The Day After

The day after the Tea Party and Republican onslaught, the Democrats are licking their wounds. The carnage left behind was severe. They lost the US House and the majority of governors. They almost lost the US Senate. Many state and local governments took a decided turn to the right. November 2 turned out to be one nightmare after another.

Why did it come to this? For me, I agree with what Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive wrote today. While there is no question that former President Bush handed President Obama a heaping pile of crap AND Republicans spent the last two years obstructing almost anything Obama tried to propose, the true weight of this debacle lands squarely on the Obama administration. They swept into office two years ago with a mandate for change and they squandered it every step of the way!

He never mobilized the base to take on the vested interests.

Example: health care. He didn’t call people to march on Washington for universal health care, or at least Medicare for all who want it. So a few tea party hucksters were able to hijack the debate. He didn’t even push Harry Reid to give the health care bill to Senator Tom Harkin’s committee, throwing it instead into the untrustworthy arms of Max Baucus.

As a result, an inferior law came on the books with some important insurance reforms in it, but it didn’t threaten the private health care providers or the pharmaceutical companies. And it didn’t deliver the immediate relief that most Americans needed.

On the jobs front, he refused to follow the lead of Christina Romer, head of his Council of Economic Advisers, or the recommendations of Nobel Prize winners Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz. All three said he needed a stimulus package that was at least 50 percent larger than the one he proposed. Nor did he propose a new WPA, like FDR did when the country faced a similar, if not quite so staggering, free fall. Obama was afraid to come on too strong. So he came on too weak.

Same on the banking front. Obama could have, and should have, nationalized Bank of America and Citibank, or at the very least, compelled them to halt foreclosures and write down the principal on all their mortgages by 25 or 30 percent. But Obama didn’t get anything from the banks in exchange for the hundreds of billions of dollars the Treasury doled out, and the trillions in guarantees. And so the bankers laughed all the way to the vault, and even some Republicans scored by running commercials against Democrats who voted for the bailout.

Same on the environment. Obama sold out the cause at Copenhagen, and with amazingly bad timing he came out for offshore drilling just weeks before the BP disaster, in hopes, again, of getting concessions from Republicans and from industry...

On issue after issue, he came across as being both too cerebral AND too accommodating -- yes, making accommodations with the very people who sought to do in his administration!

But, of course, Obama didn't bring us to this point singlehandedly. The Democratic Party as a whole has become a shadow of its former self. Two or three generations ago, to a certain extent, the Dems were the political party of working Americans and the poor. The Dems were the ones who brought us Medicare and the Civil Rights Act. But they slowly -- then quickly -- turned their collective backs on their base and now the base has turned their backs on them!

One headline yesterday underscores this retreat better than most. It was little noticed because of election coverage. ACORN -- an organization that mobilized the working poor better than any other -- filed for bankruptcy and they did so because the Democrats refused to stand up for them when they needed it most.

Yet despite ACORN’s mission and history, when the rightwing echo chamber targeted it for destruction too few Congressional Democrats stood in the way. Fox played “shocking” videos of a “sting operation” against ACORN ad nauseam, and rather than questioning the source and content, too many Democrats failed to do due diligence and instead acted cravenly in passing unconstitutional legislation to defund the group.

Never mind ACORN’s track record of registering millions of new voters, fighting predatory lending, rebuilding homes in New Orleans, helping wage and hour enforcement — rightwing operative James O’Keefe had racy videos featuring a pimp, a prostitute, and complicit ACORN employees.

Except that he didn’t.

When Rachel Maddow and others exposed that the videos were fabricated, and the Congressional Research Service, former Massachusetts Attorney General, Brooklyn District Attorney General, and California Attorney General — in all there were at least 46 federal, state, and local investigations —cleared ACORN of wrongdoing, it was too late. Eighteen months of screaming headlines and brutal attacks against the anti-poverty group had taken their toll...

America today stands at a crossroads. People are hurting and angry. They took out their anger on the muddled-message and mostly ineffective Democratic Party. I suspect in 2 or 4 years from now, that seething anger will turn on the Republicans as the result of their draconian policies.

The big question is: Will there be a party on the left to channel that anger into a more progressive and humane direction? Personally, I don't believe it CAN be the Democrats. They have already thrown in their lot with the corporate special interests. So, will a new party emerge out of the devastation of this election?

One can only hope!