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writing for godot

Clinton and the Progressives V. Trump

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Written by Winston P. Nagan   
Wednesday, 20 July 2016 05:32
Winston P. Nagan
Sam T. Dell Professor of Law Emeritus

The presidential debate has a radical divide. At the top of the list representing the divide is Donald Trump who believes that he constitutes presidential timber. The problem that Trump represents is the inability to generate real specific problems and issues. Trump is weak on matters of public policy and in some instances is boring and often ungracious, uncivil and rude. The Trump mantra seems to be “what a mess Obama has made of things”; a radical rejection of any form of immigration reform, they echo the plutocratic mantra of no new taxes and the sins of the national debt. They speak loudly of the fears of the new boogey man ISIS although ISIS would seem to be a rather poor substitute for the old boogey man, international communism. Several of the candidates go along with trumps mantra for the exclusion of Muslim refugees and they all seem to agree that immigration especially involving non-Anglo Saxons is dangerous because these non-Anglo Saxons, at least the male ones, are sex addicts and rapists. The “take America back” slogan is replete with a racist and zenophobic overtones. What Trump means is that we have an outsider who is black and who is President of the nation. “Take America back” means get rid of the black outsider in the Whitehouse. This is a pathetic slogan.
In the Democratic side, there is Bernie Sanders a social-democrat, in European terms, and a democratic-socialist on this side of the Atlantic. The republicans interestingly have not had much to say about the socialist part of Bernie’s democracy. That is because they would like to run their national campaign as a crusade against the socialism of the Democratic Party, which they believe is a winning mantra. Bernie has done something quite unheard of, he has made his democratic socialism a respectable word in terms of the opinion forming circles of the Democratic Party, although many are still uneasy about the socialist label. But apart from reducing the effort to demonize democratic socialism, Bernie has a very profound message which resonates well with a large segment of the voting American public. When he talks of a social revolution he is fundamentally talking about the empowerment of a sizable amount of the electorate that does not vote. By not voting, vast numbers of Americans are, in effect, disempowering themselves and in thus this level of inaction is essentially support that undermines their own self-interest. In short, by not voting they penalize themselves. Additionally, their absence from the booth empowers the billionaire class, the new plutocrats. So Bernie’s positive message that if people participate and vote they can change the landscape of politics that has been so recently dominated by the plutocrats and the hangers on. It is perhaps for this reason that plutocrats are beginning to consider the Bernie message to be a real threat to plutocratic rule. Simple as it sounds, if people get out and vote, there will be something that influences their political attitude that will force them to think about why they are voting, who they are voting for, what their own interests are and by participating they are empowered to have some control of their lives and their destiny. To put this into context, in our most recent history, it was Nixon who emerged with a southern strategy. This had two aspects: get alienated whites to vote, even against their own self-interest to keep blacks from voting. That had an important effect on Republican politics as right-wingers saw a path to empowerment in the radical exclusion of blacks, other minorities, poor women and all other marginal classes. These strategies were given the imprimatur of law by the Supreme Court’s assault on voting rights legislation. Additionally, the Supreme Court’s green light to unlimited dark money in elections by the plutocratic class seemed to sew up the political system. It may be here that the right wing over played its hand, as more and more Americans began to see Congress as being bought and sold like a sack of potatoes. In terms of the economic crisis of 2008, attention has focused on the impoverishment of the white middle class and the exponential increases in wealth of the plutocratic elite. Working class whites blame this on the democrats but more and more people of all races see the problem as the exact opposite of what president Lincoln envisioned. The drift of our country is government by the plutocrats of the plutocrats and for the plutocrats. This is not government for the people, of the people and by the people. Instinctively, many Americans sense that the plutocratic direction of our country is more than a threat to individual self-interest, it is a threat to the foundations of the American success. They are going to fight to prevent this.
When we come to Hillary, without a doubt the Clinton’s have been on the forefront of progressive issues in this country. In particular, they were courageous leaders in the fight against race, gender and all other forms of discrimination. In one sense they are absolutely right. The fight for equality is a fight for empowerment. Liberty is extinguished if human capacity is disparaged by discrimination. Unfortunately, this does not address the basic problems that we face. That is, we want wage increases because discrimination is bad. The real message should be: we want improved performance that benefits all people fairly, because the labor they contribute is critical to the success of the American experience. I suspect that the antidiscrimination pitch essentially requires a next step: i.e. a social-economic revolution based on the power of the ballot box. I therefore think that Hillary Clinton will do much better if she has a straight focus on the need for empowerment as a means of empowering the American workers and professionals who have a right to claim a fair-share of the national patrimony.
Another area where progressives like Warren and Sanders have made a critical pitch is free higher education. The overwhelming number of students in this nation cannot afford higher education without access to student loans which come with high end fees. This is an issue that Sander’s has taken head on. The bottom line is simply this: the investment in high education is a modest investment in the exponential potentials of the human capital in our students. The fundamental basis of real value in our socio-economic system is the value we attach the human capital, the value we attach to nurturing and training human capital and the justice in the system, which rewards the contributions of human capital. In a sense, progressives like Warren are talking about real liberty and real equality and a clear recognition that these are critically interdependent values. Hillary’s message here is fractured, we can’t give everyone a free ride, after all, why should we pay for Donald Trump’s children’s education? What she’s done is fractured the message and added convoluted complexity to it. The way the public reads this is that she’s lukewarm on the critical issue on the most generous level of access of young people to higher education. Many European countries give near-free access to higher education. One only has to look at the performance of Germany to see the success of this approach.
There are two other issues that are important to the voting public. Bernie is clear that health care is not a privilege, it is a right. One way or another, this is a strong message. Hillary Clinton, who led the charge on widening access to health care, reduces this issue to a purely procedural matter undermining the fundamental principle and symbol it represents. She does not support Warren/Sander’s progressivism on this because she sees complicational barriers. This cannot be a winning strategy, in particular in the light of the Republicans demonizing of Obama’s health initiative. Her message is lukewarm. Finally, there is the major looming national crisis of climate change. This is a matter which is a vast loss of opportunity and leadership for the republicans as they denied climate change because of the plutocratic donations from the fossil fuel industry. Republicans are willing to sell the American future for a few pieces of silver- what a betrayal of a great nation’s basic interests. Progressives have come out foursquare in attacking the climate change deniers. Hillary also supports the concerns for climate change but what should be her strong suit here, emerges as rather lukewarm advocacy. Fundamentally, since the new deal, democrats have run away from some of the most compelling issues of public policy, conceding such issues to opportunistic radical right-wing know-nothings. Progressives seem to be saying that it’s time for the Democrats to have a backbone like Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Carter and Clinton. But Hillary still seems to be stuck in the mandate of moderation, no matter how clear the public policy challenge really is. If Hillary wants to win she must be clear about at least the following: the empowerment of the American voter because their presence is needed to shape the future of this nation. Also, education should be as accessible as possible and as affordable as possible for all because education is the foundation of human capital which makes liberty and equality a political necessity. Next, clearly we need some form of universal healthcare, without ifs and buts; let’s not get too hot on process and let’s focus on the principle. Fourthly, climate change is a crisis and we should forthrightly say so and challenge the Trump know-nothings to answer to the public. The Clinton campaign needs the dynamism of a Warren type progressive to sustain itself.

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