By Joseph Ross
Brian Gilmore is an attorney, poet, journalist, and all-around clear thinker. In the excerpts below, from an essay of his, he tackles hope, Reagan, the social contract, and the election of 2010. This is a longer than normal posting but it’s well worth reading. Below, I have posted excerpts, so assume any awkwardness is mine, not Brian’s. Brian’s heart is in Washington, D.C. although he is currently teaching at the Michigan State University law School in East Lansing, Michigan.
Brian Gilmore, photo courtesy of TSE, 2008
Postscript, November 3, 2010: No Eulogy for Hope
“Keep Hope Alive…”
– The Rev. Jesse Jackson
I remember the night when Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States. I was in the alley behind my house with friends and we were chugging vodka mixed with powdered orange juice. I was a teenager, a recent college dropout, and someone who was sure the world had come to an end when Reagan rose to power under the political banner that expressed a hatred for government.
It was a sad night and my friends, all young black men living in the beautiful city of Washington D.C., were sure that things we about to get very bad for all of us. We had a boom box blasting through the neighborhood, and all we could talk about was how Mr. Reagan was going to reinstitute the draft and make us all join the army. We were products of a civic culture that knew government did good things, had saved some of us from the streets, and so many of our friends, so Reagan’s rise tore apart our vision of the world.
Of course, this was my sentiment on the night of November 2, 2010. I am sure amongst progressives and liberals and Democrats and anyone else afraid or opposed to conservative politics felt the same as well. The Democrats got crushed that night and Barack Obama, their leader, and the first black President of the United States, got repudiated by some of the population for the direction of the country. He famously called it a “shellacking.” It was again those anti-government folks who were coming to town, and it was again a moment of deep reflection and disappointment for many of us who believe in other ideals.
Some said that November 2, 2010 is the day that the Republicans returned to power for generations. Others allege that it is the day that President Barack Obama’s political honeymoon ended. My African-Americans friends, some of them, blamed it on racism that was latent but real. Others deemed it some kind of people’s revolution, the people took their country back they shout.
I beg to differ with all of those assessments.
November 2, 2010 was simply just another small skirmish in the long struggle for a “social contract” in the United States. It was, in other words, a lost battle for those of us who believe in the ideals of Jean Jacques Rousseau in his all-important book, The Social Contract. It is usually shaped as government v. no government, and of late, it has been nasty, and cutthroat, politically.
We all know the social contract. Some of us read of it in high school and in college; others remember politicians invoking it quietly in their speeches even though we had no idea what they were talking about. But the contract is a simple and basic idea.
It says we are here for each other, we will help one another, and we will do it with the government we formed that is our government. People will be able to find a decent job, retire and live with dignity after work, and if they run into hard times, we will help them through that hard time. They will get some medical care if they need it, and if they can’t afford it, we will help them get that medical treatment anyway.
It is a deal between the people, a promise, and it has been something the United States of America has wanted badly and resisted violently for all of its days now. It simply cannot decide, and thus, aluta continua, the struggle continues. This is what November 2, 2010; it wasn’t some magical moment when the people spoke righteously. Most people eligible to vote didn’t even vote in the election and that fact is completely lost in the spin cycle.
I also don’t accept the other descriptions of November 2, 2010 because I know better. The facts don’t support the idea that this is some revolution. Revolutions are about a complete overthrow; this election was not unlike many in the history of the United States. In fact, if it were accepted that because Republicans gained some degree of political power again, this were some kind of people’s revolution, this would mean that the Republicans spoke for the people. I don’t believe that for a minute and most of the Republicans who are now headed to office don’t believe that either.
The Republicans, by their own admission, and statements, are the party of corporate power and commerce not the people. They use the phrase return the power to the people but what they really mean is, the market. This is the party that believes that corporations can provide everything if the state will just sign onto that ideal. Education, health care, clean water, clean air; leave it to corporations to provide. This is their mantra even though it has never happened in history and is not likely to happen. The last Republican President, George W. Bush wasn’t shy about telling everyone that he was a business friendly chief executive. Most of his political brethren are as well which is why November 2, 2010 was not about the people.
I also don’t really believe it means the Republicans have returned to power because power in the United States is relative. Republicans have some power but for the most part, power in Washington D.C. has been split when it comes to party affiliation. It rarely drifts too far before the population pounds one of the parties for seeking to dominate too much.
Was liberalism or big government dumped on November 2, 2010? Who knows? If it was dumped, which part of that big government (if it is big) was dumped? The Defense Department was surely not dumped. Military spending is the one line item in the United States that is untouchable and no one who alleged that they voted to stop the out of control spending by the government voted to reduce the making of bombs and high tech weapons. That is why I contend that this kind of big government-small government analysis is simplistic because it focuses on one part of government and not other parts that do not ever get reduced.
