A New Progressive Era?
Today, in the New York Times, an Institute for America's Future op ad calls on us to "remember who we are," comparing the present crisis with that our parents and grandparents faced at dawn of the New Deal. To see the ad, go here.
If, as seems likely, Obama is elected and Democrats win greater majorities in both houses of Congress, will we witness a new era of bold progressive change - a 21st century Green New Deal? Certainly many of the elements are present:
Moment: Events force change. Roosevelt famously campaigned in 1932 on a balanced budget and resisted laying out a bold agenda. But the scope of the economic collapse required bold action. Similarly, Obama began his campaign intentionally vague about his "change" agenda. But the scope of the financial collapse, the deepening global economy downturn have already forced what was unimaginable only months ago.
Mandate: Hoover's failure and the speculative excesses and crimes exposed in the stock market crash discredited the Gilded Age policies of that conservative era, giving FDR a mandate for a very different direction. Similarly, Bush's catastrophic failures have discredited modern day conservatism. John McCain has helped define the scope of Obama's mandate, with his closing argument that the election poses a choice between Reaganism -- smaller government and lower taxes --and "socialism." At this point, socialism is winning. Obama is far from a socialist, but he too has framed his closing argument as a choice of a new direction or the "failed philosophy" of trickle down economics, that scorns government, lowers taxes on the rich and increases insecurity for the many. He will be elected with a clear mandate for a change in direction, not simply a change in parties.
Majority: Roosevelt's overwhelming victory cowed what remained of his Republican opposition. Indeed, he had greater trouble corraling the various factions of the Democratic Party, particularly its entrenched Southern wing. Next Tuesday is likely to expose the Republicans as a minority, regional, aging, whites only party in the grip of its evangelical extreme. For Obama, the greatest obstacles to pursuing progressive reform are likely to come from his party's conservative Blue Dogs and Wall Street DLC New Democrats.
Moral Armament: Roosevelt, by the time of his first inaugural address, was portraying the challenge to the country in moral terms. He warned against "fear itself," called people to service and to unity. He demanded "safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order," particularly that of "speculating with other people's money." He skewered the "unscrupulous money changers" who had failed because
.. "their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They only know the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish."
In his "closing" for the election, Obama is already issuing a similar moral indictment. He too is calling Americans to come together, to trust one another.
In one week, you can turn the page on policies that have put the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street....
I know these are difficult times for America. But I also know that we have faced difficult times before. The American story has never been about things coming easy - it's been about rising to the moment when the moment was hard. It's about seeing the highest mountaintop from the deepest of valleys. It's about rejecting fear and division for unity of purpose. That's how we've overcome war and depression. That's how we've won great struggles for civil rights and women's rights and worker's rights. And that's how we'll emerge from this crisis stronger and more prosperous than we were before - as one nation; as one people.
Does all this add up to a new era of bold reform? Two more elements are vital.
Presidential Determination: Roosevelt was known neither as a radical nor a particularly bold leader. Yet, as he came to understand the depths of the challenge facing the country, he clearly decided that "constant and persistent experimentation" were necessary, and that bold and dramatic measures were vital: the RFC to shackle the banks, the SEC to police markets, the WPA to put people to work, Social Security to provide basic security for all, the Wagner Act to empower workers and more.
Obama will face the same choice in the worst economic crisis since that Great Depression. Yet, today's conditions are far less dire. Many voices will counsel caution. Many will tell him to limit his priorities. Many will warn of unsustainable debts and deficits. What he decides is needed will be telling.
Progressive Movement. Roosevelt was blessed - although he often thought it a curse - with a mobilized progressive movement, led by militant labor unions. They pushed hard for reform, challenging Roosevelt's agenda, criticizing his timidity, demanding more. But they were also responsible, working to help him win reforms, challenging those who stood the way, understanding that they had to keep building power to gain further progress. Roosevelt was smart enough to help them: "the president wants you to join a labor union," their organizers said. They were disciplined enough to help the president, even as they pushed for more.
The current progressive movement is neither as organized nor as grounded. Some good many are pure Obama fans. Some - including much of the best of the bloggers - grew up in opposition to the war in Iraq and the crimes and catastrophes of the Bush administration. They are scornful of compromised Democrats, suspicious of a leadership that didn't end the war, cynical about the many corruptions of modern day politicians. Most of the organized progressive movement has spent the last years fighting to stop bad things from happening. Will a progressive movement come toigether that is independent enough to push Obama hard to go father than he might otherwise go, and responsible enough to help support reforms, and go after those in both parties that stand in the way? The Obama White House will clearly prefer the remarkable base that they have built during the campaign, ready to be mobilized in his support. Will they come to appreciate the benefits of an independent progressive movement demanding more than they think is possible?
