It is necessary that I response to a charge against Paul Rosenberg made by this morning by Jamelle Bouie, who is subbing for Yglesias while he is in China:
I need help understanding how OpenLeft's Paul Rosenberg can credibly argue that Barack Obama has manically embraced "discredited conservative ideas" and "helped enormously in extended the hegemonic continuity of [the] Nixon-Reagan Eara. [Emphasis his]" More specifically, I need help understanding this strange impulse among liberals of Rosenberg's ilk to understate or dismiss most of the work Congress and President Obama have done over the past sixteen months, especially when - as David Leonhardt noted in yesterday's New York Times - it's been a burst of activity that "rivals any other since the New Deal in scope or ambition."
To help provide that understanding, back in February Matthew Yglesias himself offered a pretty good list of the mainstream progressive / liberal goals for the 111th Congress. This list is invariably incomplete (in particular, reproductive rights, DC representation and many civil liberties issues come to mind), but still serves as a useful touchstone
It's worth reviewing the mainstream liberal policy agenda for the 111th Senate:
- A $1.2 trillion stimulus.
- The forcible breakup of large banks.
- Universal health care with a public option linked to Medicare rates.
- An economy-wide cap on carbon emissions, with the permits auctioned.
- Repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell.
- A path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
- An exit strategy from Afghanistan.
- An end to special exemption of military spending from fiscal discipline.
- An independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
- The Employee Free Choice Act.
None of these things have happened. And it's worth emphasizing that the White House hasn't even seriously attempted to do the vast majority of these things.
Three months later, none of these things have still happened. Further, it seems quite possible that none of them will happen. As such, hopefully this list helps provides Bouie with the necessary help in understanding the progressive / liberal arguments that their public policy goals for the 111th Congress have gone largely unfulfilled.
Personally, I differ a bit from Paul in that I lean toward the Ed Kilgore analysis that the Obama administration is governing largely from a Third Way ideological perspective distinct from either contemporary progressivism or Nixon / Reagan conservatism. However, that perspective still renders the approach of the Obama administration distinct from the laundry list of progressive / liberal goals articulated by Matt Yglesias back in February.
Moving on, Bouie also levels a more personal charge that requires response (emphasis mine):
This isn't to say that there haven't been disappointments - Obama's adoption of Bush-era detainee policy has been particularly galling - but on the whole, Obama's presidency has been a success for the idea of liberal, activist government. Right now, liberals (again, of Rosenberg's ilk) ought to spend less time lamenting Obama's aversion to ideological orthodoxy and more time working to defend and improve progressive governance.
Excuse me? The Open Left community ("Rosenberg's ilk") has collectively engaged in a significant amount of direct action attempting to improve progressive governance over the past sixteen months. Both in the form of consulting with major established groups and in the form of multiple, direct action campaigns of our own, we have worked on health reform, Wall Street reform, LGBT rights, prominent Democratic primaries, and filibuster reform. And those links by no means encompass all of our activism campaigns over the past year.
There is no justification to the implication that we are whining without doing anything about it. Leveling such a charge against Open Left requires lumping us into some pre-set stereotype of do-nothing, left-wing whiners that belies an almost total lack of familiarity with Open Left. If anything, since early June of 2009, Open Left has been far more skewed toward direct action than toward the analysis-based lamentations that Jamelle Bouie finds annoying. We are neck deep in these fights, and to imply otherwise is simply inaccurate.
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