well. David Weidner of MarketWatch recently discussed how Obama’s failure to adequately address the economic crisis has placed the President under the same pressure faced by many Americans today:
He’s about to lose his job.
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Blame as much of the problem on his predecessor as you like, the fact is Obama hasn’t come up with a solution. In fact, he’s made things worse by filling his top economic posts with banking-friendly interests, status-quo advisers and milquetoast regulators.
And if there’s one reason Obama loses in 2012, it’ll be because he failed to surround himself with people willing to take drastic action to get the economy moving again.
In effect, Obama’s team has rewarded the banking industry under the guise of “saving the economy” while abandoning citizens and consumers desperate for jobs, credit and spending power.
There was the New York Fed banker cozy with Wall Street: Timothy Geithner.
There was the former Clinton administration official who was the architect of policies that led to the financial crisis: Larry Summers.
There was a career bureaucrat named to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission: Mary Schapiro.
To see just how unremarkable this group is, consider that the most progressive regulator in the Obama administration, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair, was a Republican appointed by Bush.
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The lack of action by Obama’s administration of mediocrities is the reason the recovery sputters. In essence, the turnaround depends too much on a private sector that, having escaped failure, is too content to sit out what’s supposed to be a recovery.
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What began as a two-step approach: 1) saving the banks, and then 2) saving homeowners, was cut short after the first step.
Instead of extracting more lending commitments from the banks, forcing more haircuts on investors and more demands on business, Obama has let his team of mediocrities allow the debate to be turned on government. The government caused the financial crisis. The government ruined the housing market.
It wasn’t true at the start, but it’s becoming true now.
Despite his status as the incumbent and his $1 billion campaign war chest, President Obama could find himself voted out of office in 2012. When you consider the fact that the Republican Party candidates who are currently generating the most excitement are women (Bachmann and the undeclared Palin) just imagine how many voters might gravitate to a populist female candidate with substantially more brains than Obama.
The disillusionment factor afflicting Obama is not something which can be easily overlooked. The man I have referred to as the “Disappointer-In-Chief” since his third month in office has lost more than the enthusiasm of his “base” supporters – he has lost the false “progressive” image he had been able to portray. Matt Stoller of the Roosevelt Institute explained how the real Obama had always been visible to those willing to look beyond the campaign slogans:
Many people are “disappointed” with Obama. But, while it is certainly true that Obama has broken many many promises, he projected his goals in his book The Audacity of Hope. In Audacity, he discussed how in 2002 he was going to give politics one more shot with a Senate campaign, and if that didn’t work, he was going into corporate law and getting wealthy like the rest of his peer group. He wrote about how passionate activists were too simple-minded, that the system basically worked, and that compromise was a virtue in and of itself in a world of uncertainty. His book was a book about a fundamentally conservative political creature obsessed with process, not someone grounded in the problems of ordinary people. He told us what his leadership style is, what his agenda was, and he’s executing it now.
I expressed skepticism towards Obama from 2005, onward. Paul Krugman, Debra Cooper, and Tom Ferguson among others pegged Obama correctly from day one. Obama broadcast who he was, through his conservative policy focus (which is how Krugman pegged him), his bank backers (which is how Ferguson pegged him), his political support of Lieberman (which is how I pegged him), and his cavalier treatment of women’s issues (which is how Debra Cooper pegged him). He is doing so again, with his choice to effectively remove Elizabeth Warren from the administration.
I just wish Elizabeth Warren would fight back and challenge Obama for The White House. If only . . .
I frequently revert to my unending criticism of President Obama for “punting” on the 2009 economic stimulus program. The most recent example was my June 13 posting, wherein I noted how Stephanie Kelton provided us with an interesting reminiscence of that fateful time during the first month of Obama’s Presidency, in a piece she published on William Black’s New Economic Perspectives website:
Some of us saw this coming. For example, Jamie Galbraith and Robert Reich warned, on a panel I organized in January 2009, that the stimulus package needed to be at least $1.3 trillion in order to create the conditions for a sustainable recovery. Anything shy of that, they worried, would fail to sufficiently improve the economy, making Keynesian economics the subject of ridicule and scorn.
As it turned out – that is exactly what happened. Obama’s lack of leadership and his apologetic, half-assed use of government power to fight the recession has brought us to where we are today. It may also bring Barack Obama and his family to a new address in January of 2013.
At this point, the “austerian” economists are claiming that the attenuated stimulus program’s failure to bring us more robust economic growth is “proof” that Keynesian economics “doesn’t work”. The fact that many of these economists speak the way they do as a result of conflicts of interest – arising from the fact that they are on the payrolls of private firms with vested interests in maintaining the status quo – is lost on the vast majority of Americans. Unfortunately, President Obama is not concerned with rebutting the arguments of these “hired guns”. A recent poll by Bloomberg Newsrevealed that the American public has successfully been fooled into believing that austerity measures could somehow revive our economy:
As the public grasps for solutions, the Republican Party is breaking through in the message war on the budget and economy. A majority of Americans say job growth would best be revived with prescriptions favored by the party: cuts in government spending and taxes, the Bloomberg Poll shows. Even 40 percent of Democrats share that view.
