Barack Obama & The Uprising

Last night at the Strand Bookstore in New York City, a terrific panel discussed the uprising's impact on the current presidential campaign - and what Barack Obama's victory means for the uprising. The panel included Andrea Batista Schlesinger of the Drum Major Institute, Dan Cantor of the Working Families Party, and Joel Barkin of the Progressive States Network. You can watch it here.

Obama's victory is proof positive that the uprising that I describe in my book is real, and making its impact felt at the highest levels of electoral politics. Above all else, Obama has been a change candidate, and as the book shows, the uprising is - at its core - a backlash to the status quo. To his credit, Obama used his personal skills as an organizer, his understanding of bottom-up uprisings, and his campaign's smart use of grassroots tools like the internet to channel today's populist uprising into his campaign. He should be congratulated for that.

But there are some potential downsides.

Matt Stoller has previously written that Obama has, in many ways, taken over the Democratic Party and, I would add, much of the outside architecture that supports the party. Groups like Moveon have essentially become the Obama campaign, mainly because they haven't really behaved fully as movement organizations distinct from partisan ones (I got into this a bit in my last dispatch about the Protest Industry and the Players). That allowed Obama to basically take them over because he positioned himself as the movement - an easy posturing when there is a dearth of ideological, issue-based organizing willing to take on both parties.

As the panel at The Strand discussed last night, without that ideological movement to pressure Obama (or whoever becomes president), the next occupant of the White House could very easily shun the uprising and simply reinforce the status quo - and, as I wrote in The Nation in 2006, Obama is precisely the kind of politician who needs constant pressuring if we are going to get real action from him.

As history has taught us over and over and over again, candidates, parties and elections are not movements - they are vehicles for them. Those who believe otherwise - and I fear that's a lot of people thanks to the media frenzy over this primary - are deluding themselves.

You'll notice, of course, which progressive organizations are really threatened by Obama's victory and which really aren't. All of the partisan-first groups could very well be threatened by a situation whereby Democrats win the White House and the presidency. Without Republicans to blame, the Partisan Warriors would be largely irrelevant. But groups like unions, the Working Families Party and others focused on pressuring both parties for change - these groups aren't threatened in the least by an Obama presidency. On the contrary, they will become more important because they will be the instruments for the uprising to pressure officeholders for concrete policies.

This, of course, doesn't mean that groups like Moveon cannot - or will not - change their posture. I think they probably will. But as the general election campaign starts, so too does the work of creating the environment for long-term change. That means starting to look at how to ramp up that pressure system - the one that is necessary if today's populist uprising is going to start bringing about real results.

This is an ongoing blog series from the national book tour of The Uprising. You can order The Uprising at href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307395634?tag=sirotablog-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0307395634&adid=1BYG4T2ZJJAZXD5JM0YF&">Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Tattered Cover, href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/0307395634?&PID=30567">Powell's or through your local independent bookstore.

Comments

[wayoutleft]

thank god! thank you david very much!! obama has moved further to the right faster on foreign policy than any candidate in history. because of this i have stopped supporting him. you are so uncanny in recognizing how progressive channels have been flooded by generic obama hysteria to the extent that this hysteria could replace them permanently. i will never again vote "social progress and war". i just don't believe he will end the immoral occupation of iraq. i don't think he can take the war away from petraeus. this is a tough time not to be one of the sheep. however there is opportunity for radicals in the upcoming disaffection 2-3 years away. please continue to advise progressives and radicals looking for some kind of tethering in the obama tsunami.

[altohone]

Oops. 2nd attempt.

Does The Uprising show that Obama needed to be "pressured" by the "movement" in 2002 to take a stand against the war in Iraq?

Does The Uprising prove that Obama needed to be pressured to tackle partisan Washington in his purple America speech at the last convention?

Do you lay out in The Uprising how the "movement" forced Obama to refuse lobbyist and PAC money?

Do you have any substantiation in The Uprising to the claim that "Obama is precisely the kind of politician who needs constant pressuring"?


It seems to me you're crediting others for decisions Obama made based on his personal beliefs.

Obama has been a cog in the movement.
He didn't succeed "because he positioned himself as the movement".

Everybody buy TheUprisin­gTheUprisi­ngTheUpris­ingTheUpri­singTheUpr­ising!
That book won't sell itself.

[southernsepia]

Word.

Obama has had these beliefs for years.

It was he who chose to turn down a lucrative clerking position to work on the streets of Chicago.

More than Obama getting with the times, the times adapted to Obama.

I guess it's true - success has a thousand fathers.

[1849]

I saw you on Democracy Now! last night. I am still interested in your theory about voting patterns based on geography, history and demographics .