Was the election about racism or race? Sure, some people voted against the Democrats for one reason: the black Democrat President. But was it an overriding theme or motivating force of the election? Who knows?
My view of this election like most elections in the modern era is that the election was ideological in nature, a debate in the public sphere about ideas and political policy for a micro-moment that will be over before it even starts. Millions of different factions argued and debated and expressed their view for the future but two parties in the United States are the two who always get to make the deal with the public: the Democrats and the Republicans.
On November 2, 2010, they both sought to consolidate the direction of public and social policy for a short period of time and the Republicans were the victors. The economy is functioning poorly, the Democrats made some hard policy choices, the Republicans got pounded two years ago. The pendulum swung back. Right now, the change seems significant but over the long haul, the fight is ongoing and there will be little time for the Republicans to stave off the march of time.
In the U.S., in the modern era, as capitalism grows and mutates, and human needs become more complex, the mid-term election of November 2010 was nothing more than part of that epic struggle in the United States to establish that social contract, a bargain between the government and the people as Rousseau wrote about so well in 1762 before the United States was even born. It is still just a work in progress and on November 2, 2010, it again took another strange turn in America and remained a work in progress.
Indeed, the period directly preceding the election of November 2, 2010 is indicative of the struggle because it demonstrated again how fierce the battle has become in the digital media age where information travels quicker than ever. The period consumes five years of U.S. history, and it involves serious progress for Rousseau’s contract, followed by a period that will likely again prolong the struggle and force it to evolve again and again.
Thus, in November 2008, the epic ideological struggle over the social contract took another interesting turn. The Democratic Party gained further control over Congress, and the nation elected its first African-American President Barack Obama. Mr. Obama’s abiding theme: hope, became the literary and political fuel for change, and a complex intersection of the population embraced it and moved the social contract forward for the first time in a long time in a significant manner.
On March 23, 2010, hope scored a major victory too – health care reform. The United States of America passed a comprehensive health care law that covers most of the uncovered population. While it is not a government run program, some of its features provide the government with the ability to regulate the market yet in partnership with health insurance companies.
Hope also passed a new consumer protection law in the summer, 2010, a law that is a direction reaction to the housing crisis and the conduct of the financial business sector prior to the economic recession of 2008 that ruined millions of lives. The law wasn’t and isn’t perfect but it is a start.
But on November 2, 2010, after just 18 months in office and this kind of governing, Mr. Obama’s hope almost died. The Republican Party took back control of the House of Representatives on the night of November 2, 2010 and also made serious gains in the U.S. Senate. The people, it was said, spoke.
They did speak and many are unaware of the implications of their vote. The social contract is again under siege. Those who want to damage it, or kill it, are re-engaged again. Some who want to destroy it are strategically motivated; others are emotionally lost, like those individuals who screamed during the health care debate that they did not want government run health care even though they already were receiving it through Medicaid or Medicare.
Of course, the two opposing sides of the social contract have been debating this for generations. For most of the nation’s history, the conservative viewpoint has dominated government policy regarding the social contract. This is despite the fact that the nation was founded based upon the idea of a social contract. In the 1930’s with the rise of Franklin Roosevelt, the social contract or compact finally did gain political traction and the building blocks of that concept were finally put in place in a meaningful way.
Truthfully, the historic struggle for a social contract in the United States is a marathon and then an extra inning baseball game and then a heavyweight boxing match with unlimited rounds. It will go on even after the next set of achievements is obtained. The most important thing of all no matter the gains and losses is to never forget that the promise between a people in society is worth struggling for daily.
Hope took a pounding on election day 2010 but it is not dead. Speak no eulogies for hope. If someone told you when George W. Bush was ushered to the presidency in December 2000 by the U.S. Supreme Court that in 2011, a black man would be President, a woman would have served as Speaker of the House, and the nation had the beginnings of a serious attempt at health care reform, would you take it?
I think we all know the answer to that. This is especially true for those of us who remember the callousness of those who ran the government at certain points between 1995-2006. Here was a moment in history when those who dismissed the government as useless and something that should be dismantled were in control of it. Imagine, Microsoft being run by people who think computers to be stupid and wasteful or someone running Krispee Kreme donuts telling all who would listen that donuts are bad for you and no one should eat them.
Thinking back to that dark night in 1980 when I drank away my worries about the future when Ronald Reagan became President, I can honestly say that this moment and the future isn’t perfect, but I will take it. I didn’t get drunk as the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives on November 2, 2010. I smiled a little because I knew the sky was not falling.
Obviously, the writer is more optimistic than most. But it is okay to read this considering how things took a bad turn and Obama did not try hard for a long time.
I find a great deal of merit in what Mr. Gilmore has to say, but this one section puzzled me:
“Sure, some people voted against the Democrats for one reason: the black Democrat President. But was it an overriding theme or motivating force of the election? Who knows?”