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Though Americans rate unemployment and the economy as a greater concern than the deficit and government spending, the issues are now closely connected. Sixty-five percent of respondents say they believe the size of the federal deficit is “a major reason” the jobless rate hasn’t dropped significantly.
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Republican criticism of the federal budget growth has gained traction with the public. Fifty-five percent of poll respondents say cuts in spending and taxes would be more likely to bring down unemployment than would maintaining or increasing government spending, as Obama did in his 2009 stimulus package.
The voters are finally buying the corporatist propaganda that unemployment will recede if the government would just leave businesses alone. Forget about any government “hiring programs” – we actually need to fire more government employees! With those annoying regulators off their backs, corporations would be free to hire again and bring us all to Ayn Rand heaven. You are supposed to believe that anyone who disagrees with this or contends that government can play a role in job creation is a socialist.
Nevertheless, prominent individuals from the world of business and finance are making an effort to debunk these myths. Bond guru Bill Gross of PIMCO recently addressed the subject:
Solutions from policymakers on the right or left, however, seem focused almost exclusively on rectifying or reducing our budget deficit as a panacea. While Democrats favor tax increases and mild adjustments to entitlements, Republicans pound the table for trillions of dollars of spending cuts and an axing of Obamacare. Both, however, somewhat mystifyingly, believe that balancing the budget will magically produce 20 million jobs over the next 10 years. President Obama’s long-term budget makes just such a claim and Republican alternatives go many steps further. Former Governor Pawlenty of Minnesota might be the Republicans’ extreme example, but his claim of 5% real growth based on tax cuts and entitlement reductions comes out of left field or perhaps the field of dreams. The United States has not had a sustained period of 5% real growth for nearly 60 years.
Both parties, in fact, are moving to anti-Keynesian policy orientations, which deny additional stimulus and make rather awkward and unsubstantiated claims that if you balance the budget, “they will come.” It is envisioned that corporations or investors will somehow overnight be attracted to the revived competitiveness of the U.S. labor market: Politicians feel that fiscal conservatism equates to job growth.
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Additionally and immediately, however, government must take a leading role in job creation. Conservative or even liberal agendas that cede responsibility for job creation to the private sector over the next few years are simply dazed or perhaps crazed. The private sector is the source of long-term job creation but in the short term, no rational observer can believe that global or even small businesses will invest here when the labor over there is so much cheaper. That is why trillions of dollars of corporate cash rest impotently on balance sheets awaiting global – non-U.S. – investment opportunities. Our labor force is too expensive and poorly educated for today’s marketplace.
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In the near term, then, we should not rely solely on job or corporate-directed payroll tax credits because corporations may not take enough of that bait, and they’re sitting pretty as it is. Government must step up to the plate, as it should have in early 2009.
Hedge fund manager, Barry Ritholtz discussed his own ideas for “Jump Starting the U.S. Economy” on his website, The Big Picture. He concluded the piece by lamenting the fact that the federal debt/deficit debate is sucking all the air out of the room at the very time when people should be discussing job creation:
The focus on Deficits today is absurd, forcing us towards another 1938-type recession. The time to reduce the government’s economic deficit and footprint is during a robust expansion, not during (or just after) major contractions.
During the de-leveraging following a credit crisis is the worst possible time to be deficit obsessed.
Don’t count on President Obama to say anything remotely similar to what you just read. You would be expecting too much.
I always enjoy it when a commentator appearing on a talk show reminds us that President Obama has become a “tool” for the Wall Street bankers. This theme is usually rebutted with the claim that the TARP bailout happened before Obama took office and that he can’t be blamed for rewarding the miscreants who destroyed our economy. Nevertheless, this claim is not entirely true. President Bush withheld distribution of one-half of the $700 billion in TARP bailout funds, deferring to his successor’s assessment of the extent to which the government should intervene in the banking crisis. As it turned out, during the final weeks of the Bush Presidency, Hank Paulson’s Treasury Department declared that there was no longer an “urgent need” for the TARP bailouts to continue. Despite that development, Obama made it clear that anyone on Capitol Hill intending to get between the banksters and that $350 billion was going to have a fight on their hands. Let’s jump into the time machine and take a look at my posting from January 19, 2009 – the day before Obama assumed office:
On January 18, Salon.com featured an article by David Sirota entitled: “Obama Sells Out to Wall Street”. Mr. Sirota expressed his concern over Obama’s accelerated push to have immediate authority to dispense the remaining $350 billion available under the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) bailout:
Somehow, immediately releasing more bailout funds is being portrayed as a self-evident necessity, even though the New York Times reported this week that “the Treasury says there is no urgent need” for additional money. Somehow, forcing average $40,000-aires to keep giving their tax dollars to Manhattan millionaires is depicted as the only “serious” course of action. Somehow, few ask whether that money could better help the economy by being spent on healthcare or public infrastructure. Somehow, the burden of proof is on bailout opponents who make these points, not on those who want to cut another blank check.
