Super Tuesday 2020: “No, No, No, America – You’ve Got It Wrong!”

Joe-mentum! In spite of the Sanders Campaign’s self-proclaimed and much-vaunted ability to mobilise the sort of disillusioned and marginalised American voter who usually sits out elections, especially the young, just about all the energy on display on Super Tuesday came from those who turned out to support Joe Biden.

OH, THE WAILING! Oh, the gnashing of teeth! How could the American people have been so stupid? Why couldn’t they see the clear path to paradise laid down for them by Bernie Sanders? And how? Oh, Dear God! How could they vote in such self-defeating numbers for Joe Biden?

More than half a century ago, in the aftermath of the 1953 workers’ uprising in East Berlin,  the German Marxist playwright and poet, Bertolt Brecht, penned the following, justly famous, poem. He called it:

The Solution

After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

Reading the outpourings of rage and grief at the unsatisfactory outcome (at least for America’s young progressives) of the Super Tuesday primaries on social media, I couldn’t help recalling Brecht’s sardonic proposition.

In spite of the Sanders Campaign’s self-proclaimed and much-vaunted ability to mobilise the sort of disillusioned and marginalised American voter who usually sits out elections, especially the young, just about all the energy on display on Super Tuesday came from those who turned out to support Joe Biden. In Virginia, for example, Democratic Party voters turned out in numbers well up on 2016: not for Bernie, but for the former Vice-President. In Massachusetts, where he had done no campaigning, Biden carried the state. Its “favourite daughter”, incumbent Senator Elizabeth Warren, came in a poor third. Even in Texas, with its large Bernie-backing Latino population, Sanders was bested by Biden. And again, against all predictions, Biden remains competitive in California – the state Bernie was supposed to run away with.

What happened?

The short and very painful answer is: Bernie and his progressive supporters were viciously mugged by reality.

Retailing “revolution” in the United States of America has always been a hard sell. Before Bernie, there was the radical trade unionist and Indiana State Senator Eugene Victor Debs. In the Presidential Election of 1912, representing the Socialist Party of America, Debs racked-up 6 percent of the popular vote.

It’s worth noting that support for socialism in America peaked in the years between 1900-1916. There were socialist mayors and councillors, socialist legislators and at least one socialist state senator.

When compared to the support for the Republican and Democratic parties, however, the SPA’s vote remained stubbornly in the low single digits. Things got much worse after the USA entered World War I in 1917. Debs himself was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for speaking out against military conscription in 1918. The draconian legislation he fell afoul of was inspired by the high-minded Democratic President, Woodrow Wilson. He was eventually pardoned by President Warren G. Harding, a Republican, in 1921.

Bernie’s electoral success has been in spite of, not because of, his socialist principles. He has always been careful to call himself the “Independent” Senator from Vermont, and his outstanding success as a presidential candidate was made possible not by the sudden conversion of the US electorate to the principles of democratic socialism, but by the rule allowing non-members to contest Democratic Party caucuses and primaries. Without this rule, Sanders wouldn’t have been able to make more than the slightest impact on the American political scene. Be honest, could you identify the Socialist Equality Party’s candidate for the US Presidency in 2016? Of course not. Do you know how many votes the SEP ticket received? 382.

Faced with the prospect of a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” carrying the Democratic Party’s colours into the 2020 Presidential Election, most registered Democrats were dismayed. In their eyes Candidate Bernie Sanders would be an absolute gift to Donald Trump. That’s why the Democratic Party leadership seized upon Biden’s big win in South Carolina to break the log-jam of moderate contenders and give the voters the chance to restore “Uncle Joe” to his former position as the man most likely to beat the ogre in the White House.

Yes, you can argue that Americans should want more: that they should take the opportunity to bring their country into the twenty-first century that Sanders is offering. But, if you take that position, then you are ranging yourself alongside the Secretary of the Writers Union in Brecht’s poem. Castigating the people for failing to live up to your expectations of them is not the best way to win their confidence. For better or worse, democracy affords ordinary people the occasional opportunity to apply their collective weight to History’s rudder. If they fail to follow the “revolutionary” course you have suggested, then whose fault is that? Theirs, for not taking it? Or yours, for not giving them good enough reasons for risking everything on a politician’s promise?

I never really saw eye-to-eye with the late Mike Moore, but there was one saying of his that I’ve never had the slightest difficulty in endorsing:

“The people are always right – even when they’re wrong.”

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 6 March 2020.

The Response - Not The Call.

The Equal And Opposite Reaction To Bernie: Call yourself a “democratic socialist” and everyone who feels threatened by democratic-socialism will mobilise against you. The anti-Sanders mobilisation has taken some time to resolve itself into a single challenger, but former Vice-President Joe Biden’s, runaway victory in South Carolina has finally cleared the centrists’ path to the nomination.

WATCHING THE SLOW descent of Bernie Sander’s campaign is a depressing reminder of democratic (and Democratic) political realities. The most brutal of these is that Newton’s Third Law of Motion applies with equal force to politics as it does to physics. “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

Call yourself a “democratic socialist” and everyone who feels threatened by democratic-socialism will mobilise against you. The anti-Sanders mobilisation has taken some time to resolve itself into a single challenger, but former Vice-President Joe Biden’s, runaway victory in South Carolina has finally cleared the centrists’ path to the nomination.

No matter how thrilling Sanders’ wins in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada may have been, the brute arithmetic of the primary process remained constant: the combined strength of his opponents was always greater than his own. As the captains and the kings of the Democratic Party centre depart, with Pete Buttigieg leading the way this afternoon (2 March 2020) the inevitability of a single opponent standing athwart Bernie’s path to the nomination is now clear.

