Category Archives: Politics

Neoliberalism Is New Liberalism In Name Only

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It’s possible neoliberalism would be easier to fight if more people knew what it is. As things are now, only academics and certain print journalists use the term. It’s not a word you’ll hear on television. Instead, we hear of conservatism (which is a misnomer, since modern “conservatives” have become so radical) and free-market capitalism (which sounds redundant, but isn’t what Adam Smith favored). 

The term was invented in the 1930s in response to government efforts to combat the Great Depression. Certain European thinkers feared that liberal policies like Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal would eventually lead to a collectivist, authoritarian form of socialism that would trample on everyone’s freedom (except the freedom of politicians and bureaucrats to interfere with other people’s lives). Hence, they saw a need for a new kind of liberalism, one that would take liberty more seriously, especially when it came to economics.

These critics of liberalism saw this need despite the fact that liberalism got its name because liberals were champions of individual liberty (for example, as propounded in the Bill of Rights), as well as a vibrant market economy (albeit an economy that was properly regulated). The neoliberals held that liberals were much too eager to apply governmental solutions to the world’s problems.  

Jump ahead forty years and we get Ronald Reagan announcing:

The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades…. we, as Americans, have the capacity now, as we have had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom. In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.

And Margaret Thatcher explaining: 

I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand “I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!” … and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first… There is no such thing as society. There is a living tapestry of men and women and … the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us is prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate.

In other words, government is inherently bad, except for the military and the police, which, unfortunately, are necessary to keep the world safe and profitable for free enterprise. Furthermore, if you can’t succeed in a highly competitive marketplace, you might possibly get assistance from your family or a private charity. If you’re weak or desperate enough to need help from the government, you’re a loser. 

The Guardian has an article by George Monbiot that does a good job explaining neoliberalism and its ill effects. His summary: 

Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.

Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

Monbiot concludes that the left and the center need a new “framework of economic thought”, but one that recognizes the effect of continuous growth on the environment:

… it’s not enough to oppose a broken system. A coherent alternative has to be proposed. For Labour, the Democrats and the wider left, the central task should be to develop an economic Apollo programme, a conscious attempt to design a new system, tailored to the demands of the 21st century.

Perhaps being clear about what neoliberalism is and how it’s changed our lives is the first step toward developing that alternative.

Meanwhile, Michael Lind argues in the New York Times that “Trumpism and Clintonism are the future”. He thinks Trump’s success is further evidence that the Republican Party will become more populist and less friendly to the rich and powerful (less “country club” and more “country and western”), although he doesn’t explain how right-wing billionaires and corporate executives will react if the Republican Party became less supportive of their interests.

On the Democratic side, Lind thinks Hillary Clinton will govern further to the left than Bill Clinton did. That seems obvious, given her own tendencies and the fact that the Democratic Party as a whole has become more liberal in the last twenty years. But Lind doesn’t see a wave of support for democratic socialism, even the socialism lite that Sanders claims to represent:

… notwithstanding the enthusiasm of the young for Bernie Sanders, the major tension [for the Democrats] is not between Mr. Sanders and Hillary Clinton. It is between Hillary Clinton and the legacy of Bill Clinton…. it is likely that the future of the Democrats will be Clintonism — Hillary Clintonism, that is, a slightly more progressive version of neoliberalism freed of the strategic concessions to white working-class voters associated with Bill Clintonism.

Lind’s view is that the white working-class, especially the men, will be quite at home in the new Republican Party, so the Democrats won’t even try to appeal to those voters. If that happens, it’s not clear how far left the Democrats will go. But calling Hillary Clintonism “a slightly more progressive version of neoliberalism” than what Bill Clinton practiced is a big mistake. Bill Clinton didn’t govern as a neoliberal. It’s true he said “the era of Big Government is over”, but he didn’t govern like Reagan or Thatcher. Labeling Hillary Clinton as a neoliberal makes even less sense.

If you think Hillary Clinton is just another neoliberal who thinks like Reagan did that government is the problem, not the solution, read the interview she gave to the New York Daily News editorial board this month (unlike the corresponding interview Bernie Sanders, it isn’t short on details, which is one reason the Daily News endorsed her for President last week).

Not many neoliberals would use the word “excited” when referring to plans to invest more in the nation’s infrastructure, upgrade the nation’s electrical grid, create a National Infrastructure Bank and use federal money to help make college debt-free for low-income and middle-class students. Clinton comes out strongly for government policies that will reduce the prison population and help prevent another financial crisis, among other worthy, liberal goals.