Discomfort about another hasty dispersal of the remaining TARP funds was shared by a few prominent Democratic Senators who, on Thursday, voted against authorizing the immediate release of the remaining $350 billion. They included Senators Russ Feingold (Wisconsin), Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), Evan Bayh (Indiana) and Maria Cantwell (Washington). The vote actually concerned a “resolution of disapproval” to block distribution of the TARP money, so that those voting in favor of the resolution were actually voting against releasing the funds. Earlier last week, Obama had threatened to veto this resolution if it passed. The resolution was defeated with 52 votes (contrasted with 42 votes in favor of it). At this juncture, Obama is engaged in a game of “trust me”, assuring those in doubt that the next $350 billion will not be squandered in the same undocumented manner as the first $350 billion. As Jeremy Pelofsky reported for Reuters on January 15:
To win approval, Obama and his team made extensive promises to Democrats and Republicans that the funds would be used to better address the deepening mortgage foreclosure crisis and that tighter accounting standards would be enforced.
“My pledge is to change the way this plan is implemented and keep faith with the American taxpayer by placing strict conditions on CEO pay and providing more loans to small businesses,” Obama said in a statement, adding there would be more transparency and “more sensible regulations.”
Of course, we all know how that worked out . . . another Obama promise bit the dust.
The new President’s efforts to enrich the Wall Street banks at taxpayer expense didn’t end with TARP. By mid-April of 2009, the administration’s “special treatment” of those “too big to fail” banks was getting plenty of criticism. As I wrote on April 16 of that year:
Criticism continues to abound concerning the plan by Turbo Tim and Larry Summers for getting the infamous “toxic assets” off the balance sheets of our nation’s banks. It’s known as the Public-Private Investment Program (a/k/a: PPIP or “pee-pip”).
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One of the harshest critics of the PPIP is William Black, an Economics professor at the University of Missouri. Professor Black gained recognition during the 1980s while he was deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC).
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I particularly enjoyed Black’s characterization of the PPIP’s use of government (i.e. taxpayer) money to back private purchases of the toxic assets:
It is worse than a lie. Geithner has appropriated the language of his critics and of the forthright to support dishonesty. That is what’s so appalling — numbering himself among those who convey tough medicine when he is really pandering to the interests of a select group of banks who are on a first-name basis with Washington politicians.
The current law mandates prompt corrective action, which means speedy resolution of insolvencies. He is flouting the law, in naked violation, in order to pursue the kind of favoritism that the law was designed to prevent. He has introduced the concept of capital insurance, essentially turning the U.S. taxpayer into the sucker who is going to pay for everything. He chose this path because he knew Congress would never authorize a bailout based on crony capitalism.
Although President Obama’s hunt for Osama bin Laden was a success, his decision to “punt” on the economic stimulus program – by holding it at $862 billion and relying on the Federal Reserve to “play defense” with quantitative easing programs – became Obama’s own “Tora Bora moment”, at which point he allowed economic recovery to continue on its elusive path away from us. Economist Steve Keen recently posted this video, explaining how Obama’s failure to promote an effective stimulus program has guaranteed us something worse than a “double-dip” recession: a quadruple-dip recession.
Many commentators are currently discussing efforts by Republicans to make sure that the economy is in dismal shape for the 2012 elections so that voters will blame Obama and elect the GOP alternative. If Professor Keen is correct about where our economy is headed, I can only hope there is a decent Independent candidate in the race. Otherwise, our own “lost decade” could last much longer than ten years.
It’s becoming more obvious to people that our so-called, “two-party system” is really a just a one-party system. Last summer, I discussed how the Republi-cratic Corporatist Party is determined to steal the money American workers have paid into the Social Security program. While we’re on the subject, let’s take a look at an inconvenient law which the Beltway Vultures choose to ignore:
EXCLUSION OF SOCIAL SECURITY FROM ALL BUDGETS Pub. L. 101-508, title XIII, Sec. 13301(a), Nov. 5, 1990, 104 Stat. 1388-623, provided that: Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the receipts and disbursements of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund and the Federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund shall not be counted as new budget authority, outlays, receipts, or deficit or surplus for purposes of – (1) the budget of the United States Government as submitted by the President, (2) the congressional budget, or (3) the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985.
