“Angry John” v. KumbayObama

-  Chris Dodd, the leading recipient of campaign dollars from the United States insurance industry, November 12, 2007 (Dodd 2007)

John Edwards was our pick for the 2004 nomination.  But this is a different race, with different candidates.  We too seldom saw the positive, optimistic campaign we found appealing in 2004.  His harsh anti-corporate rhetoric would make it difficult to work with the business community to forge change.

- The Editorial Board of the Des Moines Register Star, December 15, 2007

Anyone who thinks that the next president can achieve real change without bitter confrontation is living in a fantasy world. Which brings me to a big worry about Mr. Obama: in an important sense, he has become the anti-change candidate

-  Paul Krugman, December 17, 2007

The Democratic candidates - with the exception of John Edwards, who opened his campaign in New Orleans and has made addressing poverty central to his campaign - have virtually ignored the plight of African Americans in this country.

- Jesse Jackson, November 27, 2007

AN IOWA-NATIONAL MEDIA DISCONNECT

For many following the Democratic presidential race in the pivotal early Caucus state of Iowa, there's a disconcerting disconnect between the reality on the ground and the treatment you see in dominant media.  Watching national television and reading national newspapers over recent months, you'd think the Democratic contest was only between the junior senator from Illinois and the junior senator from New York. As far the lords of the political news and commentary manor have been concerned, it's been all about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama [1].  The rest of the Democratic presidential hopefuls, including even John Edwards, have hardly existed in the ruling coverage.

This has been the case to a shocking degree even when the talking and writing heads have been specifically discussing Iowa, where Edwards is now running ahead of Clinton and Obama (Insider Advantage 2007) [2].  It continues even as focus groups run by CNN and Fox News during the last Democratic presidential debate in Iowa declared Edwards "the clear winner" (Krugman 2007b).

CORPORATE MEDIA LOVES KUMBAY-OBAM-A, FEARS "ANGRY" EDWARDS

There's nothing mysterious about the fact that Edwards was eclipsed by the BaRockstar as the media's official anti-Hillary. Part of the spectacularly favorable media attention Obama has gotten throughout the campaign is about race: the "first black president" story is irresistible to reigning news and community authorities. But another and bigger part is about those authorities' preference for centrist politics over anything that hints of popular struggle against concentrated business power.

"HOPE" as Selling Out

Obama and his vapid staffers prattle on (in the name of "hope") about and finding (for reasons that are never fully explained) "common ground" with (of all people) Republicans. The senator says he's against past generations' terrible legacy of "bitter," "partisan" and "ideological" dispute (conflict is scary and bad) and that he represents a "different kind of politics" seeking "to get things done" across nasty divisions of culture, region, and party. He claims to represent the glories of an America where hard work is rewarded and anyone who applies themselves and plays by the rules can rise from the bottom (where he supposedly originated) to the top. To reassure white voters and campaign investors that he (like the war criminals Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice) is safe for existing hierarchies of class and (skin) color, the "deeply conservative" [3] Obama brings in the racially accommodationist, mass-consumerist self-help icon and New Age media and marketing mogul Oprah Winfrey to tour with him [4]. "Don't worry white folks," Obama and his mass-cultural cross-racial kissing cousin Oprah tell 95 percent Caucasian Iowa. "Barack will help you feel good about your superficial [state-of-mind] non-racism while doing nothing to substantive challenge existing [state-of-being] white-supremacist structures and racial disparities" (See Street 2007a and Street 2007c)

A different "healing" message goes out to the business elite that watches and shapes the campaigns from afar. "Don't worry, rich folks," the corporate "player" Obama (Silverstein 2006 and Street 2007b) tells his powerful investor class sponsors behind the scenes, "I will bedazzle and confuse the progressive base, throwing out a few populace-pleasing lines about fighting injustice while advancing the corporate-neoliberal agenda you guys vetted me on before you made me an overnight rock star. You guys can play me and I'll play the people" (Silverstein 2006 and Street 2007b).

Obama subtly blames ordinary working people and their purported Democratic Party representatives for not mimicking young Oliver Twist by courteously requesting that America's globally connected economic aristocracy act more responsibly towards its subject homeland citizenry. This is an actual quotation from a speech Obama gave to the masters of "American" (really global) finance capitalism at the Wall Street headquarters of NASDAQ last September: "I believe all of you are as open and willing to listen as anyone else in America. I believe you care about this country and the future we are leaving to the next generation. I believe your work to be a part of building a stronger, more vibrant, and more just America. I think the problem is that no one has asked you to play a part in the project of American renewal" [5].

