In a message dated 5/3/2010 12:30:38 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) writes: CB: Everytime Barry does something good, u close ur eyes or get a blank stare on your face. For example, you didn't even know that he has nominated two pro-union people for the NLRB. Heading should be "Obama does some things right, fo sho" Comment No one is required to be a cheerleader for Obama or his administration. Obama bipartisanship - including appointing pro-union people, is a coherent strategy of political realignment. Why on earth would anyone - I for one, applaud Obama for seeking to consolidate new labor lieutenants of the capitalist class? The appointment of former SEIU lawyer Becker to the labor relations board and Patrick Gaspard, a former executive for an SEIU local in New York and even the appointment of Andy Stern to a commission seeking to reduce the country's $12 trillion deficit needs to be placed in a political context. Stern did step down as head honcho of SEIU two years before his term expired. I am not sure what this is about yet, but Stern has the distinction of being one of the persons whose name appears on the White House guest list more than any other single person, at least from the trade union movement. What is the context of this political motion? A trade union leader that accepts working to reduce the deficit without militantly advocating reducing the military budget by at least a tiny 25% (entitlements are roughly 6% of the budget) ought to be subject to profound criticism. The issue is always striving to have class issues presented. By class issue is meant money and the politics of money in the here and now. I do not suggest Stern was as bad as the UAW President - Gettlefinger (or as we call him "middle-finger") but no one is going to genuflect to Obama because he does what the logic of his precarious political tenure demands of him. In my opinion the context is the breakdown and extreme polarization taking place within the Democratic and Republican parties. In this process Obama and the Obama's administration seeks to consolidate the specific intersection of classes that allowed his to win the race for President. Specifically, a traditional section of proletarians and middle class Republican voters went Democrat, with Obama being able to capture this break away motion. The masses spontaneously drift to the right as an inherent political motion resulting from growing economic crisis. This is so because the natural tendency of a mass of workers facing economic ruin is to demand restoration of the old "social contract" or "give me back my job" so that I can fend for my family. Here is the political motion Obama captured. What Obama did right was to understand the specific psychology and real time frameworks in which the voting section of the American proletariat think things out. What we do wrong is impose ideological concepts on spontaneous impulses generated as a response to economic crisis. WL.
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