In a recent interview conducted by Anastasia Churkina of Russia Today, investigative reporter and author, Matt Taibbi described the American political system as a “reality show sponsored by Wall Street”. Taibbi pointed out that “… the problem is Wall Street heavily sponsors both the Republican and the Democratic Parties” so that whoever gets elected President “is going to be a creature of Wall Street”. After noting that Goldman Sachs was Obama’s number one source of private campaign contributions during the 2008 election cycle, Taibbi faced a question about the possibility that a third party could become a significant factor in American politics. His response was: “Seriously, I don’t see it.” Taibbi went on to express his belief that the “average American” is:
… seduced and mesmerized by this phony, media-created, division between blue and red – and left and right, Democrats and Republicans, and people are conditioned to believe that there are enormous, profound differences between these two parties. Whereas, the reality is: their differences are mostly superficial and on the important questions of how the economy is run and how to regulate the economy – they’re exactly the same – but I don’t think ordinary people know that.
At this point, the question is whether there can be any hope that “ordinary people” will ever realize that our “two-party system” is actually a farce.
The type of disappointment expressed by Matt Taibbi in his discussion of Barack Obama during the Russia Today interview, has become a familiar subject. I was motivated to characterize the new President as “Disappointer-In-Chief” during his third month in office. An increasing number of commentators have begun to admit that Hillary Clinton’s campaign-theme question, “Who is Barack Obama?” was never really answered until after the man took office. One person who got an answer “the hard way” was Professor Cornel West of Princeton University.
In a recent article for Truthdig, Chris Hedges discussed how Professor West made 65 appearances for Candidate Obama on the campaign trail. Nevertheless, Professor West never received an invitation to Obama’s Inaugural. Although he traveled to Washington for that historic occasion, Professor West ended up watching the event on a hotel room television with his family. As an adversary of Obama’s financial mentor, Larry Summers, Professor West quickly found himself thrown under the bus.
The following passage from Chris Hedges’ article presents an interesting narrative by Professor West about what I have previously described as Obama’s own “Tora Bora moment” (when the President “punted” on the economic stimulus bill). Professor West also lamented the failure of the Democrats to provide any alternative to the bipartisan tradition of crony corporatism:
“Can you imagine if Barack Obama had taken office and deliberately educated and taught the American people about the nature of the financial catastrophe and what greed was really taking place?” West asks. “If he had told us what kind of mechanisms of accountability needed to be in place, if he had focused on homeowners rather than investment banks for bailouts and engaged in massive job creation he could have nipped in the bud the right-wing populism of the tea party folk. The tea party folk are right when they say the government is corrupt. It is corrupt. Big business and banks have taken over government and corrupted it in deep ways.
“We have got to attempt to tell the truth, and that truth is painful,” he says. “It is a truth that is against the thick lies of the mainstream. In telling that truth we become so maladjusted to the prevailing injustice that the Democratic Party, more and more, is not just milquetoast and spineless, as it was before, but thoroughly complicitous with some of the worst things in the American empire. I don’t think in good conscience I could tell anybody to vote for Obama. If it turns out in the end that we have a crypto-fascist movement and the only thing standing between us and fascism is Barack Obama, then we have to put our foot on the brake. But we’ve got to think seriously of third-party candidates, third formations, third parties.
When one considers the vast number of disillusioned Obama supporters along with the number of people expressing their disappointment with the Republican field of Presidential hopefuls, the idea that 2012 could be the year when a third-party candidate makes it to the White House doesn’t seem so far-fetched.
The Tea Party movement brought us more than a few Republicans who described themselves as “libertarian”, only to advance the agenda of the televangelist lobby once they were elected to office. Beyond that, the “tax reform” they espouse applies only to corporations and the wealthy, with the middle class left to pay the difference to the Corporate Welfare State.
The 2012 Presidential campaign is now wide-open with the entry of an authentic libertarian, who has jumped into contention for the Republican nomination. Although Ron Paul (a former Presidential nominee, representing the Libertarian Party in the 1988 election) has been receiving more than a little encouragement to make another White House bid (he won the straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference – CPAC) his age is a huge obstacle. As Congressman Paul approaches his 76th birthday, many consider him too old for the job.
April 21 brought us the entry of Gary Johnson, a former Governor of New Mexico, into the race for the Republican Presidential Nomination. At age 58, he is an active triathlete, who successfully climbed to the summit of Mt. Everest in 2003. This guy brings loads of excitement into the race and is likely the only Republican who could defeat Barack Obama. Gary Johnson’s support from outside the ranks of the Republican Party extends – not only to Independent voters – but to Democrats. That’s right. Gary Johnson could actually win the votes of a significant number of Democrats – something no other Republican could accomplish. Republicans are going to have to take Johnson very seriously. Nevertheless, Gary Johnson will surely make the televangelist lobby sick with his hardcore libertarian views.