By contrast, Edwards has been delivering a steady diet of classic, red-hot "populist" orations against business rule. Praising unions and denouncing the grotesque mal-distribution of American wealth and income to an extent that is exceptional among mainstream politicians, Edwards is willing to lose significant corporate sponsorship and media love in his determination to push the "populist" angle.  He has made "ending poverty" and fighting economic inequality and corporate domination the cornerstones of his campaign.

 "The Choice Between Corporate Power [and Mass Poverty] and Democracy"

"The choice we must make," Edwards says, "is as important as it is clear. It is a choice between corporate power and the power of democracy. It is a choice between corporate power and the power of democracy. It is caution versus courage. Calculation versus principle. It is the establishment elites versus the American people." Edwards insists that "big" democratic and progressive change will "never" be attained by "negotiating" with the privileged few and their gigantic corporations. Such change cannot be meaningfully achieved, Edwards argues, by exchanging "corporate Democrats" for "corporate Republicans." It will only come, Edwards says, by "relentlessly fighting and beating" the big corporations, who have "rigged the game" of U.S. politics and policy across partisan lines (Edwards 2007). 

In the place of Obama's tiresome homilies to shared "empathy" and togetherness across class, party, regional, and other lines, Edwards declares that his mission as president would be to give corporate power "Hell." He wants to "stand up" to business elites to make policy in accord with a popular consensus that already exists for things like universal health care and "fair trade." He says it's a "lie" that "any Democrat is better than any Republican," arguing that replacing big money "corporate Republicans" with "corporate Democrats" is "just a game of musical chairs."

His generational narrative is that the next generation of Americans is about to be the first one in American history to be worse off than the previous one.  Edwards tells passive Democrats who refuse to struggle against big corporations to "reclaim our democracy" should look their children in the eyes to admit that "you did nothing to stop that."

Edwards' autobiographical narrative is that he comes from a rural working-class household and that he's running for the people who lost their jobs when his father's textile mill closed.  He's scrapping for working families and the poor against the power the privileged and wealthy few. According to Time Magazine reporter Karen Tumulty (Tumulty 2007):

"Not since Lyndon Johnson and Bobby Kennedy in the 1960s had any Democrat of national stature addressed the subject [of poverty] with the focus that Edwards gave it. He helped start a poverty center at the University of North Carolina, wrote a book about it and, when the time came to launch his next presidential campaign, chose hurricane-ravaged New Orleans as the place to do so. There are differences in style and substance this time around. In his newer, more populist incarnation, Edwards 2.0 has hammered away not only at President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and the special interests that he says call the shots in Washington but also at front runner Hillary Clinton. At one point, he even refused to say whether he would endorse her if she won the Democratic nomination. ‘I am surprised at just how angry John has become,' said his former Senate colleague Chris Dodd, another presidential contender."

According to Jesse Jackson, Sr., "The Democratic candidates - with the exception of John Edwards, who opened his campaign in New Orleans and has made addressing poverty central to his campaign - have virtually ignored the plight of African Americans in this country" (Jackson 2007).

"Kumbaya, My Lord[s]"

The only genuinely Left progressive "in" the race is Kucinich.  But for whatever reasons - maybe it really is his working-class upbringing in a rural North Carolina textile mill town - Edwards is noticeably less willing than the famously power-hungry Obama to sell his soul for the presidency (unlike Hillary, Obama may still have one to sell).

On at least one occasion, Edwards has criticized Obama's bi-/anti-partisan harmony, "consensus," and compromise themes as singing "Kumbaya." According to liberal journalist Ryan Lizza late last summer, "Edwards dismisses Obama's argument that more consensus is needed in Washington. The difference between them, Edwards told me, is the difference between ‘Kumbaya' and saying, ‘This is a battle. It's a fight'" (Lizza 2007).

During the final Iowa debate, hosted by the Des Moines Register, Edwards criticized "some people" for "argu[ing] that we're going to sit at a table with these people" - corporate executives and their top managers - "and they're going to voluntarily give their power away.  I think it is a complete fantasy." Activists and insiders knew exactly who he meant when he said "some people." As Paul Krugman notes, "this was pretty clearly a swipe at Mr. Obama, who has repeatedly said that health reform should be negotiated at a ‘big table' that would include insurance and drug companies" (Krugman 2007b).

