Indiana Democratic Senatorial candidate Joe Donnelly’s jobs program is Tea Party Light

This commentary on new Indiana Senator Joe Donnelly's political platform is slightly edited from its original publication on Examiner.com.   This author found Donnelly's platform and program to be Tea Party Light despite his running  as a Democrat; and this judgment has been confirmed by what he has done in office since his election in 2012.  An avowed Blue Dog Democrat, Donnelly follows that pattern of somewhat economically liberal but socially conservative Democratic politicians that are the norm generally in Indiana.  A socially conservative, even hidebound, state that traditionally swings Republican, Donnelly won election narrowly because his Republican challenger, Richard Mourdock, made a major faux pas in the 2012 election by saying that if  woman became pregnant through incest or rape she still shouldn't have access to abortion, because "that's what God intended."  Yet, despite this, Mourdock still got 47% of the vote--GF

Indiana’s Democratic Party Establishment is at it again:  against a strongly right-wing Republican challenger in Indiana, a state so traditionally extremely conservative it can be called hidebound and politically, economically ignorant, the Democrats have once again turned to a self-professed Blue Dog Democrat, Joe Donnelly, as challenger to Tea Party-endorsed Republican candidate Richard Mourdock, who handily defeated veteran “moderate” incumbent Richard Lugar 61-39% in the Republican primary.  Once again, as with the successful running of Blue Dog Democrat Evan Bayh for Indiana Governor and Senator and the hapless campaign in 2010 of Blue Dog Democrat Brad Ellsworth against Republican Dan Coats, Indiana’s Democrats are taking “progressive” and labor voters for granted, assuming they will automatically support Democratic candidates who are more akin to Republicans than they are to traditionally-labeled “liberal” Democrats. 

But while this paid off electorally in the case of Bayh, the result was not good for either Indiana or the nation.  Bayh, who as Governor labeled the state’s labor movement, which had supported him, a “special interest group” and introduced a punitive “welfare reform” measure while saying that single mothers needed to be “slinging burgers” rather than receiving welfare assistance, further demonstrated his self-identified “fiscal conservative” leanings as Senator by being not only the Democrat in office who had voted the most times with the Republicans, but was also a “bipartisan” co-author of the Congressional authorization for George W. Bush’s ill-fated war in Iraq as well as a co-author of the “bankruptcy reform” law that penalized the “middle class” that Blue Dogs claim to support against those “undeserving poor” allegedly leeching from the teat of federal largess.  Bayh, who resigned from the Senate, went on to work for the Chamber of Commerce as an advocate against business regulation, when deregulation itself was a major contributor to the economic recession that has plagued the U.S. since 2007 (which is more than simply a “liberal” view, unless one considers the views of Nobel Prize-winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman to be based on “liberal” ideology rather than professional understanding).

Currently the Donnelly-Mourdock race is a dead heat, with each candidate having 40% support each among potential voters, with 20% undecided.  Of course, the Donnelly campaign is having a field day decrying Mourdock as a Tea Party extremist who appeals to the far right while alienating independents and moderates, including many supporters of former Senator Richard Lugar.  (The Donnelly campaign has actually launched a “Republicans for Donnelly” committee to pick up support form disaffected Lugar voters, which is already reaping some success).   Further, for the Donnelly campaign to label both the Republican Party and Mourdock himself as dominated by the far right is a pretty easy task, as shown by the items posted on the official Donnelly website, linked at http://www.joeforindiana.com/news, which contains not only Donnelly-camp press releases and citations of Mourdock’s official stances on issues, but news stories taken from the Indianapolis Star and the New York Times.

It doesn’t take much to demonstrate that Richard Mourdock is heavily indebted to the Tea Party not only ideologically but financially, having received important campaign contributions from groups linked to the Tea Party and the far right, and that Mourdock himself expresses positions that many self-identified “moderates” and even “conservatives” would find extreme.  Donnelly’s website shows that very well.  But does Donnelly himself, as a self-identified Blue Dog, i.e., very conservative, Democrat, offer a positive alternative?  A look at his Jobs Program, linked at http://files.www.joeforindiana.com/DonnellyJobsPlan.pdf, shows Joe Donnelly’s proposals themselves to be Tea Party Light, as opposed to Mourdock’s Tea Party Heavy.

And it’s more than a question of “liberal” versus “conservative” ideology; it’s a question of what’s really going to work to create jobs and a vibrant economy both in Indiana and nationally, and what is just a repackaging of the neoliberal economic nostrums that have been around ever since the Reagan days from 1980 until now,  a time already marred by three major recessions, stagnant wages for working people while the already-rich have become even richer, economic inequality that’s at its greatest since 1929 (itself a major contributor to the severity of the Great Depression of the 1930s), significantly increased poverty and intractable unemployment even in good times, and the undermining of the “middle class” that has been going on since the 1970s and which is continuing with a vengeance.  These are all demonstrable facts, and it doesn’t take a “liberal” to see that none of these are desirable; nor does it take much to see that the much-decried New Deal reforms that raised taxes on the rich, provided for Social Security, unemployment compensation, collective bargaining rights for unionized workers, and put into place a minimal social safety net, were positive contributors, not drags on, the prosperity that characterized the U.S. economy from the late 1940s into the mid-1970s.  Anyone saying that they didn’t goes against the palpable realities of economic history and statistical measurement, even though denouncing the New Deal is currently politically fashionable; which by no means would be the first time that ignorance and dismissal of fact became politically fashionable!  Even the most cursory look at U.S. and world history would demonstrate that.

