PDA

View Full Version : The Recent Elections: Wall Street Victories...And a Defeat



IMPress Polly
11-08-2013, 08:13 AM
Since the pundits generally are talking about the recent state and municipal elections in terms of the candidates' respective tactics, I thought it would be appropriate to offer my own commentary on the actual ideological/class significance of the results.

What we see in the Virginia governor's race is particularly interesting, as it concentrates much of what I've been saying about the divides in the Republican Party between the libertarians (controlled overall by the oil industry), the social conservatives (controlled by the Protestant churches), and the so-called party moderates/establishment (controlled mainly by the financial sector). In the Virginia governor's race, each of those factions was represented by a different party: the libertarians by the Libertarian Party candidate Robert Sarvis, the social conservatives by Republican Ken Cuccinelli, and Wall Street has endorsed the Democratic Party's candidate Terry McAuliffe, who emerged victorious. Progressives (actual leftists) went unrepresented by any major institution in that election; a fact which goes to show how weak the left yet remains in Virginia: a state wherein, exit polls revealed, fully the majority of voters oppose the Affordable Care Act and believe that the government "is doing too much". Corresponding to those facts, combining the votes of the Cuccinelli and Sarvis reveals that rightists were the majority of the electorate. Hence why the Democrats strategically opted to endorse a Clinton-aligned centrist in that election. McAuliffe's campaign hence ran a defensive campaign that carefully avoided stating a lot of fundamental ideological disagreements with Cuccinelli, instead opting to criticize only Cuccinelli's degree of ideological extremity. Criticizing degrees and tactics more than ideas is the mark of a true centrist. If I sounded terribly negative on McAuliffe just there though, don't let that lead you to believe that he wouldn't have been my preference, given the aforementioned options. As a direct result of McAuliffe's victory, among other things, Virginia's working class will gain access to Medicaid subsidies that will enable them to purchase health insurance for the first time, discrimination against gay people seeking government employment will no longer be permitted, and you can bet that any further anti-abortion measures the reactionary legislature may pass will meet with a gubernatorial veto. Compared to the alternative that Mr. Cuccinelli offered, that's mana from heaven as far as I'm concerned! However, let there be no illusions about McAuliffe: he's the kind of guy who will support budgetary austerity and privatization in general (including school privatization). For that reason, I would warn progressives against any uncritical defense of him and against any support for letting him represent the Democratic Party overall in any major national speeches, etc. He is an enemy of our enemy, not our friend.

The Wall Street-backed candidate also won New Jersey's gubernatorial (i.e. governorship) election, but there financial aristocracy backed the Republican candidate, Chris Christie, leaving the Democrats to run a more left wing candidate; they decided on Barbara Buono. Buono, for those who don't know, was an Elizabeth Warren-like genuine progressive, known for her background as a trial lawyer and her corresponding consumer advocacy as a politician. Perhaps of greatest concern to Wall Street was the fact that she was the prime sponsor of the state's law against predatory lending, for example. Another worrying sign that doubtless concerned corporate America vis-a-vis Buono lay in her choice of running mate: Milly Silva, executive vice president of a chapter of the United Healthcare Workers East; a section of the Service Employees International Union. As you might expect of New Jersey's overwhelmingly middle class population though, the centrist candidate was broadly preferred to such an alternative. Like his approximate ideological analogy in Virginia, McAuliffe, Christie ran a largely substance-devoid campaign that focused on questions of personal style and tactics. Ignored was the fact that the state's rate of unemployment remains far higher than the national average and that the state's poverty level is the highest it's been in 50 years. Politically speaking, when you live in a state consisting mostly of property owners whose plight overall has perhaps marginally improved since you took office, you needn't worry about such things. Don't be fooled by the polls though: much to the contrast of how he's portrayed it, Christie is NOT popular with the victims of Hurricane Sandy for his recovery program. In a recent poll conducted shortly before the election, 75% of Jersey-ites hit by Sandy said they didn't think the governor cared about them at all. Christie didn't win re-election based on their support. And though many of the headlines suggest that Christie "won all income groups", there was one he still lost: voters making under $30,000. (Evidently the poor needn't even be counted as an income group -- as existing at all -- in the eyes of the commercial media.) In fact, his easy victory had much to do with the fact that big money intervened in his favor, the fact that New Jersey's population consists overwhelmingly of property owners (who are naturally amendable to such messaging rather than largely immune to it like the poorest people). The fact that almost one-third of Democrats themselves voted for Christie goes to show the ideological divides within the party; that a very real Wall Street faction is alive and thriving. In terms of the 2016 presidential race, this outcome does indeed show Christie to be a real, electable prospect, as many have remarked. (Christie is not a "centrist", by the way. Whether it be on economic or cultural issues, Christie is a rightist: he takes conservative-leaning social positions alongside neoliberal economic positions. The only reason he gets called a "moderate" is because he opposes the extreme tactics of the Tea Party movement (thus cementing the favor of the financial sector).)

There was, however, one notable instance wherein Wall Street suffered a political defeat of epic proportions: New York City's mayoral race. Finance had favored centrist Christine Quinn to win the Democratic Party's nomination and provided her accordingly with sizable donations. The most progressive candidate, Bill de Blasio, by contrast, was famously denounced by the city mayor and Wall Street billionaire Micheal Bloomberg on the grounds that his campaign placed wood in the fires of "class warfare". Class warfare is something Mr. Bloomberg would know a lot about, having been personally responsible for the suppression of the Occupy movement's main and founding group, Occupy Wall Street, two years ago. While Quinn had run essentially as the next Michael Bloomberg, de Blasio ran as the anti-Bloomberg populist, calling for a tax hike on the rich in order to increase funding for public schools and construct more public housing to service the needs of the city's growing number of poor people. (Poor and low-income people collectively compose 46% of NYC's population, according to a recent study.) De Blasio also distinguished himself as the only candidate who consistently opposed the city's racist "stop and frisk" policing policy wherein minorities (and yes it's almost always minorities) are randomly grabbed by the cops, thrown to the pavement to get their private parts fondled for a while, and then abandoned, all without a word of explanation. Whereas recent rightist mayors (Giuliani and Bloomberg) have managed to pull off electoral victories by running as law and order candidates focused on reducing the crime rate, that didn't work this time, now that the crime rate is well under control, much unlike in the early '90s. Winning the Democratic nomination for mayor was de Blasio's main challenge, for, as it turned out, the Democrats managed to maintain their broad center-left coalition (which composes a sizable majority of New Yorkers) in the election itself, but just under different leadership than usual; under the leadership of the left rather than of the center. As a result, de Blasio's victory was the biggest landslide in the city's entire history: 73% for de Blasio to just 24% for his Republican opponent. It was quite rewarding to yours truly to watch his victory speech, for which he stood behind a symbolically red sign bearing the word PROGRESS in bold lettering to let everyone know that political allegiances were left-of-center (albeit hardly far to the left). It goes to show that the city has now been sufficiently re-proletarianized for the left to win outright victories again for the first time since the 1940s. That's not to say he'll have an easy road ahead. The city council includes a lot of more centrist figures who will surely seek to block most all of the new mayor's initiatives. Nevertheless, this signifies major, real ideological progress.

Peter1469
11-08-2013, 08:27 AM
I think that it is interesting to note that Terry McAuliffe was supposed to win in the double digits, while in fact the race ended up being very close.

jillian
11-08-2013, 08:34 AM
I think that it is interesting to note that Terry McAuliffe was supposed to win in the double digits, while in fact the race ended up being very close.

my favorite wonk, ezra klein, thinks that's nonsense.


there's something about this conversation that's a little odd: McAuliffe was, by all accounts, a much worse candidate than President Obama running in an environment, and with an electorate, that was worse for Democrats than 2012. And yet he won Virginia by a single point less than Obama. He had some advantages Obama didn't have of course -- namely, money and a weaker challenger -- but McAuliffe's by three makes a lot more sense given Virginia's history and partisan leanings than McAuliffe by 12. I'm not sure there's much that needs to be explained here at all.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/11/06/no-obamacare-didnt-decide-the-virginia-election/

Peter1469
11-08-2013, 08:44 AM
my favorite wonk, ezra klein, thinks that's nonsense.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/11/06/no-obamacare-didnt-decide-the-virginia-election/


So why did McAuliffe's apparent lead collapse if it wasn't Obamacare? I don't know. Perhaps Republicans who didn't want to vote for Cuccinelli came home in the final days of the race. Perhaps pollsters misjudged the electorate that would ultimately turn out to vote.



I think that he is wrong. McAuliffe over spent Cuccinelli several times over. His campaign ads were 10 to 1 over Cuccinelli.

