|
Why the Rest of the World No Longer Wants to Be Like US |
 |
|
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=7646"><span class="small">Noam Chomsky, AlterNet</span></a>
|
|
Wednesday, 06 November 2013 14:30 |
|
Chomsky writes: "In the past, the U.S. has sometimes been described sardonically - but not inaccurately - as a one-party state: the business party, with two factions called Democrats and Republicans."
America's leading intellectual, Professor Noam Chomsky. (photo: unknown)
Why the Rest of the World No Longer Wants to Be Like US
By Noam Chomsky, AlterNet
06 November 13
Many countries in the world see the U.S. as the single greatest external threat to their societies.
 uring the latest episode of the Washington farce that has astonished a bemused world, a Chinese commentator wrote that if the United States cannot be a responsible member of the world system, perhaps the world should become "de-Americanized" - and separate itself from the rogue state that is the reigning military power but is losing credibility in other domains.
The Washington debacle's immediate source was the sharp shift to the right among the political class. In the past, the U.S. has sometimes been described sardonically - but not inaccurately - as a one-party state: the business party, with two factions called Democrats and Republicans.
That is no longer true. The U.S. is still a one-party state, the business party. But it only has one faction: moderate Republicans, now called New Democrats (as the U.S. Congressional coalition styles itself).
There is still a Republican organization, but it long ago abandoned any pretense of being a normal parliamentary party. Conservative commentator Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute describes today's Republicans as "a radical insurgency - ideologically extreme, scornful of facts and compromise, dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition": a serious danger to the society.
The party is in lock-step service to the very rich and the corporate sector. Since votes cannot be obtained on that platform, the party has been compelled to mobilize sectors of the society that are extremist by world standards. Crazy is the new norm among Tea Party members and a host of others beyond the mainstream.
The Republican establishment and its business sponsors had expected to use them as a battering ram in the neoliberal assault against the population - to privatize, to deregulate and to limit government, while retaining those parts that serve wealth and power, like the military.
The Republican establishment has had some success, but now finds that it can no longer control its base, much to its dismay. The impact on American society thus becomes even more severe. A case in point: the virulent reaction against the Affordable Care Act and the near-shutdown of the government.
The Chinese commentator's observation is not entirely novel. In 1999, political analyst Samuel P. Huntington warned that for much of the world, the U.S. is "becoming the rogue superpower," seen as "the single greatest external threat to their societies."
A few months into the Bush term, Robert Jervis, president of the American Political Science Association, warned that "In the eyes of much of the world, in fact, the prime rogue state today is the United States." Both Huntington and Jervis warned that such a course is unwise. The consequences for the U.S. could be harmful.
In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, the leading establishment journal, David Kaye reviews one aspect of Washington's departure from the world: rejection of multilateral treaties "as if it were sport."
He explains that some treaties are rejected outright, as when the U.S. Senate "voted against the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2012 and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1999."
Others are dismissed by inaction, including "such subjects as labor, economic and cultural rights, endangered species, pollution, armed conflict, peacekeeping, nuclear weapons, the law of the sea, and discrimination against women."
Rejection of international obligations "has grown so entrenched," Kaye writes, "that foreign governments no longer expect Washington's ratification or its full participation in the institutions treaties create. The world is moving on; laws get made elsewhere, with limited (if any) American involvement."
While not new, the practice has indeed become more entrenched in recent years, along with quiet acceptance at home of the doctrine that the U.S. has every right to act as a rogue state.
To take a typical example, a few weeks ago U.S. special operations forces snatched a suspect, Abu Anas al-Libi, from the streets of the Libyan capital Tripoli, bringing him to a naval vessel for interrogation without counsel or rights. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry informed the press that the actions are legal because they comply with American law, eliciting no particular comment.
Principles are valid only if they are universal. Reactions would be a bit different, needless to say, if Cuban special forces kidnapped the prominent terrorist Luis Posada Carriles in Miami, bringing him to Cuba for interrogation and trial in accordance with Cuban law.
Such actions are restricted to rogue states. More accurately, to the one rogue state that is powerful enough to act with impunity: in recent years, to carry out aggression at will, to terrorize large regions of the world with drone attacks, and much else.
And to defy the world in other ways, for example by persisting in its embargo against Cuba despite the long-term opposition of the entire world, apart from Israel, which voted with its protector when the United Nations again condemned the embargo (188-2) in October.
