I suspect that the ruling class never scheduled an Obama administration but instead scheduled him to provide a figurehead for Clinton Redux. That's been his course, even down to the "pragmatic" retreat from rhetoric towards the demoralization of his disillusioned supporters and defeat in the first off-year election.
Instead, the crisis has really exposed the nature of lesser-evil politics. As the Democrats have lurched clumsily to the right, the Republicans have tended to drop off the end of the scale into Fantasyland. The recent poll indicating that 21% of those polled want Sarah Palin in the presidency recalls similar results for Dan Quayle. Truly, it's about that percentage of the American body politic that are sociopathic on the civic level. And the Republican Party's catering to them leaves a tremendous vacuum in the middle which is sucking the Democrats ever more Eisenhower-ward. Obama's not going to exercise much independence of the pattern in foreign policy. A serious difference there just wasn't in the cards, and appointing Hillary Clinton to the State Department signaled that. On the other hand, we had some reason to expect some new steps to the dance in terms of domestic social policies. The touchstone on this remains health care. What's happening doesn't seem to me to be the straightforward bipartisan sellout it looked like, even just a few months ago. The debate has really forced a Democratic defense of the merits of introducing a socialized component into health care...and that has a dynamic that isn't playing out all at once yet.... Agitation for single-payer is as important as ever, but the polls indicate that 72% (even most Republicans) actually favor providing a public option. The logic of arguing that a public option will be superior to what the private companies provide naturally raises the question of why Americans are still even dealing with the latter, inferior approach at all.... ML ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
