The realignment. Or, Who among us didn't see this coming?

[lumberjack_jeff]

When this campaign season started, I had high hopes. Dodd, Biden, Richardson, Edwards, Kucinich all had tons of experience and strong progressive credentials. Clinton, although a skilled campaigner with a huge war chest, had a lot of negatives, had the least room to criticize the republicans and appeared the most likely to galvanize them to action. Obama was an inspirational speaker, but didn't have enough experience or articulated policy to be considered serious.

Lacking experience and/or progressive creds was a disadvantage. Clinton and Obama compensated for this disadvantage by their ability to capitalize on affinity politics. Obama's "Yes, we can!" sounds like the punchline to a childrens book to many of us over 40, (Yes we can... what, exactly?) but to the generations whose primary educational takeaway was self-esteem, it made some kind of sense. Hillary's frequent appeals to the sisterhood ("for cleaning up things, women are better than men" - K Breitweiser) were both transparent and, when contrasted with the position she's staked out as the biggest Iraq hawk of the group, schizophrenic.

Her "displays of emotion" punctuated by political appeals to her toughness left many scratching their heads. But she's a woman, and "it's time for a woman president", so a great deal is overlooked.

The secret of both Obama's and Clinton's success is their decision to sell their attributes instead of policy. To some degree, I find this sensible. We've had our asses handed to us so many times in the last 20 years because policy is considered boring to the electorate. No one wants to drink a beer with their teachers. The problem began when this lesson translated into picking the most innocuous policy, and the most inappropriate people to help craft it.

Obama has aligned himself with the fundamentalist free-market Friedmanites. This explains his health care plan which might subtly slow down the growth of our healthcare expenditures (thus maximizing the profits taken before the inevitable meltdown), but is far short of transformative leadership that the topic requires. Clinton, whose DLC history is well-established, has embraced the darkside too, by hiring the leading lights of Penn Schoen Berland and Burson-Marseller, people who should be anathema to anyone concerned with democracy and human rights to help craft her marginally more substantial policy.

Now the pundits speak of a realignment. Both candidates have used the primary, not to sell themselves to Democrats, but to motivate their affinity groups - wherever they might lie on the political spectrum. What do they mean by realignment? It means that both campaigns are attempting to remake the party aligned not by common cause, not by shared goals, but by superficiality. Since policy doesn't really matter, and the true believers in both camps don't really have the attention span to think through what this may mean to them, they can take as much special interest (i.e. corporate) support as they can get.

When the pundits speak of realignment, they're not talking about realignment of Republicans, they're talking about realignment of progressives. The assumption is that progressives will be forced to realign themselves with, depending on the outcome, women or educated youth. If you're a progressive you'll take whatever the realignment gives you and you'll like it.

This is the kind of realignment that Nixon with his southern strategy and later Reagan successfully accomplished. To a degree greater than either of those examples, this realignment has nothing to do with policy - it has everything to do with affinity. In a superficial country, this should be unsurprising.

Those of us who are concerned about how policy can be used to improve the lives of the 50 million households surviving on less than $35,000/year are out of luck. Those of us who are concerned about how our international policy is used as a tool to both temporarily sustain our unsustainable consumption while at the same time breeding humanitarian abuses and terror are out of luck. Those of us who understand the fact that the fiscal policy of the last 8 years has been simply vandalism intended to position the wealthy to sweep up the belongings of the rest are out of luck.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that these manifestations of our national policy are intentional. Terror, debt, consumption, income inequality and an impotent public sector are goals, not unintended consequences. No one cares. "Where's my pony?"

This condescension on the part of the two remaining candidates is what creates third parties. American politics is no longer intended to be representative of us, it's intended to appeal to us. Our politicians appeal to us while representing USA, inc.

I intend to vote for the nominee, and have a slight preference for Clinton, but I'm embarrassed for my party. 2008 was a once in a generation opportunity and we've squandered it on the shiny allure of superficiality.

[Blue_In_AK]

1. You're a wise man, Lumberjack_Jeff

Good post. K&R.

