Mark Solomon on the State of the Union

In short, the vote for a far right cipher (little known to the electorate) that appealed to independents and never even mentioned that he was a Republican (!) reflected clear voter anger over an economy mired in ten percent unemployment (with attendant insecurity for millions far beyond the actual jobless) and jerry-built health care legislation that failed to demonstrate an unambiguous benefit for the public.

Doubtless, the defeat of Martha Coakley was based in part by a complacent, lackluster campaign that treated a Democratic primary victory as an inauguration and literally took weeks off to vacation before the January 19 special election. But at the heart of the Democratic defeat was heated belief that the Democrats with their control of the White House and Congress had failed largely to deliver the change promised in 2008. Coakley’s complacency was conflated to embrace the entire Obama administration, now the reviled “insiders” against the “outsiders” at the gate demanding undelivered change. Ironically, a right wing Republican, became the beneficiary of a resurgent populism disheartened by handing trillions to the banks and investment houses while a stimulus program has just barely kept joblessness from growing but has not restored lost jobs or measurably eased the economic crisis.

 

Coakley’s defeat also reflected the public’ unease with a complex and vastly expensive health care bill whose positive features were unclear in the public mind or were outweighed by the bill’s failure to contain costs through a public option or Medicare expansion. The bill offered nothing to the majority saddled in Massachusetts with mandatory, outrageously high cost policies. Indeed, the decision to prioritize health insurance over jobs was worsened by handing a trillion dollars in mandatory insurance to the insurance industry and by the inability of the bill’s sponsors to reassure seniors about the fate of Medicare.

Most of all, failure to deal decisively with the jobs crisis explains the deflation of support for the Democrats in a wide swath of working and middle-class suburbs across the state.

 

The “center-right” elements in the Democratic Party will now call for further shifts to the right in response to the Massachusetts election. That would be a grievous and fatal misreading of the public mood, especially the mood of the vast coalition of labor, African Americans and other minorities, youth, etc. that constitute a progressive majority and the base that elected Obama and a Democratic Congress. Indeed, the disappointing performance of the Democrats in office had already sapped the enthusiasm of that base that was never energized by the Coaklely campaign. Political survival, and more important easing of the present multiple crises requires bold, fighting leadership, an end to sterile efforts to achieve consensus with the right and concrete efforts to affect real, impacting, measurable change.

 

 Any honest assessment of the state of the union would begin with the stark reality of unemployment. Officially pegged at 10 percent, joblessness in 17 major metropolitan areas is over fifteen percent. In cities with heavy concentrations of racial and national minorities (always last hired and first fired) unemployment is edging towards 20 percent. Since the start of the recession over 8 million jobs were lost. Overall there are over 15 million jobless. Unemployment for December rose to 85,000; the prognosis for an upturn in jobs is now projected for 2014 or 2015.

 

Those numbers do not capture the magnitude of the crisis. Hundreds of thousands have dropped out of the job market and are not counted in jobless figures. Vast numbers are working at reduced hours. Many are precariously holding on to their jobs under the threat of impending layoffs, wage freezes and wage reductions. Fear of loss of incomes, fear of the cost of illness, fear of loss of homes, loss of funds for education, loss of stability and loss of the traditional belief that the next generation will do better – have created unbearable psychological pressures not seen since the 1930s.

 

Directly related to the jobs crisis, state governments are in economic free fall with a cumulative staggering $350 billion in budget gaps. That translates into major cuts in education and social services. California’s vaunted college and university system is on the brink of collapse with students being forced to absorb a 32% increase in tuitions. Michigan is cutting services to families with severely disabled children. Layoffs of teachers and other public workers are multiplying into the tens of thousands while millions are forced to survive on unemployment insurance, food stamps and Medicaid (all short term ameliorations).

 

An environmental catastrophe looms. It threatens great human misery and habitat destruction. Carbon pumped into the atmosphere is already greater than “tipping point” levels determined by scientists to constitute possibly irreversible ecological damage. Continual fossil fuel emissions are creating wrenching changes in weather patterns, melting polar ice caps that are causing rising ocean waters and threatening populations of low-lying mainly impoverished countries of South Asia and the Pacific.

