I think Bernie actually has a pretty good chance of being the nominee, and if he faces Trump or Cruz in the general, I’m confident he wins. I think he can actually defeat most of the Republican clown car, I mean, candidates, but I’m in no way certain of this.
So this diary is about if Bernie wins — which is quite possible and the very best outcome among likely scenarios, IMO.
Ok, so what do I mean by the title? Bernie’s big win in New Hampshire has me going back a bit in time to Prez Obama’s campaign run and the early days and months of his tenure. We were in the middle of a massive financial crisis, with “the markets” in turmoil, a third quarter contraction of 8.9%, and hundreds of thousands of actual, real, live human beings losing their jobs each month. But the overwhelming narrative I remember at the time was not that actual human beings were suffering, but how best to calm the fears of the masters of the universe and Wall Street in general.
The focus, IOW, was on the very top of the system, not on the 99%.
Now, people can debate 365 whether or not Mr. Obama is a “liberal” at heart, center-right at heart, or some wide-eyed Marxist rebel. That’s always going to be far less important than his actual deeds and overall governance, his decisions, his policy proposals or his efforts to make things happen. What he did — or does — matters far more than our personal assessment of his intentions, motives and psychological makeup . . . if for no other reason than we have absolutely no way of really knowing any of this. At best, we can guess, and hopefully make them “educated.”
More after the fold . . . .
Obama was called a Marxist, a Socialist, a Commie, a Maoist, and accused of all sorts of “anti-American activities,” which all struck me as classic right-wing McCarthyite nonsense. But these attacks go deeper than just right-wing, JBL slurs. I think they’re also an automatic reaction by the “Deep State” and the Establishment in general to even the hint of a possible threat to their power and privilege. Even if they know it’s not much of a threat at all, that it’s just politics, they use the old Giuliani “broken window” concept, and fight like hell to prevent even the smallest, most feeble spark from ever igniting. So Obama was painted as a crazed leftist, primarily in order to force him to moderate (from his campaign rhetoric), move to the center (at least) and to focus on the 1%. Again, whether this is where he wanted to be all along is a matter of conjecture — I think he is a centrist on economic matters, but that’s a story for another day.
It worked. Obama surrounded himself with neoliberal economic advisers and cabinet, like Summers and Geithner, rehired Bernanke, kept the Bush bailouts going, never prosecuted the banksters and other assorted conmen on Wall Street, and never tried to nationalize the zombie banks. Almost everything he did and said seemed to be in the service of “calming their fears.” They being the topmost part of the financial elite pyramid.
So what does this have to do with Bernie?
He’s already getting the same treatment, though he does have a major advantage over Obama: He’s not running from the labels. He’s clarifying them, certainly. But he’s not frantically trying to run the other way. Obama did, in my view.
Can he maintain this resolve? Does he truly understand that the best way to improve the economy is to lift from the bottom, never from the top down? It appears he does, though I think he talks too much about the middle class, and should also include the poor. It’s his entire message in a nutshell, and he’s been making the case for decades. But he needs to show how logical it is, how it’s just common sense, to make sure the largest possible number of Americans have plenty of disposable income, or there isn’t enough demand to keep the economy going. He needs to demonstrate how left-populist ideas, like guaranteed work for anyone who wants it (at a living wage), free public (lifelong) education and training, single payer health care insurance and greatly expanded free clinics, access to plenty of free public daycare centers (etc.) energize the economy, big time.
When the Deep State and the Establishment in general, through their corporate media and other flunkies, relentlessly try to change the narrative from “the people” to the financial elite, Bernie needs to say hell no and get as close to fuck you and fuck off as he can within the boundaries of acceptable political speech. And when he acts, when he makes decisions, when he chooses his cabinet, his advisers, and when he pushes for new policies, he must never, ever be even slightly tempted to “calm their fears.” Their fears are absolutely irrelevant and meaningless when it comes to the welfare and well-being of the American people.