A Meltdown?

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The case for Obama - sort of

Barack Obama as president of the United States may very well disappoint us. He is essentially a mainstream member of a center-right political party. His cautious record in his short tenure in the Senate, his proposals on foreign policy, Iraq, health care and the economy are in many ways almost indecipherable from Hillary Clinton's. It almost takes a policy wonk to parse and tease out their differences. However, his association with a fire-breathing black minister is vastly unimportant as is his past associations with shady rascals like the indicted Tony Rezko. In Obamba's meteoric rise to political stardom he had to make nice will all sorts of unsavory characters – they all do. But he is not a racist for having listened for years to Reverent Wright's vitriolic sermons (which to me is are rather entertaining.) In fact in attending Trinity United Church of Christ gives Obama a sort of 'street cred' among African Americans. The law abiding ones go to such churches. It's no big deal. Plus his speech in defending himself was a masterpiece in oratory and honest political communication (and he did it without tossing his old preacher over the side.)

Obama has done something remarkable. He has bridged a gap between blacks and whites. He is a black politician but without recourse to “identity politics” - that bane of the left. Compare his style to Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton. They are never for a minute not a black politician, never a minute without a totally racial oriented agenda lurking just beneath the surface. It's part of them. It defines them. And turns it off most non-blacks. Obama can be that if wants but most of the time he is something else - a politician with a message for change. And he is not any more or less corrupt than any other US politician for having known some Chicago 'operator' or a secret hater of whites for having gone to Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church. Serious politicians must rely powerful connections (and the campaign donations they lead to) like regular ordinary people rely on air. His past (as with everyones) simply leaves chinks in his armor that are there to be exploited by enemies and opponents.

The question at this point is how much collateral damage has been inflicted by the stubborn, recalcitrant Clinton forces in their rear-guard, last ditch battle for the nomination? And how much of Clintonian dirt can be recycled by a formidable Republican slime machine later in the year? Remember what the legitimate media, which is bad enough, won't quite do (even Fox), a whole coteries of GOP allied hate mongering bloggers and “independent” right-wing ad hoc hit teams will gladly do. And once in circulation the scandal-whore corporate media will take up full force. Many fear it could make the cranky old warhorse, John McCain, an actual contender.

In any case the hope with Barack Obama is that he represents a major departure, symbolically if nothing else, from our imperialistic, corporatist, neoliberal, neocon, neofascist (yes, we have all at the same time) recent ugly Bushian past. Unfortunately there is no real evidence that he is willing to actually take on the corporate-right wing monolith, that is the military-industrial state its variants. Sure he is a riveting speaker and pushes all the right emotive buttons. Yes he seems to be promising to end our disastrous and grindingly expensive occupation of Iraq, but he will leave troops there (the enduring dream of Iraq becoming a compliant 'US client state' in the Mideast is still alive and well in both parties.) He appears to be uncritically pro-Israel, which make serious Mideast negotiations difficult. Also he says he will expand the military – great, it already eats up over half our national budget. His universal health care proposal is not single payer (as all other developed countries' systems are). In fact his proposal is weaker than Hillary's as it will leave participation voluntary. In fact according to economist Paul Krugman his proposals are actually less progressive than Hillary's.

Yet who can stand the thought of President Hillary Rodham Clinton? Ugh! Her and Bill's inherent decency and basic character have been called into question as they take the low road in a last desperate grasp for the nomination. It's ugly. And who wants a re-run of the triangulating Clintons – always grabbing at right wing policy positions and isolating their progressive left flank. Sure, Hillary would face a different political milieu than Bill did; and a Democratic president would be able do more and would not have to pander so much to the right. But anyone (even McCain) would be a breath a fresh air after eight long dark years of monumental Bushian blunders and a frenzy of Constitutional shredding. People now want change. They are sick to death with Republican ideologues (except, of course, the ever lower taxes part.)

What now exists now is a unique and important, historical opportunity to actually turn things around. The whole world is watching. A young, mixed race articulate leader could bring us together globally. He could start to repair the damage to US credibility and image. He could be a real world leader. Maybe if Obama gets in, he will suddenly tear off his rubber mask and low an behold we will have Che Guevara or somebody like that, somebody really radical in the best sense of the word. What with global warming, a possible economic collapse, a shredded Constitution and being mired in not one but two wars, it will take some real to-the-roots originality. Thomas Jefferson is supposed to have said that we need a revolution every 20 years. Aren't we are sort of overdue? If not Che Guevera, maybe at least Obama could 'metamorphosize' into an African American version of FDR and we could crank up another New Deal – the Green New Deal 2.0. Maybe we are on the cusp of something big. I sure hope so.

Will Nader spoil Obama's Party?

Ralph Nader announced today that he would again run for president. This will make many so-called “progressives” angry. They see Ralph as a spoiler. He 'steals' votes from the Democratic candidate especially in close presidential election like the last two. On the Huffington Post blog the Nader announcement garnered 508 comments. All the ones I read (that floated to the top) were hostile and demeaning of Nader. These whining fools still blame Ralph Nader for Al Gore's loss in 2000. They can't resist the received wisdom from the Democratic Party hacks who helped Gore run his pathetic campaign almost into the ground. They still believe that it was the foolish Nader voters in Florida who tipped the scales for George W. Bush. First of all Gore did not lose the election – it was stolen from him by a reactionary cabal by the way of a right wing Republican dominated Supreme Court who gave Bush the election. Gore also as I recall didn't even push for the whole state to be recounted – only several heavily Democratic counties like Dade County. Post election research by newspapers discovered Bush would have won had things been counted properly. But if you read the entire report all sorts of crooked voter suppressing legerdemain was uncovered like 'caging' (challenging voter registration of potential Democratic voters), and knocking thousand of non-felon Afro-American voters with similar names to felons off of off the roles by computer. Plus Gore with Joe Lieberman as his running mate (of all people to choose) ran a weak, uninspired campaign always with his eye on the 'undecided voters', those shallow-thinking airheads who so distort American politics, rather trying to energize the Democratic base (as Obama has). Also Bill Clinton was still in the dog house then (as he is again now) for nearly being impeached for getting a blowjob. So Clinton couldn't really be used to lend legitimacy and gravitas to the his erstwhile VP's presidential run even though Clinton had presided over a fairly successful presidency (aside from being an incorrigible Lothario) presiding over a robust economy.

