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Obama at One: Little Surprising in Absence of Progressive Social Movement
I've been searching hard for a highlight. The only thing that comes close is some of Obama's rhetoric; I don't see any kind of a highlight in his actions and policies.
As far as disappointments, I wasn't terribly disappointed because I didn't expect that much. I expected him to be a traditional Democratic president. On foreign policy, that's hardly any different from a Republican--as nationalist, expansionist, imperial and warlike. So in that sense, there's no expectation and no disappointment. On domestic policy, traditionally Democratic presidents are more reformist, closer to the labor movement, more willing to pass legislation on behalf of ordinary people--and that's been true of Obama. But Democratic reforms have also been limited, cautious. Obama's no exception. On healthcare, for example, he starts out with a compromise, and when you start out with a compromise, you end with a compromise of a compromise, which is where we are now.
I thought that in the area of constitutional rights he would be better than he has been. That's the greatest disappointment, because Obama went to Harvard Law School and is presumably dedicated to constitutional rights. But he becomes president, and he's not making any significant step away from Bush policies. Sure, he keeps talking about closing Guantánamo, but he still treats the prisoners there as "suspected terrorists." They have not been tried and have not been found guilty. So when Obama proposes taking people out of Guantánamo and putting them into other prisons, he's not advancing the cause of constitutional rights very far. And then he's gone into court arguing for preventive detention, and he's continued the policy of sending suspects to countries where they very well may be tortured.
I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president--which means, in our time, a dangerous president--unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction.
- Posted in
117 Comments so far
Show AllZinn essentially said that Obama is all talk (a liar) and that makes him dangerous. Hard to argue with it.
While Zinn said that Obama's rhetoric is there, he did not call him a liar. Perhaps you didn't read this short article......
I agree with Howard Zinn. But then, I tend to always agree with him.
blythespirit
I believe Buck was calling him a (liar), which is a proven fact.
I was and am.
You don't have to print the word "liar" to call someone a liar.
Actually, he did call him a liar.
Zinn - as a public figure with an intellectual theme - is forced to use a particular vocabulary to say "liar" in more gentle words, but his meaning is clear. In public speeches, he often resorts to colloquial speech, which suits his message better than the print media one that he uses in this article.
Interestingly, you have brought up the subject of public vocabulary. Perhaps our current PC public vocabulary is too weak and compromised to communicate anything of value to most people.
Maybe this vocabulary was designed to be mute.
Having read over a thousand pages of Zinn, it wasn't too hard to make it through this little ditty.
"Sure, he keeps talking about closing Guantánamo..." It's implied.
"Sure, he keeps talking about closing Guantánamo, but he still treats the prisoners there as "suspected terrorists."
Actually, he treats the people in Gitmo as terrorists. Normally, people are "innocent until proven guilty."
Obama is Bush with a vocabulary
If Zinn thinks health care "reform" has simply undergone compound compromise, he must have slept through the past 4 months.
After Obama's Sept. 9, 2009 speech emphasizing the need to preserve insurance company profits, health care "reform" entered the total capitulation stage where the drug and insurance companies would be compromising nothing while the rest of us would be compromising everything.
"Obama is Bush with a vocabulary." Ha-ha - good one. Too true.
Succinct and spot-on accurate. Typical Zinn. Says it all in a nutshell - "no surprises here".
Now how do we deprogram the fundamentalist Obamatrons?
Obama was their last hope and the pain of admitting that he sold them down the river is too much for them to bear.
As long as Obama, Congress and Bernanke keep printing food stamps, money, and approving unemployment insurance extensions, the US electorate will not fall far enough to push them to head for DC and camp out in front of the white house and capitol until Obama and Congress get tired of tripping over them and enact meaningful bank reform, jobs programs and medical insurance.
The millions of destitute Americans who camped out in DC in 1933 definitely accelerated FDR's New Deal.