[lumberjack_jeff]

26. Undeserved praise, but thank you just the same. n/t

[CTyankee]

2. In regards to your thesis, see today's NY Times Op Ed piece

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/opinion/04swartz.html?ref=opinion
In particular, the Rovian strategy for TExas'Hispanic voters and how the strategy came a-cropper with deep Republican xenophobic and racist biases. The twist there -- benefitting Obama -- is ironic and enjoyable for liberals to watch play out in this campaign!

[KoKo]

3. yes....another opportunity squandered away....

Engineered by policy wonks and pollsters.

[LiberalAndProud]

4. There have been one or two good things come of it,

very little by way of policy. It seems to be mostly personality with some race and gender thrown in. (sigh)

Well reasoned, lumberjack.

[mojowork_n]

5. Good analysis

Well thought out and nicely phrased, although I don't know too many people who had high hopes for Dodd, Biden or Richardson. Edwards and Kucinich -- for sure.

I'm no longer waiting for an Edwards endorsement, but I still have some hope that, despite the presence of the U. of Chicago wonks in his pit crew, pulling wrenches on economic policy, the Obama candidacy can still serve as a vehicle for real, transforming changes.

However superficial some of his support may be, it's not like it's a big secret that the last 7 and a fraction years have been a total and complete, freaking disaster.

The pendulum has to swing back, sometime. They may not be as clued in, informed, or have the depth of understanding they should have (how can they, when CNN, MSNBC & FAUX are entrusted with the responsibility of shoveling them the news?), but I think in the minds of most Obama voters, there is a sense of compelling national interest, of restoring the balance and putting the country back on track.

On the other hand, if Hillary's the nominee, I will think twice about supporting her, and might consider a third party nominee. (But only if, the morning of the election, all polls are showing a clear winner in my home state.)

EDIT P.S. -- Rush Limbaugh's urging his listeners to go out and vote Hillary, in the primaries, today, may have skewed my opinion of Senator Clinton's candidacy somewhat. The negatives just seem to keep coming, in her case, but in any event, I'm not eager to see the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Repeat thing happen. If you really want to talk about policy (NAFTA, the Telecommunications Act of 1995, corporate de-regulation and off-shoring come to mind) -- those things didn't all just start with Dubya, after 2000.

[lumberjack_jeff]

6. The tragedy is that this election, instead of being a catalyst for change...

... is only going to serve to dampen the movement of the pendulum. The center of rotation of the pendulum is moving farther and farther right with each passing year. There used to be little disagreement that torture is a war crime. Now, the debate is whether it's ineffective policy.

How bad has it gotten? Eisenhower's policy would be to the left of everyone from both parties.

[mojowork_n]

12. I know what you're saying, but I'm not so sure.

By that same yardstick, if you stood Nixon next to John McCain, Tricky would look like a candidate almost palatable to progressives. (Or in the same neighborhood, or close to the same zip code where my darker imaginings of Hillary reside.)

I'm not saying that there's no such thing as a "movement conservative", or that they haven't been successful in turning ordinary, presumably well-meaning Republicans into a well-financed phalanx of hard-liner, ideologically disciplined Bushevik's, but they've had their run. It's been such a horribly bad experience, for most Americans, I don't think the same old line of crap is going to sell as well as it used to.

Or, one way or another, we'll find out. If the plutocrats (the "Money" wing of the Republican party) don't succeed in replacing him as the nominee (the oligarchs, the "War Party" wing of the GOP like him just fine), McCain's going to give us his own version of the Dubya Shuffle. The effort to re-paint himself, as a "true" movement conservative, could also make him look like a total, flipping bogus fraud. First he was against torture, until he was for it. First he was against the tax cuts, until he realized which side his bread was buttered on. First, he was against unlimited corporate financing of political campaigns...

I know, it *has* been a bad run, ever since... Bobby, and Martin, and John. We've learned some hard lessons. I'm just hoping we can have a payoff, before there's a complete economic meltdown. That would be the GOP puppet-masters' revenge, laughing all the way to the off-shore bank, as they exit the White House. But that would probably mean the end of the GOP, as they know it, too. I know, I've had some doubts about Barack, but most of them got put on permanent "hold" when I went to hear Michelle speak. I'd heard him before, but she was the one who completely sold me on his candidacy.