Don't these so called progressives understand that Ralph Nader's laborious and symbolic runs for the presidency are not meant to place him in the position to be a real candidate? He is in there to keep our eye on the ball. Even if the points he makes seem inconvenient and ,yes, tiresome. These points are not tiresome becomes they are hackneyed and boring. They are tiresome because nothing every gets done to address them by either party, and they have to be brought time and time again. As the NY Times article in announcing his candidacy states “..Nader also criticized Republican candidate John McCain and Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton for failing to support full Medicare for all or cracking down on Pentagon waste and a "bloated military budget..” Nader know better than anybody else that the country is in the hands of a Janus faced single party. We have a single party with two right wings as Gore Vidal says. The problem is that whole spectrum has shifted so far to right since the Ronald Reagan years, the 1980s, that a moderate and reasonable European style Social Democrat type like Ralph Nader now looks and sounds like a left wing radical. Ralph has not slipped into the realms of the politically impractical (but maybe someday possible) visions of the real left. No it's the “It's the movies that got small”. The whole country has drifted year by year even while Clinton was in ever further into the dark arms of the corporate capitalist radical right. The seven miserable years of the megalomaniac George W. Bush with his clumsy mismanagement and geopolitical blunders has finally opened most eyes. The American have people finally collectively realized things have gone too far. Ralph Nader, the straight, suit wearing, consumer advocate has stayed pretty much in the same place. It's just the backdrop has shifted into 'cuckooland.' His calm demeanor and smooth empirical reasoning has not changed. The subject of it has.

Progressives should not resent Nader's entry into 'the race.' Just as Dennis Kicinich and finally John Edwards in the primaries did, he will serve to prod the Democratic presidential candidate to confront some realities. Otherwise the dialog with old warhorse McCain will be about who can be the most effective imperialist. Nader's involvement in the debates (if they let him in) should have a positive and salutary effect on the Barack Osama (or very unlikely Hillary Clinton) platform and will force them to get real on the military budget – among other things. The US at this late stage simply cannot afford guns and butter – not 'guns' at the trillion dollar price tag we are now dealing with. We simply cannot properly and responsibly address the long laundry list of accumulated needs without taking on the power players like the Pentagon, the Pharmaceuticals, the energy giants. John Edwards understood this, maybe Hillary does. Does Barack Obama? Really confronting global warming with a sustainable reconfigured green economy, providing a fully functional universal health care system and rebuilding our aging infrastructure while confronting residual poverty will not be possible if we have to continue to support a global military apparatus that almost as big as the rest of world's combined. Something has to give. Ralph is just there to keep their eyes on the ball, to keep things real. Also, and this is important, as the Democratic candidate confronts the Republican machine and mean old man McCain, he or she can afford to move further into a fully progressive direction as Ralph will be there to seemingly define the outer limits of discourse. In other words with Ralph there at the table the Demos will have some elbow room on their left.

Which Demo candidate for Prez to vote for in the Primaries?

As the California Primaries draw ever closer we will all have to decide which of one of these characters we want to vote for: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or John Edwards. At this point in the process it is certainly more of a horserace than ever (and the media loves it.) Will it be Hill ‘n Bill or Barack Obama with the golden tongue - style with little substance or John Edwards, the newly reconfigured raging populist? No clear winner has yet emerged, which is good. The whole thing is still interesting. It is not yet a total media event of mindless adulation one moment and a destructo pile-on the next. Does it make a difference as to which one gets in, anyway? They are all establishment-connected mainstream Democrats. They all are relying on the contributions of rich people and corporations - big-buck buckaroos - to that keep their incredibly expensive campaigns on track. They all claim to rely on contributions of people like and you and me (well not me, I haven’t given any of ‘em a penny yet) to keep in the race. Obviously whichever one gets in, he or she will face the same intractable problems and probably react in very predicable and disappointing ways. But at least none of them will be George W. Bush. That strutting, barely articulate phony of the first order will be history.

As things are now shaking out the Democratic Party is again being compartmentalized into factions specifically those of the racial and gender variety – identity politics. Ever since the 1970s identity politics have been the bane of the Democratic Party and the US Left in general. It leads to endless, pointless, sterile infighting. In any case it appears that many the rank and file of ‘professional Democrats’ and their acolytes will be inclined toward Hillary. These are the same people who let Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid lead Congress into a weak-kneed, non-confrontational relationship with a power hungry presidency more dangerous than even Richard Nixon (see Naomi Wolf's recent article at Huffington Post.) These are the same people who could not gather forces to confront and disable this criminal regime with either impeachment hearings or budgetary hardball? These ‘professional Democrats’ were too busy salivating at the prospect of getting control of the executive and legislative branches in 09 and didn’t want to take any chances.

Hillary Clinton represents this element in the Democratic Party – the loyal opposition. These people thrive on cleaning up elephant shit. That is what Bill Clinton did. He got things all ship shape for the Republicans and the corporations to take it back over - without making any real changes. In fact Mr. Bill borrowed from their playbook especially with respect to Reaganesque ‘welfare reform’ in which programs like AFDC were shut down and the former hapless single mothers were forced into crummy minimum wage service sectors jobs that did temporarily exist during the cyclical upswing of the dot com boom. These so called “entry level jobs” have now more or less vanished into the undocumented worker populated underground economy. Mr. Bill also reduced enough government programs and regulatory muscle to actually end up with “a budgetary surplus” – just what Republicans had always pretended to aspire to but never seemed able to achieve. This so the next Republican president can waltz in and piss it away plus trillions more. Bill Clinton set in motion the neoliberal globalization process (CAFTA, NAFTA, etc) that has resulted in the further de-industrialization of the US. He was a better Republican than they were. That’s why they hated him so. What about Global Warming? I don’t remember any real confrontation (with his later Noble prize Global Warming fighter Vice President Al Gore in tow) with the automobile or energy leviathans in those critical years when the other industrialized nations were all ‘getting religion’ on global warming.. These were years of dithering, critical years. Now a decade later things are undeniably worse.