CD's choice of a headline for this piece is interesting. Nation did not have a headline caption for it, but it could very well have been given exactly this one, given the "Progressives for Obama" stance of its editorial staff. Zinn says nothing about a movement until he says at the end that "unless" a movement pushes him, he is unlikely to move. The implication of the caption and the agenda of Ps for O is that the "absence" of a progressive movement is the cause of his disappointing performance. If the caption writers had chosen to go the route of the glass half full, they might have said (equally consistently with Zinn's "unless") that O is a disappointment despite the best efforts of the movement. While this would be less effective in letting Obama off the hook for his "disappointments," it comes close to slander to say that a progressive movement has been "absent" during this dreary year. It has been active on many fronts---have there not been innumerable petitions asking or demanding that the President or Congress or some government official do this or do that?---and yet these officials have a tin ear when it comes to these pleas. (I'm reminded here of the Declaration of Independence in which the signers say we have demanded this and we have petitioned that of the King and yet he has persisted in abusing his colonies.) Oh sure, the progressive movement could be much, much better; particularly if it were not subject to the same corporate controls that rule as well both branches of the party duopoly (and will do even more so after today's ruling on corporate campaign financing) but to say "in the absence" of the movement simply derogates some of their best efforts. Had the Nation chosen to do a piece on the "highlights" and the "disappointments" of the balance sheet of the progressive movement over the last year, they might have shown a better balance of highlights and disappointments of that movement.
In my state, there has been quite a lot of "progressive movement." The last town hall here was packed with progressives, all trying to speak their mind so that our dear pretend progressive Senator would really hear us this time. We've given up marching in the streets because .... what good has that done? You can accomplish the same thing by signing a petition and you won't get shot with rubber bullets or run over by a horse. The president knows what a disappointment he is and they surely read and follow progressive news and opinion. They just don't care because they think we have no where to go.
Yesterday I emailed my Senator from Oregon, who lives not far from me. The letter said:
"You think it can't happen here? Think again."
ivrwalker: "They just don't care because they think we have no where to go." Exactly! And why do they think this? Because many of us know where we want to go (outside the folds of the D & R parties) but are afraid to do so lest our actions detract from the chances of the "lesser evil." But in a way that's what is encouraging about the rash of expressions of "disappointment" with Obama and the Democrats; that all those timid Democrats who would like to vote progressively like a Democrat but feel that have to vote for one of the corporate-anointed centrists are coming around to the view that there is no "lesser evil" where the two parties are concerned. (Obama as much as said that in this own "analysis" of the MA election: that Scott Brown was swept in on the same wave of public anger and frustration that swept him in a year earlier.) When a critical mass of such disaffected Democrats is achieved, we might be surprised how quickly a truly progressive party could emerge, either in the Democratic Party itself or (more likely) as a "third" party.
With the Supreme Court ruling today, it just did happen here, I think.
-"Obama is going to be a mediocre president--which means, in our time, a dangerous president--unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction. "
Was that all that was wrong with Bush, there was not "some" national movement to "push" him in a better direction?
That reminds me...if a progressive politician talks in the forest, and nobody in corporate news hears her, does she still give a speech worth listening to? Is there no progressive leader in America that is more worthy of "pushing" than Obama?
Here's what I posted to The Nation:
The high point? Probably when Obama had a beer with the cop and the college professor to try to soothe over a testy situation and show the way to modern day conflict resolution.
My sharpest moment of disappointment was when I read that Obama had ordered Attorney General Holder to go along with the Bush Administration regarding extraordinary rendition in a lawsuit brought by Guantanamo detainees.
“Eric Holder’s Justice Department stood up in court today and said that it would continue the Bush policy of invoking state secrets to hide the reprehensible history of torture, rendition and the most grievous human rights violations committed by the American government. This is not change. This is definitely more of the same. Candidate Obama ran on a platform that would reform the abuse of state secrets, but President Obama’s Justice Department has disappointingly reneged on that important civil liberties issue. If this is a harbinger of things to come, it will be a long and arduous road to give us back an America we can be proud of again.” - ACLU Spokesman
As a Registered Nurse and supporter of a Single Payer healthcare system in the United States, I was sorely disappointed after Obama was elected and proceeded to meet immediately with the CEO of United Health Plans, then he refused to release The White House visitor logs, then he allowed AHIP to write the healthcare legislation and he reneged on his campaign promise which was made during the debates with Clinton to NOT have a MANDATE with his legislation.
