(Crossposted from The Huffington Post)
Consider a couple of tried and true axioms. “Divide and conquer.” “Diversity is strength.” When you think about it, they are, on the face of it, contradictory. Nevertheless, they both have an inherent wisdom, and there can be a fine line separating the two when you’re talking about politics. While many in the left are now concerned about the danger of the former, it may well be time to consider instead the opportunities of the latter.
First a little context. It’s hardly news to say there’s a split within the left, following the bitter struggle over health care reform. While many progressives see the final Senate product as a qualified win, many others see it as a giveaway to the insurance companies that will make a bad situation worse. Gone from both sides of the left is the pretense that the White House has not been a major player; those that support the bill praise Obama for its passage, those that fear the bill blame Obama for its passage.
But while some on the pro-bill camp are now reciting the “no hard feelings” victory mantra to disheartened members of the “kill the bill” camp, leading activists from the latter set have charted a different path. Bloggers like Jane Hamsher are diving headlong into the strategy laid out by Cenk Uygur in what has become a manifesto of sorts to those liberals stinging after their expulsion from the negotiating table and steaming at the open dismissal by White House legislative hammer Rahm Emanuel. Uygur’s piece gave voice to what more progressives have come to realize (based not only on the health care struggle, but virtually every other political hot potato from the Afghan War and civil liberties to Presidential appointments); that this administration will seriously consider no policy to the left of the Senate’s most conservative Democrats.
The solution, to Uygur, is for an organized and mobilized progressive movement to “hurt” the President. To draw political blood. That this is, by process of elimination, the only way to be taken seriously in the hardball world of Emanuelian politics which Obama has embraced.
Again, this isn’t breaking news. Still, there should be no question as to the reason for the speed and ferocity of the manifestation of the Uygur strategy that has appeared at progressive website Firedoglake. On the one hand, this faction sees the failures of the health care bill as a massive electoral loser, and with November looming, it becomes necessary from this perspective to improve the Democratic Party’s record despite itself.
More significant, though, is the fact that other major policy battles near and dear to the left are rapidly approaching (particularly climate change and the final disposition of the Employee Free Choice Act). Progressives are not willing to again cede these decisions to the “corporatist” wing of the party without a fight. In this sense, the clock is ticking to rediscover enough power to be taken seriously again (if indeed they ever were by this administration).
So that’s the liberal split in a nutshell, but it’s more than just a difference in strategy. It’s the form the opening salvo from FDL is taking that is serving to further antagonize these divisions; a corruption charge tailored not only to the populist inclinations of independent voters, but the scandal-obsessed traditional media as well. Yes, it’s increasing tensions, but there is also an undeniable cleverness to this line of attack.
The charge of corruption (through the person of Rahm Emanuel and questions around his involvement in Fannie Mae) is uniquely non-ideological, and has thereby allowed for an alliance with right wing hero Grover Norquist. This political jiu-jitsu co-opts a major driver of the very right wing machine Obama and Emanuel are concerned about, but puts it in service of a left wing ideological bloc, eager to garner the same respect from the White House. While many on the left are understandably finding the alliance distasteful, its potential potency is hard to deny.
Still, it is unquestionably cementing the fractures that have formed among the left. Calls of “why can’t we all just shake hands and get back to working together” fall apart before such a strategy.
Given, then, the innate wisdom of the “divide and conquer” axiom, this scorched earth approach must be a bad thing. A fractured left is a weakened left, and a weakened left can never, ever find its way back to relevance. Right?
In reality, it all depends on how it plays out in the coming month, because “divide and conquer” may not be the axiom in play if the rift can be finessed. Instead, the far more liberal mantra of “diversity is strength” could cede policy victories to the American left – even to those currently demonizing FDL’s Jane Hamsher and her allies.
So-called “movement conservatives” have proven that size does not necessarily matter when it comes to impacting policy. In fact, the beltway seems to respond to a definition of political force that mirrors Newton’s own definition of physical force in his second law: f=ma (force equals mass times acceleration). The Uygur/Hamsher activist faction may divorce itself of some mass through its approach, but through an even greater increase in its acceleration (by being more focused and nimble), it could end up a far more potent political force when all is said and done.
In addition, there’s even the potential for a good-cop/bad-cop dynamic among progressive ideological allies on either side of this attack-strategy divide. It may be distasteful for the Hamsher opponents among the left to consider, but the fact is that Rahm Emanuel may be more inclined to bring what he sees as agreeable progressives into the process in an active way if he thinks it may limit or even undermine the FDL-set during delicate negotiations. It may not put Jane Hamsher or Glenn Greenwald at the table personally, but it would be progressives at the table nonetheless – which is better than what we’ve got at present.
Is this more optimistic view the way the dynamics will play out in the coming months? Maybe, maybe not. There’s no question that FDL and company are engaging in a high stakes gamble that could either enhance the left’s impact, or further erode it. The answer to the question of which way it will all turn depends less on who is right, and more on how this tightrope is walked in the coming weeks.
However you slice it, a decision to turn up the heat on this White House, in the process solidifying the split in the left, is a high risk strategy. But it would seem that the administration has left progressives little choice if they want a way back to the negotiating table.
this is one of those times.
