Hi.  Today's Democracy Now deals with the Iowa caucuses well and I strongly
suggest checking it out.  I'll make two comments:  
1. The top three winners each got around 30,00 votes.  This merits weeks of
headlines?   and 2.  Had I been in Iowa I would have registered for a day as
a Republican and voted for Ron Paul.  He is the ONLY national figure
speaking against all wars and the military, and the ONLY national figure
speaking against Wall Street, big oil and other major economic corrupters.
No surprise in his major base of support in Iowa is in people under 30,
garnering a majority of Iowans in that age group!  
 
I feel obliged to say that of course I don't support his social or racial
views, at all, and my life's very public work defines my views. 
If Paul were to disappear, rest assured, those views would remain rhetoric,
at best.  He has no chance of winning the nimination, in any event.  What IS
needed is for progressive Democrats to win close to a majority in congress
and shove Obama leftward. I believe
Paul is carrying that torch, for now.  If my vote would prevent whichever
fanatic idiot Republican from winning the presidency, I'd vote for Obama.
As it is, here in California, I'll vote Green. 
Ed
 
 
 <http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/03-10>
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/03-10

The Politics of Lowered Expectations

"Let's face it, if today's Republicans are the most craven, greedy,
ignorant, anti-worker, anti-patient, anti-consumer, anti-environment and
coddlers of corporate crime in the party's history, why aren't the Democrats
landsliding them?"
 
by Ralph  <http://www.commondreams.org/ralph-nader> Nader
Common Dreams: January 3, 2012

Ezra Klein, the bright, young, economic policy columnist for the "Washington
Post" believes that Obama came out ahead last year
<http://www.nader.org/exit.php?url_id=554&entry_id=2341>  in the
"administration's bitter, high-stakes negotiations with the Republicans in
Congress."

He cites four major negotiations in 2011 with the Republicans that Obama
won. Obama won the game of chicken played in February by the House Speaker
John Boehner and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell to avoid a
government shutdown. He won the battle to raise the customarily supported
debt ceiling on government borrowing. He avoided an embarrassment after he
had to concur in the formation of a "Supercommittee" on deficit reduction
when Congress couldn't come to an agreement. And he won all of a two-month
extension of the social security payroll tax cut and extension of
unemployment compensation benefits.

If those were "high stakes," I wonder what microscopic instrument would
detect any lower stakes. Obama keeps "winning battles" that he could have
avoided. But what about taking the offensive on some really significant
matters? For example, when he caved in December 2010 to the minority
Republicans and agreed to extend the deficit-producing Bush tax cuts on the
rich, he didn't demand in return a continuation of the regular bi-partisan
approval of lifting the debt limit. So over weeks in 2011, he had to
mud-wrestle the Republicans on the debt limit - to the dismay of finance
ministers across the world - and won only after conceding the bizarre
creation of a Supercommittee to order its own Congress to enact budget cuts.
That Supercommittee gridlocked and closed down.

Finally, if he does nothing, the $4 trillion over 10 years that are the Bush
tax cuts expire automatically on January 1, 2013 - after the election. On
the same day, the spending trigger automatically kicks in which cuts over
ten years $500 billion from the bloated Defense budget and another $500
billion from other departments, but not from social security and
Medicare/Medicaid beneficiaries.

This is an Obama victory? What makes Mr. Klein so sure Obama won't cave
again? He has all this year to do so. His own Defense Secretary Leon Panetta
has often said that there's now way he would go for any further defense
cuts. Also, Obama was ready in 2011 to raise the Medicare eligibility age in
return for the deal on debt ceiling. He was saved from this folly only by
the stubbornness of Boehner and his clenched-teeth sidekick, Virginian Eric
Cantor from the arguably most passive Congressional district in the U.S.
Boehner and Cantor wanted more.

Here are some high stakes fights where the Republicans defeated the White
House and blocked major substantive advances. They stopped the wide-ranging
energy bill, and stifled Uncle Sam's authority to bargain for drug discounts
that taxpayers are paying to the gouging drug companies for the drug benefit
program for the elderly. They kept the coal industry King Coal on Capitol
Hill, preserved crass corporate welfare and tax loophole programs, and
blocked the able nominee to head the new agency to protect against consumer
finance abuses. They also cut budgets for small but crucial safety programs
in food, auto safety, and children's hunger.

Republicans preserved the notorious nuclear power loan guarantee
boondoggles, a bevy of Soviet-era weapons systems nestled in the arms of the
military-industrial complex and mercilessly beat up on the work and budget
of the cancer-preventing, illness-reducing Environmental Protection Agency.
That's just for starters.

Obama and the majority Democrats in the Senate dug this hole for themselves
when they failed to curtail the filibuster in January 2009 and 2011 by
majority vote. They doomed themselves to the numerically impossible hurdle
of needing 60 votes to pass any measure and avoid filibusters.

Putting themselves on the defensive, while dialing business lobbyists for
the same campaign dollars as the Republicans, the Obama crowd, of course,
could not advance what they promised the American people. They went silent
on raising the federal minimum wage to $9.50, promised by candidate Obama in
2008 for 2011. At $9.50, it would still have been less than the federal
minimum wage in 1968, adjusted for inflation. Hardly a radical proposal.

Obama went silent on the card check, promised unorganized American workers
in their losing struggle with multinational corporate employers. While
bailing out the criminal gamblers on Wall Street, he could have pressed for
a stock transaction sales tax that could have raised big revenue and helped
dampen speculation with other peoples' money such as pension funds and
mutual fund savings.

He could have pushed seriously for a visible public works program producing
domestic jobs in thousands of communities for improved public services. He
could have directly challenged the Tea Partiers with cuts in corporate
welfare, but he did not, except for ending an ethanol subsidy. He could have
made a big deal of cracking down on corporate fraud on Medicare and Medicaid
that totals tens of billions of dollars a year. However, once on the
defensive from his own self-inflicted weak hand, he was always on the
defensive.

Obama may be in a superior tactical position vis-a-vis the Congressional
Republicans, as Mr. Klein posits, but is this all there is left of the
touted movement for hope and change in 2008?

President Obama is deemed by his fellow Democrats to have won the financial
battles, but the Republicans won the rest. How can the expectation levels of
this two party duopoly sink any lower?

Let's face it, if today's Republicans are the most craven, greedy, ignorant,
anti-worker, anti-patient, anti-consumer, anti-environment and coddlers of
corporate crime in the party's history, why aren't the Democrats landsliding
them?

For two answers try reading John F. Kennedy's best-selling Profiles of
Courage, 1955, or if you favor the ancients, Plutarch's Lives (circa 100
A.D.).

 <http://www.commondreams.org/ralph-nader> Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader <http://www.nader.org/>  is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and
author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super-Rich Can
Save Us <http://www.amazon.com/dp/1583229035?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim>
. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0061238279?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim>
Traditions.



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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