A few weeks ago Newsweek got a lot of attention for Niall Ferguson’s factually challenged cover story slamming the Obama case for re-election.
This week, in true corporate media style, we get the “other” side: An argument that Obama should move the Democratic party to the right.
Peter Boyer’s piece, “Why Barack Needs Bill,” recycles some of more dubious claims about the effectiveness of Clinton’s brand of center-right “triangulation.” Since this is the media’s usual advice for Democrats— move to the right in order to capture the center– it’s worth unpacking.
Clinton-style “New Democrats,” Boyers explains, “have nearly vanished.” And this is trouble:
Their absence complicates Obama’s bid for reelection, and his chances for an effective second term, if he gets one. Clinton’s brand of liberalism was designed to win elections, and brought Democrats back after a generation in the wilderness; Obama’s brand of liberalism produced the line that became the Republicans’ favorite refrain last week in Tampa: “You didn’t build that.”
What Republicans say about Obama should be set aside for the moment–especially considering this “favorite refrain” is such a gross distortion of Obama’s words.
Where did all those New Democrats go? Well, many of them lost elections. So if the Clinton model was “designed to win elections,” it didn’t work. But we’ve known that for a long time already. As FAIR founder Jeff Cohen pointed out in 2000:
When Clinton entered the White House, his party dominated the U.S. Senate, 57-43; the U.S. House, 258-176; the country’s governorships, 30-18, and a large majority of state legislatures. Today, Republicans control the Senate, 55-45; the House, 222-211; governorships, 30-18, and almost half of state legislatures.
Clinton didn’t bring the Democratic party out of the wilderness–it’s more accurate to say that he led the party into one.
Boyers goes on to recall Gore’s 2000 loss–which again complicates the idea that Clintonism is an obvious winner–and how this dealt a further blow to the Democrats:
With Al Gore out of the picture, the party took an ever-more-stridently leftward turn, and by 2004, what Howard Dean called “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” was in full ascent. The energy in the party resided in the antiwar left, reawakened by Iraq, and by 2008, candidates in the Democratic presidential primary were expected not only to oppose the war, but to apologize for ever having supported it—and all but Hillary Clinton did. (No apology was required of Obama, who’d opposed the “dumb” war from the start.)
Now one could make the argument that this move to the left–coupled with growing public anger at the Bush administration and the Iraq War–explains how the Democrats regained a Congressional majority. Or, in other words, that this “stridently leftward turn” was a winner.
Newsweek gives an array of conservative Democrats like Doug Schoen, Al From and Artur Davis space to talk about all the things they would do to steer the party back to the right. From’s Democratic Leadership Council was founded to “find a way to sell a liberal program to a nation that consistently rejected it”– a funny idea, considering the party’s hefty Congressional majority through those years that the public was apparently rejecting its message. And Davis apparently “argues that the post-Clinton Democratic Party has willingly set a course toward the model of the fringe-European left.”
There’s little pushing back on the argument that Obama has gone too far to the left, probably because Boyers seems to agree with it:
Obama’s presidency has seemed, in key regards, a repudiation of the New Democrat idea. Clinton Democrats embraced business; Obama attacked private equity. A New Democrat would have championed the Keystone XL Pipeline; Obama, yielding to environmentalists, has resisted it.
It’s hard to know where precisely this Obama “attack” on private equity exists, outside the minds of some journalists and Wall Street leaders. Certainly there’s little in the way of policy in this regard. As for Keystone, Obama is delaying a decision, keeping environmentalists at arm’s length. It is, if anything, a pretty Clintonian move on his part.
It’s nonetheless revealing that a piece that rests on the on the assumption that Obama has strayed too far from the “center” can find so little evidence to back that up. To Boyers, the Obama years mean, unfortunately, that the “era of big government isn’t over anymore.” How Obama has made government “bigger” is left under-explained. Which is a good thing, since it, too, is a difficult argument to make.
Just as corporate media cheered Clinton for pulling Democrats to the right, they’ve consistently counseled Obama to do the same–to pull a Clinton on the left/liberal base of the party. But if you ask many of them, he already has.
Newsweek and the rest of the corpress don’t want “New Democrats”.
They want “Old Republicans”, to go with the protofascists presently in control of that party.
And that, to them, would represent “political balance”.
To Boyers, the Obama years mean, unfortunately, that the “era of big government isn’t over anymore.”
Accusing Democrats of being for “Big Government” is another one of those empty insults, like “tax and spend”. Um, yeah – that’s what Governments do, tax their citizens, then spend the money. It’s like trying to insult your neighbor by saying he “earns and spends”.
As for “Big Government”: leave aside the fact that 82% of the Republican Base – the mouthbreathing, non-donating rubes who just show up every four years to put their X down for whatever GOP candidate happens to be offered – don’t realize that the glorious Military is a big part of “Government” (the $1.2 trillion the US spends every year on the Military is seldom mentioned as part of the high cost of Government). Hence, when Republican Bush created the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 – a NEW cabinet department of the federal government – with 200,000 employees (third largest Cabinet department, after Defense and Veterans Affairs), and a budget of $98.8 billion in 2011, Bush wasn’t accused of being for “Big Government”. Why is that ? That’s a pretty huge addition to the existing Government – making it BIGGER.
