Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
How the White House Misjudged the Political Landscape
As progressives on and offline continue to debate the future of the health care reform bill, attention is finally shifting to the underlying factors that have gotten us into this mess in the first place: namely, the mistakes of the White House. Meteor Blades at Daily Kos asks the right question - why is it that progressives are getting blamed for this? Others reply that Obama does the best he can, and that to avoid a collapse in the 2010 elections, Democrats and progressives need to "point out all the good" that Obama has done so far.
But that isn't enough. The fact is that Democratic electeds, the president first and foremost, have completely misunderstood American politics in 2009. I'm not talking just about the failed and senseless efforts at bipartisanship, though Obama's underestimation of the level of control Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the teabaggers have over the Republican Party hasn't helped.
Instead I'm talking about the inability of the White House to understand the changing nature of the American left. The late 20th century experience of a marginalized and weak left has been replaced during the 2000s by a much more powerful and popular movement. The White House's unwillingness to treat that movement as an equal partner is damaging not only the health care bill, but the political fate of Democrats in 2010 and, potentially, 2012.
The collapse of support for the bill reveals a deeper and growing divide, an unwillingness of most Americans to embrace a flawed process. In particular, progressives - activists and voters - need a clear, signal victory in order to avoid complete 1994-style demoralization. Something big and bold, something clearly progressive that forced moderates and conservatives to concede something important, something that will give more people a reason to rally to Obama's defense when he is in a difficult place.
Comprehensive immigration reform along the lines of the Grijalva proposal would achieve this. Repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell would achieve this (and repeal of DOMA would be a grand slam). Firing Geithner and Summers would achieve this. Breaking up some of the big banks would achieve this. And yes, a public option of some kind would have achieved this.
Instead we have a White House and a Senate Democratic leadership that still believes we live in the 1990s, where the "left" is weak and has little popular support. They've not understood the transformative effect of the 2000s and Bush in particular, who helped create a genuine American left with real and widespread popular support for the first time in 40 years.
The White House does not view progressives as equal partners, as people who have legitimate concerns and priorities that need to be included in any deal. They still take the Clintonian view that the "left" can be appeased either through a few nice words in a speech, and if that fails, can be crammed down by being told they're wreckers, being told this is the best progressives can get, being told that progressives are irrelevant (even while the WH's defensive actions show they're anything but irrelevant).
The White House hasn't yet grasped that some basic and timeless rules of politics still apply: that you have to deliver something to your supporters to keep them on board. Something that excites them, something that gets them motivated. Ever since 1993 Democratic presidential Administrations have assumed those rules are in abeyance, where supporters will stay on board out of fear of Republicans, unwilling to act on their beliefs or frustrations out of an internalized belief that America is a conservative place hostile to progressive values.
The Bush years destroyed those internalized frustrations. Congressional Democratic support for the Iraq War destroyed what existed of progressive acceptance of that Clintonite strategy, and freed the left to actually feel confident in asserting its own values regardless of what the Democratic leadership says, because any trust in that leadership was destroyed in 2002. Obama understood this out of necessity during the primary, when he had to embrace this to defeat Hillary Clinton. But once that was achieved, he went right back to the old Bill Clinton strategy of appeasing the center-right and assuming progressives would simply go along with it - and once elected, Obama surrounded himself with old Clinton hands who espoused the same basic view of politics.
There were a number of instances in 2009 that showed Obama doesn't quite grasp political realities, and the snowballing collapse of health care reform is just one element of that misunderstanding.
Until he sees progressives as genuine partners, Obama will face declining political fortunes. That's his problem, something he and his team should and eventually will address. For our part, progressives should concern ourselves with how to further build up our own institutions and power, instead of wasting time trying to prop up a weak president who views us and our views and our work with contempt.
Robert Cruickshank is the Public Policy Director at the Courage Campaign, a 700,000 member organizing network based in California that pushes for progressive change. He is also an editor at Calitics, a blog focusing on California politics.
136 Comments so far
Show AllI would love to see Dennis Kucinich "GO GREEN" and take ALL Progressives along with him. The times couldn't possibly be any better for that. I've been noticing Dennis getting more and more frustrated and angry with "his" party and hope that some influential friends like Cindy Sheehan, David Swanson, Cynthis Mckinney, Ralph Nader, and more can get through to him VERY soon.
