Obama, or the Stakes of the 2012 Election

Of all the battles for a seat in Congress this November, the most fascinating is the one being fought between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren. Not only because it pitches this Republican who in 2010 — sacrilege! — won the seat of the late Ted Kennedy, against the new progressive icon—professor at Harvard—who fought passionately against Wall Street, established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and fervently defends the role of government. But also because, among the left, there are some who see in her what they feel Obama failed to be: an audaciously leftist character. The fact that he did not appoint her at the direction of this Protection Bureau says a lot, according to them.

Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy —to say nothing of Bill Clinton— all received thrashings from the Democratic ranks; Obama is no exception. Yet his political record is substantial. Not contenting himself with avoiding a new depression and saving the auto industry, the President has initiated major reforms: health insurance, which, if it passes the ordeal of the Supreme Court, should ensure that close to 95 percent of Americans are covered over time; a re-regulation of the financial industry; initiatives for the environment and for education, with more accessible scholarships and the “Race to the Top” program. But also a strong regulation of the tobacco and food industries, the creation of a civil service, laws against salary discrimination and hate crimes, the repealing of the anti-gay rule in the military, a law for better children’s nutrition, funding for research, development and infrastructures, free market agreements, etc.

A few shortcomings: Wall Street bonuses, the carbon tax project, a real debate on education. Those have been enough to make people say he achieved nothing. Worse still: an insufficiently innovative policy, high unemployment rate, an era of hyper-partisanism and the constant obstructionism of the Republicans have contributed early on to the fable that Obama is too quick to compromise. Yet his way of governing from the center-left has also been a reflection of the voters’ sensibilities. Since 2008, according to Gallup, Democrats have gone from 50 to 43 percent, Republicans from 37 to 40 percent and independents from 12 to 15 percent—therefore a less democratic America.

Should we then be disappointed by Obama’s moderate approach? Since 1981, the Conservative wave has re-centered the debate and pulled the left ever more towards the right. Obama is re-centering the debate on the left, and is patiently, after thirty years of neo-liberalism, rehabilitating such phrases as “tax rise”, for the rich, or “government activism,” in favor of others. Were he to be re-elected and able to cement his legacy, the Conservatives could be brutally shoved aside and future debates could play out more in the traditional fields of the left. Since Summer 2011, when the search for a compromise with the Republicans regarding the debt almost brought the country to the edge of a precipice, Obama has been leaning more to the left: Democrat strategists seem convinced that he will have to “squeeze all the juice” from the electoral base in order to get re-elected.

Think of the alternative: what should we expect from a Romney presidency? His program, “Believe in America,” sets the tone: downsizing the government and workers’ rights, maintaining tax rebates for the richest, abolishing other taxes, repealing the health care reform, deregulating the financial or environmental industries, increasing the exploitation of American oil: those propositions are not very new but they are fundamentally rightist. So much for a Mitt Romney who passes for a “moderate” but would be pressed to take action by a Congress which would certainly fall, in his wake, in the hands of Republicans influenced by the most extreme wing of the right, for whom George Bush is an apostate. Lastly, that former Speaker Newt Gingrich, 68, should still be in the race highlights the inability of the right to reinvent itself.

The Constitution should serve as a last bulwark against any form of extremism. But that a Conservative president may have to name two judges in the Supreme Court in the next few years, thus embedding him on the right for a long time, would no longer be a guarantee of this.

An independent candidate could upset the game but the outline of the election seems to be taking shape already, and it will no doubt, beyond the economy, be about inequalities and the nature of capitalism—a word which has become negatively connoted for 40 percent of Americans. The electorate looks similar to that of 2008, except that a higher number among senior citizens and the white working-class are supporting the right, and that young people and minorities, dedicated to the Democrats, are demographically more important than back in 2008. Which of these groups will rally the most to their cause in November? This question is where Obama’s re-election is being played, and perhaps with it the fate of the United States as we know them today.