Thursday, January 24, 2008

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.

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