What would be accomplished by this? The Green Party would grow IMMENSELY pulling Progressive Dems and many Independents along for the joys of establishing a "People's Party". I can posit this to you folks but I have no voice in the establishment.
Amen
Go Green Dennis. I am finally switching from Democrat to Green myself.
The author's opinion that the Obama Regime made ANY mistakes is as ludicrous as accusing the Dubya Regime of making mistakes.
Decisions made by both Regimes have consistently benefitted the 2% at the expense of the 98%, thereby assuring an eternal revenue stream to both parties from the corporations.
I agree. It's sad, but true. And this is why he didn't get my vote. He had establishment written all over him and if anyone paid attention to his voting record in the senate or even listened to what he said on the campaign trail, it would have been obvious that he was never progressive in any way, shape or form. I'm done with the two-party system. They lost me in 2006 when impeachment was taken off the table. They don't get my donations anymore.
I agree with the poster above... I'd love to see Kucinich leave the Democrats. They don't deserve him nor do they treat him particularly well.
What "landscape" is Cruickshank himself surveying? Maybe the little patch of true leftist sentiment represented by most of the posters along with an increasing number of authors on Common Dreams? Even the 700,000 (wow)members of Courage Campaign do not a landscape make, laudable as their efforts are. I think that Obama and company judged the political landscape of the country very well indeed. They saw a demoralized and apathetic electorate that could be manipulated by a charismatic candidate for President who played the "race card" to a fare-thee-well: the blacks in their pride of one of "their own" in the White House, the whites for liberals who needed a dramatic way of demonstrating that liberality by their choice for President. American politics is identity politics and left-right distinctions are pretty irrelevant. Not to say that this is always to be: the "faith of a progressive" is that the disasters generated by our corporate duopoly with its cardboard poster boy President will eventually create a leftist landscape. But for now we'll be enduring for a time that mindless activity that passes for politics in our degraded culture.
Well observed, Jerry.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Well, there's a growing number of blacks who are growing increasingly angry with Obama and speak out against his ploys. And an increasing number of Democatic voters and progressives, no matter how little they may pay attention to the news, are waking up to what's going on. Most US citizens are as dumb as can be, but when everything they count on starts disappearing in the obvious, then they will rebel.
licketyglick: I totally agree with that, as I indicated at the end of my post.
The article wasn't about Obama's political misreads during the campaign, but rather about those that have occurred since. Unless one honestly believes that it doesn't make a dimes worth of difference to Obama whether or not he is elected again, it has to be conceded that he has completely misread the political landscape, because the odds of his being reelected grow longer every day. His fans are few and far between these days.
Perhaps he doesn't care if he's elected again. Maybe what he is putting in place was what he was intended to do and he will be rewarded later in other ways. The money earned being president is a pittance to what he will earn when he leaves. He gets his salary for life anyway. Why does anyone assume he needs to be a two-term president to get done what he wants to get done (and which is not necessarily what WE want done).
GreenMike, I'm with you! Unless Dennis Kucinich runs for office, I will not vote either Democrat or Republican again! I'm an RN from Illinois. After all the work Donna Smith RN, put into advocating for real health care reform, and after realizing that she was basically ignored.....I no longer have faith in the system....period! Votes can be stolen (and have been), so voting may become a sad parody in the future. What will the Left/Progressive's do? We need a serious plan!
OBama and his ilk don't give a dam what the progressives think. There going to do it their way. You don't get it. Neither do the neandrathals in congress especially the senate.
Liberals/Progressives must teach Obama what integrity looks like.
He must be removed from office as soon as possisble
"Comprehensive immigration reform along the lines of the Grijalva proposal would achieve this. Repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell would achieve this (and repeal of DOMA would be a grand slam). Firing Geithner and Summers would achieve this. Breaking up some of the big banks would achieve this. And yes, a public option of some kind would have achieved this."
This quote reveals why "progressives" are in the minority.
It equates a strong populist measure, "breaking up some of the big banks", with a weak populist measure, "a public option."
It also equates all of these with two civil rights issues, repeal of DOMA and repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which while progressive are minority oriented issues and not particularly populist.