"Getting Things Done...With the Business Community"

But corporate media loves "Kumbaya" and hates any remotely honest discussion of class (or race) divisions.  It dislikes the labor movement and works to marginalize any political tendencies with the slightest hint of populism. It prefers Obama's soothing promises to heal America's supposedly terrible and crippling cultural and partisan (Red v. Blue) divisions over Edwards' "angry" pledge to do "battle" for the poor and the working-class majority against the wealthy masters of the class-divided (Wealthy v. The People) "two Americas."  

As Krugman (one of the few reasons left to purchase the New York Times anymore) notes, "the news media recoil from populist appeals." The "mainstream" (corporate) media warms, however, to the "message of reconciliation" peddled and packaged as "HOPE' by Obama, whose coverage has been considerably "more favorable than that of any other candidate" (Krugman 2007b). 

The Des Moines Register, which endorsed Edwards in the 2004 Caucus, has just rejected him for 2008 time on revealing grounds.  According to the paper's editorial board, Edwards' "harsh anti-corporate rhetoric would make it difficult [for him] to work with the business community to forge change." 

And what sort of "change" does "the business community" wish to "forge?" During the last debate prior to the Iowa Caucus, the Register's editor Carolyn Washburn suggested that Edwards should be less strident in criticizing big business since wealthy and special interests "are often responsible for getting things done in Washington" (Krugman 2007b).  

They most certainly are! Their history of "things" accomplished includes a remarkable and ongoing record of richly government assisted assault on social and environmental health at home and abroad.  It includes the construction of a historically unmatched military-industrial complex that starves social expenditures at home and encourages and feeds off recurrent bloody and imperial adventures abroad.  It includes the blocking of universal health insurance so that the United States remains what Hendrick Hertzberg calls "the only advanced capitalist democracy on earth that does not guarantee health care to its citizens. We spend twice as much [on health care, P.S.] as the [single-payer] French and Germans and two and a half times as much as the [single-payer] British," Hertzberg notes, "yet we die sooner [despite greater per capita national wealth, P.S.] and our babies die in greater numbers.  Thirty-eight million Americans were uninsured in 2000; now its forty-seven million.  Employer-based health insurance is increasingly expensive, stingy, and iffy" (Hertzberg 2007, pp. 37-38).       

Dominant U.S. media is not simply beholden to the business establishment, it should always be remembered. It is a critical component - possibly even the single more powerful part - of that establishment. Meanwhile, the business-sponsored authoritarian drift of U.S. political culture has gone so far that even an Edwards - not just a Nader or a Kucinich - is too left to receive respectful treatment from the "mainstream" (corporate) media Gods.

 "The Anti-Change Candidate"

Last Saturday, Obama weighed in on the "seat at the table" debate. He curried the favor of big business allies and his corporate media benefactors by declaring that Edwards is "just not realistic" in saying that "drug companies and insurance companies and so forth" will have "no say-so at all" in the making of health care reform. But the real fantasy belongs to Obama, with his claim to believe "that" - in Krugman's dead-on words - "the insurance and drug industries - which are, in large part, the causes of our health care problems - will be willing to play a constructive role in health reform.  The fact," Krugman says, "is that there's no way to reduce the gross wastefulness of our health system without also reducing the profits of the industries that generate the waste. As a result, drug and insurance industries - backed by the conservative movement as a whole - will be implacably opposed to any significant reforms."

"Anyone who thinks that the next president can achieve real change without bitter confrontation is living," Krugman writes, "in a fantasy world" [6].

"Which brings me," Krugman adds, "to a big worry about Mr. Obama: in an important sense, he has become the anti-change candidate" (Krugman 2007).

THE ELECT-ABILITY-FUNDING DISCONNECT

The Most Electable of the Big Democratic Three...

Edwards' comparative invisibility on the national media stage is the major reason he trails Hillary and the BaRockstar by significant margins in the national horse race numbers.  Interestingly enough, his official media marginalization continues even as he beats both Hillary and Obama in simulated general election match-up polls against the most likely Republican opponents.   According to a recent social-scientific telephone survey of 1,092 adults Americans conducted for CNN by the Opinion Research Corporation (ORC), "Edwards performs the best" of all the top three Democratic candidates "against each of the leading Republicans."  Besides being the only Democratic candidate to defeat all Republicans, Edwards' margins over the Republicans the other Democrats beat are considerably higher [7]. 

