Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) Wins Mexican Presidency

Andrés Manuel López Obrador speaks
at a press conference in Mexico City, July 3,
2018 (Photo: Manuel Velazquez/Getty Images)
from New York Magazine

Three times can sometimes produce a seismic charm, or so it appears for Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) (1953-), who was finally elected President of Mexico on July 1, this past Sunday. Though a longtime member the leftist Partido de la Revolución Democrática (Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD) and a failed candidate in the contested 2006 and 2012 national elections, AMLO, a former Governor of the Federal District, ran under the aegis of a new left-leaning coalition, Juntos Haremos Historia (Together We Will Make History), that comprised the progressive Movimiento de la Regeneración Nacional (National Regeneration Movement/MORENA) and Partido de Trabajadores (Labor Party/PT) parties with a socially conservative party, Partido Encuentro Social (Social Encounter Party/PES). AMLO will assume office on December 1, 2018, which, given Mexico's current parlous state, will not be a moment too soon.

AMLO's chief rivals in this year's presidential election were Ricardo Anaya of the Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party/PAN), the center-right party of former president Vicente Fox (who served from 2000-2006) an antagonist of US Republican presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump; José Antonio Meade of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party/PRI), the neoliberal, longtime ruling party to which incumbent president Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) belongs; and two independent candidates, Jaime Rodríguez Calderón, who had previously become the first independent candidate to win a state governorship when he helmed Nuevo Leon; and Margarita Zavala, a noted lawyer, and the wife of former president and PAN figurehead Felipe Calderón (in office from 2006-2012).

In essence, AMLO was not just leading a visibly left coalition but represented the only left-leaning option for Mexican voters in this presidential election. As the campaign progressed, Mexico's political and social elites grew increasingly alarmed, and perhaps rightly so. Yet the hiccuping economy, metastasizing violence, which even marked the lead-up to the election, and continuing allegations of extensive, high-level government corruption, blunted the right's blizzard of "Mexico will turn into Venezuela"-scare tactics, some with racist and classist tones, including advertisements, robocalls, videos, and social media attacks, not unlike ones that had doomed AMLO's chances in the prior two elections.

In one instance, a PRI operative named Enrique Ochoa Reza tweeted that PRI politicians who switched parties to MORENA were "Prietos que no aprietan" (Dark-skinned/black people who can't get a hold), playing on the double meanings of "moreno/a" (brown/black man/woman) and "prieto" (dark/black person), as well as the feminine form of the former word (morena=brown woman/black woman) and the verb aprietar (not being able to keep somebody). Ochoa Reza did apologize for the racist aspect of his slur, but not the misogynistic one. Additionally, there were allegations of US and Guatemalan meddling in the campaign, and Ochoa Reza accused Russia of interfering on behalf of AMLO, a charge the eventual victor laughed off.

The attacks, however numerous and outrageous, could not overcome Mexican voters disgust at the current state of affairs. AMLO won in a landslide, defeating Anaya by 21 percentage points while winning 53% of the total vote and popular vote. The final tally in an election that saw a 63.6% turnout (or 56.6 million voters out of 89.9 registered voters) was as follows, with AMLO winning 31 of Mexico's 32 states, and the first outright majority for a presidential candidate since 1989:

2018 Mexican Presidential Candidate & Party	Vote Total
AMLO (National Regeneration Movement/Juntos Haremos Historia)	30,112,109
Ricardo Anaya (PAN/Por México al Frente)	12,609,472
José Antonio Meade (PRI/Todos por México)	9,289,378
Jaime Rodríguez Calderón (Independent)	32,743
Margarita Zavala (Independent)	31,983

While his ideology has long been diametrically opposed to what we see with a figure like Donald Trump, they share a vocal populist nationalism, AMLO's rooted in the left and democratic socialism instead of Trump's ethnonationalist and racist authoritarian approach. What this might mean for the cozy relationship between Mexico's large corporations and land owners and the government and for an approach to a renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that privileges international structures and rules over the country's laws remains to be seen, but given the Juntos Haremos Historia/MORENA's capture of 312 of 500 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, and the strong popular mandate for the coalition and new president, AMLO could throw wrenches in Mexico's steady march towards privatization and economic (classical) liberalization, in favor of policies that more effectively and immediately address the rising economic inequality and insecurity that millions of Mexicans are facing.

