Americans can no longer tolerate incompetence and cronyism in government – not with so much at stake. Its no longer in vogue to blame government for our problems when the chieftains of capitalism have come begging for government’s helping hand.
A new pragmatism will replace the neverending counter-revolution of the Republican right. We will actually try to find solutions to problems based on what we know may work and not what we want to believe. Science will not be ignored. The long-term challenges facing our country will be addressed – from energy security and climate change to education and opportunity for all. A return to prudent problem-solving will be welcomed after years of right-wing induced culture war. All this of course if Obama wins.
And he knows it. He has long been after not only a victory but a sea-change. Thus, the references to Reagan as a “transformative” president despite the fact that it made many of us cringe. Obama of course wants to transform America in the other direction.
The audacity of the electoral map that Obama is playing on – putting North Carolina, Indiana and even for a time Montana in play – is another sign of his ambitions. He has long spoken of getting past the blue-state red-state divide. He of course hopes to do that by painting the map navy. The pre-Couric, Palin-bounce at one point seemed to narrow those ambitions. But Lehman and his brothers, McCain’s faux-suspension and Palin’s own incomprehension have reopened the field to a potential landslide.
When I hear Obama speak these days I am most energized when he talks about Bush-McCain’s failed “economic philosophy”. No longer on the defensive, Obama and progressives who believe that government can work to remake our world can now attack with abandon the trickle-down, hands-off approach that has dominated American politics and economic policy for nearly thirty years. During the first presidential debate when McCain attacked Obama as the most liberal US Senator, Obama didn’t squirm or seek to explain his record away. He simply argued that his votes were in opposition to Bush’s wrongheaded policies. Bomb defused.
So a new progressive era is really possible – borne of the ashes of modern conservatism and the ambitions of a young upstart Chicagoan who gambled that a sea-change was possible. Today. Of course, these dreams could be staunched if by some miracle the right can conjure enough character demons to turn the focus off their own failures. Maybe Osama will be found and this will kill Obama’s campaign. Maybe our man will have an off debate. Who knows? I countdown the days with baited breath hoping the only thing that surprises me this month is a third Red Sox series win in 5 years. Its always darkest before the dawn so expect some trying moments between now and November 4th.
Hopefully though Americans will get what they want in this election – real change. A new direction. If the Bush era was most defined by a man named Osama, it seems only appropriate for it to be ended by a man named Obama. But an Obama win would be bigger than just a repudiation of Bush, even if he is the bogeyman we’ve been running against. For encapsulated in the Bush Administration is the culmination of right-wing follies. An Obama win thus could usher in a new political age and bookend thirty years of conservative ascendance. Let it be so – a new progressive and pragmatic era is sorely needed.
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p>Let’s not gloat.
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p>
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p>Let’s be careful.
Because at least the Dems will spread around the pain. Both parties are clueless about how to get the economy moving again. Re-regulation will only slow down the economy, so it’s really not an answer for the long term.
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p>Obama is much more like Jimmy Carter in that case.
How come stock markets and the economy in general are better under Dems than Repubs? Oh, it must be all that regulation. And please, don’t even try to argue that Clinton inherited a good economy from Bush I.
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p>http://money.cnn.com/2004/01/2…
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p>http://www.slate.com/id/2199810/
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p>
News flash: Clinton did. And a lot of that was based on the tax hike that likely cost Bush the 1992 election. This doesn’t necessarily undo your original point, but is nevertheless true.
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p>Clinton did do a good job keeping the ball rolling (and permitted the inflation of a bubble), but the ball was already rolling when he took the reins, and a fair share of keeping the ball rolling during the 90s belongs to Newt Gingrich, as well.
Clinton did ok, mostly because he didn’t pass many new taxes and he cut taxes heavily on investment and home construction.
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p>Obama will hopefully not raise taxes.
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p>Otherwise Obama doesn’t seem to understand the dollar problem. I sometimes wonder if people really want to fix the economy. The thing is going down the tubes and people will suffer a lot. People will be hungry because of this but I’m not sure Dems want to fix the problem.
But we have a potential game-changing election here. We can really take America in a new direction.
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p>First of all, if we lose I still think the political direction of travel will be headed our way. McCain will be forced to work with a Democratic Congress or look like an ass. But hopefully we won’t have to consider that.
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p>I think an Obama victory will give us an opening to do some big things – if we set it up correctly. We need to first focus on getting the economy jumpstarted – another stimulus package (maybe with an energy rebate), a prime-pumping REBUILD AMERICA infrastructure program, assistance to keep people in their homes, new investments in new technologies (particularly energy), sound regulation and re-capitalisation of the financial sector, renewal/expansion of children’s health program – to name a few initiatives that should define the first quarter of 2009. Focus on that stuff to build momentum and support for the further reforms on health care (where I could see an individual mandate, like ours in Massachusetts, find its way into the package to bring in some moderate Republicans like Olympia Snowe, etc…)and a landmark energy independence package – all before the 2010 midterms.
