In the American electoral system there are four ways to register one’s disgust with the status quo.
Cast a ballot, where possible, for a radical third party that raises the decibel level and gives shape to anti-corporate outrage; vote in despair for the lesser-evil with the expectation that doing the same feckless act repeatedly will deliver progressive results; vote for the out party regardless of what it stands for with the hope of shaking things up; or sit on one’s hands with a clothespin fixed to one’s nose.
This time, lesser evil-ism did not offer a winning hand. The Democrats lost nearly every close Senate race, with the exception of New Hampshire. But if the Senate races were arguably fought on Republican terrain, the re-election of hard-core reactionaries to gubernatorial office and the capture of state legislatures by Republicans can only be explained by the national political climate.
The liberal left has offered many theories to explain the Democratic rout. Some of them actually are rooted in fact. Yes, there was poor voter turnout. Yes, there was a lack of enthusiasm among the Democratic base. Yes, the electoral map conspired against them in so far as the main battle ground states in this cycle normally lean right.
None of this however speaks to the deep pessimism of the American people in the midst of a supposed economic recovery. Almost half of those who voted still believe that life for the next generation would be worse than it is today. Two-thirds said the country was seriously on the wrong track.
All of which contributed to the well-known fear of Obama contagion on the part of Democratic candidates. The Obama presidency is widely seen as toxic. 59% of voters in national exit polls asserted that they were angry or disappointed with the Obama administration. But hasn’t employment made impressive gains? Hasn’t the stock market recovered? Haven’t deficits dropped from nearly 10% of GDP to 3%? Aren’t record high profits a harbinger of a renewed prosperity to come?
Is the electorate simply ungrateful? Or is it thoroughly alienated by the massive and historically unprecedented upward transfer of wealth and income that financed and accompanied the Obama recovery? Under the Bush recovery the top 10% captured nearly all the gains. Not only was this again true under the Obama recovery, but the bottom 90% also lost ground. There was employment growth, but this growth was disproportionally concentrated in the lowest paying service sectors.
Obama helped Wall Street avert financial catastrophe and furthered measures to support business. He endorsed much deeper cuts in social spending and the deficit during the 2011 budget negotiations than the Republicans. 5.5 million more Americans live in poverty today and median household income has declined by 4.6%. The real unemployment rate, despite the statistical slight of hand, is still at 12%.
Even Obama’s “Affordable Care Act”, is a subsidy to insurance companies and big Pharma. It reasserts the neoliberal principle that one should be able to access precisely as much health care as you can afford, just not necessarily as much as you also happen to need. In places where the uninsured rate dropped, the Republicans still managed to score massive victories.
The Republicans were hardly twisting the truth when accusing the administration of being too cozy with Wall Street and a select cohort of corporate cronies.
How then did Democratic Party candidates react to this? Did they soften or repudiate the pro-corporate Obama agenda? Did they offer a broad platform of economic remediation, which would give hope to the American rank and file that it too might share in the economic recovery, and begin to enjoy the fruits of a more egalitarian society?
No, they doubled down on their “principles”, while distancing themselves, ostrich like, from its lead author. It’s patently obvious that Democrats, with few exceptions, will not even go out on limb for a $15 minimum wage, for card check reform that would assist unions to organise, or for a desperately needed green jobs program.
Not a word will be heard from liberal left for even more radical departures and initiatives: Medicare for all, guaranteed federal employment or job training on demand, the right to a basic income, a debt jubilee for workers and the poor, the elimination of college tuition in state schools, a fully funded national pension and affordable urban housing. Democrats simply don’t believe that such things are attainable – or worse. They do not believe them desirable.
Most of what we need to know about this election, we can learn from the Alaska microcosm. There, voters imposed restrictions on mining, chose to legalize pot and opted to raise the minimum wage. And they elected a reactionary big business Republican.
In fact everywhere in which the electorate was offered the opportunity to express class solidarity by ratifying a hike in the minimum wage, it did so. And it did so while punishing Democrats and electing Republicans who denounce the minimum wage itself as a dangerous Commie plot.
It takes a special aptitude to be defeated by a hated Republican Party obsessed by a porous borders, Ebola contamination, the punishment of recreational sex, tax cuts for business, government overregulation, restrictions on gun ownership, a Benghazi cover-up and the war on Christmas.
But by falling on their sword, the Democrats once again proved themselves noble paladins of capitalism. Better to lose power waging a common defence of the corporate status quo, than to break ranks and threaten privilege.
