Progressives may sometimes feel like they're in a backdoor high-school affair with the president. You know the kind: The popular kid will make out with someone from the wrong side of the tracks. But he'll only take a rich kid from "the right kind of family" to the school dance.
The president often courts the left when he needs it, only to pitch his actions to the right at clinch time. Right-wing ideology is often mistakenly called the "center" today, despite holding views that are so conservative they're often rejected by Republicans as well as Democrats. But it's the right all the same.
Lately the president has made some significant moves toward the left, but the response has been cool in some progressive corners. The skepticism's understandable. His 2008 platform was progressive too, but after he was elected he tacked sharply right without even bothering to explain the shift. Progressives don't want to keep feeling like the kid who 'puts out' in the backseat of a convertible and then is all alone on prom night.
But if you believe (as I do) that the progressive movement should be independent of Barack Obama and the Democrats, then the decision to work with them should be made strategically. There are times to oppose them, but there are also times to support, encourage, and persuade them.
The president's new progressive moves aren't enough, and they're still watered down with unproductive and unpopular rightwing notions. But they are a move in the right direction. He deserves some credit for that. The progressive movement does too. So what's next?
The Right Left, the Wrong Right
There's no need to rehash all the mistakes of the last three years. The president and his advisors still cling to the mistaken idea that, as one of them told the Washington Post, "Fighting might make liberal groups feel good, but it isn't reasonable."
This "reasonableness" has led to Congressional gridlock, the appearance of weakness, and ongoing economic misery after inadequate steps were taken. The result is plunging approval numbers for the president, a disaffected base, and a surprisingly vulnerable re-election campaign. The White House has mistakenly assumed that we're still in the nineties, where you could win elections by rejecting the "Sistah Souljah left" and appealing to the "center."
That was two recessions, one financial crisis, two wars, and several million jobs ago. What the White House is hopefuly beginning to realize is that the 'left' is the new center. The president's proposed jobs act contains progressive ideas like closing corporate loopholes that are actually popular with a majority of Republicans. (So was the public option in healthcare.) And large majorities of Americans support his proposed millionaire's tax, another 'progressive' idea.
Fighting for these ideas won't just please 'liberal groups' - who seem to be a particular source of White House resentment. They'll please most Americans. In some cases, they'll please a majority of Republicans too . Hopefully the White House has begun to read the polls and reports that these 'liberal groups' (including our own, the Campaign for America's Future) has been giving them for years.
Perhaps the White House has come to understand that today's GOP, and the cynically compromised corporate mavens who compromise the so-called "bipartisan center," are unscrupulous and untrustworthy. The Administration has spent three years trying to please the wrong right, an intractable group of self-promoting radicals, while ignoring the right "left" - a progressive movement that has come to speak for the American majority on jobs, taxes, Social Security, and Medicare.
The Wrong Right
Case in point: The president appointed two right-wingers to run his Deficit Commission, a misguided effort that focused on spending cuts while the nation continued to struggle with lost jobs and frozen wages. Democrat Erskine Bowles is a Director of Morgan Stanley, the Wall Street firm whose brokers like to brag that "I ripped his face off" after taking advantage of one of their own clients.
That's right: The Democratic co-chair helps direct a firm whose brokers brag violently about taking advantage of its own clients.
The other co-chair was radical Social Security hater Alan Simpson, who yesterday turned on the president with an angry tirade about 'an abrogation of leadership, a vacancy of leadership."
"You can't get this done without hits across the board," said Simpson, who has adamantly opposed tax increases for millionaires or corporations as part of the "hits across the board." Simpson's also pushed for Social Security benefit cuts from seniors who have already taken "hits" like the eligibility age, which is already increasing as scheduled, and cost of living adjustments that don't keep pace with living expenses for seniors and the disabled.