On the one hand, it is always valid that any reason, including those deemed unlikely at the time, may in fact be the motivating force behind any correlating action. In this regard, Mr. Gilmore is not strictly waffling when he allows for the possibility that racism against the person of Barack Obama was the cause of the 2010 electoral “shellacking” taken by the Democratic party.
On the other hand, Mr. Gilmore is presenting a rational view of the world, carefully articulated and explained. He is walking a line between an apocalyptic vision of the future and the false triumph of 2008. In other words, he is making assessments and judgments throughout this entire article. I therefore cannot for the life of me imagine why he steps back and gives what appears to be a thoughtful nod to the notion that Democrats lost an election because of racism.
As Mr. Gilmore says, America lacks a social contract; we are a wandering people without a clear vision of what our government is meant to be. We all know, and he even reminds us in his opening, that the Democrats have lost power before. It’s valid to observe that some Americans are racists, but it cheapens the argument and lowers the quality of the debate to give even a nod to the notion that the Democrats lost seats and power *because* some Americans are racist.
Adding together those who are themselves black and those who aren’t but still voted for America’s first black president, it’s pretty clear that the Democrats lost the backing of many of the same people who put them in power. What’s more, many of those people had explicitly rejected the Palin(-McCain) message in 2008 that they are rallying around today.
Democrats themselves, not racism or anything else, are to blame for time and again allowing the Republicans to define the debate, choose the language, and make their accusations without rebuttal. That many of those Democrats who held up Obama’s agenda were also swept out of office is slightly satisfying, but if we’re going to really move this country forward, what needs to happen is bigger than an election.
Mr. Gilmore, long ago, just knew that government — *our* government, of, by, and for the people — could help. It’s a view that many Americans long held. If we’re going to get any traction in rebuilding America, we need to get them to believe again.
And that has to start with accepting the truth that many of the Democratic politicians are as beholden to corporate dollars as the guys and gals on the other side of the aisle.
Perhaps, I should have written, “I doubt it,” because I do doubt that racism was the deciding factor in the election. There was and is a racial component at work but the Democrats lost the election mostly because of the economy and because they lost control of the debate.
If people actually understood the facts and those facts had gotten out, the Democrats would not have gotten shellacked. Case in point is the economy and the bailout which was a source of frustration for everyone. I took a survey of my students and asked them who was responsible for the bailout. Most of my students (like 80-90 percent) said Obama. Of course, when the bailout (TARP) was passed, Obama was running for President and had no role in TARP other than his vote for it as a Senator from Illinois. The bailout, though passed by the Democratic Congress, was orchestrated by Henry Paulson and President George Bush on their way out of Washington DC. as they used the same fear tactics they used to invade Iraq to get a massive bailout for the banking system, American Express, and other multinationals. People also say, why didn’t Obama simply stop the bailout. Truth is, he can’t and couldn’t. TARP is a piece of legislation that has to be overturned by Congress not the President. They could have tried to repeal TARP as a show of good faith but most of the money was actually distributed.
They also lost because the Blue Dog Democrats were delusional. People usually respect you more for taking a real stand on your issues as opposed to fence sitting. The Blue Dog Democrats sat on the fence and tried to lure votes from the right on issues that Democrats could not win. No way would that happen. Your better chance is to try to maximize your own base and people who might not vote. There was no chance that voters who leaned right would vote Democratic. But if a Democrat took a principled stand as a Democrat, he or she might have gotten more of his or her own base out to vote.
I also think they lost because Obama went for scare tactics in his campaigning. Some say this worked. Ronald Reagan was in a similar position in 1982 when he was President. The economy was doing lousy and the Democrats were poised for a comeback. He didn’t go negative; he went positive and it worked. The GOP got hammered but nowhere close to how the Democrats got hammered. But all of this is water under the bridge at this point. Obama has to play the hand they way it is now. The Democrats should remind the public that the Republicans are supposed to fix a few things now. The tax cut sell-out was shameful but there are things to do. Obama, whether he knows it or not, is in control of the debate and the government despite what FOX NEWS thinks.
Very thoughtful piece, Brian. Obviously, public spin on the 2010 Election drove you to want to clarify what it meant and didn’t. You seem establish that the 2010 Election does not mean the sky is falling. That is may not mean anything more than that it was just another America swing to and fro the alleged “social contract.” You piece was well written. And, I agree with you, for the most part, except the conclusion you’ve drawn, that the sky is not falling.