During the campaign AMLO announced that he would push to reform some of the perks of the presidency, including cutting his salary and that of top officials, selling presidential planes, creating a public park out of the presidential grounds, and ending the lifetime pension former presidents receive, with the savings being directed towards Mexican seniors, who have a far less secure and comparatively robust retirement savings system than US's fixed pensions, 401K savings plans, and Social Security (which itself is admittedly always under threat from US conservatives and neoliberals). He also attacked the International Monetary Fund as an enabler of and participant in Mexico's corruption, suggesting he might pull back not just from the IMF but from other international financial systems that have long kept Mexico under yoke. One key question would be how projected new NAFTA negotiations might change as a result of this approach.

As Nathaniel Parish Flannery argues in a recent Forbes article, "The AMLO Era: Why Mexico's 2018 Election Matters," nearly half of Mexicans live in poverty, and despite the country's prowess in manufacturing, wages remain abysmal. Stemming governmental corruption and addressing the country's sluggish growth rate, rising economic and social inequality, the persistent lack of jobs in the formal economy, and low, stagnant wages across all labor sectors could have beneficial, ramifying effects on all aspects of Mexican society. The question for AMLO and Mexico's congress is how to spur all of this such that all the wealth does not continue to flow upwards to the relatively tiny sector of rich elites. Strategies to create a viable and vibrant middle class, which would necessitate a retreat from the neoliberalization of the prior PRI and PAN administrations, transformed tax and business policies, support for public education and farmers, and a strengthened safety net, could be among AMLO's and the new left-leaning Congress's potential steps.

Some of this, beyond NAFTA talks, will hinge on the "new relationship" AMLO has vowed to forge with Mexico's often domineering neighbor the United States. While the US and Mexico are among each others' largest trading partners and cooperate extensively in a range of areas, the two current leaders, Trump and Peña Nieto, have been at loggerheads, in part because of Trump's persistent attacks on Mexico and Mexicans, beginning the day he announced his presidential campaign and slandered Mexican immigrants, and because Peña Nieto understandably has refused to pay for Trump's desired border wall. AMLO has already challenged the border wall idea in a pamphlet he published, entitled Oye Trump (Listen Up, Trump). One goal AMLO outlined was development of Mexico's "internal market," so that "Mexicans can work and be happy where they were born, where their family is, where their customs and cultures are." Creating an expanding middle class is crucial to ensuring this market can flourish, and to transforming the migrant flows.

Another challenge for AMLO will be to figure out a way to lower the violence that has plagued Mexico. Neither Calderón's nor Peña Nieto's approaches worked; corruption remains endemic at all levels, and organized crime is strong as well. In addition, since September 2017, 130 political figures, from the municipal to the national level, have been murdered, and journalists across Mexico have been targeted for investigative and critical work. AMLO supposedly has suggested amnesty for low-level drug offenders, which sparked criticism, but it also is the case that Peña Nieto's initial policy approach of militarized attacks on the cartels failed, as did prior attempts to negotiate with organized crime. Rising pay for all workers, and better wages for domestic security and military forces could help to thwart the power of organized crime to infiltrate them, but AMLO also has suggested a "peace plan," involving human rights organizations, religious organizations, among others, to negotiate a decline in the murder rate.

