This is such a good piece on where the Democratic Party is now and
how it got there. I really would like to site the whole thing but is a bit long
for for that. However here are some high lites.

Populism is politics which opposes wealth and power
in the name of  the common folk. It takes both left
wing and right wing forms and sometimes degenerates
into bigotry and attacks on minorities. Populism can
be faked, and that is being done right now - e.g.,
Limbaugh and Beck. Populist appeals can be made by
spokesmen for special interests who have no
intention of fulfilling their democratic promises,
but who are just opportunistically faking populism
as part of an attack on some enemy. (As I never get
tired of saying: Republican populism is fake, but
Democratic elitism is real).

Since the Fifties the Democratic Party, whose
populist wing was critically important during the
New Deal, has avoided and repressed populism.
Individual populists such as Paul Wellstone have
occasionally been elected, often in defiance of the
party machine, but they have never had much
influence in the party. The Democratic strategy has
been cooperation with big business, and their slogan
has been "a rising tide lifts all boats" --
"win-win" solutions where everyone wins and nobody
loses. This worked pretty well until about 1970,
when business started to pull away from the deal,
and since that time it's been mostly downhill for
the Democrats, for labor, and for the average
American.

When they made their deal with big business, the
Democrats became a wonky party of technocrats and
expert administrators who balanced all the various
interests and came up with the answer which was best
for everyone, and they distanced themselves from
their earlier party-of-the-common-man pretensions.
Rather than to represent the majority of the
electorate, they increasingly defined their
constituency as a hodgepodge of special interest.
Political parties inevitably do represent plural
interests, as the Democrats certainly had done ever
since the Civil War, but the post-Fifties Democrats
made a fractionated constituency a deliberate goal
and did everything they could to avoid majoritarian
appeals and to marginalize majoritarianism within
the party.

This is so true. Just look how they treated Howard Dean and
how they marginalize Dennis Kucinich, among others.

In 1948 the Democrats purged its left, much of which
had populist roots, and the right populists mostly
ended in the Republican Party. Truman's purge wasn't
thorough enough for the right, and an anti-elitist
McCarthyism strain emerged which survives to this
day, (for example with the teabaggers). Meanwhile,
Democratic intellectuals, partly following the
leftist German refugee Adorno, developed a theory
holding that all populism is ultimately
totalitarian, either Fascist or Communist.

The liberals described McCarthy as a populist and
hinted that he was a Fascist. This was actually a
very peculiar move. First, while McCarthy was
anti-elitist and demagogic and appealed to the
common man, he also was a fairly standard
conservative Republican whose support did not come
mostly from populists or progressives. Second,
calling McCarthy a populist did not hurt him with
anyone who had not read Adorno and who still admired
the Populists. And finally, by the time these
criticisms of McCarthy came out, McCarthy had been
censured and had died in disgrace.

The target was not McCarthy at all. McCarthy had had
a lot of Democratic support, including the Kennedys,
but in any case he had been defeated. The
technocratic Cold War liberals had won - they
controlled the Democratic Party and expected to win
the Presidency in 1960. The real goal of these
attacks was to preclude the re-emergence of a
populist wing within the Democratic Party, so that
the Democrats could redefine themselves as a
neutral, non-majoritarian elite of experts. While in
office, Democrats conduct a realistic, militaristic
foreign policy while domestically dividing the
goodies between the nation's many and varied
interest groups without identifying with any one of
them -- and above all without responding to
majoritarian anti-business or anti-war popular
movements.

Those that were left became the neo-cons and the southern
Dixicrats. Then they left in the 1970s. Many becoming republicans.

My main conclusion is that the Democrats have
crippled themselves by renouncing populist and
majoritarian appeals while presenting themselves as
expert administrators and effectively allowing the
Republican Party to cash in on fake populism. This
strategy hasn't worked since 1968, and it has
crippled the Democrats by making them incapable of
counterattacking against blatantly dishonest
fake-populist appeals by the Republicans. At the
level of the high-level party pros and a lot of
elected officials, this isn't a problem at all -
they are business Democrats on the take from the
plutocratic malefactors, and they do very well for
themselves even when the Democrats lose.

But the elitist strategy is disastrous in its
effects at the lower levels - the sincere, wonkish
party workers who have been indoctrinated with
anti-populism in Pol Sci 101, and even more so the
enormous contingent of Democratic voters who have
also taken Pol Sci 101 and think of themselves as
wonks. On the internet and elsewhere, far too often
rank and file Democratic discussions of politics,
rather than concentrating on the reasons why the
Democratic position is the right one (in the cases
when it really is), end up with wonky discussions
about process, and these discussions always seem to
end with a lesser-evil slide to the center. And
while this is exactly what the Democratic leadership
wants, this is usually not what rank and file
Democrats, Democratic volunteers, and idealistic
low-level workers want.

So what do we have. Right wing fanatics and intellectual snobs
and elitist on the left. Both of which play right into the hands of
the rich a powerful.

C

Ted Rall has a column out comparing Obama with FDR and even
going as far to say his policies have been more in line with Hoover.
Here is a bit of it.