We already have had a dynasty running things and it has been horrible. We do not need to establish a Clinton Dynasty. Much of what went wrong with George W. Bush is the result of his working out psychological issues with the old man – like trying to do him one better on Iraq. What kind of little psychodramas might occur in a Clinton II Whitehouse? Please voters, show a little imagination. Lets not go to the multiplex and endure another remake of a movie that wasn’t that good in the original - just better than the last horrific atrocity of a movie we just had to sit through – The Son of Bush .

So who is left? Barack Obama and maybe John Edwards. The others are either gone or simply leftwing place markers like Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel. Gravel is a joke - too cranky and weird to take seriously. And Kucinich simply doesn’t have enough visceral appeal to match his radical platform, which is a shame. We are left with a three-way competition between: Hillary, Obama and Edwards. Although Edwards’ poor showing in Nevada may be the beginning of the end for him. John Edwards’ populist approach and his strong support of labor has made him the best one of the three. Early on he wasn’t afraid to be specific, actually proposing programs instead of simply staying in the safe, unassailable realm of feel good platitudes and anti-Bushian rhetoric. In fact he forced Obama and Clinton to come forward with some actual details (which turned out to be disappointing especially with respect to their universal health care plans.) Edwards as a pugnaciously successful trial lawyer (albeit his modest performance in the Senate) would seem a good choice to lead the donnybrook to come if corporate power in the US (and world) is to be seriously challenged. And anyone who thinks it can be a win-win situation when confronting these corporate 'greedmeisters 'and their mouthpieces in the media is a fool. That’s where I hope Obama is just being politically adroit and not picking another fight while he is fighting for his candidacy.

Obama, being a riveting speaker and good at not overplaying the race card, it appears will continue to prevail over Edwards. Unless Edwards can pull off some kind of major victory he will only be around to split the more progressive voters in confronting the Clinton juggernaut. Remember if you add anti-Hillary votes, Obama plus Edwards, she would not be ahead. How many John Edwards supporters (or especially the Lefties for Dennis Kucinich) would ever vote for Hillary over any of the others?

So if comes down to voting for who has the best chance of actually winning against Hillary - Obama or Edwards, we have to be careful. If it looks like Edwards still has a chance of overtaking or outlasting the leaders, Clinton and Obama, then it might make sense to vote for him in the state primaries, otherwise we had better back Obama. There is an outside chance that the negativity and animosity that the Clinton and Obama camps spew out at each other in their struggle for dominance will sour enough voters that John Edwards could be rediscovered and his campaign rejuvenated. But his pretty boy $400 hair cut, white boy persona and his predicable harping about his humble mill worker origins just can’t seem to compete with Obama’s natural talent as a speaker and smooth style, or against the well-oiled Clinton machine. Plus as identity politics sets in Obama will soon have most of the African-American vote while Hillary will probably corral many of the old-line feminists. The younger women may go for Barack? But a problem for Obama that is never discussed in polite company is that the two most down trodden ethnic groups Blacks and Latinos don’t much like each. So Hillary may get a lot of Latino votes.

So it goes like this. Only Kucinich represents a real departure from the RepubloCrat conundrum we are stuck in. But he stands a snowball in hell’s chance of the nomination polling in the single digits – functioning simply as a protest vote for lefties. Edwards would probably make a more effective president than Obama as he stronger on substance rather than style and appears to be more of a realist in dealing with the corporate powers that be. Obama would be better than Hillary as he can tap into the emerging appetite for real change in the electorate (and would have a better chance than Hillary against the Republican hate machine that will be cranked up.) But Hillary (and Bill) would be worlds better than any one of the clowns running in the Republican Party - if she could win.

The Democrats could let us down again...

Be prepared to be disappointed even if the Democrats take over in 2009. Even with a filibuster-proof margin in the Senate, a solid majority in the House and ownership of the White House, the Democrats could still let us down. Of course, the White House is still an 'if' since the Repubs still have their ace-in-the-hole: demagoguery. They can and will play their racism/xenophobia/nativism, hole card under the rubric of the “problem of illegal immigration.” This may or may not cut it depending how easy it will be to target a scapegoat during a recession when the “illegals” will be either heading home in droves and/or gobbling up last the few remaining low wage jobs.

In any case if under the present circumstances, with arguably the most inept, irresponsible and misguided individual to ever be President of the United States coupled with his relentless drive to transform our Constitutional into soggy, soiled toilet paper, the Democrats can't inspire and hearten us by just not being Republicans, then we indeed have a problem! And so far they haven't. The Pelosi-Reid Congress have most definitely has not inspired and heartened anyone. But the pathetic performance of Democrats in Congress aside, the lack of an aggressive forward looking program coming from any of the three real presidential candidates is even more disconcerting. The lack of much to hang your hat on on from : Hillory Clinton and Barak Obama aside from pious generalities does not bode well. Of the viable candidates John Edwards comes the closest to hammering home a message that gets to the point – the corporate overlords must be confronted. Clinton's and Obama's reluctance to commit to much of anything specific or very drastic speaks volumes about what we have in store when and if the present pack of Bushian Brownshirts are finally given a much deserved bum's rush. Actually these war criminals deserve more than simply being run off the premises. If there were any justice in the world and the US Congress was serious about preserving the Constitution, the top rung (Bush, Cheney, Rice, and whoever hasn't yet jumped ship) would be immediately impeached, and if found guilty driven from office, arrested and imprisoned.

