[Marxism] The stock market collapse -- and McCain's

["Joaquin Bustelo" <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxx>]

        "It's the economy, stupid" has been the driving idea of Democrat
candidates long before the phrase was popularized by being posted by James
Carville in Clinton's "war room" during the 1992 campaign and then captured
in a documentary on that operation.

        But rarely has it paid off so handsomely for any candidate as it has
for Barack Obama, who has seen his stock rise in inverse proportion to the
plunge of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

        The  Mainstream Media, which has or can get access to the polling
demographics and crosstabs that show pretty clearly what is going on in the
general population, is choosing to remain silent. 

        Secretly --and not so secretly-- they are hoping that this Obama
tide will recede, even if only by 2-3 percent, so we can play out the last
weeks of the campaign using recycled scripts from previous years (the race
is "tightening") and from the primaries (Obama is losing white and/or Latino
support). 

        But despite a blanket of confidentiality that for some reason has
been imposed on the demographic changes in Obama's support, I can explain at
least in general terms what is happening. A layer of the former Clinton
supporters --older, white and majority female-- and others like them, who
were undecided before September 15, have jumped into the Obama camp in the
last three weeks. And pretty firmly, too. Although the data is merely
suggestive because the numbers of such people in surveys are small, in the
latest poll I saw (yesterday)  Clinton supporters seem as firmly committed
to Obama as the general mass of his voters.

        Who are these new Obama voters? Overwhelmingly, older and especially
retiree-age "middle class" whites, and disproportionately women. And what
factor accounts for them having finally crossed over in significant numbers
into the Obama camp? (All together now) "It's the economy, stupid!"

        Their retirement savings have been hit hard by what they view as a
Republican-made economic crisis, and as the days go on and what is for them
the torture of a plunging Dow continues, a crisis the Republicans have
incompetently handled. And some of Obama's most effective propaganda has
been very narrowly targeted specifically for this group. 

        Take Obama re-raising the nearly quarter century old Keating Five
scandal, in which McCain was formally censured in Congress for his close
association with savings-and-loan institution con artists. On one level it
says "reformer" McCain isn't as pure as he pretends. But especially as
McCain explains his own heightened sensitivity to ethics and so on as being
in part due to his Keating Five mistakes, it's not really a very strong
attack, especially as Obama's folks seem to have a harder time viciously
distorting and lying about their opponent than McCain's publicists.

        But there is an additional subtext: it also recalls to those of us
of a certain age that this ISN'T the first financial crisis to result from
what the Obama campaign presents as the reckless republican mania for a
regulationless free market.

        Or Obama's rather oblique attack on McCain's
bailout-the-banks-by-buying-their-bad-mortgages-at-face-value "homeowner
rescue plan." Obama keeps saying no, this is much broader, and that
Johnny-come-lately "rescue" can't solve the problems. And he often follows
that with words of concern (though no real program, of course) for seniors
whose retirement savings have been hurt and so on. 

*  *  *

        Actually, I just strayed across some poll demographics that I hadn't
remembered that I CAN cite to show what has happened, and, especially good
ones, as they are from Gallup's very large 1,000-person a day tracking poll.
They offer demographics based on an entire week of polling, making these
numbers even better (from a statistical reliability point of view) than the
others I've seen but can't cite. 

        In the first week of September, McCain was outpolling Obama among
all retirement-age interviewees (65 and older) 49 to 41. He was also ahead
among those 50-64 48 to 45.

        As of last week, ending Oct. 5, Obama had a 1% lead in the oldest
demographic, 45 to 44. Statistically insignificant in terms of his "lead"
over McCain, yes, but tremendously significant in having wiped out McCain's
8-point advantage. Among those 50-64, the movement was less, only 5% in
Obama's favor, from a 3% deficit to a 2% lead of 47-45. And among 30-49 year
olds, Obama has gone from a 46-46 tie the first week of September to a 50-44
lead. 

        For comparison, Obama had 60% of those 29 and under in early August,
60% in the first week of September, and 60% in the most recent data. Yes,
there are some weeks that show lower numbers, the sort of random jumping
about you expect from a small sample, but no trend. 