The president has also learned that Congressional Republicans are dedicated to nothing so much as his own failure, even if that failure means extended economic misery for millions of Americans. The handful of GOP representatives who might work with them are hostages to the Tea Party and the radical right. That makes the president's rightward moves futile.
Prom Night
Now Barack Obama has begun taking some steps toward the progressive positions that define the new American center. His American Jobs Act balances some ineffective cuts with some excellent moves toward direct spending on infrastructure, the millionaire's tax, and other popular measures. He has backed off his offers to cut Social Security and Medicare, and has even started to use progressive economic analyses that explain what's really going on with those programs.
He told a Latino voters' meeting, for example, that "The way social security is set up, the (cost of living adjustment) is made automatically but over the last two years, because of the recession, it hasn't happened. We tried to provide an extra check to those receiving social security checks to make up for the loss but it didn't pass through Congress."
That's a welcome break from recent statements that those cost-of-living adjustments could be adjusted downward without serious harm to seniors or the disabled. And it's sweet talk, for sure. But "prom night" happens when the president and other Democrats act, not when they speak. How can progressives make sure we get better actions, and better election results?
Press On
The president hit a lot of progressive talking points in his recent speech to the Congressional Black Caucus. Then he seemed to lecture his audience: "I am going to press on for jobs. I'm going to press on for equality. I'm going to press on for the sake of our children. I'm going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now. I don't have time to feel sorry for myself. I don't have time to complain. I am going to press on.
"I expect all of you to march with me and press on. Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We are going to press on."
Many of those in his audience had been "pressing on" without recognition or reward for more years than the president has been alive, and some of them found these remarks condescending and inappropriate. But they'll work with him anyway. All he has to do is "shake off" his 90's-era obsession with right-wing "centrist" ideas, put on his job-creating shoes, and press on.
How can he and his party be guided in that effort? We need an independent movement to push for better (and more popular) policies. It should be centered around the kinds of positions reflected in the Contract for the American Dream - positions that end Wall Street recklessness, end two expensive and unproductive wars, create jobs, encourage growth, and rebuild the middle class.
This movement can help encourage genuinely progressive politicians at the local, state, and national levels. Because it's independent, it can also keep the pressure up to make sure they carry out their promises. The president and his staff seem to resent pressure from the left, but they're responding - and his new left-leaning approach could help him, too.
That still leaves a lot of questions unanswered: How should this independent movement be organized? How much of its efforts should be "inside the Beltway" and how much should focus on the rest of the country? Is there a role for a third party? How can the labor movement help - and be helped - by sucha a movement? How can grassroots actions like the Wisconsin sit-ins and #OccupyWallStreet be supported and expanded? Do we need primary challenges in 2012 or later?
Those questions and others are the reason why we're gathering next week in Washington to have a series of in-depth conversations.
But a little self-congratulation is in order, along with the soul-searching. Four years ago the country elected a different kind of president -- one with some explicitly progressive positions - and gave him both houses of Congress. That's a pretty huge accomplishment, whatever's happened since.
Since then we've seen the uprisings in Wisconsin, the failure of austerity economics in Europe, and the sudden appearance of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Like the old saying goes, this could be the start of something big. In other words, it's almost prom night. Once the dancing starts, will progressives follow ... or lead?
Follow Richard (RJ) Eskow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rjeskow
Josh Silver: Wall Street Protests: A Right-Left Movement Must Emerge
Wendi L. Adamek: Flashmob Meditators Occupy Wall Street
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Norquist, McConnell ( who has said it out loud), Boehner et al would rather see Obama fail than see America succeed.
That should make it easy to know what to do: Vote Democratic.
Easy to do when your numbers are dropping like flies and you're running for re-election and need every vote you can get. This upcoming election will also be about trust. Americans can trust what the republicans say, as horrible a stand on issues as they take but Obama has a record now and to suddenly appear to turn to the left on some issues is transparent and pathetically so. It smacks of desperation and a panic. Besides, it's not what Obama says any more that counts; it's what he does and in fact has always been that way. Sorry, I wouldn't trust Obama farther than I could throw Governor Christie of New Jersey.