Long after World War II ended the Depression once and
for all, Americans made use of New Deal-era labor: "The
WPA built or improved 651,000 miles of roads, 19,700
miles of water mains and 500 water treatment plants.
Workers built 24,000 miles of sidewalks; 12,800
playgrounds; 24,000 miles of storm and sewer lines;
1,200 airport buildings; 226 hospitals; more than 5,900
schools, and more than two million privies," according
to a PBS special about the New Deal. There's plenty of
work to do now: the U.S. needs a national high-speed
rail system to compete with European and Asian
countries, not to mention new mass transit systems and
school buildings. Pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq and
hire Americans to start building!

Nine months into his presidency, however, it is clear
that Obama is more Hoover than FDR. There has been
virtually no investment in public infrastructure. There
will be no public jobs programs. According to The New
York Times, "Obama's economic advisers are sifting
options for a new package of tax cuts and other job
creation measures to be unveiled in next year's State
of the Union address."

No one in Congress has proposed a single jobs-creation
bill. Instead, they're working to extend unemployment
benefits to 79 weeks. "As Democrats have found, aiding
those who have lost their jobs," comments the Times,
"is simpler than preventing more layoffs and creating
more jobs."

Is Obama stupid? Or is he crazy? More than one out of
five Americans is jobless. Many more are underemployed.
There are six jobseekers for every job. Inflation is
out of control. Yet he thinks we can wait until January
2010? Does he really believe that tax cuts create jobs?

No Ted. He is upper middle class. That's his background

Other ideas include "a tax credit for homebuyers and
accelerated depreciation for businesses." There's also
"a $3,000 tax credit for each new hire" and "allowing
more businesses to deduct their net operating loans
going back five years instead of the usual two."

When Bush flew home to Texas, we thought we were
getting an FDR to replace a Hoover. Instead, we got
another Hoover.

Even if we had a president willing and able to offer
the bold and decisive leadership that FDR offered in
the 1930s, the challenge posed by the fiscal crisis
would be daunting. But we're not as lucky as our
grandparents. We're stuck with a small-minded schmuck
with the vision of a small-time Chicago alderman. Think
about it: this is a guy who thinks tinkering with the
tax code is going to save American capitalism!

It's 1933. This time, however, Hoover got reelected.
Can we hold out until 1937 for a president who
understands that we need 10 million new jobs, and that
we need them yesterday?

Maybe so. Lets compare the backgrounds of each.
First FDR.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882
in the Hudson Valley town of Hyde Park, New York. His
father, James Roosevelt, and his mother, Sara, were
each from wealthy old New York families, of Dutch and
French ancestry respectively. Franklin was their only
child. His paternal grandmother, Mary Rebecca
Aspinwall, was a first cousin of Elizabeth Monroe, wife
of the fifth U.S. President, James Monroe. One of his
ancestors was John Lothropp, also an ancestor of
Benedict Arnold and Joseph Smith, Jr. One of his
distant relatives from his mother's side is the author
Laura Ingalls Wilder. His maternal grandfather Warren
Delano II, a descendant of Mayflower passengers Richard
Warren, Isaac Allerton, Degory Priest, and Francis
Cooke, during a period of twelve years in China made
more than a million dollars in the tea trade in Macau,
Canton, and Hong Kong, but upon returning to the United
States, he lost it all in the Panic of 1857. In 1860,
he returned to China and made a fortune in the
notorious but highly profitable opium trade[6]
supplying opium-based medication to the U. S. War
Department during the American Civil War but not
exclusively.[7] Young Franklin Roosevelt with his
father and Helen R. Roosevelt, sailing in 1899.

Roosevelt grew up in an atmosphere of privilege. Sara
was a possessive mother, while James was an elderly and
remote father (he was 54 when Franklin was born). Sara
was the dominant influence in Franklin's early
years.[8] Frequent trips to Europe made Roosevelt
conversant in German and French. He learned to ride,
shoot, row, and play polo and lawn tennis.

Roosevelt went to Groton School, an Episcopal boarding
school in Massachusetts. He was heavily influenced by
its headmaster, Endicott Peabody, who preached the duty
of Christians to help the less fortunate and urged his
students to enter public service. Roosevelt went to
Harvard, where he lived in luxurious quarters and was a
member of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. He was also
president of The Harvard Crimson daily newspaper. While
he was at Harvard, his fifth cousin Theodore Roosevelt
became president, and Theodore's vigorous leadership
style and reforming zeal made him Franklin's role model
and hero. In 1902, he met his future wife Eleanor
Roosevelt, Theodore's niece, at a White House reception
(they had previously met as children, but this was
their first serious encounter). Eleanor and Franklin
were fifth cousins, once removed.[9] They were both
descended from Claes Martensz van Rosenvelt
(Roosevelt), who arrived in New Amsterdam (Manhattan)
from the Netherlands in the 1640s. Rosenvelt's
(Roosevelt) two grandsons, Johannes and Jacobus, began
the Long Island and Hudson River branches of the
Roosevelt family, respectively. Eleanor and Theodore
Roosevelt were descended from the Johannes branch,
while FDR came from the Jacobus branch.[9]

Roosevelt entered Columbia Law School in 1905, but
dropped out in 1907 because he had passed the New York
State Bar exam. In 1908, he took a job with the
prestigious Wall Street firm of Carter Ledyard &
Milburn, dealing mainly with corporate law. He was
first initiated in the Independent Order of Odd Fellows
and was initiated into Freemasonry on October 11, 1911
at Holland Lodge Nr. 8 in New York City.[10]

FDR clearly came from wealth and privilege. He also had some
very liberal and progressive people in his life, which he looked up to
and had a profound influence on him. He had money and people with
money are usually not for sale.

