I just may have found a campaign to love. Not a candidate, necessarily, but a campaign. We met one moonlit night in Washington Square Park. Illinois Senator Barack Obama was there, but what excited me were the other people. Their candidate may not change the world, but sometime down the road, they may.
The September 27 Obama rally in New York wasn’t slick. The only band to play was dreadful; the first speaker was a seven or eight-year-old, girl who read a letter that I couldn’t hear. Next came Jonathan, 16, from Harlem who said, “Obama is all about change and change is what is needed in this country.” And then, after a very long pause, appeared Cuauhtemoc Figueroa, Obama’s National Field Director. Figueroa, known as “Temo,” proceeded to introduce the enormous crowd of celebrity-hungry New Yorkers to an extensive list of campaign volunteers. Among those was “Jeff,” a young lawyer who’d given up his home to the office-less campaign for the week (he slept on his roof), and a tiny blonde who is directing field operations in New Hampshire. I think Figueroa said she had just graduated from high school.
Conventional campaign calculus-crunchers will likely conclude that Obama’s fresh-faces will be no match for Clinton’s professional cut-throats in the upcoming primary contests. When I saw Clinton address an open air rally in Washington, she was flanked by US Senators, a past Secretary of State and Grammy Award winner Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds. When Obama took the stage in New York, he stood beneath the Washington Square Arch, alone. (The most weighty of the rally’s politician participants was State Senator Bill Perkins (D-Harlem.))
Then again, conventional campaign correspondents don’t actually cover campaigns; they cover candidates. It’s the problem with what we’ve come to call “horserace” coverage. It’s all about the horses, never about the people in the stands. Barack Obama may not be the most interesting thing about the Obama campaign.
In New York, after the rally, Figueroa wasn’t hanging with the media, he was hanging with the field workers. “We don’t train volunteers. We train organizers,” he told me. The son of farm worker organizers (and a former top politico at AFSCME) Figueroa knows the difference between a volunteer — who does what s/he’s told — and an organizer who’s a decision-maker in his/her community. At Camp Obama, the campaign’s twice-weekly training sessions in Chicago, participants train with Figueroa’s mentors — men like Harvard Professor Marshall Ganz, once a United Farm Workers organizing director — and with the people who trained Obama - mentees of grassroots organizer Saul Alinsky.
It’s about this campaign but it’s also about seeding the states with people who have the tools to make change, says Figueroa. And we’re not just talking about money, or virtual tools. The big news from the Obama campaign this weekend may not be the 501,000 donations from more than 350,000 people, or even Obama’s 28:24:22 lead in Iowa over Clinton and Edwards in the latest Newsweek poll. The big news may be from South Carolina, where according to the local The State, “Obama has put together a high-tech and grass-roots get-out-the-vote campaign unmatched by anything seen in the state before.” Obama is organized in all 46 counties. On Sunday, according to the campaign’s in-state bloggers, first-time canvassers went door to door from 31 staging locations in 26 of them. Among the lynchpin institutions of Obama’s South Carolina campaign are local barbershops and beauty salons. This is not your standard consultants and carpetbaggers’ campaign.
For all his rousing rhetoric, the sad truth is, Obama’s campaign promises are milquetoast. The most specific pledge he made in New York was to raise automakers’ gas-consumption standards to 40 miles per gallon. That’s not going to change the world. But the last time a campaign was this excited about it participants, Howard Dean was leading it. Dean’s candidacy fizzled but the blogosphere his campaign cultivated changed campaign calculus for good. If Obama can plant as many real roots in the states as Dean sowed netroots in the blogosphere, grassroots politics may yet grow a candidate with enough spine and independence to break with the establishment.
Want to see Obama’s campaigners in action? Tomorrow, October 2, supporters are gathering in 18 cities across the country, among them: Tuscaloosa, AL, Phoenix, AZ, San Diego, CA, Colorado Springs, CO, Lawrence, KS, Columbia, MO, Princeton, NJ, Brooklyn, NY and Nashville, TN.