Immigration reform, which is also thrown into the mix, is hardly populist at all in that it is generally opposed by the majority.
While all are good "progressive" measures they vary widely in there popular imapct and appeal.
Until we have an American left that focuses first and foremost on issues of class equity and strongly opposes the current acceleration in class stratification, the left will continue to be seen as elitist and irrelevant by the majority of Americans.
True, for class is mutual gratification among equals, worshiping
the higher class and enrichment upon the misery of those below.
Right on, DJH!
Alinsky was onto it. In one of his last interviews, he talked about organising on a class rather than community basis, because he understood that that's where the biggest opportunity is. Make working people 'alive to their grievances', and get them moving in solidarity. Unstoppable!
The left bought OBamas line for change hook, line and sinker...aren't you fired up and ready to kick him out...what we have seen thus far is only prelude for the next 3 years.
Not ALL of the left bought it. Some of us voted third party. :-)
Obama is young politically, as he started running for president after only a year in the US Senate. He never learned how Washington works, so he has no idea that he has to set the agenda, be a forceful leader (if he has it in him beyond rhetoric,) use the bully pulpit, and threaten to veto legislation if it doesn't measure up.
Because he is so naive, he listens to that forceful Clintonite, Rahm Emmanuel. No wonder we have Clinton redux. Emmanuel is arrogant and not willing to take any advice. He is famous for fighting Gov. Dean tooth and nail against the plan for a 50-state strategy and going for small contributions from the Democrats instead of the Wall Street interests and a small club of other influential donors. It was only because Dean won that argument that we got a Democratic majority in 2006, after his hard work supporting candidates in states the party previously ignored and ceded to Republicans. Emmanuel as head of the DCCC, which supports or opposes candidates for the House in the Dem primaries, always supported the more conservative candidate over a progressive. He fights progressives to this day wherever he can. In Chicago in 2006, his own area, he fought the woman who got Henry Hyde to retire by nearly winning in 2004 with a more conservative woman Iraq Vet, and she lost the election that the first woman probably would have won. He backed many candidates who lost because they were not progressive enough for the district, but nobody ever questions his political expertise.
The worst problem the Democratic Party has outside of the bribe taking from lobbyists is that they listen to the corps of advisers they pay to help them do the last election better. These people have studied political advising at college, are poll takers not politicians, meaning they have zero feeling for the people. Of course, these people do not take into consideration that there have been changes in the public and its needs between those elections, so Emmanuel and the others are trying to do 1993 all over again but better.
I have seen the mechanism of this party's stupidity up close and personally as a candidate for the California Assembly in 1994, when the state party was refusing to support in any way candidates in districts that were winnable but had not had a Democrat there for awhile. The district in LA County that I ran in had 11% of the voters not registered either D or R, and 9% of them were independents, many of them professors in the Claremont colleges. But the party could not see that those voters could be the difference in the election when the R voters were not in the majority and had only 2% more registration than the Ds. This lack of support by the party was true in every race, federal or state, and in 1994 the legislature for the first time in a long time was R majority along with the Congress, though it turned over again the the following election. The lack of support for D candidates around the state did not change until about a decade later.
So Rahm Emmanuel in his vaunted position as gatekeeper is trying to do the Clinton health care politics better by not putting out a plan like the one that was shot down under Clinton. He would have been the one to advise Obama not to publicize a plan that could be heavily criticized the insurance companies, and he really does not care 2 cents about whether the people get health care relief or not. So in order to support their president, the Democrats in the House and Senate will enact some version of these horrific health care bills in the conference committee, Obama will sign it and take credit for its passage. The the merde will hit the fan, and the people will have Obama to blame for less Medicare benefits, very little oversight over the insurance companies, higher premiums and fines for not taking insurance, when we all could have had what the people have been polled over about a decade to prefer, single payer health care in a form like the highly regarded by voters Medicare. Obama could have gotten HR 676, the Conyers & Kucinich bill to put us all, except those getting served by the VA, under an improved form of Medicare, a bill that is quite short and very clear. You can read it at thomas.loc.gov.
The Obama/Bill Clinton comparison is weak. Obama himself has stated his preference for Reagan over Clinton, and his polices are closer to Reagan's than to Clinton's.
