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I Have A Dream, 2010 Version
This week, Barack Obama called for a $50 billion spending program to launch a long-term public works infrastructure upgrade of road, rail, airport and other transportation facilities over the next six years.
According to coverage in the New York Times, "officials said that, under the best case scenario, if Congress acts quickly, the plan could start creating jobs over the course of 2011. But the officials emphasized that the White House does not view the proposal as a ‘stimulus, immediate jobs plan,' calling it instead a ‘six-year reauthorization that's front-loaded.'
"With only a few weeks of this year's Congressional session left before lawmakers head home to campaign for re-election, the White House concedes it may face an uphill battle in getting the plan passed this fall, either before lawmakers break for the mid-terms or afterward, in a lame-duck session. Typically, transportation measures do get bipartisan support, but they often require months of work."
Hmm. Like Martin Luther King before him, it would appear that Barack Obama truly has a dream.
And look at how much our dreams have shrunk in forty years. King dreamed of a society in which people were judged by the content of their character without regard to the color of their skin. Barack Obama has a dream about being able to scratch together a few nickels so that the country can do what it manifestly should have been doing decades ago.
And look, as well, at how much we've shrunk as a country. A substantial chunk of King's magisterial dream has already come true (with, of course, much yet to be done). Obama's puny one is dead on arrival.
I can't imagine what the guy was even thinking.
It's a dream to believe Republicans would agree to anything whatsoever at this point, after they've blocked every possible initiative they could, so why is he still indulging that fantasy?
It's dream, now that Obama has helped Democrats boot away Teddy Kennedy's seat in liberal Massachusetts, that Republicans would even let this plan come up for a vote in the Senate.
It's a total and complete dream to believe that they would do so right before an election.
It's a dream to believe, with the administration having completely blown the national discourse these last two years, that the public would favor any further government spending now.
It's even a dream to imagine members of Obama's own party passing this legislation in the current political environment.
And it's a dream to think that it would matter if they did. Obama is the great master of far too little, far too late, and far too poorly done - when and if it's done at all.
So many dreams. Given the president's evident desire to indulge deeply in hallucination, I say if he wants to dream, why doesn't he let himself go...?
Why doesn't he just dream that the economy will double in size overnight? It would be so much easier than doing the hard work of actually building it. It would be so much easier than having to show the political muscle necessary to make things happen in the current environment.
Why doesn't he just dream that Planet Earth will grow a thermostat - right near the Potomac for that matter - so he can just reach over and turn down the temperature? It would be so much easier than actually leading the battle necessary to stop a handful of global-scale predators from getting rich by cooking life forms on this planet out of existence.
Why doesn't he just dream that regressives will fall down on their knees and ask the country's forgiveness for ripping it off blind over thirty years and running?
Why doesn't he just dream that Iraqis will forget about a millennium of ethno-religious conflict and just make nice with each other next week?
Why not dream that Islam disappears from the planet? Maybe then America could win in Afghanistan.
Why not dream that Judaism disappears from the planet? Maybe then the settlers will unsettle the West Bank and Obama's pathetic Middle East peace initiative could actually work.
Why not dream that Christianity disappears from the planet? Maybe then we Americans could all start thinking, rather than just fearing, hating and killing.
Why doesn't he just dream that it was January 2009 again, and he could have a do-over?
I watched Obama's press conference this week, and I was reminded again of what a misfit he is for the presidency, and what a misfit he is for our time. He doesn't seem to get the concept that an effective president has to get in fights. He doesn't seem to understand that there are genuine enemies to the public interest out there (and, mostly, that they're not to be found overseas). He doesn't seem to understand that the reason presidents have to get into fights is because these enemies exist, because they are ruthless and entirely sociopathic, and because their victories are the public's losses.
Instead, there was Barack at his latest public event, demonstrating once again how it is possible for abysmal communication skills to reside within the body of a sometimes gifted communicator. There was the halting, ineffective, delivery. There was the blood-drained absence of passion on topics where the expression of some serious outrage is not only not a bad thing - as he seems to believe - but would be eminently healthy and highly welcome. There was the president almost never taking the opportunity to grab the bully pulpit, stake out the ethical high ground, show the kind of leadership that the public always craves from its chief executive, and deliver a moral lecture to call us to our senses. There he was continuing to treat the oligarchy of this country and their Republican marionettes not as predatory enemies of the people, but rather as nice, well-intentioned folks who have a slightly different but just as respectable a set of ideas from his. There was the president ducking difficult questions about his own previous assertions, hiding from the word "stimulus", and almost never grabbing affirmative control of the discourse and the agenda. And there he was, frankly, looking altogether and all-too-often rather annoyed with the whole business.