Inheriting a country mired in two wars, headed into a deep and long recession, marked by Gilded Age inequality and growing insecurity, the next president will face stark challenges. If Obama is elected, he will have the moment, mandate, momentum, and moral armament to launch a new era of bold progressive reform. And in the coming months, if all goes well on Tuesday, we will learn if he has the audacity of hope to undertake it, and whether progressives can forge a force for change to propel it.
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What a great post by Robert Borosage! Historical perspective is always a good thing.
I am so grateful to have HuffPo and all of these AMAZING contributors such as Borosage, Robert Elisberg, Leah McElrath Renna, and on and on. They have given me hope, soothed my rage, and galvanized me so that I could wholeheartedly and unequivocally support OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT!
Remember this, Obama did not put America in the mess that they find themselves in. America got fat and sassy and did themselves in. Obama just recognized the mess that has existed for sometime and is will to inspire us to start working on it. You start by changing your behavior. First you get your ass down to the voting booth and vote for change, then the process starts. Stop all the whining, because thats not going to work. The get through this mess its going to take a major effort, because we neglected many things, from our roads, schools, personal responsibility, military, economic system, international standing, just to name a few areas. and Obama is not the Messiah. But he is a breath of fresh air. He is going to make mistakes, so remember to give hims some breathing room. He is built and equipt for this job. He has uniques qualifications to go with it. We are luckky to have such a candidate.
the most powerful political force the last 20 years has been the talk radio monopoly and unless progressive pay attention to it it will slow down and hamstring and prevent many of the needed changes merely because of the coordinated uncontested repetition it provides the GOP, who can use it to lie and distort to 60MIL from 1000 stations, without even being noticed until the results show up as some manunufactured but established public sentiment.
Has he mentionned that he was going to cut the Pentagon budget in half? It will be nice to see the republicans bite the dust, but sure not holding my breath for any major change with Obama.
As a modern progressive Obama is a fiscal conservative who has pledged to control spending and give tax cuts to the middle and lower class. He supports the 2nd Amendment and will protect our nation by surging our military forces in Afghanistan and increasing the size of our standing army. He supports FISA and reasonable surveillance powers for our government. He will reduce our reliance on foreign oil by increasing our domestic supply through targeted offshore drilling. And finally, he is an unapologetic man of faith who recognizes the value of faith-based organizations for social change.
If he actually does all that....I would be a supporter all the way. Let's see if it turns out that way. I would say the definition of "control spending" would have to involve an actual cut in the size of government. Not a cut in the increase.
That will NEVER happen, regardless of the party. The government will grow until it is overthrown.
continuing
3. Government not the solution to all our problems. The issue I have with the "progressive agenda" is that it seeks only government solutions. Look at the record of progressive initiatives:
- SS: We are dealing with a government supported ponzi scheme. The assets of SS are mere paper. The SS trust fund is technically worthless. The early entrants collected a hansome return on their investment. Us later entrants will be lucky to collect what we contributed. After 2017 we are looking an over $20 Tillion unfunded liability.
- Welfare: Talk about a program that "spreads the wealth around"...
-Medicare: Since this program started medical costs have out paced inflation every year. This is what you get when you say something is free (of course it is not). You get unlimited demand for the service but limted resources to pay for it. That is why medicare is calculated to have a $52 Trillion unfunded liability. This disaster of a program will make the current financial crisis look like childs
No Blad, this is what you get when you allow the inmates to run the asylum. This is what you get when you let corporations do whatever the hell it wants and DON'T REGULATE THEM.
Why is it that Europe can provide government health care and it doesn't seem to break their budgets? And why do health care costs keep going up, hmm? Does it just happen by magic? Or do the insurance and pharmaceutical companies have their hands so far up Washington's ASS they can floss its backteeth from the inside??
And NO Blad, welfare did not cause the infantilization of African Americans. Jim Crow, systemic racism, cutting school budgets to build more prisons, sending steel jobs overseas-- THAT led to the decay of the inner cities. And there are more white Americans are on welfare now than black Americans, so don't even try. Just go look up the welfare stats of any of the "red" states-- they have more welfare recipients in the rural communities than in big cities.
We've heard this all before, Blad. And it's complete GARBAGE. It's just an excuse. Doesn't this election pretty much tell you we are sick and tired of excuses?
"This is what you get?" What's this? This to you is the result of the top to bottom failures of Bush II.
However, "this" doesn't then mean that a progressive revolution is at hand. I certainly hope not. America is a very middle of the road country. Of course change is an inevitable fact of life but not to the point where the population swallows a strong progressive agenda. I believe Obama has many reality based advisors. Maybe I hope that.
