Posted on 02/17/2009 5:20:15 PM PST by lewisglad
If the Obama administration doesn’t start to deal with the populist wave headed for Washington, Republicans will tap a reservoir of resentment that could destroy his presidency.
First they came for the bankers. Then they came for the CEOs. Then they came for the liberals. That might be the epitaph of the Democratic Party, if Democrats cannot learn to surf the tsunami of populism created by the economic earthquake.
Already across the world you can hear the rumble. Nations are scrambling to bail out their industries and protect them against foreign competition. The Indian government is slapping restrictions on Chinese imports. In Britain, workers have struck, demanding “British jobs for British workers.” In the US, popular support for “Buy American” provisions is as high as disapproval of the same provisions in the elite press.
As more Americans lose their jobs and their homes, as more businesses crater and banks topple, popular anger is rising like a wall of water over a suddenly quiet beachfront resort. You’d think that the Democrats in Washington would be aware of the danger.
As more Americans lose their jobs and their homes, as more businesses crater and banks topple, popular anger is rising like a wall of water over a suddenly quiet beachfront resort. You’d think that the Democrats in Washington would be aware of the danger. After all, the massive expansion of Great Society spending in the 1960s, followed by the stagflation of the 1970s, allowed the marginal conservative movement to tap populist anger and dominate American politics for a generation. Substitute stimulus for Great Society and years of possible “stag-deflation” for stagflation, and you have a scenario in which the Obama’s overwhelming majority could collapse as quickly as LBJ’s.
To date, however, the Obama administration has seemed more concerned with reassuring Wall Street that it will be protected against Main Street hotheads than in disciplining Wall Street on behalf of Main Street Americans who have lost jobs, homes, and savings. First Obama appointed an economic team dominated by Robert Rubin proteges, like Timothy Geithner, who were considered safe by the Street. Then Geithner put forth a plan which many economists warn might force the public to pay too much for toxic assets held by the banks.
Geithner himself is a lightning rod for populist wrath. Ordinary Americans who fail to pay their taxes can expect strict punishment. When Geithner forgot to pay sizeable sums, he was quickly forgiven and made Treasury secretary. Most Americans cannot afford maids, legal or illegal. Geithner’s violation of US employment laws, in paying an illegal-immigrant maid, was also judged to be a minor indiscretion. After all, he is simply the latest in a series of political appointees with illegal-immigrant maid problems. Let’s be reasonable. Important people can’t be expected to do their own housework, and ten minutes otherwise spent saving the world might be wasted on ascertaining whether their servants are violating US immigration laws or not. As the late Leona Helmsley might have said, immigration laws are for the little people.
Given the opportunity, Republicans can once again tap a reservoir of resentment, some of it justified. For a generation, the white-collar liberals who now dominate the Democratic Party have shown a remarkable ability to dress up their own economic interests in the rhetoric of globalization and anti-racism while attacking the motives and assaulting the characters of Americans who are far less wealthy and privileged. They conveniently forget to pay taxes for their illegal-immigrant maids and nannies, and then they denounce fellow citizens who can’t afford servants as Nazi-like xenophobes for insisting that all immigrants, not just some, obey federal immigration laws. They use their status as alumni of elite universities to get their mediocre children admitted by means of legacy programs (class-based affirmative action), and then they blame racism when working-class and middle-class whites criticize race-based affirmative action. They benefit from a regulated national labor market that effectively restricts the number of lawyers, MBAs and teachers allowed to practice in the US, and then they altruistically offer to sacrifice the livelihoods of American factory workers to help out the Chinese poor and to put American farms out of business to help the African poor. They claim that by living in expensive doorman buildings in fashionable downtowns and using uneconomical, taxpayer-subsidized mass transit they are saving the planet from global warming, and then they criticize working-class Americans with a fraction of their incomes who can only afford to live in exurbs and shop at Sam’s Club as sprawl-creating slobs. And they nod their heads in agreement when the elite editorial pages tell them on a near-daily basis that the greatest threat to America’s future is not ruthlessly nationalistic Asian mercantilism or lawless hedge-fund operations, but the danger that Congress might respond to the frightening number of non-Ivy League graduates in the electorate by enacting Buy American or Hire American policies which might inconvenience IRA investments or make it harder to hire an au pair.
