(Cross-posted in part from Obamaism.org--although the restrictions on excerpting articles here mean that the version at O.o is longer and more complete, so remember to go look at it)
The following is an excerpt from Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland just released by AK Press edited by Jeffrey St. Clair and myself. This is one of the essays I contributed. Find out more information about the book online at www.RedStateRebels.org.
DENVER - Last week, I appeared on CNN's Lou Dobbs tonight to discuss the economic meltdown and the political fallout that will come from it. You can watch the clip here:
There's obviously a lot of noise about Barack Obama's "shift to the center" inside the blogosphere, and today it bubbles up into the mainstream. The LA Times thinks that most Democrats don't care (based on nothing but anecdotes from insiders), while the Washington Post thinks his ideology is problematic, saying that liberals are calling him a centrist and Republicans are calling him a liberal, so who knows???
I think these thumbsucker pieces offer little in the way of identifiable information. Then again, so does the blogosphere, increasingly. That herd mentality we've all noticed in the traditional media has definitely migrated over, and the narrative has definitely hardened. There is perhaps no bigger critic of Obama's vote on the FISA bill than I. At the same time, I can't believe that this wasn't a far bigger story, particularly in the blogosphere.
The article "The End of the Reagan Era" as enlightening and insightful as it is, ignores an extremely important development , the rise in corporate power, whhich is a response to all the grassroot movements of the 1960's.
Corporate America looked on with trepidation as Americans were demanding equality and rights that were threatening to the interests of the ruling class.
On Tuesday, Utah Democrats were surprised by something many of you may take for granted, but for us was a sure sign that at least one of our congressional candidates "got it."
Via a press release, we learned that Morgan Bowen (Democratic Candidate for UT-1) had announced that if he had been a member of Utah's federal delegation, he would have voted against any bill that encouraged granting retro-active immunity for Telco's.
This was huge news for any Democrat in the state, let alone the underdog of the underdogs, so surrounded by Republicans parroting Bush's every word. But the real story behind Bowen's press release is a much grander tale than a simple announcement to local media.
Roger Simon's recent article on Politico, entitled "Obama Not Running as Movement", takes a pointed swipe at many of us here in the liberal base of the Democratic Party. Those of us who have bristled at Obama's recent jog to the center would do well to remember that whether we like it or not, this country is still center-right in political orientation.
Double standards do exist, particularly in the realm of religious expression, morality, and foreign policy. The Republican party can be excused far more easily than the Democratic party when it comes to perceived inconsistencies on this issues. So a certain degree of political compromise is necessary to win in November.
First of all it was a good read! At 72 I have been reading about politics for a long time. Sirota's book was a breath of fresh air for it has been a while since I have seen anything that takes what I learned during the Vietnam era and carries that spirit forward to the very different milleau of today's strange politics. That may sound strange to some the younger members of our group and it may sound pretentious to my contemporaries. I'm speaking now as one of the people we called "the walking wounded" half with respect and half with derision as we let our own young juices drive us during that phase of American politics. What do we old codgers have to offer now? Had we done our job better we would not be in the mess we are in now. It certainly is not because we did not try. So why are we here? What did we learn? How did we fail? And what does it have to do with Sirota's book? Come and look below the break and I'll explain.
In the 1800s immigrants from Germany and other mid-European countries flocked to cities like Cincinnatti, Detroit, Milwaukee and St. Louis. They built many things including built great breweries, like Blatz, Miller, Schlitz, Pabst, Falstaff and a thousand lesser ones. The greatest brewery of them all was Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis. I went to high school just 10 blocks from the 100 square block Busch brewery complex in St. Louis. If the breeze was just right, the smell of hops would blow in and engulf our classroom. It was a reassuring smell. It meant union jobs at solid middle class wages with great benefits that had been won thanks to strong unions and a paternalistic management. Anheuser-Busch, then & now, was the cornerstone of St. Louis.
With National Gas Prices at over $4/Gallon, you should look where the impact falls.
The Times article has a wonderful graphic. It shows the graphical impact, and if you look it's hitting
the worst in the south and the mountain states. People are now spending up to 15% of their
income on GAS!!!!
Think about that, it's running about half of their allocation for rent/mortgage. It's running
3 times the food bill. It's running 8 times the entertainment and clothing bill.
And Where is it hitting hardest??? RED AMERICA!!!!
I'm new here, though I've lurked around DailyKos since last September or so. So I thought I'd actually make myself an account and get around to posting some things I found interesting. :)
So I'm a regular Facebook user, right? It's pretty unfortunate at times, but even more so when I occasionally advise Mrs. Clinton to drop her bid and stop dragging the party into the dirt.
