The Lesser Evil Just Keeps Getting More Evil
(posted by Kevin Carson)
In “The Art of The Art of the Possible,” Daniel writes:
…First and most importantly, the next president (barring disaster) will be either Barack Obama or John McCain; any middle or outside is strictly excluded. Therefore the crucial question to ask in deciding whom to support is whether the election of Obama or the election of McCain will be a better outcome. Having reached an answer to that question, someone who decides to do anything other than support the one of those two candidates who is better than the other on balance, however marginally, is deliberately acting to bring about a sub-optimal outcome.
This neglects the tendency of the “lesser evil” to get worse over time, when the party establishment knows it’s got a captive clientele that feels obligated to vote the party ticket no matter what. On the other hand, if the party establishment loses an election because a fed-up base refuses to choose from what’s on their plates like good little boys and girls, the lesser evil might not be quite so evil next time.
Obama was engaged in just such a cynical calculation (”Where the hell else are they gonna go? Do they want to throw the election to McCain?”) when he supported the FISA disgrace. So was Hillary when she voted for the Iraq war resolution. Both Hillary and Obama assumed that the Netroots types in the end would hold their noses and vote Democratic because they had nowhere else to go, while their display of “toughness on national security” would enable them to contest the Republicans for control of the middle.
Of course, Hillary failed to anticipate the possibility of a successful primary challenge. As it turned out, her opportunism came back to bite her in the ass. Her Iraq vote probably made the difference between her and Obama. And as a lesson to all the opportunists waiting in the wings, this was about the best thing that could have happened.
But now Obama has turned around and taken his own base for granted in exactly the same way with his vote for the FISA bill. And as a lesson for the Democratic Party establishment in the future, he also needs his own betrayal to bite him in the ass–if not in exactly in the same way, at least to do him serious damage. He needs, at the very least, to get a real scare out of it and wonder whether an uprising by his own outraged base will cost him the election.
I’m not necessarily arguing that Obama needs to lose this election, or that the optimal outcome would result from throwing it to McCain and playing for 2012. The likely changes McCain would make to the Supreme Court (and the possibility, however remote, of an Attorney General Giuliani) still tend to weigh against it.
But it’s at least worth bearing in mind that there is a libertarian downside to Obama beating McCain, and an upside to him losing.
Another downside to an Obama victory is the possibility that the worst–by far the worst–economic news may hit after Obama enters office. If the housing markets and the Dow Jones both go from a controlled slide to a total implosion sometime after January 2009, and fuel prices turn into a full-blown crisis, you’d better believe the folks on talk radio, at TownHall.Com, etc., will be blaming Great Depression 2.0 on the Democrats. The Roveans will be doing their utmost to focus white working class “bitterness” on the latte-sipping elites who support gay marriage and abortion, in the way Thomas Frank has so ably chronicled. And we’ll be seeing serious attempts at the kind of grass-roots mobilization on the right (hell, let’s just call it brownshirtism and get it over with) that David Neiwert focuses on at Orcinus. There’s the very real possibility, not only that Obama will be a one-termer, but that “Obama” will turn out to be Kenyan for “Weimar.”
July 15th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
There’s the very real possibility, not only that Obama will be a one-termer, but that “Obama” will turn out to be Kenyan for “Weimar.”
Kevin, I respect a whole lot of what you write, but that’s probably the most insane thing I’ve read from you.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been spending too much time at UR, but Neiwert definitely seems like one of those people who’s looking at things from a funhouse mirror. He probably considers both you and Keith Preston dangerous subversives.
July 15th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
While I agree with TGGP’s assessment of David Neiwert, who’s far too much of a Dees/Berlet wannabe for my tastes, I think Kevin’s correct in raising the possibility that an Obama presidency during a time of serious economic downturn could indeed pave the way for the Neocons to stage a big comeback in 2008 or 2012, the way Reagan followed Jimmy Carter or Bush followed Clinton.
