Back on Friday, John Judis and Glenn Greenwald both published articles decrying the lack of concerted, effective, institutional left-wing pressure on President Obama. The specific context of their complaints was the smaller than needed size of the stimulus / jobs package. The argument was that if there had been more left-wing pressure for a larger package, the stimulus might have been a couple hundred billion dollars larger, and not included the alternative minimum tax fix. However, because so many progressive and left-wing organizations spent the last year dedicating themselves to supporting candidate, and now President, Obama, such pressure was lacking, and the stimulus was inadequate.
I posted a response to Judis and Greenwald, somewhat flippantly arguing that coordinated, left-wing pressure on the Obama administration for a larger stimulus was not possible due to new societal organizational patterns. I thought about the Greenwald and Judis articles quite a bit over the weekend, and, upon further reflection, I now think that my response was too generalized. There are reasons why left-wing pressure on the Obama administration is lacking, but those reasons are more variegated and specific than the blanket reasoning I provided. Given that creating effective left-wing pressure on any administration, not just the Obama administration, is something in which I am very interested, more thought on this subject is required. As such, in the extended entry, I attempt to provide a more comprehensive list of reasons for the lack of effective left-wing pressure on the Obama administration.
In addition to my original thesis, here are four three other mitigating factors:
There is more left-wing pressure than the Judis-Greenwald thesis credits. For starters, there is a major flaw in the Greenwald-Judis thesis: the left actually has successfully pressured the Obama administration into making concessions during the last four weeks. Last month, Democratic Senators forced the Obama administration to remove business tax cuts from the stimulus. Congressional minority caucuses forced the Obama administration to take the census away from Judd Gregg, which led, at least in part, to Judd Gregg withdrawing his nomination to Commerce Secretary. When the final stimulus bill came out, Senator Dodd successfully inserted executive pay legislation in the stimulus that the Obama administration had opposed, mass transit funding increased significantly, and Buy American provisions in the stimulus were included.
While some many not consider this adequate pressure or adequate success, it is simply not true that the left was completely unsuccessful at pushing the Obama administration over the last four weeks. The issue at hand is one of degree, not of absolutes. There has been left-wing pressure, and there have been concessions as a result of this pressure. The question is not whether such pressure or concessions exist, but whether one considers their amounts adequate or not.
Republicans still defining the debate: Republicans have continued their media dominance, even though they are now a rump regional party. They are still defining the debate, not progressives. If anything, that is demonstrative of a lack of pressure and counter-infrastructure to the national media, not to a lack of pressure and counter-infrastructure to the Obama administration.
Further, as is commonly the case, whenever Republicans dominate debate, they are good at making people choose sides. Even I, while perceived as a particularly vehement left-wing critic of President Obama, feel a strong urge to help him out whenever Congressional Republicans open their mouths. As such, continued Republican media dominance pushed more of the left into President Obama's camp than any "cheerleading squad" could ever accomplish.
Not many left-wingers upset with President Obama right now: Another factor is the lack of mass left-wing pressure on the Obama administration is that the amount of left-wingers unhappy with the Obama administration compose a small percentage of the overall population. For example, The latest Daily Kos tracking poll showed President Obama with only a 7% unfavorable rating among Democrats, a 20% unfavorable rating among Independents, and a 22% percent unfavorable rating among other non-Republicans. While no data is available to verify this, it is likely that a minority of these Dems / Inds and Others are upset with Obama because they think he hasn't gone far enough to the left.
At the most, we are probably talking about 5% of the population that currently finds itself unhappy with President Obama because he has moved too far right. This is a problem of which I have been acutely aware for some time. As I wrote back when I was appearing across numerous national news outlets as a left-wing critic of Obama's transition, "if I have become one of the go-to interviews for progressive dissatisfaction with Obama's transition, then [probably] there isn't much progressive dissatisfaction with Obama's transition." This is also connected to the problem where, even though there is no escaping ideology, not many Americans conceptualize politics in overt, thoroughgoing ideological terms. Conscious, coherent self-reflection on ideology simply isn't very common among the electorate.
(Update: In comments, Glenn Greenwald clarifies that he was not accusing the leadership of progressive organizations of bad faith, but simply dealing with organizational reality:
You're slightly mischaracterizing what I wrote. I didn't say that these groups wish they could be more anti-Obama but are cynically exploiting pro-Obama sentiment. What I said is what they said: that they are limited in their ability to push back against or criticize Obama because their new members/donors/readers, etc. are very pro-Obama and won't tolerate opposition to his agenda.
I don't think it's corrupt or bad faith of these organizations. They're dealing with the basic realities of having organizations like this. And it's not necessarily bad that they are constrained by the views of their members / donors / readers.
I agree with this, and have removed the fourth bullet point from this post as a result. While I read Glenn's original post differently, I see no reason to continue disagreeing with him now that he has made his intention clear.)
I don't mean for these three factors to replace my original thesis, but rather to augment it. Rarely is something complex the result of a single factor.
Now, even with all this said, just as they have consistently done for the last eleven years, new Internet based left-wing organizations will continue develop over the next four years. Some will morph into fairly consistent left-wing pressure groups on the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats. However, they will continue to have uneven growth rates. They will rise to prominence more as the result of a single major fight where they operated as a hub of activity--the Jena six (Color of Change), the Clinton impeachment (MoveOn.org), the Howard Dean campaign (Democracy for America), the Florida recount (Talking Points Memo), the Obama campaign (Organizing for America)--rather than because of a slow build around a coherent, manifesto-like agenda. That is just the way of things in the new world where we all live. Hell, maybe that is how it always was, even back in the 1930's:
In 1934, there was a wave of strikes. Huey Long's Share Our Wealth movement began. In a year, it had organized 27,000 clubs across the country. Francis Townsend organized a movement for old age pensions.
Even the left-wing pressure of the 1930's that John Judis calls for in the above passage was organized around short-term, specific fights, and then either quickly dissipated or morphed into far less radical institutions. After some major victories, the labor movement purged its radicals, and became far more "establishment." Huey Long's movement dissipated almost immediately after his assassination. Once Social Security was passed, how much more did we really hear from Francis Townsend?
We didn't get a large enough stimulus, but that wasn't because of a total lack of left-wing pressure of the sort that we supposedly had back in the old days. There was left-wing pressure and, rather than generalized problems with Obama cheerleading squads and the bad faith leaders of these squads, there were specific reasons why we didn't get a larger stimulus: ongoing Republicans media dominance, bad Democratic negotiating tactics, center-right Obama administration appointees drafting the stimulus, and the timing of this fight so recently after the election. Every fight will have its own specific character along these line. In some instances, new, powerful left-wing institutions will emerge as a result of these fights. While that did not happen in this case, such a specific failure should not lead to a generalized conclusion about the state of the American left. Instead, as always, it means that it is time to pick ourselves up, brush ourselves off, and move onto the next fight.
As an anti-spam measure, there is a 24-hour waiting period after registering before new users can comment. blog advertising is good for you
blog advertising is good for you
