Haiku Politics

The headline to this Boston Globe article reads, "Pelosi team tries to steer Democrats to the center". The article explains that Pelosi is "anxious to chart a centrist course with Democrats' new majority in Congress" and that she want to "rein in" her party's more progressive elements.

Some on the left have argued that the Democrats have to be supported despite their ruling class orientation because third parties don't work and because the first priority is to "stop Bush" at all costs. The theory behind this kind of lesser evilism is that we deal with the immediate danger first, then then worry about moving the country to the left at some point in the far off future. I do have to wonder at what future point anyone thinks the Democrats are going to take this magical, sudden turn to the left that keeps getting promised to us.

Posted by The Haikuist at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments

Here's a quote from an article in the Sunday New York Times:

The chief executive of Wal-Mart Stores, H. Lee Scott Jr., made more than $15 million last year in cash, stock and options, according to the company’s annual report, an amount equivalent to roughly 850 times the pay of Wal-Mart’s average “associate” tending to shoppers on a superstore floor.

If that doesn't warm the cockles of your heart, here are some more statistics from that article:

• "the top 0.1 percent of Americans in income receive nearly 7 percent of the total, the highest share since the 1920s."
• "half of the income gains derived from the increase in productivity from 1966 to 2001 accrued to the top 10 percent of earners. The wages of typical American workers, meanwhile, barely grew at all."
• "In 2000, the share of national income reaped by the top 1 percent of taxpayers reached 16.5 percent, its highest level since 1936, and higher than that of the next 4 percent of taxpayers combined."

Kind of makes you feel all fuzzy inside, doesn't it?

Posted by The Haikuist at 4:29 PM | Permalink | Comments

Another reason why the Left should not be celebrating the Democrats victory in the mid-term elections can be found in the current issue of Newsweek magazine. Here we see Bill Clinton making clear that progressivism is one thing that will not be part of the Democratic Party agenda. According to the Newsweek article,

The beauty of the Democratic Party midterm victory, Clinton muses, is that voters said no to ideology. They wanted to move past fearmongering and demonizing toward true debate. "America rejected shorthand," he says. "People are thinking again." But they are not thinking of a set of liberal policy prescriptions. He argues that the election was about more than Iraq and corruption; it turned on the unmet needs of middle-class voters for whom the country "isn't working anymore." And yet no one is exactly sure how to make it work again. "The people didn't give Democrats a mandate," the former president cautions. "They gave us a chance."

But a chance to do what?...All that is clear so far is that "the chance" will inevitably take centrist form. Just as every Republican candidate has for decades been required to describe himself as a conservative, every Democratic candidate in 2008 will don the Clintonesque cloak of moderation. It's a vindication of Clinton's "Third Way" presidency...

Nothing could be plainer. As Newsweek points out so clearly, while Republicans push a right wing agenda, Democrats push a centrist agenda. Notice what is missing from that equation? You guessed it--no left wing agenda to be found anywhere.

Posted by The Haikuist at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Comments

The USDA no longer says that people suffer from hunger; instead, they suffer from "very low food security."

Posted by The Haikuist at 1:17 PM | Permalink | Comments

From an article in today's New York Times:

Whatever their views on the war, though, conservatives agree on aspect of the midterms: Republicans may have lost, but their ideology did not. Among other things, they argue that the midterms turned both the Republican and Democratic caucuses further to the right....

Democrats, meanwhile, have arguably grown more conservative as well. After two decades of defeats, they have largely dropped their former calls for major defense spending cuts, talk of a Canadian-style national health insurance, or campaigns for gun control. They work hard to avoid getting tagged as tax raisers, and since 2004 they have tried to open their doors to opponents of abortion as well.

So both parties moved to the right in the aftermath of this election. It seems that when the Democrats win, the Left loses. And that is the sad truth of American politics.

Posted by The Haikuist at 9:56 PM | Permalink | Comments

From Mark Sandalow's article in today's San Francisco Chronicle, the headline tells says it all: "Pelosi vows cooperation".

Pelosi was quoted in Sandalow's article as saying that the Democrats will be "working with the administration and the Republicans in Congress; working in partnership, not in partisanship."

Lest there is any doubt what that means, "Pelosi has waved off suggestions that Democrats use their new power to impeach the president, block funds from being sent to Iraq, or other bold steps..."

As the Times of London puts it: "But there are pitfalls for Democrats too. The party now has to actually run part of the US Government – and accept responsibility when things go wrong. This remarkable election will be the last time for a while when the American people will have only one party to blame for their ills."

Posted by The Haikuist at 7:59 AM | Permalink | Comments

Today is election day, and in honor of that, I would like to cite Joshua Frank's article, "Wake Me When It's Over", as the best commentary on the sad state of the 2006 elections that I've seen to date.

Posted by The Haikuist at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments