The U.S Oil Industry? Nationalize it!

Very interesting poll here, showing that "only" 47% of Americans oppose the nationalization of the oil industry. The remainder is made up of about thirty percent in favour of nationalization and the rest "unsure". A plurality of Democratic voters favour nationalization and about two thirds of Republicans oppose it.

It's all moot, obviously, but it's a interesting sign, if anyone doubted it, of the leftward swing in American society over the course of the last few years. In the home of neoliberalism, the blowback seems to be gaining pace.

Callinicos on Obama/Empire

There is much to agree with in Alex Callinicos' article on Obama in Socialist Worker this week. He rightly lambasts Obama for his pathetic speech to AIPAC and his weasel words about "the military option" and the Iranian nuclear issue. He correctly claims, following Schlesinger, that the U.S President, for a variety of reasons, wields most of their power in the foreign policy arena. He suggests that Obama may, once President, "water down" his opposition to the Iraq War - so important to his victory over Clinton in the primaries.

However, I must admit that parts of the article left me completely baffled.

First of all, in a strangely weird vein he claims that part of Obama's success is that he offers the U.S ruling class a "better face" for their exploits across the world. Now, I don't know if there capitalists who support Obama because he'll make imperialism more palatable - perhaps there are. But this doesn't explain his popularity or his defeat of Clinton in the primary process. There are not many members of the U.S ruling class voting in the Democratic primary in Wyoming, I'd guess.

Secondly, most of the more venal members of the foreign policy intelligentsia are not rushing to support Obama. Men like Bill Kristol, the egregious Charles Krauthammer and the late Christopher Hitchens have not been desperate to jump aboard. True, there are some members of the liberal foreign policy establishment (Samantha Power, Brzezinski) who have hitched their wagon on to Obama, but this has more to do with his opposition to the war than anything else.

Alex then says Obama's victory was "clinched" by superior fundraising and that this shows how he will be "dominated" by money, just like all the other candidates. It's true that Obama did raise more money than Clinton, although as I said in a previous post, none of it was from so-called "federal lobbyists" and lots of it was from ordinary people making small donations. He powered his campaign by a mixture of donations from "traditional" Democratic sources (liberal sections of the capitalist class, unions) and a healthy stream of small donors, contributing ten or twenty dollars a time.

The question also must be asked: if the idea of a black man as President (or a "black Emperor", as Alex puts it) is so appealing to the U.S ruling class, why is Obama the first? I mean, if having black men running the show is so appealing, why all this resistance to it? Why all the support for McSame? Why all the "questions" about his past? Why is the current President, an appalling Imperialist war criminal positively aching to see America's dominion spread far and wide, so supportive of McCain - a man with whom he shares a volatile past as well as party allegiance?

Lenin On Clinton/Obama

It's becoming clearer and clearer that, bar a complete diasaster, Barack Obama will become the next POTUS. Rasmussen's daily Presidential tracking poll has him up 8 against McCain. This increase in his support since last week (when they were tied) is a result of increased support for Obama amongst Democrats. The end of Clinton's campaign is helping Democratic party identifiers to coalesce around the presumptive nominee of the party. Given the current ratio of Democrats to Republicans, Obama only needs to mobilize the Democratic base to a sufficient degree and he wins.

But Lenin is not enthusiastic about the prospect. He says that Hillary would be a bad choice for VP, which I agree with. He then says that Hillary "commanded" the white working class vote. He lists some of the "overwhelmingly white" states she won - West Virginia, Kansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania. He claims this can't be explained purely by racism (a point I'll come back to) and instead it can be explained by Clinton's "populist" economic rhetoric as opposed to Obama's "neoliberalism".

Obama won numerous poor and very white states - Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Kansas, Montana, Oregon. Most of the states Lenin listed are a part of the "Appalachian" midwest, and populated with the "tough" descendants of Scots-Irish immigrants. They are states with a history of racial tension, arising either from the trauma of desegregation (like West Virginia) or from acrimonious economic competition in the 70's (like Ohio). These racial tensions have been exarcebated by the process of deindustrialization that took place in these states under Reagan and Clinton. This clearly hurt Obama badly in these states. In West Virginia, 19% of white voters said they voted against Obama "partly because of his race". In Kentucky, this numer was 17%. These are the people, in other words, who openly admitted to pollsters that they were racist. The number of racist votes is likely to be higher still. It would be a good guess to say that up to a third of Clinton votes in these states were explicitly racist - i.e against Obama because he's black - in nature. Clinton did not have play upon fear of the black peril - these people fear the black peril constantly, instinctially - it's what consumed their parents' lives and it's what consumes their own lives.

In a state like Montana, which has an African-American population of 0.5%, situated a way up in the north, the ripples from civil rights and deindustrialization never really made an impact. Obama won this state, filled with its non-latte drinking, quite poor white folks, by sixteen percentage points. Therefore, it was not the "whiteness" or the "working class" nature of states that made them favour of Clinton, it was a combination of poverty and decline and a history of racial tension and racism.

Lenin also claims that Obama is a "neoliberal" candidate. I'm not entirely sure what this means with Lenin. In a discussion in his comments board some time ago, he claimed that the SNP government in Scotland that has recently scrapped fees, reintroduced grants, ended PFI, opposed Trident, restarted social housing projects and and made moves to fund local government through an income-based tax was also "neo-liberal". His proof? They've cut corporation tax. One wonders what usefulness this term has when it covers everyone from Alex Salmond of Nicholas Sarkozy. But, let's take Lenin at his word. Is this true about Obama?

Well, as I said in my post a few weeks back, Obama is not a radical. He supports more tax on those earning more than $100,000 a year (this would be called "Old Labourism" here), a hike on the capital gains tax (which is not popular), he supports "taking back the department of labor for labor", raising the minimum wage, "renegotiating" NAFTA, more pay for teachers and, of course, he's ended the practice of the Democratic Party being funded by Federal Lobbyists. Lenin pointed out that Clinton supported the (John McCain) policy of freezing the federal gas tax for the summer. Obama does not and for good reason - it was and is a pointless gimmick. It would save your average American 30 cence a day. While the price of oil rockets up, any savings would likely be completely neutralized. It's a crap idea.

Lenin is right that this policy and others helped to create an "impression" that Clinton was to the left of Obama on the economy - but she wasn't. The most genuinely progressive Democratic candidate, outside of Kucinich, John Edwards endorsed Obama for a reason. The "rustbelt" trade unions like the United Mine Workers and the United Steelworkers endorsed Obama for a reason. These people couldn't afford another Clinton presidency.

Lenin says that he thinks Obama will be just as bad as Clinton (Bill) when gets into the White House. Of course, this is pure speculation. What I will say is that Obama, presuming he's elected, will almost certainly be working with a Senate and House packed with Democrats. He will be elected to euphoria around the country and a genuine feeling of popular power - even revolt. These forces will be hard to contain.