Whatever the world may think, U.S. actions are legitimate because we say so. The principle was enunciated by the eminent statesman Dean Acheson in 1962, when he instructed the American Society of International Law that no legal issue arises when the United States responds to a challenge to its "power, position, and prestige."
Cuba committed that crime when it beat back a U.S. invasion and then had the audacity to survive an assault designed to bring "the terrors of the earth" to Cuba, in the words of Kennedy adviser and historian Arthur Schlesinger.
When the U.S. gained independence, it sought to join the international community of the day. That is why the Declaration of Independence opens by expressing concern for the "decent respect to the opinions of mankind."
A crucial element was evolution from a disorderly confederacy to a unified "treaty-worthy nation," in diplomatic historian Eliga H. Gould's phrase, that observed the conventions of the European order. By achieving this status, the new nation also gained the right to act as it wished internally.
It could thus proceed to rid itself of the indigenous population and to expand slavery, an institution so "odious" that it could not be tolerated in England, as the distinguished jurist William Murray, Earl of Mansfield, ruled in 1772. Evolving English law was a factor impelling the slave-owning society to escape its reach.
Becoming a treaty-worthy nation thus conferred multiple advantages: foreign recognition, and the freedom to act at home without interference. Hegemonic power offers the opportunity to become a rogue state, freely defying international law and norms, while facing increased resistance abroad and contributing to its own decline through self-inflicted wounds.
 |
|
Bill de Blasio: Harbinger of a New Populist Left in America |
|
|
Wednesday, 06 November 2013 14:27 |
|
Hayden writes: "The overwhelming support of New York City voters for Bill de Blasio is the latest sign of the shift towards a new populist left in America."
New York City Democratic Mayoral election winner Bill De Blasio embraces his son Dante, left, daughter Chiara, second from left, and wife Chirlane, right, after addressing supporters at his election headquarters. (photo: AP/Kathy Willens)
Bill de Blasio: Harbinger of a New Populist Left in America
By Tom Hayden, Guardian UK
06 November 13
Strong stances on inequality and policing underpin the New York mayor's win. If he holds true, he can shift the national debate
 he overwhelming support of New York City voters for Bill de Blasio is the latest sign of the shift towards a new populist left in America. De Blasio owes his unexpected tailwind to campaigning on issues considered by insiders to be too polarizing for winning politics.
One is De Blasio's promise to redress the "tale of two cities" inequalities among New Yorkers, an issue forced into mainstream discourse by the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement – not by New York Democrats aligned with Wall Street. The other is De Blasio's pledge to sharply curb police stop-and-frisk policies directed against young people of color – aggressive tactics favored by a majority of white voters and overwhelmingly criticized by African Americans, Latinos and Asian-American voters.
Despite its Democratic voter majority, New York in recent decades has been the political stronghold of the plutocratic Mayor Michael Bloomberg and, before him, the abrasive law-and-order Mayor Rudolph Giuliani – both Republicans with national, even global, reach. Democrats have lacked a progressive voice on the national stage of American politics often provided by the New York mayor's office – until now.
De Blasio will have a mandate for economic and social reform backed by a newly-elected 51-member city council, the most progressive in years. As Juan Gonzáles of Pacifica's DemocracyNow! put it:
I can't think of a time like this when so many progressives have been elected at once.
With American politics polarized between the Obama center and the thriving Tea Party, the only opening for the left is through state and local federalism serving as "laboratories of reform", to paraphrase former Justice Louis Brandeis. After the Gilded Age and the Great Crash of the 1920s, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (1934-47) and legislators like Robert Wagner created the first pillars of the New Deal before it become the national platform of the Democrats. They successfully fought not only Wall Street bankers, but a virulent and racist American right.
De Blasio is positioned to similarly shift the nation's dialogue, policies and priorities in a progressive direction – assuming he delivers on his campaign pledges. Since the financial crisis of 2008, the federal government has passed a loophole-ridden Dodd-Frank reform law, which failed even to regulate the trillions floating in the derivatives industry. Wall Street investors have been richly rewarded since then, while middle-class incomes stagnate and the numbers of poor Americans reach the highest in 50 years. A report last week from the respected American Community Survey noted:
No other major American city has such income inequality when it comes to rich and poor when it comes to New York.