Here are the CNN/ORC findings: 

EDWARDS

- beats Guliani by 9 points (53% to 44%)

- beats Romney by 22 points (59 to 37)

- beats McCain by 8 points (52 to 44)

- beats Huckabee by 25 (60 to 35)

OBAMA

- beats Guliani by 7 points (52 to 45)

- beats Romney by 13 (54 to 41)

- DOES NOT BEAT McCain (48 to 48)

- beats Huckabee by 15 (55 to 40)

HILLARY

- beats Guliani by 6 (51 to 45)

- beats Romney by 11 (54 to 43)

- LOSES to McCain (48 to 50)

- beats Huckabee by just 10 (54 to 44)

The Democratic margins of victory break down like this:

Over Guliani: Edwards by 9; Obama by 7; Hillary by 6.

Over Romney: Edwards (22); Obama (13); Hillary (11)

Over McCain: Edwards (8); Obama (none: TIED); Hillary (none: LOSES)

Over Huckabee: Edwards (25); Obama (15); Hillary (10).

CNN/ORC's numbers understate the Edwards elect-ability advantage since they are aggregate national statistics.  They do not reflect Edwards' especially superior performance over Hillary and Obama in pivotal battleground and swing states and in the disproportionately rural "red" states that are over-represented in the United States' anachronistic Electoral College tally.

It is characteristic of dominant media's distaste for Edwards' "populism" that the online CNN story in which the above (remarkable) data appears is titled "Poll: Huckabee Would Lose to Top Democrats by Double Digits" instead of, say, "Poll: Edwards the Most Electable of All Presidential Candidates."  

Some of Edwards' silently superior electability may reflect the fact that he's white, male, and from a "red state." Another and more relevant part reflects the fact that "there's a strong populist tides running in America today." As Krugman notes, a recent poll by Democracy Corps finds that most commonly held reason for mass America voter discontent is the perception that "big businesses get whatever they want in America." (Krugman 2007b).

...is the Least Well- (Corporate-) Financed of the Big Three

Recently in Z Magazine (the print version available on newsstands) and prior to the CNN-ORC survey, I noted the interesting disconnect between (i) the Democratic presidential candidates' comparative likelihoods of defeating the Republicans and (ii) the comparative distribution among those candidates of the new corporate fundraising advantage enjoyed by the Democratic Party in the wake of the Bush II fiasco (Street 2007). 

Here's the latest comparative campaign finance data (through the third quarter of 2008) from the Center for Responsive Politics for the big Democratic-presidential three and my personal favorite (to my ideological right) Dennis Kucinich (Center for Responsive Politics 2007): 

HILLARY CLINTON

Total money:  $90,935, 788(#1of all presidential candidates)

Securities and Investment Firms: $4,735,730 (#1 of all presidential candidates)

Commercial Banks: $935,638 (#1 of all presidential candidates)

Pharmaceutical and Health Products: $269,436 (#1)

Real Estate: $3,939,008 (#1)

Hedge Funds and Private Equity: $980,700 (#2, after Rudy Guliani)

Computers and Internet: $883,125 (#2)

TV/Movies/Music: $2,142,317 (#2)

Oil and Gas: $220,556 (# 3 after Guliani and Romney)

Insurance: $525,938 (#4 after Chris Dodd [#1 at $713,012], Romney, and Guliani)

BARACK OBAMA

Total money:  $80,256,427 (#2 of all presidential candidates)

Securities and Investment Firms: $4,505,026 (#3 closely after Hillary and Guliani)

Commercial Banks: $ 865,856 (#2)

Pharmaceutical and Health Products: $261,784 (#2)

Real Estate: $2,292,188 (#4)

Hedge Funds and Private Equity: $976,574 (#3, after Hillary and Guliani)

Computers and Internet: $940,459 (#1)

TV/Movies/Music: $2,203,317(#1)

Oil and Gas: $106,142 (#4)

Insurance: $390, 514 (#5)

JOHN EDWARDS (currently relying on public financing and therefore subject to spending limits)

Total money:  $30,329,156 (# 6 of all presidential candidates)

Securities and Investment Firms: $773,600(#7)

Commercial Banks: $153,650 (#8)

Pharmaceutical and Health Products: $15,000 (#10 after even Ron Paul)

Real Estate: 638,755(#8)

Hedge Funds and Private Equity: $252,556 (#7)

Computers and Internet: $182,585 (#7 after Ron Paul)

TV/Movies/Music: $458,990 (#3)

Oil and Gas: $27,850 (#11 after Ron Paul)

