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Volume 3-2013

NEWS FEEDS

The RCJ provides RSS feeds from well-respected news organizations, giving our readers a convenient portal through which to stay abreast of world events and issues. Use the links provided. The following are on the RCJ Front Page Report homepage (scroll both columns to the right).

The New York Times

The Huffington Post

The Economist

The Daily Beast

These are provided on other pages within this site:

Politico

Politics Daily

Wall Street Journal

Ezra Klein's WonkBlog - Washington Post

Nuclear Threat Initiative

cnet

Wired

Variety

Rolling Stone

 

Other sites worth visiting:

Cracked.com
Political Punch (ABC News Blog)
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LIBRARY OF ARTICLES

9-11 Liberals and Salman Rushdie

Police Force "Bombing" in Iraq

Anatomy of a Screwing

Fix America Now

Iceberg Economy: How the Supply Siders are Sinking the Ship of State

Bloomberg Illustrates Dodd-Frank Regulations for Investors

DAVOS WEF Points Out Single Points of Failure in the New Global Economy

Soulless Possession of Santo Niño

What Keeps NBC's Chuck Todd Up at Night?

"King of Bain" - Documentary on Mitt Romney's Private Equity Firm Bain Capital

Robert Smigel's Lost Ode to the Evil of General Electric

Riddle This: Do Our Governmental Systems Hinder Mitigation of Harmful Influences to Our System of Government?

The Achievement Metric - Time for a New Way of Determining Public Policy and Positioning Revenue Spending

Hide Your Brains! Matthews from the Left! Gingrich from the Right! Blowhard Attack! Or, more to the point...book reviews of "JFK Elusive Hero" and "Valley Forge"

Art Sampler - An RCJ Review of Art in the Modern Period

Benicia, California Case Study in Traffic Engineering and Growth Management

Everyday Heroism - The Penn State Debacle

How to Keep Things Lousy in the USA

How Being a Socialist Became a Negative

Are You A Slave? A Brief History of the Subject Suggests "Probably"

Moses, Wall Street, Human Nature and Grover Norquist

Concepts of Resistance - The RCJ Provides a Road Map for the OWS Movement

Lance Henriksen - World's Greatest Actor in Reflective Mode

Conspiracy - A Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the New World Order

Elections 2012

What Does it Take to be President?

Rating the U.S. News Readers

The Antidote to Michelle Bachman

Ship of Fools - Why Won't We Save Ourselves?

White House Solar Bomb

What Is Happening to Us?

The Cloud - What It Is

Background on Afghanistan

Economics 101

Global Economic Risks

Islamic Definition

Middle East

Second Amendment Remedies

Sam Broussard - Republicans

Treason

Why All the Zombies?

Gun Rights

Leadership Chronicles

The Warren Report 


Is Elizabeth Warren positioned to finally sink, once and for all, Hillary Clinton's presidential aspirations; to deprive her of the historical first she clearly desires?


By RAR

These days Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is using this pester and challenge: "All they need to take the Senate is for you to do nothing."

They, of course, are the Senate Republicans and you, of course, are responsible for whatever awfulness may transpire if you don't send funding to the Democratic party to turn back the evil tide of predatory conservatism.

One suspects, in a world of not terribly deep thinkers, that Republican identification with the word "conservative" is probably their checkmate move, at least until the left can come up with more compelling branding for itself. One suspects that association with the notion of being "conservative" is part of why Republicans continue to exist in a world in which the north star for their policy decisions is so decidedly not that of the majority of Americans. Still, a majority of Americans do see themselves as "conservative" - that is, after all, the responsible adult way to be - and men, in particular, will tend to vote for the conservative brand, policy details aside.

Democrats have been disastrously tied to the word "liberal", which gained negative weight over time with the development of morality-based politics. The Republicans conflated the word liberal with libertine through a sustained attack on "Hollywood" and "San Francisco values", which strengthened conservative aversion to liberals even as they imbibed of the same sordid culture. Still, versus the power of the conservative identity, the liberals opted for a "progressive" change in their own branding.



The liberal-conservative distinctions that weighed so misfortunately upon modern U.S. Democrats - the policy focus of the two parties has shifted diametrically over time - has its roots in the seating plan for the French National Assembly during the French Revolution. As it assembled for the first time in 1789, the supporters of the King of France sat to the President's right, and the supporters of the revolution sat to his left.