I am embarrassed as a Democrat to read the despotic healthcare legislation that the Democrats have crafted. It is nothing short of a bailout of the for-profit health insurance corporations of the United States with the threats of fines/penalties and even jail for non-compliance.
As a progressive, I found it appalling that even though the so-called "Progressive Caucus" had the power to demand a better bill with, at a minimum, the choice of a robust public option for those Americans who would like to "choose" not to finance the corporations we loathe, that we would be able to secure health insurance through the government instead.
The Progressive Caucus caved on a robust public option, a "watered down public option" (try to find somebody to explain THAT one to you!), and finally a Medicare buy-in for 55-65 year old Americans.
Progressives in the United States have NO representation in Congress. Kucinich caved, Weiner caved, Sanders caved.
Heck, even the Co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, Lynn Woolsey, is out having fundraisers for Blue Dog Jane Harman!
As a result, doctors and nurses and others who supported Single Payer were shut out and ignored. It is voters like us who took Obama over the top a little over a year ago believing that he would undo all the atrocities of Bush.
Finally, after being ignored and seeing this despotic healthcare bill inching closer and closer to becoming law, we decided that electing Coakley to the Senate would only embolden the Democrats to continue.
It was Progressive Democrats who loathe this healthcare bill who helped Brown get elected on Tuesday. He was our only hope to kill the legislation, or at least try to put the brakes on the most despotic elements of it.
To see an article in the L.A. Times yesterday penned by Orrin G. Hatch and Mark Shurtleff, the attorney general of Utah, stating that the Democrats' healthcare bill is "un-Constitutional" and to find myself cheering for their point of view, should make this progressive take pause. But it does not. In desperate times desperate people do desperate things.
It is ironic that after being shut out by our own party, the only way we could make our voices be heard was to help elect an unknown Republican who had been "thrown under the bus" by his own party and who, ironically, vocally supports the practice of waterboarding.
This is what Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have done to The Democratic Party by continuing to ignore the base and take our votes for granted.
So after all the hand-wringing and blame-gaming is over, that group of individuals need only look into a mirror to discover why we are where we are at this point in time.
Embarrassed as a Democrat? Don't be embarrassed, LEAVE.
There's absolutely no cure for terminal cancer, and that's the disease affecting this fake party.
"I am embarrassed as a Democrat . . . "
With all due respect, you should stop being a Democrat.
FWIW, Pelosi just held a press meeting and said that the Senate health bill will not pass the House so this bill, at this time is dead. For better or worse, this thing in Mass has really changed the landscape.
-"Pelosi just held a press meeting and said that the Senate health bill will not pass the House so this bill, at this time is dead"
Yeah because Pelosi surely won't turn around and pass something that nobody has read, in the middle of the night, that would be SO WRONG!!! ;)
So what? Another Pullosi punch to be reversed by a Judy Reid/Obama roll!
I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president--which means, in our time, a dangerous president--unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction.
Obama cannot be pushed in a better direction. He is what he is, a typically corrupt machine Democrat, imperialist, yuppie money-hound and true believer in America's God given right to crap on the rest of the world. Any attempt by him to move temporarily to the left will be nothing more than a cynical Rahm Emanuel/Valerie Jarrett inspired ploy, and a cheap one at that. The sheep in wolves' clothing cannot and will not change.
Like more DEM INTERMINABLE compromise of every principle of IMPROVEMENT. As far as TORTURING US ALL, starting with the Gitmo 3, TO DEATH; Obama Agonistes: it's The COVER-UP, styoopid!
Speaking of cover-ups, listen to Webster Tarpley explain why Timothy Geithner, President Obama's Secretary of the Treasury!!!, should be INDICTED:
http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=9592
This information isn't exactly hitting the front page of The New York Times Business section, now is it??
(Pass it on).
Ok so I'm trying my best to get the inside view of what a "Progressive" is w/out listening to the typical BillO GBeck hysteria. Can some of you progessive liberals give me an insight to what a progressive is and what direction you would like to see this great country moved to?
Progressivism starts with democracy. Reducing the impact of money on our election process. Publicly funded campaigns of limited duration. Encouragement of third and fourth parties through run-off elections.
After that, progressives insist on enforcing a basic social contract that states, in return for obedience to the law, society will provide ALL citizens shelter, food, medical care, and a job.