Laura Flanders is the host of RadioNation and the author of Blue Grit: True Democrats Take Back Politics from the Politicians.
Obama is a liar and a hypocrite, just like the rest of the Democrats. He says “no option” is off the table when it comes to Iran. He says we have a right to invade Pakistan. Until this year he has voted for *every* war funding bill–and he isn’t doing nearly enough to stop the war *now*. He supported the bankruptcy “reform” that the credit card industry (one of his biggest corporate donors) asked the Bush administration for. He’s just another pro-empire corporate shill.
He’s the male version of Condi Rice.
“…and change is what is needed in this country.”
Change. Buddy can you spare a dime?
After these gangsters finish with the country we’ll all need to vote for The Nun Of The Above.
Laura,
I am disappointed and ASHAMED of you for this piece! You, one of the alleged “top Progressives” in the media write this piece while Dennis Kucinich is tossed into the void of a mainstream media black hole.
If you want to fall in love with a campaign, go to a Kucinich rally. See the glimmer of hope for our country in the eyes of those who believe a wonderful America is possible under leader with integrity and sensitivity AND strength!
Every mention of Obama and Clinton just gives MORE name-awareness to a couple of politics-and-rhetoric-as-usual candidates.
Laura,
I am disappointed and ASHAMED of you for this piece! You, one of the alleged “top Progressives” in the media write this piece while Dennis Kucinich is tossed into the void of a mainstream media black hole.
If you want to fall in love with a campaign, go to a Kucinich rally. See the glimmer of hope for our country in the eyes of those who believe a wonderful America is possible under leader with integrity and sensitivity AND strength!
Every mention of Obama and Clinton just gives MORE name-awareness to a couple of politics-and-rhetoric-as-usual candidates. Granted, you point out the flaws in Obama, but wouldn’t it be more “PROGRESSIVELY CORRECT” to point out the fact that Dennis Kucinich just made a WHOPPING $300,000 fund-raising goal? And that he did it by NOT accepting ANY corporate/lobbyist funds?!
Why do writers slant their stories in this direction? Why write about the negative and ignore “pushing” the poitive options?
I love my term above and hope it becomes mainstream. We, who truly want a GREAT COUNTRY again, must ignore the negative and the slanted, left-handed articles and focus on being “PROGRESSIVELY CORRECT” IN ALL WE DO.
http://www.dennis4president.com/home/
What the United States needs at this point is a total overhaul, but clearly the majority of people here are hardly ready for that. Meanwhile the dollar slides, the country falls further into debt, the wars go on, health care becomes ever more expensive and dysfunctional, education the same. We are truly deep into a state of decadence now, but there is no will or energy to try to overcome the decadent trend, and most here don’t even recognize it as a reality. Obama appears to offer change, but does he really? No. Kucinich is the only one talking about real change, and of course he is treated as an oddball who could never be elected. He gets the Nader treatment as do all who call for real change. I’m afraid this country is headed irreversibly in the direction of a big fall, financially and otherwise. Too late to save it.
Obama is 100% image and 0% substance.
There is no way any candidate could have started their campaign nearly two years prior to the 2008 election and been anything else. The corporate coffers are the only place to get the amount of money needed to sustain a campaign for that long. Corporate support comes with corporate strings attached.
actually, DCbeltway, Obama isn’t the male Condi Rice. Condi is a bland, mediocre right-wing academic opportunist, who stirred up W’s juvenile, frat-boy “jungle fever”, every time she walked in the room (which was, according to eye witness accounts, the only time W ever appeared wakeful in a meeting).
Obama is something different, more like the male Hillary Clinton, sharp, glib, utterly contrived and scripted. Obama is like Rice in only one real respect - they are both incredibly shallow. Politically, looking at his time in the Senate, Obama has made essentially no important contributions or statements nor has he really cast any courageous votes. Instead of the leader and agent of change he likes to say he is, I think it is more accurate to characterize Obama as Joe Lieberman’s lawn jockey.
