I just finished reading Barack Obama’s book, “A Promised Land,” and it made me think that if Jesus Christ descended upon the U.S. Senate, Mitch McConnell would immediately say that he would make him a one-term savior. While Barack Obama may not be a savior, in many ways, he is about as good as it can get for a U.S. president. His commitment to the common good, to integrity and ethics, to protecting individual liberties are remarkable in an era of cynicism and alternate realities.

There is the sorrow throughout the book of a man who ascends to the highest office in the world, and then finds that in many ways he is powerless, or with very limited power. The reasons are complicated, but most involve other actors on the stage, not him. Those who oppose his vision and his policies are widespread and varied. They range from Mitch and the Republican Gang to members of his own party to foreign leaders like Vladimir Putin or even Benjamin Netanyahu. In fact, most people on our planet are much more interested in exercising and expanding their individual liberties (certainly a key part of the U.S. Constitution), than they are in promoting the common good (a term that is now coming in vogue with progressives, but is absent from the Constitution).

There is one individual who stands out as Dr. No. That, of course, is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. He is like an ambidextrous pitcher. When he is in the minority, he can threaten and then orchestrate the filibuster to stop the consideration of virtually any legislation that is put before the Senate. When he is in the majority, he can refuse to assign bills to committee; nix bills that escape from committee to come to the floor of the Senate and forbid votes on bills that do come before the full Senate. He controls his Republican colleagues as Putin controls his Politburo. He is the Vince Lombardi of legislative leaders – discipline, discipline, discipline. Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing. And that leaves the president of the United States virtually powerless except for those rare occasions when he may agree with McConnell, such as the naming of a post office in Kentucky.

There are those who would say that McConnell was Dr. No with Obama because he wanted to obstruct any successes that an African-American could possibly have. While race was clearly part of the motivation, the primary reason why McConnell does what he does is because he is just plain mean.

Presently, tens of millions of Americans, perhaps more, are suffering because of the coronavirus and the economic hardships that emanate from a listless governmental response to COVID-19. The Democratically-controlled House of Representatives has passed a myriad of bills to aid people including extended unemployment insurance, paycheck protection, assistance to state and local governments. All the bills sit listlessly in the Senate. Mitch McConnell is not inclined to negotiate seriously with Nancy Pelosi. For all intents and purposes, he is unanimously backed by the other Republicans penguins in the Senate.

The meanness of McConnell, his personification of The Republican Brain, as described so brilliantly by Washington Post reporter Chris Mooney in 2012, makes progress a non-starter. It is virtually impossible for anyone with empathy to understand how and why McConnell does what he does. His meanness, his insensitivity is so ingrained that if someone the likes of Jesus Christ happened upon the Senate, McConnell would immediately invoke a strategy to make him a one-term savior.

It’s remarkable how restrained Obama is in his book. The passion to change is there; the commitment to promoting the common good is there, but there is the underlying sadness of how the Mitch McConnells of the world did not even want to give him a chance. It’s remarkable that Obama, or any Democrat, is ever elected president of the United States.

The advancement that progressives want will only come when Democrats and others have a better understanding of the McConnells, and can craft ways to reach them. The best answer is in reforming our schools to make them more empathetic, but that is a long-term project.

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A short foray back into politics from former President Barack Obama seems to indicate that he is entrenched in the old monied interests of the Democratic Party and about as far away as possible from a new Blue Wave characterized by newcomers such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. As the party needs to connect with more young people and others who have been disaffected, he chose to chastise Democrats for moping too much.

“If you are one of these folks who is watching cable news at your cocktail parties with your friends and you are saying ‘civilization is collapsing’ and you are nervous and worried, but that is not where you are putting all your time, energy and money, then either you don’t actually think civilization is collapsing … or you are not pushing yourself hard enough and I would push harder.”

The problem is, he said this and more at a cocktail party, a fund-raiser in Beverly Hills. He said it with 200 donors in attendance where the evening was “highlighted” by a performance by Christina Aguilera.

Two clear problems. First, there is way too much money in politics and Obama is just reinforcing that. It might do him well to remember that Ocasio-Cortez’s victory came over an entrenched incumbent who spent ten times as much money as she did. More and more Democrats are realizing that can be a turn-off.

That leads to the second point. The voters that Democrats need are not the ones who can go to fund-raisers, and in many ways, fund-raisers are the last place they would want to be.

It is indeed ironic how Obama came to power on a wave largely propelled by inexpensive social media. He carried with him a reputation as a “man of the people” who before he was knocking on doors for votes was knocking on doors to ask people what he could do for them and their community. That’s what community organizers do and it’s also how politicians connect with the electorate. How many of the people at the Beverly Hills shindig live in homes where anyone can get to the door and knock?

Imagine what it would do to the actual and potential Democratic electorate if Obama was going door-to-door with the likes of Ocasio-Cortez and other young progressive candidates who were not relying on money from big donors to propel them into power?