I see less of a parallel with Hugo Chavez, to who AMLO has been repeatedly compared, and more of one with the presidency of Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva, Brazil's now imprisoned but still widely popular former president. Formerly a firebrand leftist from his country's Worker's Party, Lula lost three elections before finally becoming president in 2003, and governed for two terms. Lula moderated his platform in his successful campaign, presiding over a series of liberalized economic policies that on the one hand led to considerable growth, but which included a range of social policies that helped lift millions of Brazilians out of poverty, increased Brazil's safety net, and created a visible if fragile middle class. Unfortunately, Lula did not target systemic corruption with the same zeal, and now finds himself crucified not only because of his opponents' vengeance, but as a result of his and his successor's failure to truly wrestle with the beast of corruption during the height of their successes. With AMLO, domestic economic policies and global financial trends could prove his ally or enemy, but a failure to address systemic corruption, impossible a task as that may be, could destroy not only the tremendous support he now enjoys, but damn his and his coalition's future, let alone Mexico, for decades to come.

The Brazilian Coup

Suspended Brazilian President
Dilma Rousseff (Photo © Inserbia.info)

One topic I've meaning to write about for a while is the current political crisis in Brazil. As has been widely reported (with the best English language coverage I've seen appearing on Glenn Greenwald's The Intercept and TeleSur's English language site), on April 17, 2016, Brazil's Lower of House of Congress, led by now former-President of the Chamber of Deputies Eduardo Cunha, of the center-right Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro, or PMDB), voted to forward to the Brazilian Senate impeachment proceedings against the democratically elected president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, a member of the leftist Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, or PT). A few weeks later, on May 12, Brazil's upper house, led by Senate President Renan Calheiros (PMDB, from the northeastern state of Alagoas), voted 55-22 to have Dilma stand trial on the charge of budget manipulation, or "pedaladas," in which she allegedly used public bank funds to cover a lack of funding for government programs, with the goal of hiding deficits in order to ensure her reelection. As of that date, she was formally suspended as President, and the lawyer Michel Temer, her vice president and a member of the PMDB, like Cunha, assumed office as Acting President.

Just two years ago in the 2014 general election, Dilma won a second presidential term, defeating her centrist opponent Aécio Neves of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira, or PDSB). With her reelection victory, Dilma extended the Workers' Party's control of the presidency to four consecutive terms, the first two coming under her once highly popular predecessor and former labor organizer Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva.  Under Lula and then Dilma, during her first term, the federal government created a series of programs, including the Bolsa Familia, that lifted millions of Brazilians out of poverty, and the overall economic successes of this era, based on rising commodity prices and a roaring manufacturing sector, helped to dramatically expand the country's middle and working classes.

Under Lula and Dilma, Brazil's per-person GDP ascended from around $3000 in 2001 to high of $13,000 in 2010, and the country weathered the global recession far better than nearly all its South American peers and most of Europe. It's also important to note that as Brazil rose economically, its demographics were shifting so that by 2014, a majority (51%) of its citizens were self-identifying as brown/mixed or black, a striking fact in a country that at one point had undertaken an official state policy of whitening, beginning under its former emperor Pedro II (1825-1891, his reign lasting rom 1831 to 1889 ), by actively inviting European immigrants to settle on its shores and where state-sanctioned slavery lasted until 1888 and violence against Afrobrazilian, mixed-raced and Indigenous populations has continued for decades since. Many of these brown and black Brazilians saw their fortunes rise under Lula's and Dilma's stewardship of the country's economy, and provided crucial support for both during their presidential runs.

Not long after Dilma's second victory, the bottom fell out of commodity prices, the economy slipped into a recession, inflation began rising, and jobs started to dry up. Dilma had also continued her predecessor Lula's progressive and successful social programs and increased public spending overall, leading to a growing deficit and national debt. Additionally, in preparation for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, Brazil spent hundreds of millions of dollars on new stadiums and facilities, provoking a series of pre-tournament protests from a cross-section of the populace who preferred that the funds go towards more pressing needs, like support for public transportation and education. To make matters worse, during the event Brazilians endured global humiliation when eventual victor Germany's powerhouse squad defeated the acclaimed home team by a 7-1 score. The public dissent leading up to the World Cup could not bode well for Dilma's public standing, and it did not help that in two years, the 2016 Summer Olympics would be held in Brazil's second city and former capital, the densely packed, favela-ringed Rio de Janeiro, which meant that the country would have to spend many hundreds of millions more on athletic facilities, housing and related infrastructure, while also undertaking major environmental and security upgrades.  

