This probably isn’t a wise practice, but I sometimes view Morning Joe as a bellwether of establishment opinion, particularly regarding foreign policy. Their panel covers the spectrum from neocons to liberal interventionists – a narrow span to say the least. And they appear to be as happy as the proverbial pig in shit about Trump’s recent cruise missile attack in Syria. Both the liberal interventionist wing and the neocon wing have been highly critical of Obama’s failure to start a unilateral, extra-constitutional war with Syria back in 2013, so this past week was sweet validation for them all. As a group, they seem anxious for evidence that Trump’s administration is “normalizing” and settling in to the usual, conventional insanity, so they tend to jump on every lurch towards the institutional consensus.
And clearly, there is a solid, institutional consensus on American foreign policy. It’s a relatively small box that contains, on one end, the Obama approach, then the center-left liberal interventionist school (Clinton, Samantha Power, etc.), followed by the center-right establishment Republicans (James Baker, Kissinger, etc.), the hot-head interventionists (McCain, Graham, Cotton), and the neocons (Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Elliot Abrams, etc.). In terms of blowing things up and killing people, there isn’t a lot of distance between any of these groupings, and they all share a common imperial worldview. The encouraging development for the Morning Joe crew is the notion that Trump has now put himself in that box.
If this turns out to be a feature, not a bug, of the Trump Administration, the 2016 general election had no impact on foreign policy at all. Policy-wise, Trump appears to have put himself pretty close to Obama on that score. He maybe has a little more bomb than Obama, but it’s basically the same stuff, and the Morning Joe crowd has little to say about that. I sometimes wonder if these people remember last year, let alone 16 years ago. Do they remember that W. Bush ran a hair to the left of Gore on foreign policy – no “nation building”, right? – then pivoted back to the center-right of the consensus box after a few months (certainly after 9/11).? Obama did something similar. It’s pretty simple: presidents put out pleasing rhetoric during campaigns, then peddle back to the default policies when they win office.
Now Trump has dumped the MOAB super bunker-buster bomb on Afghanistan. What is this routine now, bomb-drop Thursday? I guess we’ll see … next Thursday.
luv u,
jp
Nuclear summer. Here in New York State, our always forward-looking government recently decided to sink up to around $7 billion over the next dozen years to subsidize our aging nuclear power plants, particularly the Fitzpatrick plant up in Scriba, NY. Part of an effort to advance so-called “clean” energy, we will now be further subsidizing this moribund industry, underwriting the transfer of this 40-year-old plant to another massive electrical utility. Meanwhile, in my home county, they have canceled a major solar energy generation project. What’s wrong with this picture? (Actually, what’s right with it?)
This is not a great strategy. They’re risking turning off some of their most ardent activists with the bluster, the hyper-patriotism, the parade of military officers, etc. Chants of USA, USA, USA! It’s pretty horrifying on a certain level to see them resort to overt jingoism. But Trump has given them that opportunity, and politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum.
Anyway, Hillary Clinton has won; that’s what the voters have said. I won’t quibble with the numbers – the horse race is over. However, the real project of 2016 continues – that of pushing a more energetic progressive agenda forward and finding effective ways of holding Hillary accountable to the activist wing of her party. My hope is that my fellow Sanders supporters will not resort to cynicism; a fear underlined by the ridiculous decision of the AP and NBC News / MSNBC to declare Clinton the “presumptive nominee” of the Democratic Party hours before the polls opened in California. That irresponsible act will, for many, throw doubt on the outcome of the California primary. We need to maintain the activist energy of the Sanders campaign and mobilize it behind a set of policies while working to defeat Trump in November. We can’t afford a radical Republican presidency. We just can’t.
The most important component in the argument against “Bernie or Bust” is simply that we cannot afford eight years of one-party rule under the Republicans. This would have a hugely negative impact on the most vulnerable in our society, on the environment, on our brothers and sisters in other countries around the world, and more. The fate of the Supreme Court alone is enough reason to vote for the Democratic nominee, no matter who it is. Scalia’s replacement is only just the first slice; three or four more justices could step down in the coming years. If Donald Trump or Ted Cruz ends up being the person replacing them, say goodbye to any hope of social justice for decades to come. A Cruz court would make Roberts seem like Earl Warren.
Okay, I did hear some encouraging words from Senator Sanders on war and peace. Not enough, in my opinion, but certainly better than last time. I am glad that he gave some historical perspective to a position that is just as relevant today as it was in the 1950s: the conviction that the United States should not be acting like an empire, overthrowing disobedient regimes whenever we feel like it, bombing wherever we please, always opting early for the sword. Clinton did what she always does – offer a set of proposals that extend the bad policy we are currently implementing. Could Sanders have disagreed more with the underlying premises of her positions? Oh, yes … but you have to pick your fights in a television debate.
I think one advantage Bernie may have is that he is making a case for something different than the status quo. His presidency would not be a third Obama term, whereas from the sound of Hillary (and what we know of how the Clintons govern), we would have continuity under her guiding hand.
Who’s the moderate in that race? Christie? Don’t say Christie. He’s vehemently anti choice, wants to provoke war with Russia, and has all the racial sensitivity of Nixon during his drunk period (to say nothing of being a shill for the Peterson Institute, which advocates for privatizing Social Security). Forget Jeb Bush. He’s easily as bad as his brother on the issues, only with less raw political talent. Rubio? He’s the bold “young” candidate who seems to have his head stuck in decades-old Cold War strategy like a bug in amber. Frankly, any one of these candidates would be an unmitigated disaster as president.
What about policy? It doesn’t look good, frankly, and it’s kind of depressing. Hillary Clinton is mouthing platitudes about inequality and being a “champion” for ordinary people, but that seems pretty clearly an effort to close off demand in her own party for a progressive alternative, like Elizabeth Warren. If she makes the right noises for a few months, it will be too late to mount any meaningful opposition. She is, of course, a mainstream interventionist on foreign policy, a supporter of the neoliberal order on economic policy, and generally a middle-of-the-road Democrat (or what was formerly known as a moderate Republican). Looking for a white knight – say, a Jim Webb? Don’t even. I just heard him obsessing over Iran this evening, like pretty much all of his fellow mainstream Dems. Warren and Sanders would have to abandon their political distinctiveness – i.e. their hostility towards bankers and lobbyists – to seriously compete in this money-heavy game, thereby abandoning any reason for supporting them.