Dear Citizens and Elected Officials:
Introduction:
My post from yesterday www.dailykos.com/... set off some interesting dialogues in the commentary section, and I’m going to make one of my responses the heart of today’s diary, along with a comment I just posted in the NY Times online, responding to Thomas B. Edsall’s column today (Wednesday, May 1st) which had the title “ ‘The Right has a greater appreciation of unions than we do’” here at www.nytimes.com/…
First, my comment to a critic who was arguing against candidate critiques at the Daily Kos, saying instead of writing something negative, just do a post arguing for one’s own candidate. The the underlying story is Biden vs Sanders, and Biden’s emotional embrace of unions and blue collar workers in his Pittsburgh speech launch on Monday, which, however, I think it is fair to say, combined with his three and a half minute “I’m running” video, come down to this: the overwhelming consideration facing Democrats is who can best beat the demon Trump?
Here’s how the unhappy commentator (about my posting) put it: “My issue is that we have a handful of people writing nearly all the negative diaries. If these issues are so compelling why aren't others writing those diaries? It's my view that the intent of the diaries isn't to inform but rather to damage candidates who are clear competition to the author's favorite.”
Now I might respond by saying that this sounds like a call for only positive posts about your candidate, and critiques of those you don’t like are strictly off limits. Think about that logic in the broader context of intellectual and academic life, and indeed, the public life of the nation. This would take the life and content out of genuine dialogue, and any deep probing about candidates themselves. I’ve written enough about Bernie, his grounding of his vision in FDR’s Second Bill of Rights, which very few Democrats from the Center, here, or anywhere else, ever mention, much less explore in depth. That Second Bill of Rights is essentially a long term vision for where the post New Deal party should go — towards the Green New Deal. And wasn’t the word environment and most dramatically, the Green New Deal missing from Biden’s half hour speech on Monday?
The ecological left is, arguably, in national political life, more broadly based and stronger than what’s left (no pun intended) of old labor who hardly can be said to have jumped out to embrace the Green New Deal Resolution, which offered them so much and which Bernie has embraced along with most of the other major Democratic candidates.
So here’s how I responded to the bid to shut off candidate critiques:
I strongly dissent from your view ____. I’m trying to understand the gap between what I said was a very good speech by Biden and the drift of American politics to the Right since Reagan, which 16 years of Clinton-Obama did not cure, especially at the state and local level. Biden has been in office since about 1973 and on the high national stage in committees and the VP office for decades. Yet wouldn’t you agree, despite this long tenure, and the speeches he gave that never reached a national audience until just now, he has done far less than Bernie Sanders since 2016 to put a social democratic agenda in front of the party and now the American people? I try to answer that in my post and in my response to comments: Joe is a divided figure, without a clear identity, like the national party itself, his heart with labor and the working persons; his head and his policy votes and behavior inside the party’s intellectual corrals have sided more than not, with the corporate wing of the party.
Now for purposes of beating Trump maybe that doesn’t matter; but it does for winning back the nation in all regions of the country and the statehouses.
No doubt, if Biden is the nominee, I’ll vote for him, but I don’t know if that will break the drift of the times, further and further to the Right.
That’s why I back a Green New Deal, which is the most pro-labor ambitious policy outline I’ve ever seen — but which a good chunk of labor scorned (do you want the itemized list, I have it?). The chief reason as best as I can tell, is that due deference was not paid, or audiences sought with labor prior to the roll out. I don’t have any close knowledge of that, so I don’t really know what happened, or if that charge was fair. Maybe the kids leading the charge (AOC and the Sunrise movement) muffed it; it’s hard for me to imagine that someone of Senator Markey’s long experience would not have done this correctly — at least the out reach; no guarantee it would have made a difference. Naomi Klein had much harsher things to say about LUNA which I will not repeat here.
Now these are some of the most difficult calls in politics. Despite Biden’s speeches to labor audiences, and his recognition of blue collar suffering in his Pittsburgh speech, he has not advanced anything close to Bernie’s platform in terms of scope and sweep and benefits for the bottom 60% of our population, and wouldn’t mention the Green New Deal. There were lots of ways to acknowledge its power and appeal without fully endorsing it, as other candidates have shown. I think it comes down to this: if Trump poses an “existenial” crisis to our nation, which is Biden’s bid, then it Trumps all other consideration and any policy sweep which might risk going too far too fast must be subordinated to building the voting coalition which beats the President.