Some recent articles about Johnson are the stuff of Bill O’Reilly’s worst nightmares. For example, an April 20 piece by Christian Heinze for The Hill included this tidbit about the new candidate:
He’s running for the Republican presidential nomination on a platform that calls for withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq – a position that’s anathema to the party’s ruling class. He also supports abortion rights and, most controversially, favors legalizing marijuana.
See what I mean? Johnson has the guts to speak out for the changes which many Democratic voters would like to see – and which Barack Obama would never even bother to include among his trademark, false campaign promises.
Republican pundits regularly emphasize the importance of a candidate’s history of success in the business world, which is perhaps why they are now fretting that the party could be stuck with Donald Trump as its 2012 nominee. Willard Romney’s inherited wealth gave him the opportunity to participate in the private equity business (Bain Capital) which he left in 1999 to become CEO of the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. As a result, Romney has been able to contrast that background against the qualifications of his political opponents, who have generally spent their adult lives at the public trough. Gary Johnson presents a fresh challenge to Romney in the area of business credentials. Johnson started his own construction business in the 1970s and became a self-made millionaire.
As a two-term Governor of New Mexico, Johnson didn’t hesitate to veto bills. He used the veto pen more than 750 times and kept the state budget under control.
Johnson’s view of the 2012 budget proposed by Congressional Republicans is not likely to win him any new friends in the party’s establishment. Here is what we learned from The Hill:
He claims the biggest threat to U.S. security is the nation’s debt, and to show how serious he is about fighting it, he says Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) proposed budget actually isn’t serious enough.
“It takes too long, and only get us a quarter of where we should be many years down the road,” he said.
One of the more informative essays about Gary Johnson was written by Niall Stanage for Salon on May 5, 2010. That piece points out how Johnson doesn’t have much use for Rush Limbaugh or Jesus, which could cause him some trouble with the Republican base – many of whom have trouble differentiating between those two individuals. Worse yet, the people at Fox News probably pulled out their hair after reading this:
Ask Johnson what he thinks of Barack Obama, for instance, and rather than the stream of vitriol that might issue semi-automatically from the lips of some party colleagues, he answers: “You can’t help but like him.”
Obama, he says, “touched” him with his rhetoric during the 2008 campaign, though he adds that the president has proven disappointing and disingenuous since then.
After reading that remark, I was on the verge of giving Gary Johnson my unqualified endorsement. Let’s see how he does on the campaign trail.
The 2012 Presidential race just became really interesting!
Donald Trump has enjoyed a good deal of publicity during the past few weeks, since he jumped on the “birther” bandwagon, voicing skepticism as to whether Barack Obama was really born in the United States. Many of Trump’s critics insist that The Donald is not a serious Presidential candidate and that his newfound “birther” agenda demonstrates that his Presidential campaign is nothing more than a flimflam publicity stunt.
I have a different theory. I believe that Trump is running a “decoy” campaign. Keep in mind that Trump is currently the #2 contender for the Republican nomination. Remember also that the Republican Presidential primaries for 11 states (and the District of Columbia) are conducted on a “winner-take-all” basis – meaning that when a candidate wins a state primary, that candidate wins all of the delegates who will represent that state at the Republican National Convention. If Trump can win a few of those states, he could amass an impressive amount of “pledged” delegates. I suspect that Trump’s goal is to win the support from the extreme right wing of the Republican Party and “hijack” those delegates who would have been otherwise pledged to candidates acceptable to the Tea Party. Bill O’Reilly’s intervention to defuse the “birther” controversy (at which point he insisted that Trump has not been seriously seeking the nomination) was apparently motivated by the fact that the candidates most likely to be eliminated from contention because of Trump’s presence – Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin – are both darlings of Fox News. In fact, Palin is a Fox News contributor.
At the 2012 Republican Convention in Tampa, Trump could step aside and support Willard Romney, who is despised my many Tea Party activists for having created what is now known as “Obamacare”. Trump’s elimination of the Tea Party favorites before the convention would solve Romney’s problem with that voting bloc. Romney can be expected to have an equally difficult time winning the support of dog lovers, as a result of his decision to strap the family dog, Seamus, to the car roof for a 12-hour family vacation drive to Ontario. Despite his “Presidential” appearance, this Homer Simpson-esque episode from Romney’s life has already impaired efforts to portray him as a potentially effective Commander-In-Chief.
Meanwhile, President Obama is busy trumpeting his newly-minted, false campaign promises. Gallup reported that on April 15, Obama’s approval rating had tied its all-time low of 41%. More interestingly, his approval rating among African-American and Hispanic voters is beginning to slip from its enormously-high levels:
Though majorities of blacks (85%) and Hispanics (54%) continue to approve of the job Barack Obama is doing as president, his ratings among these groups slipped in March and have set or tied new lows.
