Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon News

The three horsemen of globalization
Critics fear increased cooperation between the World Trade Organization, World Bank and International Monetary Fund will spawn an 800-pound gorilla.
By Monte Paulsen
[12/02/99]

What's really at stake in Seattle
Economists speak out on the issues behind the World Trade Organization summit and the street protests.
By Alicia Montgomery, Daryl Lindsey and Fiona Morgan
[12/02/99]

And then there were four ...
Ralph Nader will announce his campaign for president on the Green Party ticket in January, joining those on the Republican, Democrat and Reform tickets in next year's race for the White House.
By Micah L.Sifry
[12/02/99]

"Tear gas sucks"
I was minding my own business when the Seattle cops gassed me.
By Zach Works
[12/02/99]

A no-win situation
Nonviolent protesters get hit from both sides at the WTO conference in Seattle.
By L.A. Kauffman
[12/02/99]

Complete archives for News

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

With the calamity of Clinton's health care proposal, his tenuous coalition broke apart for the second time. It got battered again when he decided to throw in the towel over welfare and signed Congress' plan after two vetoes.

Since that moment in 1995, Clinton has succeeded in stitching together his uneasy coalition of new and old (formerly new) Democrats only in extremis -- during that sickeningly long year when the issue at stake was to keep Ken Starr, Henry Hyde and Trent Lott from shredding the Constitution in their mad crusade.

In the meantime, enter John Sweeney. Elected to the leadership of the AFL-CIO in 1995, Sweeney knew that the unions' back was to the wall and that they had to hook up with movements -- had to become a movement, in fact, that could get along with the AFL-CIO's old usual suspects, environmentalists, shaggy green types, Naderites and the like. The unions showed they had some electoral clout in 1996 and 1998. So now, into Seattle, in body and spirit, rode those Democrats who have felt crowded out during most of the Clinton administration -- not the leaders, but the people. These folks, who have to be the bulwark of any successful Democratic campaign next year, are the ones most queasy about the WTO and the wheel-greasing approach to economic reality that it largely represents.

By declaring that the lion's share of the demonstrators have their hearts and minds in the right place, Clinton has made a bid for their residual loyalty. But now he and his administration have to deliver. The Sweeneys and Greenies are tired of waiting their turn.

So the Democrats' problem remains: The Sweeneys and Greenies in the Democratic party want corporate power curbed; the money wing is corporate power and does not look forward to being curbed. The interesting exercise of being the head between these two particular wings has proved most successful when the Republicans have played their role as straight-ahead ideologues. The Democrats' happiest memory has to be that the Republicans have come to their aid before -- when they tried to shut down the government and, in the process, shut down the Gingrich revolution itself. But even Republican stupidity isn't eternal.

The Republicans, after all, don't have the Democrats' problem. For George W. Bush and most of the Republicans, economic problems are child-simple. "Trade is freedom," Bush said in Iowa Wednesday. "Trade yields freedom because of the marketplace and its promise and its potential." That's that! And might there be any downside? "I readily concede there may be an instant in time where someone has been pained by free trade," Bush said before going on to repeat the mantra shared by most other Republicans, as well as Clinton and Gore (usually) and Bradley: "If we wall ourselves off from the rest of the world, I believe it will lead to an economic downturn, and an economic downturn will hurt workers a lot worse than free trade." Bush insisted that he would devise trade policies that would protect the environment and worker rights, while rejecting "onerous" rules.

Nice trick. But will the Democrats offer a choice or an echo? For the moment, then, Clinton has turned a certain embarrassment into a useful -- if awkward -- straddle. But a straddle that awkward is likely to get harder to sustain. Al Gore's legs are probably not rubbery enough. Despite Clinton's last-minute heroics, smart Democrats will listen keenly to the alarm bell sounded in Seattle. In the years to come, with Clinton off the field, they may find straddling too awkward to manage.
salon.com | Dec. 3, 1999

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

  Get a printer-friendly version

  E-mail a friend about this article

  Backflip this article to find it again

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Search Salon