The Tax Trap and Democratic Fecklessness

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) met with President Obama a few weeks ago and according to a report on ABC News reports that he is willing to work with him in the future . . . if he moves to the center or right (http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2010/09/sen-mcconnell-we-can-do-business-with-obama-if-he-moves-to-center.html). So when the Republicans are in the majority, they ignore and bully Democrats and do what they want. When they are in the minority, they ignore and bully Democrats and don't let them do anything. Many might see this as a troubling trend that undermines democracy, but the strategy appears to be working and might just allow them to regain control of the House and maybe even Senate this November. How does it work? As I wrote yesterday, a lot has to do with the media playing along with their framing acumen and rhetorical devices.

Among those strategies are the following: 1. Manipulate the truth and history to its most convenient rendition then offer quotes to the media who tend to report what you say without any fact checking or context. 2. Spread fear that any change will destroy the country, even as your policies have been leading us along that path for years. 3. Rule as if by fiat, even after one of the closest elections in history, then demand more bipartisanship before rejecting any bill you disagree with. 4. Sound reasonable as you push a corporatist agenda that undermines the interests of the people -- while pretending to represent those very people from the "elites" who have little power. 5. Capitalize on anti-intellectualism by rewritting history, spreading tautologies, and using religion, jingoism and nativism (in addition to racism, sexism and nativism) to rally your base and scare the white middle and working classes.

These strategies have been effective since Reagan, with a few bumps in the road, though the election of Obama seemed to have the potential to create a political realignment in America. It has not come to pass. Why? Well the strategies above have been very effective. And on taxes, an issue at the heart of attempts to reaffirm the role of government in the economy, Republicans have been pulling the same trick for years -- pass tax cuts that are supposed to be temporary (the only way they are a real stimulus to the economy) and then complaining that any attempt to let them expire is a "tax hike." Here is McConnell on the issue, "“This is a debate on tax increases. The current level of taxes has been there almost a decade." He also told us how Obama can regain the ear of Republicans: "We're interested in cutting spending and debt. If he becomes interested in that, I think he'll find us a willing partner. He says he's for trade agreements. We'd like to ratify trade agreements. He says he is for nuclear power. We'd like to do that. He says he is for clean coal technology. We'd like to do that. I mean, there are areas where we'd ought to be able to work together for the good of the country.” So follow Clinton and become a Republican in social Democratic clothing and we'll follow your policies while allowing our attack dogs (Limbaugh, Focus on the Family, Beck, Grant, O'Reilly, Tea Party, etc.) to pound you relentlessly.

Yet it would be unfair to ignore the Democrats complicity in their own failure. Obama ran a brilliant campaign and won a resounding victory. And then he got caught in the bipartisan language games Republicans bamboozled the media with. Obama is pushing policy through without our support, even though we are the minority and will not support anything he does. As Krugman argued on his blog a couple of days ago (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/us/politics/06charity.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print), "This theory led to a strategy of playing it safe: never put forward proposals that might fail to pass, avoid highlighting the philosophical differences between the parties. There was never an appreciation of the risks of having policies too weak to do the job." The idea of not highlighting the differences between the parties is exactly the problem, and the idea that Obama might be the next "great communicator" has failed to materialize. If Democrats want to maintain power and actually get something done to change the current course of America, they need to provide an alternative narrative to America that transcends the ability of Republicans to dominate the debate and undermine their call for change.
 
P.S. An article in the New York Times today shows the lengths politicans go to raise money, including allowing corporations to donate to their chairites: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/us/politics/06charity.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print. While this isn't implicitly bad, it is obvious another way that corporations dominate the political landscape today. 

The "Partisan" President?