Imagine if he spent one or two days a month knocking on doors in the projects of Chicago and elsewhere to learn of their current concerns and to offer to use his skills as an attorney to help them have their rights properly recognized and respected?

The former president is spending much of his current time working on a book about his White House years. It might help him put his actions and inactions in a better perspective if he spent more time asking questions of the people who are most impacted by government action rather than those who survive no matter what.

Nothing could be more helpful to the Democratic Party and the nation than a freshly energized Barack Obama who combined his experience and wisdom with the dream and hopes that remain with his constituency. The fund-raisers deepen the coffers of fat-cats. If they mope because he doesn’t pander to them, so be it. What is needed is to get grass-roots voters out of their funk and into action.

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One of the lessons of the presidential defeat of the Democrats in 2016 is that Hillary Clinton paid minimal attention to the voters who “had no identity.” We’re actually talking about those who are not part of the mosaic of the identity politics that has become fundamental to the Democratic Party ever since the 1960s.

These people excluded from the mosaic are often known as white, sometimes as poor whites, or even as angry whites. But Donald Trump took a page out of George Wallace and Richard Nixon’s playbook in 1968 and referred to them as “forgotten Americans.” There is nothing demeaning about that and it has the cachet of other identity groups of including a victim status.

But there was a time when the so-called forgotten Americans were in the political tent of the Democratic Party. It was a time when identity was based more on economic well-being rather than ethnic identity. It was at the time that Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in 1932 and he saw that the route to getting America moving again was not trickle-down economics, but rather priming the pump from the bottom. Having the government be the distributor of income to those who were poor was much more efficient and effective than leaving it to unrestrained capitalists. In fairness to Republicans, it must be said that FDR’s distant cousin Theodore Roosevelt took many steps in his 1901-1909 presidency to curb the abuses of unbridled capitalists.

In his book Listen Liberal, Thomas Frank argues that the Democratic Party has gotten away from its roots as champions of the economically oppressed and become much more concerned about protecting professional classes and ethnic minorities. He wisely points out that there is no logical reason to exclude the “forgotten Americans” from the coalition except that they are an easy punching bag for professionals and minorities. “Forgotten Americans” and those who speak on their behalf are constant fodder for late-night comedians and elitists elsewhere in our society.

Democrats seem to have learned part of the lesson. They are making more of an effort to “talk the talk;” to include “forgotten Americans” in their lists of special interest groups. This is not without difficulty for Democrats. As Thomas Franks points out in his previous book, What’s the Matter with Kansas, “forgotten Americans” are concerned about something besides the economic considerations that were so fundamental to the New Deal and even the Great Society. They have become joined at the hip with so-called “values issues.” Barack Obama may have summed it up best at a time when he thought that he was off-the-record, and he talked about those Americans who “cling to God and their guns.”

What would help Democrats would be if their leaders would do more of “walking the walk” with those among us, of any ethnicity, who are getting short-changed. For Democratic leaders such as Obama and Hillary Clinton, this could mean going back to their roots – what they did in their twenties.

Barack Obama was a community organizer. He walked the streets on the south side of Chicago where tenants were being taken advantage of by the Housing Authority. On a daily basis, he worked with the very people that the New Deal Democratic Party wanted to help.

Certainly, Barack Obama is entitled to a break after the stresses of the presidency, particularly with the vitriolic hate of Republicans like Mitch McConnell. But does there come a time when Obama can step away from the life of fund-raisers and hobnobbing with the likes of Richard Branson and instead live in a world where he is closer to the people who are most in need of the Democratic Party.

In her twenties, Hillary Clinton worked for the Children’s Defense Fund and also as an attorney for the Senate Watergate Committee. She was clearly in the legal trenches for those who were oppressed. Her “Goldwater Girl” days were long past, and she was a champion for social justice.

It is not unprecedented for a former president or presidential candidate to get back in the trenches. Look no further than Plains, Georgia and Jimmy Carter.

What would it say, what would it mean to the Democratic Party and those who run with under its banner if Barack Obama spent a couple of days a month knocking on the doors of economically depressed people and used his legal skills to provide protection for them? What would it mean if Hillary Clinton argued cases for the Children’s Defense Fund?

It would be interesting if Obama and Clinton re-acquainted themselves with “the other America,” if even on a limited basis. The message to Democrats should be that our constituents include everyone, and we never should be above being with “the people.”

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Well, yes, it’s not the clearest photo of all time, but that’s because it’s taken from a television screen. But if you wanted a poster for what is wrong with money and politics, this picture will do it.

In the center, and at the podium, is J.B. Pritzker, a candidate running for the Democratic nomination for governor in Illinois. Why is that a problem, after all, shouldn’t anyone who meets the legal requirements to run for office be allowed to?

Absolutely. And the fact that according to Forbes, Pritzker is worth 3.5 billion, nor that his family owns the Hyatt hotel chain. America should be safe for anyone to run for office, regardless of how wealthy they are.

