HELENA, MT - This is the last stop - and therefore the last post - on my 2+ month book tour, and it ends where my book begins: in Montana. That's appropriate - this region has been a populist bellweather for both the Right and Left for most of American history.
I started the book in Montana to analyze the clash of uprisings - the conservative one from the late 1970s, and the more progressive one happening right now. The Great Falls Tribune has a nice summation of what I found in its story today about my events this week in Montana:
JACKSON, WY - I'm a movie junkie, though I'm not all that into political films. I tend to use films as a vehicle for escapism. That's quintessentially American: As the Baltimore Sun reports, in five of the past seven recessions, box office sales have jumped. We tend to run to Hollywood when things get bad. Today is no exception as theaters are teeming with moviegoers.
I'm sure that's why Focus Films asked me, Dan Rather, Jane Hamsher, Rick Perlstein and Katha Pollitt to recommend our favorite flicks about political campaigns and elections: The movie industry knows that between the recession and a grating campaign season, people are looking for a little entertainment. I turned my recommendations into my newspaper column this week, which you can read here.
JACKSON, WYOMING - The meandering 9-hour drive from Denver to Jackson Hole, Wyoming - which I completed yesterday - takes you through one strand of the Rocky Mountain West's sprawling oil and gas web. You start seeing oil rigs in Weld County just north of Denver, then a little while later you hit Sinclair, Wyoming - a refinery town named after the gas station franchise that dots the West, a town that sits in the middle of Carbon County (yes, a county quite literally named after the emission that is heating our planet). From there, it's right on up through America's very own Cloud City - Sublette County, better known as a natural gas colony (sans Lando Calrissian, of course).
The drive will remind even the most casual observer of what I found in reporting THE UPRISING: Namely, the politics of oil, gas and taxes are a volatile mix in a region that will likely decide the 2008 election and the most important policies after the race is over. Here's a quick look at three of the states that are on the front line:
ATLANTA - Two weeks ago, I met with my friend Tom Geoghegan, the single best writer and thinker on labor issues in America, and a guy who should be a leading choice for Secretary of Labor in a Democratic administration. I turned our conversation into my newspaper column this week, which you can read here.
Tom, a longtime labor lawyer and author, has come up with a six-word way to re-balance the American economy - a stroke of genius that asserts the major problem for workers is New Deal policies lashing their union rights to a labyrinthine federal bureaucracy in Washington. His proposal subtly challenges the theory behind the Employee Free Choice Act by suggesting that no matter how much we reform the National Labor Relations Board and union elections - admirable goals, no doubt - we have to go much farther by giving workers the legal tools to defend themselves, regardless of who is at the NLRB or in the White House.
The concept cribs the best from both the Left and Right - and if Democrats championed it, they would avoid an esoteric argument over NLRB rules and force the Republicans to claim that the right to join a union shouldn't be a civil right.
I'll let you read the column to find out about the ins and outs of his proposal, and why Tom should be on the short list for Secretary of Labor. To conclude this post, let me focus a bit on progressive "meta" - and what Tom really symbolizes in that meta.
NEW ORLEANS - CNN today today published a long piece on its website about what an Obama presidency would mean for the African American community. The article fronts an absurd title asking whether an Obama presidency would "hurt black Americans." I'd say there's very little chance of that. However, I do believe the amount that Obama moves the country forward on all issues is contingent on how much we pressure him. To that end, here's my quote in the piece:
"He's like any politician. He's cautious," Sirota said. "He's a potential vehicle for change, and I think he is a good vehicle, but he is just a vehicle."
His presidency may represent fundamental change, but that doesn't mean he will initiate such sweeping changes if he's elected.
"Politicians, even the best-intentioned ones, are weather vanes," Sirota said. "If the wind isn't blowing in the right direction, they will perpetuate the status quo."
It will take more than a presidential candidate to change the status quo; it'll take a movement, Sirota says.
"My concern is that people will think that by simply electing Obama, change will come, whether it's on race or economic justice issues," he said.
"If people believe that, then real change will not happen."
