Haiku Politics

Reuters reports that the "war on poverty slips from U.S. election agenda":

Hurricane Katrina exposed an underclass of poor Americans to the rest of the world, but poverty has slipped off the agenda in the runup to midterm congressional elections next month.

Posted by The Haikuist at 1:41 PM | Permalink | Comments

Today's San Francisco Chronicle reports that even though health care is a "key issue" for voters, the candidates of the two major parties in the gubernatorial race have largely ignored it.

This is hardly surprising. When a single payer universal health care bill was voted on by the state Assembly earlier in the year, Phil Angelides, the Democrat, refused to endorse it.

Posted by The Haikuist at 1:32 PM | Permalink | Comments

The headline from this New York Times article from Roger Cohen reads, "Hedging Their Bets, Democrats Lean Right".

The article suggest that Nancy Pelosi is "way to the left" of Democrats in many Congressional races. This is rather amusing, since, as we know, Pelosi is not particularly far to the left. The author also claims that Democrats are "smart" to move be moving rightward. These comments notwithstanding, Cohen does highlight the problem with the Democrats when he points out:

So from Tennessee to Indiana, from Virginia to Nebraska, from North Carolina to Ohio, Democratic candidates for the House or Senate or governor are breaking with the party line. In short, they're trying to out-right the right.

Given that the "party line" is not progressive to begin with, where this leaves the Democrats as a progressive force is obvious. Cohen cites a couple of examples:

In Tennessee, Harold Ford Jr., the Democratic candidate who is in a neck-and-neck race for senator with the Republican Bob Corker, has made much of his vote for a tough anti-illegal immigration bill. In Ohio, a key battleground state that appears to be veering heavily Democrat, John Cranley, the Democratic challenger to the Republican representative Steve Chabot, has also suggested he's tougher on immigration.

Democrats like Brad Ellsworth, a candidate from Indiana for the House of Representatives, are making quite clear what their values are. "This election isn't about Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton," he says in a television ad. "Here's what I believe: I'm pro-life. I believe in a traditional marriage."

This attempt by the Democrats to "out-right the right" illustrate once again why the Left should not be supporting the Democratic Party.

Posted by The Haikuist at 7:18 AM | Permalink | Comments

The Democrats must be rubbing their hands in glee these days, in the run up to the election. Yesterday's New York Times reported, for example, that polling data in "the bellweather state of Ohio" shows that the Republican party is in trouble there. Some are suggesting that this election might be the Democratic Party's equivalent to what happened in 1994, when Republicans took over the reins of Congressional power from the Democrats.

If the Democrats win control of Congress this year, it will not be because they have offered any kind of positive alternative to the Republicans. On the contrary, their deliberate ambiguity on Iraq, their lack of interest in proposing social legislation, and their general support of ruling class interests suggests that there will be little real change. Swing and independent voters seem to be turning to the Democrats out of disgust with the status quo, not out of any positive and principled program that the Democrats might be offering as an alternative.

On the other hand, it could be argued that US elections often have little to do with ideology anyway. Given the tweedledee-tweedledum nature of the two ruling factions of the American ruling class, when an opposition party sweeps the ruling party out of power, it has more to do with the inevitable pendulum swings of voter dissatisfaction with how those in power have squandered the promised opportunities afforded to them, than it does with any ideological shift. Those promised opportunities inevitably end in disappointment, and the voters swing back and forth between one failed party and another. This is the reality of American politics under the current duopoly of corporate-sponsored political parties.

It is easy, when the Democrats are out of power, to acquire this glow of support, but once they acquire power, they will suddenly be held accountable for what they do. Given the lack of ideological coherence on their part, the honeymoon will probably be short. The worst thing that could happen to the Democrats is the acquisition of a majority in the Congress. That glow that they've acquired from being powerless will quickly fade, and reality will set in.

It is interesting to see what has happened to the Republicans, after nearly six years in power. Even their evangelical supporters have become disillusioned. David Kuo, who was involved with Bush's "faith based initiatives" for a time, has now written a book titled Tempting Faith (great title, by the way), in which he reports that the Bush regime essentially used evangelicals for political gain. To which I say--duh. Bush's base of support, which includes his hard core constituency on the religious right, is starting to crumble.