Watching performances like that, I frequently find myself really wondering why this guy ever sought the presidency. Getting there is one of the most physically and emotionally difficult things a person can do. It's one of the biggest mountains there is to climb. So why did he go through all that just to be a placeholder president? Why succeed at campaigning only to tank at governing? Why be a historically great candidate only to have history regard you as a failed president?
Notwithstanding this repeat of yet another rather tepid public performance, there's lots of media buzz this week that "Obama is back!", because of one or two speeches he gave recently. For example, here are the opening lines from an email blast just sent from the folks at MoveOn.org: "Dear MoveOn Member: Remember what it felt like to watch Barack Obama back when he was Candidate Obama? Seeing him fired up and ready to go in front of a crowd of 20,000? Well, as of this week, that Obama's back. On Wednesday, he gave a feisty, tough speech that showed just how irresponsible Republicans have been, how crazy it'd be to give them back control of Congress this fall, and what he proposes to do to get our economy back on track."
You know, this whole concept just infuriates me beyond belief. Let's just take the best case scenario here, to start with. Let's just say that over the last two years Barack O'Bambi was too nice a guy, too committed to changing the bitter partisanship in Washington, too much a believer in the healing powers of his own magical self. That is the best case scenario - the most generous interpretation of this failed presidency - and even that is enough to disgust me to the bone. Sorry, but I don't want a president that shockingly naive.
Our national problem isn't that we honorably disagree over two equally respectable philosophies of governance and therefore don't get along because we're all such good citizens that our passionate commitment to the public weal as we each see it best pursued leads us to be occasionally intemperate. No. Our problem is that there is a group of elite raptors who are seeking to vacuum every ounce of wealth out of the pockets of the other 99 percent of us and scoop it into their own pockets instead, and that they've employed a set of politician stooges who have in the last several decades jettisoned all meaningful behavioral limitations on what they're willing to do to achieve those ends. In that sense, the idea of some religious crackpot cracker in Florida burning the Koran isn't some bizarre anomaly. It is, instead, precisely the logical outcome of a set of politics in which you have "mainstream" members of Congress challenging the president's very nationality and his religion, calling him a socialist, and accusing him of legislating death panels to kill grannies. It is precisely what we should expect to have happened. It is precisely the product of three decades of Atwater/Gingrich/Rove style politics.
These (alleged) people cannot be negotiated with, because they are not interested in public policy-making that is in the national interest. That's not their mission, and only a naive fool or someone who had spent the last thirty years underground excavating the seventh moon of Jupiter would fail to understand that. Changing the tone in Washington - which, in any case, is always a far secondary aspiration relative to getting people jobs, protecting the environment, ending criminal wars, and so on - simply will never happen until all the bomb-throwers and barrier-builders in Congress are driven from the temple, and until political aspirants across the land get the message that whatever form of McCarthyism du jour they are contemplating employing in order to get elected will cost them more votes than it will gain them. Neville Chamberlain is almost universally despised and derided today for trying to negotiate with Hitler. Which part of that lesson do you not get, Barack?
But, of course, this is only the most charitable interpretation of how Obama's presidency might be explained. The second-to-the-worst-case scenario is that he has exactly the same masters as Republicans do, but is simply a bit nicer fellow than they are in terms of implementing their common plutocratic objectives.
Which leaves the very-worst-case scenario, being the same oligarchy-serving Obama just described, with the added bonus of a boundless cynicism. This Obama governs in the interest of the overclass, but shows up on your television set three months before every election talking like some sort of progressive champion of the people.
I suspect that's what we're looking at right now, and it makes my eyes bleed. Like many progressives, I feel duped by the Obama of 2008. (I know there are many other lefties out there who think that any of us were fools to believe that Obama might have done great things as president, but I think those folks were wrong to assume that. I'm quite sure they would have said at least as much in 1932 about the theretofore aristocratic, safely uncontroversial and careerist Franklin Roosevelt. But look how that turned out. FDR became a "traitor to his class" and turned crises into great progressive achievements. LBJ - a Texan, for chrissakes - did much the same during his at-bat. Obama had at least as much potential to join that club.)
I'm furious enough at Obama for squandering opportunity, for taking care of the privileged and allowing the rest of us to suffer, for reviving the monsters of the right instead of finishing the job of crushing them, and for setting back the cause of policies and ideas I care passionately about. But it adds massive insult to injury for him to turn around and come, hat in hand, back to the people who put him into office, singing his populist song right before an election.
Maybe he's even sincere. Maybe even slow-learning Obama has truly learned a lesson and turned a corner. Maybe. But how do I and tens of millions of people like me know that? How do we know that if we were to drag our weary butts to the voting booth to endorse his party again, that Progressive Barack won't bait and switch us once more, disappearing for another two years in favor of Corporate Obama, only to resurface just in time for the next election?
Screw that. I'm way too pissed off to take the remotest chance of that happening. The irony of Obama is that nothing has so distanced me from the Democratic Party than the great socialist himself. Even another John Kerry-style yawner in 2008 would have done far less damage to my nearly non-existent affections for the party at that point. Let's face it - among progressives, the Democrats had been living off of a combination of reputational inertia and the endless insanities of the alternative Republicans for three or four decades leading up to the last election. However, because Obama was no ordinary politician engaged in ordinary, cheap campaign rhetoric, because he came to office at a time of crisis - thus opening the door to more serious reforms than would otherwise be possible - and because the right had so badly repudiated their own politics, I believed there was a real chance this time could be different, just as it was under LBJ and FDR.
And there was, indeed, a real chance. It's just that Obama booted it. The result has been disastrous all around. I know I speak for many in saying that I can't imagine ever trusting him with my vote again. I don't even expect to vote Democratic again in my lifetime. The exception would be if the left were to do what the far right has done to the GOP - namely, hijack the party. That might happen, but I don't it see it on the horizon right now, that's for sure.
As for Obama, it's hard to imagine any way in which he has not sealed his fate as a one-term president, and one of the great failures in that high office. He's the James Buchanan of our time - the milquetoast who faced great crises but brought only tepid, conventional, status quo and restrained solutions to the table. He has failed, just as Buchanan failed, and he will likely therefore join Buchanan on the list of the lousiest presidents.
Obama is going to get whacked hard in November, and this election will be a more personal repudiation of the president than are most mid-terms. It will be widely seen as his loss more than the party's. He will have three choices at that point. He can make little strategic change and keep his existing politics. But the pressures from within and without to alter course will be too enormous for that to be likely.
Second, he can turn to the left and become truly the people's president. Despite the fact that this is the only real possibility for salvation (though he probably doesn't even have time for that anymore), he is extremely unlikely to do so, not least because the election will be falsely but nearly unanimously read as a wholesale repudiation of Obama's already ‘socialist' tendencies. A turn to the left would be loudly and endlessly trumpeted by the right as spitting in the public's eye. And since Democrats never, ever, argue back, that narrative will carry the day, just as the socialist narrative has ludicrously carried the day so far.
The last option will be to turn to the right, as Clinton did, and hope that in 2012 he can convince grumbling voters that the GOP nominee is slightly more insane than he has been anemic. I have little doubt that this is the direction he will go.
Unlike Clinton in the 1990s, however, he is unlikely to have an economic boom that could allow people to forget politics and vote for incumbents. My guess is that current unemployment levels will not abate in the coming two years. Indeed, because the half-baked stimulus of 2009 is now about out of gas, there is a very real chance that things will get worse. Nothing kills a presidency like recession. But add to that slow drip decline the endless GOP investigations of bogus administration scandals you'll be seeing on a television set near you starting next January, and you can stick a fork in this president.
That's all well and good and completely just, as far as I'm concerned. I'd relish doing the sticking myself, actually. It's just that - and I hope here that the president can pardon another eruption of my silly tendency toward civic responsibility that occasionally gets the better of me - it's a disaster for America and for the world.
Maybe if Barack dreams energetically enough, though, it doesn't have to happen.
Maybe if he just dreams that he has a chance to be one of the great figures in American history because he inherited great crises requiring profound solutions, it will come to pass.
Oh, wait a minute. That dream already did come true.
Only he turned his dream opportunity into a nightmare by showing up for the war armed with a cap gun.
102 Comments so far
Show AllMy sentiments exactly, but we know who OilyBomber is by his appointments, he is a neo liberal/con.
Do not vote for the leser evil.
Vote third party and make a statement.
his dream was to become president, not to -be- a president....
Obama is in it for Obama, not you or I.
That seems to be it for all of them. The presidential candidate doesn't turn out to be the leader of the opposition, as tends to be the case in European democracies, but someone who comes out of the blue, who wants to win the presidency. Remember the Time Magazine cover shot "President Bush?" with Junior's picture beaming out at us? Up till then, I had not known George the First even had a junior. I remember thinking, "Where did he come from?" But I had the same thoughts about Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.