“Super Tuesday” (Wednesday, 4 March NZT) will winnow the field with even more force than South Carolina. The departure of Amy Klobuchar and (probably) Mike Bloomberg, will leave the field clear for Biden’s folksy homilies. Elizabeth Warren will likely remain in the race, drawing votes from Sanders in expectation of being rewarded with the Vice-Presidential nomination. At some point well short of the Democratic Party Convention in Milwaukee (July 13-16) Sanders’ campaign will falter and fade away. Many on the left of the Democratic Party will settle for the half-loaf that is Biden-Warren – especially if it means driving Donald Trump from the White House.

“No! No! No!”, the Sandernistas will cry. “That must not be allowed to happen!” But the angry protests of these young, idealistic progressives will not avail them. At some point in electoral politics, the moment comes when you must remove your fingers from your ears, open your eyes, and take in the terrifying spectacle of your enemies’ tanks rolling towards you. Whether you believe in it or not, the Third Law of Political Motion is very, very real.

Why is the Democratic Party leadership so terrified of Sanders becoming the nominee? Because they know the size and ferocity of the forces his nomination for the Presidency would unleash. Sanders supporters rail against the Democratic establishment – accusing them of doing everything within their power to undermine their candidate. And that’s true. They are. Not because they’re against Medicare For All, or even the Green New Deal, but because the billionaires Bernie denounces, whose enormous power and wealth are directly threatened by his policies, will move heaven and earth to keep him, and them, out of the White House.

Democratic Party stalwarts, the people who have spent years navigating the treacherous waters of the United States’ political system, have priorities very different from Sanders’ most vociferous supporters. They are only too aware that even if, by some miracle, Bernie won the White House; the Almighty is most unlikely to add a second miracle to the mix.

Yes, a President Bernie Sanders could achieve some important gains by Executive Order, but he couldn’t deliver Medicare For All, or a Green New Deal, or the writing-off of student debt, or any of the other radical measures he is promising, without solid majorities in both the House of Representative and the Senate. Truth to tell, securing the passage of such radical legislation would be a long shot even with substantial majorities in both houses of Congress. Without them, however, Bernie’s programme is a pipe-dream. As unrealistic as expecting the God of History to deliver the Democratic Party not one, but two, political miracles at the 2020 elections.

Stripping away all the ideological bunting, there is only one unequivocally popular prospect the Democratic Party can hold out to the American electorate: a White House cleansed of Donald Trump and all his evil brood. But, bringing together an electoral coalition powerful enough to secure Trump’s defeat in the Electoral College will not be easy. Far from offering voters the bitter rhetoric of class war, the Democratic Party’s candidate will need to speak the language of inclusion, reconciliation and national renewal.

The sentiments of America’s Founding Fathers should be turned against the constitutionally illiterate Republican incumbent. Recalling for voters all the great and redemptive moments of American history, the Candidate should then invite them to contrast the moral strength of America’s best leaders with the abject moral squalor of its worst.

Bernie Sanders and his followers have done the United States the inestimable service of bringing together all the planks necessary to construct the most progressive Democratic Party platform in a generation. To implement the Sandernistas’ progressive dreams, however, the voters of United States must first be persuaded to abandon the ruin of unreasoning and mutually destructive partisanship. First and foremost, America needs a healer.

If History has taught us anything, it is that revolutions inevitably open up new wounds – even in those rare instances when they succeed in closing up old ones. Always, the true believers cry: “Let Justice be done – though the heavens fall!” But what sort of justice has ever emerged from the ruins of paradise?

Let the equal and opposite reaction to Donald Trump’s hate be love. Allow him to initiate the action that will bring his administration down. The Democratic Party can only win in November by being the response – not the call.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 3 March 2020.

Why Isn’t JA Channelling AOC?

Red Star Rising: A very similar set of perceptions fuelled the rise of both Jacinda Ardern and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In the case of "AOC", the twenty-something, student-loan-burdened, former-waitress from Brooklyn, who proudly proclaims herself to be a “democratic-socialist”, has come to stand for everything that the contemporary Democratic Party is not – but urgently needs to become. In Jacinda's case, however, the radicalism is more apparent than real.

WHY ISN’T JACINDA ARDERN channelling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC)? This is not a frivolous question. Labour found itself swept into a winning position at the end of 2017 almost entirely on the strength of Jacinda’s extraordinary appeal – especially to voters under 40.

Central to Jacinda’s appeal was the widespread perception that Labour’s new leader represented a definitive ideological break: not only with the Labour Party of Roger Douglas, but also with the woman who did her best to clear away the worst of the mess Rogernomics had made, Helen Clark.

A very similar set of perceptions has fuelled the rise of AOC. This twenty-something, student-loan-burdened, former-waitress from Brooklyn, who proudly proclaims herself to be a “democratic-socialist”, has come to stand for everything that the Clinton-dominated Democratic Party is not – but urgently needs to become.

So far, AOC hasn’t put a foot wrong in the complex dance routine that must be executed to secure a hearing for the aspirations of her locked-out generation. Her energetic sponsorship of a “Green New Deal” for America has made it impossible for House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to nudge the radicalism of AOC and her newly-minted congressional comrades into the long grass. In similar vein, the young Brooklynite’s outspoken call for the USA’s wealthiest citizens to be taxed at 70 cents in the dollar on all income in excess of $250,000 has given Overton’s Window a much-needed shove to the left.

