Michigan, the Ohio of 2008?

Will Michigan and Motown decide the presidential election?

"If he carries Michigan, many routes to victory are open for Barack Obama. Without Michigan, he's got a big problem," said E. J. Dionne Jr in the Washington Post. "Michigan could be to this election what Ohio was in 2004 and Florida was in 2000."

Pollster Stanley Greenberg, who is said to have studied the state for years, points out that its economy has suffered the most (with 9% it has the highest unemployment rate in the country), and voters are angry and blame both parties, which makes it very difficult for either to win.

Obama hopes to win big in Detroit, but this has been made much more difficult by the scandal surrounding former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

The "Big Bailout" - a "Historic Swindle"

Friday, September 19, 2008: This is one for the history books, as they say. The response by the US government to the greatest financial crisis in US history risks being too little too late and does not adequately address the root cause. And it does it in a way that continues one of the oldest games in town: Privatize profits and socialize costs. Long live the moral hazard! To put this into historical perspective, take a look at this very useful time-line from 1929 to 2008, aptly titled Deregulating Our Way to Disaster.

To be sure, it is historic:

As Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, put it Friday morning on the ABC program “Good Morning America,” the congressional leaders were told “that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally.”

Mr. Schumer added, “History was sort of hanging over it, like this was a moment.”

When Mr. Schumer described the meeting as “somber,” Mr. Dodd cut in. “Somber doesn’t begin to justify the words,” he said. “We have never heard language like this.”

More to the point, according to William Greider, it is on track to end up as a a "historic swindle:"

Let me be clear. The scandal is not that government is acting. The scandal is that government is not acting forcefully enough--using its ultimate emergency powers to take full control of the financial system and impose order on banks, firms and markets. Stop the music, so to speak, instead of allowing individual financiers and traders to take opportunistic moves to save themselves at the expense of the system. The step-by-step rescues that the Federal Reserve and Treasury have executed to date have failed utterly to reverse the flight of investors and banks worldwide from lending or buying in doubtful times. There is no obvious reason to assume this bailout proposal will change their minds, though it will certainly feel good to the financial houses that get to dump their bad paper on the government.

One might think that those who contributed to the crisis and benefited the most all along, should bear the cost of the recovery. But instead of the investors and speculators, the taxpayers will pay - business as usual.

How Obama and McCain manage to be perceived in this crisis will likely be the most important factor deciding this election. So far, it seems to favor Obama.

In any case, the consequences of this mega-bailout are disastrous. It will make it virtually impossible to finance a progressive agenda:

As for costs, he [Henry Paulson] said no more than it will involve a significant investment of taxpayer dollars. A better adjective than "significant" might be "staggering." The economic tar pit is so deep and so sticky it may be necessary to sacrifice wildlife programs, preschool education and scientific research. Even without knowing the numbers, we can kiss health insurance goodbye. If and when Obama gets in, he will discover the cupboard is bare.

Is the 2008 Presidential Election a Great Opportunity for "Progressives"?

In its latest editorial, Get In It to Win It, The Nation suggests that because of its "volatility" the 2008 election offers

perhaps the best opportunity in a generation to nominate a genuinely progressive candidate - a candidate who can win next November.

And that's precisely the crux of the matter: A "genuinely progressive candidate ... who can win." In the US of 2007, isn't this necessarily an oxymoron? Much of this of course depends on how you define "progressive." I have addressed this question in a previous post, Who is Progressive? For a more recent and more extensive discussion, see What does it mean to be "progressive"? at TPMCafe.

Just to underline the main point: Who is a "genuine progressive" and electable at the same time? For example, many believe that people like Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader are genuine progressives; yet few think it very likely that they could ever get elected. In fact, some think that their campaigns are counterproductive, because they take precious resources and votes away from better-placed candidates.

Likewise, many progressives don't consider Hillary Clinton to be really progressive, and some doubt whether Obama really is, all the more since his platform is not very well defined yet. (For a series of probing questions concerning Obama, see David Sirota's post from today). Yet for the past thirty-some years, whoever raised the most money was eventually nominated to run. Depending on where you stand, this is either a huge problem for "progressives" or not a problem at all.

Since hardly anyone dares to call him-/herself liberal anymore, almost everybody on the left is a "progressive" now. The problem remains that this includes a whole spectrum of "progressives," ranging from rather conservative centrists to pretty hardcore leftists, with very different and ultimately irreconcilable agendas. Since strategy is primarily goal-driven, and since "progressive" goals diverge so significantly, there necessarily have to be painful trade-offs when it comes to uniting behind a candidate and an agenda. There is no easy way out of these strategic dilemmas.

The Nation editorial further opines:

The point is not to organize for a particular contender but rather to assure that whoever wins is accountable to our stances against the Iraq War and for restoration of civil liberties, a robust response to global warming and universal healthcare.

Yes, but this is one of the key questions: How can progressives effectively keep candidates accountable to a progressive agenda once they are in office? One would think that the fact that they were elected with their support would help. It would help even more if they were "one of them," so to speak. Many had hoped that this would be the case of Deval Patrick in Massachusetts, only to be rather disappointed once he assumed office. Could that happen with Obama on a national scale? How deep does his experience as a community organizer in Chicago reach, of which he claims that it was the best education he has ever received (including Harvard Law School). Or is this an irrelevant question?