One of the main Olympic venues, Guanabara Bay and the ocean area outside it, around which the city of Rio unfolds and in which rowing and some swimming events were to occur, tested so dangerously polluted that athletes competing in it for pre-Olympic events have repeatedly fallen ill with a range of diseases, including serious staff infections. (I have suggested elsewhere that that the sailing and other water events be moved to the far south of the country, to Florianópolis, where the water quality is much better, and that other events be distributed to several other central and southern Brazilian capital cities, like São Paulo, Curitiba and Porto Alegre, that already have first-class athletic facilities). Both Brazil and the International Olympic Committee, however, are dead set on not changing their minds or the sites, and many of the promised infrastructure improvements, which the government claimed would benefit not just the Olympic visitors but denizens of Rio, have yet to materialize. In addition, part of at least one favela has been razed and its residents displaced, and the military's "pacification" of others has led to increased violence against some of the city's most vulnerable people, most of them black and mixed-race.

Brazil's Congress Building
(Photo by RNLatvian)

Alongside the toxic mix of an economic slowdown and the costly international athletic events, last year Brazil found itself grappling with a new public health crisis when pregnant women, primarily in the country's northeast but eventually in other regions of the country, began giving birth to babies suffering from microcephaly. Research determined that this and related illnesses, including cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome, were the result of infections with the Zika virus, caused by Aedes mosquitoes. While Zika appears native to parts of Africa, it had not previously struck in Brazil, though there had been outbreaks in the South Pacific, and one conjecture is that it might have arrived with a 2014 World Cup attendee. After initial government paralysis, Brazilian authorities have worked, in conjunction with officials and organizations across the globe, to address the mosquito threat, but a great deal remains unknown about the virus, which also appears to transmissible between humans through semen and bodily fluids, and which does not appear to result in birth defects in all pregnant women. Chaos at the upper reaches of Brazil's government, however, makes ongoing coordination of Zika prevention a challenge.

Lastly, the problem of endemic corruption among political, economic and social elites, which has plagued Brazil for centuries, finally sparked widespread public backlash after revelations about the Petrobrás scandal began to emerge two years. During Lula's consecutive terms, from 2002 to 2010, several high-level Workers' Party members were convicted of corruption, but Lula avoided indictment. Since taking office, Dilma has not been charged with corruption, but as Lula's Minister of Energy she led Petrobrás, the state-owned oil company at the center of a vast corruption scandal, from 2003 through 2010. The Petrobrás scandal, in a nutshell, involved construction companies creating cartels to offer inflated bids on Petrobrás contracts, with Petrobrás employees approving the bids, which then led the construction companies to pocket the difference. This surplus included kickbacks to the Petrobrás employees, and to government officials, some of whom helped to place pliable employees in the ranks of Petrobrás, creating a perfect corruption feedback loop. 

The scandal came to light when Brazil's federal police began an investigation in 2014, under chief prosecutor Sérgio Moro, called Operação Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash), initially investigating money laundering, until one of the chief suspects, Alberto Youssef, spilled the beans on how extensive the alleged scheme truly was. The subsequent scandal has stretched far beyond Brazil's borders, and may have involved the illegal transfer of more than $5.3 billion state funds. Over 90 people have been convicted, and many more are currently under investigation, including several dozen sitting lawmakers, as well as ex-president Lula himself. His personal charity allegedly pocketed $7.8 million in donations from construction company executives linked to Petrobrás, leading to a recent police raid and arrest at his home. Shortly thereafter, and before her ouster, he was abruptly appointed Dilma's chief of staff, temporarily shielding him from the law's arm. A wiretap of their conversation arranging for his post spurred considerable public anger.