Bill Clinton cut military budgets, he didn't increase them. He cut the size of the military, he didn't increase it. He kept U.S. troops out of foreign wars, he didn't escalate foreign wars and start new ones. When Islamic radicals bombed the World Trade Center the first time, Clinton treated it like a crime (which is what it was), he didn't invade a country.
Clinton also rolled back some of the Reagan tax cuts for the wealthy, something Obama has not done. He transformed federal budget deficits into budget surpluses, and began paying down the national debt. Obama is increasing deficits and the debt.
The Clinton-haters don't need to tell me all the terrible things Bill Clinton did. I already know. The point is that Obama is worse than Clinton, and in fact is closer to Reagan.
As to blaming Rahm Emanuel for giving bad advice, please! Obama knew Emanuel well. He wanted him, and picked him. Obama knew what he was doing.
Yes, Bill Clinton was much better than this Obama scoundrel.....Obama does know what he is doing but that's the problem....Obama speaks and acts in very deceitful but skilled ways....I told someone months ago not to expect anything in real change from him and their jaws dropped down to the floor in disbelief.
All you say about Rahm Emanuel is correct, except like nearly everyone else you misspell his name. Emanuel, not Emmanuel. One 'm'. But I think you're being naive, especially for such a policy wonk, in saying Obama is naive about how Washington works. He may have only been in the Senate a couple years but he's a savvy-as-hell politician, which is why he chose someone like Emanuel as chief of staff. He understand perfectly well how the system works, and approves of it. He knew exactly what Emanuel would do and has no problem with it because he's in perfect agreement. If he weren't, do you really think Emanuel could go over the president's head on a matter like health care, especially when Obama considers that the crowning achievement of his administration?
Emanuel has forced thru precisely the kind of health care DEFORM bill Obama has wanted all along, one that favors Big Insurance and Pharma, keeps any form of universal coverage off the table permanently, and cold-shoulders the public, who want single-payer by wide margins. And Naturally is right, that Obama recalls Reagan more than he does Clinton, even though he archly admires them both and seems like he's trying to find just the right blend of Reaganism with Clintonism to fulfill his dreams of the perfect presidency--one that has absolutely nothing to do with answering the needs and demands of the people who foolishly elected him.
You're the one who's naive, not Obama. If you'd been paying attention when he was in the Senate, you'd realize that he's been sold out to corporate interests for many, many years. Yeah, Obama could have pushed for (but almost certainly not gotten, given how sold-out Congress is) HR 676, but he doesn't have and hasn't for a long time had the slightest interest in promoting single-payer health insurance. As you said of Emanuel, Obama "does not care 2 cents about whether the people get health care relief or not." Why is that so hard to see?
Yada,yada,yada....The time for talk is over...we have been betrayed....The people elected OBama not Emmanuel....You don't get it!
The CORP. elite own both parties in Congress and most State houses as well and also the WH. They only care about us when its an election yr. Obama thinks if he can pass this shit taco called HCR he'll be giving Dems. in Congress something to run on in 2010. He's wrong this bill makes things worse not better for most Americans. FORCING people to BUY Private Ins. is NOT extending coverage to anyone no matter what the talking heads and the paid for media whores say. It's Extortion and it will be viewed that way by the Majority of the voters. After 8 yrs. of GOPER lawlessness the last thing the Dems. should have even remotely considered was any kind of Forced mandate to spend $$ on lousy over priced Health Ins. Idiots!
This was really the only paragraph I felt an emphatic yes to:
"For our part, progressives should concern ourselves with how to further build up our own institutions and power, instead of wasting time trying to prop up a weak president who views us and our views and our work with contempt."
The rest you are right about. It is so ridiculously obvious. I also disagree with "some kind of public option" would have satisfied progressives. Even before the public option was ditched progressives were saying this bill should be knocked down and we should start over with real reform. But the only way I see that as in any way possible now is to have a big showdown and a defeat of this bill. I simply can't imagine it's final form being much better than the Senate version. By all means, let's go back to the "sliver" of a public option that the House bill had become. It's still not reform. The Senate "slipped up" with the Medicare buy-in and it made more sense to people than the words "public option" or "single-payer." Now you're seeing more and more people in comments say why don't we just expand Medicare to everyone and pay a little extra tax to do that? I saw just a comment to that effect on HuffPo this morning and left the link to Bernie Sanders' excellent 30-minute speech to Congress the other day. How does anyone with any kind of brain power not find a 2.2% tax with no co-pays and no deductibles and with dental included not extremely attractive and cost-effective?