When Richard Nixon and Milton Friedman said in the mid-1970s that “We are all Keynesians now” they were stating economic reality, not political ideology.  Regardless of political opinion, John Maynard Keynes made major contributions to economic science as such, and he and his successors among economists and economic policy makers did something far more that simply spout some new “liberal” orthodoxy.  So did another derided economic thinker, Karl Marx, who is returning to deserved recognition now, thanks to the Great Recession of 2007.  “By their fruits ye shall know them”:  and the fruits of neoliberalism, extreme political conservatism, and centrist political adaptation are much in abundance, have been since the 1980s, and certainly since 2007—and they are unpalatable indeed.  This author submits that not only as a self-identified person of the political left, but also as the holder of an actual university degree in economics itself.

So let’s look at Joe Donnelly’s Blue Dog program for job creation, as stated in the PDF linked above.  The first thing to note is that his proposals are not all bad, as even hard-line economic conservatives would have to admit; but those that are manifest reliance on ‘big government” and applying Keynesian measures in economic policy!  Those that express the current nostrums of political conservatism and economic neoliberalism would actually work against job creation, as I shall demonstrate below.

First, on the positive side, Donnelly demands, “Oppose unfair trade deals that ship Hoosier jobs overseas” and “Close tax loopholes that encourage some Wall Street corporations to send American jobs to other countries.”  Good ideas advocated by many, but also good ideas that run counter not only to neoliberal orthodoxy, but which were also placed into practice by conservative and centrist political practice under Ronald Reagan, both Bushes, Bill Clinton, and are maintained today by Obama.  Renegotiating “free trade” pacts such as NAFTA and CAFTA would be a very good idea, and would benefit not only workers in the U.S. but also workers in countries such as Mexico, where workers emigrate, often illegally, to places such as the U.S because of the poverty engendered by destruction of their own domestic economies by multinational corporations enhancing profitability through unregulated markets that undercut domestic jobs throughout, trample on environmental protections and workplace safety regulations, slash wages, and engender race-to-the-bottom “free market” trade policies.  Same goes for “tax loopholes,” again another manifestation of “unregulated free market” economic policies that supposedly bring benefits to all by enabling the free movement of capital to the most productive workforces, but only mean job cuts for “overpaid” workers and starvation wages for those workers elsewhere who have “more competitive” wage rates.  As Joseph Stiglitz has written so accurately on markets:

 

This we should know by now: markets on their own are not stable. Not only do they repeatedly 

generate destabilizing asset bubbles, but, when demand weakens, forces that exacerbate the downturn come into play.  Unemployment, and fear that it will spread, drives down wages, incomes, and consumption—and thus total demand.  Decreased rates of household formation—young Americans, for example, are increasingly moving back in with their parents - depress housing prices, leading to still more foreclosures. States with balanced-budget frameworks are forced to cut spending as tax revenues fall—an automatic destabilizer that Europe seems mindlessly bent on adopting. (“After Austerity,” Nation of Change, May 7, 2012, http://www.nationofchange.org/after-austerity-1336401779.)

The dismal jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday, June 1, which reported a dismal creation of only 69,000 jobs in May and the first rise in the unemployment rate in nearly a year, only underscores the need for a proactive program of direct job creation.  Donnelly indirectly understands this by calling for an increased share to Indiana of federal revenues for road and bridge upgrades, which would directly employ more workers to work on such projects; but then he undermines this understanding by emphasizing “trickle-down” indirect job creation by calling for more tax cuts and economic incentives for small businesses—which may, or may not, result in increased hiring by such businesses.  And though historically small businesses (officially defined as those businesses with 100 employees or fewer) are the biggest job-creators, they are also the biggest creators of jobs with lower wages and fewer benefits, if indeed, any benefits.  What would be far more effective would be a policy of direct job creation such as a new Works Progress Administration (WPA) modeled on the WPA created under the New Deal that provided direct employment to some 8.5 million workers in the late 1930s.  (On such a program and its historical effectiveness see the following articles on the New Politics website: George Fish, “Open Programmatic Proposal to the Broad U.S. Left for Directly Dealing with the Present Unemployment Crisis,” http://newpol.org/node/425; Brian King, “Jobs for All,”  http://newpol.org/node/445; and Jesse Lemisch, “Occupy the American Historical Association: Demand a WPA Federal Writers' Project,” http://newpol.org/node/555; as well as UCubed, “WPA 2.0 is Solution to Unemployment Crisis,” http://www.unionofunemployed.com/blog/recent-news/ucubed-wpa-2-0-is-solution-to-unemployment-crisis/.)