Palácio do Planalto, the official work residence
of the Brazilian President, Brasília

It should astonish no one that this confluence of grave economic, social and political crises spurred public outrage, but nothing suggested that Dilma, who I should note again has not been accused of any direct personal criminality, would suffer impeachment. Continuing street protests, calls for her resignation, defection of coalition partners, and increased criticism from the opposition parties seemed the likely outcome, and with her popularity falling to a low of 9% and her base voters stating in opinion polls that they disliked her tenure, she might well have chosen to step down. Federal deputy Eduardo Cunha, however, took matters into his own hands, however, and launched impeachment proceedings based on Dilma's alleged role at Petrobrás during the corruption scandal, combining this charge with her acknowledged use of federal funds to cover the deficit, even though her predecessors had taken this very same budgeting step without penalty. Lacking enough allies in the lower house, Dilma suffered a massive defeat, with Deputies voting 367 to 137 to send impeachment proceedings to the Senate, one third of whose members are under investigation for an array of crimes, some quite serious and linked to Lava Jato; one of them is Brazil's disgraced, impeached former president Fernando Collor de Melo (of the right-wing Brazilian Labor Party). With its vote to initiate its official trial of Dilma, her post now goes to Michel Temer.

In noting all of this I want to underline that as we witnessed in the late 1990s, impeachment can occur on the flimsiest grounds even in the US, and that governmental stalemate can occur here as well, as Barack Obama's battles with the US Congress over the last six years in office have underlined. Yet Brazil's democratic system has greater instability baked into its DNA, because a broader array of parties can hold power by forming tenuous coalitions, much like a parliamentary system and unlike in the US, where two fairly stable parties jostle for power, but without the presence of a prime minister to marshal forces on the president's behalf (i.e. France) and without a parliamentary presidential system's ability (cf. France again) to dissolve a failing government. To a far greater extent than in the US, one major conglomerate, O Globo, controls most of the public media, giving the right-leaning company outsized influence, and the presence of state-owned companies like Petrobrás, which lack strong independent oversight, open up vast possibilities for financial pillage.

Supreme Federal Court of Brazil, Brasília

President Dilma Rousseff, Lula's hand-picked successor, was a trained economist and a survivor of Brazil's two decade-long military dictatorship, during which she suffered detention and torture. Though an anti-dictatorship activist in her youth, she has not been a lifetime politician or handler, and although she was able to continue Lula's coalition with the PMDB, she did not cultivate the kinds of necessary relationships, through gladhanding, favors and monetarily greasing the wheel, that might have retained PMDB support and forestalled her impeachment. In any case, by removing Dilma, Eduardo Cunha, Senate President Renan Calheiros, and former Vice President and now acting President Temer, all from Dilma's former coalition partner the center-right PMDB, have effectively canceled the outcome of the most recent Brazilian presidential election, i.e., the majority votes of 54 million Dilma supporters. Immediately before taking office Temer announced one of his first moves would be "pension reform," a neoliberal hobbyhorse and fixation of the global right, and since assuming office, he has appointed an all male, all self-identified white cabinet that includes figures linked to Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs, and begun pushing for right-wing goals like privatization of public assets, while also eliminating ministries through consolidation, and championing greater government austerity through a lower fiscal target and reduced public expenditures.

The response has been still more protests, with one particularly notable challenge to Temer's radical shift emerging from Brazil's artistic community in response to the elimination, through consolidation and merger, of the Ministry of Culture. As a result, Temer has announced that it will be restored. The growing sense within Brazil and across the globe that Dilma's impeachment was a coup gained strength after three sensation recent wiretaps were made public via the influential Folha de São Paulo newspaper. 

