Progressive Friendly Fire
CommonDreams.org is among progressive groups calling for a confrontation with President Obama. Five reasons why we should think twice.
CommonDreams.org, the prominent progressive news and opinion website, recently sent an email fundraising appeal with the subject, "It's time for a confrontation." Signed by Executive Director Craig Brown, it begins, "When Americans voted overwhelmingly for 'Change' last November 4th, I, like so many of you, was hopeful." After a rundown of his post-election expectations, Brown proclaims, "but frankly, seven months into the new administration, my hope is fading."
Brown quotes author and environmental activist Derrick Jensen: "We can follow the example of those who remembered that the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems."
As a lifelong progressive, I find this position exasperating. And what worries me is that more of my progressive friends seem to be adopting this position.
Here are five reasons why I hope cooler heads will prevail.
1. We won. We're responsible, not entitled.
We successfully contested our own party's establishment and thrashed the GOP because of the Obama campaign's basis in movement politics. It was the real deal from the bottom up. Nobody imposed it on us -- we opted in and created something miraculously inclusive and diverse. No single group can claim, "we got him elected." Not big donors. Not party insiders. Not African Americans. Not labor. Not movement progressives. No one is entitled. Everyone is responsible.
2. Sabotage is not dissent.
Brown is absolutely right that, unlike conservatives, progressives tolerate and even welcome dissent, but "taking down the system" is not dissent. It's a form of sabotage. It's also the easy way out, not unlike the way that launching a cruise missile is easier than diplomacy. Dissent should include reasonable alternatives, and is taken more seriously if it comes from people who are in the game, not just sitting on the sidelines.
Confrontation in this context only serves to create resentment among all the people who are working so hard inside the government to make change happen. What those people need is a helping hand, not a slap down. I would urge CommonDreams.org and its network of 180,000 progressives to figure out how to mobilize broader support for the big ideas Obama has put on the table.
3. Americans are renting our ideas month-to-month. They haven't bought them yet.
America liked Barack Obama, but they had come to hate Bush-Cheney-DeLay Republicanism even more. Obama was able to reach new constituencies by articulating a pragmatic brand of progressivism. He didn't seek to persuade Americans that our values and policies were morally superior. He persuaded Americans that, with him at the helm, they just might work.
While the president rebuilds "the system," he must deliver results along the way. I'm sure the White House would, like many of us, prefer to rebuild the machinery first - like the banking and health-care systems -- but that is not a luxury we enjoy.
4. Protest-by-default is seductive but deadly
There is a long and glorious history of progressive victories rooted in oppositional protest movements. It is seductive to conjure and reapply those feelings of righteousness in the service of the effort of the moment. But those movements existed in their own time and context, and there is a real cost when that tradition is misused.
This tendency was one of the things that Obama made a call to "turn the page" on. When he talked about getting past the dorm room debates of the 1960s this is what he meant. Stick-into-the-gears activism pulls us back into the ideological clashes of the culture wars, and to the tail end of the Clinton years when there was such disdain between centrist Dems and liberals that they could barely stand being in the same room together. Progressive ideas fare much better in the pragmatic frame of the Obama era.
5. Compared to what? That is the question.
By temperament, progressives tend to be idealists, but dreams that come true are built on the ground, not in the sky. We should always strive for better, but we can't let the perfect eclipse what in reality is extraordinarily good -- maybe as good as it gets in 2009 America.
Let's put ourselves back four years ago when we were reeling from all the talk about a permanent Republican majority. Imagine we were told that in 2009 we'd have a progressive, African-American president who came of age in politics as a community organizer, who was being compared to Roosevelt in terms of his early accomplishments, but who, after seven months, had not yet revamped America's energy policy. Could progressives imagine being in that situation and losing hope?
I admire CommonDreams.org's devotion and passion. At the same time, I am dismayed by what I view as an appeal to our lesser instincts as progressives.
Bill Clinton used to quip that in affairs of politics Democrats want to fall in love, while Republicans want to fall in line. I'm not advocating for blind loyalty. I'm just saying that progressives should treat this presidency as a marriage, not a passing love affair.
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During the campaign for president, Obama was attacked from both sides. On the one hand, you had the Republicans which was obvious. On the other, you had the Hillary supporters, which was less so. I have feared all along that when he was finally in office this would continue with the conservatives and progressives both attacking him. Reading this commentary gave me great hope. It's very well written and points our the risk of this attacking. Reading the postings in response to it I realize my original concern was correct. The progressives really do eat their young. I consider myself more of a classic liberal than a modern progressive. I knew from the start that Obama was less a progressive or liberal than a pragmatist. He does what it takes to GET THINGS DONE! OK, they are not perfect. But, they are a start and after the last eight years of the Cheney/Bush dictatorship, that may be all we can hope for. To embrace a far left agenda at this time would doom everything he would try and guarantee that he'd be another Jimmy Carter. Those of you already calling for Obama's head on platter...