Why do you bother bringing up the same old nonsense about social security? The SS trust fund is backed by the full faith a credit of the United States. The core of the problem seems to be that you don't know the difference between social security and the social security trust fund. Social security has always been a pay as you go system, the money taken out of paychecks for the social security tax goes straight to retirees drawing social security. The social security trust fund was established in 1983 by Ronald Reagon in order to have some extra money set aside for the retirement of the baby boomers. If the trust fund was worthless, or broke, or was to disapear, there would still be enough money taken out of payrole taxes to pay 80% to 90% of projected benefits to retirees, and that's without raising payrole taxes or raising or doing away with the cap on taxes.
The mega world of semantics boils down to one thing, decency. That's all change means, going from selfish egotism back to the resurgent obsolete golden rule, manifesting empathetic caring. That is our family. Semantics of religion will be redistilled back to tolerance and kindness. Who cannot be kind, besides republicans? Christian has any many divisions as grains of sand. The component insistent my way or to the river styx with you is what's now failing and must fail. All ingroup outgroup labels will now dissolve to "We Together".
That's not hard, it's simply win win.
Imagine !
Imagine...
above us only sky,
Imagine...
including you and I.
I watched Obama’s commercial even though I didn’t need to. I hung on every word, every image even though I had heard them and seen them before. Tears filled my eyes and anticipation filled my heart and the audacity of hope made itself known to me. Obama’s election will be a transcendant moment in American politics and American social culture. It will reignite the beacon of hope which once represented America before the world and have it make sense again. The words alone and the strengh of conviction are reason to elect him all by themselves. At minimum, anything is better than the Bush legacy. McCain does not represent the Change We Need.
My husband and I both got choked up watching some of these people because we can relate to them. There is no way that Palin or McCain could have done a compassionate "infomerci
well said.
I think there are some other lessons from the depression that Obama should take heed of.
1. The New Deal programs really did not work at all. Unemloyment remained stubbornly high even after the implementation of the mirad programs. Businesses tended not to invest capital in expansion or new business creation because FDR "experimentation" caused an environment of uncertainty about what he intended to do next. This all kept investment capital on the sidelines. So few jobs if any were created. Obama should eschew grandiose government initiatives to "fix" the economy. I fear all this "bailout" activity already enacted will have unforseen consequences that will not come to light until the new president takes office. The bailout has the potential to be very inflationary.
2. No new expansion of government. No universal health plan, no expansion of existing government programs. I guess it would just be too much to ask to actually cut government. I think most even on this very liberal site would have to agree that given the size and complexity of our government today there exists a significant level of waste and corruption that needs to be cleaned out. if this was to be accomplished it would more than pay for Obama's proposed tax cuts.
Yes, and we should start with the so-called "Defense" Department, and the military-industrial complex which is one of our biggest government hand-outs. We are wasting billions and billions of tax dollars on a department that has nothing to do with defense, but with imposing US hegemony around the world, something we can ill-afford. We could easily afford all of domestic priorities and take care of our own people if we finally ended welfare for the military business. It's just the lining the pockets of people who live off death and destruction. When we really needed a defense department on 9/11, it was nowhere to be found. Too busy imposing our will on other countries. I don't suppose that will much change under either McCain or Obama. Ron Paul seemed to be the only one who really understood the problem.
You guys are so predictabl
But defense is not the biggest budget item....en
I don't agree with you on deomestic spending. I think that should be cut as well. Most of the domestic spending is precisely what Obama was referring to when he talked about "spreading the wealth around". He wants even more of that. That is socialism. Is that what you want? Taking from those that earned the money and handing it to those that didn't earn it? Is that moral. Is that fair? Did it even solve any probelms..
I found you post nothing but raw emotion...
Forget it. We're about to see even more government intervention in our lives. America has allowed itself to be sold on the notion that it's the responsibility of a bunch of politicians and the federal bureacracy to "make us happy."
Personal responsibility, hard work, sacrifice and discipline are now equated with greed. Okay, let's see how a nanny government works. I'm sure the suits in Washington DC know what's good for us more than we do. Good luck, folks.
"The New Deal programs really did not work at all." My god, I wish you would read some history not written by a right wing fool. From the start of the New Deal to 1937 personal income grew from $50.2 billion to $74.1 billlion. Unemployment fell from 25.2% to 14.3%. The average wage of factory workers rose from $1,086 to $1,376. Coporate income more than doubled from $5.3 billion to $13.2 billion. Thing were looking good enough in 1937 that FDR, who was at heart rather conservative on economic issues, thought it would be a good time to try to balance the budget. He cut spending on social programs, and laid off millions from make work programs. These moves plus the $2 billion taken out of paychecks for the new social security program sent the economy into the tank. Things recovered somewhat in 38 with a new infusion of cash into social programs, but by the end of 1939, with the election of a new conservative congress most of the New Deal programs were dismantled.