Still I hope Laura Flanders is right. I hope all the people in Obama’s organization carry on the fight after they realize they’ve been used and tossed aside by their current champion. God knows we can use people who still believe in something better than the dog-eat-dog hellhole we are turning our country and our world into.
Although I do like Dennis Kucinich, I hate to see his fans beat up on Barack Obama for lack of something better to say.
What’s so much to dislike about a bi-racial, bi-cultural (spare us any crude junk about bi-anything else) teacher of Constitutional law who expressed his disapproval of the current war from the beginning?
Obama realizes if he was to be actually elected that he would need all “options on the table” for negotiating foreign affairs. So he is not nearly so much at liberty to say too much in a campaign like other candidates such as Biden (and Kucinich) can–since those guys know they’re not really going to be elected anyway.
Obama knows how some other opponents oddly fell out of races clearing him an unexpected path in his Illinois campaigns, and I’m sure he wonders privately if it could happen again at a national level. So he is careful with words. Why fault him for being smart?
As for why Obama is not leading the charge at Jena?
Because he is not a single-issue guy and can’t afford to be labeled as another Jesse Jackson.
Obama is for those partisan types that desire a choice other than Hillary. That is all he is–an empty slate to project a anybodybutHillary hope on.
No one can predict what Obama is going be as a President of the USA. Consideraing all the condidates that could win, he is probably the best to sponsor change.
What we need to do is to vote out repugs and democrats who are the status quo so that the next president knows that the ‘new’ congress wants change.
Of course the best solution is a total remake of congress and the election process but we will need a president to sponsor them. Lacking a total revolution of course.
Sell out hand puppets, all of them. Even Kucinich has a hand up his ass, just ask him about Paul Wellstone.Total revolution is the only course.
Obama can’t be elected; he is, huh, well, BLACK.
I still have customers that insist he can’t be elected because he’s a Muslim. The American public are ill informed and well, I hate to say this, but for the most part just plain stupid. They can’t be bothered to check facts, do research or anything that would indicate they might be capable of LEARNING. Critical thinking has gone the way of the DoDo. Perhaps we should just sit by and let these fools unleash the beast by attacking Iran. I’m really beginning to believe a little ethnic cleansing of our own might be necessary in this Country.
From one of those cities, Colorado Springs, I am giving out a big yawn……………….
I heard Obama is a nicotine addict and smokes cigarettes. I may be petty, but I prefer a President who is healthy. Even though I would never vote for the guy, he has a wife and two daughters. He should quit smoking. And then make a big deal of it.
Dear sweet naive Laura. Progressive tactics are meaningless if the campaign that’s using them has a corrupt overall strategy.
Obama’s campaign has raised about $80 million already. This is what corruption looks like.
Campaign spending limits (including banning independent expenditures and shortening election seasons), is the answer.
I really hate it when Obama sings these love songs to triangulation; about how he is supposedly beyond “partisan bickering,” meaning he is a fake centrist with every plan of turning against his base supporters in favor using his power to strengthen the right wing’s hold on this country, all the while propagandizing what he’s doing as if it was noble. Obama’s campaign is apparently not progressive at all, though, so it doesn’t need my attention; their candidate has a worthless platform.
Actually the only person worth a vote in this or any election is me. But until you all realize this vote Kucinich or Gravel in the primary and hold your nose and vote for Hillary in the general election.
Bu$h the inferior and the Republicans have everything screwed up so bad that thing will get better by default.
Obama is not good. That much is true.
But for the life of me, I cannot understand why people continue to support Dennis Kucinich. It seems clear that Kucinich makes the “Democratic” party appear to have a left-wing. At the same time, the leadership of the party continues and will continue to support wars of aggression in the name of national security. The leadership of the party will never support a single-payer health care system since this would be an attack on the health insurance industry. It is not in the interest of the leadership to make such an attack.