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p>If you can get that done – paying for it by letting the Bush Tax Cuts expire, drawing down troops from Iraq and getting rid of corporate loopholes that benefit companies that hide in tax havens like the Bahamas – you have a pretty good record to go into 2012 with. And hopefully the economy has recovered strongly by then – a progressive morning in America indeed.
Sorry, but I’m just not buying the ‘sea change’ scenario.
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p>Just because Henry “yeah, I’m out of a job in January” Paulson, and Ben “ivory tower” Bernanke walked into Congress, set Pelosi and Frank’s hair afire, fleeced them for $700B and essentially took away the Congressional pursestrings, and therefore Congress’s job for the foreseeable future, doesn’t make a sea change. At least not a sea change against fiscal conservative principals.
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p>Perspective.
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p>For those who remember the end-of-the-economy 1987 market crash, you can almost see it on the graph.
Plot it semi-log then we’ll talk.
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Thanks, I’m not a quant, so I don’t have a clue what your helpful lines indicate. If I were to guess, I’d say it is a buying opportunity!
Actually, the opposite. It’s some technical graphing that shows a break out to the downside, which indicated, accurately on 9/30, that there was downside room. My own pet theory is that the market is establishing a bottom at current levels and should travel erratically but sideways for a while.
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p>Anywazz, that’s not really relevant. My point is this: the Great Depression has been analyzed for decades, and the conclusions are still, 80 years later, vicorously debated. So now to blame deregulation for a recesssion — which may or may not be substantial — is misguided. It’s too early. Whoever is President must defend markets against the deregulation backlash or risk bundling the market with so many rules that it flounders.
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p>Folks are saying that Reagan, Goldwater…are finished aren’t looking at the long picture.
It just enables the thievery.
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p>http://articles.latimes.com/20…
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm…
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p>The $700B+ trade deficits, the doubling of the federal debt and they widening income gap during the Bush terms are more likely causes of the Great Recession.
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p>Enough!
But lack of regulation was certainly a big part of what has caused the financial mess we now face – which will in turn draw us into a possibly deep recession.
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p>The housing collapse ultimately is the chief culprit in all this. Cheap money, asset inflation (which Greenspan basically spurred on) and indebtedness – with banks leveraged 30 to 1 largely against real estate related assets – which went unchecked by regulators – whether the Fed or Treasury or SEC.
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p>The point is – an economy that increasingly was based on speculation and debt (encouraged by the tax code, cheap money and financial innovation) was hailed by right-wingers as the marvel of the world and triumph of the free market. It never seemed to occur to anyone that when the financial sector accounted for 40% of corporate profits in 2007 – from less than 10% 20 years ago, something had gotten terribly out of whack. Financial sector debt reached 116% of GDP by 2007 and nobody blew the alarm.
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p>When Greenspan and then Bernanke decided that inflation was a threat from late 2005 on – and raised interest rates to upwards of 5% over the next two years it was only a matter of time before the housing bubble burst. What they didn’t know was how hard the fall would be and how tied into real estate the whole financial sector had become. That is a lack of regulation and basic understanding of what had actually happened in the markets.
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p>So here we are. A market failure because policy had been altered to foster finance at the expense of other sectors, of the economy and regulators and politicians stood by and cheered it on. And it all fell on Bush’s watch, with Greenspan (originally a Reagan appointee) in the drivers seat.
Clinton years: A dot com bubble and housing boom that partially corrected, all within the long-term trend. The only ‘sea-change’ now is that Congress basically resigned to leave the Secretary of Treasury in charge. Now there’s a sea change. Hope the new Secretary let’s them keep their seating and keys to the bathrooms.
Dow 9,447.11 as of 10/7/08
The sea-change will come because after years of government being seen as the problem (and the right-wing basically showing that poorly run government was a problem), people will come to accept greater government involvement in a range of issues. They want government to do more again – from health care to education to infrastructure to economic development. That is the sea-change this election potentially offers and that is a massive change in a progressive direction.
The sea-change will come because after years of government being seen as the problem (and the right-wing basically showing that poorly run government was a problem), people will come to accept greater government involvement in a range of issues. They want government to do more again – from health care to education to infrastructure to economic development. That is the sea-change this election potentially offers and that is a massive change in a progressive direction.
If McCain-Palin wins, we’ll be witnessing a continuation of the old age.
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p>If McCain wins then we don’t quite get a progressive revolution. But, I still think McCain will largely be playing policy defense and will have to work with Democrats on a number of problems. It won’t be all we wished for but it still doesn’t mean the policy trajectory isn’t headed our way.
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p>That said, a sea-change requires an Obama win – and the bigger the better. A real mandate for a new direction.