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Obama, elected to office with strong support from minority voters, has averaged better than 90% approval among blacks, and 65% among Hispanics, during his term. Prior to March, Obama’s lowest monthly average among blacks was 88% in July 2010 and December 2010. The president’s 54% March job approval rating among Hispanics ties the low from July and August 2010.
Despite the efforts of Republican commentators, such as Peggy Noonan, to create a narrative to the effect that Obama’s waning popularity – as well as the losses sustained by the Democrats in the 2010 elections – resulted from voter concern about government spending and the deficit, I suspect that Americans have simply become alienated by the failure of Obama and his party to deliver on their 2008 promises. Worse yet, the capitulation to the interests of Wall Street by Democrats who promised “reform” has reinforced voter apathy – the real factor in the 2010 Democratic setbacks.
Cord Jefferson of Good provided this graphic of what Congress would look like if it truly represented America. The failure of Democrats to win the support of Independent and centrist voters is readily apparent. You can blame gerrymandering all you want, but as long as the Democrats fail to provide alternatives to Republican policies, they will continue to lose. I believe it was William Black who said:
Under America’s two-party system, we have one party that is owned by big business and another party that sells out to big business.
I was pleased to see my own sentiments shared and articulated quite well by Mike Kimel of the Presimetrics Blog, in his recent posting entitled, “Why I Will Not be Voting for Obama in 2012”. Although Mr. Kimel doesn’t have an alternative candidate in mind, the very reason for his disillusionment with Obama is that – with respect to the nation’s most significant problems – our current President has proposed no alternative policies to those of his predecessor:
And yes, there are a handful of things Obama did that GW might not do, but let’s be realistic – this has looked from the very beginning like GW’s third term.
Which leaves just one question – if the policies of the Republicans are even worse than Obama’s – and they tend to support anti-growth tax policies (calling them pro-growth doesn’t change the data), what should a rational person do? I don’t know. But I think if I’m going to see Republican policies enacted, I’d prefer to see them run under a Republican label. See, Democratic policies may not be very good, but historically they have tended to produce better results than Republican policies. (BTW – Michael Kanell and I have an entire book called Presimetrics looking at how Presidents performed on a wide range of topics.) Another four years spent bringing the feeble Democratic brand down to the levels of the even more feeble Republican brand will cause lasting damage.
Obama will never re-ignite the enthusiasm of 2008 by presenting himself to the voters as “the devil you know” or “the lesser of two evils”. What America’s middle class really needs is an honest, Independent candidate to make a run for The White House in 2012.
Comments Off on Wisconsin Bogeymen Could Save Democrats From Themselves
Until this week, it was beginning to appear as though November 6, 2012 would be the day when Barack Obama and the entire Democratic Party would fall victim to their incurable case of The Smug. I discussed this syndrome back on December 2:
The Democratic Party is suffering from a case of terminal smugness. Democrats ignored the warning back in 2006, when the SouthPark television series ran the episode, “Smug Alert”.
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In the 2008 Democratic Primary elections, voters chose “change” rather than another Clinton administration. Nevertheless, what the voters got was another Clinton administration. After establishing an economic advisory team consisting of retreads from the Clinton White House, President Obama has persisted in approaching the 2010 economy as though it were the 1996 economy. Obama’s creation of a bipartisan deficit commission has been widely criticized as an inept fallback to the obsolete Bill Clinton playbook. Robert Reich, Labor Secretary for the original Clinton administration recently upbraided President Obama for this wrongheaded approach:
Bill Clinton had a rapidly expanding economy to fall back on, so his appeasement of Republicans didn’t legitimize the Republican world view. Obama doesn’t have that luxury. The American public is still hurting and they want to know why.
More recently, Robert Scheer lamented how President Obama’s economic team of recycled Clinton advisors shared the blame with Republicans in helping bring about the financial crisis and the ever-worsening income inequality between the “haves” and the “have nots”. Mr. Scheer reminded us that the Democrats who promised “change” have been no less corrupted by lobbyists than their Republican counterparts:
The lobbyists are deliberately bipartisan in their bribery, and the authors of our demise are equally marked as Democrats and Republicans. Ronald Reagan first effectively sang the siren song of ending government’s role in corporate crime prevention, but it was Democrat Bill Clinton who accomplished much of that goal. It is the enduring conceit of the top Democratic leaders that they are valiantly holding back the forces of evil when they actually have continuously been complicit.
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Thanks to President Clinton’s deregulation and the save-the-rich policies of George W. Bush, the situation deteriorated further from 2002 to 2006, a period in which the top 1 percent increased its income 11 percent annually while the rest of Americans had a truly paltry gain of 1 percent per year.