[lumberjack_jeff]

14. As you say, we shall see.

Here's to "hope". :toast:

[Nederland]

7. Did you notice

That you lamented how 50 million people have to survive on less that $35,000 a year and then in the following sentence lamented our unsustainable consumption? The fact is that a huge percentage of the world would kill to live on 35k a year and the only reason we in this country think of 35k a year as a problem is because of our unsustainable consumption.

[lumberjack_jeff]

8. Families which live on less than $35k/year

Suffer not primarily because of their consumption, but because public policy is built in such a way as to maximize the burden that this $35k must bear.

Medical insurance for a family of four can easily consume a third of that. The absence of public transportation consumes a quarter of the remainder. Childcare takes another quarter. This leaves less than $12k with which to consume (food, taxes, clothing and housing).

The "huge percentage of the world which would kill" for that kind of money neglect to recognize the degree that our public policy dictates that we are individually responsible for services which they can take for granted.

The problem isn't that we're too rich, it's that the benefits are distributed inequitably.

[Nederland]

10. Now you are talking about "families"

In your original post you said "people". I would agree, a family of four trying to live on 35k a year would be stretched.

[lumberjack_jeff]

15. In the OP I said "households"

Is the family of four representative of the $35,000 household? I don't believe it's atypical.

[Nederland]

30. Where are your getting insurance numbers from?

I took you at your word initially, but then I went to an insurance comparision website and found I could get good insurance from top named companies (Kaiser, Humana, etc.) for a family of four for between $200-$300 a month. That is significantly less than what you were talking about. Where did you get your numbers? What assumptions were you making about age, tobacco use, height, weight etc.?

[lumberjack_jeff]

31. It's from a 2005 Kaiser study.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2005-09-14-family-health-policy_x.htm

It is more now and this figure does not include copays and deductibles.

Granted, most people have this level of coverage because their employer pays a share.

[mojowork_n]

13. Nice observation

It's an over-simplification, but when I spent 4 months living in Europe, they told me, "here, we live for each other. In America, you're all on your own."

Echoing economist Jared Bernstein's YOYO & WITT descriptions. We're meant to be raised in docile herds, as so many consumer cattle, but it doesn't have to be that way.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/opinion/TPRICHexcerpt.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-5753939.html

(I have to confess I haven't even seen a copy of the Bernstein book, but those are links to articles about it.)

[lumberjack_jeff]

36. Those links are awesome. Thank you. I very much appreciate the Economic Policy Institute. n/t

[CRH]

9. This of all days to post an excellent observation, ...

You are right on target, but I fear more superficial activities of the O/H cheer leaders will prevail today. After all, this was an intelligent assessment of what you so rightly called an 'embarrassment'.

With all that has happened in the last seven years, the party could have put together a real progressive and different alternative. The result? Both O/H are statistical dead heats with McCain. Either the general public is brain dead, or they simply can't see much of a difference between the three. It is the problem with a two party system that has only one world view.

Good Post.

[grantcart]

11. The other way to understand what is happening is that is not as much a

shift in policy but strategy, the tried and true strategy of trying to make major policy jumps as being as successful as the embargo on Cuba has in changing that regime. Having lived overseas and working with Drs from other countries it has been obvious to me that single payer not for profit is by far and a way the best way to deliver health care -and citizens in other developed countries love the care that they get. Now if we could only get 50 or 60 million Americans to live overseas for a while it would be easy.

It seems to me obvious that we are going to have to back door the concept and get people used to a government role in health care incrementally. I thought JE plan the cleverest because it put private practice in competition with medicare.

Sen. Obama's genius is that he reshapes the landscape and prepares a more fertile ground to move on actual policy rather than merely positioning for future electoral success. There is a reason that he hasn't faced substantial Republican opponents in his GE fights and that is when you add several hundred thousand new voters into the Chicago/Illinois electorate it encourages your opponents to look again.

