archived: 6 - 12 Jul, 2008         Back                 Next

UPDATED:  JUL 9, 2008 

“NO OBAMALLUSIONS, II” 

   Last week I noted that since he secured the Democratic nomination for President and secured Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s withdrawal from the campaign, Sen. Obama has been moving rapidly to organize, re-organize, and expand both his policy and operational staffs.  The response to all of this from an increasing number of progressives and leftists has been ranging from raising caution flags to expressing outright horror: “what’s he doing on Israel?” “what’s he doing on FISA?”  “what’s he doing on ethanol?” “what’s he doing on campaign finance reform?” [planning to win]  “what’s he doing on ‘free trade’?” “what’s he doing on the US Muslim population?” And so on and so forth.

  I noted (hard to miss, actually) that Obama seems to be veering more towards right-wing Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) positions than in recent months I recently had thought he would.  However, last November, on these pages I did say that I thought that Senator Obama and Sen. Clinton comprised a DLC “entry” in the race for the nomination.  As I put it then (TPJ, Dec. 5, 2007, “The Presidential Election, 2008: Democratic Considerations”): “As they have done in the past, the center-right Democratic Leadership Council is this time around running what in Standard-Breed (trotters and pacers) horse racing terminology is known as an ‘entry.’  In these races, one owner can enter two horses and bettors can bet on the ‘entry,’ so that if either one of the horses wins, places, or shows, the bettor collects.”  

   This week, we shall look further at the likely causes of the apparent coming together of the Clinton and Obama campaigns (which would have been in the cards all along if my earlier supposition about their being an “entry” is correct).  We shall also look at why it is in any case absolutely essential that all anti-Georgite forces of whatever stripe rally behind Obama. 

The Deal 

   Whether or not Obama has been a “DLC man” from the beginning, it is becoming quite clear that there has been a deal between Clinton and Obama.  In it she decided not to “take it all the way to the Convention,” not to “make sure that every vote counts” (referring of course to the DNC rules-breaking primaries held in Michigan and Florida), not to appeal to the Super Delegates on the basis of total popular vote (which by party rules have no role to play in the primary elections, but what the hey).  And all of this happened very quickly.   

   As is well known, there are still talks going on, on such issues as how much help should Sen. Obama provide to Sen. Clinton in paying off her campaign debts (well more than half of which are to herself and the great political strategist Mark Penn), what role Sen. Clinton will play at the convention, and how the roughness of the campaign, felt by supporters on both sides, is going to be put into the rear-view mirror.  But the basic stuff is there.  Clinton is backing Obama, even if she is retaining her delegates at least for the time-being (bargaining chip?), and doing so with some degree of enthusiasm.   

   Let us recall that while the Super Delegates were flowing towards Obama in a steady stream, Clinton was quite right.  No Super Delegate is “committed” until they actually cast their votes at the Convention.  When Obama went “over the top,” his number included a large number of Super Delegates, whose minds conceivably could have changed had Clinton kept with her vow-up-to-the-last-minute to “take it to the convention.” But after Montana/North Dakota Clinton did a 180 on her actual campaign very quickly, over about a 48-hour period.  I don’t think that this happened casually (although money and the increasing lack of it was a big problem for her).  In my view it is obvious that there was a deal struck on some central issues, the result of negotiations that had likely been going on for some time.  So what was the deal? 

   I think that a, perhaps the, central element of it was on policy.  You got that right: on policy.  How about that, as Mel Allen, the legendary New York Yankees baseball announcer, used to say.  Back on April 9, in this space (http://www.thepoliticaljunkies.net/Archived/Year%202008/Apr/Week%202/Jonas.htm) I said that a primary campaign objective for Clinton, win or lose the nomination, was to maintain the power of the DLC in the Democratic Party.  I said that she was so firmly fixed on this objective that she would rather see an anti-DLC Obama lose than have the DLC swept into the dust-bin of history.  If I am right both in that conjecture and in my present conjecture about a deal and what it is about, the Obama people most likely either figured that out or were told it, directly.  I think that the central element in the deal, then, was that DLC policies and its people who represent them, would move fairly quickly into the Obama camp.   