Insurance: $129,600 (#8)

DENNIS KUCINICH

Total money: $ 2,130,200(# 15 of 18 presidential candidates and $6 millions less that Ron Paul)

Securities and Investment Firms: $1,750

Commercial Banks: $1000

Pharmaceutical and Health Products: $5,000 (#)

Real Estate: $13,950

Hedge Funds and Private Equity: $0

Computers and Internet: $11,000

TV/Movies/Music: $42,125

Oil and Gas: $1,250

Insurance: $1,250

Leaving aside the officially irrelevant Kucinich and focusing only on the top three Democrats (one of whom is largely invisible), it is hard not to notice the curious inverse relationship between elect-ability (against the Republicans) and popularity with corporate election investors. The least elect-able (Hillary) is the most well- and corporate-financed.  The most elect-able (Edwards) is the least well- and corporate-financed.  Obama is in the happy middle on both counts. But he could emerge as the best-financed when fourth-quarter results come out and his narrow second-place funding finish is more than compensated by his superior corporate media coverage.

BETTING ON ELECTIONS V. BETTING ON POLICY

Again this is unsurprising. Big money election investors and corporations don't throw their money and resources into the political ring just for the satisfaction of "picking a winner."  Corporate campaign finance isn't a trip to the electoral racetrack; it is conducted in pursuit of government results. Its managers seek policy returns for concentrated economic power centers (leading investment houses and corporations, including media firms) and are not likely to support a good election bet that might be a bad policy bet. And while Dennis Kucinich is the closest thing to a genuinely Left candidate in the Democratic primaries, even Edwards is running too left (it doesn't take much) for the U.S. plutocracy. 

The Clintons' business-friendly corporate-neolberal and globalizationist track record is clear (See Pollin 2003, pp. 3-124, and Street 2005). Obama goes out of his way to express deference to dominant domestic and global hierarchies, masters, and doctrines (see Street 2007b, 2007f, and 2007g). The former fighting trial lawyer Edwards is willing to "lose friends" (it's not hard to do) in the "business community" with his recurrent rhetoric about "fighting and beating" corporate power, attacking poverty and economic inequality, supporting the labor movement (which he repeatedly calls "the greatest anti-poverty program in American history"), "ending" the "rigged game" of business-dominated special interest politics and "taking back our democracy from the big corporations."  While Edwards does not challenge core capitalist prerogatives (Street 2007h)and would be likely to move closer to the center in a general election, his "working class hero" campaign has given corporate America reasons to think he would be harder to control - and more likely to encourage popular challenge to corporate rule - than "Hillary, Inc." (Berman 2007) and "Obama, Inc" (Silverstein 2006). As a logical result under the rules of American "market democracy' - whereby "the public participates only indirectly in choosing their leaders, and their choices are restricted to the set approved by the monied elite" (Herman 2007) - leading "election investors" are ready to overlook or discount indications that Edwards is the best election bet of the Democrats' top presidential hopefuls"

WHY IT MATTERS

Reflecting on the disconnect between the fact that Edwards does the best against likely Republican opponents but trails Clinton by 26 points nationally, CNN's polling director Keating Holland says that "electability is not as important as it was in 2004" (Mooney 2007).  But electability is a big deal in a moral sense for a simple reason: the arch-authoritarian, radically regressive, viciously intolerant, racist, and messianic-militarist Republican Party needs to be strongly defeated. As my fellow Left-libertarian Noam Chomsky noted in late October of 2004:

"The urgent task for those who want to shift policy in a progressive direction - often in close conformity to majority opinion - is to grow and become strong enough so that they can't be ignored by centers of power.  Forces for change that have come from the grass roots and shaken the society to its core include the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the peace movement, the women's movement and others, cultivated by steady, dedicated work at all levels, every day, not just every four years.  But we can't ignore the elections.  We should recognize that one of the two groups [the Republicans, that is, P.S.] now contending for power happens to be extremist and dangerous [emphasis added], and had already caused plenty of trouble and could cause plenty more" (Noam Chomsky, Interventions (San Francisco: City Lights, 2007), pp.99-100). 