The San Francisco Bay Guardian, which fancies itself as "progressive" but often endorses Democrats (although this year they have endorsed some Green candidates as well), interviewed Lewis Lapham in last week's issue. When asking him about a hypothetical Bush impeachment and an imagined ascent by Pelosi into the White House, Lapham responded,

Well, that wouldn't happen. I would not like to see Nancy Pelosi in the White House, if you're asking me that question, because I don't think her policies would be that much different from — I don't think they'd be extreme as Bush — but I don't think she has at heart the interests of the American people, if that's what you mean. She's a servant of the [ruling class] interests, as is [Sen. Dianne] Feinstein.

Bravo, Mr. Lapham. That is the reality of American politics. And the sooner progressives come to realize this, the better off they will be.

Posted by The Haikuist at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments

The New York Times business section yesterday ran a story about the ever decreasing share of the economic pie that workers in the US (and elsewhere in the capitalist world) are getting. According to the article,

Job growth is starting to slow, and wages are barely keeping up with inflation. Five years into a relatively robust economic expansion, it’s understandable that many American workers feel that they are not getting their fair share of the pie.

In fact, the share of the economy devoted to workers' wages and benefits has eroded in the United States over the last five years.

The Times points out that the percentage of the economy that is paid out in wages "is perhaps the broadest measure of the workers' share of economic growth." And in the last five years, this percentage in the U.S. has dropped 2.5 percent. But here's the kicker. According to the article, "The recent declines are hardly atypical. While there have been some periods when the workers' share has risen, the overall trend since the 1970’s has been downward in most industrialized countries." In otherwards, for the past three decades, workers' have been getting less and less of the economic pie!

And why is this happening?

Economists have identified some important forces causing this erosion, but they are mostly perplexed by the long decline. "It’s a bit of a mystery why the labor share is falling so much," said Alan B. Krueger, a professor of economics at Princeton.

So, as the rich continue to get richer in today's capitalist economy, the rest of us are having to make due with less. What lesson can we draw from this about the capitalist system?

Posted by The Haikuist at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that big corporations are giving large sums of money to Nancy Pelosi's campaign--as if this is a surprise. Says the Chronicle:

Corporate PACs that gave Pelosi more included those from San Francisco international engineering giant Bechtel. Donations from the company, which is located in Pelosi's district, went from $2,000 in the 2003-04 election cycle to $5,000 this year.

AT&T's donation went from $5,500 to $12,500 and Microsoft's from $6,000 to $10,000.

Employees of the Menlo Park-based venture capital giant Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers have given Pelosi $10,500 so far this year, up from $1,000 in 2004.

Brokerage UBS gave $10,000 to Pelosi's committees in 2003-04 and doubled the donation to $20,000 this year.

The brokerage firm's political action committee shows exactly how business can be a bipartisan giver: Of the almost $1.5 million it has contributed thus far during the current election cycle, 48 percent has gone to Democrats and 49 percent to Republicans, data from the Center for Responsive Politics shows.

Thompson, former head of the business council of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has worked for years to dispel the notion that the Democrats are anti-business.

"You can be Democrat and understand business. We're working with them," he said.

And so there you have it from the horse's mouth--an admission that Democrats support corporate interests. Not that this comes as any surprise.

Posted by The Haikuist at 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments

A Reuters article from today gives us the headline: Democrats use strategy of ambiguity on Iraq. To which I say--what else is new? The Democrats have been using this "strategy" ever since 2002. Their 2004 presidential platform refused to take a stand on the war in Iraq, saying instead that "people of good will disagree about whether America should have gone to war in Iraq".

Here is an extract from that Reuters article:

President George W. Bush and Republicans have taken a battering over Iraq, but it's not because voters believe Democrats have a clear strategy for ending the conflict and bringing American soldiers home.

"If you ask people out on the street what the message is, they wouldn't know," said Joan Lowery, a 60-year-old insurance company manager, at a recent Democratic fund-raiser in Cincinnati.

Lowery is not alone. Only a quarter of Americans think Democrats in the Congress have a clear plan for Iraq, far less than the 36 percent who believe the president has one, a USA Today/Gallup poll in mid-September found.

But experts said the lack of a clear Democratic plan made no difference at all to most voters. Ambiguity has been part of the Democratic strategy on Iraq all along and has worked quite well, they said. (emphasis added)

This tells us what we need to know about the Democratic Party. The Democrats are clearly not a progressive political force in American politics. A legitimately progressive party would serve as a voice of conscience against imperialism, occupation, empire, and war. The Democrats are not that party.

Posted by The Haikuist at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments