Some crisis links (10.31.2008)

"Obamacons" to the rescue

Once again, Obama bears to the right: An AP report at TPM has Obama asking Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) to become his first Chief of Staff.

Emanuel is a veteran of President Clinton's White House, and has made a rapid ascent of the House leadership ladder since his election to Congress. He was chairman of the Democratic campaign committee two years ago when the party won a majority for the first time in more than a decade, and he cemented his reputation as a prodigious fundraiser and strong-willed political strategist.

This tack is unsurprising (see this, this, this). Paul Volker, the former Federal Reserve Chairman who ushered in the neo-liberal era and tamed the 1970s stagflation economy, had already joined Obama, as the Washington Independent reminds its readers. So too the self-styled Eisenhower Republican, Bill Clinton, who recently made peace with Obama (see this) after race-baiting the Senator in the spring! Scott McConnell, Editor of the American Conservative, will vote for Obama, rightly identifying the Senator as a first-rate Clintonista. Across the Atlantic, the Economist discusses what it terms the "Obamacon" phenomenon and wonders if this group, when coupled to President Obama's conservative governance, will produce the next great electoral realignment in the United States.

On a more hopeful note, Glen Ford suggests that finance capital's recent and radical troubles could provide the urban poor with an opportunity to oppose the ethnic cleansing (gentrification) of America's great cities. Perhaps a resistance effort of this kind would compel Slick Willie to take his office from Harlem and move it to the increasingly inviting spaces in SoHo!

Ohio: Soon to be the land of lawsuits, according to the New York Times. "If the outcome of next week's presidential election is close, this precariously balanced state could be the place where the two parties begin filing the inevitable lawsuits over voting irregularities, experts say."