If Kucinich leaves the Demcratic Party, perhaps his words would have a lot more substance. Right now, they really don’t have any.
usrcjp
“If Kucinich leaves the Demcratic Party, perhaps his words would have a lot more substance. Right now, they really don’t have any.”
Your (il)logic escapes me. So you are a “party pounder” insread of an issues person? If he were Green or Independent SAYING THE SAME THINGS you would support him?
It’s because of this inane thinking that we are going down the toilet in a big WHOOOOSH of politics-as-usual.
You and your ilk are the reason we are in the trouble we’re in.
usrcjp - people support Kucinich because Americans have been brainwashed from birth to be stupid when it comes to politics. Nonetheless, since the USA has begun to stink like a decomposing corpse, even the politically brainwashed are beginning to recognize that something’s very wrong. To these people, who never had any other political ideas beyond “Vote Democratic!” before, Kucinich is the first political figure they’ve ever seen who seems to offer some truth and some genuinely good ideas. One might say that rising from blind follower of the Democratic Party to being a Kucinich supporter is a first step towards improved political consciousness.
But to recognize Kucinich’s shortcomings — that’s a more advanced step. People still in the first stage of freeing themselves don’t realize that Kucinich is simply someone with watered-down socialist ideas, combined with an unattractive loyalty to the Dem Party. As you say, he’s willing to play this “Left Ornament” role, trying to con people into believing that the Dems have a left wing, & thereby hoping to keep potential left defectors from bolting the party.
So basically, a Kucinich supporter is someone who realizes that the mainstream Democrats stink; but who hasn’t yet realized that Kucinich is just a device to keep antiwar types from quitting the Democrats altogether. There’s no doubt, for example, that when the party nominates its next warmongering candidate, Kucinich will support that candidate, just as he did for Kerry 3 years ago. His real role is ensuring that left-leaning waverers still wind up voting for Hillary in the general.
Dear Rich M,
I am one of those naive Kucinich supporters, just breaking out of my shell into an infantile political consciousness. Could you please be specific about why Kucinich’s ideas are “watered down socialism”? Could you please give some specific examples?
Thanks!
Oh, and maybe watered down socialism is better than none at all. Hillary’s crazy laughter at the very notion that her health plan might be conceived of as socialism demonstrates what she thinks of it…utterly absurd, unthinkable, not even worth addressing with anything other than a cackle.
At some point people need a small dose of realism in their lives. I would adore having Gravel or Kucinich as POTUS but realistically that is NOT going to happen EVER. Even if Kucinich could somehow by some miracle get the Dem nomination, he’d be shredded in the General election. Let’s see we could start with his wife (personally I think she’s great) she is 30 years his junior with a tongue stud. Do you really think the South or Midwest is going to allow her as “First Lady”? I know it sucks and I wish it were not that way but IT IS. I’m not sure what I’ll do come voting time. I know Obama isn’t great but I also know I’d much rather see him than Hillary get the nomination. I don’t think Hillary stands a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the General. The right HATES her ass and half of the Dems do as well. I doubt seriously Obama could win the General either. He would lose the South in a landslide. Racism is alive and well and I’ve overheard more than a few customers discussing how much fun it would be to assassinate him were he elected. Edwards maybe the only “electable” Dem in the General. He could actually pull some of the South.
Right now the only one who can stop Hillary is probably Barack.
I like what I am hearing from Obama lately and of course Hillary is back to saber rattling for a war with Iran. It did not take her long to show her pro war stance once again after a short respite and a temporary anti war position.
Hillary will only bring us another fascist white house dedicated to corporate power. She might be a little softer around the edges than the madmen we now have running the country but I am certainly not looking forward to another do nothing go backwards Clinton administration beholden to AIPAC.
Of course intelligent progressive Americans really have only one choice for a decent president this time around, Dennis Kucinich.
You know when Roland Reagan was asked to sum up his feelings about America in one word he chose Community; he said that the word exemplified what America was all about a community of people working together.
