Confessions of a Reformed, Green, Libertarian Socialist
-Paul Corman-Roberts
Wow, did I really say McCain was running a brilliant campaign back in November? Jesus, how did I miss that gaffe in the October edit of a column I basically wrote in late August? Maybe pundits just aren’t meant to work four times a year. Such infrequency turns the political mind that is sharply attuned to all the fine degrees of sewage which pour out of the television and internet every day into that same sloppy sludge.
Punditry really only works best when anger is freshly stoked at all times, like the crisp, stinging heat devils generated by flowing lava which manage to stay above the violent morass below. (Notice the hot air metaphor please…)
This is as close to an apology as I’m going to make for being a lemming idiot. But hey, back in August McCain held a slim lead in most polls and Plain, I mean Palin, looked as if her gleaming eyes and homecoming queen smile could steamroll any subpoena or public relations gaffe. God bless Tina Fey, but I never thought for a moment she had what it took to prevent the Karl Rovification of the campaign. I didn’t dare make a call.
But of course, the enmity between McCain and Rove makes Clinton/Obama look like a sidewalk dustup next to a rugby scrum. There was no virtuoso of spin in McCain’s army, and we can see clearly now that even Rove’s presence could not have helped whoever the GOP candidate would have been in the wake of the collapsing economy. A forty percent plunge in the Dow Jones average had enough juice to drive a nail into a presidential and legislative coffin for a party that four years ago believed it was on the verge of a
“New Deal” like domination of the political landscape.
So now the USA has elected its very first president whose most notable accomplishments came under the job description “community organizer” or what many conservatives sneeringly refer to as an “activist” (why, was there anything else special about our first Hawaiian president?) By the time you read this, barring some catastrophe, he will have been sworn in. It’s clear though, from the nation’s primary disseminators of
status quo; that a conspiracy of the elite against Obama is simply not in the cards. His surrounding himself with Republicans and Reagan Democratic war hawks has garnered him praise as “pragmatic” from a wide range of voices, from as far right as the Wall Street Journal to as far left as The Nation.
To be sure, Obama makes a lot of Americans, of both stripes, very nervous.
For the left, a moderate candidate derided as a “radical”, a “terrorist” and a “socialist” by Fox News, has been doing nothing but tacking hard right ever since clinching the nomination, and this never sits well with the Nader or Kucinich contingents. Hannity and Limbaugh on the other hand, will never part with their
newly, and forever bruised white pride. Of course, the issue of the 44th president’s race will remain an issue for a large percentage of Americans (not just white) who would never, ever admit it to anyone, and frequently themselves.
Yet what Obama does with his Presidency can do much to undermine the old segregationist urge, and it is just this course that makes a different faction on the right (quite rightly) also nervous; the possibility that Obama will somehow, against all odds and expectations (sound familiar?) turn out to revitalize the American working class, which is exactly what the folks over at the WSJ, or the Times, Time or Newsweek for that matter DO NOT want: the second coming of FDR.
While this will be hard to do without Big Labors co-operation (the original instrument of Roosevelt’s leveraging of the GOP) rapidly changing economic conditions might well send old line stalwarts like the UAW and the Teamsters down the path of the dinosaur. But collective bargaining was never Obama’s thing anyway. Grassroots organizing is what the tall thin man from Illinois brings to the process. Organizing and connecting techno tribes with collective bargaining, with media purveyors, with activists…pull enough of those together and sooner or later it includes someone you talk to frequently.
The ability to build up people’s role in a society, first with a political campaign, and then with big (if unsexy) political ideas (say like universal healthcare; the electric car, or sustained micro-subsidies for co-operative infrastructure models) is what can render the issue of racial prejudice as shallow as the melatonin which
symbolizes the prejudice Obama also manages to inspire.
Of course, there’s no guarantee Obama will choose this path. If he turns into Bill Clinton on us (what the WSJ, the Times, Time, Newsweek and all the tabloids really want) then the Republican backlash will not take long to seize on every mistake, every gaffe and a condescending “I Told You So” rhetorical tsunami, vanguarded no doubt by the aforementioned Messrs. Hannity and Limbaugh, possibly limiting Obama’s presidency to one term.
Thankfully we are still in a moment where anything is possible. If Obama is lying in wait with a big idea that can help transform our country, he’s probably making all the right moves by comforting the powers-that-be with his cabinet picks (however much difficulty they have of sticking.)
We are the fortunate (or possibly unfortunate) recipients of the Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times.” Regardless of where we are a year from now, or two or three or four years from now, the hemorrhaging economy and the sense that history can flash at any moment are going to keep things reeeaaallly interesting…perhaps too much so.
Paul Corman-Roberts is the author of the flash prose collections "Coming WorldGone World" (Howling Dog Press 2006) and "necom(muter)" (Tainted Coffee Press, 2009.) He once had coffee and donuts with Eldgridge Cleaver. You can wallow in his wonderfulness at www.paulcormanroberts.com
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