Among De Blasio's first challenges will be prodding Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state legislature in Albany to permit local tax increases to fund universal pre-kindergarten in New York City. Cuomo and most pundits say the De Blasio proposal is going nowhere, but seasoned reporters like Gonzales are not so sure. "It's hard but doable. I'm not sure that Albany will resist the home rule message from a new mayor with a large mandate."
De Blasio has direct power over New York City's $70bn budget and re-zoning policies, which, under Bloomberg, showered favors on a real estate industry bent on competing with London and Hong Kong at the expense of residential neighborhoods. An early test for De Blasio will be the Midtown East re-zoning project left unfinished by Bloomberg, which would erect Empire State Building skyscrapers from the East River to downtown. De Blasio wants to "fix" the proposal, while community groups are 100% opposed, saying they would be left in permanent shadows.
De Blasio also can tackle income inequality by signing the living wage ordinance on city contracts, or by preventing Wall Street developers getting special city abatements – measures that Bloomberg vetoed. De Blasio didn't flinch on the issue when confronted in closed meetings with developers during the campaign.
When De Blasio first raised his opposition to the police stop-and-frisk policies, according to Vincent Warren of the Center for Constitutional Rights, the candidate began rising in the polls against other contenders in the Democratic primary. The stop-and-frisk policy, a variation of racial profiling against black and brown young people, is generally supported by white and worried New Yorkers and overwhelmingly opposed by communities of color.
De Blasio and his African-American wife have a teenager, named Dante, whose Afro style even caught the attention of President Obama. As Dante leafleted with his father at subway turnstiles, emotional memories of the murdered Florida teenager Trayvon Martin were palpable, if rarely mentioned.
New York under Mayor Giuliani fanned then popular American policies of mass incarceration towards youngsters who resembled Dante de Blasio. From 2008 to 2012, the NYPD stopped nearly 2.9 million New Yorkers, a majority of them young, about 85% black or brown. On average, 88% of those stopped were completely innocent of any crime or misdemeanor.
When a federal appeals court halted a judicial order ordering detailed changes in the NYPD last week, De Blasio expressed "extreme disappointment" and pledged to move forward on police reform from day one. How he will do so is procedurally muddled for the moment, but there is little doubt that another staple of the Bloomberg era is ready for the dustbin.
Will De Blasio adhere to his promises? He is, after all, a mainstream Democratic party operative and policy wonk who once managed Hillary Clinton's centrist campaign for the US Senate. Decades ago, he was deeply involved in the Nicaragua Solidarity Movement against Ronald Reagan's illegal contra war. De Blasio seemed nervous when this past association surfaced earlier in the campaign. But the Republicans could gain no traction on the issue.
It is reassuring that De Blasio has roots in past social movements instead of the usual pedigrees for a political career. If he has veered back to his lefty roots, it is enabled by a popular anger among voters. This anger was fanned by the growing gap between the haves and have-nots, reinforced by heavy-handed policing, in a city whose power brokers are addicted to opulence.
The media widely acknowledges that Occupy Wall Street "changed the conversation" in America. De Blasio won't represent the 99%, but a healthy majority will do. From Wednesday, Bill de Blasio will have the largest megaphone of any conversation-changer on the national scene.
|
|
|
No, Christie Is Not the Next Great Moderate Hope |
|
|
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=27989"><span class="small">Elias Isquith, Salon</span></a>
|
|
Wednesday, 06 November 2013 14:20 |
|
Isquith writes: "While it's true that Christie has at times shown an admirable willingness to buck the most extreme elements of his party's base, it'd be going too far - much too far - to call the man a moderate."
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. (photo: Getty Images)
No, Christie Is Not the Next Great Moderate Hope
By Elias Isquith, Salon
06 November 13
he media will want to crown Chris Christie as the GOP's new model centrist. Here's why that's ludicrous
In the wake of his landslide reelection to the governorship of New Jersey, Chris Christie has got to be feeling good - or as he'd be more likely to put it, he's got to be feeling damn good. Not only did "The Governor," as his campaign portentously called him, manage to secure a second term, but he did it by an almost comically large margin. With men, women, whites, blacks, Latinos, Asians - across the board, Christie matched or surpassed the levels of support a generic Republican would otherwise have received. One wonders, in fact, if anyone in the state of New Jersey knows what Christie's Democratic challenger, Barbara Buono, even looks like. Without the aid of Google, I sure wouldn't.