Why should progressives settle for a corporate giveaway at any level? As another commenter put it, we are basically paying for 100% of this bill already. Why should I pay for the luxury lifestyle of these insurance industry pigs? Why should I and my fellow citizens continue to be a cash cow for the corporations and the government with very little benefit to show for it?
Rich M--
Your points are well made made and after one day short of 11 months in office (will this obscenity of a presidency ever end?) beyond serious dispute. Although saying "I told you so" is faint comfort or satisfaction either to those uttering the phrase or having to hear it, the last 11 months were entirely predictable based on the campaign filings and of the Obama campaign prior to his gaining the presidential nomination and his early appointments prior to innauguration.
Banks and Wall Street ponied up lotsa, lotsa money so, surprise!, Obama supports the continuation of no strings attached Wall Street and banking bailouts and appoints Geithner and Summers to prominent financial oversight positions, keeps Bernanke in his helcopter wher he can shower the world with growing mouhntains of increasingly worthless US currency, and uses Robert Rubin (the chief assassin of Glass-Stegal) as head of his transition team.
Big Pharma, health insurance, HMO's, and the whole rest of the healthcare for profit infrastructure larded up the Obama campaign funds, and so, surprise!, single-payer healthcare is "off the table",
The MIC, not to be outdone, waddled up to the table and plopped down their wad of cash and, surprise!, we now have an expanded Afpak war and a President so brazenly cynical that he uses his Nobel Peace Prize lecture to instruct the world on the need for "just war".
Corporate attorney Hillary Clinton is Secretary of State, Bush family retainer Robert Gates is in charge of Defense, and all of this and so much more happened essentially before day one of "change we can believe in".
Poet
"To be sure, there is a large mass of confused, betrayed & angry people, facing a future of declining living standards"
First their ten thousand ice cream flavors will shrink down to two hundred, and they will feel relief, better appreciation, less indecision.
Then their five thousand pastry flavors will shrink down to one hundred, and they will feel relief, better appreciation, less indecision.
Then their one thousand car models to choose from will shrink down to thirty, and they will feel relief, better appreciation, less indecision.
Fewer opportunities to trade in the old house for the new house, the old furnishings for the new furnishing, the old geographic location for the new geographic location, the old vacation condo for the new vacation condo.
They will wimper for a minute, and then be happy as can be. They didn't really want all this garbage. It was shoved in their faces, by the supply-siders at capitalist central-planning.
Obama didn't "misjudge" the Left, he lied to leftists to get elected.
Didn't FireDogLake just publish Jane Hamsher's report about how "Obama himself is once again arm-twisting someone NOT named Lieberman, Nelson, Landrieu or Lincoln," regarding the health deform bill? http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/18-7
Now they publish this Obama-is-confused malarkey?
Obama is not confused, he's a self-promoting corporatist without a conscience, and he always has been. He's George Bush and Sarah Palin with a better vocabulary and slightly more tolerance for women and gays.
As I said in the Hamsher thread,
"Candidate Obama campaigned for Joe Lieberman in Connecticut in 2006, explained his admiration for Reagan as one who grasped the "excesses of the 1960s" to a Nevada newspaper, privately assured Canadian officials of his devotion to free-trade while lying to Ohio voters that he would renegotiate NAFTA, brazenly promised to escalate the Afghanistan War and unilaterally invade Pakistan ...
As President he has changed little that Bush/Cheney set in place. He took single-payer off the table. Now come revelations that behind the scenes he supports the furthest-right Dems and threatens progressive Dems."
Where's the confusion?
In 1964 Lyndon B. Johnson presented himself as "The Peace Candidate"....Johnson knew that he was going to escalate The Viet Nam Conflict into a full fledged War and he did that using an attack on U.S. Ships that never happened......
58,000 dead American Soldiers and over 3 million dead Vietnamese...(I won't go into the hundreds of thousands of American Vets that have had early deaths because of contact with: Agent Orange, Agent Pink, Agent Purple, and Napalm.)...But, "The Corporate Elite" went away happy with Billions of Dollars.