Donnelly also endorses the shibboleth of retraining unemployed workers, which is at best only a partial solution.  First, because skills demanded by employers at any one time are regularly changing, and retraining programs through technical colleges and other places traditionally teach the skills that used to be in high demand, but are not necessarily so at present; second, many laid-off workers are older, and/or have family obligations that interfere with going back to school; and third, the need for employment for the unemployed is now, at whatever skill level the unemployed have now—which can often be quite high, as many potential workers who are classified as “unskilled” or “lacking in experience” are in fact well-educated college graduates!  (See Bonnie Kavoussi, “Unemployed College Graduates As Vulnerable As High School Dropouts to Long-Term Unemployment: Report,” Huffington Post, February 2, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/02/long-term-unemployment-college-graduates_n_1250418.html;  Catherine Rampell, “Many with New College Degree Find the Job Market Humbling, New York Times, May 18, 2011; and Hope Yen, “1 in 2 new graduates are jobless or underemployed,” Associated Press, April 22, 2012.)  This is especially true in Indiana, which has long suffered a “brain drain” due to the lack of high-skill jobs, and where many Indiana college graduates are unemployed, underemployed, or have only temporary jobs.  (See in particular on how college graduates in Indiana can be derisively dismissed as “unskilled” George Fish, “Add another Frustration to Being Unemployed: A Case in Point from Indiana’s WorkOne State Employment Agency,” New Politics, http://newpol.org/node/564, and George Fish, “Indiana’s Brain Drain: the problem that won’t go away,” Examiner.com, reposted on "politically Incorrect Leftist.")

Last, Joe Donnelly advocates measures that would actually be counterproductive to job creation, such as calling for a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution and being fixated on the so-called “deficit problem,” which, as economists Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz (as mentioned above, both Nobel Prize-winners in economics) and University of California economist and former Clinton Administration Secretary of Labor Robert Reich have all emphasized numerous times, is a pseudo-problem manufactured by conservatives.  Krugman, Stiglitz and Reich have all demonstrated that truth of “Keynesian orthodoxy,” also confirmed by economic history, that the use of temporary deficit spending by government to create employment (coupled with progressive income taxation on higher income brackets) not only directly produces revenue for paying off the deficit by making unemployed workers employed taxpayers, those same workers’ wages also directly fuel consumption which further creates jobs.  A full-employment economy is a win-win situation, whereas an economy with significant unemployment is a downward-spiral lose-lose situation.  (In fact, the budget surplus that was created under the Clinton Administration was turned into a deficit under George W. Bush by tax cuts for the very rich coupled with high defense spending, notably for the futile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.) 

Donnelly also indulges in the all-too-common “bash China” syndrome, by which the U.S.’s economic ills would be solved if China would only revalue the yuan and “play fair” in trade.  But that argument is only partially true, and contains fundamental fallacies.  As the report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) cited by Donnelly himself in support of his hard line on Chinese trade, that of Robert E. Scott, “Growing U.S. Trade Deficit with China Cost 2.8 Million Jobs Between 2001 and 2010,” EPI Briefing Paper, September 20, 2011, http://www.epi.org/publication/growing-trade-deficit-china-cost-2-8-million, states (p. 18):

 

Is America’s loss China’s gain? The answer is not clearly affirmative. China has become dependent on the U.S. consumer market for employment generation, suppressed the purchasing power of its own middle class with a weak currency, and, most important, now holds over $3 trillion in hard currency reserves instead of investing them in public goods that could benefit Chinese households. Its vast purchases of foreign exchange reserves have stimulated the overheating of its domestic economy, and inflation in China has accelerated rapidly in the past year. Its repression of labor rights has suppressed wages, thereby artificially subsidizing exports.

 

So, while Joe Donnelly stands as fundamentally different from open Tea Partier Richard Murdock, by staying within the Blue Dog Democrat framework he himself does not propose an adequate solution to either Indiana’s or the U.S’s fundamental unemployment problem.  He may be the “lesser of two evils,” but the lesser of two evils is not in itself a positive good.  

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

 

   

The Tea Party and the 2012 Indiana elections

This, and another article from the 2012 Indiana elections, on how Indiana's new Senator, Joe Donnelle, ran on a platform in 2012 that was Tea Party Light, were both originally published on Examiner.com that year, and are reprinted on "Politically Incorrect Leftist" because they have stood the teat of time:  they are both still highly relevant to today's politics--GF

Indiana is traditionally a very conservative state with a penchant not only for electing Republicans, but also a state where Democrats tend to be Blue Dogs and Republicans outright reactionaries.  But Indiana can also surprise on that.  In 2008, while incumbent Republican Governor Mitch Daniels and Senate hopeful Dan Coats beat their Democratic opponents by nearly two-to-one margins, Obama narrowly carried the state by 30,000 votes. Governor Daniels, a fiscal conservative who enthusiastically signed into law bills that established Indiana as a right-to-work state and cut unemployment benefits, and said that unions were no longer needed, also called for a Republican “truce” on divisive social issues—even as he signed into law the defunding of Planned Parenthood in Indiana (however, a federal district court issued a preliminary injunction against defunding).  Richard Lugar, a long-established moderate Republican who’d served as Indiana Senator since 1976 and earned the respect of Democrats as well as Republicans, lost to Tea Party-backed insurgent challenger (and state Treasurer) Richard Mourdock in May’s primary by a 61%-39% margin—but Lugar isn’t campaigning for Mourdock, and Mourdock’s Tea Party support could make him Indiana’s Sharon Angle or Christine O’Donnell in the tight Senatorial race with Democrat Joe Donnelly.  Angle and O’Donnell, Tea Party-backed Senatorial challengers who handily defeated more moderate Republicans in the Nevada and Delaware primaries in 2010, respectively, went on to major defeats in the general election. 

