Views » February 8, 2008 » Web Only

The Democrats’ Class War

By David Sirota

For all the hype about generational and gender wars in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, we have a class war on our hands. And incredibly, corporate America’s preferred candidate is winning the poorer “us” versus the wealthier “them”—a potentially decisive trend with the contest now moving to working-class bastions like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

In most states, polls show Hillary Clinton is beating Barack Obama among voters making $50,000 a year or less—many of whom say the economy is their top concern. Yes, the New York senator who appeared on the cover of Fortune magazine as Big Business’s candidate is winning economically insecure, lower-income communities over the Illinois senator who grew up as an organizer helping those communities combat unemployment. This absurd phenomenon is a product of both message and bias.

Obama has let Clinton characterize the 1990s as a nirvana, rather than a time that sowed the seeds of our current troubles. He barely criticizes the Clinton administration for championing job-killing trade agreements. He does not question that same administration’s role in deregulating the financial industry and thereby intensifying today’s boom-bust catastrophes. And he rarely points out what McClatchy Newspapers reported this week: that Clinton spent most of her career at a law firm “where she represented big companies and served on corporate boards,” including Wal-Mart’s.

Obama hasn’t touched any of this for two reasons.

First, his campaign relies on corporate donations. Though Obama certainly is less industry-owned than Clinton, the Washington Post noted last spring that he was the top recipient of Wall Street contributions. That cash is hush money, contingent on candidates silencing their populist rhetoric.

But while this pressure to keep quiet affects all politicians, it is especially intense against black leaders.

“If Obama started talking like John Edwards and tapped into working-class, blue-collar proletarian rage, suddenly all of those white voters who are viewing him within the lens of transcendence would start seeing him differently,” says Charles Ellison of the University of Denver’s Center for African American Policy.

That’s because once Obama parroted Edwards’ attacks on greed and inequality, he would “be stigmatized as a candidate mobilizing race,” says Manning Marable, a Columbia University history professor. That is, the media would immediately portray him as another Jesse Jackson—a figure whose progressivism has been (unfairly) depicted as racial politics anathema to white swing voters.

Remember, this is always how power-challenging African-Americans are marginalized. The establishment cites a black leader’s race- and class-unifying populism as supposed proof of his or her radical, race-centric views. An extreme example of this came from the FBI, which labeled Martin Luther King Jr. “the most dangerous man in America” for talking about poverty. More typical is the attitude exemplified by Joe Klein’s 2006 Time magazine column. He called progressive Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., “an African American of a certain age and ideology, easily stereotyped” and “one of the ancient band of left-liberals who grew up in the angry hothouse of inner-city, racial-preference politics.”

The Clintons are only too happy to navigate this ugly cultural topography. After a rare Obama attack on Hillary Clinton for supporting policies that eliminated jobs, Bill Clinton quickly likened Obama’s campaign to Jackson’s, and the Clinton campaign told the Associated Press Obama was “the black candidate.” These were deliberate statements telling Obama that if he talks about class, they’ll talk about race.

And so, as Marable says, Obama’s pitch includes “no mention of the class struggle or class conflict.” It is “hope” instead of an economic case, bromide instead of critique. The result is an oxymoronic dynamic.

Obama, the person who fought blue-collar joblessness in the shadows of shuttered factories, is winning wealthy enclaves. But Clinton, the person whose globalization policies helped shutter those factories, is winning blue-collar strongholds.

Obama, who was schooled by the same organizing networks as Cesar Chavez, is being endorsed by hedge fund managers. But Clinton, business’s favorite, is being endorsed by the United Farm Workers—the union that Chavez created.

Obama, the candidate from Chicago’s impoverished South Side, is finding support on Connecticut’s gilded south coast. But Hillary Clinton, the candidate representing Big Money, is finding support from those with relatively little money.

As the campaign heads to the struggling Rust Belt under banners promising “change,” this bizarre class war may end up guaranteeing no real transformation at all.

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• Reader Comments

  “As the campaign heads to the struggling Rust Belt under banners promising “change,” this bizarre class war may end up guaranteeing no real transformation at all.”

  The “Change” slogan is just that, a slogan. Obama hasn’t the power to deal with big money any more than an ordinary citizen can get his letter read by his “representative”.

  Stockholders can no longer influence the companies they “own” and an individual voter cannot communicate with his elected officals above the local level.

  Corporations’ CEOs and members of Congress have far more in common than either with their constituents.  They have been working hand in hand through their middleman, the lobbyist to care for each other for decades. This is truer than ever before as evidenced by the diminishing job quality, benefits and purchasing power of the average American.

  Go to the U.S. Census Bureau website and read:

  Changes in Median Household Income: 1969 to 1996.

  With more people per family working we are still far worse off.

  Posted by whattheheck on Feb 8, 2008 at 4:43 PM

  *sigh*. So true and yet so frustrating…just when I started to “get fooled again” by reading some of Obama’s speeches - which are extremely inspiring to a progressive like myself - here comes a bit of truth to wash it away.

  As whaththeheck aludes to - as Ralph Nadar continues to say - there really is just one party in America and that’s the Corporatist party.

  When you think of it, in a world of competing interests, why wouldn’t the most powerful entity every devised - the modern corporation - find a way to protect their interests? Still you come off sounding like a raging looney when you talk about runaway corporate power.

  Yet most people would never argue against the concept of checks and balances. Clearly we need some checks as a balance to corporate power, and sadly we need to stop hoping - every four years - for the democrats to do this. How about publicly funded campaigns, instant runoff elections, and third parties??

