Professor Richard Wolff: Poor Polls and Obama's Missed Opportunity

[marmar]

Poor Polls and Obama's Missed Opportunity

Thursday, 07 August 2014 00:00
By Richard D Wolff, Truthout | Op-Ed

What if President Obama had rejected conventional political advice and pushed for a new New Deal? What if an effective nonaligned left had pushed for such a program, economist Richard D. Wolff asks.

Once upon a time, long ago in America, another president was elected just as a major economic crisis was deepening fast. Like Barack Obama in 2008, Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 was a typically centrist Democrat. His past, too, offered little reason to expect that he would deviate from the conventional politics that got him the presidency. Moreover, both presidents' conventional advisers and political friends argued against anything other than the usual government response to capitalist economies' recurring downturns.

The advisers' argument was simple and direct. You must wait out the crisis and NOT have government interfere much (after initial emergency government bailouts of failed big corporations). Large corporations, the business community generally, and those they have made rich prefer that course of (in)action. Once the initial emergency is past, they have the resources to wait out the crisis in comfort while grabbing crisis-distressed assets at bargain prices. Most hate the idea of being taxed to pay for taking care of "bums and the unfortunate." In their minds, a government that taxes capital to support labor thereby opens the door to ever more state interventions and ultimately to "socialism." Conventional advisers insist that state interventions (eg., deficit-boosting fiscal stimulus programs, welfare supports to people struggling with unemployment, minimum wage increases, etc.) and socialism only hurt those they claim to help. They repeat as absolute truth the idea that capitalism heals itself better than any government intervention could. They conveniently forget those initial bailouts by the government.

If politicians disobey this conventional advice, corporations, business and the rich will abandon them in favor of their political competitors. Such politicians then lose to those competitors, who in turn, either follow the conventional advice or else they lose too. The lesson: To disregard the conventional advice is to commit political suicide. That threat is always part of the conventional advice, explicitly or implicitly. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/25378-poor-polls-and-obamas-missed-opportunity

[Dustlawyer]

1. K&R!!!

[busterbrown]

2. Problem is that Reagan tore apart any semblance of a strong

left wing coalition.. Destroying Unions while demonizing the poor and needy casting them as nothing but moochers living off the “teat” of our hard working middle class.

Obama had absolutely no political sphere to turn to.. The ACA miraculously passed a House and Senate both filled with political dis-like of any concepts of progressive economic doctrine..When Republicans gained control of the House, all hope of any kind of forward thinking economic strategy was dead in the water...

The only goal Republicans had at this point was to do anything in their power to show that Govt
is useless and counter productive to any kind of economic gain needed.

More importantly the new Right Wing Congress had absolute contempt for the President which was driven by a disgusting yet overwhelmingly racist contempt for the man.

Put this together with a Corporate world which gladly put millions upon millions of advertising dollars in to the pockets of politicians who became strong allies of those who wanted to destroy Obama’s attempt to move our country economically to the left and you’re left with the situation we unfortunately we have now..

[Cartoonist]

3. Poor polls my ass

I am now going to reply to every post mentioning Obama's bad poll numbers.

The polls are full of shit. I have never before seen such love given to our president, and I was alive during JFK. Every time he puts in a personal appearance, he is mobbed with smiles. GW had to stay inside during his term lest someone showed their true feelings.
The polls are the result of only asking old white men what they think about Obama.