I think it was on this site where someone posted the comment that Barak Obama, by being the first African American elected president, has already secured his place in history. I'm reminded of Robert Redford in the last shot of his 1972 film "The Candidate" (still one of the best depictions of American politics), after winning the election, saying, "What do we do now?"
No one seems to have a workable answer to that question.
Obama, like Clinton, was a nobody, a little person, who was accepted into the world of the elites of the Ivy League and began his life anew. Obama, who went to Harvard Law, like Clinton who went to Yale Law, was for years busy rubbing elbows and befriending the future oligarchs, even more so than when he was at Columbia. He can no more lead a populist revolt against his buddies than the Pope can lead a movement against the Catholic hierarchy to legalize abortion. Deep down he feels allegiance to the oligarchs as they had accepted him and lifted him up out of the misery of being ordinary (how he and his fellow elites would characterize it). He will never turn on them.
Kival, you have really hit the nail on the head. The elitists only serve their own interests. They made both Obama and Nafta Clinton members. It is the most exclusive club in the world. Globalization only rewards those who are already rich and those politicians who can be bought to help suck their struggling nation dry. It is such a terrible fraud in undeveloped countries. Nothing else matters.
A fourth posibility is that Obama was approached the same way democratically elected officials in South America have been approached, with the offer of great wealth if he played ball or assassination if he did not. Obama most likely decided to play ball, to take the money and cooperatively put in his time.
I doubt that he is even interested in a second term. He just works out early every morning to lessen the emptiness of his self-alienation, and gives speeches with a pathetic, increasingly mechanical delivery.
A fifth possibility is that he really believes in group process, such that, when the populace finally realizes that they are responsible for their own reality, they will become "disenthralled," and do something meaningful. Dissent is not being actively suppressed, after all. The problem is that most of the populace is either out of work or happy to conform and take their piece of the diminishing pot of money.
Either way, it is time to stop looking to Obama, and start looking to ourselves.
The pot hasn't diminished in any way at all.
It's the inequitable distribution of the pot that makes it seem so.
And we can look at ourselves all day, it won't give us power in the government or the boardroom.
List what police have done to Peaceful Protesters and 80% of the list will be ways dissent is repressed by law enforcement.
I agree that street demonstrations are not very productive, and may lead to reprisals against the demonstrators. Dissent can take other forms, such as not going along with the program, or starting alternative social forms.
While I appreciate Mr. Green's indignation, there are a few things about this article which need to be corrected.
The proposed $50,000,000,000. "spending program" is a cynical maneuver. Even as it was being announced, the administration made it clear that the "cost" of this scheme (to get people to forget the past two years) will be taken out of other programs. No information about what will be cut has been given, but you can be certain it will NOT be taken out of warmongering and it will be taken from social services. Bi-partisanship (the main lie) will ensure that the republicans will gain as the democrats gain.
Mr. Green seems to primarily want us to focus our anger at the administration. Yes, this administration is awful, but they are merely doing their best to maintain the illusion that there is a significant difference between democrats and republicans. There is not.
We who saw the writing on the Pentagonal Wall Street wall had no choice but to oppose both Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin. We knew there would be no FDR like movement because Obama made it arrogantly clear, while still in the Senate, that he would ensure more unjustifiable war and more protection of corporate malfeasance (by supporting immunity for unconstitutional spying and the unrestricted bailout), and simultaneously, he and the democrat "leadership" deliberately snubbed anyone who was even remotely connected to Martin Luther King jr. (ask Jesse Jackson).
Finally, Obama's difference was the color of his skin and for me, and other real progressives, the color of a person's skin is NOT how you determine who they are.
Maybe for you the color of a person's skin makes no difference, but you might try asking blacks how they feel about that subject. Fact is, color makes all the difference. In this country it always has. That is why they will support him next time around even if the President continues to blow them off.
"drosera"
A clarification and an agreement.
I did not say that the color of a person's skin made no difference. As a matter of fact, what I was saying was that it was THE deciding factor in Obama's election in spite of ample evidence of his corruption.
We are all susceptible to prejudice and we need to try to stay aware of our susceptibility.
Too many well intentioned people were fooled by their own knee-jerk acceptance of the premise that Obama was this or that because of his skin color. It drove me nuts to see the huge numbers of people "of color" getting all teary-eyed for a man who was OBVIOUSLY opposed to their needs.
Sadly, I think you are correct about the "next time around."
Well Drosera,
Now you ought not to be talking for black folks, we can talk for "usselves" thank you. I do agree with your comment on race, but we are getting over that. President Obama sent a strong message that many people never heard with his remark, "they talk about me like a dog". That was a coming of age statement for a President who is not a "White" "kick ass" "read my lips" kind of guy. More to come.