A politician of Jacinda Ardern’s acute sensitivity can hardly have failed to notice the bright red glow currently pulsing from the heart of the zeitgeist. She would have watched in awe as Bernie Sanders’ “Children’s Crusade” forced Hilary Clinton to call in all her favours (and Super-Delegates) to head the old socialist off at the pass. But that awe would have turned to horror as Jeremy Corbyn’s socialist revival rolled up Blairism like a threadbare carpet and set the crowds cheering at Glastonbury.

Suddenly, Jacinda’s carefully scripted lines about being a “pragmatic idealist” seemed likely to have a very limited shelf-life. Certainly, her “politics of kindness” trope continues to inspire, but the problem with throwing around such kindly words is that, sooner or later (and preferably sooner!) they have to be matched by kindly deeds. Helping with the barbie at Waitangi looks good on the six o’clock news, but more is needed. Much more.

Does Jacinda get this? Does she understand the huge political potential – and risk – posed by the “surplus consciousness” of tens-of-thousands of young adults laden-down with professional credentials and student debt but denied the security and status attached to well-remunerated employment and a solid career-path? The precarious position of young people in the labour market is amplified even more pitiably for them in the marriage and property markets.

These voters are too well-educated to find solace among the angry populists of the Alt-Right, but they are signing up in droves to the system-challenging – and changing – agenda of democratic socialism. After all, what favours has neoliberal capitalism ever done them?

It’s one of the great mysteries of this government that, on the night the Labour-NZ First coalition was announced, Winston Peters got this – and Jacinda didn’t.

Then again, maybe not. One of the first big political gigs offered to Jacinda was an internship in Tony Blair’s Cabinet Office. It’s hardly the sort of ideological grounding to generate a surge of enthusiasm and support for Bernie Sanders or (God forbid!) Jeremy Corbyn.

Nor should it be forgotten that Jacinda was for a good portion of her life a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. One has only to recall the shining eyes and broad smiles of those Mormon missionaries on your doorstep, or tipping you that friendly wave as they ride by on their bicycles, to remember suddenly where you have seen Jacinda’s political style before.

Those familiar with Jacinda’s CV will object that her stint as President of the International Union of Socialist Youth (IUSY) equips her even more impressively than AOC for the struggle to advance democratic socialism. A little more is required of a true democratic socialist, however, than the ability to call people “comrade” with a straight face. Nor is the IUSY quite the bastion of radical socialist internationalism that its name might suggest. Any organisation that welcomes a far-right CIA stooge like Venezuela’s “Interim President”, Juan Guaido, into its ranks, has some explaining to do!

Finally, there is the problem of the company Jacinda has trained herself to keep. Throughout her entire political career she has surrounded herself with – and been surrounded by – right-wing social-democrats. Blair’s New Labourites; Clark’s incrementalists; Cullen’s DNC-endorsed economic policies; and, most recently, Grant Robertson’s “Budget Responsibility Rules”. She was an enemy of David Cunliffe and, by implication, the hopes and dreams of the thousands of Labour Party members who supported him. And, lastly, it’s a pretty safe bet that, like Labour’s current president, Nigel Howath, she has no time at all for that bane of Blairism, Jeremy Corbyn.

No. Jacinda may envy AOC’s extraordinary political savvy and covet her social media skills. She may even decide to crib some of her best lines about saving the planet and soaking the rich. But anyone anticipating an Ardern-led shift towards democratic socialism (which is still, ironically enough, the official ideology of the NZ Labour Party) is bound to be disappointed.

Democratic Socialism, as practiced by AOC, will be DOA in Jacinda’s NZLP.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 12 March 2019.

Carrying The Torch.

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans – born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage – and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world. 

–  John F. Kennedy

NOTHING IN PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S inaugural address resonated in the hearts of young Americans, and the youth of the world, like the words quoted above. Asking what you can do for your country is all very well, but unless what you’re proposing elicits a sympathetic response from the seat of power; some sign that your motives are understood and your values shared, then your question will be lost on the air. It is from this rejuvenated sense of connection that generational shifts in politics acquire their transformational power.

The big question for 2018, therefore, is: what are the motives and values connecting New Zealand’s 37-year-old prime minister with the generations born after the post-war Baby Boom?

Kennedy was, of course, a member of what some have called “The Greatest Generation”. Raised under the pall of economic depression, and then thrown into the most destructive human conflict of human history, they were nevertheless determined to create the fairest and most prosperous societies the world had ever seen – and in that regard, they’d been spectacularly successful.

The full measure of that success is captured in Kennedy’s proud boast that, thanks to humanity’s technological prowess, “man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life.”

The Ancient Greeks would have called this hubris – and they would have been right.

But what of the generation for whom Jacinda now speaks? Untempered by war; undisciplined by the existential stakes attached to global ideological competition; unimpressed with their nation’s colonial heritage; and uncommitted to the universal definition of human rights for which Kennedy pledged his country’s all on that chilly January morning in 1961: for what will the Millennial Generation “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe”?

Well, for a start, they would probably refuse to be bound by such an open-ended and reckless pledge. “Any Price?”, they would respond. “No, not any price. The world has had enough of men who commit the lives of millions to the fulfilment of promises they had no right to make.”

For a great many millennial women, JFK, himself, is a problem. “If #Me Too had been around in 1963,” they ask, “how many women would have come forward to denounce the President?”

No, Jacinda’s millennials are not well disposed to big promises, all-encompassing systems and unyielding ideologies. They have grown up amidst the havoc wrought by a generation far too prone to alternating fits of selfless idealism with bouts of hedonistic excess. That all their Baby Boomer parents’ enthusiasms boiled down to, in the end, was the cold and selfish cynicism of neoliberalism, taught them all they need to know about the malleability of human aspirations. The Labour Leader’s brisk “Let’s Do This” slogan was perfectly pitched to an audience more intent on achieving small dreams than grand visions.