 

While the US domestic economy continues to decline and the dollar weakens, the projection of unmatched military power around the world intensifies. Over 700 military bases and tens of thousands of US forces pursue so called “security interests.” Major wars are being waged in Iraq and Afghanistan while US military forces and the CIA in Pakistan conduct an illegal shadow war and yet another war looms in Yemen. Ostensibly to fight drug trafficking, the US occupation of seven bases in Colombia is reasonably looked upon by regional powers as a threat to Latin American countries that have moved to the left. All this takes place as the military-industrial complex continues throw its political weight around, protecting expensive weapons programs while generals arrogantly campaign openly for their preferred military and political objectives that are constitutionally invested in the presidency.

 

The power to intimidate and control policy by a vast military machine and national security state is endemic and institutional. That is amply and disturbingly demonstrated by the Afghan war. Many reasons have been offered for an essentially civil war that is glaringly not winnable and welds US lives and money to a hopelessly corrupt and unpopular regime. Perhaps the least convincing argument is that the Afghan intervention is a “war on terror” designed to destroy the al-Queda network operating on the Afghan-Pakistan border. However, reliable intelligence estimates that less than 100 al-Queda jihadists remain in that barren, impoverished land to face over 100,000 US forces alone. It’s also claimed that Afghanistan must be cleansed, or at least reduced, of the Taliban, al-Queda’s alleged hosts. Yet, intelligence sources admit that the Taliban is ripe with division, is significantly hostile to al-Queda (with some elements open to negotiation). Historic experience and common sense point to the need to define stateless terror as criminal acts that must be countered by maximal intelligence and international cooperation across ideological boundaries. Whatever the malign motives of al-Queda, its ability to recruit is based on grievances such as US bases on middle east soil, the terrible toll of civilian casualties in US-NATO wars in the region, manifest US bias in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and silence in the face of the killings in Gaza, exploitation by Western powers of Middle East resources, the brutalities of Guantanamo and Abu-Ghraib, illegal rendition and torture. All that must be addressed for a successful fight against acts of terror.

Some analysts have attributed Washington’s intervention in Afghanistan to revived interest in a lucrative oil pipeline from the Middle East to East Asia; others point to the designs of unelected US strategists to establish a permanent military presence in Afghanistan to pressure Iran and surround rising China, others to US determination to crush all movements, even regressive movements (Taliban) that do not accommodate imperial interests. All those objectives converge and likely explain the otherwise irrational quagmire in Afghanistan (as well as a secret drone war in Pakistan). At the same time, imperial objectives are driven by a militarized economy and a military culture that mandates interventionism and “victory” in the name of national security – no matter the consequences. One aspect is the hypocritical and manipulative celebration of military forces that are standard features of public (especially sports) events while veterans’ authorities have until recently neglected the terrible effects of war on veterans, especially post-traumatic stress disorder.

 

President Barack Obama demonstrated the essence of the national security state in his awkward acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize. After acknowledging the indivisible commitment to peace with justice by previous winners Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr., Obama separated himself from those magisterial figures by claiming before an unmoved audience that as President and commander-in-chief his duty was to protect the national security of US citizens. No explanation was offered of how a hopeless war in Afghanistan and a cruel secret war in Pakistan (and now Yemen) advance that security save his obscure contention taken from theologian Reinhold Niebuhr that “there is evil in the world.”

 

On the domestic front, decades of falling rates of profit have been dealt with by nearly systematic destruction of the industrial and manufacturing economy and globalization that has shifted manufacturing jobs to low wage and low tax countries, turning the US into an importer of goods rather than an exporter. Militarization has also choked the economy and robbed the public of resources to advance new productive technologies and new green jobs. (While the US continues to invest heavily in useless weapons systems, China has built an ultra-modern light rail system, has risen to second place in exports, has contributed last year to 50% of global economic growth and holds more than one trillion dollars in US treasury bonds.)