        We learn further from another Gallup weekly chart for white
preferences, by gender. McCain preserves a big lead among white men, which
was 57% at the beginning of September and 55% in the more recent data. But
Obama has made a little more progress among white women, reducing a 7%
advantage the first week of September (and an 11% McCain lead the following
week, due to the Palin Hype effect) to a 46-46 tie.

        Because there is no movement among the youngest voters (29 and
under) and the biggest movement is among retirees, and among white women, it
is very obvious what Obama has been able to do, with a little help from the
biggest economic/financial crisis in well over 70 years. He is increasing
his vote among older whites and especially older white women. 

        Almost certainly, this isn't solely accidental but quite consciously
strategic. Shifting this vote a few percent will give Obama Florida, and
because the same sorts of messages that work there with retirees will also
work with white collar "middle class" and professional whites in their 40's
and 50's, who ALREADY are likely to have some significant individual
retirement savings, they help him greatly also in Virginia and North
Carolina, and perhaps some in the rust belt (Ohio, Michigan). So those are
the messages he has prioritized, INSTEAD OF, for example, sweeping, lofty
visionary speeches that might inspire even more younger voters, but would
likely leave the oldest voters unaffected, if not skeptical. 

        Without Florida, it is very hard to imagine a realistic McCain
electoral map that puts him in the White House. And it is very hard to come
up with one that doesn't also include Virginia, North Carolina and Ohio, or
at least two of those three.

        But Obama is doing more, including using his big lead in resources
and campaign workers (many of them volunteers) to force McCain to spend time
and money defending some of the weaker but traditionally or often Republican
states in the "heartland."  If McCain doesn't, then what happened to him in
Florida (where a leaning McCain state went toss up and now is even "leaning
Obama" on some peoples electoral maps) or North Carolina and Virginia (Bush
"red" states in 2004 that are now tossups with an Obama edge) will happen
again, except with only a couple of weeks of campaigning left. 

        Thus the somewhat bifurcated current message of the McCain campaign:


        On the one hand, Obama is dangerous, un-American, pals around with
terrorists and so on. We need a tough, pit bulldog president. 

        On the other hand, John the Mac is a practical, easy going,
accommodating guy with the plan to keep you in your home: capitulate to the
banker's strike currently under way and simply hand them the keys to Fort
Knox in the hopes that they will be merciful.

        The media is presenting especially Palin's rabid mouthings as just
throwing red meat to the Republican base. I think that's a misjudgment. What
the McCain campo is trying to do is stoke every fear and hesitation among
those who were raised in an America where a Black man running for city
council --never mind president-- wasn't even a joke because it was so
unthinkable. The problem is that a change in a social layer like this tends
to snowball. As more of their friends, neighbors, relatives and
acquaintances take a couple of deep breaths and decide to vote for Obama as
the best shot to save their retirement savings, it becomes easier for the
next person to do the same in these retirement communities in Florida. 

        And Obama is also playing to their fears. His pitch that McCain is
"erratic" is obviously aimed at the dread of instability and the unknown
that retirees, who just want to live out their last years in peace and
quiet, visiting grand children and so on, tend to have. 

        McCain's problem is that his lurches to try to win "blue collar"
votes, halting his campaign, coming up with a new "homeowner rescue plan"
and whatever other stunt he may stage doesn't go well with the
Obama-is-dangerous pitch. The whole "maverick" shtick, given the economic
situation, is suddenly making Obama seem like a "safer" choice. And the
increasingly open manifestations of racism among McCain and Palin
rally-goers and supporters won't necessarily play well even with seniors.
They may have a hard time bringing themselves to vote for a Black man,
discounting his qualifications and magnifying his supposed demerits as a
result of the unconscious white supremacism that weighs so heavily in their
judgments. But that is different from viewing themselves as conscious
racists or indentifying with those who openly present themselves as such.