The two great exceptions to this rule are Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn. On the face of it, their ability to draw tens-of-thousands of young people into their campaigns seems counter-intuitive. What could these two, ageing, Baby-Boomer males possibly have to say to the Millennial Voter? They had, after all, spent most of their adult lives achieving sweet-bugger-all: two old leaves swirling aimlessly in the stagnant backwaters of left-wing politics.

But that was the whole point. Unlike so many of their contemporaries, Sanders and Corbyn simply refused to surrender the hopes and dreams of their youth. While all around them lay the jettisoned ideals of former comrades, they had kept on singing the hallelujah song.

Sanders and Corbyn were the proof that growing old did not have to mean growing cynical and cruel. The Millennials looked at the career politicians of their own generation and saw far too much evidence of wholesale generational surrender. How had so many twenty-something minds been taken over by so many hundred-year-old ideas? Sanders’ and Corbyn’s bodies may have been old, but their thinking was as young as the kids who cheered them on.

This, then, is the torch which the Prime Minister is being asked to carry into 2018. The inspirational torch of authenticity which dispels the darkness of hypocrisy. If she truly wishes to change their world, Jacinda must first prove to her generation that the world is not changing her.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 2 January 2018.

Hillary Clinton, Progressive.

Neoliberal War Goddess, Or Stalwart American Progressive? Why is this woman, this feminist, this progressive, demonised as some sort of fanatical neoliberal war goddess? Why do even New Zealanders who identify as “left-wing” claim to see no meaningful difference between Clinton and her Republican rival, Donald Trump? How has the woman who campaigned for George McGovern – the most radical presidential candidate in recent American history – been so egregiously defamed?

 

“WHAT WE HAVE TO DO every so often in America is save capitalism from itself.” Hillary Clinton’s take on capitalism is pretty much the same as Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s take on capitalism. If that doesn’t justify placing Clinton among America’s progressives, then the definition of “progressive” must have been changed when the world’s political scientists weren’t looking.

 

Only the most extreme denizens of the Far Right would dispute that Roosevelt’s “New Deal” rescued American capitalism from the looming political consequences of the Great Depression. Certainly, that remains the firm judgement of practically all American socialists. Indeed, the great tragedy of American socialism is that the progressive movement (almost always in the guise of the Democratic Party) has unfailingly stepped up to defuse those economic and social bombs which, left undefused, might so easily have exploded into revolution.

 

Clinton fits very comfortably into that Democratic tradition. Ideologically-speaking she rates as a fairly staunch American “liberal” (New Zealand political scientists would call her a social-democrat). United States experts locate her on the same section of the left political spectrum as President Barack Obama and Senator Elizabeth Warren, and only marginally to the right of Senator Bernie Sanders who, in spite of calling himself a “democratic socialist”, has devoted his life to promoting a social and economic programme indistinguishable from Roosevelt’s New Deal.

 

So why is this woman, this feminist, this progressive, demonised as some sort of fanatical neoliberal war goddess? Why do even New Zealanders who identify as “left-wing” claim to see no meaningful difference between Clinton and her Republican rival, Donald Trump? How has the woman who campaigned for George McGovern – the most radical presidential candidate in recent American history – been so egregiously defamed?

 

The answer is simple. Hillary Clinton has been demonised by the most reactionary elements of the American Right ever since she and her husband looked set to claim the White House in the presidential election of 1992. For nearly quarter-of-a-century she has been the target of an unrelenting campaign of false accusations, scurrilous rumours and outright lies. Recall the disgraceful campaign to undermine the prime-ministership of New Zealand’s own Helen Clark, multiply it by 10, and you will have some idea of the magnitude of what Clinton quite correctly described as “a vast right-wing conspiracy” dedicated to her and her husband’s destruction.

 

Those who were not yet born in 1992 find it difficult to fathom the depths to which the American Right was (and is) willing to sink in order to neutralise any and all threats posed to the legacies of Reagan and Bush by the Democratic Party and its more electable leaders.

 

That Hillary Clinton, as the Junior Senator from New York, voted for the invasion of Iraq has been parlayed by Sanders’ millennial supporters into proof positive of her war-mongering instincts. That dozens of her fellow Democratic senators did the same, is simply ignored. So, too, is the historical fact that ever since the days of the red-baiter, Joseph McCarthy, the Democratic Party has felt obliged to out-perform the Republicans on issues of national security.

 

The Millennial Left’s refusal to put the behaviour of politicians into some semblance of historical context is also evident in the their criticism of Clinton’s actions in regard to Libya. As US Secretary of State, Clinton was acutely aware of how much her country owed to its Nato partners for their unwavering support of the USA’s military commitment to Afghanistan. That was why she was willing to recommend to President Obama that he lend his support to British and French efforts in the UN Security Council to provide air support to Libyan rebels fighting Muamma Gaddafi. Clinton’s critics conveniently forget that it was the Security Council, not the US Secretary of State, who subsequently authorised the “humanitarian” bombing of Libya.

 

Unfortunately, this is not the sort of argument that sways Clinton’s younger critics in the slightest. Anyone who takes money from Goldman Sachs and their Wall Street partners-in-crime is obviously guilty beyond redemption. As is anyone who acknowledges the extraordinary electoral power of the Jewish Vote in US politics by making favourable references to Israel. (Did anyone hear Bernie condemn “Israel’s apartheid regime”?)