This is what passes for media coverage today: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/04/AR2010090402579_pf.html. Apparently it involves listening to conservative framing and repeating it without question. Reporting from the American Political Science Association, the Washington Post seems unwilling or unable to escape the general discourse in America today. While they don't blame Obama fully for the partisanship that has ensued since his election, they put the major onus on him. For example, are quotes like this, "Obama would have been better off trying to assess what the public was prepared to accept, rather than to have acted in ways that assumed he could change it." Yet the public voted him and Democrats in in record numbers; at least by recent historical standards. He ran on hope and change and while he has done little to allay the cynicism of the public, he has certainly changed the nature of the debate: including reasserting the role of government in the economy. It is united Republican opposition to anything and everything Obama does together with the fact that "A large proportion of voters on the losing side in 2008 . . . had by election day come to regard Obama as the McCain-Palin campaign had portrayed him: as an untrustworthy leftist radical with a socialist agenda . . . There was also an undertone of racial animosity." Yet the paper refuses to really focus on this aspect of what they call a populist movement. They might want to read the recent article from the New Yorker about the Koch brothers, who have funded conservative movements for years and essentially funded the events that have moved the Tea Party to the forefront of media coverage today. This is not to say that Obama does not deserve some of the blame for the current polarization. For one, he has turned away from the rhetorical flourishes that resonated with the public after eight years of Bush. And he has taken a conciliatory, post-partisan tone, seemingly tone deaf to the new "party of no" GOP. And that same argument that the conservative "populism" is new is itself tone deaf to the past 30 years, since the rise of Reagan Republicans, who have consistently used populist rhetoric to garner the support of working class people who often suffer under their policies. Obama has accomplished an incredible amount in two years, particularly if you frame it within the post-Great Society years, but the media has turned on him and few report his record without quotes from conservatives or complaints about his tone, his radical agenda or the liberals and radicals who have turned against him. The supposition of a neutral media has always been as absurd as the idea that it is "liberal," but its irresponsible coverage since Bush was elected would be scandalous, if not criminal, but for a public that doesn't have the knowledge or care to really question them. Where is the next Edward R. Murrow to challenge this malaise?

The "Polarizing" President?

This is what passes for media coverage today: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/04/AR2010090402579_pf.html. Apparently it involves listening to conservative framing and repeating it without question. Reporting from the American Political Science Association, the Washington Post seems unwilling or unable to escape the general discourse in America today. While they don't blame Obama fully for the partisanship that has ensued right after his election, they put the major onus on him. For example, are quotes like this, "Obama would have been better off trying to assess what the public was prepared to accept, rather than to have acted in ways that assumed he could change it." Yet the public voted him and Democrats in in record numbers; at least by recent historical standards. He ran on hope and change and while he has little to allay the cynicism of the public, he has certainly changed the nature of the debate: including reasserting the role of government in the economy. It is united Republican opposition to anything and everything Obama does together with the fact that "A large proportion of voters on the losing side in 2008 . . . had by election day come to regard Obama as the McCain-Palin campaign had portrayed him: as an untrustworthy leftist radical with a socialist agenda . . . There was also an undertone of racial animosity." Yet the paper refuses to really focus on this aspect of what they call a populist movement. They might want to read the recent article from the New Yorker about the Koch brothers, who have funded conservative movements for years and essentially funded the events that have moved the Tea Party to the forefront of media coverage today. This is not to say that Obama does not deserve some of the blame for the current polarization. For one, he has turned away from the rhetorical flourishes that resonated with the public after eight years of Bush. And he has taken a conciliatory, post-partisan tone in much he has done that seems tone deaf to the new "party of no" GOP. And that same argument that the conservative "populism" is new is itself tone deaf to the past 30 years, since the rise of Reagan Republicans, who have consistently used populist rhetoric to garner the support of working class people who often suffer under their policies. Obama has accomplished an incredible amount in two years, particularly if you frame it within the post-Great Society years, but the media has turned on him and few report his record without quotes from conservatives or complaints about his tone, his radical agenda or the liberals and radicals who have turned against him. The supposition of a neutral media has always been as absurd as the idea that it is "liberal," but its irresponsible coverage since Bush was elected would be scandalous, if not criminal, but for a public that doesn't have the critical knowledge or care to really question them. Where is the next Edward R. Murrow to challenge this malaise?

