I'm a Trotskyist and supporter of the International Marxist Tendency. More specifically, I'm a member of Fightback, an activist group that tries to work for socialism within the New Democratic Party, historically Canada's labour (note the British spelling) party. In recent decades, like social democratic parties worldwide, the NDP has largely backed away from any real criticism of the capitalist system. Basically, the IMT argues that workers in revolutionary situations will always first turn to their traditional mass organizations, basing that on Trotsky's theory of entrism (Lenin, in his book "Left-Wing" Communism - An Infantile Disorder, urged British communists to join the Labour Party!). We're trying to be somewhat realistic in our political approach, avoiding sectarian squabbling on the margins of debate.
Huh. I apologize. I thought you were a Bill Maher-type progressive. I did not realize you were a Trotskyist influenced by Marx. I've read the Communist Manifesto and it is...interesting. I've also read of the Bolsheviki Revolution, but never studied intensively the musings of Lenin or Trotsky. The thing is, I have never met anyone not on a college/university campus who actually defines their ideologies by them. It always has struck me as a form of academic contrarianism, personally.
Only one year's extension of unemployment benefits, while extending the Bush tax cuts for 2 years? The American people were overwhelmingly against extending the Bush tax cuts for everybody - I think the figure was around 62% support for ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and extending them for everybody else.
I do hate the Bush tax cuts and the $100 billion (at least) that the extension will add to the deficit. However, I also am extremely happy that unemployment benefits won't vanish for a month like they did for millions of Americans last summer because we have to fight every three months for an extension. Further, I consider New START, repeal of DADT and the 9/11 Health Care Law far more important and substantial than those tax cuts. Lastly, you are picking the poll statistics you like. Yes, most people supported the end of Bush Tax Cuts for the rich...but not at the expense of their own tax cuts. If you looked at the data the next most popular option by over 50% was an extension for all and you drop under 40% when you ask how many people would be willing to take a tax increase to try and break the Republicans. It would have been political suicide to do it your way. The momentum would be on the Republicans who could more strongly control the agenda from the House and while the political careers of most Democrats end, unemployment benefits would dry up, Russia would begin building up its arsenal as Putin threatened after passage of New START became a pipe dream and DADT would still be the law of the law of the land. But hey, at least they would have taken the principled stand.
He's going to keep pulling this kind of Clintonian triangulation now.
Doubtful.
Obama was never really a liberal in the New Deal sense
Agreed. He still lives in the Reagan era and is obviously effected by that. But I promise you he will be the most progressive president you've seen since and for the near future. Just because he is not a Roosevelt does not make him a Clinton or a Bush. If one cannot see the differences than they choose to allow their ideology to ignore the realities of governance past or present and will never truly affect it. At least not effectively so.
Drawing down the Iraq War? Last time I checked, there were still 65,000 heavily-armed American soldiers stuck in a bloody occupation. Obama boasted in his August "withdrawal" speech that during his term of office, he'd brought 90,000 U.S. troops home from Iraq.
....And we'll be completely out by the end of 2011.
ACtually, this plan was started under Bush and while I loathe this war, the drawdown is being very well handled. The question is what will happen the second we're gone? In any case the war wasn't worth it. But the end of it has been well handled thus far.
But those tens of thousands of troops were largely transferred to Afghanistan. Obama started out by saying he would bring troops home at the end of 2011. But immediately after high-level military officers and political officials came out and said, not really...U.S. troops would remain in Iraq and Afghanistan until at least 2014. Once you add in expanding the war into Pakistan, launching drone attacks on Yemen, and maintaining a non-stop banging of the war drums against Iran - isn't it obvious this man deserved the Nobel Peace Prize?
I am not happy with the Afghanistan strategy or how that war is being handled. Don't get me started on the Nobel Prize. With that said, the idea of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East is terrifying, as is the Ayatollahs being the first to get them. It is not beating the war drum so much as using every avenue to try to stop or slow down the Iranian government. If a neocon is in power when that bridge is crossed, you'll see what a war drum really looks like. I am not happy with a number of foreign policies, however it is a disservice to say the Johnson and Bush Administrations to call sanctioning a human rights violator who has threatened neighboring countries and is attempting to gain nuclear weapons as a "war drum."
Don't get me started on the Nobel Peace Prize.
Repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell is the big progressive accomplishment Democratic loyalists like to tout. Give me a break. Obama, despite nominally supporting the repeal of DADT, fought that repeal every step of the way through Holder's (meaning his) Justice Department. He could have ended it at any time with an executive order, but of course he would never use such an anti-democratic approach for anything except further deregulating big business.
No he could not end it with an executive order. I was upset about the DOJ, but he puts as much value in military morale and order as the progressive base. And his strategy worked while keeping both sides appeased. Not how a partisans would do it? No. Then again he is president of more than the Huffington Post.
Elizabeth Warren was charged with overseeing the establishment of a Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, but not to actually run the agency. True to form, Obama preemptively caved to avoid Republican accusations of her as being "anti-business".
Fair.
Salvation of the auto industry? Good one. Obama bailed out the big U.S. automakers on the condition that they cut the hard-earned wages of their labour force by half. Unions fought for years to get decent living wages, and for the last 30 years there's been a steady assault on unionization worldwide. Obama and the political/business/media establishment will claim this assault on workers is necessary to make American industry more "competitive". It is a lie. They're taking advantage of a crisis to bring American workers down to the level of wage slaves overseas
What you're arguing would have ensured GM went under and all those jobs would be gone forver. But the unions and yourself didn't get everything you wanted, so it doesn't matter. You and Stormy should get along. Ideology over reality! Consequences be damned!
The bottom line is Franklin Roosevelt only instituted the New Deal as a response to enormous pressure from below. In the 1930s, the American ruling class was terrified by the potential spread of communism. U.S. workers were far more organized and radical than they are today, and the widespread dissemination of socialist/communist ideas, along with Huey Long-style populism and politically active unions, forced Roosevelt to develop progressive economic reform in order to save capitalism from itself.
I agree with the Unions and labor fights that started spreading like wildfire after WWI. But I would not give Huey Long that much credit, his populism was far more opportunistic than Roosevelt's. And you sound a lot like Long and his ilk did when they talked about the New Deal in the 1930s. Now you praise the New Deal now. Interesting, no? The far left is never satisfied. Nor should they be, we always need reforms, but they're as puritanical in their views as libertarians. And that is why they always remain at the fringes of American life.
The only other time this really happened during the 20th century occurred in the 1960s with the civil rights movement, when grassroots organization and pressure from below forced the federal government to pass the Civil Rights Act.
True. Albeit, Kennedy's death and subsequent martyrdom didn't hurt the Civil Rights Act's chances either.
The American working class has been weakened by 30 years of anti-union propaganda and attendant legislation.
This I agree with. But trying to recapture the mid-20th century American economy in the world of globalism is unlikely.
So far they've managed to take the populist and legitimate anger of the American masses and direct some of it into the absurd Tea Party movement, a perfect example of "astroturf" (fake grassroots movements).
I strongly dislike the Tea Party and how easily manipulated it is by right wing media and politicians. But whatever role FreedomWorks and Fox News played in its early growth and expansion, to dismiss it as "astrotruf" and not a true populist movement is to discredit a large swath of American life as not real because they don't fit the narrative you have in your head or your idea of "populism." And that sort of bias is why you remain in a continuously overlooked minority, I have to say.
