Obama and Outsourcing

Barack Obama promised to run a different campaign for the United States' presidency. Defiantly inclusive, he wanted to avoid "negative" campaigning and to draw together this divided country around his positive image. Thrown into the national limelight after his remarkable speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, Obama became the standard-bearer for a new politics. "Do we participate in a politics of cynicism," he asked, "or do we participate in a politics of hope?" Then, he let loose with a flourish, "I'm not talking about blind optimism here - the almost wilful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don't think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about something more substantial. It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores... . Hope - hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!" In keeping with his first name, Barack Obama was a breath of life in a political landscape torn between cynicism and ruthlessness.

When Obama decided to run for the presidency after his short stint as the Democratic Senator from Illinois, his candidacy was welcomed across the country. Running against the putative front runner, Senator Hillary Clinton (New York), he was at a disadvantage. Hillary Clinton, with her name recognition and her Rolodex from the White House years, not only had political capital to collect but also had better access to money than any other candidate running on either party ticket. In 2000, Hillary Clinton raised about $30 million in her victorious campaign against first Rudy Giuliani and then Rick Lazio (they raised a total of $60 million).

Six years later, with minimal opposition for her re-election campaign, Hillary Clinton pulled in $50 million but only spent $37 million. The remainder will go towards her presidential run. But Obama surprised Hillary Clinton with his popularity among voters and with his ability to raise money. By mid-June, both have raised about the same amount (about $26 million). Since money is the lubricant of today's "democratic" politics, the person who raises more money with the least amount of controversy is declared by the media to be the front runner and is thereby able to ride a kind of artificial momentum to the elections.

The public recognises that money has corrupted politics. A Washington Post poll found that 66 per cent of the public supports restrictions on the way that political candidates raise money, and a plurality of the population feels that the process is now corrupted by big business. Campaign finance laws make it to the floor of the Senate and the House, but the elected officials water them down. As veteran consultant Joe Trippi put it, the campaign finance situation "is kind of like the nuclear arms race. No one's willing to unilaterally disarm." A cynical attitude has taken hold, where these same political candidates argue that donations are a form of free speech and any attempt to regulate campaign finance is a restriction on these fundamental freedoms. Money then is a form of speech.

The money for the US elections comes, largely, from corporations whose interests are in finance, insurance and real estate (so-called FIRE); pharmaceuticals; media; and retail sales (such as Wal-Mart). These are the beneficiaries of globalisation and neoliberal polices, which tend to favour transnational corporations more than the benighted citizens of bounded nation states. Given this structure, it is virtually impossible for a serious candidate for elected office in the US to be critical of globalisation and neoliberalism. The most they can offer are gentle suggestions about the dangers or the immorality of inequality (as John Edwards has been trying to do). A frontal critique of the power of transnational corporations eclipses the candidate from money, which means marginal media attention (the fate of Ralph Nader in 2000 and 2004).

Source: Vijay Prashad