Over almost three decades, really ever since Ronald Reagan became
president, there has been a redistributionist curve to the American
economy. In this period, the curve has enriched the already rich.
The more rich they were the greater their further enrichment. This is
not the consequence of a neutral hidden hand in history. It is a
result of law and policy and, moreover, of the ethically debauched
standards that brought us to the present calamitous circumstances of
the financial system.
Different policies would have improved the situation of the middle
class and solidified the status of the upper middle class, whose
fragility has now become more apparent than ever. These two strata are
feeling the strain -and, yes, one can say "pain"- of the decline in
employment, pay, bonuses, health care, scholarship money that underlay
democratic capitalism even as it was being sabotaged by the ideological
free marketeers.
I do not here emphasize the poor because they had long ago become the
permanent orphans of the system which, whether under Democratic or
Republican stewardship, had little inclination to change the structural
supports for what was morally insupportable.
So Obama re-entered into our political vocabulary the idea of economic
redistribution. It is about time someone did. The fact is that
Obama's victory will be based on votes from voters who want reasonable
redistribution downwards.
When Obama brings his program to a Democratic Congress there will be no
surprises. Not from the Congress. And not from the American people.
Obama had made it clear that these were his intentions. And McCain
and the Republicans had already warned them of the peril. Redistribution was an issue in the election, and the electorate will
have voted for it. No surprises.