Chomsky's admonition holds up four years later: the Republicans continue to be "extremist and dangerous" at home and abroad. Faced with the disastrous legacy of George W. Bush's reactionary and murderous reign, the G.O.P. is running for office on the Orwellian bases of fear (of false and self-created "National Security" threats), chauvinism (towards blacks and immigrants at home and Arabs, Persians, and others abroad), and deception.  It is continuing the dreadful Reagan tradition of pushing global and domestic panic buttons to justify and cover their embrace of a murderous and imperialist foreign policy.  It is fanning the flames of nationalist and xenophobic hostility toward stateless Latino migrants and sustaining its long record of bashing gays, feminists, and non-whites in general.  Republicans are also advancing blatant falsehoods about their "opposition party's" (the Democrats') policy agenda (absurdly accusing the Democrats of supporting the supposed hideous evil of "socialized medicine") and continuing their wicked custom of painting out their militantly plutocratic policy goals as the politics of the middle- and working-classes [8].

As AK Gupta notes in a recent ZNet commentary that drips with understandable disdain for the Democratic candidates: "on the Republican side, the field is more open, but all the candidates are lunatics. Almost without exception they compete to show who hates immigrants the most, who will ban abortion the fastest, who will bomb Iran the fiercest, who will waterboard the most terrorists and who will stay the course in Iraq the longest" (Gupta 2007)[9].

So while Left politics is about much more than the corporate-crafted narrow-spectrum "quadrennial election extravaganzas" (Chomsky), the Democratic presidential candidate's elect-ability matters. Unfortunately, powerful monied interests standing (in accord with "angry John" Edwards' "populist" reflections) between the people and election outcomes do not share the citizenry's same degree of interest in the defeat of the "extremist and dangerous" G.O.P. "lunatics."  For the big money political donors (now giving more to the Democrats than to the G.O.P. thanks to the long national Cheney-Bush nightmare) and for the politically untouchable corporate media Gods (who can barely conceal their lust for their creation Obama), the biggest thing of all is the attainment of (business-friendly) policy results, not election outcomes.  Those super-special interests have read the handwriting of Republican defeat on the electoral walls and their first preference is for those Democrats who seem most certain to favor the full-blown business agenda. For all the considerable limits of his progressivism from a hard Left (my) perspective (see Street 2007h), Edwards doesn't fit that plutocratic bill. Meanwhile, of course, there's no organized electoral (or any other kind of) thunder on Edwards' left to make him look like a happy moderate alternative to "the business community."      

IOWA BATTLE

It's not surprising that Edwards has been able to overcome the pronounced national corporate media and funding bias (the two are intimately related) to run even with or (now apparently) ahead of Clinton and Obama in Iowa.  The intensive retail politics traditionally mandated by that state's early and long Caucus drama means that the leading candidates have to make repeated direct contacts with voters through a marathon of town hall meetings, barbecues, speeches, and other community gatherings across 99 counties.  It's more difficult to win Iowa just with big media consultants, slick television advertisements, and national media love: you have to impress ordinary working people on a constant basis at a relatively intimate and small-group level. This is something for which Edwards' "populist appeal" and personal like-ability is a good match.  

Obama has performed very well at the task for which he was hired: to confuse and divide the progressive base.  And it is sometimes difficult to call him out on this terrible role he is playing in painfully polite Iowa, where it is seen as uncivil, "negative," "hot-headed," and possibly even (in certain confused liberal-academic circles) "racist" to publicly notice basic things like Obama's long history of supporting the imperialist occupation of Iraq...or Obama's receipt of millions of dollars from gigantic global investment houses like Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bros, UBS, Credit Suisse Group, J.P. Morgan Chase and Co. (such firms make up 8 of his top 20 contributors)...or his shockingly Republican-like decision to denounce his opponents' universal health care plans as coercive "government mandates" (Krugman 2007a).

In any event, the most elect-able and (interesting "coincidence") actually progressive of the Democratic Party's officially presidential viable candidates (Edwards) probably has to win Iowa to stay in the race.  The Obama and Hillary machines can survive a number 2 or 3 showing in the state. Edwards probably cannot. My check to Kucinich is in the mail, but I'm joining volunteers from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), UNITE, and the United Steelworkers in knocking on doors and making calls to help "angry John" beat the anti-change corporate Democrats.

Veteran radical historian Paul Street (paulstreet99@yahoo.com) is the author of Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm). His latest book is Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).

1.  For two small recent examples of dominant media's pronounced tendency to treat the Democratic race as a two-person contest and ignore Edwards, see Jeff Zeleny, "Obama Showing New Confidence with Iowa Sprint," New York Times, 16 December 2007, sec.1, p.2; and Maureen Dowd, "Reefer Madness in Iowa," New York Times, 16 December 2007, sec.4.,p.11. On numerous occasions in recent months NBC's Nightly News has presented national and Iowa polling data going four or more candidates deep on the Republican side but mentioning only Hillary and Obama on the Democratic side. An exception is Paul Krugman, "Big Table Fantasies," New York Times, 17 December 2007.

