I'm a populist. I suspect you're one, as well. We
average citizens are populists when we need to be, when the red flags are waved,
when it becomes apparent that we'd better do something soon or reap the
whirlwind.
According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a populist is
one that adopts "a political philosophy supporting the rights and power of the
people in their struggle against the privileged elite."
Yep, that'd be
us.
Here are reads on the "new" populism. The first is from Jim
Hightower, sincere populist of the First Water. The next two, and the link, are excellent analysis from Richard
Escow, having to do with the Campaign for America's Future May conference on
populism. The last is a take-down of Escow's articles for faux-populist
rhetoric, as well as his group as a shill for establishment Dems. It's hostile
and cynical, which is ok with me as long as it tells the truth as the author
sees it. I don't see it quite that way, but he makes a few good points.
It might appear that the U-S-of-A has gone
bonkers. So let me clear up any confusion that you might have: Yes, it
has!
Yet, it hasn't. More on that in a moment.
First, though —
whether looking at the "tea party" congress critters who've swerved our nation's
political debate to the hard right, or at the peacocks of Wall Street who
continue to preen and profit atop the wreckage they've made of our real economy
— it's plain to see that America is suffering a pestilence of nuts and
narcissists in high places. These "leaders" are hell bent to enthrone themselves
and their ilk as the potentates of our economic, governmental and social
systems, and they are aggressively trying to snuff out the light of
egalitarianism that historically has been our society's unifying
force.
Bill Moyers, America's most public-spirited journalist, summarized
the state of or nation in these terms: "The delusion is no longer marginal. It
has come in from the fringe to sit at the seat of power." Symptoms of this
national insanity include these examples:
— We can't even keep the doors
of our government open. In October of last year, Washington's tea party
Republican faction, unable to win the budget cuts it had demanded, threw a
procedural fit to get what its acolytes wanted. Their stunt literally shut down
the nation's government for 16 days and bled $24 billion from the U.S. economy.
They won nothing except the widespread public scorn they earned for being
self-aggrandizing political fools.
— Lloyd Blankfein, bankster-in-chief
of Goldman Sachs, runs a financial casino that has bilked its own customers,
been so reckless that it took a $10 billion taxpayer bailout to keep it afloat
and lobbied furiously to kill regulatory reforms that would've reined in its
ongoing destructiveness. So has this wrongdoer faced prosecution and jail? Ha!
Blankfein continues to reign, retaining his CEOship at Goldman and hauling in
$23 million last year in personal pay.
— A narrow, five-man majority of
the U.S. Supreme Court has decreed that corporations are "persons" with the
right to spend unlimited sums of their shareholders' money to elect or defeat
whomever they want — and to do so secretly.
This year, in McCutcheon v.
FEC, the Court also overturned the campaign finance rules limiting individual's
contributions on aggregate federal campaign contributions — thus enthroning a
tiny elite as America's ruling electoral power.
— Big Money's control of
politics gives it control of public policy. Thus long-term joblessness and
underemployment rage on unabated, middle-class income is plummeting, the
majority is finding upward mobility roped off, labor unions are being
systematically disempowered and our social safety net is being
shredded.
— From retail workers to adjunct college professors, the new
normal for workaday people is poverty-wage, part-time, temporary, no-benefit
employment. At McDonald's, the world's biggest burger chain with 860,000 U.S.
workers and $5.5 billion in profits, typical pay is only $8.20 an hour and
"full-time" jobs amount to only 30 hours a week. McDonald's business plan: Shift
the bulk of its labor costs to taxpayers and workers themselves. The top
executives calculate that employees will subsidize their gross underpayment by
finding second jobs, and then get health care from emergency rooms and go to
welfare offices for food and other basic needs.
All this (and more)
explains the popularity in America of this bumper sticker: "Where are we going?
And what am I doing in this hand basket?"
Most people know that things
are screwy, that this is not the America that's supposed to be. And therein lies
the good news: The USA hasn't gone crazy — its leaders have, and they can be
changed.
In opinion polls, tea party Republicans are becoming less
popular than swine flu, while solid progressives are on the rise. Such undiluted
populist voices as Elizabeth Warren's and Bernie Sanders' in the Senate, Alan
Grayson's in the House and Mayor Bill de Blasio's in New York City are shifting
the debate from the corporate agenda to the people's.
The anthem by
rocker Patti Smith sums up where we Americans are — and where I think we're
going: "People have the power — to dream, to rule, to wrestle the world from
fools."