The support of affluent liberals with attitudes like these helped Barack Obama to defeat his (somewhat) more populist rivals in the Democratic primaries. In his unguarded remarks to rich Californian donors in April 2008, Obama made his “bitter” gaffe about people from “these small towns” who lose their jobs and “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them” that Republicans undoubtedly have ready to roll out again on a feedback loop on talk radio. Obama’s “bitter” remarks echoed the “status anxiety” theory of populism promoted in the 1950s and 1960s by liberal scholars that looked out (and down) at populist Americans and saw, not Lockean-Jeffersonian democratic republicans with legitimate grievances struggling to preserve their independence against corporations and plutocrats, but crypto-fascist Central Europeans who might vote an American Hitler into power. The caricature of American populists by mid-century liberal professors was the grandest misunderstanding of American political culture since Leon Trotsky, visiting the US, began a speech: “Workers and peasants of the Bronx!” And yet as the farmer-labor component of the Democratic Party has dwindled, stereotypes about working-class and rural Americans have grown even stronger among the liberal intelligentsia.
At least Obama, with his appeals to national unity and post-racial rhetoric, recognizes the need to get away from the rote white-male bashing that contributed to creating a generation of conservative Republican hegemony in Washington between Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. The majority of Americans, even during the conservative years, were never against big government; they were against big government that provides special treatment whether to minorities, illegal immigrants, or the CEOs and shareholders of Wall Street firms that are too big to fail. What wrecked the Democratic Party was the public’s perception of double standards
Amazingly, some prominent Democrats have yet to figure this out. In testimony to Congress on January 7, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich worried that too many stimulus jobs would go to “white male construction workers...I have nothing against white male construction workers, I’m just saying there are other people who have needs as well.” The conservative blogosphere has picked up on Reich’s comments, interpreting them as a call for race and gender quotas in stimulus spending. If the Right succeeds in defining the stimulus package as a giveaway to minorities and women at the expense of unemployed working-class white men (and their wives and their children), then conservatives have half the populist script written for them. The other half is provided by the bailout, if that is perceived as a massive subsidy to financiers with political clout in Washington. The acolytes of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove will find it easy to write a campaign ad in 2010 or 2012 portraying the Democrats as an alliance of the top and the bottom against the middle—a classic populist theme.
To hurt the Democrats, middle American populism does not have to be channeled through the Republican Party. A third-party presidential candidate in 2012 like Ross Perot might rob Obama of re-election, by winning or, more likely, by draining off enough disaffected Democrats to give the White House back to the Republicans. Lou Dobbs—tanned, rested and ready?
Two factors, however, might help blunt the damage to the Democrats when the populist waves come rolling over the beach. One might be the division of the Republicans between social-issue populists like Mike Huckabee and free-market libertarians like those of the Club for Growth.
Another is the presence in the Democratic Party of populist liberals, many of whom defeated incumbent Republicans in 2006, including Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown and Virginia Senator Jim Webb. The Democrats owe their majorities in both houses of Congress in part to politicians like these, whose criticism of US trade policies alarms the Rubinesque neoliberals around Obama and whose hard line toward illegal immigration upsets the liberal left. Absent these politically incorrect populists, however, the Democratic Party would be a coalition of socially liberal fiscal conservatives and pro-welfare social democrats with little appeal to the socially conservative, economically liberal white working class.
At the very least, the majority Democrats, while waiting for the tsunami to hit, can refrain from committing suicide in advance of the wave's landfall. Obama should drop all talk about “bipartisan entitlement reform,” a code word for gutting Social Security, a program popular with the majority of Americans if not the IRA-supported overclass. Social Security is not in as dire fiscal peril as deficit hawks claim, says Peter Orszag, Obama's budget director. As Orzsag has pointed out, it is health care that is busting the budget and requires reform.
While liberals oppose Social Security cuts, they favor a policy equally hated by populists, amnesty for illegal immigrants. There is no democracy in the world with rising unemployment where amnesties for foreign workers who disobey national laws would not be a form of political hara-kiri.
Above all, Obama and the Democratic Congress must refute the idea being spread by Republicans that the trillions of dollars that the federal government will spend are really disguised subsidies for particular Democratic constituencies, from environmentalists to minorities. By stigmatizing Great Society programs as special-interest giveaways, the Republicans built an alliance of conservatives and populists that marginalized liberalism and governed America for a generation. Don’t think that they can’t do it again.