 

The “Bernie-or-Bust” die-hards who, unlike their mentor, refuse to recognise the brute realities of American presidential politics, have proved to be fast learners when it comes to orchestrating exactly the same phantasmagorical parade of falsehoods that, hitherto, Clinton only had to fend off from the Right.

 

Hillary has become “Killary”. Bumper-stickers scream “Liar, liar, pants-suit on fire!” Never mind that the US media’s fact-checkers have pronounced Clinton the most truthful of all the major primary contenders. Or that on her watch as Secretary of State the USA markedly improved its global conduct.

 

The only conclusion to be drawn from the above is that, in the minds of politicised Millennials, the meaning of “progressive” has changed. It now means: “Somebody who could not possibly be elected President of the United States.”

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 11 August 2016.

Course Correction

Bernie's And Busted: When idealistic young people, most of them utterly unprepared, are pushed into the thrusting, beating and grinding behemoth that is the Democratic Party machine, and told to disrupt it, how shocked the party's critics claim to be, how dismayed, when the machine chews them up and spits them out. As if the Old Left had no idea that, to paraphrase Boromir in Lord of the Rings: “One does not simply walk into the Democratic National Convention.”

JEFFREY ST. CLAIR writes for the American on-line magazine Counterpunch. To read his excoriating critique of the Democratic National Convention is to feel the intense frustration and rage of the progressive American Left.

 

A sample: “Hillary has already out-Thatchered the Iron Lady and she hasn’t been elected yet. She’s made the complete metamorphosis from a Goldwater girl to a McGovern woman to a Reagan granny.”

 

That same frustration and rage was evident in the “Bernie-or-Bust” dead-enders’ attempts to disrupt the Convention. Their petulant bewilderment at being stiff-armed by the event’s organisers and security staff proof of just what a children’s crusade the Bernie Sanders candidacy had become in some US states – California in particular.

 

The Democratic Party is a machine: huge and unforgiving. St. Clair and his fellow critics on the Left know this. It is why they seem to enjoy nothing more than taking their readers into the heart of the mechanism. They point to its massive pistons pumping, its huge gears grinding, the controlled explosions in its vast cylinders, and they profess to be shocked.

 

And when idealistic young people, most of them utterly unprepared, are pushed into this thrusting, beating and grinding behemoth and told to disrupt it, how shocked the critics claim to be, how dismayed, when the machine chews them up and spits them out. As if the Old Left had no idea that, to paraphrase Boromir in Lord of the Rings: “One does not simply walk into the Democratic National Convention.”

 

Unacknowledged amid all this shock and dismay is the simple fact that without the brute force of the Democratic Party’s political machine: without the Wall Street donors, the SuperPACs, the media manipulation and the cheap parliamentary tricks designed to keep nay-sayers off the platform and away from the cameras; progressive politics in the United States would make no headway whatsoever.

 

Sanders grasped this simple fact. That’s why, to the boos of his supporters, he urged them to get in behind Hillary Clinton. Even if his followers failed to grasp it, the most important truth about the Democratic Party machine isn’t how it works, but in which direction it is steered.

 

Listening to Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech all Jeffrey St. Clair heard was compromise, betrayal and “proto-fascism”. A less jaundiced observer would have heard something much more encouraging. Amid all the patriotic flourishes and the merciless deconstruction of the hollow, clay-footed god that is Donald Trump, a sensitive ear would have detected the crunch and groan of the Democratic Party changing course.

 

Not enough to silence the Bernie-or-Bust dead-enders; and nowhere near enough to mute the criticism of Jeffrey St. Clair; but more than enough to send a shiver down the spine of New Zealand’s Ambassador to the United States, the former Trade Minister, Tim Groser. Barack Obama would like to end his presidency with the congressional ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but Hillary Clinton is pledged to take the Oath of Office over TPP’s unratified corpse.

 

It was another female US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, who described the United States of America as “the indispensable nation”. When all other nations are stepping back, it is the United States that must step forward. In doing so, the United States reveals itself as not only the world’s indispensable nation, but also as its essential leader and guide.

 

This is the geopolitical reality that makes the presidential election of 2016 so critical. If Donald Trump wins, and puts “America First”, then the United States will have signalled its intention to step back and away from its leadership role. But if Hillary wins, as I believe she will, then the United States will begin the long, slow process of leading the world away from the self-destructive shibboleths of neoliberalism.

 

Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Convention did not swing the wheel of American politics as hard to port as Jeffrey St. Clair and the Bernie-or-Bust dead-enders so obviously desired. But, on a long journey, even a small course correction can alter a vessel’s ultimate destination to a surprising degree.

 

In his glorious anthem, Democracy, Leonard Cohen urges on the USA, that indispensable vessel of the world’s hope:

 

Sail on, sail on

O mighty Ship of State!

To the Shores of Need

Past the Reefs of Greed

Through the Squalls of Hate.

Sail on, sail on, sail on.

 

Such is the political course dictated to Hillary Clinton, not only by what Bernie Sanders calls “the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party”, but by the necessity of repairing an economic system that serves only obscene wealth. Redistributing that wealth isn’t just an ethical imperative, it is a sociological necessity. Inequality is the supreme solvent of human solidarity and social justice.

 

The choice before the American electorate has become existentially clear: sail on, or sink.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 2 August 2016.

America's Troubled Waters

All Come To Look For America: Tens-of-thousands accepted the call from this improbably grandfatherly “democratic socialist”, and to their astonishment and delight Bernie’s quest took on the bright aura of plausibility. Was it possible that the white-haired Senator from Vermont might win the Democratic nomination? No. Life is not a song and quests are seldom fulfilled in the way that those who set out upon them imagine. Hillary Clinton drew her political power from a grid several orders of magnitude larger than Bernie’s. Twenty-five years of “Third Way” Democratic Party politics were not about to be overturned by a college graduates’ crusade.