 

Now, with Mourdock and Donnelly running neck-to-neck, with latest polls showing them in a statistical tie, a Donnelly win would help ensure Democratic control of the Senate.  Whereas Lugar was nearly invincible each time he ran, Mourdock clearly is not; and his hardball campaign against Lugar in the primary has alienated a lot of moderate Republicans and conservative to moderate Democrats who would’ve gladly supported the six-term Senator.  That handily-received Tea Party endorsement that was an asset to Mourdock in the primary could well turn out to be a serious liability in the general election.  That, and non-support from Lugar Republicans. 

 

Joe Donnelly certainly hopes so, and is vigorously trying to appeal to disaffected Lugar supporters as well as portray Mourdock as a Tea Party extremist.  Mourdock, for his part, is now trying to tack to the center, portraying himself as a typical Indiana conservative rather than a Tea Party fanatic, and trying to make what political hay he can by vaguely referencing Lugar’s stated wish after the primary that he hoped for a Republican majority in the Senate (which a Mourdock victory could enable).  But Lugar’s office recently slammed as unauthorized a mailing from an outside group that claimed Lugar support for Mourdock, and Lugar himself has refused to campaign for Mourdock.

 

Another Republican candidate with strong Tea Party ties is Mike Pence, a six-term Congressman running for Governor against Democrat John Gregg.  Only this race isn’t even close—at least not yet.  Pence has a two-digit lead over Gregg in statewide polls, has far outdone him in fund-raising, and has been further aided by an initially lackadaisical campaign on Gregg’s part, along with his inability to rally Democrats and reach out to women and independents.  But Gregg has been aggressively trying to change that lately, pointedly reaching out to disaffected Lugar supporters, attacking Pence’s ultraconservative record as Congressman, and his fixation on divisive social issues such as being staunchly anti-abortion, supporting a cutoff of all federal funding for Planned Parenthood for any purpose, defining marriage as only between a man and a woman, and a family as consisting of a married man and woman only couple as heads of household (single-parent households would thus not count as families, nor would households where heads of household were not married, or of the same gender).   Pence also wants to put into Indiana law a stipulation that no other state has—that each piece of proposed legislation be subject to an impact study on how it would affect such “traditional” families as defined above.

 

Gregg has also been actively pointing to Pence’s unabashed Tea Party support and participation—regularly speaking at Tea Party rallies, and being the first member of the Republican Congressional leadership to join Michele Bachmann’s Tea Party Congressional caucus.  To counter this, Pence, like Mourdock, has been trying to tack to the center—emphasizing on the campaign trail job creation, economic development, and restructuring education to give more emphasis to vocational training rather than college prep.  But Gregg and the Democrats charge that this soft-pedaling of social issues that Pence engages in now could all change in January 2013 should Pence become Governor, and have the power to force his prior widely-publicized far-right social agenda, which Gregg calls “social engineering.” Pence is also widely considered as planning to use his Indiana gubernatorial victory, should it come, as a springboard from which to launch himself as a future Republican candidate for President. 

 

Both Gregg and Donnelly are conservative Democrats.  Donnelly, a Congressman from Indiana’s northwestern Second District, is a member of the House Blue Dog caucus, while Gregg, former Speaker of the Indiana House from 1996-2002 who describes himself as a “gun-totin’, Bible-quotin’ Southern Indiana Democrat,” was Honorary Chair of the Hillary Clinton for President Indiana Campaign in 2008.  And while Donnelly supported aspects of Obama’s program such as the bailout and Obamacare, he’s also dissented from other aspects of it:  he supports building the Keystone XL pipeline, and opposes cap-and-trade legislation. 

 

While Gregg chose liberal present Indiana House Minority Leader Vi Simpson as his running mate for Lieutenant Governor and actively worked with liberal Democrats and Republicans as Speaker of the Indiana House, he implores prospective voters to “Look beyond the party label” in this conservative state that last elected a Democratic Governor in 2000.  Donnelly calls for tax cuts for small businesses to create jobs and supports a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, conservative measures criticized by this writer in his Examiner.com article, “Democratic Senatorial candidate Joe Donnelly’s jobs program is Tea Party Light,” reposted on "Politically Incorrect Leftist."