Compare Christie's landslide to another Republican running to be governor of his state, Virginia's Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, and the list of reasons for "The Governor" to smile grows longer. Unlike Cuccinelli, Christie managed to transcend his party's national image and overcome the stigma of being a Republican in a deep-blue state like New Jersey. And unlike Cuccinelli, no one associates Chris Christie with the now seriously unpopular Tea Party, or sees the New Jersey governor as a chief architect of the Republican Party's so-called War on Women. In a nutshell: Chris Christie, unlike Cuccinelli, doesn't have to waste his time disassociating himself from Ted Cruz.
Now, in the coming days, weeks and, indeed, years, a lot of pundits are going to look at Christie's feat and conclude that he's some kind of moderate. How else could he win in New Jersey? Nurturing that impression is certainly part of the reason why Christie's team decided to run up the score, waging a vigorous reelection campaign despite the fact that Christie's triumph was never in doubt. Yet while it's true that Christie has at times shown an admirable willingness to buck the most extreme elements of his party's base, it'd be going too far - much too far - to call the man a moderate.
What Christie is extremely good at is implementing what my colleague Blake Zeff previously described as the GOP's "blue-state playbook." It's pretty simple, really. To stay alive in these politically hazardous environs, blue-state Republicans make a show of breaking with the rest of their party - on issues that may be prominent in terms of media attention, but are actually of secondary or tertiary importance from a policy perspective. So, for example, you get the once omnipresent images of Christie walking side-by-side with President Obama in the wake of Hurricane Sandy's devastation; or you get Christie's decision to drop a clearly doomed appeal to a judge's ruling ushering in gay marriage in his state.
In both instances, Christie ticks off just enough conservatives for it to get noticed (Matt Drudge, for example, is not a fan) but not so many as to actually, materially damage his position within the broader conservative movement. On the real, bedrock issues for modern conservatism - low taxes on the wealthy, cuts to public services and attacks on the workers who help provide them, and opposition to women's reproductive health - Christie is about as conservative as they come. The smart Republicans know this, and give him a pass for those other few breaks with orthodoxy, not unlike how many Democrats once gave Barack Obama a pass for his once-squishy stance on gun safety, or his cagey answers on class-based affirmative action.
Indeed, as Real Clear Politics' Sean Trende recently argued, Christie is "easily the most conservative politician elected to statewide office in New Jersey in the past 60 years, and possibly longer." Trende continued:
The normal Republican blueprint in the Northeast is to run as a center-right candidate on fiscal matters and center-left - if not left - on social issues (remember, Christine Todd Whitman opposed a ban on partial-birth abortions). On fiscal matters, Christie has been pretty hawkish, taking on the state's teachers' unions, overseeing cuts in spending and lowering taxes. Even on social issues, he has been fairly conservative, especially by Northeastern standards - he's pro-life, against gay marriage (though he does support civil unions), and he even cut state funding for Planned Parenthood. This is an unusually conservative overall profile for a successful Republican politician in the region, much less for one of the most successful Republican politicians there in a generation.
Trende's not the only one to notice Christie's conservatism, either. In fact, one of the most vocal proponents of the Christie-as-conservative analysis is none other than The Governor himself. When asked on Tuesday by CNN's Jake Tapper whether he considers himself a conservative or a moderate, Christie replied, "I'm a conservative, and I've governed as a conservative in this state." On that score, at least, The Governor and I are in complete agreement.
|
|
Tuesday's Progressive Victories Show That the Tide Is Turning |
|
|
Wednesday, 06 November 2013 14:17 |
|
Dreier writes: "Despite a few setbacks, progressives had much to cheer about, sensing that the tide is turning against the unholy alliance of big business, the Tea Party, and the religious right."
The backers of a City of SeaTac ballot measure want to create the highest minimum wage in the country. (photo: AP)
Tuesday's Progressive Victories Show That the Tide Is Turning
By Peter Dreier, Reader Supported News
06 November 13
 n Tuesday, Bill de Blasio won a landslide victory to become the mayor of New York City, voters in New Jersey and Seatac, Washington supported minimum wage hikes, and the Illinois legislature voted to legalize same-sex marriage. These are among the progressive victories that swept across the country.