Michael Lind is the Whitehead senior fellow at the New America Foundation
That’s the kind of (predicted) response I would expect.
Ok. Buy some guns and non-perishables and move up to the hills then.
We’ll do the work in the conservative trenches for you.
I didn’t say stop working for what is right - you did. As a 30-year activist, I can’t stop....even though most don’t have ears to hear or eyes to see.
I believe its you that has a flawed perspective on reality.
Annie is exactly correct in her analysis of the condition we find ourselves in.
I really get the feeling that some DO NOT want to accept reality because of what it would mean. They prefer to solace themselves in the comfortable “rituals” of the past.
“it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation?
For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth — to know the worst and to provide for it. I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House? “
What is it about the last few DECADES that justify YOUR hopes? Sir, I recommend you ACCEPT the truth and PROVIDE for it... Its been one failure after another. People we counted on to do our will, instead did the will of the socialists. Even after WE worked our asses off to give them all three branches of government they stabbed us in the back. The light of that experience has shown me that we were wrong all along. The GOP is another arm of the socialist party.
You’re the one who’s been saying everything’s hopeless. I took that as to mean that it’s futile, the country is finished, and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Not now or ever.
I disagree.
It’s not patience that is called for in these times.
Last call....
Your putting the emphasis on the wrong concept.
The “country” is not what you should be concerned about. The concepts of freedom and liberty are the valuable and fragile sparks that you need to be protecting and saving.
That is what I’m concentrated on. When I speak of “country” I speak of those ideals, for those are the ideals that this country was founded on. I won’t let them slip away. No way in hell.
I have been reading the exchange between you and SLC with some interest. Let me throw my two cents worth in.
I think that you are exactly correct, Annie and here’s why. In the coming months, we are gonna get the big amnesty and voting rights giveaway for the illegal aliens. With the invevitible chain migration of the aliens and their extended families, the game will be over. There will be 30-50 million new voters which will vote Dem overwhelmingly. At that point, no amount of hard work or money thrown at this by the dwindling numbers of conservatives left in this country will be able to turn the tide of socialism/communism. We will be demographically overwhelmed. The Repubs and RINOs will continue to have a token represntation in Congress but will be even more impotent than they are now.
I take no pleasure in pointing out the sorry and desperate state that our precious Republic finds itself in. I have resigned myself to preparing for the worst while still trying to enjoy my life while the thin veneer of civilization remains intact. I admire SLC’s optimism but the Marxists have worked for 40 years to stack the deck against freedom and liberty and to lock in their power. It seems the future holds some very tragic and frightening possibilities for those of us who love the ideals that the Founding Fathers built this coutry around. Slavery, anarchy or revolution are what I see. I know what I will choose.
Might I contribute a cent or two?
You make excellent points. At about the middle of reading your post, I recalled a bit of history: back in the day in northern Italy, the place was a shambles of city-states, country estates and just plain farms. No real political organization bigger than a city council. In Florence, the ruling party managed to get control of the surrounding area and a power grab began. We know it now as the Guelphs vs the Ghibellines. (Shakespeare made Romeo and Juliet out of the wreckage).
Long story short, the Guelphs won. The Ghibellines were basically wiped out and certainly eliminated as any kind of political force. So, peace at last, yes? Well, no. The Guelphs went about a decade or so just grumbling among themselves and then broke into open civil war, the Whites against the Blacks (Dante lost his municipal job in that fracas). The Whites eventually won, sort of, but the result so damaged Florentine power that it took a good long time for them to be more than side players (becoming bankers helped a lot, but that took time).
I think we just saw the Guelphs destroy the Ghibellines. You can guess what I think will happen and how long it will take to happen. 2012 will be interesting, in this context, yes?
Unfortunately, there are more of them right now (those who love his policies...or don't want to know what they are, they'll just trusting him) - and they are in control. And - before you ask, they are in control of all three branches of government, the banks, higher education, lower education, the MSM, Hollywood, unions, and so on. And, as if that weren't enough, he's going to commandeer votes via illegals, convicts, controlling the internet & talk radio, etc.