"To embrace a far left agenda at this time would doom everything he would try and guarantee that he'd be another Jimmy Carter"
Far Left Agenda?
You mean like pushing for a single payer option?
Like repealing DODT and DOMA?
Like letting the same foxes still run the finacial system without any meaningful reform?
Man - if that's a far left agenda then a large part of this country must be wearing Mao t-shirts.
"realize you are undermining any chance... ultimately supporting those who want to return to the Cheney/Bush rules"
Where have I heard that mantra before? Oh yeah - pretty common from the right wing crowd over the last years...
"If you don't agree with us then you must hate America"
Commondreams was so in the tank for Obama during the elections. Craig Brown used commondreams to actively campaign for Obama. Progressives who dared to question Obama, including me, were banned from commenting on the site.
I received the same fundraising email you did, and unlike you, I was pleasantly surprised. It is an indication that progressives are refusing to shut-up, sit-down, and behave like good little sheep. Craig Brown's letter suggests, that after heavily promoting Obama's agenda, Commondreams must be losing visitors and donations.
Obama's inability to generate progressive grassroots support for his health care reform package, his falling poll numbers, Rahm's telling progressive groups not to run ads against blue dog dems, all suggest that his progressive base has become disillusioned.
Progressives gave Obama everything he needed to push through a progressive agenda. They gave him both houses of Congress and the Presidency. Since then, all they have heard are lame excuses, for why progressive change is not possible. And all your article is giving us are lame reasons for why progressives should remain sheep. Baah. Baah. Bye-Bye.
Yes, we can't.
Sadly, I saw that slogan under a MAD Magazine portrait of Alfred E. Newman as Obama, during the campaign.
Please tell me MAD magazine didn't get it right.
Again.
Part II
What I'm seeing both saddens and alarms me: Obama being attacked both from the Right and the Left. So, who is supporting him? How likely will it be that he wins re-election in 2012? If he doesn't get re-elected, what are the chances of someone MORE progressive getting elected? What I'm saying is this: give Obama your support or watch Palin/Romn
The guy has only had 7 months! Sure, we should let him know we're not supporting all his policies, but he did get SCHIP expanded, created legislation for credit card companies to stop their deceptive practices, passed the stimulus package which is starting to create jobs in hard-hit areas, created the "cash for clunkers" which is allowing car dealerships to stay open and give people incentive to drive more efficient cars. I'd GLADLY have Obama -- any day! -- than another republican!!
While I too would much rather have Obama than ANY Republican your plea for "consensus" is the same tired old refrain, kowtowing to those in power.
Dude, we put him in there to get sh*t done - not to become an apologist and continuer of the Bush/Cheney admin polices.
I'd rather he hold peoples feet to the fire and shout from the roof tops than try and build a "bipartisan" solution.
Scr*w that sh*t - we've already seen what that's gotten us in the last 7 months - no change where it matters at all. Cash for Clunkers - BFD. Credit Card "reform" - that's a laugh.
PART I
I have to agree with this author. I certainly understand the people who have expressed disappointment with the Obama Administration on this blog. We all wish we could have seen much more aggressive change this past 7 months. However, if we think politicians run this country, we're fooling ourselves.
The deeply entrenched corporate/military interests are the ones who run this country. They have all the money and all the power. Even if we had a Kuchinich at the helm, how much change could he actually make happen? When I hear Obama talk about health care and green energy and using the stimulus to create green jobs to get us off foreign oil, I believe this is what he had really hoped to accomplish. But is he -- one man -- able to muscle these well-financed, powerful interests into giving up their power for the benefit of the American people?
All of Obama's cop-outs were predicted by those who were paying attention instead of buying the hype. Since the alternative was Hillary, we all held our noses and voted for him with the warning that we would hold his feet to the fire. Now he has moved to the right of Hillary, far to the right of the Clintons in their first year (who went out on several limbs like gays in the military and healthcare that 15 years ago were entirely different battles than today - "liberal" causes and not mainstream ones as they are now).
The perfect is not the only enemy of the good. (And in fact that phrase is kind of idiotic. What is "the perfect" in any context?) The "good enough" is the worst enemy of the good this side of the outright evil.
As I and many other people have posted elsewhere, Obama has continued the failed policies of Bush. He is continuing both needless wars, including the one he promised to end. He is continuing to sell our futures to corporations and speculators. The healthcare reform is being scuttled in front of our eyes, not by the raging town halls morons, but by Obama and the drug and insurance companies.
1. You're right, we are responsible. That's why we need to stand up and tell him what he's doing is wrong, and not at all like what he promised us he was going to do when he wanted us to vote for him.