How did you come to know so much about Black FolK?
I agree with this intelligent analysis that David Michael Green posits regarding the Obama Presidency. And I too am completely disheartened by the utter disappointment his voters have suffered because of his inability/refusal to live up to the many promises he made during his campaign.
I'm afraid that one of the major factors in this dilemma was caused by something that David Michael Green omitted from his analysis. And that factor is nothing less than "MONEY!" It is obviously the factor that completely controls our Congress.
Our Congress has been "bought" and probably Obama has been too. The Website "opensecrets.org" clearly spells out, giving names and parties, the amount of money that has changed hands in our so-called" democratic" government this year.
During this past year our Congress received $328,409,893.00 in lobbying money, i.e. BRIBES.
When you compare that to the total amount of donations Congress received for the past year, which was $21,003,999.00, perhaps you can see which group Congress will kowtow to - certainly not individual citizens or groups of citizens.
Our Congress has been totally bought and paid for by the Corporatocracy and Obama is nothing more than another player. We citizens are being played for "fools" if we think for a moment that our desires for legislation of any sort would ever counteract the millions of dollars being paid to politicians to cater to the will of the Corporatocracy!
I have finally arrived at the same point David mentions in his analysis. Why in the world even vote?????
"Why not dream that Judaism disappears from the planet? Maybe then the settlers will unsettle the West Bank and Obama's pathetic Middle East peace initiative could actually work.
Why not dream that Christianity disappears from the planet? Maybe then we Americans could all start thinking, rather than just fearing, hating and killing."
Is DMG really so stupid that he thinks that religion is a fundamental cause of all of this? That's just astonishing. What is it about "progressives" that causes them to deny the material basis for violence? Clearly, it's that "progressives" deny the class-based nature of our state of affairs.
PLEASE STOP TAKING THIS MAN SERIOUSLY!!
What's with the user ID?
"DavidGreen"
Actually, DMG is not missing the mark with the comments about about religion. He just needs to take it further. The vast majority of religions are about domination through sexism and aligning themselves with militarism and using dogma to enforce the class structure.
If you can't see how all the churches, temples, mosques,... are based on material greed and demanding of submission, then you are equally as "stupid" as you call DMG.
If you think that any pope or mullah or rabbi or swami is more concerned about equal justice than domination, then you have little understanding of history.
TOO MUCH BIRDBRAIN "thinking".
Good Point
Thank you, David, for a well written article, helping us to understand, the let down we often experience with elected officials. But, I think you forgot to bring into the scenario, some very important facts.
Elections are not won only by the people’s vote. They are won, very much in part, by the amount of money that is spent in the campaign. Since corporate America, is now the largest contributor by far, they play a big role in not only who wins, but the ultimate agenda taken by the winner.
Corporate America would always prefer to have a Republican president as they have little trouble controlling the Republican agenda. But, when a Democratic win is probable, as was predictable in the 2008 election, because of the mess left by eight years of Bush, then they hedge their bets to back the candidate most likely to win if they feel that they can control his agenda at least in part. The Obama campaign received enormous funds from corporate sponsors, including the big banks.
I think you miscalculate the real motive of almost every candidate who climbs that biggest mountain there is to climb. Because even a placeholder president is unmistakably a great achievement for those people who thrive on that kind of achievement. Noble objectives are good for campaigns, but in a government where compromise, and obstructionism is the name of the game, noble gains are seldom achieved. Our form of government has always favored the elitist rulers where propaganda prevails over truth.
Another great essay by David Michael Green.
I'm not voting for Democrats again, either. But I will be sure to vote, for third party candidates only. Otherwise, the Dems will use our non-voting as a pretext for moving even farther (if that's even possible) to the right.
Good article, too light on the Democratic party's complicity in our downfall, but overall a good article.
"It [dreaming] would be so much easier than doing the hard work of actually building it."
Also might be said of progressives building an organization that would make possible 3rd party victory at the polls.
"FDR became a "traitor to his class" and turned crises into great progressive achievements."
He was nothing of the kind. He used socialism (in a form that could later be undone) to save capitalism.
FDR, another good argument for term limits.
He's informing us rather well. How about that for an answer? Bullets aren't necessary and ballots can work but only if more people are properly informed. You can't just expect one being to change things. Informing others is part of what helps people to change their voting at the ballots. It may not look like much at first but what if those of us informed by RichM successfully inform others as well and it keeps spreading?