Professor Peabody
11-08-2013, 08:47 AM
Obama bundler funds libertarian candidate to disrupt Virginia gubernatorial race

November 5, 2013

Virginia Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Robert C. Sarvis is funded by a "major Democratic Party benefactor and Obama campaign bundler" software billionaire Joe Liemandt of Austin, Texas as reported today by Meredith Jessup of theBlaze.

http://www.examiner.com/article/obama-bundler-funds-libertarian-candidate-to-disrupt-virginia-gubernatorial-race

McAuliffe won by only 55,000 votes after spending $15 million and what ever they spent to fund the spoiler.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/2013_virginia_gubernatorial_election_map.png/300px-2013_virginia_gubernatorial_election_map.png

Cigar
11-08-2013, 08:48 AM
McAuliffe won by only 55,000 votes after spending $15 million and what ever they spent to fund the spoiler.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/2013_virginia_gubernatorial_election_map.png/300px-2013_virginia_gubernatorial_election_map.png

So in other words .... Cuccinelli lost! :laugh:

jillian
11-08-2013, 08:53 AM
I think that he is wrong. McAuliffe over spent Cuccinelli several times over. His campaign ads were 10 to 1 over Cuccinelli.

i don't know that your numbers are correct. and, as we learned after citizens united, it really doesn't matter how much money

cuccinelli was the poster child for rightwingnuttery, but mcauliffe was a bad candidate.

and i think ezra's reasoning is sound, alothough he's ignoring the false story about a different TM fed to the AP by cuccinelli operatives.

Professor Peabody
11-08-2013, 09:06 AM
So in other words .... Cuccinelli lost! :laugh:

Yup, but it cost the Democrats a fortune to win a Governors house with an overwhelmingly Republican House of Delegates. Congratulations!

Peter1469
11-08-2013, 09:06 AM
i don't know that your numbers are correct. and, as we learned after citizens united, it really doesn't matter how much money

cuccinelli was the poster child for rightwingnuttery, but mcauliffe was a bad candidate.

and i think ezra's reasoning is sound, alothough he's ignoring the false story about a different TM fed to the AP by cuccinelli operatives.

What do you mean about in your last sentence?

IMPress Polly
11-09-2013, 12:02 PM
Well actually the ratio was 4 to 1, but that's still a major difference. Probably the best commentary on the recent elections that I've seen so far (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec13/politicalwrap_11-08.html) was offered last night on the PBS News Hour. As is often (but not always) the case, Mark Shields dissects matters pretty well. I particularly agree with Shields' assessment concerning where the energy is on the left today. I say that as someone who has been a left wing activist for more than a decade now. Back when I started out getting involved in activism in 2002-3 the energy on the left was definitely around opposing the (then-forthcoming) Iraq War. (Between 9/11 and Bush's State of the Union Address in 2002 wherein he laid out his "axis of evil" formulation and then began promoting the idea of invading Iraq, there was almost no left wing activism going on, but once Iraq came up then some started to emerge around that issue.) Between that point and the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the anti-war scene was where the American left was; the Iraq War the main issue around which they congregated. The Great Recession, and in particular the crash of 2008, however, seems to have permanently altered the center of energy on the American left. From that point on, economic inequality became the source of energy and intellectual ferment on the left. The so-called "old left" -- the economic left -- is back and its going to be gaining more and more political expression as the years go by. I think that's actually the overall most important takeaway from all this because it relates most to the long-term political directionality of the country. Progressives hence should celebrate de Blasio's victory more than McAuliffe's.

Peter1469
11-09-2013, 12:08 PM
I am certainly interested in seeming how de Blasio's policies work out.

Codename Section
11-09-2013, 12:13 PM
Libertarians are not controlled by the oil industry anymore than socialists and communists are controlled by the banking industry. We're antistatists.

The Sage of Main Street
11-09-2013, 02:33 PM
So in other words .... Cuccinelli lost! :laugh:

There is no such thing as "winning ugly." People who take that put-down seriously wind up losers. The former DNC Chairman, in the capital of the Confederacy, probably told his friends at the beginning of the campaign, "It ain't gonna be pretty."

The Sage of Main Street
11-09-2013, 02:41 PM
Libertarians are not controlled by the oil industry anymore than socialists and communists are controlled by the banking industry. We're antistatists.

We are not allowed to advocate violent overthrow of the government. Since Libretardians insist that the rulers of the private sector are not a government and not "statist," they have no answer to declaring open hunting season on the 1%.