2. Overthrowing the government is not "sabotage". Overthrowing failed governments is built into the very core of the American idea. From The Declaration of Independence (perhaps you've heard of it): "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,"
3. What are you even attempting to say here with this?
4. Protest by default? Perhaps you haven't been paying attention.
5. Bush was bad therefore whatever the democratic majority are doing now should be good enough in comparison. The government is pillaging its own people while guys like you stand there and say "Just give them time."
Obama promised, above all, "Change We Can Believe In" during his campaign. Since his inauguration, however, he has delivered nothing but "More Of The Same". He has embraced and expanded "state secrets", warrantless domestic spying, and "pre-emptive" indefinite detention of terror suspects. He has endorsed and taken ownership of the cover-up of Cheney-Bush war crimes, torture, war-for-profit, etc. He has deliberately sabotaged any hope of reforms on Wall Street or in health care by turning the processes over to the lobbyists and corporate profiteers who created the crises in the first place. And he has scuttled any hopes for improved lives for the LGBT community by embracing and defending DADT and DOMA.
Where's the "really very good" stuff we're all supposed to be happy with? Progressives aren't demanding perfection, but we are demanding that Obama and Co. begin to address the issues which they were elected to fix. So far, we have been cheated out of reforms or improvements at every turn. Although we LIKE Mr. Obama better than the Cheney-Bush Gang, that doesn't change the fact that we're still getting stuck with the same results which a third Cheney-Bush term would have delivered.
The American People are getting screwed by the Obama administration. If we don't confront them over their lies and sell-outs, we are looking at 3 1/2 more long years of the Cheney-Bush status quo. That may spell doom for the United States of America.
Change I don't believe in
The financial foxes are still managing the henhouse - like that's going to work
Health "Insurance" reform
Gitmo is still open
Total wimp out on Don't ask Don't tell and the Defense of Marriage Act
I voted for the man, but I'm starting to get as mad as hell...
I haven't abandoned Obama as my president, but I have transferred my time and money to those actually fighting for a minimum public option. The public option Obama promised on the campaign trail.
I'm not going to support a watered down trillion dollar giveaway to the insurance companies.
Obama's not the only dog in this fox hunt, but I'd gladly welcome him back at the head of the pack, if he can tear himself away fom sniffing around the royalty.
How is a health care reform that directs billions of tax dollars to subsidizing _the private health insurance cartel_ anything other than brazen plutocratic market-gaming and a cruel and immoral insult to working Americans?
Passing such a bill would not be a Democratic victory, but an utter betrayal of economic common sense.
Obama, by rejecting single payer (which he himself in 2003 admitted was the best policy) has clearly demonstrated that he does not deserve the appelation "progressi
The ugly truth is that on economic issues Centrists and Blue Dogs are NOT Democrats and are NOT fiscal conservatives. Centrists and Blue Dogs are Republican agents of the industrial cartels (banking, war, fossil fuels, private health insurance, pharmaceuticals, etc.) who have infiltrated the Democratic party to promote the plutocratic agenda. Since the Reagan Revolution, the Democratic party was hollowed out from within, and all moderate Republicans ran as Democrats.
Progressives SHOULD hold Obama accountable.
No Democratic voter should give a cent or a vote to any Centrist or Blue Dog in any primary.
Let's get these infiltrators OUT!
When you cut out centrists you are cutting out the majority of the party, leaving nothing but the far left. Most Dems are NOT far left and do not want to be associated with the far left. They are centrists. Do we want to drive them out of the party? I agree on the blue dogs, but to cut out the centrists is not like cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. It's like cutting off the rest of the body to spite one's nose.
Remember that Dems are supposed to be the party of the people - all the people.
Somebody from Commondrea
Garbage.
If Obama fails, it's his own damn fault.
1. Do progressives want to be ignored by the Obama administration?
2. If not, do they want to make it easy for them to be ignored?
3. If progressives reject "confrontation," are they sending the message that they can be ignored?
Obama may have been a progressive at one point. He is no longer. He's a centrist. And yes, he needs to be confronted.
1. Yeah, we are responsible. And being responsible means not looking the other way when your child makes a mess of things.
2. You are mistaking not being in the game for being benched by the coach. If Obama bends over backwards to accommodate the opposition, then it is entirely reasonable to become the opposition.
3. We dispute the Centrist dogma that timid half measures are the only, or even the best, path to success. Conservatives will only see weakness to be exploited, and the general electorate does not delight in subtly nuanced compromises.
4. “There is a long and glorious history of progressive victories rooted in oppositional protest movements.
5. “Compared to what.” What a wonderful cop-out. Republicans are a Blue Dog’s best friend. To paraphrase another poster, the utterly incompetent have become the ally of the barely adequate. And, as long as we’re going with the marriage analog, there’s a reason we have no-fault divorce in this country.
Even the social democrats of Europe have had to go one step at a time. Unless we are willing to literally lead a peaceful revolution, there is no way sweeping changes can happen at once. I don't see the majority of progs are willing to give up their often comfortable (even now) lives to do that.
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