Even as the Campaign for America's Future prepares for its May
conference on the New Populism, attacks on populism keep coming from all
directions. One of the latest salvos to be publicized comes in the form of an
anecdote about Bill Clinton. As Tim Geithner told Andrew Ross Sorkin, Clinton
sarcastically told the Wall Street-friendly Treasury Secretary how to "pursue a
more populist strategy":
"You could take Lloyd Blankfein into a dark
alley," Clinton said, "and slit his throat, and it would satisfy them for about
two days. Then the blood lust would rise again."
Clinton was always
effective at belittling people with whom he disagrees -- even when, as in this
case, his own position is morally indefensible. The president and his economic
team deregulated Wall Street to disastrous effect, then became very wealthy
there after leaving office.
The "them" in Clinton's quote is us. And the
only people who confuse a cry for justice with "blood lust" are those who have
become too close to the unjust.
It is precisely this sort of sneering
insider indifference to public opinion -- not to mention good governance and
fair play -- which has given rise to today's populist mood. And make no mistake
about it: the public's mood, despite years of attempts by most Republicans and
many Democrats to placate them, is distinctly populist. And much of that
populist sentiment is directed toward the financial institutions which have so
badly damaged our economy.
The fear triggered in some circles by a figure
like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (who is the keynote speaker at the New Populism)
conference is based, not on concerns about "blood lust," but on an understanding
of the politics involved. Washington insiders can protect Wall Street -- and
themselves -- only so long as nobody represents the majority on the political
stage. Once a populist alternative appears, like that represented by Sen. Warren
and like-minded politicians, this "bipartisan" tilt toward bankers becomes much
harder to maintain.
Why? Because these populist leaders aren't just
proposing the right policies toward Wall Street. They're also offering very
popular policies, policies with much deeper and broader support than those of
the Clinton, Bush, or Obama administrations. Polling results compiled in CAF's
PopulistMajority.org website show, for example, that ...
More than half
of those polled last month think the problems with banks which led to the 2008
financial crisis haven't been fixed (to a large extent, they're
right);
Two-thirds of those polled believe that Wall Street financial
institutions make it harder to find good jobs in the United States than was true
in the past (again, there's a lot of truth to that, given the increasing share
of national profits being captured by the nonproductive financial
sector);
Two-thirds believe there should be more government oversight of
financial institutions such as banks and credit card companies;
More than
nine out of 10 people polled believe it is important to regulate financial
services in order to ensure fairness toward customers;
80 percent of
those polled supported the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
(CFPB) after learning about Wall Street's role in the economic crisis of
2008;
83 percent believe that new rules should be implemented for Wall
Street, and that bankers should be held accountable for the actions which caused
the financial crisis.
Most Americans are equally disturbed by the Wall
Street- and billionaire-friendly economy which government policies have forged.
Nearly 8 out of 10 Americans polled last month, for example, believe inequality
is a problem - and more than half think it's a major problem. Two-thirds of
those polled in March believe it's important for the government to implement
policies that reduce inequality. 71 percent think the government believes it's
more important to help major corporations than to help the poor.
What's
more, Americans correctly perceive that bankers broke the law and got away with
it -- that, in fact, they were bailed out rather than punished. A Reuters/Ipsos
poll conducted last September showed that only 15 percent of the public agreed
that "The government has sufficiently prosecuted bankers for their role in the
financial crisis," while more than half disagreed with that
statement.
These populist trends are powerful enough to capture the
attention of many politicians, including some Republicans. Public opinion, and
presumably the free-market side of the conservative spectrum, have led several
Republican politicians to take surprisingly populist positions on Wall Street
issues. Last year, for example, Louisiana Sen. David Vitter joined with Ohio
Sen. Sherrod Brown (who is also speaking at the conference) to introduce a bill
which takes aim at "too big to fail" banks. And earlier this year Republican
Rep. Dave Camp proposed a bank asset tax designed to offset the market advantage
held by large financial institutions.
But most of the populist financial
action is taking place on the Democratic side of the aisle, perhaps to the
consternation of the party's Clinton/Obama wing. Sen. Warren's brilliant
campaign against Wall Street's political privileges has been reinforced by
proposals like Sen. Brown's and has received the enthusiastic backing of
independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and leaders of the Congressional Progressive
Caucus.
(Sen. Sanders and several key congressional progressive leaders,
including Representatives Keith Ellison and Jan Schakowsky, will also be
speaking at the conference.)
These legislators cannot force the
Department of Justice to pursue lawbreaking bankers. But if enough of them come
together, they can pass legislation to protect our economy. And, perhaps even
more importantly, they can use their Congressional exposure to shift the
political debate.
Insiders may scoff, but populist views of Wall Street
aren't driven by "blood lust" -- or any other kind of lust. They're driven by
love -- love of justice, love of fair play, love of democracy, love of country.