First, in April 2016, just before the lower house was set to vote on whether to refer impeachment proceedings to the Senate, a wiretap captured Temer discussing Dilma's impeachment as if it were already a fait accompli, and he was the new president. Wikileaks documents had previously shown him to be a US informant since 2006, particularly against former President Lula. Then, an even more explosive wiretap from May 23, 2016 captured Interim Planning Minister and Senator Romero Jucá (PMDB, from the distant Amazonian state of Roraima) conferring with ex-senator Sérgio Machado, also a former CEO of Petrobrás subsidiary Transpetro, about the former's talks with the Brazilian Supreme Court, which will be responsible for trying Dilma and which has launched investigations of many legislators, and with key figures in the Brazilian military, which ran the country from 1964 through 1984, to guarantee that Dilma would be removed from office. In addition, the tapped conversation appeared to suggest Jucá was working to quash the Supreme Court's investigations of legislators. O Globo, the main newspaper organ of the Globo conglomerate, editorialized against Jucá, leading him to resign from his cabinet post, though he still holds his Senate seat.

Today, yet another wiretap, released to the media, appears to show Senate president Renan Calheiros also telling Sérgio Machado that they needed to change the the laws dictating investigations into corruption, primarily the plea bargain rules, because a number of politicians were "afraid" of the ongoing corruption dragnet. As with Jucá, Calheiros also appears to have been in conversation with Brazil's Supreme Court about forcing Dilma from office. 

The least generous appraisal of these wiretaps would lead one to conclude that Dilma's impeachment is the result of a concerted effort not only to oust her in undemocratic fashion while ostensibly using constitutional tools, but also to shut down the metastasizing corruption investigations. In so doing, the center-right and centrist parties, which cannot win the presidency, would thwart the will of a majority of Brazil's voters, and maintain the elite networks of corruption--into which certain fortunate new political actors can enter--while imposing failed conservative and neoliberal policies that will only enrich the uppermost stratum of Brazilian society while once again impoverishing those at the middle and bottom.

By involving the Supreme Court, politicians like Jucá and Calheiros are tainting the investigation process and showing that there is no real separation of powers, and by bringing military officials into the discussion, they appear to be setting the stage for an even more horrifying eventuality, which is to say, the transition from what is essentially now a "soft coup" to a hard one, with the military in control. In any case, the goal appears to be less about rooting out corruption and more about returning unpopular elites to untrammeled power, including the power to rob the country blind, while reversing the economic and social gains of the Lula (and Dilma) years.

Among the impeachment leaders, Eduardo Cunha is now suspended from the House of Deputies for alleged intimidation and attempted obstruction of investigations of his receipt of bribes totaling $40 million, which he is said to have squirreled away in a Swiss bank account. Acting President Temer also faces potential impeachment proceedings because he approved the same sorts of budgetary sleights of hand as Dilma; he had already been ordered to pay a fine for campaign finance violations and barred from running for office for eight years, yet was allowed to assume the interim presidency just the same.  Also under investigation are Calheiros and Machado, as part of Lava Jato. Indeed, in Calheiros' case, there are other investigations still brewing; he had previously been  involved in a 2007 scandal in which he was investigated for having received funds from a lobbyist to pay for child support for a child from an extramarital affair. A secret Senate ethics panel vote decided not to impeach him on the charges, but he currently still faces three other charges related to the scandal nine years ago. 

With Dilma out, and Temer barred from running for office and potentially under impeachment, this would tip the presidency to Interim President of the Chamber of Deputies Waldir Maranhão (Progressive Party, from the northeastern state of Maranhão), who has said he will not assume the post, thus handing it to Calheiros, who is...under investigation. And on it would go. To call this situation a hot mess hardly does it justice. To say that it deeply harms Brazil's democratic present and future is an understatement. In fact some Brazilian politicians, among them federal deputy, evangelical Christian, and extreme racist and homophobe Jair Bolsonaro (Christian Social Party, from Rio de Janeiro), have praised Brazil's military dictatorship and expressed nostalgia for its return. Bolsonaro event went so far as to publicly praise the very general who had inflicted torture on Dilma during her prison detention! If not the military, then a rightist Trump-like candidate could step into the breach. Multiple scenarios bode ill for Brazil, the world's fifth largest economy, which nevertheless must get through the rapid conservative changes under Temer, the Olympics, and the impeachment trial before anything else.