This is teh gist of the problem and where Eskow is wrong. A mistake is something done unintentionally and Obama intentionally dug us further into the quagmire that is Afghanistan and intentionally added Pakistan to the mix. All this and to the shame of most democrats when they never questioned his judgement about focusing more on Afghanistan when he ran for the presidency. Was flip-flopping on halting pollution regulations just two weeks ago and keeping GITMO open etc just mistakes too?
We need a Progressive party, no matter how small at the beginning because it will get much larger. As long as there isn't one, democrats will take our votes for granted believing they can go as far right as they want because we have nowhere to go but to them. Then we wind up with what just happened, the killing of an American citizen abroad ordered by the President of the United States and a shot right into the heart of due process and our Constitution.
But the president is not going to stand with their progressive candidates because we saw him support the Blue Dog against anti war and progressive candidates time after time in the 2008 and 2010 elections .Let him go down .We can do more with Congress anyway.....
Nonsense! That's just wishful thinking. Words aren't "moves". His aren't "significant".
All Obama's done in this campaign (and the last) is produce occasional progressive rhetoric. Last time he campaigned to "restore habeas corpus" but, instead, extended the Patriot Act. He campaigned to end the Bush tax cuts, but extended them. He campaigned to end the Bush wars, but extended them. He promised an AFL-CIO audience in late 2007 he'd find "comfortable walking shoes" and march with labor, but sat by during the first six months of the GOP assault on workers' rights in Wisconsin, when his support would have mattered most. (I and 100,000 of my neighbors have done more to preserve collective bargaining rights in America by rallying in Madison than Mr. Obama has done at all.) His "bedroom slippers" speech is more of the same.
Campaign rhetoric isn't action and Obama is just a Blue Dog. Based on his actions the past three years, he deserves to be primaried right out of the 2008 presidential race. Otherwise, we'll just get the same damned Neo-Con policies whether he's re-elected or not. (And it looks like we will.)
If anything he's gone even more Wall St than his first Cabinet picks!
Admire Obama for his charisma, sign of racial progress and good looks.
But to mistake him for a progressive or even a Democrat is absolute denial.
Well said!
To be a Democrat (or a Republican or Socialist or Green, for that matter) is to be partisan. If you're doggedly "bipartisan" you can't at the same time be a Democrat. And if you're consistently pro-Wall Street, you're no progressive.
I love Campaign Obama to pieces, but President Obama is another matter: he's a disaster. Even setting aside his regressive policy positions and compromises, he's occupying an office and media attention that rightfully belong to an actual, partisan Democrat: someone unafraid to emulate Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman--or even Teddy Roosevelt and Bob La Follette--not someone who consistently ignores the needs of average Americans by caving in to the every whim of belligerent plutocrats.
Obama is more than a disappointment: he's a hazard to navigation and (sad to say) a mistake.
I would not like to see what the country would look like if right wing extremeists controlled two branches of government. Then again, maybe they already do.
However, as a ProgressivÂe, these are what I think the ProgressivÂes problems are... at least right now:
1. ProgressivÂes do not have the money.
2. ProgressivÂes are weak - someone says move, they fall over,
3. ProgressivÂes are dreamers, not doers - rather than do something, they say "Wouldn't that be nice."
4. ProgressivÂes aren't leaders - they are always looking for leaders, because they aren't leaders.
5. ProgressivÂes lack the 'killer instinct' - they cannot plow through whomever and whatever they have to to reach their goals.
6. ProgressivÂes aren't smart - they have not found any argument to defeat greed and selfishnesÂs.
7. ProgressivÂes message is unclear - they have no way to to get the less-aware ConservatiÂves to see they are being manipulateÂd to vote against their own interests or enlighten them that their values are actually ProgressivÂe values.