And that's giving rise to something which is already afflicting the comfortable
and challenging the powerful.
Call it "the New Populism."
++
Making The “New Populism” A Reality
Richard
Eskow, Campaign for America's Future Blog by Common Dreams
Tuesday, May 27,
2014 by
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/05/27-2
[open link for a short clip of highlights from the New Populism
Conference]
“Democratic movements are initiated by people who have
individually managed to attain a high level of personal political self-respect,”
historian Lawrence Goodwyn wrote nearly four decades ago. “They are not
resigned; they are not intimidated.”
“The game is rigged,” Sen. Elizabeth
Warren said at last week’s New Populism Conference, as if summoned forth from
history by Goodwyn’s observation: “We can whine about it. We can whimper. Or we
can fight back.
“Me? I’m fighting back.”
Against the
Odds
Goodwyn’s quote comes from a book called “The Populist
Moment: a Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America,” and it’s exciting to
think that we might be facing another such historical moment. But Goodwyn warned
of the obstacles such a movement inevitably faces: “cultural roadblocks,” the
difficulty of enlisting supporters, educating them and encouraging them into
action, and the powerful forces arrayed against movements of this
kind.
Goodwyn also warned of “intense cultural conflict with many
built-in advantages accruing to the partisans of the established order.” Anybody
who has ever watched Fox News, or seen Bill Clinton sing from billionaire Pete
Peterson’s hymnal at one of Peterson’s “Fiscal Summits,” can attest to the
prophetic force of that 1978 observation.
Against such odds, what will it
take to make the new populist movement a reality?
First, a
Vision
“We need more than just bumper sticker phrases,” Rev.
William Barber II of the NAACP said at the conference. Rev. Barber, who spoke of
the connection between “academia and activism,” quoted a fellow theologian as
saying that “prophetic moral vision seeks to penetrate despair so that new
futures can be believed and embraced by us.”
“The slaves didn’t figure
out how to get out of slavery by first figuring out how to get out,” said Rev.
Barber. “They got out by first being driven by a vision that said, ‘Up above my
head/I hear music in the air … before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my
grave, and go home with my Lord and be free.’
“They had a vision to get
out,” said Rev. Barber, “before they figured out the ways to accomplish
that.”
To be real, the New Populism must also have a vision. In Rev.
Barber’s words, “Imagination must come before implementation.”
“There
must be people who keep alive the vocation of imagination,” said Rev. Barber,
“who keep conjuring up alternative visions.”
Setting Goals
Rev.
Barber’s populist agenda was similar to that of Sen. Warren, who outlined hers
in the day’s keynote address:
“We believe that Wall Street needs
stronger rules and tougher enforcement, and we’re willing to fight for
it.
“We believe no one should work full-time and live in poverty, and
that means raising the minimum wage – and we’re willing to fight for
it.
“We believe people should retire with dignity, and that means
strengthening Social Security – and we’re willing to fight for it.
“We
believe that a kid should have a chance to go to college without getting crushed
by debt – and we’re willing to fight for it.
“We believe workers have a
right to come together, to bargain together and to rebuild America’s middle
class – and we’re willing to fight for it.
“We believe in equal pay for
equal work – and we’re willing to fight for it.
“We believe equal means
equal, and that’s true in the workplace and in marriage, true for all our
families – and we’re winning that fight right
now.”
Resisting Consensus
There was a strong
sense of unanimity of purpose at the conference, which took place in Washington
– a city whose political and media elite continue to argue that these goals are
politically impossible. Rev. Barber had a response for that:
“One of the
things that prophetic moral vision must do is restore the kind of hope that is
the refusal to accept the reading of reality that is the majority opinion at the
particular time.”
In a political world which is fixated on – and imposes
arbitrary limits on– the “art of the possible,” the importance of this
subversively indefatigable hope cannot be overstated.
Which is not to say that bipartisanship, albeit of a more
transformative nature, was not on the table at the New Populism conference. Rev.
Barber said that “we have to have language … that’s not bound by partisanship,
but gets into people’s souls and asks them … Don’t you still want to be
human?”
“I don’t want people to go left or right. I want them to go
deeper into who we’re called to be. “
Fusion
Reactions
Rev. Barber went on to talk about his experience in
Mitchell County, North Carolina – which is 89 percent Republican and 99 percent
white – where he was invited to speak and the listeners formed a local chapter
of the NAACP and supported his economic agenda. “Don’t tell me it can’t be
done,” he said of populist-themed “fusion politics.”