Barack Obama has turned into someone that is more "Evil" than George W. Bush for he knows exactly what he is doing because he has an intelligence that George W never had.
David Icke, a Brit, predicted exactly what would happen well before the 2008 Election.......see his video by googling "David Icke: Live at the Oxford Union".
The Mass Media, 200 of them Council on Foreign Relations Members along with all of Obama's advisors, keep the "Propaganda" flowing..."What a great speech he gave for his Nobel Peace Prize."
1. Obama claimed that with War you stop people like Hitler:
I guess Obama did not know that the Rothschilds, Bushes, and Rockefellers helped
finance Hitler......Where would his Air Force had been without the Standard Oil additive?
You could even go back to the Bolshevik Revolution and find that the Rockefellers and J.P. Morgan helped finance the Communist takeover of the Soviet Union......
It has always been Capitalists that encouraged both sides of a War. (Read "The True Story of the Bilderberg Group" by David Estulin)
So, when Obama talks about the terrorists being "The Evil" that we are waging a war against.....He forgets who created that enemy and who continues to finance that enemy......The United States and Saudi Arabia hold the most responsibilty for that enemy. And, if there ever were an Independent Investigation of 9/11, we would discover that most of the people involved were working with or for the CIA and the coverup was executed by our own FBI. (Read "The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Commission" by Philip Shenon)
No, Mr Obama, the terrorists are criminals not Nation States and they are no threat to the security of the United States......Terrorists have existed for centuries and will continue to exist with or without you waging a war.
You already have 189,000 Americans, including soldiers and mercenaries, in Afghanistan. You have a puppet Prime Minister and his brother, both of whom are corrupt and you are using the same War Lords that run the drugs as fellow ministers. All of that to protect "The Oil Pipeline"....And you force "The New World Order Army", NATO, to join you, or else!
These two invasions and occupations have meant TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS for the same Corporate Elite that led us into Viet Nam......The People of the United States are still as ignorant as they were in the 70's.......They lack the right information.
Naturally-
You've seem to have completely missed the primary point of the article. Unless you actually believe that Obama really doesn't want to get reelected, you have to concede that yes, he's confused, because his actions are assuring that he will not be reelected.
"...his actions are assuring that he will not be reelected."
GREAT! The time for Kucinich is ripe!
The article posits that President Obama hasn't thrown a bone to the Left, and that oversight will (supposedly) lead to "declining political fortunes" for him, and therefor he must be "confused."
I disagree with the conclusion. Obama has always cynically promoted his career with lies. It's worked for him every step of the way. I don't think he's ever been confused about political realities.
Lying to the Left to gain the Democratic nomination in 2008 was his biggest challenge, since he had done virtually nothing in his political career to advance any cause the Left cares about, and his record in the Senate was distinctly profits-before-people.
Once he won the nomination, placating the Left became much easier. He simply had to sell himself as better-than-the-alternative. As President, it's easier still. Party hacks do his lying for him, all too willing to sacrifice public interest for party power.
As to winning the next election, paying off his insurance, pharma, bankster, MIC and other repugnant-industry backers is the biggest piece in that puzzle. He has that well in hand. Beyond that, I'm sure he calculates that lies will carry the day for him yet again.
Harry Reid was supposed to be a master politican, but aside from staying in office, I don't see what he's accomplished. His public explanations of failing legislation are like limp wrinkled hotdogs smeared with baby-sh*t mustard curled up in in stale moldy buns.
Obama was supposed to be a skilled politician, but unless you count keeping the moneymen temporarily appeased, I don't see it. BO could have kept the bulk of his base right under his thumb with only a few crumbs of social reform, but he clearly chose not to from day 1. Perhaps we should be glad that he didn't bother because it would have been a lot harder for people to see what he really is.
Next time I hear that someone has mad political skillz, I'll be reluctant to believe it without proof. Mind you, I don't consider such ability to be a positive attribute anyway - it just means 'working the system' more successfully, manipulating people both in and out of government, and I despise manipulation.
The utter lack of respect I feel from DC is returned in full.
Obama isn't skilled, as he's shown. He's just arrogant and contemptuous. I have the same respect for him as I had for Bush at this point -- it is a zero sum. He was a slick, more-articulate-than-Bush speech giver with a great marketing team.