If Pritzker was just a wealthy man who has an interest in politics (he majored in political science at Duke University), there would not be a problem. It wouldn’t necessarily be a problem that his list of friends includes former President Barack Obama or even former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.

Here’s where it gets tricky, or maybe just plain disgusting. His friendships are littered with favors being asked and favors being granted. When that happens in politics, it is politely called conflict of interest. In other circles, it is called corrupt.

Shortly after Barack Obama was elected president, the question of filling his Senate seat became a topic of conversation. There would not be an immediate special election, instead the governor of the state, Rod Blagojevich at the time, would make an appointment.

It turned out that Blagojevich’s efforts to “sell” the seat became cause for him to become another Illinois governor to be sent to prison. But J.B. Pritzker was right in the middle of the dealing. According to FBI wiretaps obtained by the Chicago Tribune, the following took place:

J.B. Pritzker, a billionaire businessman with political ambitions, told Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich he was “really not that interested” in the U.S. Senate seat the governor was dealing in late 2008.

Instead, Pritzker offered his own idea: Would Blagojevich make him Illinois treasurer?

“Ooh, interesting,” Blagojevich said during a November 2008 phone call with Pritzker. “Let’s think about that. You interested in that?”

“Yeah,” Pritzker answered, “that’s the one I would want.”

So, Pritzker is not some paragon of virtue running for office who happens to be a billionaire. He is tightly intertwined with politicians and others who make the levers of government move.

The photo shows Illinois Senator Dick Durbin standing next to Pritzker. Durbin has made a name for himself as a liberal, if not progressive, who can work effectively with Republicans. He has been one of the leaders to achieve a bi-partisan solution to immigration issues, and would probably be hailed as a very effective deal-maker if it was not for Donald Trump scuttling his work.

But when it comes to supporting Pritzker against other Democrats running for the gubernatorial nomination, Durbin is tainted. Pritzker has donated at least $25,000 to Durbin campaigns, and it could be far more.

Also next to Pritzker is Illinois’ other Democratic Senator, Tammy Duckworth. She too is a recipient of Pritzker largesse.

Pritzker money is all over Illinois politics, particularly among Democrats and including to a large extent Barack Obama. J.B.’s sister, Penny Pritzker, became Obama’s Secretary of Commerce.

So regardless of what ideas J.B. Pritzker has (he says that he supports a public option for health insurance for Illinois, but the state is virtually bankrupt), this man is not who Democrats who we can respect should be supporting. That’s what’s wrong with the picture, and unfortunately, all over America there are similar photos of “pay-to-play” endorsements.

What can we do? At the very least, express our outrage and consider withholding support.

The post What’s wrong with this picture? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Every quarter, Factcheck.org likes to take a look at the numbers since Obama became President. They go deeper than just unemployment and study metrics like corporate profits, the number of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and how other countries view the U.S. Here’s a look at where we stand in July 2016, with just a few months of his presidency left.

The post Obama’s numbers appeared first on Occasional Planet.

President Barack Obama and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders met on Thursday, June 9, 2016 to discuss “where do we go now” following the primaries and caucuses in California and five other states. Shortly thereafter, he endorsed Hillary Clinton, in a paid video by the Clinton campaign.

In the announcement, the president said that the differences that exist in 2016 between Clinton and Sanders are no different than those that he and Clinton faced eight years ago. This sounds nice; it has a certain symmetry to it, but it may not be accurate. In fact, it is likely an inconvenient truth that it is not so and failing to recognize that will make it more difficult to garner the backing of Sanders and his supporters in the fall campaign against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Acknowledging the differences between 2008 and 2016 can be key to bringing the Sanders – Clinton – and Obama wings of the Democratic party together and fashioning not only a successful campaign this fall, but developing a renewed purpose with a progressive perspective for the future.

The differences are spelled out quite well by Tim Dickinson in Rolling Stone:

But, looking back on the 2008 campaign, the substantive differences on policy were vanishingly small. There were big fights over judgment (the Iraq War) and the claim to history (the first African-American versus the first woman nominee). But on policy grounds, Clinton and Obama were all but the same candidate.

Their most salient disagreement was whether the Democratic plan for universal health care ought to include a mandate to buy coverage. Clinton insisted the mandate was essential; Obama opposed as a matter of principle. They debated it ad nauseum. But in the end, this squabble was much ado about nothing. When Obama became president, Clinton’s top health-policy adviser was tapped by the White House to run point reform — and the individual mandate became a bedrock principle of Obamacare. 

This is relevant today, because falling in line behind Obama in 2008 required Clinton to swallow little more than personal pride. It did not require sacrifice of any dearly held principle or policy stance — only surrender of the idea that she would have made a better president.

In 2016, the contested terrain is not symbolic. Consider Sanders’ call to break up the big banks against Clinton’s proposal to better regulate Wall Street.