How is Obama new? He got the Blue Mass Group to fall into line behind the Bailout. That’s new?
indicates your own blindness. After eight years of Bush incompetence and twelve years of Reagan-Bush before that, with Clinton sandwiched in between – an Obama win will be as big a change in American politics as we’ve seen since 1980 at the very least.
Who’s the statist? Obama or McCain? Does The State really have the answer to our shitty economy? The whole State was just for a bailout and the markets are crashing. You want to turn the whole thing over to The State?
I am all for making markets work. But, fact is, when they stop functioning you can’t just let it all collapse. Too many market fundamentalists seem to think a depression may be good for the soul. The ghosts of Mellon and Hoover.
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p>Markets only work when government creates the right conditions. We therefore regulate competition. We should regulate to ensure transparency and open information. We should regulate levels of debt banks take on because taxpayers are on the hook for bailing them out and have their savings at stake. Are you against depositor insurance?
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p>Next time you want to talk about the State, maybe you should think about all the ways the State already intervenes and protects your sorry ass. Then maybe you won’t mind so much when it gets back involved to repair broken markets as only it can do.
Goldwater and Reagan are not linked; in fact, they are polar opposites.
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p>Goldwater was an economic conservative, socially neutral. He was an advocate of govenemnt neutralityon ‘culture’ ises, as opposed to Rockefeller, who was a liberal.
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p>Reagan made the greatest mistake the GOP has recently suffered – he brought social conservatism to the fore, and was neutral on economic conservatism.
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p>Personally, I am doing my best to revive the spirit of Goldwater.
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p>And before you attack – I worked for John Anderson in 1980.
Which is why I describe you as conservative, without scare quotes.
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p>And is also why I never understood the Romney thing with you.
n/t
… to be that he made international terrorism a viable model for succeeding generations with his ‘we don’t negotiate with terrorists’ doublespeak. In much the same way, I think that nuanced students of statecraft will look back on GWB’s legacy and see that he promoted nuclear proliferation by demonstrating to the rest of the world in it’s dealings with North Korea and Iraq that the safest way that a regime that is unpopular in the west can ensure that it doesn’t get rolled over is to get nuclear weapons and keep them.
Far from the greatest mistake, Reagan actually made the greatest strategic move in GOP history by bringing social conservatism to the fore (as you put it).
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p>Pro-choice Republican President Gerald Ford lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976, at least in part, because Carter was more conservative on abortion and other social issues. Carter was born again, evangelical and a Southern Baptist.
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p>Reagan’s campaign brilliantly co-opted much of Carter’s message on these issues. In the nearly 30 years hence, the Democratic Party hasn’t recovered from this move to establish the GOP has the home of evangelical Christians.
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p>Goldwater, meanwhile, was certainly not the pure libertarian history now remembers. While Goldwater has an admirable record of opposition to the new Religious Right, he had a generally mixed record on these issues. He was both pro-life and pro-choice depending on the time. Unlike most libertarians, he did not favor decriminalizing drugs and has a mixed record on gay rights. His presedential campaign was as much about “moral decay” than anything else.
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p>Both Goldwater and Reagan made their political career as anti-communist (anti-labor union) Republicans. In this way, and many others, they will long be linked.
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p>”It is impossible to maintain freedom and order and justice without religious and moral sanctions.” – Goldwater
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p>”Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.” – Reagan
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” – John Adams.
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p>Please don’t post the Adams quote about the US not being a Christian nation – I am familiar with it. Adams was not a denominationist, but a deist, who respected morals and the religious impulse. I would submit that your Goldwater and Reagan quotes say much the same thing.
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p>Goldwater was NOT a Libertarian, but a Republican, so your observation about drug legalization isn’t that germane. In fact, what history remembers him as a Libertarian?
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p>And what was the state of ‘gay rights’, in the modern sense you seem to mean, in 1968? Other than the cessation of stoning? That would be like me criticizing Sen. Byrd for racist actions…
Personally, as an agnostic, I prefer the sentiments of the succeding President who wrote famously:
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p>”Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.” – President Thomas Jefferson
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p>To me, the role of government is not to promote any particular moral vision (whether one credits one’s own view of God for that vision or not). Rather, government was created to better society and to serve the people it governs.
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p>This means I support redistribution of wealth, national health care, public education, strong business and environmental regulations, and a broad vision of our national security protected by robust diplomacy mixed with the judicious use of military force.
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p>In today’s political world (post-Reagan), that makes me a Democrat with the big-D. The true federalists running today’s GOP, in contrast, continues to oppose this broad vision of government and instead have cobbled together a seemingly weak coalition of the rich, the greedy, the religious, the libertarians and the racists.
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p>My point on Goldwater was that, of course, Republican but it’s widely accepted that he was more of a libertarian than the modern day cultural conservatives which Reagan brought in to the GOP. I feel like you are being deliberately obtuse here. Wasn’t that the point of your original post? I simply want to note that the “Goldwater was a true conservative” storyline is more complex than it is generally understood.