 

BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER – that was the song Paul Simon sang to the Democratic National Convention. No doubt the nearly 2,000 delegates pledged to Bernie Sanders would have preferred their theme-song “America”. Simon gifted Sanders the rights to the song at the very beginning of his extraordinary quest. The campaign advertisement it accompanied was easily the best of the 2015-16 primary season.

 

There is something in the song that touches the hearts of more than the ageing Baby Boomers who recall the song from their long-haired, hitch-hiking days in the 1960s and 70s. Perhaps it is the mixing of what is, after all, a love story, with an account of being caught up in a much larger narrative.

 

“Cathy, I’m lost” whispers the song’s protagonist. “I’m empty and aching – and I don’t know why.” All those college kids who flocked to Bernie’s banner, did they too feel the tug of history’s currents pulling them out into the at once thrilling and terrifying deeps of political commitment?

 

“All come to look for America” runs the refrain. It was both a description and a challenge. Tens-of-thousands accepted the call from this improbably grandfatherly “democratic socialist”, and to their astonishment and delight Bernie’s quest took on the bright aura of plausibility. Was it possible that the white-haired Senator from Vermont might win the Democratic nomination?

 

No. Life is not a song and quests are seldom fulfilled in the way that those who set out upon them imagine. Hillary Clinton drew her political power from a grid several orders of magnitude larger than Bernie’s. Twenty-five years of “Third Way” Democratic Party politics were not about to be overturned by a college graduates’ crusade.

 

Not overturned, that was too much to hope for, but, even in the offices of the Democratic National Committee, Hillary’s people were “feeling the Bern”. Like it or not (and if Wikileaks is to be believed they did not like it at all) the Clinton juggernaut was being influenced by the Sanders insurgency. Obama had beaten Hillary Clinton to the nomination in 2008 on the strength of his famous slogan: “Yes we can”. Now, thanks to Sanders’ “political revolution” from below, Hillary was making sure of the nomination by declaring: “Yes I will”.

 

This was the message Sanders had, somehow, to deliver to his followers as, after a poignant reprise of his “America” campaign ad, he stepped on to the stage of Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Centre. They weren’t about to make it easy for him. The cheers and the chants went on and on as if, by dint of their undiminishing fervour, they could will another, happier outcome.

 

For there was sadness in the faces of Sander’s delegates – even among the cheers. One black woman looked on, her face a carved portrait of despair. Tears rolled unchecked down the cheeks of another young woman as she held aloft a placard promising “A Future To Believe In”.

 

What followed was thirty minutes of uncompromising political education. Sanders acknowledged his followers disappointment, but he refused to let them wallow in it. He may not have won the nomination, but he and his movement had played a crucial role in writing what he called “the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party”. And, like Wendy reattaching Peter Pan’s shadow, Bernie fastened Hillary to the Democratic Party platform with chains of rhetorical steel. The revolution would go on.

 

Pondering Sander’s masterful address, it occurred to me that “Bridge Over Troubled Water” was the right choice after all. It’s a song of two parts. In the first, the singer declares:  “When you’re down and out/When you're on the street/When evening falls so hard/I will comfort you”. In the second part, the focus shifts: “Sail on silver girl/Sail on by/Your time has come to shine/All your dreams are on their way”.

 

Yes, this is Hillary Clinton’s time to shine. She has devoted her entire life to the hugely difficult task of changing the United States of America. That the task has required compromises goes without saying. It may even be true that in her suppers with the Devil she brought too short a spoon. But, it is not only in comparison with the alternative that Hillary shines. She will make a fine President in her own right.

 

And Bernie will be sailing right behind.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 29 July 2016.

Raging Against The Dying American Light

E Pluribus Unum: Out of the four leading contenders for the Presidency, the American electorate and/or the Republican and Democratic Party "grandees" must contrive to winnow down the choice to just two (or three, if they fail) and then to just one. Not since the 1850s has the American Republic been confronted with an electorate less disposed to swing in behind the last man - or woman - standing.

 

THE AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL election campaign is entering a critical stage. The results of the forthcoming primary elections in the big, delegate-rich, north-eastern states of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania will go a long way towards determining which of the Republican and Democratic candidates square-off against each other in November.

 

For the Democratic challenger, Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont, it’s make-or-break time. If he cannot inflict a series of decisive defeats upon front-runner Hillary Clinton in these three great Democratic Party redoubts, then his candidacy will be dead in the water and the Democratic Party Convention in late July will be the Clinton coronation her supporters have always predicted.

 

On the Republican Party side, the race could get a whole lot more complicated. A failure by Trump to come storming back in his home state, New York, may well end his hopes of winning the 1,237 delegates he needs to secure the Republican nomination. If neither Trump, nor his principal rival, Texas senator Ted Cruz, has the numbers to win on the first ballot, then the world will be treated to a spectacle unwitnessed in twenty-first century American politics – a brokered convention.

 

Will the assembled Republican delegates, no longer pledged to dance with the candidate they came with, install Trump or Cruz anyway? Or, will they swing their support behind the allegedly “moderate” Governor of Ohio, John Kasich? The possibility that the candidate may turn out to be someone entirely unlooked for: someone “drafted” by the convention delegates themselves; cannot be discounted.

 

What is it that has produced these high levels of political volatility and uncertainty in American society? How has the usually elite-driven process of selecting a presidential candidate been transformed into this rowdy festival of unguided democracy?