This is a difference of orientation, not degree. And it is but one of many such differences.

The profound differences between Sanders and Clinton, coupled with Obama nearing the liberation of the post-presidency provide an opportunity for more progressive change. In a nutshell, here is what each of them have to do to make this happen.

1. Sanders, who has good reason (at least in his own mind) to be spiteful about how the race for the nomination turned out, needs to drop his issues about 2016. He ran a good race (at least before the New York primary) and now is the time to make peace. I think that most of his criticisms of Hillary are legitimate, but there is no point in further hammering them home. Let’s learn to live with Hillary; she may surprise us and be a more progressive president than Obama.It is time for Bernie to turn his attention to more structural changes in our democracy, changes that cannot be implemented in 2016, although some might be promoted at the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia. These could include:

a. Promoting dramatic change in the way in which we choose our nominees for president. What about developing a plan so that in 2020, Democrats choose their nominees through four regional primaries beginning in March or April? No more caucuses, no more inflated importance for small states, no more parochial messaging for tiny portions of the country.

b. Promoting concrete ways to reduce the role of money in politics. Sanders is the master of fashioning a national campaign based on small donations. This could be coupled with supply-side democracy to eliminate the financial connection between Wall Street and other vested interests in the business of the people.

c. Working with schools to help students develop into more active and informed citizens in our democracy. This will include drastically reducing (or eliminating) the role of standardized tests and replacing them empathy and concern about the common good.

d. Addressing the issue of the “angry white males” who have gravitated to Donald Trump when a New Deal or Great Society agenda would have been much more beneficial to them.

e. Explaining to the American people who the word “socialism” is not a bad word, and in fact is an option for addressing most of our economic problems.

2. The President can take off the shelf all the progressive ideas that he had to put away because of a recalcitrant Republican Congress and Supreme Court. His memoirs will provide an outstanding opportunity to join with Sanders and millions of others in placing a genuine progressive agenda before the American people. He can write his memoirs with no fear of having to submit them to Congress and having them mired in gridlock. He will be free to speak his mind. He might also say that getting cozy with Wall Street and other big donors was a necessity for him to become president, but that the American people are now willing to conduct politics without big money. Perhaps most importantly, in his retirement, he would be wise to follow the outreach path of Jimmy Carter rather than Bill Clinton so that he is no longer entangled with shady moneyed interests.

Perhaps Obama and Sanders discussed some of those ideas on June 9. In all likelihood they didn’t. But Bernie can push this agenda and perhaps Obama will be a willing follower, knowing that Hillary will be his likely successor.

The post What Obama and Sanders can do to keep “the Bern” alive while helping Clinton appeared first on Occasional Planet.

First off, let me be clear. I’m voting for Bernie Sanders in the primary and I hope he wins the nomination. If he doesn’t I will vote for Hillary Clinton. I’m choosing Bernie not just because my political views are closer to his, they are, but because I think he has the best chance of winning in November.

That said, I have some problems with Bernie Sanders.  My greatest criticism is that he’s a faux Democratic Socialist. No real Democratic Socialist would vote, as he has time and again, to continue the U.S. imperialist wars in the Middle East and the Ukraine. His foreign policy views are slightly better than Clinton’s, and he is less of an outright warmonger, but he is a huge disappointment to me on that front. Bernie can’t call for a “revolution” and ignore the link between our vast imperialist military/intelligence state and the problems we are facing at home. They are profoundly connected. Even though this is a big issue for me, I’m still voting for him, and I will explain the many reasons why. Before I get to them, there are other things about Bernie that I’m not thrilled about.

Bernie’s deals with the Devil

As an Independent from Vermont, Bernie’s deals with the Democratic Party have somewhat muzzled his progressive voice. I’ll give you an example. Although to his credit, he did, rather brilliantly, force Republicans to add funding for community health centers to the Affordable Care Act, he did not push hard enough for the “public option.” Bernie had a lot of influence because he sat on the committee that wrote the bill.

He’s been terrible on guns, primarily to garner votes from gun-owning Democrats, Independents and Republicans in his home state of Vermont.

Because of his deal with the Democratic Party to not run candidates against him in exchange for his caucusing with Democrats, he has diminished his ability to be critical of the Party.

Countering Bernie criticism from the Left

There’s no shortage of criticism of Bernie by writers on the Left. People I admire, like Paul Street and Chris Hedges, consider Bernie a socialist sellout. They support Green Party candidate Jill Stein. I too would prefer to vote for her, but the stakes are too high. I don’t want a Republican in the White House.

For better or worse, Bernie’s imperfect deals with Democrats, which the Left despises and considers a deep character flaw, have allowed him to “get shit done” as Hillary supporters like to claim. In fact, Bernie has way more legislative success to his credit than Hillary, precisely because he’s a very skilled dealmaker. When he was in the House, he was called the “Amendment King,” because he improved not-so-great bills by introducing progressive amendments. Bernie is not as ideologically or politically “pure” as the Left or I would like, but he has been consistently effective, nonetheless, in passing bills that help ordinary Americans.