2. As the malevolent Newt Gingrich argued the other night on right-wing talk radio, Edwards may be ahead of Hillary and Obama in Iowa when you factor in the second-choice votes of Caucus participants whose first choice (Kucinich, Dodd, Biden, or Richardson) won't be officially viable.  Insider Advantage is the only polling to have predicted Kerry's victory in Iowa in 2004. It did soon the basis of second choice votes.  Its latest survey of Iowa Democrats has Edwards at 30 percent, Obama at 26, and Clinton at 24.  Edwards has 42 percent of second-choice votes, compared to 29 percent for Obama and 28 percent for Clinton.

3.  See Larissa MacFarquhar 2007 (in "Sources," below). By MacFarquhar's account, Obama "rarely accuses, preferring to talk about problems in the passive voice, as things that are amiss with us rather than as wrongs that have been perpetrated by them...If you take unity seriously, as Obama does, then outrage does not make sense, any more than it would make sense for a doctor to express outrage that a patient's kidney is causing pain in his back... In his view of history, in his respect for tradition, in his skepticism that the world can be changed any way but very, very slowly, Obama is deeply conservative."

4.  See Dixon 2007 (below) for a devastating critique of Obama and Oprah's joint exercise in racially accomodationist mass electoral marketing.

5.        See Obama 2007. For a detailed respond to this childish drivel, see Paul Street, "Obama Speaks: ‘Oh, Great White Masters, You Just Haven't Been Asked to Help America," ZNet Magazine (December 11, 2007), read at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=90&ItemID=14481.

6.  I have explained why I think Obama's faith in negotiating with corporations and Republicans probably has more to with cynicism and his corporate funding base than with sincerely held "fantasies." See Street 2007d (below)

7. Alexander Mooney, "Poll: Huckabee Would Lose to Top Democrats By Double Digits" at www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/10/poll.head.to.head/index.html#cnnSTCText

Complete poll results: http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2007/images/12/11/tue6ampoll.pdf

8. And yet I must frankly confess that I will not be able to hold my nose and vote Democratic in November 2008 if the candidate is not Kucinich (whose nomination is completely impossible) or Edwards (whose nomination will remain possible if he wins Iowa).

9. I share Gupta's overall perspective (see Gupta 2007) but must respectfully disagree with one of his formulations.  "Edwards has turned the head of many progressive because he actually talks policy," Gupta writes, "but he's starring in a well-known role. Lacking the party machine backing Clinton, and the media hagiography illuminating Obama, Edwards packages himself as an issues man, which is the role Jerry Brown filled in the 1992 race and Howard Dean in 2004."  From my vantage point on the ground in Iowa this is somewhat inaccurate. While the fact that the Edwards team has (unlike the other Democratic campaigns) published and widely distributed a detailed (88-page) policy (and issue) book is attractive to many progressively inclined activists and voters, the main thing that has  "turned progressive heads" about Edwards is his insistent willingness (in one flyer and town hall meeting and county barbecue after another) to speak passionately about and against poverty, economic inequality, and corporate domination of U.S. politics and politics.  Also relevant is Edwards' strong connection to the labor movement - seen among other things in the fact that hundreds of activists from the SEIU and the USWA are working for him in Iowa and other states.  It's been more about Edwards packaging himself as a "fighting" and "populist" candidate.  Edwards' television ads have been weaker on specific issues and policies - and stronger on outrage and emotion - than those of Obama and Hillary. 

SOURCES

Ari Berman 2007. "Hillary Inc.," The Nation (June 4, 2007), pp. 11-18.

Center for Responsive Politics 2007.  "2008 Presidential Race: Contributions From Selected Industries," read at http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/select.asp?cycle=2008

Des Moines Register 2007.  "Editorial: Why Clinton" (December 15, 2007).

Bruce Dixon 2007. "Oprah and Obama Together: Corporate Marketing for a Corporate Campaign," Black Agenda Report (December 12, 2007), at http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=469&Itemid=1.

