Steve Fraser of The Nation: Obama's policy of The New Deal In Reverse

[brentspeak]

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100301/fraser

Buoyed by great expectations when he assumed office, Barack Obama has so far revealed himself to be an unfolding disappointment. On arrival, expectations were far lower for FDR, who was not considered extraordinary at all--until he actually did something extraordinary.

The great expectations of 2009 are, only a year later, beginning to smell like a pile of dead fish with new rhetoric--including populist-style attacks on villainous bankers that sound fake (or cynically pandering) when uttered by Obama's brainiacs--layered on top of the pile like deodorant. Meanwhile, the country is suffering through a recovery that isn't a recovery unless you happen to be a banker, and the administration stands by, too politically or intellectually inhibited or incapacitated to do much of anything about it. A year into "change we can believe in" and the new regime, once so flush with power and the promise of big doings, seems exhausted, vulnerable, and afraid. A year into the New Deal--indeed a mere 100 days into Roosevelt's era--change, whether you believed in it or not, clearly had the wind at its back.

snip

This was true, in fact, of the whole Democratic Party. The Congress elected in the off-year of 1934 was not only more overwhelmingly Democratic but the Democrats who won were considerably more progressive-minded. They were far readier to jettison the shibboleths of the old order and press a still cautious president in their direction. By 1936, the essentials of the social welfare and regulatory state were in place, an insurgent labor movement had won the elementary right to organize (while becoming the New Deal's most muscular constituency) and the president was denouncing "economic royalists" and "tories of industry" whose "hatred" for him he "welcomed."

Today the Obama administration and the Democratic Party are visibly moving in the opposite direction. They read the lesson of humiliating defeat in Massachusetts and the voluble hostility of the populist right as an advisory to move further to the right. Tacking rightward, tailoring policy to match the tastes of business and finance, cautioning Americans that they'll need to tighten their belts (as if they hadn't already been doing so), adopting the parsimonious sanctimony of the balanced budget, slimming down their great expectations until what little is left mocks the hopes of so many who elected them--all of this is seen as smart politics.

[KoKo]

1. A long generation spent cowering in the shadows of the conservatives...

Another snip from the article:


Today the Obama administration and the Democratic Party are visibly moving in the opposite direction. They read the lesson of humiliating defeat in Massachusetts and the voluble hostility of the populist right as an advisory to move further to the right. Tacking rightward, tailoring policy to match the tastes of business and finance, cautioning Americans that they'll need to tighten their belts (as if they hadn't already been doing so), adopting the parsimonious sanctimony of the balanced budget, slimming down their great expectations until what little is left mocks the hopes of so many who elected them--all of this is seen as smart politics.

Smart like a chicken. This is the same cleverness that, beginning with Ronald Reagan's triumph, turned the Democratic Party into Republican-lite. Shrewdness like this helps explain, in part, why Obama's inner circle and Democratic leaders took the early, fateful steps that were bound to land them where they find themselves today.

Would the Republican right and its tea-party populists--marginal, mockable political freaks less than a year ago--have enjoyed their current growth spasm if the administration hadn't been committed to bailing out the very institutions most people considered the villains responsible for running this country into a ditch? Would the Democratic Party have been in imminent danger of losing its faltering grip on Congress had it found the will to pursue serious healthcare reform and environmental legislation, or wrestled the financial oligarchy to the mat as Roosevelt did? A long generation spent cowering in the shadows of the conservative ascendancy has left the newly empowered Democrats congenitally incapable of seizing their own historic moment.

[hollowdweller]

2. That's the real line there.

A long generation spent cowering in the shadows of the conservative ascendancy has left the newly empowered Democrats congenitally incapable of seizing their own historic moment.

Seriously the public has moved on some of these issues in a more progressive direction but the dems are still going to the right.

Dean was right people will pick republicans over republican lite.

[Overseas]

3. K&R. Very sad. Millions crossed over to vote for the party of FDR because they had seen how badly

the party of the Greedy Obstructionist Plutocrats had ruined our country.

The Republican Bush Gang pushed us into a war of choice and breached the Geneva Conventions while engaging in rampant war profiteering.

The Republican Bush Gang cut taxes on the super rich during a time of war.

Millions crossed over because the Republicans had screwed up so badly.

They voted for the party of FDR. For Change with a capital C. The Republicans had driven our country off economic and moral cliffs.

So it was profoundly demoralizing to see the active courting of Republican votes from the outset.

Had President Obama wanted to honor the bipartisan spirit, he could have told them-- Your party USED TO BE considered fiscally responsible, but you handed me a trillion in debt from cutting taxes while running expensive privatized wars, so you're going to have to let us clean up that mess before you push any more of your ideas.

Your party used to be considered sensible on national security, but you allowed your military and private contractors to openly and massively violate the Geneva Conventions and you pushed the country to war on Iraq on false pretenses, so you're going to have to understand if we don't want any more advice from you guys for a while. We have to repair your mistakes first.

He could have talked about looking forward to the restoration of the moral fabric of the Republican party so that the public could learn to trust them again. But until then, he would have to rely on his Democratic Supermajority to clean up the mistakes their last administration had made.

By tossing out great and necessary Democratic ideas like single payer right off the bat, he made it seem so much more like "they are all the same" to a population that was eager for positive, effective good government.

My 21st Century Green FDR would have corralled his fellow Democrats to go all FDR on the country. It worked the last time greedy plutocrats drove us off a cliff. The 21st century greening component would have drawn older and younger Democrats together proudly.

How different things would have been if President Obama's team had linked up strongly with the Progressive Caucus. That would have been a much more powerful force for change.

[depakid]

4. Had the administration and congress more courage and political fortitude and less complicity

with the objects of populist resentment, the same thing might have happened in the mid term elections of 2010 as 1934- relegating Republicans and their failed ideology to the fringe for a generation.

Instead, Democrats are now looking down the barrel of a thumping in a redistricting election.

Wow.