 

Relentless attacks for decades on the labor movement and on the living standards of all working people -- resulting in a huge growing gap between the super rich and the rest -- have been papered over by a consumption economy driven by debt now counted in the trillions of dollars in credit card obligations alone. Those conditions have festered for decades and have contributed to the most serious economic crisis since the 1930s.

 

With the calculated depletion of the industrial economy, finance capital has become the primary engine of economic activity. “Financialization” has ruled with a toxic mix of high-risk speculative instruments – hedge funds, derivatives, sub-prime mortgages packaged into obscure securities traded globally and worldwide currency speculation. At root, financialization has been established on the backs of working people – squeezing the economic life out of a debt-ridden working and middle class, overburdened homeowners and many pension-dependent seniors.

 

A faltering economy was pushed over the edge by the systematic dismantling of regulation originally fostered to save the financial system from its own recklessness. Starting with Alan Greenspan, disciple of the ultra reactionary Ayn Rand, deregulation was accelerated during the Clinton years by an array of Wall St. “New Democrats” led by Robert Rubin of Goldman Sachs and his acolytes Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner and later on, Ben Bernanke. 

 

Representing the so-called “liberal wing” of the financial industry, Rubin and company conducted economic policy under Clinton through a Wall St. prism – making minimal concessions to the working class majority while persistently pursuing the fundamental interests of high finance. Whatever “reforms” were to be adopted by a Democratic administration (now returned to power after George W. Bush) – they were to be funneled through the commanding heights of the private sector considered sacrosanct and untouchable. Thus, severe economic crisis was addressed not by efforts to stop foreclosures and bolster employment, but by a massive bailout of the finance industry begun under Bush by Goldman Sachs’ Hank Paulson and sustained by Geithner, Summers and Bernanke. A health care crisis was not to be addressed by creation of an efficient government financed health care system, but by programs funneled through the private insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Foreign and military polices were to be configured so as not to collide with the military apparatus and the military-industrial complex. In short, all “reforms” were to be transmitted through moderately regulated corporate structures.

 

The equivalent in politics of such unvarnished class bias is represented by the center-right “New Democrats” such as Obama’s chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel whose mantra is to consolidate the center, conciliate with the right and neuter the left. This is not advocated (and executed) as a tactical “triangulation.” It reflects a material and ideological conviction that the political center unfettered by pressure from the left is the proper arena to satisfy the class interests of “liberal” corporate Democrats. It also explains why the “New Democrats” are reluctant to challenge the Senate’s 60-vote cloture rule – something that the Democratic majority can do. Reduction of the 60-vote rule to a manageable 51 to 55-vote margin would clear the way for deeper progressive change and deprive the center-right Democrats of excuses for not affecting such change.

 

However, the “liberal” Wall St. and center-right politics crowd are by no means the only forces working at the center. There are significant figures in Congress, the Administration and in broad social movements who are certainly dedicated to the system but who recognize the need for significant change to address the challenge of economic crisis, the environment and foreign policy. (The pressure of events has even forced Summers and company to switch gears and embrace re-regulation of Wall St.) Those centrist forces are willing to consider a carbon tax to stem the fossil fuel disaster, to at least accept a public option (if not single payer) to control health care costs, to resist growing privatization of education, to tax the super wealthy to support health care, etc., and are discomforted by escalating military adventures in the Muslim world. Those groups are critically important to reviving and building the broad social movement that elected Obama.

 

The political center, and the tensions and clashes within it, is perhaps the crucial arena to consider Barack Obama’s first year as President – at this moment perhaps the greatest source of anguish and debate on the left with attitudes ranging from unconditional, patient support to bitter accusations of betrayal.