  —-
  Eric
  change the world, one post at a time
  www.changeany1thing.com

  Posted by eheller on Feb 8, 2008 at 10:38 PM

  Sirota’s article is very insightful, and provides an important piece of the big puzzle.  Class warfare would seem to be an appropriate battlefield for two Marxist class warriors.

  A different piece of the puzzle that Sirota does not address is the nature of the debate within the two parties:

  *  Clinton and Obama have very similar views on the important policies: out of Iraq and into populist Socialist economics.  But the Democratic Party’s long absorption with identity politics is revealed to be a fraud.  Identity politics was the tool of party bosses to organize and marginalize the various tribes to their own benefit.  Blacks, Chicanos, women, unions, academics were there to provide workers and money for the political campaigns that solidified the central control of leftist demogogues. 

  If you doubt this, consider the actual status of Blacks.  In reward for unswerving support to the Democratic Party, the ghettos of Los Angeles, Detroit, and New Orleans are permanently mired in poverty, crime, stagnation, and identity politics.  If the Democrats wanted to do something, anything, to help Blacks, forty years of Democratic dominance in these cities should have accomplished something, but what has been accomplished?  Zero.  Nada.  Zilch.

  LBJ, Hillary’s hero when she decided to play the race card against Obama, was the most overtly racist SOB that ever graced the halls of Congress, much less the Oval Office.  So it is with amusement and bemusement that we view the current identity crises that beset the Democratic Party; the monster that they have created is out to destroy them.

  Bill made an unholy pact with the devil when he pretended to empower feminists and actually was coerced into a qui pro quo pact with Hillary, in which he agreed to support Hillary’s presidential ambitions in order to consolidate his own tarnished presidential legacy.  The HillBillys reconned without the other tribes, namely that a bright, articulate Black might claim his own place in their sun; after all, the Democratic Party was the chanpion of diversity, was it not?

  So, now we have a furious conflict between two of the principal tribes of the Democratic coalition, Blacks and feminists. Who will win?  Who knows? Who cares?  Does anyone care about the actual problems that confront the Republic?

  * Well, yes, as a matter of fact.  The Republican debate is not about who is the Blackest or who is the most feminine.  The Republican debate is actually about issues, of all things: the War Against the Terrorists, taxes, spending, the things that actually make a difference. 

  So, can the Democrats actually continue a content-free campaign while creating conflict and confusion between two of their principal constituents?  And what are their chances of success in such an endeavor? 

  My contention is that Socialist/collectivist philosophies exist to promote the status and power of the leadership.  It makes no difference whether these ideologues bill themselves as Progressive, Liberal, Socialist, Communist, or Fascist, or what ideological clap-trap they espouse;  the important consideration is to maintain the status and power of the incumbent.  Bill Clinton has likely blown the cover of his self-serving ideology, just as he blew his cover in pretending to be anti-racist.

  Posted by scorp on Feb 10, 2008 at 2:37 AM

  scorp & eheller

  I’m afraid my expectations of the citizenry in general is pretty low and falling.

  It appears that the majority are swept up with the vaccuous calls for change without thinking of how little is even being offered or, more importanty, how unlikely the Congress is to do anything to “change” the status quo.

  While some people really meant to help minorities through government welfare programs, I can’t help believing the resulting dependence they created were not expected by their political designers.

  One of the freedoms which Americans exercise in extreme is the freedom to remain uninformed of history and uncaring about the responsibilities which maintaining freedom demand.

  People on the street don’t know the most important individuals past or present or how our system is supposed to work. Regarding the economic stimulous I heard a woman on TV say, ” They should do this every year, but the richest people always get morre back than I do at tax time.”

  I think politicians operate based on this quote from H.L. Menchen —
  “No one, as far as I know, has ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of plain people.”

  We might add that they don’t lose elections for the same reason.

  Posted by whattheheck on Feb 10, 2008 at 2:50 PM

  This essay is an example of how something can appear balanced but is definitely slanted towards Obama.  First, the candidate is Hillary Clinton, not the Clintons.  Yes, having a former president as a spouse means the media will cover him with a lot more interest than the media covers wives of other candidates who have not yet earned the publicity level accorded a presidential family. Nevertheless, that is the media’s decision to cover him and the Clinton campaign is using that desire to its advantage, albeit with some challenges.

  Secondly, a senator representing his or her state’s voters will vote for or against legislation as best benefits those constituents.  That does not mean the senator would hold those positions or causes as president. Similarly, Obama’s job as a community organizer does not mean he will hold the same position as president that his employer asked him to support as an organizer.

  The Obamas represent the high-powered dual-worker family.  The Clintons represent the people who chose public service. Yes, I know that is extremely simplistic but it is important.  Most women, and most men, are not living in a high-powered, dual-income family.  Most women I’ve encountered do not want to have the high-powered jobs; they want the jobs that will allow them to have a house, medical care, and time for family or their own community service.

  It is not an accident that youth are looking at the Obamas. They seem to have it all: jobs, a very nice house, power, money, children.  Listen to young women talk, they say they don’t identify with women of Hillary Clinton’s age; the younger women say they can have it all and the older women want to make them choose. Obama is promising them everything and the youth, many of whom think all content on the Internet should be free, without realizing that somebody has to pay for creating the content, are buying into the idea that everything Obama says he supports will be something on which he will devote time and energy to achieve.

  Posted by SillyLeftist on Feb 11, 2008 at 12:07 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

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