[p2p-research] US electoral dynamics

[Michel Bauwens]

*Not specifically p2p but this is the best analysis so far of what happened
in the recent election:

- not a progressive but a centrist obama administration (unless the economy
drastically deteriorates to a 1930's level of 20% unemployment)

- a new aggressive and anti-democratic 'palin' conservatism centered in the
most isolated and change averse part of the US (scottish-irish appalachian
region, see http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=9750 for details)

Michel



http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2008/11/sarah-palin-is-the-future-of-conservatism.html

By John Brown*

When we look back with the benefit of hindsight at this year's presidential
election, we will remember two noteworthy developments. The first and the
most obvious one is the historic victory of Senator Barack Obama, and the
other and much less noted one is the political birth of Governor Sarah Palin
or more importantly the new prototype of conservatism her emergence
represents.

Senator Obama's victory is most important in what it negated, the primary
political narrative of our time. The conservative political and economic
consensus, which has dominated this country since the start of the Reagan
administration, is no more. Governor Sarah Palin's emergence is important in
what it revealed, a snap shot into how and in what form the American right
makes its comeback.

Both of these revelations have a similar starting point. They both come
about due to the death of the old right. The conservatism of Buckley,
Reagan, Gingrich and Bush the younger is no longer capable of garnering a
working majority in American politics, a fact even more highlighted by the
very profile of the candidate which routed them on Tuesday.

Many of us will rejoice in this fact, as we should, but we would be wise to
remember that the collapse of what passes as the respectable right in any
nation is the first sign of a society moving in a non-democratic direction.

The old right itself died a dialectic death, by which it passed on as the
very result of the spectacular success of its policies. The destruction of
the labor movement, deregulation, free movement of capital, massive military
spending and the massive shift in wages and wealth to the top 10% of the
country at the expense of the rest of the population undermined majoritarian
political support for its programs.

In politics it is foolhardy to make predictions about the future course of
events, politics is by its very nature fluid and unpredictable. If one is to
do so, one must also be willing to draw a picture of a likely social and
economic context in which our public life will be operating in.

The primary patterns of American social and economic development that we
have experienced in the past 30 years are likely to continue and accelerate
over the next 20 years regardless of who is in the White House. The
deindustrialization of the country will continue finally placing the last of
the unionized living wage income earning working class of the 20th century
into the history books. The continued expansion of the information and
service based parts of the economy and the generally meager wages and
benefits it offers will further harden the income, education and opportunity
gap between the top 20% of American society and the rest of the population,
leaving the country more rigidly divided than ever in its history.

This would be a bad scenario in any country, but it is a disastrous scenario
in the United States given how it runs counter to the great American
narrative. The American narrative, or what most people call "The American
Dream", has always been a practical bargain. The rules were the following:
you give up your former identity and allegiances, you do not think socially
or politically, you do not question economic hierarchies, and in return you
or your children will have a reasonable chance at achieving a better
material life. In truth it was always a lousy deal, but it was a deal real
and tangible enough to improve the lives of countless millions of people.

What was never part of the deal was the creation of a hard caste system of
social and economic polarization. When the day arrives when the vast
majority of Americans understand in the deepest recesses of their minds that
this myth is shattered and that their children will have less opportunity
and poorer economic prospects than themselves, all that we have ever thought
or learned about American politics will become irrelevant.

Within such a context the primary task of the new Obama administration will
be to weave together a new political consensus that will fill the political
space left behind by the collapse of the old right. These discussions over
the next few months are likely to decide the political direction of the
United States for a long period of time.

An Obama administration will have two primary options to choose from. One
choice would be to move center left and reestablish the social compact of a
modern New Deal type program. Barring a further deterioration of the
economic situation in the country, it is not likely the direction they will
move in. The second choice would be to reassemble a new establishment center
consensus, minus the most reactionary elements of corporate power, and
create a soft Democratic Party Corporatism as the new vital center of
American political life.