Apparently it did not occur to him that the word is a derivative of the word Communist the political philosophy that he worked against most of his life.
The point is that we now have people castigating candidates like Kucinich because his ideas smack of water-downed socialism.
Well, I for one am not afraid of that particular word in fact I embrace it as a philosophy that helps bring people together acting in unison for the betterment of individuals and our nation as a whole.
I know that this nation has already sipped the poisonous nationalistic kool-aid distributed by the neocons and that it is almost too late for a candidate like Kucinich to emerge victorious but for the hand full of people still left who have not been brainwashed let the day dreaming continue.
It still might be possible to elect an FDR type of president but not right now in the midst of world chaos that has our people too frightened to select a peace candidate.
SEQUOIABISON: I applaud your common sense and candor. There are too many “party pounders” on this site (No names) who would rather have another politics-as-usual nominee than be bold enought to have some courage, take a risk, and go for the “watered down Socialistic candidate” who is the ONLY one who speaks for “We The People”. (Ron Paul pushers, do
some “serious ” research!)
Dennis Kucinich has said it best: “I CAN win–IF you vote for me”! What harm could it POSSIBLY do to support him in the primaries? THERE’S A MESSAGE THAT CAN BE SENT EVEN IF HE CAN’T PULL OFF THE NOMINATION!!! What other SERIOUS Progressive candidates are there out there in the two main parties. (NO! The time is NOT RIGHT for a third, TRUE Progressive party no matter how much we may fantasize on it.)
Some of the comments I read from “alleged” Progressives attacking D.K. because he happens to want to change the system from within frustrate and sicken me. In poker, you play the hand you are dealt. You can’t play a fantasy hand.
And you do the best you can with what you are looking at.
To beat up and seek reasons NOT to support Kucinich is both childish AND DANGEROUS to this country and at this time.
celebrity, I hope you didn’t take my post as beating up DK. I like him alot, that doesn’t change the fact that he’s not electable in the General election and is a long,longshot in the primaries. The harm that comes from voting for DK in the primary is it will almost certainly ensure Hillary getting the nomination. That will leave Progressives with the fabulous choice between a Republican or a Republican in Democratic clothes in the General. Which will almost certainly guarantee another four years of a Republican President because Hillary won’t win the General. As I stated, I’ve not yet decided what I’ll do come primary time, I’m watching the polls closely and will make my decision much closer to the actual vote. I live in Florida, so it’s not like my vote is actually going to count for shit anyway…
P.S. This is assuming of course we EVEN have an election in 2008, were I a gambler I wouldn’t bet my money on it, so this is really just mental masturbation at this point.
SEQUOIABISON (9:50 am) — “The point is that we now have people castigating candidates like Kucinich because his ideas smack of water-downed socialism.”
– I’m not “castigating” him on those grounds. On the contrary, a serious socialist program would be far better than what people like Kucinich or Nader offer. One of the main things wrong with Kucinich is that he’s trying to pretend that today’s crisis can be solved within the framework of capitalism & the 2 big capitalist parties. This is like applying a bandaid to a situation that needs “major surgery” (ie, a far-reaching & drastic overhaul).
pleasethink (5:53 am) –Could you please be specific about why Kucinich’s ideas are “watered down socialism”? …
– Hard to do it justice in such limited space, but I’ll try. // Basically, Kucinich is presenting himself as a “reformer” of our current economic system. Reformers stand on the message that “Our system is fundamentally good. We’ve gotten a bit off course, but things can be set right again with just some limited palliative measures.” Reformers don’t aim at fundamental change; rather, they argue that it’s possible to retain the foundations of the current system, by seeking only limited changes of the system’s most glaring deficiencies.