It’s the money, stupid

Bernie is remarkably clean when it comes to special interest money. He takes campaign donations from unions, but not banks and big corporations. And he has not benefited personally from holding elected office. After being in public office for 34 years (including time as mayor of Burlington, VT), his net worth is around $400,000. The Clintons left the White House broke, but managed to make $230 million over the next 14 years from speaking engagements, book deals, and consulting gigs.

If Hillary is nominated and elected president, her indebtedness to powerful special interests will leave her hamstrung when it comes to “getting shit done” for the American people. Hillary is very “experienced” at simultaneously dog-whistling to her donors as she tells voters she is “fighting for them.” She did that very artfully during the last debate when talking about the TPP trade agreement.

My point is that the influence of Big Money is devastating. This is the main reason Bernie keeps harping on it. Big Money produces watered down bills like the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank that are touted as the best thing since sliced bread—or the Depression—take your pick. Worse, Big Money siphons off trillions for wars that benefit its interests. For good reason, people feel shafted. No wonder they are looking for a non-establishment candidate—someone who is not drowning in campaign donations and speaking fees from banks and corporations. Those who are looking for a scapegoat choose fascist candidate Donald Trump, Those who want a government more responsive to their needs choose Bernie Sanders.

If elected president, Bernie will not be afraid to mobilize the electorate behind initiatives that challenge big money, because he has no skin in the game. He has no one to appease on Wall Street. He doesn’t have to suck up to Lloyd Blankfein to get reelected. That’s precisely why Blankfein called him “dangerous.”

Bernie can flip the House and Senate, Hillary can’t

If Bernie keeps winning the primaries, he will continue to energize and turn out a previously disaffected voter base—a broad spectrum of young Democrats, Independents and some Republicans. Unlike Hillary, he will insure a huge voter turnout in November, giving him the possibility of flipping the House and Senate.

As Bernie’s campaign manager confirmed in a recent interview, the plan is to bring progressive candidates on board to challenge Republicans down ticket. If Elizabeth Warren is his running mate, he will not only win, he could shut down Republicans for a decade. If she isn’t on the ticket, he still has a very good chance of winning the presidency and achieving a Democratic victory in the House and Senate—an advantage he will not squander. The road will be steep to take back the House and Senate, but only Bernie has a chance to achieve this.

Clinton campaign dated and out-of-touch

Bernie Sander’s record-breaking victory in New Hampshire exposed how out-of-sync the Clinton machine is with the times. Hillary lost because she based her campaign on the playbook of a fading, and out-of-touch Democratic establishment—one that has fought to deny Democratic voters a choice, and make her nomination a coronation.

Hillary figured women would vote for her simply because she was a woman. She figured college grads and wealthier Democrats would vote for her because her more “pragmatic” policies wouldn’t seriously challenge the status quo. She figured Bernie Sanders was not a real threat, and that she was the inevitable candidate—all fatal assumptions by an out-of-touch campaign.

Not surprising, in New Hampshire she won those 65 or older with incomes over $200,000, but she lost everyone else—women, men, people under 30, college grads, blue-collar workers. She lost both liberals and moderates. Hillary and the Democratic establishment backing her were so focused on big money and power players they missed the seismic shift happening under their feet. They ignored, for example, the public’s enthusiasm for populist icon Elizabeth Warren, the only woman senator yet to endorse Hillary Clinton.

In a speech from the senate floor on the sixth anniversary of Citizens United, Warren said:

A new presidential election is upon us. The first votes will be cast in Iowa in just eleven days. Anyone who shrugs and claims that change is just too hard has crawled into bed with the billionaires who want to run this country like some private club.

Wonder who she was talking about?

If Hillary wins the nomination, she won’t bring the party together

If Hillary wins the nomination, even with Bernie’s promised endorsement, she doesn’t have the skills to reunite the party. That said, because of a GOP in disarray, Hillary could still win in November, but not by much, because voter turnout could be diminished. Therein lies the danger. Throw in that her unfavorable rating is quite high, and Democrats could lose. And, because turnout will be lackluster, she will not be able to change the Republican grip on the House and Senate.

Bernie has the wisdom and judgment to be president

A good way to judge a president is by the people he or she chooses as advisors and cabinet members. If Hillary gets elected, she will bring into her administration the same old corporate/Wall Street cronies that were there under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. In contrast, Bernie has suggested people like Robert Reich, Elizabeth Warren and progressive economist Joseph Stiglitz. He has said on CNN’s State of the Union that his administration would include “great public servants who, for years, have been standing up for the middle class and the working families of this country.”