Since the Pelosi-Reid Congress steadfastly refuses to consider impeachment, then the only other thing to do is to force the presidential candidates to get serious. Two interlocking problems should be on the table. One is the questionable GOP controlled election machinery that still persists in many so called 'Red States' ( by the way what is it with this stupid color coding of the States?) Two Presidential elections were essentially stolen by the Republicans by both transparent and opaque machinations in at least two of the so-called “battle ground states”, Ohio and Florida. Banana republic style election maneuvers were essentially ignored (or lampooned) by the corporate controlled media. Election irregularities in the Ukraine got more attention that they did in Ohio. Both Al Gore and then John Kerry, four years later, both wimped out big time and refused to fight back when the presidency was stolen right out from from under their noses. This serious concern of election integrity interlocks with a second more long term institutional problem – fact that the Democrats are a essentially a center-right party and are only marginally more progressive than their ostensible adversaries, the Republicans. As the Republican Party has dragged the entire political spectrum drastically to the right, the Democrats passively accepted this new (mal)alignment. Richard Nixon, who supported the establishment of the EPA (environmental regulation) and Family Assistance Act (welfare), would have been classified as a raving socialist by these new standards. Part of the reason for ignoring this recalibration of the political spectrum is that as we know the Democratic Party is in bed with the same corporations and their lobbies that have been essentially running the country under George W. Bush. Bush-appointed agency heads have been functioning like puppets on strings, strings pulled and jerked by the very corporations they are supposed to be overseeing and regulating – and everyone know it. And Democrats up until recently have only issued a few weak squeaks and whines in a egregious situation in which the regulators and regulatees are one.

The front running Democratic presidential candidates' tepid, platitude filled language and detail-less proposals reflects their corporate/ruling class perspectives and Washington consensus driven inclinations. Things need be kept vague and nonspecific so that new party coming in will not stray too far off of the farm once they get into power. If at this present juncture with the US on the brink of an economic meltdown, two ongoing budget busting military quagmires and a restive electorate crying for change composed of many who are experiencing serious downward class mobility (the American Dream in reverse); if under these circumstances the Democrats can't energize and excite their base for drastic and fundamental change, what is it going to going to take? And if they are this restrained in the heat of the campaign, what will they be like when the actually assume office?

We must start now from a position of demanding a total housecleaning. First we must demand a sweeping, ambitious environmental program to make the US a world class model for environmental responsibility. This must be done. It is now no longer a partisan matter. Even the those Republicans who are not brain dead have grudgingly admit that it is getting warmer, and it is a problem. The global corporations that benefit by externalizing their costs by befouling and destroying our Commons, locally and globally, must be brought to heal. But whole industries are at fault. It will be a battle royal. And this program must address both global environmental and global poverty issues simultaneously - otherwise it will fail. Turmoil and recourse to reactionary religious ideology is germinated where their is desperate poverty and corrupt autocratic regimes – many propped up by the US. The new president must immediately negate and reverse every single element of Bushian-GOP dogma. It's all wrong. They must totally change the extant frame of reference especially this stupid so called “Global War on Terror (GWOT.”) It should now be clear now that the GWOT is merely an excuse to jettison civil liberties and put us on a permanent warfare footing – a neo-Cold War. Really confronting the appeal of reactionary militant Muslim religious ideology would involve confronting global poverty in a full-on serious way including the inexcusable poverty in oil rich nations as well the more resistant form in the many hapless overpopulated hellholes where there is nothing much to sell but their future and our future (i.e. destruction of the remaining tropical forests which serve as carbon sinks.) In fact we must jettison this whole “war on whatever” mentality. 'War is not the answer' as the bumper stickers used say. For instance the so called War on Drugs has not produced anything more than bloated bureaucracies, police corruption, over zealous politically ambitious prosecutors and a self perpetuating prison-industrial complex. Just as many people get high as ever. Drug abuse (aka addiction) is a personal problem not a criminal act. The Democratic Party establishment must stop worrying about their right flank. Corporate funding of right-wing Murdochian type media is a worldwide phenomena. The shrill, yammering, prevarication spouting talking heads on Fox, CNN and others can be negated by simply getting truth and reasoned analysis out. With an independent honest, truth seeking government funded alternative media, their lies and spin-meister driven programming can be easily disarmed and exposed as it is in the Blogosphere. With an intelligent alternative, a revitalized and a gutsy public broadcasting system, the profit-driven non Murdochian corporate media outlets would be shamed into providing better investigative journalism as well as factual, contextual coverage of critical issues. The 'tits and ass' and 'if it bleed it leads' stuff can still be there for libido challenged airheads but it doesn't have to be front and center 24/7 as it is now.

The real question we must ask ourselves - is real reform possible? Obviously fundamental structural change (confronting the contradictions of capitalism) is out of the question for now. But it is possible to go beyond the present dominate ideology of the ruling class – Neoliberalism wedded to 'Warfare Keynesianism' which what we have had since WWII? Regardless of all the claptrap about Monetarism and Supply Side economics from academic opportunists, we have been depending on government spending to float the economy every since the Great Depression. Can we at least move into a mode of tamping down the excesses of pedal-to-the -metal “free market” capitalism in which the only 'free market' is the freedom of corporations to rip us off while trashing the environment? Of course, the last time this power was challenged was in the 1930s. The whole economy had collapsed due to rampant speculation, and then ill advised lazzie faire government policies (again under the a Republican, Herbert Hoover) had made things much worse. But American capitalism was saved by FDR and the Democrats over the (politically) dead bodies of the Republicans and their supporters, propertied classes, the real beneficiaries of the system - and they never forgave them for that. But where is the next Roosevelt? It could be John Edwards if he could break through of his corporate media defined pretty boy persona and really resonate with the voters. His candidacy must catch fire. Hillory Clinton and Barack Obama, both creatures of the establishment, must cancel each other out. The whole thing is still up in the air. So many things are out of whack and everyone knows it, yet the campaigns seem to deal in generalities and personalities not aggressive new proposals.

