September 05, 2009 07:54 PM UTC

Is It Time To Declare Class Warfare?

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• by: harrydoby

With a popular President, Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress, and a large majority of voters supporting health care reform, why are we Democrats letting the tail wag the dog in this debate?

While the right-wing fringe wages a disinformation campaign to derail attempts to pass meaningful reform, why is it we merely seek polite compromise?

In a provocative New York Times article by FDR biographer Jean Edward Smith, the author offers Obama some advice:

Roosevelt was a divider, not a uniter, and he unabashedly waged class war. At the Democratic Convention in 1936, again speaking to a national radio audience, Roosevelt lambasted the “economic royalists” who had gained control of the nation’s wealth. To Congress he boasted of having “earned the hatred of entrenched greed.” In another speech he mocked “the gentlemen in well-warmed and well-stocked clubs” who criticized the government’s relief efforts.

FDR’s words could easily be describing Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, et al.  But, unlike the Depression years, we still do have a middle class.  So really the declaration of war I believe should be against the right-wing propagandists.

Citing another example:

Roosevelt relished the opposition of vested interests. He fashioned his governing majority by deliberately attacking those who favored the status quo. His opponents hated him – and he profited from their hatred. “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today,” he told a national radio audience on the eve of the 1936 election. “They are unanimous in their hatred for me – and I welcome their hatred.”

And if Obama, the media and we all excoriate the ridiculous assertions as the deliberate disinformation that they are (“death panels”), then perhaps we truly could have a reasonable debate over legitimate questions of how to extend access to affordable health care, in a manner that is both fiscally responsible and fair.

Although I don’t think it is in Obama’s nature to actively seek conflict, perhaps in next week’s speech, he will take this opportunity to throw down the gauntlet to his opponents (and wavering Democrats).

Roosevelt sought consensus among his fellow Democrats, which is why he sometimes kowtowed to the Southern oligarchs who were the chairmen of Congressional committees. But his Republican opponents were relegated to the political equivalent of Siberia.

Perhaps this will be the future of the grandstanding hypocrites on the Right.