Written by Winston P. Nagan   

Yesterday the Senate, imposing a super majority for the approval of a version of the President’s jobs bill, succeeded in killing that bill by minority vote. This vote came in the face of the escalating expression of social and economic activism centered in Wall Street but spreading throughout the nation. That expression has rallied around the symbol that Washington, meaning the Republican representation in it, remains fanatical in its defense of the interests of the 1% of the supremely wealthy and indifferent to the economic deprivations experienced by the other excluded 99% of the population. There is an element of confidence and political arrogance in the posture of the Republican Senators. Some of the Congressional leadership have described the demonstrators as merely a mob with the implication that they are not to be taken seriously in the political process. The durability of this movement and its awakening to the way in which our national politics has been rigged in favor of the wealthy and conspicuous classes is a matter that is still unfolding. However, the widespread dissatisfaction with the economic organization appears to be a more deeply rooted matter. This nation has experienced a fairly consistent drive to the bottom for the 99% of the political community. However, it appears that the current economic crisis has made the reality of the steady depression of middle class economic security, a much more critical and real reality which appears to be shaping the political orientation of the demonstrators. In part, the demonstrators are also fueled by the arrogance of the super rich. The Kochs brazen funding of the tea party was a matter that was slow to catch on. The extension of their interest into a systematic effort to demolish the power of labor unions, was not only shocking to the middle class but provided a sharper understanding of the reality of the abuse of political power by concentrated wealth. Moreover, the rejection of even the most modest thoughts about tax reform raise the question of why Republican Congressman and Senators would signed a pledge to a private individual that any form of tax change would be forbidden. It is astonishing that a person could run for office and then give private undertakings and binding pledges that that person’s presence in Washington would be used to prevent rational political discussion of important matters such as rational tax policy. Finally, there is the matter of Professor Elizabeth Warren. Citizen Warren, a person of middle class stature, is the public enemy number one of the financial oligarchy. She demonstrated that a significant cause of the recession was tied to predatory financial practices which in the aggregate meant that big finance consistently victimized the middle class and blames the middle class for the recession by claiming that it was too greedy. Finally, we return to the vote in the Senate yesterday. It is now clear that the Republicans do not want an end to the recession. They see the continuance of the recession and unemployment as a major political advantage in the coming election. In particular, this modest effort at legislating recovery policy carried the real seed that it may prove that governmental intervention would actually work, and that it could serve as the basis for even more bold initiatives to get the nation back on a prosperous economic footing. This is the context of the current Occupy Wall Street activity.

The challenge that Occupy Wall Street now presents is that it cuts into the power of the Republicans to dominate the public discourse on the crucial issues of the economy of the nation and unemployment. The Democrats in Washington have made fatal error of tolerating the extremist right-wing zealots of the Republican Party to in effect dominate the public discourse flooding the media with the mythology that making the rich richer would inevitably restore the economy and employment levels. The Presidential strategy of reasonable accommodation to promote discourse and bipartisanship has actually created a widespread perception that accommodation is simply a concession of weakness on the part of the President. Clearly, notwithstanding a dysfunctional Congress, it is not in the President’s interest or the Democratic Party that he symbolically shows that he is unable to stand up to the extremist tactics of the other side.

It is a major strategic blunder for the President to consistently refer to Washington’s dysfunctional government. This rhetoric has the effect of blaming his administration, the Democratic Party, as well as the prime course of blockage and dysfunction, the Republican Party. The rhetoric should explain as explicitly as possible that the Congressional Republicans are the cause of the blockage of every possibly initiative to promote employment opportunity. Second, the Republicans in the Senate now require a super majority to pass any legislation initiative. The problems of dysfunction should target those who own the dysfunction: the Republican Right Wing. Moreover, the recession itself is largely a Republican creature, and we should be clear as to who should be the owner of the recession.

There is disappointment in the Democrats as the party of Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy seems to have lost its voice when it comes to the message of the New Deal. The New Deal confronted the radical right wing who fought tooth and nail to prevent legislative measures to rescue the economy. If you look at their rhetoric then it doesn’t differ to the rhetoric now. The problem for them was that the American people fully supported the New Deal and it carried five democratic presidential elections. Roosevelt did not complete the New Deal with regard to access to health care. But he laid the foundations for it. Additionally, Roosevelt commissioned his administration to draft a Bill constitutionalizing the right of every American to reasonable employment opportunity. I have not heard any democrats suggests that employment is so fundamental to economic survival of the individual that it implicates and absolutely fundamental value which has, or should has, the character of a fundamental legal right and even possibly a fundamental human right. Such a posture requires both the public and the private sector to be involved in a major and fundamental mandate. It seems to me that this idea promoted by Roosevelt is one that should again be reinvented to fit the circumstance of our current climate. Additionally, the union busting agenda of the Republicans is clearly designed to radically weaken any political right that promotes the idea of access to employment. In fact, the Republican rhetoric about killing regulation and the getting rid of taxes for the wealthy provides absolutely no evidence that such policies promote access to employment. Indeed, it is probably doing the opposite. Moreover, since the Republicans stress the idea that they are the promoters of “liberty”, it is worth noting, as Roosevelt said, human beings in dire necessity are simply not free. Translated into the present, the economic devastation of the middle class also means the devastation of the liberty of the overwhelming majority of the American people, the other 99%. Additionally, unemployment guts the freedom of the unemployed. The unemployed have as much right to freedom as the obscenely rich. The central direction of longstanding republican policy and practice is to consistently reduce the standard of living of the majority of the American people. A consequence of that policy is the reduction of the liberty that Americans experience. I repeat Roosevelt’s insight was that there is a lot more to freedom and liberty than simply the liberty of the few, hence his statement that at the back of the New Deal there was a recognition that necessitous citizens are not free and have their liberty circumscribed.

Today it would seem that Occupy Wall Street, which is not precisely argued for a new agenda, may well be the incipient seed of a New new deal. That new deal would have to take into account the conditions of post industrial society, the complexities of creating vastly new forms of wealth and interest that remained unregulated and provide for a renew economic security in the labor markets for the overwhelming majority of the American people. Let us hope that the opinion influencing groups within and without Occupy Wall Street will begin to see the challenge and its own interest in the effective articulation of a New new deal political challenge as the real issue for the next presidential election.