Hillary may have more “experience” in holding powerful positions, but her judgment in her various roles has been deeply flawed and compromised, and at times, atrocious. I don’t expect her judgment to be any better as president. I also cringe at the idea of Bill and Hillary being back in the White House. Something about this feels terribly wrong. A democracy should not have ruling dynasties, backed by massive amounts of corporate/oligarch money, moving in and out of the White House.

You may imagine the president as a solitary figure, making big decisions on his or her own, but in reality the president is a leader of a team. The president we need now is someone who can put together and lead an extraordinary team of public servants who will craft and enact policies that will benefit the majority of the American people. We need someone who is willing to confront and break the grip of money in politics. That person is not Hillary Clinton. It’s Bernie Sanders.

Matt Taibbi on “The Case for Bernie Sanders”

Sanders is a clear outlier in a generation that has forgotten what it means to be a public servant. The Times remarks upon his “grumpy demeanor.” But Bernie is grumpy because he’s thinking about vets who need surgeries, guest workers who’ve had their wages ripped off, kids without access to dentists or some other godforsaken problem that most of us normal people can care about for maybe a few minutes on a good day, but Bernie worries about more or less all the time.

I first met Bernie Sanders ten years ago, and I don’t believe there’s anything else he really thinks about. There’s no other endgame for him. He’s not looking for a book deal or a membership in a Martha’s Vineyard golf club or a cameo in a Guy Ritchie movie. This election isn’t a game to him; it’s not the awesomely repulsive dark joke it is to me and many others.

And the only reason this attention-averse, sometimes socially uncomfortable person is subjecting himself to this asinine process is because he genuinely believes the system is not beyond repair.

Not all of us can say that. But that doesn’t make us right, and him “unrealistic.” More than any other politician in recent memory, Bernie Sanders is focused on reality. It’s the rest of us who are lost.

The post Why I’m voting for Bernie Sanders appeared first on Occasional Planet.

It is no secret that political polarization has increased in the United States in recent years. For those who heard President Obama speak on the need for sensible gun laws on Tuesday, January 5, 2016, it is clear that he continues to look for ways to find common ground with Republicans. Yet experience has taught him that this is unlikely now, because his presidency and the 114^th Republican-controlled Congress are inexorably linked at the hip until January 2017.

The differences between Republican and Democratic presidential candidates in 2016 could not be more palpable. Republicans viciously attack one another and speak in angry tones about the solutions to America’s problems. The three Democratic candidates reason together, and each seems to strengthen his or her positions by listening to the ideas suggested by the other two. There are those who say that under present conditions, the United States may be stuck in a long-term political stand-off with continued Democratic presidents and Republican-controlled houses of Congress.

Is there any way that the messages from either party can resonate with voters who are undecided or identify themselves with the other party? Republicans like to cater to fear, and unfortunately, we do not know to what limit that might play. Life in the 21^st Century is indeed frightening in many ways, and we all have cause to be concerned. For those who either do not have the inclination or the opportunity to step back, take a deep breath, and consider the best policies for tomorrow, the Republican Party may provide the kind of “quick fix” answers that they want.

Democrats frequently try to broaden their appeal by calling on reason to connect with others. As I have previously written, efforts to communicate by reasoning are becoming more and more limited as America’s schools place far more value on standardized test scores than on students’ abilities to engage in critical thinking. When Democrats say that easy access to guns results in more gun violence, far too few people are able to take the next step; the step to support legislation to strengthen gun control. There are times when progressives have opportunities to try to strengthen the reasoning abilities of those who are challenged in this regard. But all too often, those opportunities are squandered. Renee Shur wrote here in 2013 how MSNBC has alienated “the persuadables” rather than welcoming them into progressive company.

What is clear is that progressives need to take the lead in learning more about how they think, and about how conservatives think. Republican leaders will not make an effort to find common ground so it is essential for progressive leaders to reach out to leaders and individual voters who do not share their political point of view.

In an effort to help progressive learn more about the political landscape in which we operate, I have initiated further study into the infamous “Republican Brain” and also the Democratic Brain that often views the world in a very different fashion.

Last month, I surveyed over 200 voters across the nation on bellwether political questions. While the sample size of our survey is small, it is significant enough to make it validate general findings. I offer the results not as “absolute truth,” but rather as talking points and questions that need to be further studied. We’ll focus now on just one of the sixteen questions asked.

This first question is: “In terms of determining what is right or wrong, what do you value most?” The three choices are (a) The Constitution, (b) The Word of God, and (c) Both the same. Below are the aggregate responses:

Many people, particularly those who do not consider themselves to be religious, view the Constitution as the work of many human beings. There is nothing mystical about it but it certainly is a remarkable document. Forty-seven percent of Democrats said that they value The Constitution more than “The Word of God,” while only 9% of Republicans did.

Fifty-one percent of Republicans saw “The Word of God” as more important compared to only 31% of Democrats.

