Cenk Uygur has written what may be the most important piece currently out there on the interwebs for progressives to read. It ends up optimistic, although considering the article’s almost behavioralist slant, its hard to get very excited.
On Obama:
I’m sure Obama is a progressive that would help the average American if he thought he could. But apparently he thinks he can’t. He can only bring them a small amount of change because of what he thinks the system will allow.
You can criticize him for lack of imagination, duplicity during the campaign, lack of spine and political miscalculation. And you might be right about some or all of that, but all of those aren’t the essence of Obama. The core of Obama is a man who is a cautious politician. That is what he is at his center. He can’t help himself.
[…] so why did Obama drop the progressive reformer angle and go toward the right and corporate America? Because his field changed. He went from campaigning all across the country to being in the middle of Washington, DC. The center of Washington is very different than the center of the country.
[…] Right now, Obama perceives the center of the country to be somewhere between Dick Cheney and Harry Reid. Do you know where that leaves him? Joe Lieberman. That’s why we’re in the sorry shape we’re in now.
On Dean:
The reality is that Howard Dean is a moderate. Progressives in Vermont were upset with him when he was governor because they thought he was too far right. I just heard from someone who was on a cruise that The Nation organized and that Howard Dean spoke at. The crowd on the cruise nearly booed him when he spoke because they thought he was far too moderate.
If you look at Dean’s policies, they are right down the middle of the country. That’s part of the reason his 50 state strategy worked so well. But the establishment media hate him. Why? Because he points out when they’re doing something wrong – and he winds up being proven right in the end. There’s nothing that irritates the establishment more than that.
On Bernie:
As things stand, Howard Dean is perceived to be to the left of all of the Democratic senators in Washington (not because he’s more liberal than Bernie Sanders or Harry Reid; it’s because unlike them, he’s willing to fight for his positions (sorry Bernie, at this point, it’s true)). That’s unconscionable. Washington has shifted so far right that Dean is considered some sort of wild-eyed liberal. We have to move it back if we are to have any hope that Obama will move further left (and much closer to the true center of the country).
On what’s next:
It’s not pretty, but it’s necessary. We have to attack Obama relentlessly from the left. Right now he is a giant that is unmoved by anything in his left flank, he keeps looking to his right and ducking and worrying and moving to accommodate them. They are so loud and so visible. It’s hard to miss them. We have to make him look left. We have to shake him off his foundation.
Rahm Emanuel gave a wonderfully condescending interview to the Wall Street Journal where he explained that the White House has nothing to worry about from the left. That’s exactly what we have to change. Unfortunately, the only way to capture their attention and make them accommodate us rather than Fox News Channel is to hurt them. When we can put on the same kind of pain and pressure on the Obama White House as Fox does, that’s when they’ll have to move, at least to get out of the way.
You inflict political pain by voting things down. So far progressives have been completely unwilling to do this. They got rolled on healthcare because they had no intention of putting their foot down – and everyone knew it.
For my part, I’ll be honest. It’s been a while since I felt this beat up, exhausted, and discouraged. Even cynicism takes a certain amount of energy, and I’m out.
But I suppose tomorrow is another day. Heck, its Christmas. Happy (?) Holidays.
Sorry to hear that you feel beat up, exhausted, and discouraged. I don’t, because I do my best not to get invested in the personalities that move in and out of political positions. I see them more as actors stepping in and out of written roles.
There is a structure in place, involving two major parties, corporate lobbyists, corporate appointees, millionaire campaign finance, a patchwork of tricky electoral laws, and a semi-monopolistic news media. That structure filters out some people and allows others to pass through. Our political system has predefined places for these people to fit in. They wouldn’t be there if they had policies in mind that would make major changes in the parasitized hulk of our empire.
Sanders has found that if you try to change a meat grinder from the inside you change more than the meat grinder. Dean is finding his mojo because he’s got nothing to lose at this point.
Harassing Obama from the left won’t do much, because he was filtered through the corporate/political structure in order to get where he is today. He has behaviors and beliefs that fit the way things are run now. As I wrote in a recent post at minorheresies.com, you wouldn’t expect the CEO of Exxon/Mobil to turn that organization into an environmental non-profit. One, he wouldn’t be allowed to, and two, being who he is, he wouldn’t think of it.
My point is, stop thinking “Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Dean, Sanders, McCain, Inhofe, Boehner, Lieberman.” Start thinking “Campaign finance laws, electoral laws, lobbying laws.” Change the filter and you change the next occupants, or more importantly, the political beliefs allowable in the next occupants. It’s going to take a new civil rights movement, one for 99.9% of Americans, to get that done. I wonder if we have the social strength for that.
I’ve thought about that. The Supremes equated money with free speech back in 1976, effectively ending legitimate democracy and trading it for plutocracy. Still, there is an out.
They prohibited overall spending limits and have ruled against extremely low contribution limits as restricting free speech. Ok, fine.
Public financing should be based on multiple matching, much like the statewide public financing system here in VT. Cap individual donations at a day’s wages at minimum wage – around $50 right now. After tax? Anyway, multiple match those donations 7:1, so $50 becomes $400. That would get around Buckley. No cap on total raised funds. It would cost us about $2-3 billion a year, but would save us about 100 times that.
That way Bill Gates and the guy who mows Bill Gates’ lawn have the same clout.
As a former staffer for Sen. Russ Feingold and then-Rep. Bernie Sanders, let me just chime in briefly.
As far as campaign finance, we may be about to face a tsunami. The Supremes are working on their decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which the Roberts Court may use to overturn all campaign finance laws, even those dating back to the early 1900s, which put the original restrictions on corporate and union spending. See my blog post – http://scaypgrayce.wordpress.c…
If the Court’s majority comes down as I think they will, they are about to open the floodgates on millions, perhaps billions, of dollars in corporate largesse.
So if you think you were feeling beat up, exhausted, and discouraged before . . .
As for Bernie, I’m also disappointed in his vote, but I understand it, and he got community health center funding (yes, I know, a drop in the bucket compared). The real problem is Obama. Bernie may have tried and failed – or caved, if you want to see it that way – but Obama flat out lied to us. He’s even saying now he never campaigned on the public option. He never intended to support it, and he played a rhetorical three-card monte for months, trying to pretend he wasn’t screwing us and millions of Americans and their families while handing a major Christmas present to Health, Inc.
Obama’s the one who should be receiving the withering fire, not Bernie.