        McCain's campaign, and especially some aspects of Palin's rallies,
are starting to drift towards a posture of more-or-less unveiled racism that
the ruling class decided very firmly by 1970 or so would be outside the pale
of mainstream bourgeois politics. And I see no indication whatever that on
this point, in relation to Blacks, the ruling class is willing to
countenance a change.

        And if the increasingly fascist-like atmosphere of the McCain and
especially the Palin events is unlikely to broaden that tickets support
greatly among whites, among other reasons because the media is going to
present it VERY negatively, it IS going to help Obama among Blacks. Obama
himself isn't going to say much. But his supporters are circulating emails
pointing to youtube videos of the racist raw sewage in McCain nation to
motivate going out and actually voting for Obama, getting your sister and
mother and everyone else to do it.  

        I've gotten a half dozen emails from friends in the Black and Latino
communities pointing to "that one" videos from McCain in the last debate, as
well as others of youtube clips of interviews with mad-dog McCainites even
telling THEIR candidate at THEIR CANDIDATE'S EVENT to shut up so they can
finish their rants.

        The "over the top" character especially of Palin is also hurting
McCain with young people. I have no numbers here, neither private but from
Gallup, just anecdotal evidence, like beer-guzzling debate parties in
college dormitory lounges where a list of words have been announced and
everyone is required to have a gulp whenever Sarah says them, like maverick,
Joe six pack, goshdarnit (and variants) as well as a presiding judge that
gets to proclaim new Palinisms worthy of a gulp on the spot. (Curious how
this leitmotif of the ancient Groucho Marx late-night show, sop long ago it
was even before my time, should be preserved among the very young.)

        This must set some new kind of speed record in someone completing
the trajectory from overnight media superstar to the but of rude mead-hall
jokes.

*  *  *

        As some readers will perhaps have surmised, a lot of what I've said
has been illuminated by private discussions (some of them as lubricated as
the student debate-watching parties I described above) with people in the
political racket (both sides) as well as with other hacks (i.e.,
journalists, as we prefer the public to think of us). But though I could
have chosen to simply report what the spinners, unspinners, respinners and
those just doing an incredible simulation of whirling dervishes are saying,
I chose instead to present my own take on what's going on in this campaign
when looked at from within the framework of bourgeois electoralism. 

        Thus I don't have much to say about Obama's failure to present a
program of interlinked transitional demands that can help cohere the
American proletarian as a class, nor even simply his "forgetting" to
champion the democratic rights and immediate demands of Black folks, his
community. Not that I don't have those disagreements with Obama, but
--frankly-- I never expected anything different. Despite that, I consider
Obama's campaign to be one of historic importance in U.S. politics, a real
turning point.

        Yet I did not suspect until it was upon us that the campaign would
also coincide with a huge immediate financial panic that might well  develop
into a crisis of historic importance in the evolution of the capitalist
economic system. That panic, and the very skillful, disciplined and
effective campaign Obama has run, has transformed the long-shot candidacy of
a Black man for president --and a Black man recognized and embraced as such
by the overwhelming, crushing majority of the Black community, not a Colin
Powell or Condi Rice-- into what at this point looks like a campaign getting
close to an insurmountable lead to win the presidency.

        If Obama were white, I have little doubt that now he would be
leading, not by 6% or 7% in the polls, but by double that, and some in the
Mainstream Media might even be considering, in desperation, covering what
Nader is saying to try to put some novelty and excitement back into the
race. 

        As I suggest above, I think, in bourgeois electoralist terms, Obama
is running the more effective and strategic campaign, whereas McCain has
been cornered into having to rely on outlandish proposals, maneuvers and
stunts in an effort to retake the initiative. The first one of those, BTW,
Palin, did in fact work for a time. I think the good ship Palin would have
started to take water from all sides well before election day, but as it
was, the Paulson administration's decision (I think it is about time we
recognized that Cheney is no longer running this show) to leave Lehman
Brothers twisting in the wind, triggering the financial panic, meant that
Palin and McCain took a full spread of torpedoes below the water line just
as the band was playing "God Bless America" for a Bush-style "mission
accomplished" celebration topside. 