You may be right.

Maybe Senator Obama is policy lite.

I would say that the evidence in so far would suggest that he is strategy heavy and understands just how you have to take transformation in stages. I have learned to stop underestimating him.

In any case what a joy to read a post that has a definte point of view, is well thought out and very well written.

[KittyWampus]

16. you have some fucking nerve using the word superficial. It describes your knowledge of Obama

Go do some research on how he has organized grassroots activists and energized Democrats in every damned state there's been a primary so far.

Clinton has used pre-existing Democratic machinery in the few states she bothered to show up in.

[Armstead]

19. I support Obama, but he ain't running as no liberal or progressive

His platform is basically a new and improved version of centrism. he is avoiding taking any positions that might actually get to the root of our problems.

[lumberjack_jeff]

20. The hug of hope clearly leaves a strong impression on the acolytes. n/t

[Shine]

17. I can align myself with what you are saying.

:D I would furthermore contend that over the years it's become evident that the selling of a political candidate is just that: SELLING.

They are marketed to us, as appealing products, which we the Voter/Consumer choose to buy (into), or not.

That said, I am an eternal Optimist who believes that Clarity and Awakening will prevail.

Here, have a cupcake. :D

[Armstead]

18. Unfortunately I think you're correct. This election is a massive WASTED OPPORTUNITY

I tend to favor Obama because....well mainly because I am sick of the Clintons, the DLC and the same old shit.

I think Obama does have the ability to generate enthusiasm and there is a chance that he may turn out to be more progressive than we think.

But I ain't holding my breath.

Bacically, after the failures and disasters of CONservatism in all its' forms, the public has a hunger for change. And this has created a major opening for liberal/progressive populism.

The center could be pushed to the left, atleast to a restoration of balance.

However both Clinton and Obama are -- in their seperate ways -- just playing on the same old conservatist centrist garbagio that neutered the Democrats 30 years ago.

[nolabels]

29. I try (whenever possible) to live in a pragmatic world

When government dictates how health care can be administered and financed then they too should accept them responsibilities that are part of the mandates. The whole problem with majority of modern governments is that they want to be in charge things without accepting the consequences.

Yea paint me as this, tag me as that but that should only work we have conflicting interests. The complaint they are going through false or dejecting steps is not too much to the point. You and or me might wish for things that are not so nuanced but the reality is no big steps cannot first begin without learning and accepting what them small steps look like. We will need a big windup to get over that first step in the other direction. The pendulum is still tilted the other way

In other words, if you win a hundred dollars in the lottery do you throw the ticket away because it isn't the million dollars you were hoping for :shrug:

[elixir]

21. Interesting post but when was the last time we had a primary where you're candidate made it to the

finish line? I'm with you. I think we've ended up with possibly two of the weakest candidates (maybe Edwards would have beat one of them out) which isn't to say I don't think they're all good candidates. I believe the Richardson or Biden would have been terrific. But it's a race and until we have a depression - because, you know that we're in a recession - nothing much is going to change.

[lumberjack_jeff]

23. Absent real leadership (ie FDR) this depression will be blamed on the next administration.

I've never been this ambivalent about our nominee.

I liked Kerry, Gore, B Clinton, Dukakis, Mondale and Carter. With the exception of Gore, none of them were my first choice, but none of them were my last choice either.

[leftofthedial]

22. we didn't squander the opportunity. we never really had the opportunity.

the American election system has been completely privatized. through campaign financing, lobbyist support, back-room deals and who knows what other enticements, the corporate servants of the oligarchy choose which candidates get to participate.

otherwise, :thumbsup:

[tekisui]

24. I agree for the most part.

My one ray of "hope" is that this Primary has woken the sleeping giant of the electorate. Whether they realize what their best interests are yet, is another story.

To that extent, the Democratic Party should see significant gains in the House, Senate and at local levels. And, the only place you find Progressives in National Politics is in the Democratic Party. The more Dems we have the better chance we have at promoting a Progressive Agenda. It certainly doesn't have a chance in a puke House, Senate or WH. I estimate half the Dems are Progressives. Maybe we can eventually push the Centrists out, and have the Progressives claim a viable Party.