Now lets look at Obama's background.

Of his early childhood, Obama recalled, "That my father
looked nothing like the people around me--that he was
black as pitch, my mother white as milk--barely
registered in my mind."[15] He described his struggles
as a young adult to reconcile social perceptions of his
multiracial heritage.[16] Reflecting later on his
formative years in Honolulu, Obama wrote: "The
opportunity that Hawaii offered--to experience a variety
of cultures in a climate of mutual respect--became an
integral part of my world view, and a basis for the
values that I hold most dear."[17] Obama has also
written and talked about using alcohol, marijuana and
cocaine during his teenage years to "push questions of
who I was out of my mind."[18] At the 2008 Civil Forum
on the Presidency in 2008, Obama identified his
high-school drug use as his "greatest moral
failure."[19]

Following high school, he moved to Los Angeles in 1979
to attend Occidental College.[20] After two years he
transferred in 1981 to Columbia University in New York
City, where he majored in political science with a
specialization in international relations[21] and
graduated with a B.A. in 1983. He worked for a year at
the Business International Corporation[22][23] and then
at the New York Public Interest Research Group.[24][25]

After four years in New York City, Obama moved to
Chicago, where he was hired as director of the
Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based
community organization originally comprising eight
Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland (Roseland, West
Pullman and Riverdale) on Chicago's far South Side. He
worked there as a community organizer from June 1985 to
May 1988.[24][26] During his three years as the DCP's
director, its staff grew from one to thirteen and its
annual budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000. He helped
set up a job training program, a college preparatory
tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in
Altgeld Gardens.[27] Obama also worked as a consultant
and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community
organizing institute.[28] In mid-1988, he traveled for
the first time in Europe for three weeks and then for
five weeks in Kenya, where he met many of his paternal
relatives for the first time.[29] He returned in August
2006 in a visit to his father's birthplace, a village
near Kisumu in rural western Kenya.[30]

Obama entered Harvard Law School in late 1988. He was
selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the
end of his first year,[31] and president of the journal
in his second year.[32] During his summers, he returned
to Chicago, where he worked as a summer associate at
the law firms of Sidley Austin in 1989 and Hopkins &
Sutter in 1990.[33] After graduating with a Juris
Doctor (J.D.) magna cum laude[34] from Harvard in 1991,
he returned to Chicago.[31] Obama's election as the
first black president of the Harvard Law Review gained
national media attention[32] and led to a publishing
contract and advance for a book about race
relations,[35] though it evolved into a personal
memoir. The manuscript was published in mid-1995 as
Dreams from My Father.[35]

From April to October 1992, Obama directed Illinois's
Project Vote, a voter registration drive with a staff
of ten and 700 volunteers; it achieved its goal of
registering 150,000 of 400,000 unregistered African
Americans in the state, and led to Crain's Chicago
Business naming Obama to its 1993 list of "40 under
Forty" powers to be.[36]

For 12 years, Obama served as a professor of
constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law
School; as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996, and as a
Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004.[37] In 1993 he
joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a law firm of
12 attorneys that specialized in civil rights
litigation and neighborhood economic development, where
he was an associate for three years from 1993 to 1996,
then of counsel from 1996 to 2004, with his law license
becoming inactive in 2002.[38]

Obama was a founding member of the board of directors
of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife,
Michelle, became the founding executive director of
Public Allies Chicago in early 1993.[24][39] He served
from 1994 to 2002 on the board of directors of the
Woods Fund of Chicago, which in 1985 had been the first
foundation to fund the Developing Communities Project,
and also from 1994 to 2002 on the board of directors of
the Joyce Foundation.[24] Obama served on the board of
directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge from 1995
to 2002, as founding president and chairman of the
board of directors from 1995 to 1999.[24] He also
served on the board of directors of the Chicago
Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the
Center for Neighborhood Technology, and the Lugenia
Burns Hope Center.[24]

Rather traditional upper middle class. No one in particularly
liberal or progressive except for his mother. And Harvard is
a rather conservative school. His civil rights background
one would think would have made him a bit more progressive.
But remember his experience there was primarily establishment
oriented, not the Back Panthers. The most outspoken person
being Rev. Wright.

He did not come from a wealthy background either. The upper
middle class background he did come from tends to be more
middle right socially and economically.

So to expect Obama to embrace the FDR progressive agenda
is not terribly realistic.

So in a way we do have a new Hoover in the presidency. We could
have had a new Benito Mussolini.


C