He’s a pro-war Democrat who famously criticized Dubya for not selling the Iraq War to the American people well enough. Just the sort of vile creature one would expect Chicago machine politics to produce.
On the other hand, he has a reputation as a being a political pit bull who views politics as merely a continuation of war by other means. The Democrats have a long and sorry history of bringing knives (rubber ones, so nobody gets hurt) to gun fights. This needs to change if anything significant is to be accomplished in a world of Senate filibusters. In other words, a political pit bull is precisely the sort of person Obama needs on his staff.
But nothing positive will happen automatically. They will, for example, fix health care if a situation can be created where not doing so somehow becomes politically very costly to them. But only if. Otherwise Rahm’s talents will be utilized strictly where their natural inclinations lie: to further the interests of the few.
A Republican administration would respond by demonizing any such desires as “socialist” and “un-American” and come up with something completely phony. So the emerging state of affairs is still identifiably an improvement over the alternative.
Some famous abolitionist (whose name escapes me at the moment) remarked upon Lincoln’s election as to how Lincoln was not one of them, but his election still represented real progress because Lincoln could nonetheless be used to achieve abolitionist goals. It would be wise to keep a similar attitude in mind about Obama.
This video is well worth a look.
Sure, the guy blows it big time with the factiod about Silicon Valley workers wearing suits and ties, and I find the bit about most innovations happening in worker’s collectives to be news to me, but he does hit the nail on the head with respect to some key facts of the current economic mess. Facts that, although some have crossed my mind, I’ve been remiss in enunciating here.
When a conservative Democrat like Max Baucus is supporting universal health care, and the staid, centrist New Republic is admitting it’s a workable idea, then it’s clear that we have the best opportunity in a generation to do something about the disaster that is the American medical-industrial complex.
I don’t dare dignify it with the name “health-care system,” because providing health care is only a second priority of the system, grudgingly done in the pursuit of the first priority of maximizing profits.
No, any result from this Congress is not going to be ideal. Trouble is, the radical movement is so small and fractured, there’s no way we can step up to the plate and address the health care crisis ourselves via peoples’ cooperatives any time soon. Meanwhile, real people are really suffering. I’d rather see their needs get met via a lousy fix than to have no fix happen any time soon.
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