Rahm Israel sez "What Left" as Cheney did.
If at first we don't secede then try, try again!
The left-right divide reflects a national self-division that requires healing, not further calls for 'us' against 'them.'Two wings lift a bird. One wing flapping leaves us grounded, moving in circles, as we have seen. From the right comes that part of us that seeks a higher absolute truth to guide us on the 'straight and narrow' and abide with a morally clear world. From the left comes the part that seeks to face the needs of humanity as they are, and build a just world. Each without its companion wing becomes extreme--one imposing rule by hard ordered authority from above, the other allowing dissipated diversity without a coherent center to hold the whole together. The conservative/regressive sitting across the table from the liberal/progressive make a face-off as classic as head versus heart, male versus female, cold versus hot. We need more listening and considering, less projecting and reacting. Otherwise I think this ill eagle is not going to heal and fly.
While the sentiment is beautiful, you assume that the right is intent on the same goal that we are: making our nation a better place. I don't believe that is their intent. Their intent is on winning at all costs, even at the cost of this country. I have seen nothing from the right indicating any desire to work with the left, be on the 'straight and narrow' or "abide with a morally clear world". All I have seen is political strategizing on how to get into power by making every ill the cause of leftist policies.
Rich M., correct on all counts, and as you say, article's author wrong on most counts. And a shout out to Mike in Minnesota, too.
Obama is perfectly secure in relying on triangulation because none of us in the tinder box have done much to answer the question "who will win when we cause Democrats to lose?" in an acceptable way. I think most of us are too busy blogging. Until we have done the work to create an acceptable answer to that question, all of these types of articles, whether they come from the "he doesn't know what he's doing" angle, the "he knows exactly what he's doing -- he's not a progressive" angle, or the "he's doing the best he can in a straitjacketed political system" angle, are just venting by the authors, followed by 75 comments of venting by readers.
There are only two things we can do, and both of them involve the same opening play: organizing locally. Whether you're organizing to create a citizen lobbying effort that can powerfully influence seated legislators, or whether you're organizing an alternative electoral effort to replace seated legislators, or some effective mix of both, either way, it's not going to happen unless you organize. And I don't mean by getting 650 people to poke each other on Facebook. You have to get face to face with people and organize, train, strategize, and organize some more, repeat, repeat, repeat, with all the hard work, risks, and sacrifices that entails.
Steve
local organizing tips here, particularly posts called "how to get started, parts 1 & 2, near the bottom www.commonplan.blogspot.com
PS: before saying "who are you to criticize people for blogging, Mr. Blogger," please log onto the site. It has only a handful of posts, and I think the most recent one is dated over a year ago, and it was the first since a year before that. I may add one more message pretty soon just as a guide to the rest of the posts, but I do not blog, or link, or buzz, or tweet, or digg, or poke, or any of that stuff. I organize in my town and its environs. It's more interesting than doing those other things, widens your social circle, and it works, so you get a good payoff now and then to keep you motivated. Please organize, folks.
SG
"There are only two things WE can do... influence seated
legislators... an alternative electoral effort."
Problem is, WE is only you 40% of the intelligent
middleclass. For you are not the 10% high society,
and you are not my 50% laboring class that did not
vote last November, us being not so fool as to vote
for next dictator.
"50% laboring class"
invisible and mute
some homeless now
others destitute
"40%"
comfortable
indifferent
progressive
"10%"
them
who count the stones in a jar
Personally, I'm with Matt Taibbi on this one. The democratic party is and has been selling out to corporate interests. And all the evidence indicates Obama is right there with them.
I've vowed to see this healthcare bill through and, being an optimist, am holding out slender hope that tiny slivers of improvement can be made to something that will ultimately pass. I will continue to be active in local grassroots but not for Obama or Dems who are not progressive.
This process has been one "compromise" too many. Never thought I would say this, but it might do the Dems and Obama some good to take a pounding in 2010.
When Rahm runs for office again when he leaves the White House, I'd be happy to work to see him defeated.
Tell it to the self-absorbed over at Huffington Post.
OUT OF DARKNESS
Fresh out of college Obama was hired by a multinational corporation
to be groomed for the position of paid actor President of the United
States.
