Protection Racket
by digby
April 10, 2011
Winning the future:
The President of the United States and the Democratic Senate are taking credit for "protecting" some line items in the budget against what --- the all-powerful Satan? I don't know if anyone's noticed, but the Republicans don't have the majority --- they have one House of congress. The Democrats control half the congressional branch and the Executive. They aren't scrappy little underdogs here. This was an administration that originally proposed to add a 40 billion dollars in much needed stimulus in a time of nearly 9% unemployment. Today they're taking credit for puny rear guard actions "protecting" Head Start and Planned Parenthood. It's literally the least they could do.
It was one thing last December to say that they extended tax cuts for the middle class and unemployment insurance in exchange for the Bush tax cuts for the rich. It was a shitty deal they could have avoided if they hadn't been so determined to also "protect" their House members from having to stand for anything, but at least it advanced something tangible that wouldn't have existed if they didn't act and could theoretically be called an economic stimulus.
"Protecting" some social programs that the Republicans put on the agenda for the purpose of feeding their base red meat is not an accomplishment. It's a very weak cover for their capitulation and one which the Republicans are glad to give them. After all, the culture warriors will get a few more bites of this apple in the coming months and this keeps them engaged and busy while the bipartisan budget cutters take a meat cleaver to everything else.I suppose that the governing elites are counting on American Exceptionalism to get a different outcome here. And maybe it will. After all, here in America
the entire conversation among all elites in the media and government is leading people to believe that the cause of the current economic malaise and income inequality is government spending and high taxes for the wealthy and corporations. It will take years to unravel that belief at this point and until it is, there will probably be round after round of cuts to "fix" the ailing economy as average people incrementally lose their dreams and their futures. At some point, they'll catch on. But it may be too late.
While the Democratic Party very well "win" from time to time and the party will play its role in the kabuki dance -- that of "protector" of an ever dwindling handful of ever smaller signature programs to keep the desperate progressive faction on board ---
liberalism itself has suffered a terrible and perhaps mortal blow. To have a Democratic president of the United States adopt austerity and extol it as an historic victory the midst of ongoing high unemployment and a moribund economy means that the argument is basically over. This is not Franklin Roosevelt's puny GOP opposition and the Democratic Party does not have the middle class loyalty it had in 1937 to withstand making this kind of monumental error. Neither are we likely to be rescued by a war machine --- it's already cranked. No,
the Democratic Party is formally relinquishing its historic claim to represent the economic interests of working families. The best we can hope for is that they "protect" us from a full blown Theocracy or a return to Jim Crow. (After all, they need to get elected somehow or they won't get a share of the spoils.)
Read the full article at:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/protection-racket.html
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