 

As for Indiana grassroots Tea Party activists, they are enthusiastically working for both Pence and Mourdock.  A news story from Indianapolis TV station WTHR, “Mourdock finding support among Tea Party,”  http://www.wthr.com/story/19608135/mourdock-finding-support-among-tea-party, quotes Indiana Tea Party activist Greg Fettig as saying that while Mourdock never said he was a Tea Party candidate, “The Tea Party claimed him.”  Fettig said this as he delivered a bundle of pro-Mourdock signs to a fellow Tea Partier for placing, 25,000 planed for strategic placement in Central Indiana alone.  WTHR political analyst Robin Winston says of the Indiana Tea Party and Mourdock, “He was bought and paid for by them and supported by them.”  Dr. Theo wrote enthusiastically in the conservative Dakota Voice of a 2010 “Get Out the Vote” rally in Plainfield, Indiana, where both Richard Mourdock and Mike Pence spoke, that was sponsored and organized by the Indianapolis Tea Party.  (Plainfield is a small town to the west of Indianapolis; the link to the story is http://www.dakotavoice.com/2010/10/pence-and-murdoch-at-indianapolis-tea-party/)

 

Of course, Pence always had Tea Party support in Indiana because of his open affiliation with the Party at the national level.  The Tea Party at Perrysburg blog gushed on January 18, 2012 that Pence had already raised $5 million for his campaign. (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/9/tea-party-wins-in-indiana/) But William Teach admonished Pence in the June 17, 2010 Right Wing News for trying to tie the Tea Party movement to a moral agenda that was heavy on social issues such as support for “traditional” marriage and against abortion instead of focusing exclusively on political issues such as limited government, “loyalty to the U.S. Constitution” and individual liberty. (http://www.rightwingnews.com/republicans/mike-pence-states-tea-party-should-also-focus-on-morality/) Of course, sentiment such as Teach’s is not shared by many Tea Partiers, who are enthusiastic supporters of draconian social legislation such as Pence endorses.  Further, Kentucky Senator and Tea Party supporter Rand Paul avidly praised both the Tea Party and Murodck’s primary victory over Lugar in the conservative Washington Times of May 9, 2012. (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/9/tea-party-wins-in-indiana/)

 

However, in mid-October a Tea Party group in northeastern Indiana was forced by the property owner to move a billboard comparing Obama to Osama Bin Laden from its original spot near the Allen Co. line (Indiana’s second-largest city, Ft. Wayne, is located in Allen Co.). (http://www.courier-journal.com/viewart/20121015/NEWS0203/310150113/Indiana-tea-party-group-forced-move-anti-Obama-sign)  In September, John Gregg got into trouble for calling Mike Pence a “Teabagger,” a term many Tea Party members consider a slur. (http://blogs.wishtv.com/2012/09/10/did-john-gregg-direct-a-slur-at-mike-pence/)  And in early October an outside group supporting Gregg, Believe in Indiana, posted ads in Indianapolis and Ft. Wayne that show Pence speaking at a 2011 Tea Party rally in Washington, D.C. and tying him to Mourdock as “Tea Party and extreme.” (http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/politics/new-ad-attacks-mike-pence)   Tensions and tempers are running high this election season in Indiana.

 

As is seen from the above, the Mourdock-Donnelly and Gregg-Pence races, and the role of the Tea Party in each, are generating a lot of media attention, far more than usual in Indiana elections.  And this attention is not just confined to Indiana media.  Nationally-read newspapers such as the Louisville Courier-Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and Slate have all run stories on these races and the significance of Tea Party involvement, and the defeat of Richard Lugar by Richard Mourdock was a national story as well. Mike Pence and his political career and predilections have long been items of national interest, and have generated further commentary in such Internet outlets as the Daily Kos, Politico and Talking Points Memo.  Indiana newsman Brian Howey published a piece on the vicissitudes of John Gregg’s campaign that was reprinted widely. (Linked at http://www.nwitimes.com/news/opinion/columnists/brian-howey/brian-howey-the-curious-campaign-of-john-gregg/article_bd0c126f-2010-5982-9e79-f774baa6cd8d.html)   From these extensive media sources both nationally and in Indiana this writer has drawn much of the material from which this story has been composed—and the links that carry these items of reference,  while far too numerous to list, show up readily on Internet search. 

 

Indiana is normally a sleepy place for news, even local news, so it’s really unusual for such media attention to be drawn to anything Hoosier outside of the Indianapolis Colts.  However, these are unusual elections, and considerably more than usual rides on the outcomes.

 

Riding especially on the outcome of the Mourdock-Donnelly race are control of the Senate and the political future of the Tea Party, both intertwined.  The Tea Party’s had a history of winning handily with its candidates in the Republican primaries, only to lose by large margins in the general elections, and turn what should’ve been easy victories for Republicans for Senatorial seats into resounding defeats and major victories for Democrats.  It happened three times in 2010, with Sharon Angle in Nevada, Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, and Ken Buck in Colorado.  It could happen again twice in 2012:  had Lugar won the Republican primary, he would’ve been close to invincible in November; and had Todd Akin not won the Missouri primary against the  Republican establishment candidate, that seat, too, would’ve probably gone to the GOP.  As it is, Akin, who notoriously bawled that women never get pregnant in cases of “legitimate rape,” is in a tight race with Democratic former underdog Claire McCaskill; and Akin’s candidacy has been essentially disavowed by the Missouri Republican Party because of that remark.  While political handicapper Charlie Cook gave the Republicans a 60%-70% chance to gain control of the Senate in 2011, he now gives a 60% chance to the Democrats to stay in control.  (The information for the above comes from Dana Milbank’s October 19, 2012 column in the Washington Post, “The Tea Party is helping Democrats,” which has been syndicated widely; link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-the-tea-party-is-helping-democrats/2012/10/19/815e07e0-1a08-11e2-aa6f-3b636fecb829_story.html)   Tea, anyone?        