The prospect of moving from an economy driven by military expenditure to one driven by building a totally green, sustainable economy must be placed before the people in a forthright way. But in order do this a president will have to turn away a half century of Warfare Keynesian policy and return to real Keyesianism the real model that John Maynard Keynes had in mind – public spending that benefits everyone especially the poor that primes the pump and gets things running again. It's called counter-cyclical deficit spending. Will it work when are already deep in the whole from Bushian excesses - a looming federal deficit? That is a good question?

In any case such a policy by whoever means confronting a whole host of strong institutional adversaries – essentially the whole military-industrial complex, the medical-industrial complex and the prison-industrial complex and its hand maidens in both parties. It will be a tough uphill battle. And the right wingers and Neocons will go ballistic especially in the mass media that they control.

We face major domestic problems while inextricably entangled in dual expensive geopolitical military quagmires – Iraq and Afghanistan (with Pakistan now imploding into civil war, too) with a backdrop of a growing international perception of the US having become an imperialistic warmongering, resource-hogging bully of a nation. We face an ever worsening health care system hat sucks up ever

more money while leaving millions with either inadequate or no health care at all, a shrinkage of our middle class through the continued loss of living-wage manufacturing jobs to low wage platforms, and an ignored and angry under employed, uneducated underclass who have a created to ghetto gangster subculture. And all this while storm clouds gather for a major recession. If the economy turns down sharply all of the tools for recovery will which have dulled and damaged by by eight years of quintessentially irresponsible voodoo economics - massive military spending while reducing the federal revenue stream by lowering taxes for the already filthy rich. Recovering from the tyrannical Bushian/GOP siege of the last eight years will be difficult. It will be more difficult than even what faced Bill Clinton in the post-Reagan years, especially if the global economy crashes Clinton eventually presided over a high-tech boom brought on by the maturing of the Internet. The options the Democrats will have once in power may be sharply limited. And there is a danger that the American public, ahistorical by nature and confused by context-less mass media presentations, will blame those who take the reins of power for whatever transpires regardless of the predetermined realities they inherit.

Yet unlike the Clinton years when the lurch to right was still in full swing and Slick Willie had to roll with it, now most people are pretty much burned out with all of the hollow sanctimonious rhetoric of the hypocritical and corrupt Republican bible-thumper supported right wing. People really are ready for change. They really would like a departure – honest leadership even if it is by someone who could be placed in that was once dreaded political category - “a liberal”. Taxes are still unpopular; they always will be. But lying about the incidence of the tax (who pays, who doesn't) will no longer cut it. Everyone knows now that the upper 1%, already rich as Crocus, got massive reductions in their taxes while everybody saw no real change. And all the investment by the big boys which was supposed to flow from their reduced taxes ended up in speculation, off shore accounts or in invested in factories in wage slave countries like China. Whatever limited prosperity that did occur in last few years was not due to the magic of “supply side” economics or the wonders of “privatization.” It was due to the normal functioning of a what is know as a “mixed economy”- government spending interlaced with private investment - and lots of credit. Of course as we now a new crisis emerging as a result of the misuse of credit on all levels but most specifically massive levels of irresponsible loans on real estate – billion of dollar worth. The old financial markets are being rattled to the core.

Now we are at an incredibly important juncture. And the US Democratic Party is our only hope. So far its recent performance has been to say the least disappointing. Not since the late 1960s have Americans been so ready for change – real change. This time it is not just the young people as it was in the 1960s when the college kids, intellectuals, artists and young working class rebels were in open insurrection but the WW II generation was still in power and dragged their heals in firm opposition voting for Nixon twice . This time the discord cuts through all, ages, all social classes and all political perspectives. The moment must be seized. It is not a revolutionary moment but it is something akin. A deep malaise infects the country. It is akin but not identical that which occurred and undermined the presidency of Jimmy Carter (which he honestly acknowledged but was politically skewered for.) But Jimmy Carter was a conservative Southern Democrat at a time when the Republican Party was in the doghouse with American public due to the spectacular (and highly entertaining) slow motion implosion of one the Nixon presidency but otherwise people were burn out on change. Carter was a caretaker not a activist. The 1970s were an era of diminishing energy and increasing cynicism.

Now after nearly three decades of reactionary Republican agendas, shameless cynical pandering to religious troglodytes and wide scale corruption, the time is ripe for some fresh new energy – a new progressive, green, strongly left of center agenda. And everyone knows it – except the professional Democrats. What will it take to get them off dead center?

The Bogeyman Arena

Which bogeyman is going to get us first? We have several major contenders which include: Global Warming; a Bushian nuclear attack on Iran (resulting in a worldwide retaliatory spasm of suicide bombings or a world economic meltdown due to oil price spike); a Sunni-Shiite total war in the Middle East supposedly as a result of a “premature” US withdrawal from Iraq; a meltdown of the global economy led by a collapse of the US dollar (anyone for a Wiemar Republic level hyper-inflation?) the Big One, a 7+ on Richter scale earthquake, that destroys Los Angeles or SF Bay Area (including my house.) Other horrific bogeyman possibilities include: a worldwide avian flu pandemic; a dirty bomb terrorist attack on some major city; an accidental nuclear war with the Russians who still have lots of rusty old Cold War era nuclear subs and and now Bear class bombers prowling around; and, oh yeah, what about a large meteor collision with the earth?