Internationally, the United States will rely on negotiation, diplomacy, and cooperative decision-making and will avoid seeking to accomplish its goals through military intervention.
Finally, that science, not political ideology, will serve as the basis for environmental policy.
That is my take on progressive politics--others may choose to emphasize different points.
drosera and other progressives: I was going to respond, but you covered it well and anything I could add would just be redundant.
"After that, progressives insist on enforcing a basic social contract that states, in return for obedience to the law, society will provide ALL citizens shelter, food, medical care, and a job."
You say society but who is society? Are you saying that me as an individual is responsible for my fellow citizens care or that our government is? If it's our government doesnt' that mean we have given up our freedom cause the government knows how to take care of us? If it's me as individual would that be charitable donations? If you can elaborate more on this?
Charity is not the solution to social problems. Voluntary giving has never been shown to feed the hungry, house them, educate children, take care of the elderly, or provide healthcare for all. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." That is the basic principle. Collective action is the only way to insure those at the bottom of society are not ignored and taken advantage of. The government has the means of taking from the wealthy through taxation and conferring benefits to those in need. Furthermore, the government can make decisions on behalf of citizens that insure their safety and well-being.
As for your apparent distaste for government, you should consider that "government" is not an entity independent of what the people wish to do collectively. Individuals cannot solve the big problems; only the people working together can accomplish that. Instead of making the "government" into an enemy, you should devote more effort into making government more responsive to human needs. That is what we progressives are constantly trying to do.
Sioux Rose
DROSERA: Excellent & wise post.
Sioux Rose, thank you and all here for a wonderful conversation, polite, informed, progressive --- and even a bit hopeful, which is particularly tough with today's news from the damn court, and our informed concern of what it will likely bring on.
And thanks to Zinn for his continued willingness to try.
Best to all,
Alan
Sioux Rose
ALAN: Your decency becomes you. You are a credit to the forum, and I learn from your many honest, thoughtful posts. Thank you for the kind words.
Collective action is the basis of Socialism. Capitalism subverts the concept of giving and rewards greed.
The Sioux Nation was a socialistic system on steroids that elevated status based on selflessness. Possessions were for the common good, not hoarded. Food was shared. Following the death of a child, parents would spend their time making things. Women made cradle boards, parfletches, moccasins, etc. Men made bows, shields, pipes etc. After a year had passed everything was given away including their teepee and the clothes off their backs. They stood naked and possessionless. The people then provided them with new things to continue life's struggle.
Whether this would be called charity or sharing matters not. It was people taking care of people in need. The challenge is to form a civil compact that provides for everyone.
Better to know you can survive minimally as a citizen than as a mendicant. The guarantor of Life and Liberty is indeed the nation state that encodes those inalienable rights into the law of the land.
To Be Progressive means to live by values based on truth and advancement of the individual and community, therefore making progress. Sustainability needs to be at the core, because technology overload has proven to not solve our problems in this modern era. Sometimes simple solutions are the best.
Unfortunately, being a Progressive is more of a fashion statement in our society. People sport the Obomba shirts, and maybe burn some 420, but at the center most people are a slave to "the man" and are not willing to change their cozy American lifestyles.
The Pharmaceutical industry is in charge of the Health bill because their product is hugely popular amongst the American people. Frankly, it's a bunch of drug addicts who want the government to lower the price of their habits. Funny, because truly progressive people like myself, realize that the best health care is your own body and mind. Prevention, like acupuncture, will keep you alive and healthy. But simple laws of economics show us what is in demand and who wants all this crap. Americans have come to value crap and not true security and well being. The idiots will likely bring down many of the decent Americans who have some self dignity. For those who can't admit Obama is a failure, they have no self dignity, nor true vision of their own values.
A follow-up: "progessive" and "liberal" are not exactly the same. To my eye, the essence of modern liberalism is the effort to achieve social change through legislation (usually with some grounding in civil liberties). "Progessivism" is an umbrella term for left and left-leaning political beliefs that don't necessarily get expressed *within* a system the way that liberalism does. As you can see, progressivism may overlap with radicalism, but doesn't necessarily.