Conundrums for the Left in the 2012 Elections--the Presidential Vote

“American exceptionalism” is a bad word on the left, but it is the reality—in many ways the U.S. is different from Europe, and nowhere does that difference show up than in the political systems. Unlike European (and Canadian, Israeli) parliamentary systems, there is no coalition building in U.S. politics—it’s winner-take-all, and losers or also-rans are just not recognized; in fact, they can be ignored when it is not convenient to recognize them, even if they represent 49% of the vote. Also, thanks to the “genius” of the Founding Fathers, who feared direct democracy, there is the Electoral College to consider, because the Electoral College actually elects the President, not the voting public. The Bush-Gore contest of 2000 made this abundantly clear: while Al Gore defeated George W. Bush by 543,895 votes, with 50,999,897 voters, or 48.38% of the total electorate, casting votes for him, to 50,456,002 voters, or 47.87% of the electorate, casting votes for George W. Bush, Bush won the Presidency because he was awarded the disputed Florida Electoral College votes, giving him 277 Electoral College votes to Gore’s 266. And, as we know from his record in office, George W. Bush paid no mind to the 48.38% of the electorate that wanted Gore instead of Bush; and certainly not to the 2,882,955 voters, or 2.74% of the electorate, who voted for Ralph Nader, showing clearly that they wanted neither Bush nor Gore. That’s the nice thing about winner-take-all for the winner—you can absolutely ignore your opposition and essentially do whatever you can get away with, and smirk at those who protest, “Tough beanies, losers!”

Ralph Nader, of course, was sullied as a “spoiler,” and not just by Gore-supporting Democrats and liberals, but by elements of the left also. They claimed that the Nader vote put Bush in office because, had not been for Nader, the 2.74% of the electorate that voted for him would’ve voted for Gore, thus clearly giving Gore the Electoral College votes he needed. Of course this ignores that at least some of those who voted for Nader might not have voted at all in 2000, but rationalizations and recriminations have no room for logical subtleties. I voted for Nader in 2000 because I had no Gorillusions, and certainly not because I wanted to see George W. Bush in office. Nader addressed well the “spoiler” issue in an interview then on CNN, dismissing it with “Only Al Gore can defeat Al Gore.” If anything, Nader might’ve gained votes for Gore because, with a sharp-tongued opposition to his left, Al Gore got bolder on the campaign trail than he’d been initially. I received the same criticism from some labor Democrats who claimed that I’d really voted for Reagan when I told them I voted for Barry Commoner of the Citizens Party in 1980. No, not so in either case—I voted for Barry Commoner in 1980 because I wanted to support the politics and platform of Barry Commoner, and the same with voting for Nader in 2000. I didn’t want to buy into the “lesser evil trap” in either election.

But in looking back on it, while realizing that Al Gore would not have been either an effective President, as such things go, or a consistent champion of progressive politics and truly-needed social change, he certainly would’ve been better than George W. Bush, and perhaps better for the left as well had he won the Presidency. George W. Bush’s harshly rightist policies and practices in office did not galvanize the broad left—ranging from those mildly left of center to committed radical socialists—into sustained protest, resistance and concerted action; rather, it demoralized vastly, and drove many to eschew independent and third-party politics altogether and always vote for the Democrat as the only “realistic” alternative. And actively urge others to do so as well.

In 2004 I formally voted for John Kerry; but actually I didn’t vote for Kerry, I voted against Bush. In Indiana where I live, neither Nader nor the Green Party made it onto the ballot, and the only way to cast any kind of third-party protest vote was to go through the onerous process of casting a write-in vote for the Socialist Party candidate, a process which, at least in Indiana, meant filling out paper ballots for all races up for grabs, even if one leaves them blank—one just had to go through all those pieces of paper. In 2008 I voted for Obama, not because I had any particular Obamillusions, but mainly because at the time he was an unknown quantity who spoke well and seemed to be saying, albeit vaguely, all the right things; also because, like many Americans, I was scared to death of John McCain and especially of Sarah Palin, having that queasy feeling in my stomach that, because of McCain’s advanced age, I might wake up some morning and have President Palin to contend with! (Should this have come to pass I would’ve much preferred President Tina Fey—a clear case where the copy was far superior to the original.) Further, and once again, there was no Nader or Green Party candidate on the ballot, due to Indiana’s ballot access laws being among the most restrictive in the nation. As for the Socialist Party write-in option, the numbers tell the general futility of that—in 2008 the Socialist Party candidate got a total of 12 votes statewide.