Sorry, truth hurts, I know, but right now this is the truth. We're all demoralized after the bait-and-switch, but with the right voice, these can be overcome. And that voice is NOT the one telling ProgressivÂes to 'quit complaining.'
ProgressivÂes do have the numbers but, as long as the monied players can (in the words of Jay Gould, railroad tycoon and robber baron) "hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half," we don't even have that.
At least I didn't have to waste my time with the rest of your posting. Thanks for that.
In NYC, there's are a few independent parties including the Liberal Party. Whenever a democrat runs for office, the or she goes running to the party to get their support. They need it but that support doesn't come willy nilly; it comes, if they have a record, of having supported by action the issues most important to the Liberal Party. A progressive Party would ensure that progressives wouldn't have a democratic president's back; we'd be holding our own knowing full well a democratic president needs us more than we need whoever that president or candidate is and insuring a knife isn't plunged into our back.
I am, for the record, not a fan of the ConservaDems or their apologists. A ConservaDem is no different than a Republican on fiscal issues, hence the chained CPI proposal. How could any apologist defend that? Still, the Progressive weakness can't be laid on the ConservaDem apologist's doorstep because they were never Progressives in the first place.
Look at the Progressive budget. Did that get any appreciable exposure? I'm sure if we held national referendums on issues, we'd see how truly progressive the country is. Knowing that, it's hard to make excuses for our weakness and lack of progress on our agenda.
"we'd be holding our own knowing full well a democratic president needs us more than we need whoever that president or candidate is"
I'm not sure where you're getting this. The President clearly feels no such need. And we have no viable candidate with which to primary him.
Meanwhile, government corruption is beyond comprehenssion. Our political system is completely disfunctional. Things need to change.
The perpetrators on Wall Street starting with CEO's like Blankfine, Dimon on down the line need to be held accountable and jailed where appropriate.
There also needs to be accountability for Iraq and a return to the rule of law in this country.
Certain members of the Supreme Court don't even bother trying to hide the corruption. Its as if it were somehow an ethical responsibility to be corrupt. This needs to be corrected.
That's just for starters. I hope the movement spreads across this country and grows into the millions.
and he doesn't lack courage, he lacks honesty - it takes a whole lot of cojones to gather votes on your record as a Chicago community organizer and then once in office , fill your cabinet with Wall St profiteers.
But what causes this mitosis is worth looking at. Politics is a social phenomenom, even more so with today's rapid firing social networks. Its obviously not an entirely rational or predictable process.
Complex memes of politics use human networks to replicate themselves- simply said, the ideas of politics take on lives of their own. Sometimes those ideas are wrong, but unstoppable. In many ways, that's what the current right wing extremism is about- out of control memes that are wrong, but are virulent nonetheless.
I'm a committed liberal, and I'll support a third party even if it means losing an election. But I think we'd be way better off to fight within our party, to be as uncompromising within the Democratic party as the Tea Baggers have from the right. Cause party mitosis, and be ready for it. Let memes work for US for a change.
We are in a rare battle over moral values of our party. In most elections, Republicans cleverly hide these values. In this extreme environment, we can call them out and create our identity by contrasting with theirs. It is mitosis, and long overdue.
The pittance I gave directly did very little in the end, but hand him the campaign mystique of having the "little people" behind him.
The direction of this administration become clear in the very moments of his inauguration when Rick Warren gave the invocation. An olive branch to the right wing funadmentalists, and a slap at those who put him there that day.
I will not donate directly to the Democratic Party, only to individual candidates based upon their voting record and stance on current affairs. I will also put my money in the hands of those who share my beliefs, as Russ Feingold does, for example, and let them contribute to like minded candidates with whom I am less familiar.
No more hiking our skirts in the back seat for anyone.
He should have been primaried back when there was time to develop a campaign and a following. If we had, I would now be telling you to stop undermininÂg the Progressive movement, to turn out and vote for a real Progressive.