Ahistoric garbage! Ever hear of a 3rd party called the"Free Soil Party"? Maybe you recognize them by their new name, used on their third presidential run: Republicans. If you're interested in not sounding uneducated, read up on the Progressive Party which was killed by the Duopoly at the turn of the century only after decades of trying, and by having to incorporate half of the Pro.Party's proposals (including 8 hour days, women's sufferage etc). You party hasn't exactly "died" if the other parties end up passing half your legislation.
Amen Mark ! I explained the history of third parties in the last 150 years but nope, nobody listens. The only weak argument I get is that the Republicans were once a third party but that was very brief. Third parties can win on a few local elections but you'll rarely get a third partier to win in Washington. It sure would be nice if all those to the left of Obama could pull in unison behind an opposition anti-war Dem candidate to defeat him in the 2012 primary. That's the key upcoming choice we should make. Don't let naysayers tell you incumbent-beating can't be done - it has been, repeatedly. Unplug from that corporate propaganda drumbeat, ignore all the witless zombies who mindlessly repeat it. Firmly reject all efforts to splinter the progressive voice among various never-win options.
It would be nice and easy to work within the Democratic Party except for one thing. They're not giving us anything to work at. They're doing all the controlling of their party's agenda. Third parties may have lost in the last 150 years as far as presidential elections are concerned but why have the Democrats and Republicans worked so hard in the last 20 years to prevent third parties from having a voice? Are they afraid that after those first 130 years that people are tired of the two parties? What if after 1988, people were not only hating Reagan/Bush but the Democrats who cooperated with them and the Republicans? Is it that fear that resulted in a Perot surge in 1992 that you're afraid of? Perot may not have won but he proved that at 19%, third parties could rise so all the Democrats and Republicans wanted to do is prevent further rising by cutting them out of the debates, limiting their airtime, passing a fraudulent Mccain-Feingold Protect the Incumbents bill, use the power of the state legislature and courts to keep them off the ballots, and market people against thinking outside the two party box. I'd like to be practical like you and Mark A but the Democratic Party is going too far and pissing me off. I can't vote third party in my state or do a write-in so I might just not vote in 2012 unless Obama does something remarkable and I doubt it.
Um... slowly and in small words; my referencing the birth of the Republican Party would suggest to any historically literate person that I was very familiar w/ slavery and the Civil War. What does it have to do with your historically-challenged "fact"? Whether or not I'd heard of slavery and the Civil War has no bearing on the fact that 3rd parties HAVE succeeded. Why would anyone ask such a nonsensical question? To divert attention from the fact that my post obliterated the contention you had made in the above-post? You said "no 3rd party has ever succeeded, never will". When I factually refuted this statement you countered with a tangent. So, just to settle the issue, I am right, you are wrong. There has been a successful 3rd party. The issue of the Progressive Party is simply to limn the point that "success" can be measured by accomplishing your goals regardless of whether you're elected. Any further criticism must be leveled within the context of these points which you seem to accede to.
"So, if you believe in ballots, and if you are progressive, the Dems are the only game in town, and the only vehicle for progressive politics. It's a hard road, but it's the only one."
Oh dear, where have I heard that before again? I don't know if I'm progressive or not but I do know that the Democratic Party has no room for progressive anything. They can hire fake newbies to run as "progressives" and then once in office, they just leave their masks at the doorway and show their true colors.
"These facts don't change, no matter how disappointed we are in Obama."
True but why let that stop you from making a truly conscientious decision? I had it with my last vote for Obama in 2008 and I was very reluctant to do it. The only reason I voted for him was because I felt a race guilt going through my mind, I didn't want to miss turning VA blue for once in 44 years, and I fell for that Nader can't win but only because I decided to start local and see where it all goes from there.
Whether I be a progressive, liberal, or whatever, the important thing is standing for what's right. When both parties are abusing us bad as can be, voting for the lesser abuser and expecting a different outcome is self-defeating. Voting for a third option and beyond will teach them plenty of lessons. I have more to do in addition to voting. Care all you want about which party can win but you're not winning anything for yourself. Voting third party is not about spoiling. It's about showing your ability to be a conscientious thinker when none of the traditional choices are suitable. I think I'm gonna like doing that from now on.
Wake up! No one on this "debating society" site has any intention of doing/changing anything."Ballots or bullets?" HAH! You mean "endless comments read by almost no one". Looking for change on CD is like... voting for Obama.
The only antidote to the flood of $ "Citizens United" has unleashed is (real) citizen participation; knocking on doors, leafleting, etc. Things that must be done on a local level. 4 or 5 times I've posted my email and never received a serious or local reply (This, in L.A.). Ergo,people here want to talk, that's it. [Eli Wallach in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", "If you're going to shoot, shoot, don't talk!")