Now it’s 2012, and I have even fewer Obamillusions than I had in 2008. I need not dwell on all the flip-flops, rotten compromises, broken promises, and even dangerous moves Obama has made since he became President—just pointing out his support of NDAA, use of lethal drones in Pakistan, compiling a “hit list” of persons targeted for assassination, advancing no serious jobs or economic recovery program, and the refusal to even consider single-payer in the healthcare debate will suffice. As has now long been pointed out, Obama, far from being even a liberal, is a pro-business centrist who clearly supports Pax Americana and regards the Wall Street crooks and big business CEOs as “savvy businessmen” (as he once stated) whom he wants on his team; and of course, surrounding himself with Wall Street types, Clintonites and Democratic Party flacks as advisors, key aides, and cabinet members while driving out, or forcing out, all those of a more progressive bent who originally came on board. But on the positive side, such as it is, he is ending active US military presence in Iraq and has set a deadline for US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. And though there is strong and concerted opposition to Obama’s policies from the left, the overwhelming opposition comes from the right, especially from the hard right, and has often been overtly racist in character.

Mitt Romney’s opposition to Obama is not at all based on Obamacare not going far enough (though it is clearly modeled on the healthcare program Romney supported as “moderate” Governor of Massachusetts), or because Romney sees the NDAA as a threat to civil liberties, or because he opposes drone warfare or official assassination lists as fundamentally unethical and disregarding of innocent lives—no, Romney’s stated opposition to Obama’s policies is all from the hard right, as his campaign rhetoric, overt appeals to the Tea Party, and choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate have amply shown. Further, very similar arguments apply to Democrats in House of Representatives and Senate races against Tea Party-supported Republicans (which is, all Republicans).

Simply put, while Obama and almost all Democrats are bad, very bad, the Republicans are worse, even much, much worse. And that’s a good part of the rub in terms of how leftists should vote in the 2012 elections, and whether it’s better, simply as a tactical measure that has some chance of effectiveness, to hold one’s nose and vote for Obama or other Democrats; or whether it’s better as a matter of principle to vote for Jill Stein and the Green Party, or Rocky Anderson and the Justice Party, or Roseanne Barr and the Peace and Freedom Party, or the Socialist Party, as possible. (Jill Stein, Presidential candidate of the Green Party, is on all state ballots except Oklahoma’s, but only as a write-in in Indiana and Georgia; the Justice Party, the Peace and Freedom Party, and the Socialist Party are on even fewer state ballots, though they may be write-in options wherever not formally listed.)

Socialists have stated it well both ways: Eugene Debs said famously, “Better to vote for what you want and not to get it than to vote for what you don’t want and to get it;” while Greg King, union activist in SEIU Local 888 and New Politics online contributor, said to me in an e-mail on October 24, “Those Democrats aren't much better than the Republicans in Indiana or nationally, but the Republicans, especially the Tea Party aligned ones, are SO bad that it's worth voting for the Democrats.” (King’s remarks were part of a comment on an article I’d written for the online Examiner.com newspaper, “The Tea Party and the 2102 Indiana elections,” where conservative Democratic candidates for Governor and Senator are running against openly Tea Party-backed Republicans, http://www.examiner.com/article/the-tea-party-and-the-2012-indiana-elections?cid=db_articles.)

Further, it isn’t only the left that has third-party movements attempting to appeal to those disaffected with both the Democrats and the Republicans. The Libertarians, and further right that the Libertarians (yes, it is possible), the Constitution Party, as well as a gaggle of openly racist and neo-Nazi splinter parties, are all trying to build opposition parties of the right that oppose the Republican Party, the right’s traditional home.

There is also the practical matter that no third party or independent Presidential electoral challenge since early in the 20th Century has ever broken through the magic 3% barrier, i.e., getting 3% or more of the total national vote; most of the time it’s been less than 2% and often less than 1%. That was true of Nader in 2000, as noted above with 2.74% of the vote, and even the actively-organized and widely-publicized run of Henry Wallace as the Progressive Party’s Presidential candidate in 1948, which garnered 2.4% of the vote—same percentage of the vote as the segregationist States Rights Party Presidential candidate, Strom Thurmond, garnered that year, but with fewer votes than the States Rights Party. The last third party to become a major party in the US was the Republican Party in 1860, but only because the two major opposition parties in the traditionally two-party American system, the Whigs and the Democrats, had either disintegrated (Whigs) or split (Democrats, with one Presidential candidate in the North, and another in the South), due to the highly divisive issue of slavery. Another aspect of that much-maligned on the left, but factually true, “American exceptionalism.”

As it is, the case on the left for voting for Obama has been compellingly, but not fully convincingly, advanced in three important articles seen by many who consider themselves left-of-center. The most forcefully pro-Obama one was by Tom Hayden, September 4’s “Saving Obama, Saving Ourselves,” http://tomhayden.com/elections/saving-obama-saving-ourselves.html; less sanguine, but still urging a vote for Obama from the left, were Achy Obejas’ “Voting Obama with no illusions” in the November 2012 In These Times (not available online until November 5) and Daniel Ellsberg’s October 18 “Progressives: In Swing States, Vote for Obama,” http://rootsaction.org/news-a-views/534-progressives-in-swing-states-vote-for-obama, also reprinted in the Huffington Post and carried by the left news listserve Portside. All three articles raised the specter of a Romney/Ryan victory as a tremendous setback for the left and enshrinement in practice of far right policies: a refrain of my argument stated above, that while Obama may be bad, Romney would be far worse. Hayden further brings up an interesting point for the overwhelmingly white anti-Obama left to consider, that persons of color, particularly African Americans and Hispanics, are for Obama by margins of 70% or greater. These are not arguments easily slighted, especially in our highly polarized winner-take-all, damn-all-those-who-didn’t-vote-for –us American political system we of the left face in 2012, and will face beyond 2012.