The second option is the more likely choice and also the path of least
resistance. The Obama administration will not pay a great political price in
abandoning the pretense of moving the country in a progressive direction for
two primary reasons. First, for Senator Obama's political base the symbolism
of his election is the change they were seeking and not an idea or program
based on a set of policies. The second reason is the political weakness of
what passes for the left in the United States, a line up of individuals and
organizations stretching from MoveOn.org to the AFL-CIO, who in their
misunderstanding of the nature of power confuse access with power itself.

The primary task of serious progressives over the next few months must be to
prevent progressive votes of this Tuesday from being turned into another
corporatist victory. No one should be very hopeful for the prospects of such
an effort. I suspect as progressives spend their time fighting over tickets
to the inaugural ball, the Wall Street and K Street branches of the
Democratic Party will win the war of priorities and ideas of the new Obama
Administration in a rout.

The significance of Governor Palin's emergence is in its confirmation that
the old right is no more. When conservatism makes its comeback, it is likely
to look and sound a lot like Sarah Palin.

Within the hierarchies of the old right, Sarah Palin's style of pseudo
working class conservatism was reserved for the proverbial back of the bus.
Her type was not to speak, but to be spoken to; they were assigned to work
as the foot soldiers in campaigns and be ignored until the next election.

But as social divisions widen and opportunity declines, there will be an
ever-decreasing market for the type of homely business conservatism dished
along with breakfast at the local Chamber of Commerce or Rotary Club. The
style of conservatism that Sarah Palin represents will be the only one that
has a majoritarian future in today's America. The populist conservatism will
be openly hateful, paranoid, anti-intellectual, belligerently militaristic
and most significantly ideologically inconsistent and opportunistic.

To understand what these changes mean in practical electoral terms, we must
first digress three months and understand the electoral and political
rationale that went into the decision to nominate Governor Sarah Palin as
John McCain's running mate -- a decision as learned as it was unabashedly
cynical.

Sarah Palin was never chosen for her strengths, but in fact for her
weaknesses. For electoral purposes these were her strengths. She was chosen
to be savaged because in order to savage her you would need to savage the
realities, the life styles and thinking of the largest segment (though not a
majority) of American electorate. Her ignorance of the world, her religious
practices, her out of wedlock pregnant daughter represented far more true
pictures of the realities of American life than the cosmopolitanism of
Barack Obama.

It was to be the juxtaposition of his professorship of constitutional law to
the countless community colleges she attended, his perfect family to her
pregnant 17-year-old daughter, his Harvard educated wife to the "First Dude"
of Alaska. What they were trying to say to American voters was the
following: Barack Obama might be the mask you want to put on in this hour of
need, but you know in your heart of hearts it is Sarah Palin that is the
more truthful nature of your profile.

Her selection was an attempt to make the election about the culture wars,
and it nearly worked. Absent the timely melt down in Wall Street it would
have likely led to a John McCain victory.

For any one who doubts the transformative nature of what Palinism signifies
for the conservative movement, one needs to look no further than the
negative reaction of so many prominent conservatives to the Palin
nomination. From Peggy Noonan to Andrew Sullivan to many of the propagandist
scribes of the *National Review*, her appointment was savaged as symbolizing
the death of a certain kind of conservatism, which in fact was very much
true.

It is hard not to have contempt for these intellectual half-men who in their
moral cowardice despise the very forces they have spend their careers in
unleashing.

As we look into the future regardless of what course the Obama
administration chooses to take for the politically serious on both the right
and the left, the future is not likely to lie in the center of a new elite
consensus. In a system, which is entering a period of semi-permanent crisis,
to plant oneself or one's party in its political center is to make yourself
responsible for a political system which is forever failing, losing
legitimacy and eventually its right to rule. In the long run, the future
will belong to whichever political force flies the boldest flags, stands
credibly far enough from those who will be held accountable for our
troubles, and curses the loudest at the coming darkness.


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