 

While Obama’s election was a historic victory for the democratic anti-racist impulse, a major defeat for the right and an inspiring call for change that awakened many – Obama’s political caution and circumspection were near the surface. From the start, he made it clear that the insurance and pharmaceutical industries would “have a seat at the table” in urgent efforts to overhaul health care (that was a poison pill from the beginning); while he called for an end to the Iraq war he advocated a stronger military and intervention in Afghanistan. Hovering over those positions was the enormous power of finance capital (characterized by Sen. Durkin of Illinois as “owning Congress”), by the distinctive pressures of the military establishment and the military industrial complex, by the pivotal clout of the energy industry (fighting efforts to stem the climate crisis) and by the reach of potent right-wing media. At stake for the collapsing finance industry, the insurance companies, the military and the oil and gas giants was enormous wealth to be tapped from tax payers by using their sway over the political process and their media clout. Obama had signaled his conciliatory temperament at his “coming out” speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, when he struck a mollifying note toward the right, declaring that “there are no red states, there are no blue states – there is only the United States.”

 

Facing such powerful forces, Obama calculatedly chose “Wall Street Democrats” to dominate his economic team, hoping perhaps to minimize conflicts with the finance industry. He retained at the Pentagon a veteran cold war schemer and insider while handing the generals a beefed up war in Afghanistan, he backed off promises to close Guantanamo and under fierce pressure from the right has resurrected the “war on terror.” Obama chose to essentially go along with Hilary Clinton’s “New Democrat” hold on the State Department – retreating from clear opposition to the coup in Honduras, and from insistence that Israel end its illegal settlements on the West Bank and in Jerusalem. 

 

Nevertheless, Obama has not been wholly owned by the center-right. Despite underfunding under pressure from the “deficit hawks,” efforts to stem the economic crisis with a neo-Keynesian stimulus package signaled a positive direction. Despite serious capitulations in efforts to reform health care, the attempt to overcome 75 years of corporate obstruction was ambitious; there were positive signals to offer reconciliation to the Muslim world, and to try to undo much of the global damage wrought by Bush through pursuit of multilateral cooperation. His administration has largely undone Bush’s wreckage of the State Department’s civil rights division, it has put teeth into the Environmental Protection Agency, has ended the terrible abuses of detained immigrants, has canceled the European missile shield, has opened exploration of a total ban on nuclear weapons, has advanced stem cell research, has made a promising Supreme Court appointment and has appointed an outstanding head of the Labor Department.

 

Yet, equivocal and contradictory nature (as well as a lot of fierce infighting) of the administration is illustrated by its response to the awful tragedy in Haiti. Determined not to repeat Bush’s despicable neglect in the Katrina crisis, the administration reacted quickly to extend assistance to the desperate island. But one hundred millions dollars in aid was far less than most lottery prizes while assistance on the scale of a Marshall Plan is needed. Crucially, insensitive to the historic plunder and exploitation of Haiti that has reduced a vibrant society to a basket case and to a long history of US military interventions – Pentagon chief Gates has dispatched 10,000 troops to police Port-Au-Prince while 10,000 doctors are needed. The presence of US military forces that had abetted the overthrow Aristide deepens suspicion that sectors of the administration are poised to exercise the “shock doctrine:” to reassert control of the Haitian economy for the benefit of foreign capital. On the positive side Obama has extended temporary protected status to more than 30,000 vulnerable Haitians in the US. Beyond that, this administration should support the return of Aristide; it should call for cancellation of Haiti’s IMF deft and should transform all loans into grants. The Pentagon should relinquish its seizure of Haiti’s airport that has spurred suspicion throughout Latin America and should rededicate the US contribution to saving lives over providing spurious “security.”

 

Obama’s most disastrous failure is escalation in Afghanistan, immoral drone wars in Pakistan and on the Afghan-Pakistan border and now a potential war in Yemen with serious implications that such a war would be about control of a vital chokepoint in the transport of oil. While yielding to military and right wing pressures, Obama has typically maneuvered to mitigate the consequences of the hopeless Afghan venture (and mollify a resurgent peace movement). He has placed strictures on the involvement of US forces. Supposedly additional US troops will arrive quickly (by next summer) and leave in 2011. However, the generals are already undermining that time frame. Without doubt, withdrawal from Afghanistan and Pakistan will depend on that resurgent peace movement working at the grass roots to influence and organize public opinion into an effective force.