The subtext here is this: is Trump the unique existential threat, or the logical outcome of the Republican Right’s evolution since Goldwater in 1964, with more, or worse, to follow? After all, it’s the world’s most rabid ideological party since the demise of the Bolsheviks in 1989-1991 with the motto, my translation of their world view: “All Power to the ‘producers,’ and the ‘takers’ can rot in jail and at $7.25 an hour, begging for charity medical care, and the Greens can console themselves by knowing that God will intervene to save, if not the planet and Nature, at least the holy remnant which is close to the Republican Party voting lists.”
The key question facing us as Democrats, and perhaps more broadly the nation: can the party develop a new world view as sweeping as the one which emerged, experimentally, during the long New Deal, 1933-1939, and as Green New Dealers remind us in their Resolution, the united purpose and sacrifice of the citizens during the Mobilization (1939-1945) to win World War II?
Even if Democrats can beat Trump, can they address the economic and environmental pain with the Centrist philosophy that has evolved from Carter, Clinton and Obama, which still, I would maintain, believes with Bill in 1996 — and Reagan — that “The Era of Big Government is Over?” To which my retort has been, for more than a decade, “but the era of big problems has begun, environmental and economic.”
And that’s what Biden’s candidacy will shy away from answering — the big ideological and therefore policy vacuum that results from a divided and conflicted party, torn between the faint embers of the old New Deal labor left and the vigorous policy heat of the corporate influences...the Greens struggling for anything coherent and sustained enough to make a difference.
If Bernie Sanders can beat Trump — and the polls are very mixed — doesn’t he offer the long term vision — and Modern Monetary Theory the financing mechanics, to get it done, beat Trump and build the Green New Deal coalition that will save Nature and the citizens from the national decline in motion since the Vietnam War debacle and the “unravelling” of the 1970’s; and the unresolved problems left over from the Great Recession, 2007-2008, which even Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, admits still hang over not only the US but Europe as well, and beyond, the ungovernable Global economy?
In that spirit, here is my comment at the NY Times today, in response to columnist Edsall’s “unions and the Right” challenge:
Thanks for this informative column, Mr. Edsall. However, did I miss something? I didn't see any mention of the fact that the last three Democratic Presidents - Carter, Clinton, and Obama, a total of 5 terms or 20 years, failed to make reforming labor laws, the Union's top priority, the Party's priority, and so nothing happened. I think this is because at the idea level, always a precarious notion in action and inertia bound American life, there has been no general upsurge until very recently with the Green New Deal that puts the nature and shortcomings of our political economy - who gets what share of the national pie and for what purposes - in front of the people. If I could make any one clear statement, or assertion, if you would prefer, after nearly a half-century in political and intellectual life since 1972, there is simply no public dialogue about these crucial matters: what is Neoliberalism, our governing political economy since at least 1980; what is the role of the federal government vs "The Market"; why have there been so many economic panics and crises since the 1970's; how much do the federal deficits and debt matter; what is Modern Monetary Theory...and finally, why has the Republican Right made tarnishing and dismantling the legacy of the New Deal a priority, such that Joe Biden would go for the Simpson-Bowles Commission...and until the Green New Deal arose, the Democratic Party followed Clinton in saying the era of Big Government was over?
And since I’ve mentioned Modern Monetary Theory twice in my two highlighted responses above, here are two article from Ellen Brown sketching out, in some detail, how we can learn from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation of the first New Deal, how Japan conducts their economy, and what Modern Monetary Theory recommends. As Dave Roberts of Vox has written, how we can pay for the ambitious programs implied by both the Sanders agenda and the Green New Deal resolution; the answers are crucial not just for them, but to solving the two major problems facing the country: climate disruption and economic disruption...and this is written at the top of the business cycle...which will not last…
From Ellen Brown: www.truthdig.com/… and www.truthdig.com/…
From David Roberts: www.vox.com/… and www.vox.com/…
Best to you on May Day…
Bill of Rights
Frostburg, MD