Election 2020

[pbrower2a]

(11-13-2019, 05:17 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(11-12-2019, 12:40 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(11-12-2019, 10:42 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(11-10-2019, 11:10 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Yes -- we are in a Crisis Era, and even an Obama-style Presidency might be utterly inadequate. We will need major reforms of the political system to prevent  another play-for-pay system even more blatant than what Trump has shown us. That is even before I discuss changes in economic norms.

I've always felt that Obama was elected out of time.  Yes, he's black, and that made caution mandatory.  Nonetheless, he acted far more cautious than required, including his push on healthcare.  He operated on the old plan: comity and compromise.  There was no comity then, and less now.  And compromise?  Really?  That was a non-starter from the go, but he persisted to the end.

I would point out that Obama had no grist to grind:

When the panic struck, the Republican administration proposed the TARP to prevent financial collapse.  Republicans in congress refused to support their own president's policy.Democrats stepped up to the plate to do so. Where was the progressive opposition? Nowhere to be seen because nobody knew what was going on.  There were no memes out there for that. Since then we have had Occupy who gave us the 1%, and Piketty's monumental Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Should this be tried again, there is a greater likelihood there will be progressive opposition.

When health care was being negotiated, Medicare for all (MFA) was eliminated right form the start, without any discussion. Obama had run on a public option, which Clinton had argued was unrealistic. Obama couldn't get it done, proving Clinton right. Again, where were the progressives? Had they been vigorously pushing for MFA, the deal Obama would make with conservative Dems would to give up MFA in exchange for public option. Progressives did not act because MFA did not yet exist as a meme. Now it does.

Back then less action was taken on global warming than could have been. But then there was no Green New Deal (GND). Now there is, so should there be another financial collapse it would be possible for progressives to use the 1% meme to oppose a second TARP, while proposing GND as the preferred policy.

Last 4T, FDR had memes to work with in 1933: free silver, 40 hour week, postal banks, etc. Obama did not in 2009. But a future president in Obama's position will have memes.

But this argues we are still some ways from a regeneration.

The answer to "where were the progressives" is "looking to Obama for leadership".  I doubt it had dawned on the emerging left that Obama was not a trailblazer.  So they sat and waited, and nothing happened.  If Bernie hadn't run in 2016 and Trump hadn't won, I suspect they might well be still wailing for Godot.  It's more than a bit sad that the one-two punch of Reagan and Clinton so thoroughly reset the goalposts it's only now that it's being recognized.  

So now we have a vocal but still relatively small progressive wing that's making enough noise to draw real attention.  I agree that they have started to use the same messaging and narrative paradigm that the right has used for so long, but is that enough?  Obama had 60 votes in the 'Senate (for a while) and managed little.  For this to change in 2020, Trump will have to be massively repudiated and the GOP tied to him like Ahab on the whale.  It's possible, just not likely.

I'm scoring the next decade for the oligarchs … again.  "The People" hate them, but seem bound to support their policies.  Eventually, AGW and economic stress will trigger a real, impactful response.  I would love to see it.  I hope I do.

Obama is no Progressive. He is X, and he is more pragmatic than anything else. His idea for reforming health care was to cut its costs by removing the for-profit (or otherwise lucrative) bureaucracy. This has been done elsewhere, but doing so in America means putting an end to a for-profit bureaucracy that builds in costs on a cost-plus basis that raises costs to everyone.

After the 2010 elections, Obama was unable to achieve much of a legislative agenda. The only way in which to avoid political gridlock in a political order in which the right-wing party sees the other one as watered-down Marxists and the left-wing party sees the other as watered-down fascists is for decisive majorities for the President's party. Of course, Donald Trump was unable due to his combination of offensiveness and incompetence to fully achieve a Christian and Corporate State in which all that matters in economics is elite gain and indulgence and the rest of Humanity gets vague promises of a glorious Afterlife for obedient suffering in This World.

I would like to believe that our oligarchs have decency enough to recognize that working people and intellectuals (which even includes such people as schoolteachers) who have a stake in the System are less likely to show dissent. The alternative to such decency in a capitalist order is the nightmare of slow starvation, concentration camps, and brutal executions. See also "fascism".

After the Crisis is over, an Obama-like, Eisenhower-like, or Cleveland-like President could be the optimum -- but only then. We will need a Lincoln or FDR to get us out of the mess that we now endure. I see Donald Trump as the literal (in the Biblical sense) scapegoat whom the community gives the burden of the commonplace iniquities and then sends off into the wilderness, most likely to become prey for bears, wolves, or Big Cats. As it is, Donald Trump represents just about everything wrong with America and practically no virtues.