Obama's selection of a team of highly skilled pragmatists has already been described as a move to the political center, but Obama advisers and longtime acquaintances say that this is a misreading of the incoming president and his approach. They describe it as combining a practicality about means with an overriding concern about the corrosive effects of growing economic inequalities.
Aides say that Obama was drawn to Summers in part because the former Harvard president shares the president-elect's passion for a more equitable distribution of economic benefits. Obama was impressed during campaign policy discussions that Summers would often pull the conversation away from general talk about economic growth to a concern with the living standards of families with average incomes.
Washington often divides the Democratic policy world between progressives and pragmatists. With Obama, as yesterday's news conference showed, it will have to become accustomed to a president who is both.
Fine. If Obama wants to call himself a pragmatic progressive, I have no problem with that. People can call themselves what they want. However, I object to progressives, especially those who criticize Obama from the left, being contrasted with pragmatists more generally.
This division of the Democratic policy world between progressives and pragmatists inherently portrays progressives as naïve idealists whose goals are unattainable. Rather than contrasting progressives with a competing ideological term, such as progressives versus centrists or progressives versus conservatives, progressivism is substituted for "idealism," in a pragmatic vs. idealist binary. This simultaneously accomplishes two goals: progressivism is dismissed as nice but unattainable, and those calling themselves "pragmatists" avoid overt disagreement with progressives. Thus, pragmatists are just serious progressives who know what can and can not be accomplished, and know how to bring those accomplishments into reality. Pragmatists are serious people, and progressives are just Dirty F***ing Hippies.
Given that I have somehow become the posterboy for accusing Obama of moving to the political center, can I just say that I consider myself a pragmatist? Some may scoff at that notion, but consider that Open Left is one of the only progressive blogs where one of our three founders and partners is actually working on the Obama transition team--and in a high level position on the team, at that. That we are somehow simultaneously dismissed as naïve idealists who don't understand how government works is both befuddling and unfair.
As far as politics goes, rather than a false contrast with progressivism, I understand pragmatism to be the habit of engaging in electoral and legislative fights you can win, and the use of readily available means within those fights. I think, without question, our work here on Open Left reflects such an attitude. While some of the primary fights in which Open Left has gotten involved have turned out to be 20% losses (IL-03 and IA-03 come to mind), we did win the Donna Edwards fight. The candidates we endorsed on the Better Democrats, Blue Majority and Netroots Candidates Act Blue pages actually have a pretty good records. There has been real progress on our two largest policy campaigns, Net Neutrality and No Residual Forces. We have worked on campaigns like Freeze Out Fox News, and SChip, that did actually influence candidate and congressional voting behavior. Through it all, we have developed new ways for people to get involved, including Use It Or Lose It, Searching for John McCain, Personal Paid Media, and Infrastructure Contest. to top it off, I do my best to pick fights and campaigns that can be justified through careful polling analysis.
Criticizing Obama from the left does not mean you lack a pragmatic outlook. I carefully choose what I believe are winnable fights where someone with my limited means can actually make a difference. I'm sure this goes for a lot of people who would consider themselves to the left of Obama, and who have been critical of some of his moves. Feel free to call me a lot of things, but don't claim that just because I am left-wing that I am not pragmatic.
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