   I don’t think that the deal includes the Vice-Presidential nomination.  Whether or not HRC wants it or not, if it is the former one can be certain that the Obama people drew the line there.  Having her on the ticket would multiply the negatives for it.  Even if he were to survive what would be the most brutal assault by the Republicans in US electoral history and win, Obama could hardly stomach the idea of having both HRC and WJC in the White House.  It is unlikely that it included the Majority Leadership in the Senate.  Clinton is fairly junior, Harry Reid shows no inclination to politely retire, Clinton has made a lot of enemies there, especially with her campaign, and that position is not Obama’s to give away anyway.  It could, however, include the first available Supreme Court nomination. 

   And so, in my view, the money, the convention prominence, the which-HRC-staff-get-which-jobs, are all minor issues.  In this case, it is actually policy not politics that count.  And Clinton and the DLC are winning.  So what we progressives and leftists do?  Support McCain, the maverick?  Vote for Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney?  Stay home on election day?  Well, surprise, surprise, I think that any of those would be a bad idea.  The “lesser-of-the-evils” argument has riven the American Left for decades.  Back in the 1930s the US Communist Party struggled with the question of whether to support Roosevelt and pursue the “parliamentary road to socialism” or pursue a revolutionary line.  (They chose the former, much good did it do them when the MCarthyite witch hunts began with the reactivation in 1946 of what became the 75 Years War against the Soviet Union.)  I must say that I have always hewed to that line, even if it meant supporting Humphrey in ’68, Carter in ’76 and ’80, and so on and so forth.  It has perhaps not always been the correct thing to do.  But now it most assuredly is. 

The Lesser of the Evils 

   We now confront true evil, as we have since the 2000 election.  McCain indeed does represent the Third Bush Term.  And even though, as a good friend of mine sagely observed before the deal that I postulate could have taken place, an Obama Presidency may well be the Third Clinton Term, the reasons why Obama must win, DLC or no, are very well known.  The raison d’être of The Political Junkies is: “For the Preservation and Promotion of Constitutional Democracy.”  Well, with a McCain Presidency, we could kiss that one good-bye.  The alternative to Obama, DLC or no, is obviously a continuation, and perhaps even speeding up because of McCain's easier-to-accept persona, of the Republican Religious Right's drive to Fascism.  Hey, McCain thinks that the Supreme Court decision restoring habeas corpus, which is ensconced in the Constitution in no uncertain terms, is incorrect.  At the same time, he thinks that the Supreme Court interpretation of the totally ambiguous Second Amendment is totally correct.   We Cannot Afford to be Picky. 

   Under Obama, the fascist threat here at home will not be dead.  But at least we would have some breathing room.  Right now, there are only two things that could put Georgitism, otherwise known as American fascism, away for at least quite some time.  One would be the appearance of a 9/11 version of Scott McClellan, who could with the outmost credibility reveal the BushCheney role in 9/11.  (Whatever it was, there was one, for sure.  There’s too much circumstantial evidence to not hold to that view.  What we don’t is just how far their involvement went.)  The other would be a BushCheney coup attempt in October or November/December, using a false flag “terrorist attack,” that would hopefully fail, and then be fully revealed to have been in the planning stages for quite some time.  Otherwise, given that major and powerful sector of the Power Elite that would like very much to have fascism here, and given the Privatized Ministry of Propaganda which, since it is privatized would hardly go away with a change of government, the danger of fascism will be clear and present in our country for the foreseeable future.  But at least with the election of Obama we would have a pause.  One thing that might happen during it would be the development of a mass-based anti-Fascist movement in our country.  Hey, you never know.  But at least with Obama there would be hope.  With McCain, none.

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