The domestic policy agenda she presents in that interview is not a neoliberal one by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a progressive agenda consistent with the ideals of today’s Democratic Party. It’s the agenda of someone who believes government can do a great deal to make ordinary people’s lives better. If anything, Clinton is too optimistic about what government can accomplish, given how many real neoliberals she’ll have to deal with.

Krugman Explains Why He’s Not a Sanders Fan

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Paul Krugman thinks ideals aren’t enough when you’re running for President:

What you see … is the casual adoption, with no visible effort to check the premises, of a story line that sounds good. It’s all about the big banks; single-payer is there for the taking if only we want it; government spending will yield huge payoffs — not the more modest payoffs conventional Keynesian analysis suggests; Republican support will vanish if we take on corporate media.

In each case the story runs into big trouble if you do a bit of homework; if not completely wrong, it needs a lot of qualification. But the all-purpose response to anyone who raises questions is that she or he is a member of the establishment, personally corrupt, etc.. Ad hominem attacks aren’t a final line of defense, they’re argument #1.

I know some people think that I’m obsessing over trivial policy details, but they’re missing the point. It’s about an attitude, the sense that righteousness excuses you from the need for hard thinking and that any questioning of the righteous is treason to the cause….

Does Clinton have problems too? Of course — she’s been too cozy with established interests in the past, she shouldn’t have given those speeches, and of course she shouldn’t have voted for the Iraq War. But there is no evidence that she’s corrupt, and lots of evidence that she both thinks hard about issues and is willing to revise her views in the light of facts and experience. Those are important virtues — important *progressive* virtues — that seem woefully absent on the other side of the primary.

But never mind. As you know, I’m only saying these things because I’m a corporate whore and want a job with Hillary.

I’ve quoted most of what he had to say. There’s a bit more here, including a link to his column about the Sanders campaign’s dismissal of Clinton’s victories in the “Deep South”. 

I’m Super, You’re Okay. Clinton, Sanders and Arithmetic.

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[Note: After I wrote this long post, I saw two articles at Salon that nicely capture what’s going on with the selection of delegates to the Democratic convention. You could go to the bottom of this post and read them, skipping everything I have to say. I mean, they were both written by professional journalists – the people we trust to report and explain the news.]

You may have heard that the Democratic Party has superdelegates. These are people who get to vote at the upcoming national convention because of who they are (they’re former Presidents, members of Congress, Democratic Party officials, and so on). There will be 712 superdelegates at this year’s convention. That’s roughly 15% of the total number of delegates (which is 4,765). It’s been reported that most of the superdelegates (469 of them so far) have said they’ll vote for Hillary Clinton at the convention, but all of them are free to vote for Bernie Sanders if they want. 

The other 85% of the Democratic delegates are selected as the result of primary elections and party caucuses. These contests began in Iowa on February 1st and will end in the District of Columbia on June 14th. How many of the Clinton or Sanders delegates are selected in these contests depends on how many votes Clinton or Sanders receives (as well as the rules of the local Democratic Party). Unlike the similar process taking place in the Republican Party, none of the Democratic contests are “winner take all”. Delegates are assigned roughly proportionately.

According to Wikipedia, Hillary Clinton has 1,310 or 54% of these pledged, non-super delegates so far. Bernie Sanders has 1,094 or 46%. Those percentages roughly correspond to the number of votes Clinton and Sanders have received. Some states don’t report vote totals, but for the states that do, the New York Times says Clinton has received 9.4 million votes (57%) and Sanders has received 7 million (43%).

Clearly, this process is totally rigged!  

That’s what people are saying anyway. From a news article in the Times:

Backers of Senator Bernie Sanders, bewildered at why he keeps winning states but cannot seem to cut into Hillary Clinton’s delegate count because of her overwhelming lead with “superdelegates,” have used Reddit and Twitter to start an aggressive pressure campaign to flip [superdelegate] votes [to Sanders].

From a comment (recommended by 612 readers) in response to that article:

Not only is the DNC primary process in conflict with Democracy, but it is borderline authoritarian. Party leaders picking a candidate before voters have yet to speak is the epitome of corruption. If Hillary Clinton should get the nomination in no small part due to super delegate power, the DNC is in for a very harsh reality.

From noted political scientist D. J. Trump:

“Think of this. So I watch Bernie, he wins. He wins. He keeps winning, winning. And then I see, he’s got no chance. They always say he’s got no chance. Why doesn’t he have a chance? Because the system is corrupt,” Trump argued. “This is a crooked system, folks.”