So in 2007 brand Obama was created with but one goal, generate
the maximum amount of popular support. So all of corporate media
kept hidden that Obama was making speeches in cities that appealed
best to the laboring class, speeches to unions promising a revival in
unions, and speeches to the middleclass and rural rich that contradicted
things promised to those oppressed.
The goal being disaster capitalism in its finest hour, to burst the fraud
bubble economy in a way that best gratifies the corporate rich, high
finance took full control of Treasury, military took full control of the
budget and now butcher medicine gets a 35% increase in gross
sales and capital gains.
Excuse me, Where is this Powerful New American Left? You mean the Circular Firing Squad we are witnessing in the carping sections around HCR? The Stupid Liberal Tricks that attacked the Liberal Allies in Congress that are needed if anything is going to go our way? Or maybe it's the massive uprising against the war over the past eight years, you know, the one that brings millions of people out into the streets when we pass the 1000 casualty mark and tens of millions when we pass 2000. Oh, right, that part didn't happen.
And don't kid yourself that third parties are the solution.
In CT in 2008, there were 445,658 Republicans, 817,435 Democrats, 939,282 UnAffilliateds and 8,059 third party voters split between Greens and Libertarians with a few Rightwingnut parties as well. And that's Connecticut, a very blue state.
In our current political system, winner takes all at 50%plus one. If you don't have the numbers, you lose. That's why there are parties. Until the entire system is changed, this will be a continuing situation. We don't have proportional government (thank doG) and having several small parties competing for a seat means that political deals must be struck between them to get over the top.
The vast majority of Americans, when polled on specific issues answer in a mode that can only be described as Liberal. But ask them if they are Liberal or Conservative, they answer Conservative often as not.
But most Americans give less thought to their political choices than they do to their entertainment choices. People that can recite baseball stats back to the relief pitchers in the early sixties can't name all the Congressional delegation of their state.
I like the article. Especially this central conclusion:
". . . progressives should concern ourselves with how to further build up our own institutions and power, instead of wasting time trying to prop up a weak president who views us and our views and our work with contempt."
How do we build up our own institutions? Our power?
What new institutions do we need?
I have my answers. What are yours?
"I have my answers. What are yours?"
I like what Marc Shuler wrote a few months back--I call it Make Them Pay A Price:
"As soon as the left realizes that the Democrats are not on their side, it becomes much clearer and easier to start to work to build the political power on the left that we need. The key is not to tip-toe around the edges of the Democrats. The key is not to ally with the Democrats. The key is to go straight after the Democrats and try to take from them the power they hold by pretending to support progressive ideals. When you realize that we must hurt the Democrats to build our own politial power, and when you are ok with that because you realize the Democrats are not on our side, then the sorts of actions and campaigns we need to be raising become much clearer.
My suggestion would be that we try to run independent campaigns in 2010 where the Democrats are most vulnerable. Any congressional seat that the Democrats won by a small margin on Obama's coattails in 2008 should be a target for a strong anti-war, pro-worker, anti-wall street opposition campaign.
We might not be able to win those races ourselves. But we can make the Democrats lose. We can put into danger their majority in Congress. We can probably also cost them a Senate seat or two.
When we develop and display the power to inflict pain on the Democrats, we'll discover that they will become much more interested in actually supporting our issues. Do you think they'd have diss'd Single Payer in this health care debate if they knew as a lock-tight certainty that an angry left would cost them their majority in the House?
We need to show them that we can hurt them. My feeling is that what the left needs to do is to try to kick the Democrats in the nuts as hard as we can in 2010. Maybe that will get their attention. If not, we start planning on how to kick them even harder in 2012."
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/21664#12075
The main problem I see with your thesis is that it presumes the nominal Democrats are in it to win. I'm not sure that's true. Haven't we seen a lot of behavior that looks like what I believe in boxing is called "taking a dive"?
I'd suggest an alternative: go for both Dems and GOP seats in the primaries. During Huey Long's time, there were both leftist Dems AND leftist GOPers allied with him, and reactionary GOP AND reactionary Dems allied against him. His most virulent opponent was Joe Robinson of Arkansas, the *Dem* leader! The landscape wasn't polarised as it is today (and especially not a monopole!). There were, in some sense, ideological parties 'hidden' within the nominal parties. We could create that situation again.