Last night as I was listening (or trying to listen) to Obama’s vaporous
victory speech, I heard a steady procession of young people walking up
Third Avenue cheering and yelling “Obama” over and over. For all
practical purposes, it was just the kind of display that attends a World
Series or Super Bowl victory by a New York team. This is understandable
given the way that the presidential campaign is understood by the
average person. Their candidate is like the home team and the primaries
amount to playoffs leading up to the championship game.
I almost felt like putting on my clothes and going down to the street to
ask people why they were celebrating. What does the average young person
living on the Upper East Side think that they will get from an Obama
presidency? Surely, they must believe that he can’t be anywhere as bad
as McCain. On this they are certainly correct since that is a sine qua
non for the continued functioning of the 2-party system. If after Obama
took office, he named Alberto Gonzalez to the Supreme Court, the system
will blow up in his face. Instead, he will probably nominate some
corporate hack like Stephen Breyer.
Getting past the bottom line that he will be better than McCain, I
wondered what else they would expect from him. Obviously the number one
issue is the economy. Since many of these young New Yorkers probably
work in FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate), they must fear for
their jobs. But it is doubtful that Obama will be able to stave off
unemployment even if he had the desire to do so, given his professed
free market pieties. Even FDR found it impossible to break the back of
the Great Depression. In the final analysis, it was war production
rather than the Civil Conservation Corps that put people back to work.
full:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/11/05/president-obama-governor-paterson-and-ayn-rand/
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