I tend to favor McCain, because 4-8 years of that guy will probably destroy the competitiveness of the Republican Party for a generation. It’s either pay now or pay later.
Btw, Pat Buchanan has a good piece on Obama-as-shyster:
http://www.vdare.com/buchanan/080708_obama.htm
July 16th, 2008 at 12:02 am
I agree with everything Keith just said, except that I think worse is worse, not better. I am perfectly fine with corrupt, opportunist Chicago politicians. I’m scared of ones that genuinely want to reach out and hug everybody, reshape the world and all that.
July 16th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Me too! We should definately support corrupt empty suits like Obama and work hard to keep good people out of office. We must imitate our craven, sniveling political leaders in the name of crackpot “realism!” Why don’t people understand that?
July 16th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
I’m saying I’ll be glad if he wins, not that I’ll lift a finger to make that a realization. The Republicans have done all the heavy lifting already.
July 17th, 2008 at 12:14 am
Michael Moynihan often rubs me the wrong way, but this on the weak analogies to fascism promoted by Jonah Goldberg and Naomi Wolf is pretty good and seems appropriate for this thread.
July 17th, 2008 at 11:57 am
TGGP,
I’ve taken issue with Neiwert before over his understanding of the constitutionalist/militia movement, and his lumping them together with the Red State talk radio types. They’re two entirely different things.
But he’s entirely correct about the latter, IMO. The use of angry, threateninng, and eliminationist rhetoric by supporters of Bush (the kind who listen to Limbaugh, Hannity, and Coulter) is very real.
July 17th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
The use of angry, threateninng, and eliminationist rhetoric by supporters of Bush (the kind who listen to Limbaugh, Hannity, and Coulter) is very real.
I agree on that, I just disagree about its significance.
July 18th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Kevin:”The use of angry, threateninng, and eliminationist rhetoric by supporters of Bush (the kind who listen to Limbaugh, Hannity, and Coulter) is very real.”
TGGP: “I agree on that, I just disagree about its significance.”
I think some distinctions are in order. The kind of “conservatism” represented by Limbaugh, et.al. is raw meat to be thrown to the dogs among the ranks of the “red state fascists”. But I disagree that the “talk radio” perspective is representative of the ruling class as a whole. It might represent a sector of the right-wing of the ruling class, but I don’t think it represents the wider liberal-internationalist-managerialist whatever ruling class proper.
All states and ruling classes use appeals to jingoism, “patriotism”, “traditional values”, “morality”, religion, etc. as a means of rallying the common people, particularly the more unsophisticated sectors behind the agenda of the elites. While media outlets funded by the right-wing of the ruling class may use such appeals in a Goebbels-like manner, I think the evidence justifies the conclusion that the US ruling class is continually moving leftward socially.
For instance, the notorious FOX News is owned by the pro-neocon Murdoch, but FOX is hardly a socially conservative network if the contents of their programming is any guide. Rudy Giuliani is easily one of the most authoritarian politicians in the US, yet he’s also a social liberal on gay rights, gun control, abortion, drive-through marriages, cross-dressing, etc. The Neocons are the most “right-wing” of any ruling class ideological faction, but most of them are urban cosmopolitans or ethnic Jews in background or cultural orientation.
The danger is not the prospective seizure of power by some John Hagee-type as much as the ability of the ruling class to use jingoism, relgion, socially conservative rhetoric or for that matter fiscally or economically conservative rhetoric to camoflauge its goal of continuing to attack the working class and poor, expand the empire, and expand the police state. In the social realm, the system has to move leftward almost out of necessity because of the need to continually cultivate new constituent and interest groups to serve as wards/clientele for the all-pervasive state, and because of the growing diversity of American society in general.
July 19th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
We have a two-party adversarial system where the base of each naturally thinks the other is a grave threat to all that is great and good. It’s been like that for a very long time. It doesn’t mean that the rednecks and Chomsky-fans are about to have drive-bys on each other.
July 20th, 2008 at 6:54 am
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