And that was before the meltdown that wiped out the jobs and home values of so many tens of millions of American families.
Thanks to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, the Democrats now have two bogeymen, who can personify the “reverse Robin Hood” crusade of the modern Republican Party. E.J. Dionne of The Washington Postrecently placed the burden on centrists to prevent the draconian budget proposal introduced by Representative Ryan, from finding its way to the President’s desk (probably because it would be signed if it got there):
Ryan’s truly outrageous proposal, built on heaping sacrifice onto the poor, slashing scholarship aid to college students and bestowing benefits on the rich, ought to force middle-of-the-roaders to take sides. No one who is even remotely moderate can possibly support what Ryan has in mind.
Mr. Dionne then focused his attack more directly on two “middle-of-the-road” political figures:
Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the co-chairs of the deficit commission and the heroes of the budget-cutting center, put out a statement saying some nice things about the idea of the Ryan budget. They called it “serious, honest, straightforward,” even though there is much about its accounting that is none of those.
What Mr. Dionne conveniently ignores is that it was President Obama who appointed Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson as co-chairs of the deficit commission. Those guys were never my heroes. Last December, when I criticized Obama’s elevation of Alan Simpson and a Clinton retread to leadership of his own deficit commission, I incorporated some pointed observations by Cullen Roche of Pragmatic Capitalism. The platitudinous insistence by Erskine Bowles (Clinton’s former Chief of Staff) that it’s time for an “adult conversation about the dangers of this debt” drew this blistering retort from Cullen Roche:
Yes. America has a debt problem. We have a very serious household, municipality and state debt crisis that is in many ways similar to what is going on in Europe. What we absolutely don’t have is a federal government debt problem. After all, a nation with monopoly supply of currency in a floating exchange rate system never really has “debt” unless that debt is denominated in a foreign currency. He says this conversation is the:
“exact same conversation every family, every single business, every single state and every single municipality has been having these last few years.”
There is only one problem with this remark. The federal government is NOTHING like a household, state or municipality. These entities are all revenue constrained. The Federal government has no such constraint. We don’t need China to lend us money. We don’t need to raise taxes to spend money. When the US government wants to spend money it sends men and women into a room where they mark up accounts in a computer system. They don’t call China first or check their tax revenues. They just spend the money.
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Mr. Bowles finished his press conference by saying that the American people get it:
“There is one thing I am absolutely sure of. If nothing else, I know deep down the American people get it. They know this is the moment of truth”
The American people most certainly don’t get it. And how can you blame them? When a supposed financial expert like Mr. Bowles can’t grasp these concepts how could we ever expect the average American to understand it? It’s time for an adult conversation to begin before this misguided conversation regarding the future bankruptcy of America sends us towards our own “moment of truth” – a 1937 moment.
We centrists actually know better than to take Simpson and Bowles seriously. Unfortunately, E.J. Dionne’s hero – Barack Obama – doesn’t.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has become the second bogeyman for the Democrats to spotlight in their efforts to cleanse their own tarnished images after selling out to Wall Street lobbyists. As Amanda Terkel reported for The Huffington Post:
A divisive budget battle between labor unions and Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) turned a state Supreme Court race into a nationally watched bellwether on the electorate’s mood heading into a recall campaign and the 2012 elections.
Nearly 1.5 million people turned out to vote, representing 33.5 percent of voting-age adults — 68 percent higher than the 20 percent turnout officials had expected. JoAnne Kloppenburg has already declared victory, with the vote tallies showing her beating incumbent David Prosser by just a couple hundred votes. The race is expected to head to a recount.
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There were no party affiliations on the ballot, but Kloppenburg was heavily backed by Democrats and Prosser by Republicans, making it a fierce proxy battle for the two parties.
Will the Wisconsin Bogeymen provide the Democrats with the inspiration and motivation they need to put the interests of the American middle class ahead of the goals of the Plutocracy? Don’t bet on it.
In the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the fatal shootings of six other bystanders (including Federal Judge John Roll), a huge debate has erupted over the motives of the gunman (who left notes admitting his intent to kill Congresswoman Giffords). The accused killer, Jared Loughner, is now being subjected to a great deal of scrutiny to ascertain whether he may have been motivated (to any extent) by Sarah Palin’s now-infamous midterm election campaign advertisement featuring a map with crosshairs over those Congressional Districts whose Representatives who were being “targeted” by SaraPAC (one of whom was Rep. Giffords). Palin’s defenders and apologists have contended that there was nothing unusual about the rhetoric used by Palin throughout the 2010 campaign, during which time Palin attempted to establish herself as an influential “power broker” within the Republican Party.
Among the most specious defenses of Palin was the assertion made by SarahPAC staffer Rebecca Mansour, who claimed that the crosshairs on the map identifying the Congressional Districts of targeted Democrats were actually “surveyor’s symbols”. Amanda Terkel of The Huffington Post had no trouble exposing the dishonesty of that claim.