He's been posting his "third parties good, Democrats bad" bs for years. He said so himself. Why would he want to change course if that schtick makes him feel oh, so good? Just let him stay there.
Shawn Berry: ... STAY there or SLAY there?
There have been occasional misses by the ruling class but every progressive populist Democrat that ever made it always gets converted 6 months to a year in office. There must be some way to trick the ruling class into believing that they'd work for them and then pull a surprise once elected. I'd almost feel like trying that out except my wife wouldn't want me to get shot for it.
You're totally obsessed with elections and can't comprehend 10% of what RichM has tried to explain. You also trivialize his much deeper insights into the problem by dismissing it all as "waving red flags," as if anyone is suggesting such puerile nonsense. Then you say he's "dreaming of revolution" while you're the hard-nosed realist hammering away at electoral strategies--to simply keep Democrats in office and get more "progressive" Dems elected, even though they NEVER move the party one inch to the left.
What is this "better direction" you want to move in? It sounds to me like Dreaming, Incorporated. The goals of radical leftism will never be achieved at the ballot box, and the alternative doesn't have to be "bullets" either. Although you again seem to have no imagination in this connection. The left can't get anywhere trying to shoot its way to power, to empower the people, that is. If we can't change peoples' consciousness about who is ripping them off and how they do it, year after year, under either wing of the Business/War Party, then there's no hope anywhere. Certainly not in your managerial electoral strategies.
Well done.
Events are moving quickly, and the Left is reviving and restoring itself. We can expect an escalation of absurd red-baiting, such as the "waving red flags" and "what's your plan" and "bullets or ballots" and so forth. Exciting times, the political logjam is breaking apart, things are starting to move finally, and we are right on the verge of massive social change. It will become more and more clear now that many liberals and progressives are opposed to any such social change. They have, after all, been advocating for years that we can "improve the system" without any massive social change; we can vote third party, we can change our lifestyles, we can think good thoughts and that will make good things magically happen, etc.
As for helping people see who is ripping them off - their landlords and their bosses are, the companies selling them goods are, everyday in every transaction. That is where people understand how they are being abused and oppressed, and that is where the battle is.
I had a chance to talk with Michael Moore last winter, and one of the people with us started talking about going green, raising chickens, planting an organic garden, reducing our carbon foot print, voting third party and so on, and Moore said "yes, yes, we have all heard all of that. You are missing the forest for the trees and you are looking at one tree - personal lifestyle - and that is a very, very small tree. Right here in this community, rich f*ckers from out of town are speculating in real estate, making millions, and driving up the cost of housing while we have more and more people unable to afford rent or living on the street. Why aren't we organizing a rent strike? That got a blank look from the "activist" who was lecturing us on "the choices" we all should be making.
Not only had it not occurred to the progressive activist to take on the property owners, he was resistant and opposed to the idea. He may well be a property owner and landlord.
Moore drove a wedge there between the real needs of working class people, the real battle, and the gentrified agenda of the progressives.
"As I keep pointing out, to "hijack" the Democratic Party, as DMG puts it, is a far easier route to electoral victories than any other."
It has been done before but nothing fruitful ever comes from it. Tell us anything fruitful from doing it in 2006 and 2008. Too many pretender "populists". Dan Boren of my neighboring district doesn't sound like a Democrat at all. He's the typical obvious Bush "Democrat", HA !
"Long before you have raised enough consciousnesses to win a general election as a third party, you will have enough raised consciousnesses to win a primary election, take the Democratic nomination for Congressman, Senator, Governor, or President, and win the office with the help of regular Democratic voters whose consciousnesses might not yet be fully raised."
That strategy looks nice and easy at first glance but if one were to look at the history of how the Democratic Party used this strategy, one would have to question their political intentions at large. I hate to say this but the consciousness of the Democratic voters is growing and it's not good thanks to what this Democratic Party keeps doing as RichM correctly explained. The people are very angry, disaffected, and disillusioned at what they party in Washington has shown itself to be. Wacky as they can get, who can blame them? The Democratic Party is finished for most of this decade and possibly well into the next. I'm not waiting until 2030 to finally agree on voting third party.
"Once again, ballots or bullets?" or bubbles?
You are posting in various places with demands to people - "what's you plan?" - and also claiming that the choice is between "bullets or ballots."
Those are idea planted in people's thinking by the propagandists working for the rulers, and you are merely parroting them. They are designed to shut the left up, obviously, and supposedly have no response.