Despite a few setbacks, progressives had much to cheer about, sensing that the tide is turning against the unholy alliance of big business, the Tea Party, and the religious right. Growing protests -- such as the "Moral Monday" movement in North Carolina, militant immigrant rights activism, battles to protect women's health clinics from state budget cuts, strikes by low-wage workers, civil disobedience actions to challenge voter suppression, and student campaigns against global energy corporations -- reflect a burgeoning progressive movement bubbling up from below the surface that is beginning to have an impact on elections.
By far the most impressive symbol of this rising tide is de Blasio's landslide win, which the New York Times called "a sharp leftward turn for the nation's largest metropolis." De Blasio campaigned on a bold progressive platform, promising to address the city's widening income inequality, gentrification, and hollowing out of the middle class. De Blasio, the city's public advocate, trounced Republican Joe Lhota (a transportation official and long-time advisor to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani) by a 73 to 24 percent margin. His victory represents a rejection of 20 years of business-oriented municipal policies under Giuliani and Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
De Blasio pledged to end the city's racist "stop and frisk" police practices, to expand affordable housing, and to increase pre-kindergarten classes by raising taxes on residents earning over $500,000, subject to approval from the state legislature. After winning a come-from-behind victory in the Democratic primary, de Blasio built a powerful grassroots campaign that drew on unions, community organizations, and other progressives. On Election Day, more than 10,000 de Blasio volunteers were turning out voters.
In addition to this overwhelming mandate, the new mayor will have a more progressive City Council to work with. The 51-member Council will have at least 21 new members, many of them supported by unions and the Working Families Party, which also played a big role in de Blasio's victory. The council's Progressive Caucus is likely to double in size from 10 to 20. Council member Brad Lander, a former community organizer, cofounder of the Progressive Caucus, and key de Blasio ally, was re-elected by a wide margin in his Brooklyn district.
Americans' growing frustration with widening inequality, stagnant wages, and persistent poverty can be seen in the mounting momentum to raise wages. Even as New Jersey voters were giving conservative Republican Gov. Chris Christie a second term, they also overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment to raise the state's minimum wage by a dollar to $8.25 an hour. The new law includes an automatic cost-of-living increase each year. Last year Christie vetoed a bill to raise the state's minimum wage to $8.50 an hour, so the Democrats in the state legislature pushed back by putting the question to the voters. On Tuesday, it passed with 60 percent of the vote despite opposition from business groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, and Christie, who said that raising the wage is "just an irresponsible thing to do."
Three thousand miles away, voters in the Seattle suburb of Seatac, Washington embraced the Good Jobs Initiative' to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour for workers in Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and at airport-related businesses, including hotels, car-rental agencies, and parking lots. At midnight, it was winning 54 to 46 percent, although many mail-in ballots had not yet been counted. The new law, sponsored by labor unions and other progressives, applies to more than 6,000 workers. Washington State's current minimum wage is $9.19, the highest in the nation. Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and challenger Ed Murray (who beat McGinn on Tuesday) both supported the Seatac initiative and raised the possibility of doing the same thing in Washington's largest city.
The two minimum wage victories come on the heels of growing activism by low-wage workers around the country, including strikes and other protests by employees at fast-food restaurant chains and Wal-Marts. A year ago, voters in Albuquerque, N.M., and Long Beach, California, raised local minimum wages, adding to the more than 150 cities that have adopted living wage laws. Last month, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation raising the state's minimum wage from $8 to $10 an hour - a bill he had vetoed a year earlier. Activists in Idaho, South Dakota, and Alaska are gathering signatures to put minimum wage hikes on the ballot next year. Their counterparts in Maryland, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Hawaii are pushing state legislators to raise the minimum wages in their states, too.
The momentum at the local and state levels is likely to have ripple effects in the nation's capitol, where President Obama has proposed raising the federal wage threshold to $9 an hour and liberal Democrats in Congress have embraced hiking it to over $10 an hour, including an annual cost-of-living adjustment. Unions and other progressives will be using the issue to target Congressional Republicans facing tough re-election campaigns next year, hoping to pressure them to support a minimum wage hike or face the wrath of angry voters. Public opinion polls show that the vast majority of Americans believe that people who work full-time should not earn poverty-level wages.
