Why is Obama putting a Social Security privatizer in charge of the Commerce Department?
The trend of the data would suggest the explanation that he's stealing it, of course, in a non-partisan way.
Glad to help you clear that one up, Lambert!
In another good post, Newberry points out that the Village drools over Obama as George Herbert Walker Bush's second term:
...Obama, in their view, could be the perfect Democratic President: spend on term cleaning up Bush's fiscal mess, his foreign policy mess, cram down Democrats on their favorite program, force people to buy health insurance at an enormous profit to insurance companies, and then be washed away by a corporate Republican who goes back to tax cuts for the wealthy.
It is a job that Barack Obama is eager to do. Having taken 4 off the table - as in "what does 2+2=, assuming that 4 is off the table?" - in every major policy area, what is left is minor fixes and minor changes to policy. He is willing to do enough about the middle class and suburbia, such as subsidies for home buying - which, you will note, the suddenly purist free traders of Washington DC are not uttering a peep about, despite the fact that we don't import subdivisions from China or Europe - so that the middle class does not rebel against being bled dry, and enough about civil liberties so that no one is in danger of having their passports revoked. He is willing to put competent people in charge, which means that Ivy and sub-Ivy league types are not behind graduates of fundamentalist degree mills for positions of authority. He is willing to do enough about global warming so that the flatheads don't feel bad. But he is not willing to sheer away the 13% or so of American GDP that is horrendously misallocated.
Thus, restrictions on executive pay are off the table, repealing the Bush cuts early is off the table, thus giving more time to profitize and smuggle the money out, comprehensive health care is out, thus keeping 5% of GDP flowing to insurance companies, really cutting the military is out, just shifting it from one war to another.
What this means for progressives is very simple: this progressive revolt is over, dead...
This, for those of you not paying attention, or self-spinning yourselves into dizziness, is Old Politics. Old Politics is top down, with information gathering and the patina of responsiveness to produce "buy in." Small groups get small things. The people who run those small groups get to continue to live the life they like, by harvesting donations from their small group of donors who have made a particular issue "their" issue. The small groups are happy, and they support the large initiative. Buying support for pennies on the dollar. Obama is merely doing this on the left.
Old Politics rapidly annoys the public, because they both have the large issues go against them, and they seem small issues decided by "the extremists on both sides." They thus blame "the extremists on both sides" for the erosion of American opportunity. It would be like a drunk switching between water and club soda to mix with their hard liquor, seeing this as change. The reality of course is that the top down system, itself, is the problem. Revolts against top down come in the form of "bottom up" generating the next group of small issue activists to be harvested in turn by the next party in power. Social conservatives are energized by social liberals, social liberals by social conservatives. Resource exploitation is energized by environmentalism, environmentalists by resource exploitation. Military people by war opponents. Back and forth it goes in a dynamic equilibrium which is, none the less, stable. The core - protecting the financial infrastructure and super-elite - remains in place. Faith by Science, Science by Faith. In each case the irrelevancies of packaging are focused on. Coke. Pepsi. Pepsi. Coke. Which has more vitamin C in it?
Why, the Kool Aid, of course, Stirling.
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