History Rewritten Again

Republicans are at it again, rewriting inconvenient truths to serve their larger national ambitions. This time it is Mississippi's GOP governor Haley Barbour(http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/09/02/haley_barbour_race_history/index.html?source=rss&aim=/politics/war_room) who wants to avoid being tagged with any of the Southern strategy history as he prepares to take on the first black president. History is clear in showing that LBJ and the Great Society support for the civil rights movement realigned the political landscape in America. The party that had once tacitly supported segregation and opposed attempts at true equality for Blacks, at least in the South, was now aligning with the civil rights movement and as LBJ purportedly said in 64, "losing the South for a generation." Barbour wants to erase this history and rewrite the move of Dixieland from democrats to Republicans as completely unrelated to White resentment at the improving conditions of Blacks across America. From the birth of the Republican Party and its support for Abolition and then Reconstruction, the South was firmly Democratic, no matter the mood of the country. That all changed with LBJ and support for Barry Goldwater as the anti-affirmative action candidate. Ever since, the GOP has been building its base on latent racism and attacks on affirmative action and any policies that were perceived to hurt White, Christian America. While Obama had some surprising victories in the new South, that racism continues to be at the heart of so much Republican campaigning. Political expediency has stepped in and it will be interesting to see if the mainstream media allows Barbour to tell his tale without any fact checking and challenge. Recent history tells us he just might get away with it ...

Cynicism & Republicans

I wrote my dissertation on cynicism and democracy and have often wrote here about the topic as well. When Obama won the election in 2008 I had hoped that it was a direct challenge to what I argued was a pervasive cynicism in American democracy. He ran on the dual messages of hope and change and that appeared to resonate with a population tired of the cynical, backward looking policies of the Bush administration. And yet two years later it appears Republicans are on the brink of winning back majorities in the House and maybe Senate: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41603.html. How have the Republicans done it?

I believe the rather obvious answer is by returning to the cynical policies that have won them power since Reagan. They run as white victims, as anti-Government, pro-business "populists," as latent (or in some cases obvious) racist, anti-Gay, xenophobic candidates playing on white male resentment at the cultural revolution of the 60s and on fear and greed. The past few weeks have shown us just the latest examples of this strategy in action, including the attacks by Focus on the Family on a very serious problem in schools: bullying (http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/08/focus_on_the_family_dont_let_gay_activists_hijack.php), arguing that gays have underminded the "Christian" spirit of those programs, the absurd call to God and the founding fathers of Glenn Beck last week (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joe_conason/index.html?story=/opinion/conason/2010/08/30/pray&source=newsletter&utm_source=contactology&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Salon_Daily%20Newsletter%20%28Premium%29_7_30_110) and the continued anti-immigrant, Obama is a Muslim, Communist non-citizen discourse and so many other overt and covert nods to their White, Christian, Free Market ideology.

But this is old news and has been going on for over 30 years now. The problem I see is the media's myopic adherence to conservative discourse. Just today, John Dickerson at Slate argues that Obama is making Bush look good in some ways: http://www.slate.com/default.aspx?id=2265539. And this follows articles in the New York Times and Washington Post in recent days that blame Obama for all that ails America. I believe this started soon after Obama entered office and has only worsened as time has gone on. While the New Yorker and some political coverage has made the salient point that Obama has kept many of his problems, is enacting the very policies he promised when he ran, and as the left has made abundantly clear (and I agree in some cases), is far more moderate than many had hoped. But what happened to those who voted for him two short years ago? Has he really been that disappointing? Did they really think he could fix all of our financial and social problems in less than two years? And do they really believe a return to the failed policies of Reagan and Bush will really somehow work this time? I, for one, hope they wake up in time. And hope is really all we have right now.