by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
If President Obama and his party didn't even try to deliver on their
2008 campaign promise of a minimum wage hike when they had the White
House and both houses of Congress on lockdown in 2010 and 2011, what
does their sudden rediscovery of the minimum wage mean now, when they
know they can move nothing through Congress? Are they and their
sheepdogs, the so-called “progressive Democrats” just yanking our chain
again?
Progressive Sheepdogs, Democrat Sheep: Broken Promises & the Minimum Wage
by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
As a presidential candidate back in 2007 and 2008,
Barack Obama promised to ram a hike in the minimum wage through Congress by 2011. Like the president's promises
to renegotiate NAFTA
and enact labor law reforms to make union organizing possible again, it
wasn't one of those high profile pledges he repeated at every
opportunity in front of every audience. He didn't have to, that's not
the way it works.
If you're a right-leaning Democrat nowadays, here's how it works: you
make those kinds of promises before small audiences of labor and poor
folks. From that point, it's the job of your sheepdogs, the Democrat
“progressives” campaigning for you to keep the herd of your base voters
in line by putting those words in your mouth a lot more often, and with a
lot more emphasis than you actually place upon them. Promises are
promises, after all, and promises made by the wealthy and powerful to
the poor and powerless are worth exactly nothing.
Inevitably, once in office the corporate Democrat (is there any other
kind?) breaks his or her promise to his poor and apart from their votes
which they've already given away, powerless constituents. At this
point, his other sheepdogs, the “pragmatic” Democrats wisely bark at the
herd about how naïve and foolish they are, that they don't really
understand how politics works, that this one president or mayor or
whatever can't save them or change the world, or do much anything
really.
With President Obama's popularity at an all time low, the president
has rediscovered that something like 80% of the US favor not just a
significantly higher minimum wage, but a minimum wage indexed to some
kind of cost of living formula.
Even a big majority of Republican voters
are in favor of this. So the president has muttered his traditional few
words about the minimum wage, and from MSNBC to Huffington Post to
labor and the nonprofits, the chorus of presidential sheepdogs are
baying – the president cares, the Democrats care, they want to raise the
minimum wage, but the evil Republicans will want to thwart them....
The problem with this of course, is that whenever Democrats are in
charge of Congress, they never try to raise the minimum wage. It's a
promise they make to get elected, and something you never hear about
again until they're safely in the minority again and need something to
blame the evil Republicans for blocking. Let's be clear, evil
Republicans did not block efforts by President Obama or Congressional
Democrats to raise the minimum wage in 2010 and 2011, when they
controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. During that
time, there were no bills introduced to raise the minimum wage. There
were no presidential speeches or off the cuff presidential remarks
mentioning raising the minimum wage. There was no pressure from the
White House or Democrat leadership in the House or Senate to raise the
minimum wage, despite the importance placed upon the president's promise
by his sheepdogs, the “progressive” wing of the Democratic party.
Leading Democrats have always known that overwhelming majorities of
Democrat voters want an increase in the minimum wage. But it's a
campaign issue, and Democrats only campaign differently than
Republicans, not govern differently.
It's worth noting that the first lady, Michelle Obama has devoted lots of time to
shilling for Wal-Mart, the largest and most ruthless low-wage employer in the country. Even
Fortune magazine
claims Wal-Mart could substantially raise wages and benefits across the
board without its shareholders taking much of a hit. But Democrat
sheepdogs at MSNBC and labor won't touch the First Lady. They bark only
at the evil Republicans who won't pass a “jobs bill” or a minimum wage
hike or stop questioning the president's birth certificate.
Under the people-proof and democracy-proof matrix we call politics in
these United States of America, the fact that Democrats overwhelmingly
support jacking the minimum wage doesn't mean that elected Democrats
will really even try, like the O'Jays said, to
Give the People What They Want.
It's just a signal for the progressive sheepdogs to start barking
again, a chain with which to herd us back into line, to circle the
wagons again around the White House.
It's just more progressive white noise from our black president.
Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and a
member of the state committee of the Georgia Green Party. Contact him
via this site's contact page, or at
bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.
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