A majority of Americans now also embrace another progressive idea - same-sex marriage. In the past, conservatives tried to increase Republican voter turnout by putting anti-gay marriage measures on state ballots, but that strategy no longer works as public opinion has dramatically shifted in the past few years. On Tuesday, the Illinois state legislature passed a measure to legalize same-sex marriage. Under the legislation, which Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn has pledged to sign, gay couples could start marrying in June. Illinois will become the fifteenth state to legalize same-sex marriage, a number that is certain to grow rapidly now that the Supreme Court struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
And it is certainly no accident that this week the Senate cleared the way to vote in favor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) to ban discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation and gender identity. On Monday, the Senate voted 61-30 to circumvent a filibuster of the bill, which has been introduced repeatedly since 1994. Reflecting the nation's changing mood, seven Republicans -- Sens. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Susan Collins of Maine, Orrin Hatch of Utah, Dean Heller of Nevada, Mark Kirk of Illinois, Rob Portman of Ohio, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania -- joined 54 Democrats in voting to invoke cloture in order to advance the bill. Two Senators who support ENDA -- Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) -- were absent. The Senate is likely to vote on final passage this week. The bill will face higher hurdles in the House, where Speaker John Boehner has reiterated his opposition to ENDA on the absurd ground that it will "cost American jobs, especially small business jobs," but the growing number of Republicans who are now embracing LGBT rights may eventually force Boehner - or his successor - to revise his stance.
In another milestone Tuesday for the gay rights movement, Seattle became the second largest city in the country to elect an openly gay mayor. State Sen. Ed Murray, a gay Democratic state legislator, appeared to be headed for victory in Seattle's mayoral race. With 40 percent of the votes reported, Murray had a large lead -- 56-43 percent -- over incumbent Mayor Mike McGinn. Last year Murray sponsored and led the successful Referendum 74 campaign which legalized same-sex marriage in the state. Both Murray and McGinn are liberals who hold similar views on most issues. Both favor more public transit and universal kindergarten, and both embraced the campaign to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour in neighboring Seatac. McGinn, a one-time Sierra Club activist, was the first big-city mayor to push for divesting Seattle's pension fund money from energy companies that contribute to global warming, a cause that is gaining momentum on many college campuses. Annise Parker, a lesbian, was elected mayor of Houston (America's fourth largest city)) in 2009. Other large cities that have elected gay and lesbian mayors include Providence, Rhode Island and Portland, Oregon.
In Boston, State Rep. Marty Walsh edged City Council member John Connolly to become the city's next mayor. A long-time labor leader, Walsh gained the support from unions and key community and minority activists to win with 52 percent of the vote. As in Seattle, Walsh and Connolly - both liberal Democrats -- agreed on many issues. Walsh 's background as a working class union leader who won his personal struggle to overcome alcoholism helped catapult him to victory. National unions contributed heavily to help elect Walsh, who will become one of the few labor leaders to lead a major city. (Antonio Villaraigosa, a former union organizer, ended his two terms as Los Angeles' mayor earlier this year due to term limits). Walsh will replace Tom Menino, a moderate Democrat who served as Boston's mayor for 20 years but declined to seek a sixth term for health reasons.
In Minneapolis, community organizer and Occupy Homes activist Ty Moore was in a close race for a seat on the City Council. Moore was running as a Socialist Alternative candidate against Democrat Farm Labor Party candidate Alondra Cano, who would be the first Mexican-American to serve on the council. Moore, whose campaign earned the support of SEIU and the Green Party, co-founded the local Occupy Homes movement, which staged sit-ins to prevent banks from seizing foreclosed houses. His campaign focused heavily on stopping foreclosures and raising the city's minimum wage to $15 an hour. By early Wednesday morning, neither Moore nor Cano had reached the required threshold of votes to be declared a winner. Minneapolis uses a ranked-choice voting method, which processes ballots through a series of rounds, in which the lowest ranked candidate (or candidates) is eliminated, and their votes are redistributed to the next-ranked candidate on those ballots. The final outcome should be announced later this week.