From the hosts of a morning talk show:

Co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were exasperated by just how rigged the Democratic primary system must be for Sanders to have won eight of the last nine primaries and still fallen further back in the overall delegate count [note: Sanders actually earned 110 more delegates than Clinton in those nine contests, eight of which were caucuses, not primary elections].

“Bernie Sanders won Wyoming by 12 percent, but he might not even pick up a single delegate. Hillary Clinton was awarded 11 delegates, Bernie Sanders only seven,” Scarborough said. “Why does the Democratic Party even have voting booths? This system is so rigged” [note: Sanders and Clinton both received seven delegates to the state’s May 28th convention as a result of the Wyoming caucuses — see the update down below for more on this subject].

A wise person would ignore all the hot air and misinformation being spread about the shocking unfairness of the Democrats’ presidential nomination process. New York and Pennsylvania will be voting soon, after which it should become even more obvious which candidate has the most support among Democratic voters.

Nevertheless, a few points deserve mention (I’ve never claimed to be wise).

First, the number of states a candidate wins has nothing at all to do with how many delegates that candidate receives. That’s because delegates are apportioned to the states based on their populations and some states have much larger populations than others. Idaho, Hawaii, Alaska, Utah and Wyoming, all of which Sanders won last month, had 111 delegates up for grabs between them. New York, voting next week, has 291. Pennsylvania, the following week, has 210. It’s only in the anti-democratic U.S. Senate where every state, the huge and the tiny, gets the same number of votes.

Second, in terms of democracy, primary elections are more democratic than caucuses. Primary elections encourage relatively large numbers of voters to participate and everyone casts a secret ballot. Caucuses rely on a smaller number of voters who are willing and able to attend a meeting and then vote in public. That’s why primary elections have replaced caucuses in most states, especially the big states with the most delegates.

Of the 37 Democratic contests so far, Clinton has won 20 and Sanders has won 17. But 16 of Clinton’s 20 wins have been the result of primary elections. Only six of Sanders’s 17 wins have been. This is why Clinton has received so many more votes than Sanders. (By the way, states that have caucuses don’t apportion delegates based on the total statewide vote. Only states with primary elections do that. States that haven’t adopted the more modern primary election system generally have complicated rules that apportion delegates based on which caucuses a candidate wins. Caucuses are not elections. They’re glorified discussion groups.) 

Third, if there weren’t any superdelegates at all, Clinton would be well on her way to winning the nomination on the first ballot by virtue of her success in the primaries and caucuses. All she would need to do is to continue winning a majority of the delegates before the convention starts. The existence of the superdelegates, therefore, is what’s stopping Clinton from arriving at the convention with the nomination sewn up. The existence of the superdelegates means that a candidate needs to win roughly 60% of the non-superdelegates in order to get the nomination, instead of a simple majority. If a candidate were to win 60% of the non-superdelegates, he or she wouldn’t need any superdelegate votes at all. But Clinton has “only” won 54% of the delegates so far.

Since the superdelegates do exist (as they’ve existed in the Democratic Party for decades), there are only 2,404 delegates left to be selected before the convention. And that means Clinton would need to win 1,073 or 69% of those remaining 2,404 non-superdelegates (much more than her current 54%) in order to have the nomination in her grasp before the convention begins. Since Sanders would need to win even more of the remaining delegates (1,289 or 83% of those 2,404) to accomplish the same thing, it’s clear that neither candidate will have enough pledged delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot (unless one of them drops out before the convention, which isn’t going to happen, despite Clinton’s email issue). The arithmetic dictates that the superdelegates will get the last word on who becomes the Democratic nominee.

Now, since the rules say they get to vote, who should they vote for? Should the superdelegates vote for the candidate with the loudest supporters on the internet? Or the one perceived to have the most “momentum” this week? Or should they vote for the candidate who arrives at the convention with the most delegates? In purely democratic terms, given the numbers, the answer is clear: Hillary Clinton should receive a majority of the superdelegate votes and win the nomination.

If I were a superdelegate, however, I’d vote for whichever candidate I preferred, whether or not the voters in the primaries and caucuses agreed with me. Personally, I don’t see the Democratic Party’s decision to give senior members of the party a voice in selecting the party’s nominee as a terrible, un-democratic mistake. (If the Republicans had superdelegates, Trump would be less likely to be the Republican nominee.)