I called Obomba the consummate con man a long time ago and he has lived up to that name. I agree with Howard Zinn that he dazzles people with his rhetorical bs. Obama sold the promise of change, while all the while he knew it would never happen.
What can you say, Zinn is essentially correct.
I disagree with one point on the stated progressive agenda. I think instead of "rule of law," we must insist on the rule of "JUST law;" just law as defined by King in his letter from a Birmingham jail, for example.
CD and the Nation can continue their "Progressive For Obama" stance as much as they want.
Throw truthdig in there as well. CD is a better site but truthdig is worth reading to hear the torturous, distorted logic of the Obama true believers. It is so pathetic it makes you laugh.
With his "nice" sounding lies, the only place obomber is going to lead amerika is into the abyss of a failed empire !
tioche, Mexico
Dear Howard,
Ironic you used the word "mediocre" to describe President Obama, which is exactly the description I used when he won the primary and began the 2nd phase of the campaign, you know, when he promised to filibuster any bill containing immunity for the telecommunications industry for their illegal spying on Americans in the Bush administration. Well, that promise didn't last very long, when he voted for the bill giving them immunity, and then taking money (unsure how much, but I imagine millions) from A T & T -- who actually paid for the Democratic National Convention. That's when I knew for certain he was a fraud -- of course, I voted for Ralph Nader. I wrote to Obama and told him I thought he was just another slick politician and that if elected he would be just "a mediocre president" and that the people shouldn't expect too much from him, because he would not deliver. How right I was!!
Abbeybwood:
As a (progressive unenrolled voter) resident of Massachusetts, I could not have stated what you have said any better, and I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, to my surprise, I cheered the win of Scott Brown -- whom I never ever would vote for. You nailed it!!!
Abbey, can you tell me why you folks did not try to run your own progressive candidate instead of Obama's hand picked candidate? There was a republican, a republican lite and a libertarian, why no progressive?
Ok next question. What present or past government is a reflection of the Progressive agenda?
FDR during The Great Depression. Even Lyndon Johnson, murdering warmonger that he turned out to be, used the shock of John Kennedy's assassination to pass landmark civil rights legislation, knowing all the while that this would destroy "the solid south" and turn it Republican which it remains to this day. Those were the two sides of LBJ. The side that blatantly lied and drastically expanded the Vietnam war was also the beginning of the end of the Democratic party. It was that act that ultimately led to Bill and Hillary Clinton and the coup de grace of Obama. There is no Democratic party any longer. There is no progressive agenda, except out there in Shangri-La.
Would just comment that certainly they didn't kill JFK and then leave the
"people's" government standing to investigate them and hold them responsible.
Yes, there were a few challenges to the Warren Commission and to the CIA but
those like Sen. Frank Church who led that investigation were quickly targeted
and gone. Nor was the Democratic Party intended to continue standing to be
used as a tool for human rights, liberal and progressive actions.
AND MOREOVER .... was there actually ever a Southern Strategy or merely large
computers used by the MSM which moved them from the usual reporting of official
vote tallies to new powers of PREDICTING and CALLING elections provided by the
computers. In fact, in 2000, Fox/Jon Ellis simply reversed those new powers.
Both the large computers used by MSM and the individual voting machines began to
come in during the mid-and-late-1960's -- coincidentally -- about the time
America was passing The Voting Rights Act!
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
A government with a Progressive agenda is not necessarily needed to get some progressive legislation passed even by a conservative government. For this to happen there must be an independent and strong Progressive movement/party threatening to take over. What I describe has happened numerous times in Western democracies. Even the arch-conservative German chancellor Bismarck felt compelled to introduce the very first form of Social Security ever, threatened as his government and class were by the meteoric rise of the German Socialist Party (SPD) which eventually did take over the German government. FDR patterned our SS after Bismarck's to take the wind out of the sails of the American Socialist Party of Eugene Debs and these are just two of numerous examples.
I disagree with the notion that the Democratic and Republican Parties are essentially identical. However, the Democratic party has never been the independent and strong Progressive Party to scare our conservative God-infested governments into passing Progressive legislation. What little Progressive life that Party had in 1945 was effectively killed by Joe McCarthy to please his fascist puppeteers.