I wrote:
>>George Dubya, the titular head of the US state, recently got headlines by
>>okaying the veto by Congress of Clinton-era ergonomic rules in the
>>workplace. I wonder: isn't part of this reversal Clinton's fault? After
>>all, Big Bill left this proposal to the end of his years, so that its
>>actual enactment would be up in the air. As a neoliberal, he probably
>>liked the idea of proposing stuff that sounds pro-worker without its
>>actual passage.
Brad writes:
>Don't go grasping for straws,
hey, straws are all we've got to grasp for at this point!
>and never underestimate the effects of total disorganization. Had Big Al
>[Gore? Big?] been elected, the Clinton-era ergonomic rules would still
>have been set out, and would stand.
The problem with this is that it ignores the fact that the
Clinton/Gore/Leiberman forces -- otherwise known as the Democratic
Leadership Council [conference?] -- have steadily worked to disorganize
the Democratic Party's base. Instead of the old "New Deal" coalition of
labor unions, minorities, etc., the DLC crowd worked hard to attract the
[mostly white] suburbanites away from their allegiance to the GOP -- and
more importantly, to attract the CAMPAIGN BUCKS. Clinton, it seems, decided
that he would emulate the GOP campaign-fund-raising process and go five
steps further, selling honor and honesty whenever possible to bring in the
bucks. So we see renting out the Lincoln Bedroom and the pushing of
anti-labor policies such as NAFTA. (In theory, those could have been
pro-labor, but the increase in efficiency associated with NAFTA -- if any
-- never led to any of the hypothetical compensation that economists
promise. Pie in the sky!) The Clinton-types worked to concentrate power in
the hands of the Fundraiser-in-Chief. Then, as with so many other extremely
centralized and top-down organizations, when the leaders get "bumped off"
(retired or trounced in an "election," for the cases of Clinton and Gore,
respectively), the organization falls apart, rudderless. If he had been
able to do so, I'm sure that Clinton would have surrounded himself with
only mediocre successors -- just as Napoleon could only put up with
mediocrities like Marshall Ney. In fact, maybe we should see Gore as the
Marshall Ney of US politics.
I'm not convinced that Small Al Gore would have kept the ergonomic rules,
since his campaign was even more conservative than Clinton's while his
emphasis on the suburbs and the money-raising was even stronger. (Do I hear
the ding of Buddhist bells?) Gore seems to be like the vast majority of
Democratic pols, lacking a backbone except when it comes to allegiance to
the sources of campaign funds. If he had kept the ergonomic rules, I'm sure
he would have undermined them by extending NAFTA (again without dealing
with its costs to workers) to Chile, etc.
>Yet another blessing we have received from Ralph Nader...
The DLC types mess up their own party for years and then blame Ralph (even
though there was a statistical study reported in the NATION magazine
indicating, ironically, that Buchanan had a bigger effect). But if
Clinton/Gore had actually lived up to their promises more often -- rather
than turning into what Clinton himself called "Eisenhower Republicans"
(according to Bob Woodward) -- then no-one except die-hard leftoids would
have been interested in Nader. In fact, Nader himself wouldn't have been
interested (as he showed in 1996, when he "ran" in a half-hearted way).
Supposedly, it's doctrine among the more enlightened managers that it the
employees unionize it's management's fault, i.e., that they should have
kept the workers happy so that a union wouldn't have been desired. The
Democrats like Brad should understand that to the extent that left-wing
"third" parties gain popularity it represents a failure of the Democrats.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