With all these horrific catastrophes in direct competition, the one bogeyman that is real, Global Warming, is the one that is in relation to its importance and our short time frame to react is still getting short shrift. This crisis of all times, this on-going and now throughly documented unfolding event, the irreversible damaging of the atmosphere of our planet by CO2 and methane must compete for the attention with all matter of trivia and day-to-day local and geopolitical emergencies. A jaded public is easily distracted accustomed as it is to hyperbolic overreaction by a corporate advertising-driven mass media. A daily diet of disaster and scandal, if-it-bleeds-it-leads yellow journalism results in a sort of collective state of world weary fatigue and fatalistic resignation. It all seems so hopeless. Global Warming is just more bad news, another 'Horseman of the Apocalypse' that threatening to ride down upon us. To further hamper things, the proposed solutions to Global Warming all seem to lead in the direction or austerity. To a population conditioned to base their 'pursuit of happiness' on material acquisition and the enjoyment of the 'good life', some media-driven idealized upper-middle class level of affluence, these measures are anathema especially to those in the US. where denial of the problem has been especially strong.

I wish I could be more optimistic about the fate of the human race. Any serious discussion among most thinking people on the general state of things soon leads to a consensus of pessimism and resigned cynicism. The entrenched corrupt political institutions usually get a thorough drubbing in any such discussion. This is, of course, unless one or more of the those in the discussion is of a religious bent. 'Believers' as they like to call themselves are much less likely to be that down about things. Religious faith allows people to get above it all and take the 'long view'. The impending downward spiral of mankind into barbarism or worse doesn't really bother these people all that much. In fact some of the more hidebound and fundamentalist even deny man's role in climate change and actually support wars. It turns out they are hoping the unending turmoil in the Middle East (much of it the direct result of US and Israel policy) will hasten Armageddon, the End Days and the Rapture and so forth. Others, ironically the two most implacable foes fundamentalist Islamics and Zionists, pine for the reestablishment of long lost theocratic empires in all their mythical glory – Greater Zion or a new global Caliphate. With these people geopolitical machinations and our industrial-driven environmental endgame are really of only minimal concern. In fact they are hard at work making the situation worse. For them it is the afterlife that matters – eternity with a capital “E.” Irrespective of which brand of religion, it always amounts to a convenient projection into the afterlife or the irrelevance of material reality even as it beats them down. It is easy to write off these people as fools with a low gullibility threshold, but their irrationalities are important and dangerous, and directly feed energy and life into the overall Spectacle (see Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle.)

Human institutions evolve self-perpetuating and self-regulating mechanisms and can survive for thousands of years. A good example is the Roman Catholic Church. These formations become embedded in and in fact define a culture – sometimes to the direct determent of the very civilization that the culture is interwoven into. In other words there can be an inherent incapacity of institutions, especially those that constitute the very underpinning of a civilization, to change even as they are actively (and obviously) bringing down the entire edifice.

Jared Diamond's Collapse is an classic study of this unfortunate tendency. Diamond follows the downfall, seemingly quite predicable and not at all opaque to any thinking person living there at that time, of several such collapses – Easter Island, Nordic Greenland, the Anasazi Indians and others. In each case the warning signs were ignored or feebly reacted to for many years until the point of no return quietly and fatally slid past. The (ex-Polynesian) Easter Islanders could not turn away from their deforestation based religion requiring logs (many logs) to roll huge, massively heavy carved images (graven images?) from the quarry to various sites all around the island. Eventually they created a barren environment with a bad new-micro climate that could not support them. The Nordic Greenlanders couldn't lower themselves to switch from Northern European climate style agriculture and animal husbandry to hunting and fishing practiced by the indigenous population seen by them as lowly savages and heathens. The Anasazi built their cities in a semi-dry climate oblivious to long term weather patterns (Southern California are you listening?) All of the societal collapses that Diamond chronicles (obviously for allegorical reasons) systems that were both simpler and more isolated than ours. Simplicity and isolation were both advantageous and increased vulnerability. Identification and addressing the problem early on could have reversed things especially with Easter Islanders. But they had no external means of help being over 1200 miles (by sail) from their nearest neighbor, Pitcairn Island. Unlike the Easter Islanders we live very close to each other due to the wonders of our tightly knit transportation and communications technology. We live in a time of intricate incredibly complex inter-relationships effecting every nook and cranny of the entire planet. We have become evermore monolithic in terms of our world-wide economy – welcomed by those who own most of it (more markets, more profits.) The economy is our religio-institution that we cannot let go of or change adequately even as it kills us! We are much like the Easter Islander as we decimate our natural environment for short term, hegemonically defined goals.

The process of global warming was recognized by all of those with any degree of environmental consciousness and has been thoroughly documented in peer-reviewed literature by thousands of scientists worldwide. Yet with visible evidence now appearing in every direction, immediate day-to-day concerns continue to divert our attention. We are like the Easter Islanders. Immediate problems and day to day issues keep us from any real collective and unified concern. Just look at any headlines and lead stories in any daily paper or worse turn on CNN, Fox or CNBC. The scale and seriousness of the impending world-historical catastrophe of human-induced climate change cannot compete with everyday pedestrian bullshit. The overall situation, usually bad, at any given moment requires us to direct most of our psychic energy into the immediate crisis a hand - like the war in Iraq. These short term emergencies, short term in relation the crisis of ecocide, are in direct competition for our attention. And this is going to be our undoing. We will continue to piss away critical time let this last closing window of opportunity slam shut. Once its throughly too late the horse is long gone from the barn and things are really drastic, not the usual droughts, floods, hurricanes and heat waves, but huge population relocations and die-offs, then we will 'get crack'in', when it's too fucking late! All sorts of draconian state-of-emergency decrees will be ushered forth by the political class as panic sets in.

