The Political Economy of the Palin Pick

Nobody has done a better job than Rick Wolff just did explaining the relationship between the decline of capitalism, the role of the religious right in squeezing productivity out of workers while keeping them preoccupied with the next life and the apocalypse, the complacency and ultimate futility of the Democrats' search for capitalism with a human face, and the choice of Sarah Palin to give hope to the McCain campaign. He brings it all together lucidly and calmly. This is a masterpiece of the current election cycle.

...the more "liberal" or even "leftist" Democrats -- could never go very far along these lines because the Democratic Party also needed the money and support of capital to pay the huge costs of political campaigns. The Democratic Party fears that alienating capital would assure Republican victories...the Democratic Party has basically offered the mass of US workers nothing real or concrete to significantly change their deteriorating social and personal situations. ...nothing is likely from the Democrats that could alter the basic components of the workers' deepening crises -- their wage and job prospects, the extent of state programs and supports they can obtain, their collapsing families and personal relationships, their dwindling self-confidence and frightening loneliness....Palin, as packaged, is the concretized fantasy of "home town family values" carefully combined with "personal flaws" to be identified with, enthusiastic patriotism, aggressive celebration of capital's agenda, and status as maligned victim of elite and media hostility. By naming her, the Republicans aim yet again and more dramatically to be seen as the best hope American working people have that something, rather than nothing, may possibly be done for them in this time of looming economic catastrophe.