The entire range of possibilities for political action fall between bullets and ballots. Claiming that we have to choose between those two and only those two - accept things as they are, or else start killing people - is a clever way to keep people from considering ANY ideas, ANY plans, to prevent people from doing any critical thinking at ll about the subject.
However, if you are asking "what's the plan" seriously and sincerely, and if by that you mean what is the best course of action for us, I can answer that. If you truly cannot imagine any sort of political action between bullets and ballots, I could offer some examples - strikes, boycotts, rallies, speeches, critical social commentary, sabotage and passive resistance...
You confuse goals with methods, observations of objective reality with "belief systems."
The goal is not an "armed uprising" or "overthrowing" things to honor some belief system, nor is it to advance some plan or install some system to impose some ideology. You are projecting the way that you look at politics onto others, I suspect.
Let's say your child is drowning. You jump in and attempt a rescue. Your agenda was not to "jump in the lake," nor was that your goal, nor was your behavior driven by a "belief system." The child was in danger, you did whatever it took to save the child.
We are talking about doing whatever it takes to rescue the working class people and the planet on which they live.
Go ahead. "Work within the system." The system means you are supposed to believe that there is a lifeguard on duty - when all of the evidence says that there is not - and that all rescues should be left to them. You do get to vote on who will be lifeguard next year. Don't jump in to save the child, no matter how many children drown. Listen to the cries for help from the drowning child, and then say "don't worry! There will be an election next year, and this time we are going to vote in a good lifeguard who will REALLY start saving children! Don't blame me! I voted for the good lifeguard last time!"
I agree, RichM, and I winced at the face-saving bit you reference in your second point.
Poor DMG! It must be particularly distressing for a professor of political science to have so enthusiastically believed in Candidate Obama. Now, so much sadder but wiser, he still can't entirely accept that it was possible to see through the award-winning Team Obama marketing from the beginning.
He's like some mournful mark insisting that there really ARE Nigerian banks or international sweepstakes outfits worth investing in, damn it, and those documents seemed perfectly authentic! And if YOU can't see that-- well, maybe there's something wrong with YOU!
But his specious sidewinder of a rationalization that (we) skeptics and cynics would've also scorned FDR is just pathetic. Besides the criticism you raise, it's a two-dimensional and circular comparison based purely on hindsight. Does he mean that the apples of TODAY'S skeptics and cynics would be the oranges of FDR-era skeptics, etc.? Or is he just bitching that SOME people are so negative and cynical that they'll reject ANY politician, and using FDR as a straw man?
I don't begrudge DMG such tattered little fig leaves, but it suggests that despite his dark hints that he's DONE with the duopoly, he's still willing to be enchanted by candidates who seem to have the left stuff.
Are you insinuating that some people here have a covert agenda to foment violence, and that this is their political agenda and goal?
If so, you had better back that insinuation up or else retract it.
I see. Thanks. Wasn't sure what you were saying.
"unless "the left were to do what the far right has done to the GOP - namely, hijack the party"
We know that this approach works. First the Republican moderates were cast out, and now even some of the Conservatives are being cast out. But does the left have the fervor to do the grass roots work that the Tea Party crazies have?
Excellent summary, as always.
I can't believe I was such an idiot to fall for the MoveOn email, going so far as to sign their petition, even as suspicious as it smelled.
At least this should be a boon for the Greens.
P.S. To commenter "DavidGreen," who wrote: "Is DMG really so stupid that he thinks that religion is a fundamental cause of all of this? That's just astonishing. What is it about "progressives" that causes them to deny the material basis for violence? Clearly, it's that "progressives" deny the class-based nature of our state of affairs. PLEASE STOP TAKING THIS MAN SERIOUSLY!!"
First, I don't think that's quite what DMG said; second, the more I hear from folks like you, the lower you sink in my opinion; third, if you don't have the cahones to put your name to your ideas, please stop spouting them.
I find it abhorrent that David Michael Green and/or the editorial staff at CD chose this title - very obviously drawn from the speech of Dr, Martin Luther King.
To place this title above overly lengthy and circuitous reiteration of an already known situation that engages petty phrasing leaves questions in my mind as to why the ignorant belittlement of one of the most incisive pieces of oration ever delivered at a public lectern.
I Have a Dream - - the original should, no MUST be re-read or watched as a standing statement that is not of the past but VERY PRESENT.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbUtL_0vAJk
If it's a dream, then it can't come true unless it can be made to come true at which point it is no longer a dream but reality. Dreaming about what the Democrats will never dare do is a waste of time and energy. Get out there and look to people who will support what you believe is right for not only yourself but for others as well.