The Enemy Within

Apparently Trump's State of the Union address was slathered with redbaiting. POTUS vowed never to allow the United States to become another Venezuela. The political class and the oligarchs who write the checks applauded.

Interestingly the 2020 campaign is shaping up to be a battle about socialism. A Gallup poll in August found that more Democrats favored socialism over capitalism. The base of the party is definitely social democrat, whether or not it self-identifies as such. That's why Howard Schultz bolted early and promised to stage a quixotic quest for the White House as a independent -- the base of the Democratic Party is too far left to nominate a billionaire.

Why is it that more Democrats favor socialism to capitalism? It has to do with the basics of life: housing, jobs, health care, education. The costs of housing, health care and education exceed the wages one earns to pay for them. Capitalism has produced this situation in the United States. No longer can politicians in either of the two parties blame socialist policies within the United States for the precarious lot of working people.

Cue Venezuela. The country is starving and roiled by civil unrest, so the argument goes, because of socialism, so much so that a military intervention is not out of the question. Of all the declared presidential aspirants to date, Tulsi Gabbard has provided the best rebuttal:

The root cause of mass immigration on our southern border is our history of US military intervention in Latin America that left countries destroyed. Before we talk about a wall, we need to end our ongoing threats of intervention - this time in Venezuela.

Get ready. The presidential election campaign will pit two fracturing parties in a two-party system that dates back to the Civil War. The emerging volcanic core of one party is white supremacist; the other, social democrat. There should be lots of heat and hopefully light too.

"Shock Doctrine" Applied to Europe

Jacob Lew was in Brussels yesterday where he appeared at a press conference with Herman Van Rompuy, head of the European Council. Annie Lowrey covers it in a story, "In Effort to ‘Rebalance,’ Europe Appears Committed to Austerity Plan," that appears in this morning's paper:

“Our economic recovery is gathering strength,” Mr. Lew said. “The U.S. economy has expanded for 14 consecutive quarters, and although the pace of job creation is not as fast as we would like, the private sector has added jobs for 37 straight months.”

In contrast, the euro zone continues to struggle with shrinking economies and rising unemployment, with Germany, France and Spain all contracting in the fourth quarter of 2012. That has made meeting Europe’s goals of reducing fiscal deficits even harder.

Van Rompuy stuck to the austerity script:

But Mr. Van Rompuy reaffirmed the Continent’s strategy, rather than indicating a change in direction despite the rising unemployment and worse than expected contraction. 

“The European economies face a high level of debt, deep structural medium-term challenges and short-term economic headwinds that we need to confront,” he added. “There is no room for complacency.”

We've always been told in this country that Europe, because of its parliamentary system and strong labor unions, has a richer social democracy than the United States. Well, the welfare state in Europe is being dismantled, and this is bad news for the rest of us wherever it is that we live.

The financial system failed, but it is the social safety net that must be cut. It's a complete validation of the Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine. Crises provide cover to implement neoliberal "reforms," even when neoliberal reforms create the crises to begin with (such as the repeal of Glass-Steagall). It's not clear that we have a way out of this circle of cannibalization. If Europe can't do it, we're in serious trouble.

The fact that Portugal's constitutional court pushed back against austerity is good news. Possibly the judiciary can do what the people's representatives in the legislature and executive have up until now failed to do -- halt the cannibalization. Raphael Minder's story today, "Portugal Warns Citizens of More Economic Pain," reports on plutocratic worries over developments in Portugal as revealed in a Fitch report from yesterday:

The decision has now called into question how the government can meet its budgetary goals in the near term and raised the broader issue of just how much austerity will be tolerated, not only by disgruntled citizens but also by justices who often act as the guardians of the Continent’s cherished social welfare system.

“The ruling could be interpreted as saying that all public spending cuts that affect civil servants are unconstitutional,” Fitch, the credit rating agency, wrote on Monday. “If that interpretation is correct, the ruling represents a setback to future fiscal adjustment efforts in Portugal.” 

It added, “This is a greater concern than its immediate impact.”