But I repeat .. “almost”.
You forget there are many who consider themselves the independent “left”. That is folks like me who, while finding agreement in the rhetoric of liberals, have discovered the Democratic Party is not our friend; it is politicians who will actively fight for a progressive movement who are.
This isn’t about a fractured all encompassing “left”. This is about abject failure on the political front. The heat on the DC Dems and their surrender monkeys in chief Reid and Obama is because the DC Dems really don’t disagree with the Republicans on enough issues of substance to deliver a truly progressive agenda.
The best way this could all work out is for a people friendly health insurance bill to emerge from the Congress, but that won’t happen. The best way this could all work out if for Obama to recognize war only begets more war, but that won’t happen. The best way this could all work out is for the Senate to support and push for an anti-pollution bill that really deals with the impending disaster of global climate change, but that won’t happen. The best way this could all work out is for our Congress to force an honest openness on the Obama administration, but that won’t happen. The best way this could all work is … well you get my point … it won’t happen.
It won’t happen because true progressives, not liberals who have run to that moniker simply to avoid being called liberals, true progressives have not been willing to flex muscles at the polls.
Progressives (small ‘p’) have done a lemming dance with liberals much the same way libertarians have done the dance with conservatives; and for the exact same reason: “if you don’t vote for me the other fella is gonna win”.
Guess what? Big brother, corporate sponsoring, war loving, police power enhancing, big money obsessing liberals and conservatives have ended up running the show in DC.
So because the best what things could work just isn’t going to happen under the current crop (including Sanders and Leahy), the next best should be worked on. And that next best is for progressives to not fall in line with the rest of the lemmings and vote for a liberal simply because otherwise the conservative might win.
This is about transformational politics … this is not about some split in a non-unified “left”.
We’re losing because we look thru the binoculars backwards, at relationships and who we’re standing beside,and who we’re standing across from.
Or, to put it differently, we have abandoned the high ground to wallow in the mud in the trenches.
In our attempt to shake free from the bonds of religion (the rituals that are forced on us), we have forgotten that religion gave us truths and ideas (social justice instead of pack or herd animal behavior, the struggle to end violence).
Several thousand years of scripture point from our primitive violent past towards a progressive future where we overcome our weaknesses bit by bit.
We can’t work with Grover Norquist, any more than we can progress by imitating the behavior of a pack of wolves, or a herd of buffalo. That is, Grover’s ideas are ones tried and failed, that we tried to put behind us thousands of years ago, and again, hundreds of years ago.
This nation was founded on republican and democratic principles. Those principles have been abandoned, in favor of monarchy, torture, oligarchy, avarice.
The only way to succede is to remind people of the direction we were headed, and that we have done an about face, and are headed in the opposite direction. Holding hands with Grover won’t do that.
But there is no way that Grover Norquist can have any part in forming a progressive alternative to the policies of the Obama administration.
Think of it this way: like all Republicans, Norquist undoubtedly opposed any change in our health care system, right?
And, like the results or not, Emmanuel had a role in making sure that something passed.
So Emmanuel had a role in defeating the wishes of Republicans.
Of course Norquist isn’t going to like him. Anything that enables Obama to get any of what he wants is anathema to right-wingers like Norquist.
Weakening Obama is entirely in line with the Republicans’ agenda, but it isn’t going to help us get any of ours through.
As was written in the Times today, we should put pressure on the Senate to permanently break the Cloture rules that currently exist. The pattern we’ve seen over the last 40 years is that those who oppose all government will use the rules to obstruct everything that doesn’t involve funneling money directly to large corporations. We, when in the minority, still want government to work, and generally do not obstruct as often.
If it only took 50 votes plus the vice president to pass legislation, is there any doubt that a much more progressive agenda would emerge from Congress? Even when we’re (eventually) in the minority, it will not hurt us as much as it does the obstructionists to lose the current “filibuster” rules, which have essentially boiled down, due to overuse, to requiring a supermajority to govern. C’mon…if you need 60 votes, you’re going to wind up compromising a lot more; it’s just logic.
We have the numbers and power to change the Senate rules until next November. I suggest that they guarantee people from all sides plenty of time in front of the cameras, but do not allow the minority to rule. And, while we’re at it, every Senator gets only one nomination “hold” per Congress…
Some commentator pointed out that if Obama had started the health care debate with “I will not sign a health care bill that lacks a viable public option,” the whole thing would have played out differently. Dramatically so.
Likewise, with the present 60-vote cloture requirement, if Sanders and/or Leahy had fired an opener of “I absolutely will not vote for a health care bill that lacks a viable public option,” the debate would have gone differently.
Instead, Lieberman, Nelson, and company got in the first ultimatums, and everybody sucked up to them.
Perhaps nothing would have passed, but it would have turned the frame of the debate into why the public option is necessary rather than why it is unacceptable. The media would have focused on the pro-public holdouts and given them time in the public arena to explain themselves.
Now is the time for Sanders to issue a public statement in advance of the reconciliation process that he cannot in good conscience vote for a final bill that lacks the public option. If people bring up the likelihood of a filibuster, he should say, “Go right ahead, break out the folding cots and live in the Capitol Building for a month. Or two months. No more bluffing.”