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p>Many issues, like gay rights, that later mobilized social conservatives were absent in the 1960s. Goldwater didn’t have the political opportunity to run after Roe v. Wade, Miranda, and Romer v. Evans. The “religious right” wasn’t yet incorporating as much politics in to Sunday services as is done today. Nevertheless, Barry “moral decay” Goldwater is still responsible for the modern conservative movement which brought Reagan to office and changed the GOP apparently so irrevocably. Even if he’s the same man who, appalled by what he had done and started saying things as early as 1981 like “Every good Christian should kick Falwell in the ass.”
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p>”At worst, there are some liberals who dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant, insisting on a caricature of religious Americans that paints them as fanatical, or thinking that the very word “Christian” describes one’s political opponents, not people of faith.” – Barack Obama
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p>”Guilty, as charged.” – theloquaciousliberal
From evil empire incendiary rhetoric and their confrontational approach to the Soviets to the slash-and-burn tax cuts and the less-than-subtle racially charged politics of states rights (i.e. no federal intervention in segregated public facilities) and welfare baiting – Goldwater laid all the antecedents for modern right-wing politics – save as you say the marriage with religious evangelicals which would finally come to fruition by 1980 with Falwell’s moral majority coming in behind Reagan.
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p>That said, many of those evangelicals came from the formerly Democratic south. In the 1964 Johnson landslide, it was Goldwater that first pulled white southerners out of their Democratic embrace – winning four southern states with his states rights agenda.
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p>In hindsight you can argue that Goldwater was more western libertarian than the current GOP. But a lot of the conservative movement sharpened their teeth in his campaign including Reagan himself.
Overly presumptuous posts such as this are bad ideas for two reasons
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p>1) Nobody has won the election yet
2) IF Obama wins it will not be because America is progressive
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p>1) On that point I would just repeat the Yogi Berra phrase
“It aint over till its over”. Remember in 1948 Dewey was assembling his cabinet right now while Truman was still campaigning, and Truman ended up winning a huge upset.
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p>Personally I think the advantage goes to Obama, and he now has some breathing space in the national polls, but by all means he should still treat everything seriously. Something like a terror attack (god forbid) or some other international crisis might push voters towards McCain. Obama could somehow lose his composure and end up looking like an angry black man. All sorts of variables could happen.
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p>Personally I think the Bradley effect puts the 10 pt lead into the 5pt zone, and I think Republican voters are being underrepresented in polls because they don’t want to admit to voters they are. That said black voters are also being underrepresented as well, especially in Southern states. In any case its still anyones game.
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p>2) If Obama wins it has everything to do with a dissatisfaction with radical right wing policies on economic issues and foreign policy. The country will still remain more socially conservative on a whole, it will still be resistant to tax increases, it will still in lock step resist “big government solutions”. While this economic crisis looks like it might be another depression the political climate is not clamoring for another New Deal and Obama has to be real careful not to overreach were he to win and have the opportunity to govern.
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p>Basically everyone should be cautiously optimistic, and if he does win, be pragmatically progressive and not pugnaciously so.
Believe me being a Democrat is like being a Sox fan pre 04 or a Cubs fan now. No amount of superstitious ticks will ease my anxiety.
I don’t want to rain on this, but my sense is an Obama win is only about half of what people hope for.
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p>It is, mostly, a repudiation of Nixon-to-GWB Republicanism. It isn’t an embrace of a Democratic core agenda and deeper Democratic principles, e.g. the interpretation of key parts of the Constitution and peacetime principles of governance. That’s what the Hillary/Obama primary was about. The Party picked the moderate/Left-centered candidate, not the liberal-conservative candidate who was actually pushing to get beyond the remnants of the Bush agenda before 2012.
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p>If you look at what Obama represents a mandate for change for, it’s basically in economic affairs- doing what needs doing, and ending the Republican agenda of tax cuts by letting them sunset. On ethics the election(s) are taking care of things, putting in the less corrupt Party and some cosmetic changes. On issues of justice and Constitutional interpretation, i.e. social issues, Obama is trying for a minimal, purely Party-associated, mandate. That means we might (if we’re lucky) get a cleanup of election and voter elegibility law; nothing doing on abortion, gay marriage, etc.
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p>On foreign affairs, war, and fighting terrorism Obama is stuck in a nonpartisan situation- he’s going to stay in Afghanistan until Al Qaeda (read: Osama bin Laden) is extinguished. Whenever that is. We’ll withdraw fully from Iraq when the Maliki government falls, not before. The Coalition is disintegrating as the “Willing” governments with hegemoniacal or colonial desires crumble.
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p>The 2012 election is about an actual different agenda and persuading people to accept it.