Column No. 198
by - Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – July 09, 2008
Last week I noted that since he secured the Democratic nomination
for President and secured Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s withdrawal from the
campaign, Sen. Obama has been moving rapidly to organize, re-organize, and
expand both his policy and operational staffs. The response to all of
this from an increasing number of progressives and leftists has been ranging
from raising caution flags to expressing outright horror: “what’s he doing on
Israel?” “what’s he doing on FISA?” “what’s he doing on ethanol?” “what’s
he doing on campaign finance reform?” [planning to win] “what’s he doing
on ‘free trade’?” “what’s he doing on the US Muslim population?” And so on and
so forth.
I noted (hard to miss, actually) that Obama seems to be
veering more towards right-wing Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) positions
than in recent months I recently had thought he would. However, last
November, on these pages I did say that I thought that Senator Obama and Sen.
Clinton comprised a DLC “entry” in the race for the nomination. As I put
it then (TPJ, Dec. 5, 2007, “The Presidential Election, 2008: Democratic
Considerations”): “As they have done in the past, the center-right Democratic
Leadership Council is this time around running what in Standard-Breed (trotters
and pacers) horse racing terminology is known as an ‘entry.’ In these races,
one owner can enter two horses and bettors can bet on the ‘entry,’ so that if
either one of the horses wins, places, or shows, the bettor
collects.”
This week, we shall look further at the likely causes
of the apparent coming together of the Clinton and Obama campaigns (which would
have been in the cards all along if my earlier supposition about their being an
“entry” is correct). We shall also look at why it is in any case
absolutely essential that all anti-Georgite forces of whatever stripe rally behind
Obama.
The Deal
Whether or not Obama has been a “DLC man” from the
beginning, it is becoming quite clear that there has been a deal between
Clinton and Obama. In it she decided not to “take it all the way to the
Convention,” not to “make sure that every vote counts” (referring of course to
the DNC rules-breaking primaries held in Michigan and Florida), not to appeal
to the Super Delegates on the basis of total popular vote (which by party rules
have no role to play in the primary elections, but what the hey). And all
of this happened very quickly.
As is well known, there are still talks going on, on
such issues as how much help should Sen. Obama provide to Sen. Clinton in
paying off her campaign debts (well more than half of which are to herself and
the great political strategist Mark Penn), what role Sen. Clinton will play at
the convention, and how the roughness of the campaign, felt by supporters on
both sides, is going to be put into the rear-view mirror. But the basic
stuff is there. Clinton is backing Obama, even if she is retaining her
delegates at least for the time-being (bargaining chip?), and doing so with
some degree of enthusiasm.
Let us recall that while the Super Delegates were
flowing towards Obama in a steady stream, Clinton was quite right. No
Super Delegate is “committed” until they actually cast their votes at the
Convention. When Obama went “over the top,” his number included a large
number of Super Delegates, whose minds conceivably could have changed had
Clinton kept with her vow-up-to-the-last-minute to “take it to the convention.”
But after Montana/North Dakota Clinton did a 180 on her actual campaign very
quickly, over about a 48-hour period. I don’t think that this happened
casually (although money and the increasing lack of it was a big problem for
her). In my view it is obvious that there was a deal struck on some
central issues, the result of negotiations that had likely been going on for
some time. So what was the deal?
I think that a, perhaps the, central element of it
was on policy. You got that right: on policy. How about that, as
Mel Allen, the legendary New York Yankees baseball announcer, used to
say. Back on April 9, in this space I said that a primary campaign objective for Clinton, win or lose the
nomination, was to maintain the power of the DLC in the Democratic Party.
I said that she was so firmly fixed on this objective that she would rather see
an anti-DLC Obama lose than have the DLC swept into the dust-bin of
history. If I am right both in that conjecture and in my present
conjecture about a deal and what it is about, the Obama people most likely
either figured that out or were told it, directly. I think that the
central element in the deal, then, was that DLC policies and its people who
represent them, would move fairly quickly into the Obama camp.
I don’t think that the deal includes the
Vice-Presidential nomination. Whether or not HRC wants it or not, if it
is the former one can be certain that the Obama people drew the line
there. Having her on the ticket would multiply the negatives for
it. Even if he were to survive what would be the most brutal assault by
the Republicans in US electoral history and win, Obama could hardly stomach the
idea of having both HRC and WJC in the White House. It is unlikely that
it included the Majority Leadership in the Senate. Clinton is fairly
junior, Harry Reid shows no inclination to politely retire, Clinton has made a
lot of enemies there, especially with her campaign, and that position is not
Obama’s to give away anyway. It could, however, include the first available
Supreme Court nomination.
And so, in my view, the money, the convention
prominence, the which-HRC-staff-get-which-jobs, are all minor issues. In
this case, it is actually policy not politics that count. And Clinton and
the DLC are winning. So what we progressives and leftists do?
Support McCain, the maverick? Vote for Ralph Nader or Cynthia
McKinney? Stay home on election day? Well, surprise, surprise, I
think that any of those would be a bad idea. The “lesser-of-the-evils”
argument has riven the American Left for decades. Back in the 1930s the
US Communist Party struggled with the question of whether to support Roosevelt
and pursue the “parliamentary road to socialism” or pursue a revolutionary
line. (They chose the former, much good did it do them when the
MCarthyite witch hunts began with the reactivation in 1946 of what became the
75 Years War against the Soviet Union.) I must say that I have always
hewed to that line, even if it meant supporting Humphrey in ’68, Carter in ’76 and
’80, and so on and so forth. It has perhaps not always been the correct
thing to do. But now it most assuredly is.
The Lesser of the Evils
We now confront true evil, as we have since the 2000
election. McCain indeed does represent the Third Bush Term. And
even though, as a good friend of mine sagely observed before the deal that I
postulate could have taken place, an Obama Presidency may well be the Third
Clinton Term, the reasons why Obama must win, DLC or no, are very well
known. The raison d’être of The Political Junkies is: “For the
Preservation and Promotion of Constitutional Democracy.” Well, with a
McCain Presidency, we could kiss that one good-bye. The alternative to
Obama, DLC or no, is obviously a continuation, and perhaps even speeding up
because of McCain's easier-to-accept persona, of the Republican Religious
Right's drive to Fascism. Hey, McCain thinks that the Supreme Court
decision restoring habeas corpus, which is ensconced in the Constitution in no
uncertain terms, is incorrect. At the same time, he thinks that the
Supreme Court interpretation of the totally ambiguous Second Amendment is
totally correct.
We Cannot Afford to be Picky.
Under Obama, the fascist threat here at home will not
be dead. But at least we would have some breathing room. Right now,
there are only two things that could put Georgitism, otherwise known as
American fascism, away for at least quite some time. One would be the
appearance of a 9/11 version of Scott McClellan, who could with the outmost
credibility reveal the BushCheney role in 9/11. (Whatever it was, there
was one, for sure. There’s too much circumstantial evidence to not hold
to that view. What we don’t is just how far their involvement
went.) The other would be a BushCheney coup attempt in October or
November/December, using a false flag “terrorist attack,” that would hopefully
fail, and then be fully revealed to have been in the planning stages for quite
some time. Otherwise, given that major and powerful sector of the Power
Elite which would like very much to have fascism here, and given the Privatized
Ministry of Propaganda which, since it is privatized would hardly go away with
a change of government, the danger of fascism will be clear and present in our
country for the foreseeable future. But at least with the election of
Obama we would have a pause. One thing that might happen during it would
be the development of a mass-based anti-Fascist movement in our country.
Hey, you never know. But at least with Obama there would be hope. With McCain, none.