Polling data shows
that this kind of left/right fusion politics, however utopian it may sound in a
time of polarized politics, has genuine potential. Eight out of ten voters
polled believe – perhaps “understand” would be a better word – that economic
inequality is a real problem in our society. More than two-thirds of those
polled believe the government should do more to address it.
As many as
three out of four Republicans opposes the Social Security budget cuts long
promoted by the Republican leadership and centrist/corporatist Democrats. More
than 80 percent of Americans believe that we need new rules for Wall Street and
that the government has not done enough to hold bankers accountable. More than
nine out of ten believe we need financial oversight to keep the system fair.
Most Americans believe the government’s top priority should be job
creation.
On issue after issue, the public – often including most
Republicans – supports economic positions that could accurately be described as
“populist.” (See PopulistMajority.org for more details.) These figures validate
Rev. Barber’s experience and suggest that a truly nonpartisan populist movement
is a realistic possibility. As Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) put it in his
conference talk, “We are in a populist moment: the question is, What are we
going to do about it?”
There are signs, however preliminary, of a
potential “fusion” coalition in today’s party politics. Democratic Sen. Sherrod
Brown of Ohio spoke at the conference about partnering with conservative
Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana on a bill to rein in “too big to fail”
banks. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the democratic-socialist independent from Vermont,
cosponsored a bill to audit the Federal Reserve with libertarian Republican Rep.
Ron Paul.
Making Populism Real
But, as several conference
speakers affirmed, elected officials will not generate a populist movement.
There is too much money in our political system to make that realistic, despite
the popularity of populist ideas. It’s much more comfortable for most
politicians to preserve a status quo in which the GOP represents the economic
far right, the “centrist” Democrats offer an economic platform that’s too often
indistinguishable from Republican free-market conservatism of earlier eras, and
truly populist leaders aren’t even on the ballot.
Profound social change
– whether in the agrarian economy of the 1900s, the growth of labor rights,
civil rights, women’s rights, or in other transformative historical moments –
has always begun with a popular movement. “Politicians see the light when they
feel the heat,” as Rep. Ellison said.
Is the New Populism real? Its
footprints can be seen in the polling data, in the experiences of Rev. Barber
and other conference speakers, and in the lessons of history. It exists as
potentiality in the hearts and minds of the American people. It exists in the
moral outrage that millions of people feel toward the injustice in our economic
data, our cultural prejudices, and the unjust laws which remain on our books. It
exists in our history and in our values.
But there is much work to do to
move the New Populism from the world of nascent possibility to the world of
transformative reality. It will be hard work – the work of expressing opinions
that are sometimes unpopular, the work of showing up at demonstrations beneath
the glare of hostile strangers (or hostile law enforcement), the work of calling
strangers and friends, of starting petitions or email lists, the work of
educating ourselves in the work of educating others.
There will be the
work of committing deeply to struggle that at times will seem unwinnable, the
work of remembering Dr. King’s words: “The moral arc of the universe is long,
but it bends toward justice.” It will feel like a leap of faith at times, as if
stepping off a cliff into the chasm of an unknown future.
But it must be
done, and it can be done. Who will step forward and volunteer to do this work?
If you’re reading these words, hopefully you’re ready to answer that question
for yourself. ++
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Elizabeth Warren’s
Moment
John Cassidy, New York Books
May 22, 2014 Issue
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/may/22/elizabeth-warrens-moment/
[This is a review of Warren's new book, A Fighting Chance, with
interesting snips from her personal and political
life.]
The Democrats’ New Fake
Populism
Shamus Cooke, Common Dreams
Friday, May 30, 2014
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/05/30-5
It would have been hilarious were it not so nauseating. One could only
watch the recent “New Populism” conference with pity-induced discomfort, as
stale Democratic politicians did their awkward best to adjust themselves to the
fad of “populism.”
A boring litany of Democratic politicians — or those
closely associated — gave bland speeches that aroused little enthusiasm among a
very friendly audience of Washington D.C. politicos. It felt like an amateur
recital in front of family and friends, in the hopes that practicing populism
with an audience would better prepare them for the real thing.
The
organizers of the conference, The Campaign For America’s Future, ensured that
real populism would be absent from the program. The group is a Democratic Party
ally that essentially functions as a party think tank.
The two
co-founders of Campaign for America’s Future are Robert Borosage — who works
closely with the progressive caucus of the Democratic Party — and Robert Hickey,
who works with Health Care for America Now, an organization that prioritized
campaigning for Obamacare. On the Board of Directors is the notorious liberal
Van Jones, no doubt carefully chosen for his non-threatening elitist politics.