This usually causes some kind of outrage by delusional Hillary supporters and/or outraged feminists who would rather see the party die just because the nominee in November doesn't have a vagina. (No offense any sensible feminists here...I'm a very strong supporter of the feminist movement, and as well, forgive my crudeness.)
So, how was my latest endeavor with the delusional Clinton supporters? Well, to my surprise, it wasn't a die hard feminist upset with Clinton's loss after loss, it was a man who blatantly said that the 'DLC is the new DNC' and that 'He'd vote for a Liberal Republican over a Liberal Democrat any day...'
As DHinMI points out in his front page diary (Repub Congressman Diagnoses GOP Illness, Declares Them Terminal), Tom Davis, former head of the GOP congressional campaign, has done a very interesting analysis of the problems House Republicans will have hanging come this November. The memo is very much worth reading, as DHinMI says, for that reason alone. But that isn't all of what Davis writes about in his memo. A good piece of it concerns the presidential race, and what Davis perceives to be Obama's weaknesses as a candidate vs. John McCain.
You don't have to agree with Davis in order to learn something from his analysis. But the core of it is this: Davis believes that economic populism is the key to the presidential vote, and he believes that Obama is not reaching this populist vote.
After Tuesday night's win for Hillary in West Virginia, exit polls suggested that both race/Wright (i.e., racism) and jobs/the economy/a gas price rebate (i.e., populism) were factors. While an interesting, and I believe insightful, diary here, which uses exit polling data so as to rank order states in terms of their racism, there may be more to the story than simply race; when racism and populism intersect, it is often hard to know how to sort things out.
I have been waiting since about last Thursday for Hillary Clinton's campaign to trot out their tried and true, tradmarked, Pre-Primary Kitchen Sink Strategy. Perhaps I will jinx it with this post and we will see an ad insinuating Obama visited Waziristan in August 2001, but I doubt it. Per Ben "Objective Journalist" Smith at Politico:
In a pair of new Indiana ads, Clinton keeps the focus on gas prices and fighting for workers but drops the shots at Obama, closing on a positive economic message.
Newspaper editors heart Obama; TV pundits not so much.
Of course there are a bunch of reasons for this disparity, but an obvious one is Senator Obama's strong technology platform, a prominent component of which is a rock-solid commitment to "net neutrality." Net neutrality threatens corporate broadcasters, but the good news is that this issue brings lots of ordinary people on the left and the right together.
The family-friendly net neutrality advocated by Senator Obama should be especially effective with the "family values" voters that democrats sometimes have trouble reaching.
So all we have to do is bring this issue to the fore. (Ideas about how to do that below.)
Clinton is portraying Obama as an out-of-touch, effete, liberal elitist who can't relate to (white) working class and voters. If and when Obama wins the nomination, McCain will do the same.
Obama's problem in real. In every state but Wisconsin, even Illinois, he's failed to win the majority of white, blue-collar workers. According to a new poll, McCain crushes Obama among white working class voters in key states. For a while the campaign (and some progressives) seemed willing to write off these voters. Obama has come to recognize that he has a problem, but the changes enacted by his campaign are mostly cosmetic and will do little to solve it.
He can forget about bowling and basketball, he can forget about talking about his humble roots and his single mother. For Obama there's only one answer, and it's called progressive populism.
During every election cycle, someone proclaims that "these are difficult times." Well, these are difficult times, especially if you are a wage earner and have the responsibility of housing, feeding, and providing medical care for a family. The buying power of all Americans has diminished throughout the last seven years as prices for most commodities have steadily climbed. I guess this is what they call a "free market economy." The last six months in particular, have seen a spike in prices for gasoline, groceries, prescription medicine, and clothing. These are not luxury items; these are necessities.
Elite (also spelled Élite) is taken originally from the Latin, eligere, "to elect". In sociology as in general usage, the élite is a relatively small dominant group within a large society, which enjoys a privileged status envied by individuals of lower social status.
The position of an elite at the top of the social strata almost invariably puts it in a position of leadership and often subjects the holders of elite status to pressure to maintain their position as part of the elite. However, in spite of the pressures, the existence of the elite social stratum is usually unchanged.
I can't help but think of George Lakoff's teachings about framing when I see the garbage that is being said and written about this word. The word has been framed by the very elite who wish to use it as a pejorative. Let us explore the concept further because the frame needs to be dealt with.
