The Beeb reports that per capita GDP in the UK is projected to surpass that of the US this year for the first time since the nineteenth century.

Signs of the US economy going into, or having already entered, recession are evident in areas like jobs, housing, and credit. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Americans will lose, or be on the verge of losing, their homes between now and the inauguration of the next President. Even more tragically, it’s likely that a thousand additional Americans will die in Iraq, and at least a hundred times that many Iraqis.

The next President and the next Congress face a host of problems, by no means all of them results of the Bush/Cheney disaster.

The American economy has been gutted as we’ve sent our industrial base to the third world. All we’ve got left is military power, and as Paul Kennedy demonstrated in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, military power not backed by an industrial infrastructure is hollow. So we fall back on the role of the world’s market of first and last resort. If we stop buying, we’re screwed, but we take everyone else down with us. This is not much of a threat; thus our influence wanes.

In many ways we’re more vulnerable than the rest of the world: we have a negative savings rate, a huge national debt, enormous trade imbalances; we use outrageous amounts of resources per capita, and generally leave no room for others to live as we do. Nor have we won many friends with our foreign policy recently, especially in the cauldron of the Middle East. Certainly Bush administration policies have aggravated these situations, but the situations and our skewed responses predated Bush and Cheney, and will survive them.

My question is, will Barack Obama change those things, or is he the New DLC, a modern, compassionate, inspiring, multi-cultural face for the very machine we need to replace? What I’m hoping now is that Obama will give some serious sign of progressive intentions. The best way, assuming he’s nominated, would be to ask Edwards or Kucinich to join him on the ticket. But I’m not holding my breath, because I don’t think that’s who Obama really is.

As the astute Gary Younge of the Guardian observes:

…Obama has himself created a new constituency that is expanding the Democratic base, just like [Jesse] Jackson did. Its roots are not in race, class or single issues but age and ideology. The bulk of his support comes from young and independent voters. In South Carolina, we will see if African Americans will follow. Politically, the connections are looser and far less radical; but electorally they may prove more effective.

In all of this, beyond some civil rights references, race is virtually absent from his message but central to his meaning. He doesn’t have to bring it up because not only does he espouse change, he looks like change. He has the role of an inadequate and ineffective balm on the long-running sore that is race in America. His victory would symbolise a great deal and change very little.

For those who believe that democracy is not just a beautiful idea, but one that might actually work in the right circumstances, it’s vastly encouraging to see the Obama phenomenon bringing a lot of young people into the political process. If that surge of interest morphs into something permanent, the country will benefit greatly. (If not, of course, the problems already on the table will define their lives.)

The problem is the gap between results achieved by symbolism on the one hand and struggle on the other. Young people, very solidly against the war, are ignoring Obama’s many go-along-get-along votes for war funding and projecting their agendas onto him. Many Republicans are comfortable with him because they don’t see him as an agent of change. He sounds progressive, but his policies — increasing the size of the military, continuing the GWOT, non-universal health care — don’t. Like Huckabee for the Republicans, he can appeal to opposing constituencies simultaneously.

What we need is to confront the dependence of our society on war, and assert the power of the people and their needs in a generations-long battle with the corporations. If Obama’s up for that, he can ease the transition to a post-imperial society, and leave the United States a happier and better place for his tenure in office. If he’s just a kinder, gentler manager of the existing machine, we’d be better off with a bumbler, who’d make our danger more obvious.

Posted by Chuck Dupree at January 07, 2008 02:46 AM

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