        But McCain has been lucky to have been facing a Black opponent under
these circumstances. Anyone else, and I truly believe his campaign would be
sleeping with the fishes right now, so far under water you'd need a research
submarine, and not just a normal one, to find it. And while under other
circumstances I'd be glad to assure comrades that with such trends in the
voting public, the outcome now is a foregone conclusion, here we have to
take into account that one of the most powerful forces in U.S. politics, and
one that I believe will eventually blow this country up, presents a real
wild card. And that is not just open, overt racism, but white supremacy.

        The question the pollsters ask, "Is America Ready for a Black
President?" has been transformed by the financial crisis into "Is America
ready for having no other choice but a Black President?" For I do believe
that, even if for a white Democrat under these circumstances the percentage
odds of winning would now be in the high 90's, the VERY high 90's, even
though Obama is Black, McCain's chances at this point are probably in the
teens, and if he can't somehow devastate or get Obama to make a catastrophic
mistake, after Wednesday's debate they will be cut in half or two thirds, to
single digits. 

        McCain has to attack Obama along multiple axis, as an inexperienced
greenhorn (to appeal to the soft, mostly unconscious white supremacist
prejudices especially among older whites who mostly think of themselves as
not racists and opposed to racism), as a Washington insider that will just
give us more of the same (to appeal to the overwhelming desire for change),
as an uppity n****r who doesn't know his place (to galvanize the conscious
racists into voting for him), as a testosterone challenged wimp without the
manliness to stay in Iraq for 100 years and bomb Iran, and as the
testosterone-poisoned, sexist pig who denied dear and gentle Mrs. Clinton
her turn in the oval office. And he has to do so without letting the
messages clash with each other nor undermine his own image of a principled
maverick above Bush-style character assassination politics who reassures
older voters in their quest for stability and normalcy while he presents
bold proposals to rescue the nation from catastrophe and put an end to
Washington as we know it.

        That would be a pretty tall order even if he wasn't an uninspiring,
mediocre candidate who only won his party's nomination because all the rest
weren't just worse, but had their campaigns run by incompetents. 

*  *  *

        I wrote the above over the last couple of nights, Thursday and
Friday. This morning I've seen more polling, as yet far from conclusive, but
that suggests a further crumbling of McCain's support among retirees as the
week was ending with no end to the financial turmoil in sight. 

        Perhaps the combined forces of the G7, G20, IMF and World Bank,
currently meeting in Washington, plus whatever the EU summit can produce
tomorrow, will bring a sunny day on Wall Street on Monday. Friday's
extraordinary rally, where the Dow index shot up 900 points from it lows
(before falling again) suggests there is a ton of money out there waiting to
jump back into the market as soon as it seems pretty clear that it has hit
bottom. What happened Friday is that there were a ton of people in the
market looking to get out, and they took the Dow's recovery as an opportune
moment. That, plus the pressure from renewed short-selling, put the index
under water again.

        The more serious crisis, of course, is not in the stock market but
in the broader financial markets. But it is now clear that even Paulson has
been convinced that a state takeover of at least some of the biggest banks
is the only road. Though presented as "merely" the government taking an
equity stake to help recapitalize the banks, the truth is those banks will
be under the complete control of the Fed and the Treasury even if the
government stake remains a minority one because in addition to having a
significant block of voting stock, which puts it inside these banks
management, the government can also cut off their air supply if the bank
doesn't play ball. Whether that can be enough, I don't know. There's another
sort of "bank" out there --the hedge funds-- and for the government to
really RUN the financial system for a while, they have to be brought to
heel. I'm convinced the government COULD easily put them under heavy manners
--suspend short selling again, Tobin-tax foreign exchange operations and so
on-- but I don't yet see any political will in Washington to do so.

        At any rate, insofar as it impacts the campaign, the financial
turmoil of the past few weeks has been so extraordinary, on the one hand,
and so ethereal on the other, with people overwhelmingly just going on with
their everyday lives, that it is impossible to predict what the impact of at
least a temporary calming of the financial waters might be on the electoral
scene. Continuing turmoil, however, will almost certainly favor Obama.

Joaquin

        


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