Let’s take as an example the emergence of the US under Bush as an open military aggressor in the world, similar in many ways to the Nazis. The underlying problem producing this situation is not just a few “wicked” warmongers who have “made a bad decision” by invading other countries. Rather, it’s that the entire decision-making apparatus of the country is dominated by big businesses, all of whom see that controlling Middle East oil, & fighting endless wars, is in their interests. The oil companies see that; the whole military-industrial complex (MIC) sees that; and Wall St sees it too. IOW, this is not just a matter of a small cabal in the White House; rather, it springs naturally from the whole structure of the US economic system.
Now, the political structure of the US is 100% in the hands of two parties, and BOTH of those parties are controlled by the consensus of corporate needs. So it’s no surprise that the government, regardless of which party is in power, acts again & again in the interests of corporate needs, while ignoring the needs & interests of the rest of the population. Basically our “democracy” is that you get to vote on which supporter of the MIC and Wall St you prefer. That’s the extent of the “choice.” The power of the MIC & Wall St is not “on the table” for discussion.
So, a guy like Kucinich comes along & says, quite rightly, “The war is wrong. We should withdraw from Iraq.” That’s quite true, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t address 2 big things: the fact that we are limited to just 2 parties — both controlled by Wall St & the MIC. And it doesn’t address the issue that the immense power of the MIC is itself a natural consequence of capitalism. If you have capitalism, companies that can make war-related profits are going to thrive, gain influence, & organize themselves into an “MIC.” It’s inevitable, & this is what has happened. The interests of this group are often opposed to those of the rest of the population. Yet the govt represents them, and only them — not the rest of the population.
Even if a Kucinich was by some miracle elected, & even if he was able to order a withdrawal from Iraq, we would STILL have an MIC, and STILL have a political system of 2 parties subservient to Wall St & the MIC. It would only be a question of time until they organized for another campaign of permanent war. Thus, withdrawing from Iraq would cure the symptom, but not the disease.
What’s even worse about Kucinich is that he’s not really a serious reformer. He played exactly the same role in 2004. He knows perfectly well that he’s at about 2% in the polls; that the media treat him as though he’s invisible; & that he has no chance whatever to defeat the corporate (ie, “mainstream” or “electable”) candidates. He knows he will wind up supporting the warmonger Hillary. Yet he’s out there pretending that the things he rightly criticizes (the war, the current health-care system, environmental dangers, etc) can be solved within the framework of the Democratic Party, which is a party of Wall St & the MIC.
Oboma = Uncle Tom. A white guy who happens to have black skin. Suppose Laura and her supporters in status quo party gave an event and nobody showed up?
This is the last time, I will ever read this irrelevent women and her attempts to prop up more of the same.
Gee, as far as I can tell w/out rereading these droning comments over again, not one of you noticed Laura wasn’t writing about Obama but about on-the-ground participation in politics.
I guess maybe it left many of you panting for breath, sedentary as you are behind your words, and unable to summon the oxygen needed to respond with lucidity.
Solution: Get out from behind your fricking keyboards and join those who are actually out to make a difference with voters. Yup, like those knocking on doors in SC. YOu’d be surprised what a little fresh air will do.
“I still have customers that insist he can’t be elected because he’s a Muslim.”
Kristina40 : Please check your facts before posting…
Obama is NOT a Muslim, he’s a Christian!
And one more MINOR DETAIL…..with our vote counting process now TOTALLY in the hands of PRIVATE CORPORATIONS, do you all think for one minute that the outcome will reflect the American voters choices??? With little input from citizens, our Democracy has been silently replaced…electronic voting machines controlled by a few elite politicos now select our leaders!! To correct this, they give us heat sensitive printouts for verification….look at any receipt you have that is more than a month old and you will see how well THAT will work!!! Instead of a vote count being conducted by citizen volunteers, it is now rushed through solely to get an INSTANTANEOUS RESULT FOR THE MEDIA….after all, they just can’t miss their DEADLINES!!!
REFUSE TO VOTE ON THESE MONSTROSITIES!! DEMAND PAPER BALLOTS!!!
The only thing I took away from this article was how to spell “milquetoast”