Nobody would call Terry McAuliffe a bold progressive, but progressives and liberals are nevertheless embracing his victory in the Virginia governor's race on Tuesday as one more nail in the Tea Party coffin. The former head of the Democratic National Committee and a close ally of Bill and Hillary Clinton, McAuliffe defeated state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, an ultra- right Republican embraced by the Tea Party. Virginia is swing state. Since 1977, it has elected governors from the opposing party of the sitting president. Although Obama won Virginia in both 2008 and 2012, the lower turnout in this year's off-year election was expected to favor Cuccinelli, who had already won statewide office and was a well-known figure. But McAuliffe's campaign was successful in winning over younger (under 45) voters, a majority of women, and moderates, many of whom viewed Cuccinelli as too conservative, according to polls. Cuccinelli was hurt by his extreme right-wing views on birth control, abortion, and divorce, and by the recent Republican-led shutdown of the federal government, which particularly affected the many Virginians who live in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. Even so, McAuliffe barely squeaked by, winning by a 47 to 46 percent margin.
Liberals and progressives have reason to breathe a sigh of relief over McAuliffe's slim victory. Had Cuccinelli won, he would have followed the playbook of Republican governors who have refused to implement the Obamacare program, supported anti-union legislation and cuts to the social safety net, and embraced severe limits on women's reproductive health care, including abortion. In fact, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, along with Senators Rand Paul (R-Ky) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla) - all Tea Party favorites - campaigns for Cuccinelli. Although McAuliffe, who made his fortunate in banking and real estate, was often criticized by progressive for his close ties to business in his role as a Democratic Party fundraiser, he seemed to shift somewhat to the left during the campaign. In a state with a large number of gun owners and where the National Rifle Association has its headquarters (in suburban Fairfax, outside Washington, D.C), McAuliffe came out for strong gun controls and even boasted of his "F" rating from NRA.
McAullife's narrow victory was not the solid defeat for the crackpot Tea Party wing of the Republican Party that Democrats had hoped for. But other races on Tuesday suggest that there's a growing divide within the Republican Party between its business wing and its Tea Party wing, which may soon be gasping for breath in most parts of the country. In a Republican primary contest in Alabama, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business lobby groups poured huge sums to help former State Bradley Byrne defeat Dean Young, a Tea Party lunatic who last week said in an interview that Obama was born in Kenya. The business and Tea Party wings of the GOP both oppose higher taxes, government regulations on business, and labor unions, but the so-called mainstream corporate Republicans fear that if more Tea Party candidates win GOP primaries, voters will elect more Democrats to Congress and state legislatures. Although there are still many right-wing businesspeople, like the Koch brothers and their ilk, who fund Tea Party candidates, the major business lobby groups, as well as political operatives like Karl Rove, want to defeat the Tea Partyistas before they destroy the GOP's legitimacy. They worry that recent polls show that as many as 40 Republican House members are vulnerable to defeat next November as the party's favorability ratings sink among moderate and independent voters, who blame the GOP for the government shutdown and for the gridlock in Washington. The Democrats, who have 200 seats in the House, need to add 18 members to take back control of Congress' lower chamber.
Although Tuesday's political landscape definitely reflected a surging tide of liberal and progressive victories, business and conservative groups prevailed on two major ballot measures.
In Washington state, voters rejected an initiative that would have required labels on foods containing genetically engineered ingredients. Initiative 522 lost by a 54.8 percent to 45.2 percent margin. The pro-labeling campaign was vastly outspent by big business. The anti-labeling No on 522 campaign set a record for fundraising with $22 million in donations, almost all of it from out-of-state corporations and lobby groups, including the Grocery Manufacturers Association, Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer, Dow AgroSciences, and Bayer CropScience.
In Colorado, voters turned down a tax hike that would have provided an additional $1 billion for schools and would have resulted in smaller class sizes, pay raises for teachers, increased support for English-language learners, and full-day kindergarten. The initiative, called Amendment 66, would have changed the state income tax from a flat rate of 4.63 percent to a two-tiered system. The first $75,000 of taxable income would be taxed at 5 percent and everything above that threshold at 5.9 percent. The plan had the support of national teachers' unions and Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper. The campaign was a rare case where the teachers unions worked on the same side as corporate philanthropists like Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, who support school privatization. The Colorado initiative included a provision to increase funding for charter schools, a major goal of the network that education historian Diane Ravitch calls the "billionaire boys club." The supporters of the school financing initiative, vastly outspent its opponents, but the measure nevertheless lost by a 66 percent to 34 margin.
|
|
ew Jersey Governor Chris Christie won a landslide reelection yesterday, significantly outperforming the national Republican Party among black, Hispanic, and female voters. Christie has been viewed as too moderate to win a Republican presidential primary, but he's popular, pragmatic, and has lots of momentum. Is he the 2016 GOP front-runner?