Palácio da Alvorada, the official
resident of Brazil's President,
in Brasília

One other disturbing note: the current US ambassador (ambassadrix) to Brazil, Liliana Ayalde, was Ambassador to Paraguay in 2012 during the period when that country's parliament shockingly and abruptly impeached and ousted its leftist president, Fernando Lugo. His two-day removal from office placed his Vice President, from an opposing party, and a year later a subsequent general election presidential vote installed Horacio Cortes, a conservative multimillionaire businessman from the party that had governed Paraguay for 50 years before Lugo's election. A US cable allegedly discussed a desire by some opposition figures to remove Lugo from office via impeachment, and when he was drummed from office, the US issued a bland statement that gave tacit approval to the process and outcome. Ayalde's presence during both impeachments seems to underline which side the US, yet again and quite unfortunately, is on.

The DNC Show (It Got Me)

First Lady Michelle Obama (© Tannen Maury/EPA)

I admit, I fell for it. Hard. The three-day Democratic National Convention proved quite an entrancing show, its effectively organized and run evenings showcasing many of the most appealing aspects of the Democratic Party, its politicians and supporters, and its standard bearers, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden, to superb effect. The convention hall brimmed with so much diversity I had to remind myself it wasn't taking place in Queens or Jersey City, but in non-union Charlotte, North Carolina. Its speakers trumpeted many of the best policies the Democrats under Obama have promoted and passed, among them the much-maligned Affirmative Care Act, the auto industry bailout, the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and the drawdown in Iraq. In addition, the convention highlighted other crucial points in this particular cultural moment: the ongoing struggle for women's reproductive rights and autonomy; the lack of a comprehensive immigration policy and the plight undocumented Americans face; the economic vise in which millions of people from Maine to Hawai'i find themselves in; the changing faces of this country, its people, its families. First Lady Michelle Obama took the stage, in resplendence, and reminded the world once again of one of the reasons many people voted for her husband. There were bursts of barn-burning progressivism from Elizabeth Warren, Deval Patrick, Ted Strickland, and Jennifer Granholm, and there was Julián Castro, already one of the Democratic Party's young stars. What was not mentioned, however, were this administration's assaults on civil liberties and whistle-blowers, the record deportations, the disastrous coddling of banks and the failure to adequately address the housing crisis, the lack of any programs to end poverty, Guantánamo,  the drones, and the ongoing neocolonial excursions, in Afghanistan, Yemen, north Africa, and elsewhere, and on and on.

But who am I kidding? None of these issues, or many others, were going to come up at the convention. What did make an appearance, in the illuminating speech of former President Bill Clinton and the more workmanly and ultimately soaring peroration of President Obama, was the haggard specter of Simpson-Bowles, the current president's deficit commission that not only could not reach a consensus (in part because of commission members like Representative and GOP VP nominee Paul Ryan (R-WI)) but whose chairmen, former US Senator Alan Simpson and former Clinton chief of staff and Wall Street executive Erskine Bowles issued a severely problematic series of recommendations of their own, which included cuts to Social Security (which has no effect on the federal deficit) and Medicare, and a flattened-out tax code that would lower rates for the wealthiest Americans and corporations, while removing many deductions that benefit middle-class Americans. Both Clinton and Obama seemed to be shilling for this awfulness, the general concepts behind it bankrolled by billionaires like Peter G. Peterson, which suggests that although it is a far less optimal option than the Progressive Caucus's budget or simply returning to the Clinton-era rates, it has the inside track should enough Republicans overcome their lockstep antagonism to Obama and decide to feather their friends'--and their own--beds. The very thought of this awful program, or the "Grand Bargain" in general, which the President seems determined to push through, gives me chillblains. The only thing worse is the utterly destructive plan the GOP candidates would likely pass, to the delight of their Congressional caucus colleagues, the Kochs, and gazillionaires all over this country and the globe.