The “new populism” seems to mistakenly believe that if Democrats merely
advocate for a couple of “popular” ideas — as opposed to their usual unpopular
policies that they actually implement — that they can suddenly transform
themselves into “populists.”
The unofficial and uninspiring leader of
this grouping, Senator Elizabeth Warren, summarized the “radical” populist
platform of these reborn Democrat revolutionaries, doing her drab best to inject
life into a zombie political party:
"We believe that Wall Street
needs stronger rules and tougher enforcement, and we're willing to fight for
it.”
“We believe no one should work full-time and live in poverty, and
that means raising the minimum wage — and we're willing to fight for
it.”
"We believe people should retire with dignity, and that means
strengthening Social Security — and we're willing to fight for it.”
"We
believe that a kid should have a chance to go to college without getting crushed
by debt — and we're willing to fight for it.”
It’s true that 90
percent of Americans would agree with Warren, but the devil is in her lack of
details. Warren’s popular platform falls incredibly flat because there are no
concrete demands to inspire people, just generalizations. This important
omission didn’t happen by mistake.
The Democrats simply do not want a
new populist movement; rather, their opportunistic goal is to win elections by
simply being more popular than the Republicans. Any of Warren’s above ideas — if
they ever enter the halls of Congress as a bill — would be sufficiently watered
down long before any elated response could be reached from the broader
population.
How might Warren transform her ideas if she actually wanted
a populist response? Some examples might be:
Jail the bankers who
crashed the economy. Tax Wall Street earnings at 90% and nationalize any bank
that is “too big to fail” in order to bring them under control.
Raise the
national minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Expand Social Security by lowering
the retirement age to 60, to be paid for by expanding payroll taxes to higher
earners — who currently pay no Medicare and Social Security taxes on income over
$110,000.
Free university education — to be paid for by taxing the rich
and corporations. Eliminate crushing student debt.
Such demands would be
much more likely to inspire people than what the “populist” Democrats are
offering, and inspiration is the missing populist ingredient that the Democrats
are organically incapable of provoking.
What’s preventing the Democrats
from becoming inspirational? They know all too well that by venturing too far to
the left they could easily instigate a real mass movement. And such a movement
is not easily controlled and would inevitably demand much more than the
corporate-minded Democrats are willing to concede, which, at this point, is
virtually nothing aside from musty rhetoric.
Unlike the Republican’s
populist turn to the right that created the now-defunct Tea Party, a true left
turn would mean have the potential to rejuvenate the millions’ strong labor
movement, while engaging tens of millions more into active political life,
driving people to participate in mass marches, rallies, labor strikes and other
forms of mass action.
This was what happened during the “old populism”
in U.S. history, which the Democrats are taking their trendy namesake from. The
populist movement of the late 1800’s was a genuine mass movement of workers and
farmers, which briefly aligned in an independent political party, the People’s
Party, also known as the populists.
The populist movement that included
strike waves and local rural rebellions had nothing to do with the lifeless
politics of the Democratic Party, and threatened the very foundation of America
corporate power. The Democrats are keenly aware of this type of real populist
“threat,” and they are willing to do anything to stop it.
For example,
the Occupy movement proved that the Democrats fear real left populism much more
than they fear far-right populism. We now know that the Obama administration
worked with numerous Democratic Party mayors and governors across the nationto
undermine and destroy the Occupy movement through mass arrests, police violence
and surveillance. And because Occupy succeeded in changing the national
conversation about income inequality, the Democrats were forced to engage with
the rhetoric of the movement they dismembered, and now use the plagiarized
language as proof of their “populism.”
Aside from Elizabeth Warren, the
other rock star of the “new populism” conference was the nominally-independent
“socialist” Bernie Sanders, who essentially functions in Congress as a Democrat.
Sanders’ politics fits in perfectly with the rest of the progressive caucus
Democrats, which is why he was invited to the conference. Sanders can perhaps
outdo Warren when it comes to anti-corporate-speak; but like Warren he keeps his
solutions vague and his movement building aspirations negligible.
If by
chance Sanders chooses to run for president as an Independent — as many radicals
are hoping — his fake populist politics and empty rhetoric are unlikely to
drastically change, limiting any chance that a "movement" may emerge.
It’s doubtful that many people have been fooled by the “left turn” of
the Democratic Party. But on a deeper level the politics of “lesser evilism”
still haunts labor and community groups, and keeping these groups within the
orbit of the Democratic Party is the ultimate purpose of this new, more radical
speechifying. Until these groups organize themselves independently and create
their own working class political party, the above politics of "populist"
farce is guaranteed to continue. ++
“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the
final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than
evil triumphant.”
~ The Reverend Martin Luther King
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