Before the Al Gore documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, and all the recent graphic video footage of huge glaciers sliding to the sea but with no less of a deluge of scientific data it was even worse. No one cared. We were all off buying gas guzzling SUV's and huge pickups, building ever larger metropolises in the desert and voting for Green-baiting Republicans. Any media account of the problem had to be counterbalanced by psuedo-science speculation and contrarian doubt planting by the whore's with PHDs on the payroll of Exxon and energy industry public relations outfits. Now even as the concern level rises it has started to become almost like another background noise – another possible bogyman that could get us. It becomes a sort of unconscious source of anxiety that is always with us – kind of like the ever present possibility of a 'nuclear war with the Soviets' during the Cold War years

What I fear about the Global Warming Crisis now that it is officially acknowledged by the US (who is the biggest contributer per capita by far to global warming gases) is that it will get absorbed into the whole overall spectacle itself. It will become (or probably already has) become a mere representation of itself. It certainly happened to the so-called Environmental Movement. The present day Environmental Movement came of age in the early 1970's descending from a convergence of 19^th Century conservationism and the post-Rachel Carson rise of the field of ecology. By the early 1970s damage to the environment was becoming more inescapable, and growing consciousness was emerging. To co-opt it, it became practical even among the industrial corporate sector, who have always made it a standard practice of externalizing production costs by off loading as much waste as possible into 'the commons', to start to get on board – or appear to. Environmentalism was an apple pie issue from the start, good for elementary school field trips and nationally sponsored Earth Days and Coastal Cleanup days. All designed to make us feel good. But by the early 1970s even Republican Party favored the idea with brand new federal agency set up during the first Nixon Administration to enforce a growing set of regulations and laws pertaining to the environment– the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA.) This was all well and fine until the corporations realized they could not pass all the costs of being regulated and force to clean up back to the end consumers – in short it was starting to cost real money. Just Republicans inherently and uniformly oppose labor unions because they cut in to profits and operational prerogatives so did they soon uniformly opposed further environmental regulation. Bu the 80's they had a standard bearer anti-environmental in a cowboy hat with ranch – Ronald Reagan. Soon the Westerners and the corporate sector were in alliance making environmentalism a Democratic “liberal” issue. And it has been ever since.

Once identified has a liberal, do-gooder “Democratic Party issue”, it was easy naturally evolved into another left-center 'special interest' along side of organized labor, consumer rights, civil rights, privacy, universal health care and so on. And it did. A whole industry of beltway connected environmental groups with paid staffs vying for donations and grants sprung up and become essentially just another lobby, another accepted part of the Establishment. And so it has remained for well over 30 years through thick and thin. Mostly thin as Republicans almost as a matter of principal oppose all environmental legislation and when in power precede to minimize or refuse the enforcement of what is on the books – especially under the Bushian Anti-Environmentalist Taliban. The Democrats when in, supported by the same corporations who bankroll the Republicans, only timidly enforce existing environmental statutes and offer only tepid new legislation.

So with this partisan arrangement firmly in place, that is with issue of the throughly environmentalism institutionalized, throughly reified and domesticated that is totally absorbed into the overall Spectacle, along comes the unprecedented problem of global warming. Environmentalists in their scientific, academic, foundation-bound ghetto had been accumulating increasingly alarming empirical evidence of this gathering storm for years. It was originally called the Greenhouse Effect in that the planet would heat up like a hothouse if the buildup of CO2 gases was not arrested and would have increasingly deleterious effects on many sensitive climatic and ecological balances. But the threat of environmental destruction caused by global warming planet was occurring within a unified field of many other environmental threats, many other “inconvenient truths” - deforestation especially tropical rainforests, ozone holes forming every winter over Antarctica, the plundering of the world's oceans leading to plummeting fisheries, massive wetland and mangrove swamp loss, coral reef loss, top soil erosion, dead zones at mouth of rivers, deadly air and water pollution and on and on. It was dizzying and depressing. Each issue had groups that specialized in their issue – Greenpeace (oceans), Rainforest Alliance (tropical deforestation), Coral Reef Alliance and so on. Over the last three decades each group has struggled for support and recognition – and legislation. The public when polled usually pays lip service to environmental concerns and gives some support and money. That is except for those who identify themselves as “conservatives” (strange ironic label for those who did not want to conserve anything), who derisively called the environmentalist “tree huggers” and “greenies.” Anyway, that's all water under the bridge.

So here we stand with a recognized historically unprecedented problem of a global scale, one that could literally “end the world” as we know it and we must watch helplessly as the dithering begins. Our political leadership is fucking joke. Not one single candidate for the US horse race for President in 2008 has placed Global Warming front and center within their campaigns. There are no bold, Apollo Project scale initiatives being unveiled here in ground zero of planter warmers – where we have 1/5 of the world's population but are consuming 75% of its energy – thus we pumping well over our share of climate warming gases mainly CO2 and methane up into the stratosphere where it will stay for thousands of years cooking our fat asses. It not that most politicians are actually crooked and corrupt although many are, it's that there primary focus is on the reality at hand. It has to be or they will be swept aside by others more adaptable to a particular social-political reality. And the social-political reality is defined by pandering, infotainment producing corporate media (owned by anti- environmentalist Republicans) – another classic feedback loop. So they cannot lead but only react. The time and energy they typically devote to a particular cause or issue is in direct opposite proportion to its importance. They will not do jack shit until it is too late and then they will fall over themselves with draconian decrees making us even more miserable as everything collapse around us. It will be way too late. Maybe it already is!

Immigration - a perfect Issue for the Repubs

With the all of the white-guys-on-parade-Repub candidates for Prez flailing around for a means to distance themselves from The Bush, immigration may be the ticket. Nativism runs deep in this country and Latino immigrants, legal and illegal, have now dispersed themselves through out country. So it is no longer simply a regional issue. Who has not gone to a Home Depot or a Lowes and seen all these dudes furtively hanging around (almost like they are selling something illegal) apparently waiting for work, quietly jabbering away in Espanol. TV commentator Lou Dobbs has made a career with his incessant tirades - agitating and exaggerating daily about our Broken Borders. Immigration is one of the few issues George W. Bush has taken a moderate position on and it has only exacerbated his sinking popularity with many Republicans.