 

Essentially, the outcome of vital battles for progress today depends on resurgent grass roots social movements. A fractured and weakened progressive movement that at times has lost focus and has not grasped the need for relentless pressure on the administration must bear some blame for present disappointments. The only viable response to the outrageous actions of the financial industry and the war mentality of the militarists is the unified voice of an aroused public fighting back against such vile practices. Despite the enormous power of the banks and investment houses, a spontaneous public outcry against “high times on Wall St. and hard times on Main Street” has pressured Obama into declaring that he was not elected to line the pockets of the Wall Street fat cats and has now called for a tax on banks and investment houses. And now Paul Volcker has been resurrected along with his proposal to separate FDIC banks from hedge funds and other forms of reckless speculation. This development (already sending Wall Street into panic mode) may well mark a significant turn in the administration away from the center-right economic team.  

 

 The “New Democrat” center-right faction of the administration has perversely acknowledged the potential power of grass roots forces that elected Obama in 2008. It has truncated “Organizing for America,” the formation based on the 13+ million names accumulated from the campaign. That vast constituency has been put under the Democratic National Committee where it languishes as a toothless appendage to the administration. (It also was contrary to the proposal of Obama’s campaign director to maintain the Obama electoral coalition as an independent progressive movement.)

 

There is another crucial reason to work for an independent cohesive progressive majority. The right wing has targeted Obama in its frantic efforts to reverse the 2008 election and return the country to the worst days of Bush. Backed by the financial resources of the most reactionary capitalists, the right wing has launched a ferocious campaign, punctuated by contrived “tea parties” and town meeting disrupters – building its own coalition on the country’s historic legacy of racism and anti-communism. Obama is the “convenient” target because he is African American; calling his modest reforms repressive socialism, fear is fanned by the right wing; deep economic and social anxieties are exploited through bogus populism aimed at hurting the very people who are asked to embrace it. That toxic brew of anti-tax elements, racists, anti-communists, anti-abortion and anti-gay activists, combined with large numbers understandably shattered by the economic crisis constitutes a serious threat that the 2010 elections could mark a major defeat for progress and justice. In that context, progressives need to defend Obama from vicious right wing attack, while gathering a sufficient force to demand the thoroughgoing change that he called for in 2008.

 

The right wing threat can only be met by rekindling the vast coalition of labor, African Americans, Latinos, young voters, seniors, etc. that won in 2008. That requires patient, persistent efforts starting at the grass roots to link the most vital issues. The fragmentation of progressives into scores of single-issue organizations is simply counter-productive. Movements to stop the war, to stem the climate crisis, to win universal health care and end the recession cannot continue in isolation from each other. It is time for progressives to recognize and act upon the reality that no single issue can win unless all major issues are confronted and overcome in a spirit of cooperation and mutual support. From the neighborhood up, progressives should confidently connect with a certifiable majority that wants universal health care, opposes the US wars and wants effective action to save the planet.

 

A “more perfect union” requires a movement capable of fighting for these inseparable objectives:

 

A rigid timetable to remove troops from Iraq and Afghanistan; no US forces in Somalia, Yemen, etc.

 

Solid and comprehensive targets to remove carbon from the atmosphere – significantly beyond what Congress has proposed

 

Continued battle for single payer health care. There is no clear indication of where health care reforms stands after the Massachusetts electoral defeat. Progressives should forcefully demand that progress minimally requires removal of the Senate’s proposed tax on comprehensive policies, a progressive tax on the wealthy, protection of abortion rights, removal of the anti-trust exemption for insurance companies, a viable public option and re-import of prescription drugs from Canada and Mexico.

 

Support for the AFL-CIO economic program: a second stimulus for direct government green job creation; dramatic increase in federal aid to state and local governments; extension of unemployment insurance, strong re-regulation of the finance industry.

 

Those objectives have wide public support and with a focused, unified, well-organized progressive movement they can be won over the resistance of the finance, military and energy industries.