There have been so many depressing days during the Bush administration, but today stands to be one of the best days and one of the worst. The Senate is going to pass a version of the FISA bill that is totally unacceptable to civil libertarians and that eviscerates our privacy rights. And, yet, if the polls can be believed, Barack Obama is going to sweep the Potomac Primaries and take a solid lead in the presidential nominating contest.
There is still some hope on the FISA bill. Everything now depends on the House of Representatives and the House/Senate conference on the bill. (More on that later).
Ever since Russ Feingold announced that he would not be running for president it has been clear that progressives would not have a true champion in the primaries (Kucinich notwithstanding). We could rally around Edwards’ populist message (if we bought it as sincere), we could latch on to Chris Dodd’s defense of the Constitution (despite his lack of viability), we could buy into Richardson’s more aggressive Iraq withdrawal plan (if we ignored his call for the line-item veto and neo-liberal policies), or we could choose between the frontrunners.
Obama and Clinton both long ago began casting each vote with an eye for how it would affect the core Democratic constituencies they needed to win the nomination. The end result is that they have nearly identical voting records. They crafted their health, education, and foreign policy papers with the same constituencies in mind…the result is that they are nearly identical. The other result is that progressives have little to be offended by and just as little to be excited about. We’ve been served a bowl of oatmeal by both candidates. But looks can be deceiving.
Despite Hillary Clinton’s carefully crafted voting record and policy papers, she is the champion of Clintonism, or The Third Way, or corporate-Democratism, or triangulation, or whatever you want to call it. There were other champions in the race…originally. Evan Bayh and Tom Vilsack both gave strong consideration to making a run for president, dropping out last fall. Clintonism, as a philosophy, developed in response to Walter Mondale’s crushing defeat in 1984. The defeat was interpreted as proof that the Democratic Party had become soft on defense, hostile to business, and out of touch with the country’s conservative social values. In order to both appeal to voters in the South (and Heartland) and to compete in raising corporate donations, the Democratic Party needed to distance itself from unpopular interest groups (unions, feminists, gays, the urban poor), and start praising huge military budgets, deregulation, and free trade.
Whatever the merits of the strategy in theory, the immediate result was disastrous. Within two years of the Clintons coming to power, the Democrats lost both houses of Congress. Ironically, the losses came predominantly from the very South that Clintonism was designed to appeal to.
Meanwhile, New Democrats maintained their belief that we were losing elections because we were too secular, too associated with the urban poor, and too soft on military issues. And then came 9/11. Go back and look at the record. Clintonites like Dick Gephardt led the charge on the AUMF Iraq, while Clintonite intellectuals like Peter Beinert and Michael O’Hanlon gave cover for ‘serious’ people to be for the war. Clintonite newsrags like The New Republic lashed into Howard Dean’s race for the presidency and Clintonite operatives like Paul Begala and James Carville fought to keep Deaniacs (and Dean himself) out of positions of influence within the party.
The New Democrats were reluctantly convinced, for political reasons, to oppose Social Security privitization in 2005, but they have been among the least likely to oppose continued war funding, to condemn torture, to condemn how we deal with enemy combatants, or to push against telecom immunity, while they were the most likely to vote for the Bankruptcy Bill.
Some people have looked at the similarity between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s platforms and concluded both that Clinton isn’t really a Clintonite and that Barack Obama is a Clintonite. This is wrong. Clintonism is a faction within the Democratic Party whose foremost interest is sustaining the power of its members. It is impossible that Barack Obama could be a Clintonite at the same time as he beats the Clintons and takes away the jobs of all their supporters and gives them to new people that do not like the Clintons. That doesn’t mean that the Clintonites have not tried to claim Obama as their own:
“I am not currently, nor have I ever been, a member of the DLC,” said Obama, in a statement that substantially reflects a telephone conversation with Associate Editor Bruce Dixon, this weekend. “It does appear that, without my knowledge, the DLC…listed me in their ‘New Democrat’ directory,” Obama continued. “Because I agree that such a directory implies membership, I will be calling the DLC to have my name removed, and appreciate your having brought this fact to my attention.”
When asked whether he supported universal health care and opposed NAFTA and the AUMF-Iraq, Obama, saying yes, said:
You are undoubtedly correct that these positions make me an unlikely candidate for membership in the DLC. That is why I am not currently, nor have I ever been, a member of the DLC. As I stated in my previous letter, I agreed to be listed as “100 to watch” by the DLC. That’s been the extent of my contact with them. It does appear that, without my knowledge, the DLC also listed me in their “New Democrat” directory. Because I agree that such a directory implies membership, I will be calling the DLC to have my name removed, and appreciate your having brought this fact to my attention.
Ironically, Clinton would say the same thing…if she could. Unfortunately, that AUMF-Iraq is there on the record. Clinton’s pro-corporate universal health care plan is sincere, and there’s some evidence that she had her doubts about NAFTA. The key is to look at the DLC members themselves and see who they are supporting. To a woman, they are supporting either Clinton or McCain. And that should tell you all you need to know about what the elites think about this race and who will serve whose interests.
Ever since the decision to invade Iraq was made, there have two factions in the Democratic Party. On one side was the DLC, the Clintons, the old party hands, the hawkish intellectuals, and The New Republic. On the other was Howard Dean, the netroots, MoveOn.org, Iraq Vets Against the War, and progressives of all stripes. Today we may see the former faction hand George W. Bush unprecedented spying powers, while the latter faction nails another nail in the coffin of Clintonism by sweeping the Potomac Primaries.
