| This is interesting from Edwards today:
[I]f we have actionable intelligence about imminent terrorist activity, and the Pakistan government refuses to act, we will.
Which sounds a lot like Obama last month:
If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.
This reminds of me when I recently looked up the global warming plans of the "top three" candidates. Clinton says:
She supports an 80% pollution reduction by the year 2050… Hillary supports a market-based, cap and trade approach to reducing carbon emissions and fight global warming.
Obama says:
Barack Obama supports implementation of a market-based cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050.
Edwards says:
Capping greenhouse gas pollution starting in 2010 with a cap-and-trade system, and reducing it by 15 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050,
Are all of these plans written by exactly the same people? They are certainly sound identical. It kind of makes you wonder if there is any meaningful policy differences between what I am now hearing more and more people call Hillary Edwama. It even makes you wonder if the primary matters at all, because no matter who wins, the same centrist Democratic policy establishment will be in charge of developing policy under the coming trifecta. This means residual forces in Iraq, no reduction in the national security state, mandated health coverage instead of single-payer, cap and trade instead of a carbon tax, and a whole bunch of other compromise stuff on things like trade and immigration reform. The policy consensus coming from Democrats, which always seems to oppose the most common progressive solution, is extremely disturbing. It certainly isn't Bush-esque, but it always seems to start out in a third-way, compromised position. It also makes the rare progressive stances from Dodd on global warming, Richardson on residual forces, and Kucinich on the national Security state really stand out. Despite being common in the progressive mainstream, those positions look very unusual within the Democratic policy community.
There are some differences, but those differences are often hidden from view and difficult to spot. Tom Edsall points to one difference between the foreign policy advisors of Clinton and Obama:
Months before the war in Iraq began, the battle within the Democratic foreign policy establishment was engaged.
In late 2002 and throughout 2003, at such think-tanks as the Brookings Institution, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, many eminent scholars, policy intellectuals and politicians out of power lined up for and against Bush's war plans.
On one side were a number who opposed the war -- among them Zbigniew Brzezinski, Ivo Daalder, Susan Rice, and Lawrence Korb -- all of whom called for a broader, multinational coalition, intensified weapons inspections and expanded diplomacy.(…)
On the other side of the Democratic divide were the early backers of the drive to invade Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein, including Richard Holbrooke, Sandy Berger and Martin Indyk.(…)
The well-publicized contrast between Hillary Clinton's early backing of the Bush administration's war effort and Barack Obama's early opposition, has to a degree been replicated in the less visible network of foreign policy advisers that each candidate has cultivated -- the early war opponents by Obama, and the one-time hawks by Clinton.
OK, now that is really good information on the difference between the candidates. It may not be the same as a break with standard Democratic policy orthodoxy, ala Dodd on the carbon tax or Richardson on no residual forces, but it is a start. While I do not see a meaningful difference between Obama and Clinton's redeployment plans, it is good to know that Obama has surrounded himself mainly with foreign policy advisors who opposed the war from the start, while Clinton has surrounded herself with advisors who mainly favored the war at the start. That strikes me as a potentially meaningful difference in the way they would govern during unforeseen circumstances.
But returning to the larger point, I wonder how the progressive grassroots can make a dent in elite Democratic foreign policy circles that seem to repeatedly and nearly ubiquitously favor centrist policies over progressive ones: cap and trade over carbon tax, mandated coverage versus single payer, maintaining the national security state versus reducing it, etc. Just as I discussed earlier today when it comes to Democratic primaries,and elite control of the concept of Democratic electability, these elite circles appear to have a stranglehold over decision making in the development of governmental policy, and they always seem to favor more conservative, pro-business policies. With an anti-progressive, pro-corporate, establishment elite primarily in control of who becomes Democratic nominees, what legislative policies we propose, and how our elected officials should act in order to remain "electable," basically the progressive movement is screwed when it comes to forging a progressive governing majority. These are just three of the major barrier we face when it comes to overthrowing the working conservative majority in Washington. It will take a long-term effort to overcome them all. |
