Obama's latest comments expressing admiration for several top bankers, and indifference to their bonuses, despite his recent criticism of the same, is a reflection of his attempt to "dance at two weddings." (Dancing at two weddings is a phrase many of us learned years ago in William Ryan's classic, Blaming the Victim, one of those truly important books that is not given the credit it is due as fundamental social criticism.)
Obama's trying to convince the chief capitalists that he understands that they live in a "winner take all" capitalism, while the rest of us don't and that this is just how capitalism works and he's okay with that. Of course, as Paul Krugman points out, these particular capitalists nearly brought the whole show down, which is far, far more important an issue than their grotesque bonuses and salaries.
And Obama is also trying to say that he's on the side of Main Street and stands with those who are not participating in "winner take all" capitalism and never will.
This is the basic contradiction of the Democratic Party; it wants to cozy up to the chief capitalists and not just for campaign contributions, and it also wants to appear as dyed-in-the wool populists or at least progressives.
This "dancing at two weddings" is killing the Democratic Party.
We all should remember that Obama is trying to distinguish between the high salaries that attend to running big outfits that actually make things that we need---which is an issue that we need to address more generally---and the obscene billion dollar bonuses for the very people on Wall Street who nearly brought us down.
That's an important distinction but Obama did a very poor job of making it.
In the meantime the conservatives have stolen the idea of populism and turned it upside down. Populism used to mean mobilizing the majority against the capitalism of the fat cats and others who win in the race to the top and who ignore the plight of Main Street and ordinary people.
Now it means anger and fury directed toward "liberals" and other effete snobs who are portrayed as thinking they are better than Main Street and that , further, they know what's best for Main Street.
If you know you will never get anywhere within the sight of the top you might as well get back at those who also aren't going to get anywhere the near of the top and who think they are better than you and who really aren't.
Actually, when you look at income distribution in the United States, those who make from $100k to $200k have more interests in common with those who are poor or near poor because the health of the basic infrastructure of the American society affects most people in the U.S. directly, including their physical health.
By basic infrastructure I mean education, health care, transportation, security, and other hard infrastructure (like roads, bridges, power systems, the Internet), as well as employment levels and as these and more all affect the lives of the better off (but not truly rich) as well as those who are worse off.
These are the goods that should be understood as collective goods assured by government, and this is yet another reason health care reform assured by government is so important. It is only the truly rich who can escape the yawning failures of American capitalism to provide the adequate infrastructure that is essential to our common health and our common wealth.
I'm not sure this is all going to work out all right. The Democrats could re-introduce some more progressivity in the income tax, raising taxes on the very rich (and not just letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to expire) and this would help nearly everything but of course people like Rahm Emmanuel will explode at such an idea and repeat his famous slur against liberal ideas like these.
I'm going to find my copy of Phil Och's "I Ain't Marching Anymore," the old Vietnam protest song, and give it another listen or two.
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