What do we learn from these results? Even with the limited statistical reliability of the results, we find further indication that Democrats are more aligned with the U.S. Constitution, one of the primary documents of The Enlightenment or The Age of Reason. Republicans were more comfortable with “The Word of God.” One of the things that is rarely discussed is how vague a term “The Word of God” is. Certainly it means one thing to Catholics, another to Protestants, something else to Jews, and something different to Muslims. As we know from the Sunni and Shia fighting in the Middle East, even within one religion the differences can be large.

This is a topic for further study. Do those who value “The Word of God” think that there is a divine right or wrong to a woman’s right to choose? What if there is conflicting words within the Bible or the Quran? In subsequent surveys, we’ll dig down deeper on this and then look for possible areas where progressives can better connect with Republicans. This will not be easy, but it is a good place to focus our attention rather than on demonizing those with whom we do not agree.

The post A glimpse into Republican and Democratic brains appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Well, not exactly. But there is something interesting that Carly Fiorina says about budgeting for the federal government that might be helpful in reassessing the U.S.’s strategy on Syria.

Fiorina has called for “zero-based” budgeting. What that means is that everything is on the table. Her ideas can get very scary when applied to Social Security or Medicare, but in some cases they might make a little sense. If we apply zero-based budgeting to United States foreign policy towards the Middle East and Syria and Iraq in particular, it might help us find a strategy better than the one we are presently pursuing.

I’m reminded of the endless years that the United States remained in Vietnam, well past the time when it was clear that the U.S. was not going to “win” the war. Yet President Johnson and then President Nixon repeatedly said that those Americans who had died on the battlefields of Vietnam should not have “died in vain.” So what they did was to follow a policy resulted in more Americans dying on those same battlefields in vain. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense then and it doesn’t now.

So why is the United States still waging war in Syria and Iraq? Is it because that’s where we find ourselves now and to get out would mean that the policies that brought us there were a failure? To the degree that defending the past is guiding our current policy, we are trapped in a position of our own making and are too proud to change course. This has repeatedly not worked for the United States, nor for any other country. When rationalizing the past propels continuation of policies that simply are not working, the outcome is stagnation at best.

This is where the concept of zero-based budgeting comes in. Examine the present situation without either favoring or opposing the policies that brought you there. Take a look at the landscape with a fresh eye and reassess the problems that might exist through a lens that focuses on what your real goals are. Think about the historical forces that got you to the present situation. Consider who you want to help and who you consider to be your “enemy.” Reexamine the capabilities that you have to carry out any projected policy. Put every possible policy through a rigorous cost-benefit analysis. Consider possible collateral damage resulting from any steps, or non-steps that you might take.

In broad terms, let me suggest three significantly different approaches that President Obama and the United States could take toward Syria and Iraq:

1. Get out. At least get out militarily. Until the last several centuries, and most particularly since the discovery of oil in the region, western countries have not paid that much attention to the Middle East. Perhaps it would be best to let internal forces compete for power in the region rather than intervention from other countries based on reasons that may have very little to do with the well-being of the people in the region.
2. Go in full bore. Build a coalition of countries that are irritated by, are opposed to, and simply want to get rid of ISIL and similar organizations such as Al Qaeda. Send in hundreds of thousands of troops, perhaps millions, and combined with air strikes and a variety of sanctions, simply wipe out these organizations. Stay long enough so that you’re willing to play “whack-a-mole” and take out the last vestiges of these organizations. Once you have accomplished that, determine whether or not it’s wise to stay and engage in “nation-building” or better to simply leave. Keep in mind all the while how surviving citizens in these countries might regard the United States and other global power once the intervention is concluded.
3. Stay the course. Continue doing what the United States is doing now. Do not abandon ship but at the same time do not grasp beyond your reach. Be confident that the current strategy will work if given enough time.

Obviously there is a myriad of other policies that the U.S. could take that are between the polarities of getting out and going in militarily without reservation. The bottom line is that whatever direction President Obama takes should be one that is based on clear goals and realistic strategies to carry them out. Justifying the past is not a good reason to do anything, particularly when the stakes are this high. Thank Carly Fiorina for unintentionally giving you the idea and wish her well in her return to corporate America. Be thankful that you won’t be working for her.

The post Obama could take a page out of Fiorina’s playbook on Syria appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In a recent interview in Jacobin, linguist, philosopher, and political activist Noam Chomsky gave an interesting answer to a question about the American capitalist system. He basically said we don’t have one. We have something else, more akin to “state capitalism.”

And by not being engaged and involved in the political process, we’ve allowed corporations and banks to “run things,” to take over government. We’ve felt powerless to effect change, and we’ve allowed them to suck up resources that should be going to fund projects and policies that directly help us and the communities where we live.

Chomsky’s comment on our so called “capitalist system:”

What’s called “the capitalist system” is very far from any model of capitalism or market. Take the fossil fuels industries: there was a recent study by the IMF, which tried to estimate the subsidy that energy corporations get from governments. The total was colossal. I think it was around $5 trillion annually. That’s got nothing to do with markets and capitalism.