With the Demos continuing to disappoint showing little zeal or political courage to steadfastly confront an out of control Imperial Presidency, the Repubs will be angling for an issue to recapture enough of the electorate to again weasel their way back into the Presidency (remember the voting machinery is still in the hands of many GOP state functionaries.) All the clap-trap about the inherent immorality of gays or the sanctity of life of unborn fetuses is starting to wear thin. Such issues no longer have the punch they once had. They need a new wedge. And Immigration with a capital "I" will do just fine. It is divisive enough; it is definitely emotive enough and it is something that George W. Bush actually had a moderate position on - one that they can disagree with and thus redefine themselves as non-Bushian Republicans.

Several categories of voters are vulnerable to the charms of the Repubs on the immigration issue. First of all, immigration is a splendid means to split off many from that portion of those who vote as "independents" or who only weakly identify with either party. This highly sought after pack of shallow thinking, non-committal bozos (whose perennial pursuit drives the Democrats to the right in every presidential election) is always fair game. Included here are what were once called Mugwamps (registered to one party but vote for the other.) This voting demographic tends to vote emotionally rather than rationally. Gun control leniency has elected many a Republican stalwart who has in turn enlisted in the very class war that will economically hurt the very same blue collar gun-aficionado who put in them in - shifting the tax burden on to middle classes, deregulation of the big corporations, pro-NAFTA neoliberalism on steroids, etc. And of course how many Republican voting evangelical Christians have suffered a full decade of a frozen minimum wage at their crummy Walmart jobs while waiting for the Rapture? Try as the Demos do, the Repubs, Karl Rove or no Karl Rove, are masters Pied Pipers at luring these poor saps over the hill and into the arms of their class enemies.

And then there are the many loyal Democrats who, although they despise Bush and his panoply of horrors, also resent the downward pressure on wages produced by the perceived hoards of "illegal immigrants", people who are used to getting for a full day's work for what they get in the USA in a single hour. Many voting Democrats are caught in vise of a seemingly low but relentless rate of inflation (officially 2.36% - can that be real?) and stagnant wages (which continues to lag behind productivity.) To most people the official inflation rate doesn't seem to capture the increasing spread between living expenses and take-home pay. Somehow housing costs, either rents or payments on recently taken out huge mortgages, don't seen to be reflected in the consumer price index (CPI.) Plus many people were seduced into buying gas gobbling, greenhouse gas spewing SUVs and giant pickup trucks in the last few years and now gas prices seems to be only going up. So the "illegal immigrants" whether directly responsible or not will make fine scapegoats for economic stress suffered by the middle and lower middle class voters. The party that can manipulate that frustration and resentment will get a bonanza of votes. Which party is the most intellectually dishonest and conniving? Which party is a virtuoso at getting people to vote against their own best interests?

And then of course there are Repub loyalists - the so-called the Republican Base. They now consist of two rather disparate categories. The first is the the old-line country club patrician ruling class type Republicans. From the small town, small fry Babbits to the Ivy League educated corporate elite (the real power behind the throne), these are the boys who run the show if they can - and they usually can. This group, while numerically small, is quintessentially influential out all proportion to their numbers controlling many institutions (universities, foundations, NGOs) and most importantly the media. Also paradoxically and probably what accounts for Bush's unpopular support for "amnesty for illegals", these guys own many of the factories and farms that now employ these "undocumented" interlopers. For these people it is all about economics - they really do enjoy the promised tax breaks and they enjoy the cheap labor. So they probably are of two minds on the issue. But when comes down to it they know their butter placement and their sides of bread. They really do benefit from privatization, deregulation, anti-union policies, off-shore production (and banking), anti-environmental policies, etc. -in short the whole neoliberal agenda.

The second component of the Republican Base couldn't have less in common with first part. They are the brain dead redneckian right wingers, many from the South, who always gravitate to that position that allows for the most hate, racism and bigotry to be manifested - the audience of Ann Coulter and Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh, etc. This group is rather malleable. To some extent this demographic overlaps with the unaffiliated types cited above. This is essentially an amorphous group of under-educated, binary minded empty vessels that can be used by demagogues and rabblerousers of any ideology - they are the rabble. And (surprise, surprise) they seem to have gravitated to the right on the immigration issue. However, that energy can (and has been) redirected upward toward the upper classes, their real enemy.

The Democrats must come to terms with the so-called Globalization issue. It is international economic forces and damaged ecological systems that have increased this world wide migration rate as the poor are pushed off the land. Subsidized crop producing wealthy developed countries hypocritically and cynically force 'free market reforms' and privitization on underdeveloped countries. As their ag sectors are consolidated and industrialized to compete the excess rural population either winds up in festering slums that ring their overloaded cities, or they flee over the nearest border usually illegally to somewhere where things are relatively less desperate. The illegal immigrants are not freeloaders and opportunists nearly as much as the educated professionals graduates of state supported universities who gravitate legally to higher wage zones. This is commonly known as "brain drain" and it is accepted and encouraged. The travails of the poor on an overpopulated abused planet will not go away - billions live on less than $2.00 (US) a day. Whether they remain in their wretched hell hole festering Third World slums without clean water and have to endure stinking open sewers while living cardboard and tin shacks, or whether they flee over the border willing to work for peanuts, they will not go away.

Unless the Democrats begin to formulate a readily comprehensible analysis and back away from the excesses of the "no holds barred, pedal to the metal, 'free market' capitalism known as Neo-liberalism they will be ambushed by Republicans on the immigration issue. No way will the Democrats Party, a political party with sizable components of ex-immigrants (Mexicans- Americans) and descendants of slaves be able to match the reactionary, racist, Nativist policy that the Republican, no-nothing right can conjure up. The Republicans will come up with a harsh, unworkable but appealing demagogic approach and it will be very politically appealing to the constituency that it is aimed at.

The Democrats must counter with a bold plan of a green rebuilding of the country including luring more investment back into this country. A New Deal scale project using reprogrammed military-industrial monies needs to be envisioned. The Democrats must go where they have not gone since FDR. They must inflame passion and inspire creativity and hope. The people are ready for it. Are the Democrats?