[lumberjack_jeff]

25. That's my take too. Hope springs eternal.

It's a very good point. We need to till the soil, plant the right seeds and cultivate like mad. The challenge is that it's not the gardener who selects the flower which eventually makes into the vase.

Our garden is full of wonderful examples. Our best strategy is to grow such a uniformly wonderful garden that even the worst one that corporate USA will choose is still good.

Gaa! Metaphor poisoning. :)

[HughMoran]

27. Reasoned arguments? Constructive criticism? Is this permitted here on DU?

:rofl:

Excellent thought-provoking post. I don't necessarily agree with your conclusion, but you've painted a clear picture of where we are at this point in time.

[Hissyspit]

37. It used to be what DU was mostly made of... n/t

[Two Americas]

28. excellent post

Thanks lumberjack_jeff.

"Those of us who are concerned about how policy can be used to improve the lives of the 50 million households surviving on less than $35,000/year are out of luck."

There is the Achilles heel of modern liberalism and the Democratic party, as well as the great shame of what we have become, and the source of all of our failures and frustrations. We have allowed liberalism and the party to become a movement of the "winners" for the "winners" - the good "winners," not those bad "winners" like Cheney. Millions have been forgotten and left behind, and are still invisible. That will not be without consequence.

[lumberjack_jeff]

33. Indeed. Torches and pitchforks are not prohibitively expensive.

Thanks!

[Laelth]

32. I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

My hope is that Obama is a true leftist who has camouflaged his true colors under bipartisan rhetoric.

And, besides, if Obama can deliver us, via coattails, 62 votes in the Senate, we can pass a single-payer health care plan and dare him to veto it.

:dem:

-Laelth

[varelse]

34. Anyone willing to face reality could have seen this coming

Ugh... yet it's sometimes easy to understand why people turn a blind eye,when our reality is just so ugly.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that these manifestations of our national policy are intentional. Terror, debt, consumption, income inequality and an impotent public sector are goals, not unintended consequences. No one cares. "Where's my pony?"

[truedelphi]

35. K & R. More and more I am realizing that in the truly "working" democracies

Of the European Union, the idea of having only two political parties is about as beloved as the idea of having an illiterate village idiot for Prime Minister or President.

Only this nation, which fails its people by not having National Health Care, only this nation which fails its people by having an executive office that not only cost 4,000 lives of our service people but bankrupted this country, only this nation with its over zealousness of concern about the rights of gay people to marry and lack of concern about mortgage bankers and financiers reaming the economy in the sinkhole it's become, only this nation insists that anything more than two political parties is a bad idea.

Yet anyone who has even skimmed an American History text knows that it was the third parties of this country that did such marvelous things as
One) promote the right of Women to Vote
Two) End child labor by enacting child labor laws
Three) Establish the forty hour work week WITH BENEFITS

Et Cetera.

[the other one]

38. If you agree or disagree, this is an excellent post. R & K

Thanks for expanding my conceptual vocabulary.

[tomp]

39. of course these mainfestations of policy are intentional.

the truly progressive wing of the democratic is small and powerless within the juggernaut that is the truly non-progressive (read:imperialist) majority of the democratic party. dennis kucinich was head and shoulders the most progressive candidate, with everyone else (including edwards, biden, and richardson) a far distant second. i have been voting for my fourth or fifth choice my entire life. i have watched bipartisan imperialist policy dominate (with the necessary squabbling over details to maintain the illusion of two parties). i have witnessed the bipartisan squelching of crucial truth. there is simply no doubt that both parties dwell on superficialities in the media and work together behind the scenes to accomplish the agenda of the rich.

progressives must become successful in accomplishing their agenda by whatever means necessary. for a start, i would like to see dennis kucinich hold to his promise of not supporting a candidate who uses war as an instrument of foreign policy.

[Muttocracy]

40. thanks - comforting to know I'm not the only one who care about policy over sales pitch nt