I love the analogy of voting in an anti-government administration is akin to Microsoft being manage by people who hated software. And, you are right. I agree no body knows what Election 2010 really meant. It remains to be seen. It might mean that America is set to go backwards, they voted for the same fools that’s got us into this big mess of wars, economic collapse, and low or no growth. Far from a revolution, it might illustrate America’s gullibly to fear, manipulation and the nastiness of the right wing,
Actually, just as the Ku Klux Klan, Segregation, Jim Crow, Lynching, etc., came in response to he Reconstruction Era, when Black political power began to emerge, Barry Goldwater started this conservative movement, around the same time that the Civil Rights Movement was taking root and demanding that the U.S. Government do more to protect the rights of all of its citizens. Goldwater failed miserably in his conservative presidential run, in 1964, but he inspired many and Ronald Reagan in 1979, against President Carter, “the peanut farmer,” would later pick up the banner and run with it.
It seems that whenever there appears to be some chance that those who were left out began to make inroads, a counter movement begins. And, thus conservatism, in the ‘60s, right wing, in the ‘80s, and the tea party in the 2010s.
Barry Goldwater claimed that government, big government, in particular, was the number 1 problem challenging the nation, and that the solution is to reduce government. Government became the enemy. He propagated the social contract as “liberal” and dated. America could no longer afford the social contract of the past.
America never believed fully in a social contract, because “the people” excluded so many people, including Blacks, Browns, Asians, women, handicapped, gay, veterans, etc. Therein, lies the problem; the “social contract’s” inherently vulnerability to dismissal because it never represented the true “majority.”
Years later, all whom were excluded, as a result of a liberal movement, are gradually being included. There’s even talk of making illegal immigrants legal and make health accessible to all???!!! And, it’s government that is making these inclusions possible.
Whites are expected to become another minority by 2040. Just as they felt a need to revisit affirmative action, during the 70s and beyond, because the Blacks were getting token jobs, (now that 10 years of affirmative action had redressed over 200 years of wrong), whites folks are feeling the same about government. As right-minded people try to expand the ideal of a social contract, the right wing has a lot of whites feeling that they have the most to lose by a government that will increasingly respond to and protect so many people it never did before. Whites have to consider going from being among “the few” that were served by government to having to compete among the many for the services of the government.
America’s bubble has burst. The sky is falling. Just as the mortgage bubble burst and now there must be a correction. America’s industrial bubble has burst, and we are living in the dawn of the correction.
Whites are thinking like they are a minority, already. They’re thinking desperately. Look around, they are losing ground in almost every area, from being the man to being another hand, from becoming a global manufacturer to a global consumer, from the world’s big brother to just another warlord, China is becoming a superpower, Iran, India, and North Korea have nuclear capability, not to mention that America has not won a war since World War II. America doesn’t create jobs anymore (the next industry will be the green technology); corporate America is incentivised to export jobs. Economically, educationally, and health wise, the United States trail less powerful, less developed, relatively poor countries. Americans are losing in almost every area.
The American desperados are gonna to blame somebody. They got a backlash when they blamed the Jews, then the Blacks, and now the immigrants. But, it’s politically neutral to blame government. And, if government has been a linchpin, a protector of the common man, then those who have been left out by the old way, stand to benefit in ways they never have before from government growth. So, if right-wingers attack government (except the military, social security, Medicare – the lion share of the federal budget), then they can seem politically correct in putting the brakes on the white slide and non-white growth without seeming to be racist, at all.
The notion of slowing minority growth by slowing government growth has invigorated the right wing and conservatives, and spawned the tea party movement. The country has way been sold out to corporations, the accepted third rail of congress, the lobbyists, and their influence on government. How you take America back from corporations?
Right-wingers like to hail back to a day when free market America, Inc. “worked,” when America exported cotton and steel, made cars, etc., for the world, etc. But, by attacking government, and by extension, regulation, the best we got was: George W. Bush, Jr., twice, Enron, World Com, Wall Street national hustles, merit-less wars, etc., — the worsening of the American experiment.
There ain’t no going back for America. Corporate America, like the social contract, never really worked for everyone; it worked for some and that some has become few. So, yeah, their arguments on the surface has appeal: Get government out of the way of the free market so it can do those things for the country it never really did –is a smokescreen.
The real deal, is 2040.
Remember the statement, we have to be twice as good to be accepted as good? Well, after electing a Black man as president, they were only going to give a brother 2 years to prove he’s superman and create some jobs out of air. And, Obama could only fail in that. But, while Obama succeeded in overhauling the cause of the economic malaise, those who were hedging their bets, so to speak, called their bets off. It’s to be expected. We’re still deeply immersed in America’s notions of white supremacy.
2008 was more a complaint that America needs a lot of fixing a lot of patience, or we jump back in the fire,. And, right wing ideologues are willing to drive America back in the fire, by the mantra of attack government, de-regulate, free the free marketers, whatever it takes to slow down the race to 2040. And, that’s the scary part. America will jump back in the fire. I would argue that the sky is falling for America. But, hope is eternal. As America loses it way, another country is rising – it may be China.