Finally, The Nation appears to advocate for what we call a "movement-electoral strategy" in our survey (pdf) of progressive strategy, which includes Democracy for America and Progressive Democrats of America:

The progressive voice on these issues will gain traction only if MoveOn.org, Democracy for America and Progressive Democrats of America, as well as unions, environmental groups and other issue-focused organizations, rapidly expand into a cohesive movement. New technologies make it easier than ever to organize voter lists and to communicate with voters about the candidates and the evolving dynamics of the race. In partnership with innovative state-based organizations, MoveOn.org, unions and other national groups should prepare interventions throughout the process. Such interventions are essential.

Interestingly, Dan Berger also identifies the beginning of a "mass movement" from his experience at the first US Social Forum. Yet if you compare the agenda of the Forum with those of the leading "progressive" candidates, you can measure the distance that separates very different understandings of what it means to be "progressive."

Very appropriately, the motto of the Forum is "Another World is Possible. Another US is necessary." But how do make the necessary possible, when the leading candidate is Hillary Clinton? Though it is hard for some progressive to accept, politics, it seems, stubbornly if not necessarily, remains the art of the possible.

And please don't forget to be "realistic" when it comes to political strategy.

Nader the Narcissist: Unsafe in any Election

Please note: This post has also been published at TPMCafe, and has received 25 comments as of July 3, 2007. I hope you are going to join the discussion at TPMCafe or continue it here.

The first half of this title is inspired by Tood Gitlin's criticism of Nader running as an independent in the 2004 election: From Tragedy to Farce, concluding that his narcissism knows no limits:

So, when all is said and done, leave aside Nader's wishful thinking -- his hallucination of ideologically aroused masses, his prayer that the Electoral College system might vanish. What Nader's decision amounts to is not logic but an exercise in monomania by a man who once accomplished great things and now believes that whatever he claims to accomplish is great by virtue of the fact that he claims it. Quixotic Nader, whose first run was tragedy, now tries farce. It's not funny.

This conclusion is as true today as it was three years ago. In fact, it might even be more true and potentially more tragic, and even less funny, because apparently he is seriously thinking about running again in 2008!

In 2000, Nader arguably helped Bush defeat Gore. As a reminder, Gore lost to Bush in Florida by only 537 votes, whereas Nader received 97,448. Most analysts agree that many of those who voted for Nader would otherwise have voted for Gore had Nader not run, at a minimum 538. In 2004, his role was insignificant. What will his impact be in 2008, if he decides to run again?

He has started calling Hillary Clinton a "coward," and, in his recent article, Hillary's Hypocrisy, criticizes what he calls her "twofer strategy:

So she travels around the country with her twofer strategy - pandering to powerful audiences and flattering gatherings of Democratic voters. She has watched Bill’s lack of political fortitude win elections in this two-party, elected dictatorship against the hapless Republicans. Why should she be any different?

If she wins the primary and the November elections the country will get another kind of twofer in the White House. Here they’ll go again.

In an interview with Politico.com, Nader Ponders Run, Calls Clinton "Coward," he gives all the familiar reasons for running yet again, essentially revolving around the necessity to offer a real alternative to what he sees as the two party duopoly and the corporate interests that dominate the political system.

Nader believes that the Democrats are likely to win the presidency and maintain their majority in Congress. And yet, he still wants to run.

What third parties can do is bring young people in, set standards on how to run a presidential election and keep the progressive agenda in front of the people. And maybe tweak a candidate here and there in the major parties.

For a persuasive explanation of how futile if not counterproductive third parties tend to be in a two-party system and an electoral system based on plurality, and a devastating critique of Nader's justification of his 2000 campaign, see Bill Domhoff's Why Third Parties Don't Work (March 2005). From a progressive point of view, what does this mean for the future strategy of the Green Party? Indeed, a very strong argument can be made that running as a third party candidate in the US tends to be counterproductive.

For the most part, Nader's attempts were pretty much irrelevant; but in 2000 they were fatal. Beyond spoiling the election of Gore, the deeper issue seems to be that Nader is not sufficiently concerned with the effects that a conservative presidency has on precisely those less privileged people that he claims to care about so much. For he must have known how close the election was going to be, both in 2000 and 2004; and likely also in 2008. And how credible is his emphasis on how indispensable third parties are in the US while running as a an independent candidate in 2004, and not as a candidate of the Green Party, as he did in 2000?

Most importantly, how much does the progressive agenda really matter to him when deciding to run? From a strategic point of view, running as a third party candidate takes away precious resources and attention from those candidates who actually do have a chance of winning and therefore can advance the progressive agenda much more effectively.

Nader is 73 now. No one denies the crucial role he has played in advancing progressive causes. But it is high time for him and all other progressive third party candidates to start behaving more responsibly in elections, if not more strategically in politics in general. Quo vadis, Nader?