In order to determine whether Jared Loughner’s videotaped shooting spree was politically motivated – or whether he was politically aligned with any group, a close analysis of his YouTube page can be helpful. (Loughner also had a page on MySpace, which has been removed by that organization.) Take a look at what can be gleaned from a review of Loughner’s YouTube page and ask yourself whether some of this stuff reminds you of anyone famous:
He apparently did not expect to survive this event because his upload entitled, “Hello” began with the statement that what followed were his “final thoughts”.
He constantly addressed his intended audience as “listener”, suggesting that he may have been emulating someone with a radio program.
He opposes the use of fiat money, preferring instead, the use of currency based on gold or silver.
He is an abstruse advocate of citing the United States Constitution in discussions of subjects that involve no Constitutional issue (e.g. the tuition at Pima Community College).
On his YouTube page, Loughner uses his “electronic blackboard” to explain his theories about how the American public is being subjected to mind control.
He is critical of what he describes as the poor grammatical skills of the people in District 8, while at the same time personally exemplifying the potential validity of that claim.
He is apparently obsessed with transitive relations. Nearly every assertion posted on his YouTube page is couched in terms describing some sort of transitivity. Most noticeable among these was what I refer to as his “Transitive Law of Moneyprinting” — which must have scared the hell out of Ben Bernanke:
If you create one new currency then you’re able to create a second new currency.
If you’re able to create a second new currency then you’re able to create a third new currency.
You create one new currency.
Thus, you’re able to create a third new currency.
Any guesses as to who Jared Loughner’s hero might be?
It obviously does not take a licensed clinical psychotherapist to realize that Loughner is suffering from some sort of Axis II personality disorder. Nevertheless, that does not excuse whomever may have been responsible from giving this guy that extra nudge from the realm of the delusional to the ranks of the homicidal.
Despite the claims of Sarah Palin’s apologists that the controversial “crosshairs” campaign advertisement was part of a “normal political discourse”, consider the following:
— Representative Giffords complained about the ad during an interview conducted by Chuck Todd on MSNBC. Here is what she said about the ad:
We’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list. But the thing is the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun site over our district. When people do that they’ve got to realize there’s consequences to that action.
In spite of the eerily prescient objection raised by Representative Giffords, Palin and her minions refused to remove the ad.
— Two versions of the “crosshairs” ad remained posted on the Internet for 65 days after the mid-term elections were concluded. This raises the question of whether Palin was attempting to provoke what Sharron Angle might describe as “a Second Amendment solution” to the continuing political viability of Representative Giffords. The “political discourse” was over on November 4, 2010. Why did SaraPAC wait until Gabrielle Giffords was actually shot in the head before a decision was made to take down the ads?
— Regardless of whether Jared Loughner was motivated by the “crosshairs” ad campaign, the BBC News reported this interesting bit of information provided by the Pima County Sheriff:
Sheriff Dupnik said the congresswoman had been threatened by someone with a gun during her re-election campaign in November, adding that there had been other threats.
It should come as no surprise that Palin’s apologists are now criticizing Sheriff Dupnik for laying blame where it properly belongs. Because Loughner had a history of smoking marijuana, Team Palin is now attempting to characterize Loughner as a “Leftist”. Nevertheless, in the event that any of Loughner’s writings might reference an entity known as Aqua Buddha . . . you know what will happen.
Prior to this tragic event, many astute conservatives, such as George Will, had pointed out that Sarah Palin was in over her head with her attempts to become a Presidential candidate. Although elections often become “beauty contests”, the Republican Party’s cynical decision to actually put a former beauty contestant on their national ticket in 2008 didn’t work out too well. Experience as a beauty contestant does not necessarily qualify one for a position of political leadership. I have always considered Sarah Palin to be a gumball. At this point in her political career, Palin has gone from being toast to toxic. I cannot imagine why any political candidate with an I.Q. above 80 would want to have anything to do with her. In the aftermath of the Tucson killings, Palin’s cherished “brand” may have no greater value than that of Lehman Brothers.
Let’s all hope that Gabrielle Giffords has a successful recovery and that the grieving relatives and friends of those slain in this tragedy can regain the strength to continue enjoying their lives to the fullest extent possible.
TheCenterLane.com offers opinion, news and commentary on politics, the economy, finance and other random events that either find their way into the news or are ignored by the news reporting business. As the name suggests, our focus will be on what seems to be happening in The Center Lane of American politics and what the view from the Center reveals about the events in the left and right lanes. Your Host, John T. Burke, Jr., earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Boston College with a double major in Speech Communications and Philosophy. He earned his law degree (Juris Doctor) from the Illinois Institute of Technology / Chicago-Kent College of Law.