But considering what I’ve said above, all this overheated complaining from Sanders supporters and political commentators about unfairness and a rigged process is just silly (“He’s not getting the most votes or the most delegates and he won’t get the nomination. How unfair!”). Sanders doesn’t have a right to the Democratic nomination, no matter how much his supporters whine about unfairness and a lack of democracy. The fact is that the people are speaking and they’re saying that Hillary Clinton should be the Democratic nominee, the infamous superdelegates notwithstanding.

Let’s hope that everyone who is complaining so much and feeling so persecuted comes out in November and helps elect Democratic candidates, instead of staying home and moaning about how Bernie and they have been mistreated. We really do need to cast as many votes as possible for Democrats in November, because the Republican Party has completely gone off the rails. That’s the reality of our situation.

UPDATE:

These two articles were published this morning at Salon. Both refer to the results of the Wyoming caucuses. One article is called:

“This system is so rigged”: Outrage as undemocratic superdelegate system gives Clinton unfair edge over Sanders

The other is called:

Bernie is wrong about super-delegates: Why his tortured Dem Primary arguments try to have it both ways

One article dispenses a lot of heat. The other dispenses some light. Guess which one relies on facts instead of bluster.

Hillary Clinton: Surprise Upon Surprise

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Which presidential candidates are Americans most enthusiastic about? According to a Gallup poll, 65% of Trump’s supporters are either extremely or very enthusiastic about his candidacy. That’s not a surprise. His supporters are nothing if not enthusiastic. What’s unexpected is which Democrat has the most enthusiastic supporters. Gallup found that Hillary Clinton’s supporters are more enthusiastic about her than Bernie Sanders’s are about him. Fifty-four percent of Clinton supporters say they’re extremely or very enthusiastic about their favorite candidate vs. 44% of Sanders supporters. Given how much publicity Feeling the Bern has received, that’s quite a surprise. 

But considering how well Clinton has done in primary elections this year (as opposed to the small-scale caucuses that have favored Sanders), we should expect that she has lots of enthusiastic supporters. Counting both primaries and caucuses, she has received 8.9 million votes vs. 6.4 million for Sanders. Winning by that margin in a general election would qualify as a landslide victory.

One might ask, however, why so many Americans are enthusiastically supporting such a devious and dishonest person? It’s probably because they don’t think she’s as devious and dishonest as the Republicans, many in the press and some Sanders supporters claim. Jill Abramson, a former editor of the New York Times, published an article yesterday with the title: “This May Shock You. Hillary Clinton Is Fundamentally Honest”. The article is worth reading in full, but here’s a little bit of it:

As an editor I’ve launched investigations into her business dealings, her fundraising, her foundation and her marriage. As a reporter my stories stretch back to Whitewater. I’m not a favorite in Hillaryland. That makes what I want to say next surprising. Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest and trustworthy….

… Politifact, a Pulitzer prize-winning fact-checking organization, gives Clinton the best truth-telling record of any of the 2016 presidential candidates. She beats Sanders and Kasich and crushes Cruz and Trump…

Abramson says Clinton distrusts the press more than any other politician she’s ever covered and that she needs to resist her strong desire to protect her privacy.  If Clinton were less secretive, Abramson argues, fewer people would think she’s hiding something. But Abramson also worries that too many people expect “purity” from female politicians. No successful politicians are pure, not even female ones, but Hillary Clinton may be purer than most. What a surprise!

Something to Keep in Mind When a Bomb Goes Off

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As long as there are religious fanatics who think it’s a good idea to blow themselves up in public places or otherwise kill as many innocent bystanders as possible, we shouldn’t be surprised when it happens in Europe or even in America. If you want complete protection from suicide bombers and their ilk, don’t go out in public. And if you do, avoid crowds. (While you’re at it, never, never get in a car, smoke, get drunk, eat fast food or keep a gun in the house.)

We should keep in mind, however, that these mass attacks on civilians happen a lot more often in places like Iraq and Pakistan than in Europe or the United States. While we all heard about the massacres in Brussels six days ago, three times as many people were murdered in Lahore and Baghdad this week.

On Friday, an ISIS suicide bomber killed 41 and injured more than 100 at a soccer stadium in Baghdad. Yesterday, a Taliban group that supports ISIS set off a bomb in a public park in Lahore, killing at least 70 people and injuring hundreds more.

We can always say these attacks don’t get as much attention in the West because they happen far away and they happen so often. Still, we should remember that the most frequent victims of radical, fundamentalist Islamic groups like ISIS and the Taliban are other Muslims. These fanatics aren’t waging war on the West so much as they’re waging war on the rest of the human race, and in particular on innocent Muslims who pose no danger to us or anyone else.