I think Chomsky is saying that our form of capitalism is not one Adam Smith would recognize. In our version, fossil fuel companies fund politicians, who then vote for industry subsidies. Even though the industry is a big contributor to climate change, the government continues to promote fossil fuels. Bought senators and congressmen continue to give away money to a highly profitable industry that doesn’t need it. Money in politics has a life of its own, and it’s not benign. If a senator or congressperson stops voting for subsidies, there’s hell to pay when he or she is up for reelection. Not only will they no longer get campaign donations, they will have money being spent against them. We live under the illusion that  we have a “free-market” economy, when its more akin to a mafia-run protection racket.

Chomsky turns the conversation to banks:

And the same is true of other components of the so-called capitalist system. By now, in the US and other Western countries, there’s been, during the neoliberal period, a sharp increase in the financialization of the economy. Financial institutions in the US had about 40 percent of corporate profits on the eve of the 2008 collapse, for which they had a large share of responsibility.

There’s another IMF study that investigated the profits of American banks, and it found that they were almost entirely dependent on implicit public subsidies. There’s a kind of a guarantee—it’s not on paper, but it’s an implicit guarantee—that if they get into trouble they will be bailed out. That’s called too-big-to-fail.

And the credit rating agencies of course know that, they take that into account, and with high credit ratings, financial institutions get privileged access to cheaper credit, they get subsidies if things go wrong and many other incentives, which effectively amounts to perhaps their total profit. The business press tried to make an estimate of this number and guessed about $80 billion a year. That’s got nothing to do with capitalism.

It’s clear that without massive subsidies and bailouts, the banks would be insolvent. In a real capitalist system they would have been failed businesses. Chomsky is not the first to point this out. For nearly imploding the world economy, banks were rewarded with access to free money, which they use, not for repairing the damage they did to main street, but for speculation. Thanks to Bill Clinton removing the wall between traditional and investment banking, big banks continue to operate like gambling casinos.

Corporations, too, have been borrowing money at very low, or no interest for stock buy-backs, which raises stock prices and CEO pay. Profits are off-shored and tax-sheltered. Nothing big banks and big corporations are doing right now is helping middle class and working people. Chomsky continues:

It’s the same in many other sectors of the economy. So the real question is, will this system of state capitalism, which is what it is, survive the continued use of fossil fuels? And the answer to that is, of course, no.

By now, there’s a pretty strong consensus among scientists who say that a large majority of the remaining fossil fuels, maybe 80 percent, have to be left in the ground if we hope to avoid a temperature rise which would be pretty lethal. And, unfortunately, that’s not happening. Humans may be destroying their chances for a decent survival. It won’t kill everybody, but it would change the world dramatically.

This is Chomsky’s conclusion if the current situation were to continue. But there’s a rebellion brewing against the status quo. Bernie Sanders in the US, Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, Alex Tsipris in Greece, and Pablo Iglesias in Spain are openly challenging the corporate/bank/billionaire grip on their respective governments. And in Canada, the Liberal Party just won back control of Parliament after nine years of the conservative Harper government. So, there’s reason for hope.

Getting a person or party elected is not enough

We can’t pin all our hopes on another Wall Street-funded candidate. Chomsky thinks it will take pressure from a large popular movement to effectively challenge the grip of money and power on government. The job of activists and organizers, he says, is to help people understand they have power, and even though they feel powerless, they’re not powerless. “People feel impotent, but that has to be overcome.”

About Bernie Sanders, Chomsky feels it’s pretty unlikely in a system of bought elections that he could win. And even if he won, he would be abandoned by both corporate parties, In other words, he couldn’t get much done. But, even if he loses he will have made a positive contribution. Chiomsky says:

In fact, the Sanders campaign I think is valuable—it’s opening up issues, it’s maybe pressing the mainstream Democrats a little bit in a progressive direction, and it is mobilizing a lot of popular forces, and the most positive outcome would be if they remain after the election.

It’s a serious mistake to just to be geared to the quadrennial electoral extravaganza and then go home. That’s not the way changes take place. The mobilization could lead to a continuing popular organization, which could maybe have an effect in the long run.

A little history

In 2009, newly elected President Barack Obama could have nurtured and expanded his extremely effective Obama for America organization to be exactly the kind of popular organization Chomsky calls for—one standing behind him and supporting him in demanding real change—but he funneled everyone into the newly formed “Organizing for America.” Organizing for America served to neutralize and eventually shut down the enthusiasm and populist energy stirred up by his campaign, thwarting any threat to the big money interests that bankrolled his election. As Gloria Bilchik wrote in 2010, OFA became a propaganda machine for the President and a subsidiary of the Democratic National Committee.

The best outcome of the coming election will be if Bernie’s followers form a truly progressive organization independent of the Democratic Party. It’s purpose would be to keep pressure on politicians to do the right thing for the American people.

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