Shall we stand against all of that? Of course - and with the exception of RINOS in Congress (all of whom will likely be replaced with Dems anyway), we are standing.
I understand all that you’ve written....with the exception of the fear. I have no fear of the wrath to come....and, am willing to pay with my fleeting life to stand for the truth.
I fear the unknown, Annie. I also fear the pain that will be inflicted on those that I love by what I think is coming. Along with that fear I am angry as hell that we have come to this 20 years after Ronald Reagan left office after crushing communism without firing a shot.
As a guy in his mid 40’s I lived through the Cold War as a kid with the fear that one day our way of life would go up in a big ball of flames because the Soviets didnt like our way of life and the things we beleive in as a country. Then one day, poof, that threat was gone because one guy (Ronald Reagan) had the stones to stand up and say no and lead us in taking down that evil empire. It just seems incredible to me that twenty years later, after my wife and I have worked our butts off to build a life that seemed unlikely to ever happen in the early and mid eighties because of the threat of nuclear war, we are facing this threat from the same exact ideology. Only this time, the threat is coming from inside our wonderful country from a group of seductive vampires that the electorate invited right in the front door. They may not be threatening to drop the big one on us yet but I wouldn’t put much else past them if someone or something stands in the way of their communist goals.
I told my friends that the 2008 elections were the last peaceful stand for our freedom and way of life and we lost. Obama, Reid and Pelosi are gonna prove me right sooner rather than later.
To be sure, BRC, these are times that try men's souls. That's because LORD is stripping away all things that men have put their trust and faith in - their 401(k), their government, their political party, their jobs, their education, their cash, etc. This, in order that we might see that there is NOTHING in this world that saves us. There is but ONE Savior and He is hastening the day while calling out a people to Himself.
CHANGE AND HOPE can only be found in Jesus Christ.
Again you are correct, Annie.
I was confirmed as a Catholic two years ago this Easter. I was asked a few weeks ago to speak with the current RCIA class at my church about coming to the church as an adult and the process and it really got my doing some intense introspection. I had attended church as a kid and up through college (I was a Lutheran) but had just drifted away from it after graduation. My wifes parents went through RCIA about 9 years ago and it really changed their lives. My wife attended Catholic high school but was a confirmed Lutheran like me. My dad came from a big Catholic family but he joined my mom’s church after they were married and I attended Mass often with my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins so I was very familiar with Catholicism. Long story longer, I got really negative towards organized religion around the time of 9-11. My incredulity at Islam attacking us based on their hatred of those who did not share their faith was overwhelming. My wife had asked me a few times about joining the church but I told her that I didnt know if I could do it based on the feelings I had. Stupid, I know.
Then my beloved Dad died in 2006. It really threw me for a loop. I think the Holy Spirit was working in me through that because I starting reconsidering alot of things at that time. I knew deep down that my wonderful father was with the Lord in Heaven and there was no way to deny it. My heart was opening but I wasnt there yet. Then my mom-in-law passed less than a year later. We were fortunate enough to be there as a family when she passed. She was suffering from cancer and was horribly ill. It was such poweful experience, especially the smile on her face as she passed. She knew she was going to be with the Lord and had told us all she was ready. Soon after, my wife decided to attend the RCIA class beginning that fall. She asked me to go with her and I said I would give it a try but made no promises although I knew it was what I was supposed to do. As soon as I got there, I knew it was the right place for me. Through the process of confirmation and the last two years, my faith has grown tremendously. I opened my heart to the Lord and He has filled it up. I am so thankful that I followed my heart and really let him in. It has truly changed my life. I shared these experiences with the RCIA candidates to let them know that they, like me were there for a reason and that the Lord would guide them if the would open their hearts and let Him.
I know that I am ready to withstand any trial with His help. He really seems to be letting us know that He is the way and we need to follow Him.
Sorry about the long post. Just wanted to let you know where I am.
We shall both stand in the gap - until the day when we stand on higher ground. Thank you for sharing the testimony of Christ here. It is what we leave here on FR....like a message-in-a-bottle...
democratic - characterized by or advocating or based upon the principles of democracy or social equality; "democratic government"; "a democratic country"; "a democratic scorn for bloated dukes and lords"- George du Maurier
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.