But there still remained the minimum wage, the 40 hr. work week, the right of worker to unionize, aid to families with dependent children, social security. These are testiment to the grand idea of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which is this, that never again would America stand by while millions of its own citizens drowned in the flood waters of economic catastrophy.
"I wished to warn the people against the greatest of all evils,--the blind and furious spirit of innovation, under the name of reform. I was, indeed, well aware that power rarely reforms itself. So it is, undoubtedly, when all is quiet about it. But I was in hopes that provident fear might prevent fruitless penitence. I trusted that danger might produce at least circumspection. I flattered myself, in a moment like this, that nothing would be added to make authority top-heavy,--that the very moment of an earthquake would not be the time chosen for adding a story to our houses. I hoped to see the surest of all reforms, perhaps the only sure reform,--the ceasing to do ill."
Edmund Burke to William Elliot 1795*
I feel that Obama wishes to add a story to our houses during an earthquake. We need a limited Federal government, not a more unlimited one.
*"The Philosophy of Edmund Burke, The University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor, 1960, pg 166.
Such as one brought to us by the Bush administration and the Republicans, where we've had the largest accretion of police power in the history of the Republic and a President who has assumed unconstitutional powers.
Of couse, two wrongs don't make a right.
Obama voted to continue FISA, Clinton brought us Carnivore.
""...Clint
Of course, don't be surprised when democrats "squeeze" too.
Vidal again:
"President Clinton signed into law the anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act...legi
My point is that both parties are creating a totalitarian police state under the pre-text of terrorism.
It is in our best interests to call them both out on it, without hesistation, even when it gores our own ox.
*
http://www
**"Perpetual War fo Perpetual Peace",Thunder's Mouth Press, 2002.
In comparing current times to those of Roosevelt, I believe there's a distinct difference in people's ability to delay gratification. I'm a product of the depression and have lived its lessons. Those who have followed me are an 'on demand' society accustomed to living on the unsustainable credit which has now tanked. Tough times lay ahead, and I hope for the sake of all of us that we all prove my worries about 'staying power' to be overblown.
Why does the republican trickle down liquid of choice look like pee?
Good one.
http://www
New GOP Ad Accuses Democrats of Trying to 'Steal' Ohio Election
The Ohio Republican Party launched a new statewide ad Tuesday claiming Democrats are trying to “steal the election in Ohio” by allowing hundreds of thousands of people to vote illegally, the latest effort by GOP operatives in the battleground state to challenge the eligibility of newly registered voters, many of who are expected to vote for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.
“As Election Day approaches, consider this: could Ohio’s election be stolen?” a woman says in the 60-second spot. “Hundreds of thousands of new voter registrations are questionable. Many may be fraudulent. Yet [Ohio] Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is concealing the evidence.”
That's rich coming form the ones who stole it in '04 which is highly documented by now.
Be prepared for legal challenges from the GOP prolly up until inauguration day. I hope I have enough $$ to donate THEN.
GOP STEALS OHIO - THERE WILL BE RIOTS.
Robert, It is time for ACTION! PT6
I voted for Reagan!
I voted for OBAMA! Have YOU?
__________
If you are YOUNG and HEALTHY:
1. Grab the Keys and "Shoes!"
2. Go to the nearest voting location with the shortest line!
3. VOTE!
If you are NOT Young and Healthy:
1. "Get Dressed" and grab your keys!
2. Go to the nearest voting location with the shortest line!
3. VOTE!
The trollers in here say the Trillion-dollar Banker Bailout is good but a bailout for the poor is bad. Republicans and their cheerleaders favor "Reverse Robin Hood" Socialist economics.
I'm tired of these Ayn Rand Socialists, they make me sick.
Look, if those who have the most can't bear to pay a little more in taxes, then they are freeloaders who expect everything to come to them, but contribute nothing in return.
This is what the Republican party has become. It's all about how the government, middle class and the stock market can work for the rich, but everyone else is unimportant.
Didn't their mothers ever teach them to share? Or at least, how to give back to the community who treated them so well?
You drink the kool-aide of the left. How sad
Yes and a middle class tax cut is "socialism", but subsidizing failed mega-corporations is alright? Obama '08 Change we need.
Ayn Rand was not a socialist. Ayn was probably best described as a libertarian. And Ayn would have not been in support of subsidies to businesses any more than handouts of taxpayer money to individual citizens.
Any tax cut would not be considered socialist but a government run single payer health system is as socialist as it gets. I think Obama will if elected will have to lay off that boondoggle.
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