 And while it is true that there is little difference of substance between the Democrats and Republicans, it is sheer hyperbole to say there is no difference, especially given the open support of the Tea Party and corporate money for the Republicans; and it is accurate to say that, on all issues of concern to the left, while the Democrats usually waffle and often strongly disappoint, the Republicans advance a clear far right political and social agenda on all these issues, from civil liberties to foreign policy, economic and jobs issues to gay and women’s rights, that we of the left can consider truly dangerous, especially if enacted. And also, that too many of the anti-Obama left not only cavalierly dismiss the threat of Romney and the Tea Party-backed Republicans, they actually portray Obama as somehow worse than Romney, a greater danger to the left and to meaningful progressive social change than Romney. This smacks me as indulging in a blind ultraleftism reminiscent of Germany in 1932, when the Communist Party denounced the Social-Democrats as “social fascists” worse than the Nazis, were openly dismissive of Hitler and the Nazis as a mere flash in the pan, and advanced as their chief political slogan, “After Hitler, our turn!”

No, not after George W. Bush can we of the left categorically say there is no real threat from a corporate-supported hard right in public office; and we certainly can’t say that in light of the deadlock imposed on all progressive legislation and political appointments, no matter how tepid or unsatisfactory, by the victory of Tea Party-backed House Republicans in 2010. I don’t much like the slogan advanced for years by the Communist Party, “Defeat the ultraright,” and the strategy flowing from that, elect Democrats no matter what they are; yet I can’t categorically dismiss it either. There is some realism embodied in it, especially in view of the US’s winner-take-all political system and, in terms of the Presidency, the paramount role of the Electoral College, not the popular vote, in determining who becomes President.

Still, I can’t say that definitely rules out voting for third-party candidates of the left in protest, even though, as a matter of practicality, voting for them will have no discernible political impact in the short term. (Though it might serve as a base from which to launch an independent left electoral movement at a later date, if the left can reach out effectively to all those disaffected who voted for left third-party candidates.) But when I raised the question of who I would vote for in 2012, saying I might hold my nose and vote for Obama, or I might vote for Jill Stein as a write-in, I was excoriated by one Ed Griffith of the New Progressive Alliance, a pro-third party of the left group that does consider Obama a greater threat than Romney and talks only of the Democratic and Republican “uniparty.” Griffith, with whom I had become friends due to his support of my short-lived independent candidacy for Lt. Governor in Indiana (more on that in Part II), turned viciously against me after I’d posted an anti-Romney (but not pro-Obama) video on Facebook excoriating Bain Capital’s role in the outsourcing of jobs from a business in Freeport, Illinois to China. Griffith wrote me this final livid e-mail:

You have chosen to openly support evil and the very people who are oppressing you. You may not have the mental capacity to chose, but I am through making excuses for you. I believe we all have free will and you have made the cowardly choice to support evil even though it goes against your interest. The blood of all the innocents that Obama is killing in his many wars is on your hands. No relationship with you is possible. I will ignore all future communication.

New Politics online editor Stephen Shalom commented trenchantly on Griffith’s vitriol and its political import, "I guess Ed G. has just broken off all communication with 99% of the American population: a real good strategy for achieving social change!" Because on November 7, no matter what the outcome, we of the left will need to talk to those at the grassroots who supported Obama if we are serious about building a significant third-party electoral force. Because on November 7 we are going to wake up either to a re-elected President Obama, or a President-elect Romney, period, and not even remotely to a President-elect Stein, or a President-elect Anderson, or a President-elect Barr, or the Socialist Party nonentity as President-elect—and that alone will impact what we of the left do, and can do, for at least the next four years.

I still haven’t decided who I am going to vote for as President on November 6: whether it will be reluctantly for Obama; whether it will be futilely for Jill Stein, who advocates what I really believe in; or whether I will just ignore the Presidential race entirely here in a state that is considered a shoo-in for Romney; nor does my one vote make much difference in Indiana or nationally. So all I would advise my fellow leftists is simply and rather vacuously, “Vote whatever you think is best.” But I do know that the left is going to have to do more than dabble inconsistently in electoral politics, as it is doing now and had done for decades, if it wishes to be a serious political force; and that if serious independent left electoral third parties are to be built, they will have to be truly grassroots-based and be able to command considerable support and be able to actually win, or have a realistic chance of winning, at least some elections, even if at present only at the local level (not even statewide, because presently that simply is not possible, despite the visible, yet small, presence of the Peace and Freedom Party in California). I will be addressing how to seriously build left third-party electoral movements in a later post.