I ended my viewing of the convention with the feeling that although Obama has not approached the heights I'd hoped he would, he does have many substantial accomplishments, some of the quite far-reaching (i.e., Obamacare) in their beneficial effects on and for the country, and, if his supporters can push him away from bad economic and political policies, like the deficit-focus and austerity, and Simpson-Bowles, towards approaches which will have a far greater impact on creating jobs, reducing the ever-widening wealth and income gap in this country, and turning off the tap for the military-industrial complex and redirecting the savings towards domestic reconstruction and infrastructure development, he just might end his second term as one of the better presidents we've had. He still has time, and he must listen to more than people from the mega-asset-holding class. But he can't and won't do anything unless we reelect him and then push him, and elect a Congress that will work with him, beholden as they may be to the billionaires and financiers and corporations. I still think a 70% top federal marginal tax rate would be a great way of changing the money=speech equation, but get there seems very unlikely in the current climate, so perhaps just allowing gridlock to take hold until Obama gets reelected, as it appears likely he will, then having the Clinton-era tax rates reset and the savage cuts the GOP imposed unfold will provide enough of a stun to get the GOP to cooperate with the President on strengthening the country. Obama also will be able, I never forget, to appoint judges and set the baseline for federal policies. As Bush's Supreme and Appellate Court appointees have made clear, we should never, ever underestimate the importance of this aspect of the President's power. The DNC's show underlined that in this regard, there's no question whatsoever that Obama is not just the better, but the only choice, for November.

Illinois votes + Amazon vs. Macmillan + Tissue as commodity + Golden Girls grow gays

Today's Primary Election Day in Illinois, and a number of key posts are on the ballot, from the US Senate seat, formerly occupied by President Barack Obama and now by his notorious successor, Roland Burris, to the Governors' seat, whose previous recent occupants include a convicted felon (George Ryan) and a man (Rod Blagojevich) who tried to sell the just-mentioned Senate seat to the highest bidder, was impeached by the state legislature, and will soon appear on a TV reality show, to various municipal and local positions, including one that almost no one outside of the state knows about but which has been a rag of contention for years, the powerful Cook County Board President's office. That seat is currently occupied by Todd Stroger, whose father suffered a massive stroke, thereby handing the gig to his son.

Since I vote in New Jersey, I'm a spectator in all of this, but I have to say that while I was somewhat frustrated with the lackluster options in the New Jersey elections that put Rovian Republican Chris Christie in office, I would feel even more disillusioned if I had to choose from the rogues' and hacks' gallery vying for these various Illinois seats. Let's just take the US Senate seat. On the GOP side, the leader is Mark Kirk, a sometimes moderate (by Midwestern standards), sometimes right-wing Congressman representing Chicago's wealth North Shore. Kirk was outed as gay, via a really sleazy media-leaked rumor, by one of his GOP opponents, a very nasty operator named Andy Martin, who has zero chance of winning. Facing almost no real competition Kirk, who ha moved politically to the right to secure the nomination, will very likely win the GOP nomination, where he'll face young, fairly progressive Democratic projected-winner Alexi Giannoulis, the current State Treasurer. (David Hoffmann, the state Inspector General, a former Federal prosecutor, and a truly progressive candidate with a clean (including anti-Daley) record, probably doesn't have a chance, but if he did, he would make the best Senator out of all the candidates.) Ironically enough, Giannoulis's family mint and former employer, Broadway Bank, is in serious financial trouble as a result of its lending policies over the last 8 years. During Giannoulis's tenure as Chief Loan Officer from 2002 to 2006, Broadway Bank jumped heavily into the subprime lending business and other risky banking activities. While Giannoulis has argued that he wasn't really involved in the problems that now place Broadway Bank on the brink, a review of the record belies this. As Treasurer he's done a decent job, particularly in the midst of the current economic calamities, which have hit Illinois, the nation's 6th most populous state, very hard, but his banking tenure, and his refusal to be explicit about his role in it, are troublesome.

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