Bush clearly made the Government much Bigger – yet OBAMA gets the label “Big Government guy” ???
Re Dear Misleader’s “yielding to enviromentalists”
Why Did the Dems Choose Charlotte? Examining Obama’s Close Ties to Utility Giant Duke Energy
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/9/4/why_did_the_dems_choose_charlotte
Duke represents the future of energy industry propaganda. As the evidence of climate change becomes impossible to ignore, you’ll likely see corps admitting it exists, while distorting its true impact, and pledging to address it.
Greenwashing will be the order of the day, and a compliant and complicit corpress will aid and abet the strategy, as per usual.
And if you’re “surprised” by Obama’s ties to all this
You are either breathtakingly – and dangerously – naive
Or just plain irredeemably idiotic.
Newspeek: Obama Needs to Be Clinton
Says it all…..
John Stewart summed it up nicely, last week, when he said, there is the visible Obama that actually exists and the invisible Obama in the chair at the Republican Convention, who is a left wing socialist. He said only Republicans could see the invisible Obama but he was wrong. Journalist see him too.
Clinton didn’t bring the Democratic party out of the wilderness–it’s more accurate to say that he led the party into one.
Nonsense. Shameful nonsense coming from fair. Unless the media being unfair and inaccurate has nothing to do with pols, politics and elections. When the repub controlled house feels free to schedule a hearing on just who paid for the stamps for sock the cat’s mailing list the media wasn’t doing there job.
This article should be called- may the real Barack Obama please stand up.Forget Clinton.He had” liberal lee way”.By that I mean there was enough in the coffers at that time, that every stupid liberal idea had a pad.Obama has no pad.Clinton was helped by Newt.Newt put things on a paying basis,and it benefited Clintons legacy.Obama has never dealt with the right and never intends to.But who is Obama is the question?My answer is a man who has never really liked this country.Who wanted to remake America under lines that do not reflect what this country has always been.His inexperience ,and coming to the job without a single qualification was enough to make him fail.His ideology guaranteed it.
How about Clintons speech.Glorifying himself while throwing bones to”that man who was serving us our coffee a few years ago’.It was pure Clinton.I could almost here Obama back stage hissing through clenched teeth GET HIM OFF!
This is a complete mess. It seemed captivating, this Clintonism, because it had Clinton, and what he did worked. For a time. Glass-Steagal was much missed when the Collapse came. The compromises with conservatives didn’t last. Its version of prosperity, free trade über alles and let Wall Street do as it wants– ended up creating not one, but TWO bubbles, first the Internet and next Housing. And Glass-Steagal still isn’t reinstated. Still, our presidents are better than theirs.
I wish FAIR would deconstruct Newsweek since Tina Brown took over as managing editor. What used to be a reliable magazine has become a platform for the likes of Niall Ferguson and fluff pieces about vain women. I don’t care about overly-expensive hand bags and high heels. It is thinner, more fragmented, and right-leaning than ever.
Similarly, I wish FAIR would analyze just how balanced the two main Sunday morning TV political shows and the weekly radio call-in show by Diane Rehm are in their hosting of guests. They want to appear balanced but usually tilt to the right by about 3:2 or worse. We get the Wall Street Journal and Heritage Foundation regularly. When do we get to see and hear Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader or Al Gore in this onslaught of conservatives?
JimH
I think I heard you say “ended up creating two bubbles…Housing”.Let me say that this is my pet peeve.I worked for Bill Clinton.I was against the moves he forced along with Janet Reno – that led to Fanny and Freddy collapsing.I spoke about it for years before the crash.I spoke to Reed, Schumman and others about the danger.They in essence patted me on the head and said all was well.All was funded.I screamed from the bloody mountaintops that when this went…everything was going with it.This horrible, socialistic, liberal owned and operated plague upon this country.I spoke to Bushes people who tried 27 separate times to stop it.(I hold him responsible also for failing to do so.)When I spoke to crowds in those days I always ended with this.”The left will try to blame this on wall street ,as ridiculous as that is.Because they are smart enough to hedge bets and leverage to profit, win or loose.And in the end the government will keep them on their too big to fail list.So it is a fixed game.But they are the vulures that come after.Not the cause.Call your Congressmen and Senator’s.Tell them to run the numbers on this.The Dems behind this coming housing crisis are cooking the books”.
So for you to say it is all wall streets fault- tells me you never went to one of my talks.Tells me I was wrong all that time even though it happened as we said it would.Yes many of us saw it coming.And yes we benefited.Sold our savings and divested into gold that shot through the roof while your leaders told you to sit on those 401ks.I guess that makes us evil too.Because we told you and you ignored us.Want some free prognostication?This wont cost you a dime.You have more coming down the pike.Obama is the next shoe to drop.Four more years and it will be your ass that is cooked.Not just the books.
Moody’s is ready to hit our T bills and lower the ratings.