There you have the established elite on the right wing of the hall, the seekers of change on its left. Over time the positions of those resisting change came to be referenced as "conservative" - conserving the status quo - and their counterparts on the left as "liberals" - willing to replace the established order.

So, by accident of history and language development, some politicians were tarred with the term liberal, and so the dye was cast. For decades Republicans would be able to get people who valued considering themselves as thoughtful conservatives to vote against their own interests. On the other side of the aisle, liberals felt like they were dirty, possibly perverted, and so they went for the more hopeful distinction: progressive. This was good, but probably good too late, and probably not quite as good anyway as being cautious and conservative. In fact, in attempting to spin a political persuasion in a positive, but not too threatening light, being a progressive makes one sound like a lightweight taker of baby steps. And in that bit of wishy-washiness there is lost the important distinction between what one side represents versus what is represented by the other.

In fact, that is part of why it has been so hard to distinguish Republicans from Democrats, even including their policies. One should remember that smoke and pother aside, the Affordable Care Act, the signature achievement of the Democratic Obama administration, is a Republican plan. It is profoundly conservative in the French National Assembly sense of things, designed entirely to keep the King and his elite supporters in charge; or, in the case of the healthcare system in the U.S., to make sure that the insurance and existing healthcare conglomerates remain in charge. It is unclear why a progressive or any other kind of Democrat would want to do that. (See the article in this issue on the healthcare industry.)



Amid all of this slime and weasel talk there strides Elizabeth Warren, the progressives' last best hope for a turnaround in the downward arc of America's good fortunes; that is, unless one considers Hillary Clinton to be an avatar of progressive change. She will need to get through the primaries first, which may be a challenge if Elizabeth Warren is in the field. That means she will need to run as a progressive in the primaries, and a conservative in the general election if she wins the nomination of her party. At this point in her career, it is difficult to know if Hillary Clinton has enough credentials remaining to be considered a progressive. If she doesn't, the U.S. is right back in that grey area where it is difficult to distinguish the actual legislation from one party against that of the other, e.g., the Affordable Care Act.

Democrats seem to believe that they are fighting some battle that they really are not. If there were real distinctions between what they and the Republicans represent, the Keystone Pipeline would be a dead deal, there would be a universal health care program for all Americans, the big financial companies would not only be in check but many of their leading executives would be behind bars. None of that is happening and that is part of why the odd voice of Elizabeth Warren cuts through the otherwise white noise.

It was Bill Clinton and his administration that allowed the Glass-Steagal Act to be killed, which allowed banks to use invested assets on risky, speculative ventures. It was Lawrence Summers who rammed through the Wall Street-friendly deregulations that created the disastrous housing bubble that developed during the G.W. Bush administration. Incredibly, Barack Obama just attempted to nominate Summers to Treasury Secretary, an insult of such egregious proportions that his nomination eventually had to be jettisoned. Still, it tells one a lot about where the Democratic party is at under Obama, which is to say well to the political right.

Hillary Clinton's claim to fame in her political life has been that she is a congenial schmoozer, but she has little in the way of accomplishments to show, either from her Senate years or her time as Secretary of State. If she runs for the presidency carrying the weight of having to explain her own slim record while also defending that of her husband regarding his roll in America's financial decline, she will likely have a problem.

Clinton was not an effective candidate in 2008, when she was taken out by the upstart Obama. The electorate has changed immensely since then, and will have changed more by 2016. There are more minority voters and more young people who cannot find livable wage jobs. The populist Warren, who has even less experience at brokering deals than Clinton, will likely speak to those minority and young voters with greater authority than will Hillary, who is now firmly entrenched in the old school political system. She is one of the old boys at a time when the country probably needs some dynamic populist who has the wherewithal to effect change and make positive things happen - the ones desired by the majority of Americans according to most polls. People want the rich to pay more taxes and for the financial industry to be reigned in. They want troops out of distant lands and they want the oil companies and large agricultural operations to reduce their manufacturing of greenhouse gases. They want free and fair elections, and reasonable control of firearms.

Elizabeth Warren has expressed no interest in running for the presidency in 2016. She would reveal broad fissures in the Democratic party if she does get into the race. Those may be enough to finally deny Hillary Clinton a chance at history, but Warren herself seems unlikely to except the torch of leadership after eight years of a failed Democratic administration. She may seem a little squeaky versus the immense challenges that will face the U.S. by the next presidential election day.



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©Rick Alan Rice (RAR), December, 2013