 

Before answering that question, it is worth pausing for a moment to consider the implications of the previous sentence.

 

Because whatever its critics may say about the American system, this year’s presidential race is proof that the great republic is still very much the creature of “We, the People of the United States.” Trump is selling populism; Cruz conservatism; Sanders idealism; and Clinton is retailing pragmatism. “Step right up!” their respective barkers shout: “You’ve paid your money – now make your choice!” And, in the lengthy and complex process of choosing, millions of Americans are demonstrating not only their ideological diversity, but also their unifying faith in the ongoing utility of the ballot-box.

 

Whether that ballot-box can any longer deliver a President equal to the challenge of representing the burgeoning diversity of the American electorate is the core question being posed by the 2016 campaign. Somehow, the populism, conservatism, idealism and pragmatism which have whipped the contest into its present state of inchoate frothiness must be settled and distilled: firstly into two candidates; and then, on 8 November, into a single individual.

 

The number of times this seemingly impossible task has actually been accomplished by the American electorate is impressive. Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt managed to keep all four balls in the air, and so did Dwight Eisenhower. Lyndon Johnson did it in 1964, as did Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1980, and then again, even more emphatically, in 1984.

 

For all their eloquence and glamour, neither John F. Kennedy nor Barack Obama succeeded in triggering the sort of landslides granted to Johnson and Reagan. Bringing together the clamouring tribes of the American polity proved to be beyond both presidents. Although Kennedy’s assassination did engender a kind of unity – if only of shock and grief.

 

The current roilings of American politics: its vicious and uncompromising partisanship; the disquieting thought that many of the issues at stake may not be susceptible to resolution by simple majorities; have recalled for US historians the deadly politics of the decade immediately preceding the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861.

 

The historic outcome of the presidential election of 1860, which saw Abraham Lincoln elected with just 39.8 percent of the popular vote, was made possible by a fatal split in the ranks of the Democratic Party. That such a split – this time in the ranks of the Republican Party – is being openly canvassed only adds to the sense of historical déjà vu. Should Trump’s clear plurality of the Republican primary vote be discounted by the machinations of party grandees, his supporters may not go quietly into that good night of political impotence.

 

A third party challenge by Trump could throw the 2016 Presidential Election to the Democratic Party in circumstances that call into question the legitimacy of its mandate. As in 1860, it will be race and the threat it poses to the status of White Americans, that threatens not only the coherence, but also the very survival of the American republic.

 

Tomorrow’s New York Primary is worth keeping an eye on.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 19 April 2016.

Black Brothers And Good Ole Boys: Bernie Sanders' Winning Margin?

Rooting For The Wrong Team: Dumb, racist, Bible-thumping, gun-loving, working-class white males living in the American South began voting for the Republican Party when the Democratic President, Lyndon Johnson, signed the Civil Rights Bill into law in 1965. The Republican Right has been playing them like a fiddle ever since. If he's to become President, Bernie Sanders is going to have to persuade these good ole boys to vote the same way as their black brothers.

 

IF BERNIE SANDERS is to win the US Presidential Election he’ll have to win the support of two crucial demographics. The first group to win over are working-class blacks. The second, and arguably the more important, are working-class whites. Because, right now, the Sanders campaign is a paradox: it offers America a left-wing programme, but the voters who have , so far, responded most enthusiastically are not the black, white and Latino working-class Americans who would benefit most from its content, but the young, well-educated children of America’s white professional middle-class – and some of their parents.

 

As the primaries head South and South-West into South Carolina and Nevada the Sanders campaign must find a way to counter Hillary Clinton’s popularity among African-American voters and Latinos. If he does not find some way of detaching a significant number of black support from the Clinton juggernaut in South Carolina, he risks getting what Barack Obama calls a “shellacking”. Being beaten by 40-50 percentage points in the Palmetto State would damage the Sander’s campaign very seriously. A narrow loss (10-15 points) on the other hand, would indicate that he just might come out the other side of “Super Tuesday” with enough delegates to keep on fighting.

 

[The phrase “Super Tuesday” refers to the Tuesday in February or March of a presidential election year when the greatest number of states hold primary elections to select delegates to national conventions at which each party’s presidential candidates are officially nominated. More delegates can be won on Super Tuesday than on any other single day of the primary calendar; accordingly, candidates seeking the presidency traditionally must do well on this day to secure their party’s nomination. States participating in this year’s “Super Tuesday” (1 March 2016) are: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and Wyoming. – Wikipedia]

 

Sander’s position in Nevada is of less concern than his situation in South Carolina. The Nevada polls put him within striking distance of Clinton, which suggests that, whoever wins there, the margin will be relatively narrow. If it’s not, and Clinton racks up a big Nevada win, then the Sanders campaign will find itself holed below the waterline.

 

In Sander’s favour, however, is the endorsement he has received from the “Black Lives Matter” movement. This mostly young activist group has broken ranks with the ageing veterans of the 1950s and 60s civil rights leadership – nearly all of whom have come out strongly for Clinton. Black youth, who have grown up in the post-civil rights activism era, are drawn to Sander’s unequivocal condemnation of Police racism, and are as enthusiastic as white youth about his promises of free tertiary education and universal, publicly funded and provided health care.  If Sanders attracts the support of young black working-class voters across the South (where most of the Super Tuesday primaries will be taking place) then Clinton campaign’s progress will be severely impeded.

 

But, even if he heads off Hillary to claim the Democratic Party’s nomination, Sanders cannot become President of the United States without re-claiming for the Democratic Party a significant chunk of the white working-class’s current support for the Republicans.