Christopher Dodd 2007.  "Democrats Need to Come Together to Support Democratic Nominee, no Matter Who It Is," press release available online at http://chrisdodd.com/media/releases/dodd:-dems-need-come-together-support-democratic-nominee,-regardless-who-it

John Edwards 2007.  "To Build One America, End the Game," speech at Hanover, New Hampshire (August 24, 2007), read online at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/08/the_path_to_one_america.html.

Laura Flanders 2008.  "Clinton: Class of '68," in Laura Flanders et al., The Contenders (New York: Seven Stories, 2008).

AK Gupta 2007.  "The Theater of the Absurd," ZNet (December 8, 2007), read at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=33&ItemID=14463

Edward S. Herman 2007. "How Market-Democracy Keeps the Public and ‘Populism' At Bay," ZNet Sustainer Commentary, 13 August 2007, available online at  http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-08/13herman.cfm. 

Hendrick Hertzberg 2007. "Ghostbusters," The New Yorker, October 1, 2007.

Jesse Jackson, Sr., 2007.  "Most Democratic Candidates Are Ignoring African Americans," Chicago Sun Times (November 27, 2007), read at http://www.suntimes.com/news/jackson/668053,CST-EDT-JESSE27.article#.

Paul Krugman 2007a. "Mandates and Mudslinging," New York Times, 30 November, 2007.

Paul Krugman 2007b. "Big Table Fantasies," New York Times, 17 December 2007.

Ryan Lizza 2007.  "The Legacy Problem," The New Yorker (September 17, 2007), read at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/09/17/070917fa_fact_lizza?printable=true

Larissa MacFarquhar 2007. "The Conciliator:  Where is Barack Obama Coming From?," The New Yorker (May 7, 2007).

Alexander Mooney 2007.  "Poll: Huckabee Would Lose to Top Democrats By Double Digits" at http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/10/poll.head.to.head/index.html#cnnSTCText

Complete poll results: http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2007/images/12/11/tue6ampoll.pdf

Barack Obama 2006.  The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (New York, NY: Crown, 2006). 

Barack Obama 2007. Barack Obama 2007. "Our Common Stake in America's Prosperity," Speech at NASDAQ, New York City (September 17, 2007), read at http://www.barackobama.com/2007/09/17/remarks_of_senator_barack_obam_24.php.

Robert Pollin 2003.  The Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity (New York: Verso, 2003).

Ken Silverstein, "Obama, Inc.: The Birth of a Washington Machine," Harpers (November 2006),.

Paul Street 2005. "Bill Clinton Was No Champion of the Poor," ZNet Magazine (September 30, 2005), available online at http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=8847§ionID=72

Paul Street 2007.  "Corporate Money on the Democrats: The Bad News." Z Magazine (December 2007).

Paul Street 2007a.  "Obama's White Appeal and the Perverse Racial Politics of the Post-Civil Rights Era," Black Agenda Report (June 20, 2007), read at http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=254&Itemid=34.

Paul Street 2007b.  "Obama Speaks: ‘Oh Great White Master, You Just Haven't Been Asked to Help America," ZNet (December 11, 2007), read at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=14481.

Paul Street 2007c. "The Full Blown Oprah Effect: Reflections on Color, Class, and New Age Racism," Black Commentator (February 27, 2005), available online at http://www.blackcommentator.com/127/127_oprah.html.

Paul Street 2007d.  "The Obama Disease: Business Rule, ‘Common Ground,' and Paying/Playing the Fool," ZNet (December 4, 2007), read at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=14432.

Paul Street 2007e. "Establishment Politics in ‘Rebel's Clothing': Corporate Power, Populist Pandering, and the Ironies of Identity in the Democratic Presidential Race," ZNet Magazine (November 18, 2007), read at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=90&ItemID=14316.

Paul Street 2007f. "Obama's Audacious Deference to Power: A Critical Review of the Audacity of Hope," ZNet Magazine (January 24, 2007), read at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11936

Paul Street 2007g. "The Obama Illusion: on the ‘Hopes of Slaves' and the ‘Hamiltonian Ambitions' of a Corporate-Imperial ‘Player,' Z Magazine (February 2007).

Paul Street 2007h.  "A Very Narrow Spectrum: Even John Edwards is Too Far Left for the U.S. Plutocracy," ZNet Sustainer Commentary (August 29, 2007), read at http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-08/29street.cfm

Insider Advantage 2007. "New InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion Polls Show shift to Edwards in Iowa" (December 18, 2007). See  http://insideradvantagegeorgia.com/webcast.php.

Karen Tumulty 2007.  "John Edwards' Defining Moment," Time (December 14 2007).