 

In the states of the old Confederacy, and especially among voters with only a high-school education, the formerly rock-solid grip of the Democratic Party was broken as long ago as the late 1960s. The poor, ill-educated, deeply religious working-class white males of the Old South never forgave President Johnson (a Texan goddammit!) for passing the Voting Rights Act in 1965. It made them easy meat for the Alabama Governor, George Wallace, in 1968; Richard Nixon, in 1972; and Ronald Reagan in 1980.

 

By skilfully practising the dark art of “wedge politics” the Republicans have by-and-large held on to these angry and alienated “good ole boys”. Culturally impoverished, Fox News watching, minimum wage workers comprise the core of evangelical Christianity in America; hold deeply conservative views on most social issues; love their guns, their families and their flag; and have precious little that’s good to say about Blacks (welfare scroungers!) Latinos (illegal immigrants!) Muslims (terrorists!) or “Big Government”.

 

Can Sanders – a socialist Jewish-American – win back these good ole boys? That depends upon how forthright and uncompromising he is willing to be in sheeting home the blame for working-class America’s woes to where it properly belongs. Deep down these voters know that they’ve been suckered by the country-club set, and that, as Sanders declares over and over again, the game in America is rigged against the ordinary working stiff – no matter what colour or creed he may be.

 

Only if he is able to convince both the black and the white working-class that a vote for the Democratic candidate is a vote to break through to the surface and once again breathe free American air, can Bernie Sanders hope to become the 45^th President of the United States.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog and Bowalley Road  of Saturday, 20 February 2016.

Orbiting A Dying Sun?

A Dying Sun?  Perhaps one hundred years of Labour is enough.

 

AS THE OLD YEAR shuffles towards the wings of the political stage, the Infant Year arrives garlanded with many questions. For those who position themselves on the left of the political spectrum, the biggest of these questions concerns the future of the Labour Party.

 

Love it, or hate it, Labour is the sun around which all the other progressive parties and institutions of New Zealand’s political life must orbit. It’s gravitational pull being inescapable, Labour’s fate, and the fate of the Left in general, are inseparable.

 

Significantly, 2016 marks the centenary of Labour’s birth.

 

In July 1916, in the midst of a monstrous war whose gargantuan appetite had already consumed thousands of young New Zealand lives, representatives of the “democratic public” arrived in Wellington determined that Government plans to conscript men must be accompanied by plans to conscript wealth. The delegates were also seized by the effects of the hitherto all-conquering Liberal Party’s inability to any longer honour its mandate as the democratic public’s principal standard-bearer. Progressive New Zealand was in the mood for something new.

 

The temptation to compare and contrast the Labour Party of 1916 with the Labour Party of 2016 is irresistible. And, no matter how hard the party’s supporters try to convince progressive voters that the opposite is true, it is not an exercise from which Labour emerges with any credit. In 1916, Labour was led by heroes. One hundred years on, perhaps predictably, it is led by colourless political careerists: men and women lacking the character, courage and creative intelligence to be genuine revolutionaries – or even effective reformers.

 

Labour in 2016 is a party dominated by Members of Parliament who seem to be simply waiting their turn to form a government. Labour’s view of politics is, at best, instrumental. Her advisers argue that if the voting public can no longer be inspired (a proposition with which they heartily concur) then it must be manipulated. Cynicism on this scale, however, is only ever successful when backed-up by copious quantities of cash – and the Labour Party of 2016 is broke.

 

Accordingly, about the only thing 2016 has in common with 1916 is the growing sense among progressive voters – the democratic public – that the hitherto all-conquering Labour Party has lost its way.

 

International trends in progressive politics provide considerable encouragement for this point of view. In Europe and the United States there is growing evidence of the emergence of a new progressive paradigm: one which takes as its starting point the necessity of challenging and defeating the dominant neoliberal worldview.

 

2015 began with the stunning electoral victory of the radically left-wing Syriza in Greece, and ended with the much-better-than-expected showing of the equally radical Podemos in Spain’s general election. In September, to the consternation of just about everyone, the radical leftist, Jeremy Corbyn, was elected Leader of the British Labour Party. One month later, the first Democratic Party presidential candidates’ debate in Las Vegas was dominated by the self-proclaimed “Democratic Socialist”, Senator Bernie Sanders, and an at least rhetorically radicalised Hilary Clinton – who promised, incongruously, to “save Capitalism from itself”.

 

Not that the news has been all good for the Left. Syriza’s, and by democratic extension, the Greek people’s, brutally enforced submission to the European Union’s financial diktats offers a terrifying object lesson about the very real dangers inherent in challenging the neoliberal world order. As does the vitriol directed against Jeremy Corbyn, not only by his Tory opponents and the right-wing press, but also by members of his own Labour caucus!

 

Mention Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, Syriza or Podemos to the New Zealand Labour Party, however, and you will be met with a mixture of impatience and hostility. As if New Zealand is in any way comparable with the UK, the USA, or Europe! As if this country has ever before fallen victim to political trends originating in these utterly alien cultures!

 

The year following the Labour Party’s foundation, revolution erupted across the Russian Empire. Labour’s leaders in New Zealand were excited, enthralled and inspired. That dour Scot, Peter Fraser, who was later to become New Zealand’s 24th Prime Minister, proudly proclaimed that: “If I was in Russia, I’d be a Bolshevik!”

 

Can anyone imagine Andrew Little proclaiming: “If I was in Greece, I’d be a member of Syriza!”

 

Perhaps one hundred years of Labour is enough?

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Saturday, 2 January 2016.