Movement psychology - the kind that is going to take the populist uprising and turn it into a movement - requires us to focus on making that wind blow in our direction before the election and after. If we can do that - and I think we can - we're going to see the kind of change we are all hoping for.
OUTSIDE OF WACO, TEXAS - I'm filing this weekly column dispatch at a rest stop outside of Waco, Texas on my way to the Netroots Nation conference. On the drive from Dallas, I've been listening to talk radio and obsessing over the concept of "the center."
I'll admit it - I'm more than a bit obsessed with the ongoing attempts by today's propagandists (read: politicians and Washington pundits) to distort where the mythic "center" is. Whoever controls the definition of the center, controls a huge amount of political power because they control the very parameters of what policies are - and are not - acceptable for serious consideration.
Back in 2005, I wrote this article for the Nation on how forces inside the Democratic Party exist almost exclusively to make Democratic politicians believe the "center" is far to the right of the American public. Now this week, I wrote this new newspaper column looking at the debate surrounding Barack Obama's recent policy shifts.
DENVER - Last week, I appeared on CNN's Lou Dobbs tonight to discuss the economic meltdown and the political fallout that will come from it. You can watch the clip here:
This clip shows the good side of Dobbs - the side where he's the only person on cable television consistently talking about major economic issues and questioning the corruption of both political parties. For doing that, he should be applauded.
Of course, there's a bad side of Dobbs: the side that comes out when he talks about - and takes extremist positions on - cultural issues like immigration. This is not admirable, to say the least.
DENVER - Last week, I appeared on Fox News to discuss the inflammatory comments by Phil Gramm (John McCain's top economic advisor) and how those comments really epitomize the Republican Party's country clubbish, let-them-eat-cake outlook on the economy. Notice about half-way through as the Republican strategist I'm debating actually acknowledges that McCain's major idea for fixing the economy is continuing George W. Bush's tax policies - and that when she's called out for saying that, she tries to deny what she just said:
CHICAGO - The New York Times writes today on Barack Obama's recent policy shifts. The headline (not surprisingly) distorts the frame of debate, calling the Illinois senator's critics the "far left." I'll be writing on why that is such a distortion in my upcoming newspaper column this week. But beyond that distortion, let's consider the substance of what's going on. Here's my take, as quoted in the article:
"I'm not saying we're there yet, but that's the danger," said David Sirota, a liberal political analyst and author. "I don't think there's disillusion. I think there's an education process that takes place, and that's a good thing. He is a transformative politician, but he is still a politician."
This follows a lot of the underlying message of my book, THE UPRISING: namely, that politicians - whether Obama or others - are not messiahs, but mere vehicles for the change we do - or do not - force them to embrace. If Obama's moves force more poeple to learn that truism, then I think that's a positive silver lining to his disappointing shifts.
Jeralyn Merritt over at TalkLeft says I'm wrong - that Obama isn't a transformative politician. What do you think? Do you think what I told the Times was right, and that Obama is transformative, but that his moves potentially undermine his brand? Or do you think I'm wrong, that Obama isn't really transformative, and that his moves prove that?
NEW YORK'S LA GUARDIA AIRPORT - To paraphrase Jerry Garcia, my book tour has been a long, strange trip - but as my newspaper column this week notes, it has been strange in how much of the same I've seen.
As our culture has homogenized and as our economy has been Wal-Mart-ized, our politics have - rather unfortunately - followed suit. As I've found in my travels, the concept of thinking globally, acting locally is a foreign one to many political activists. No matter where you go, the focus is almost exclusively on federal elections - and more specifically, the presidential election - to the exclusion of almost everything else.
We're having a great conversation and debate over at TPM Cafe about The Uprising. This morning I wrote a post about 5 ideas to move this populist uprising into a full-fledged progressive movement. You can read it here. I'll be talking about these themes on Diane Rehm's NPR show from 11am to noon EST. You can listen in here. I'm also scheduled to be on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight sometime between 7pm and 8pm tonight. Tune in.
INDIANAPOLIS AIRPORT - Sitting in the airport waiting for a flight to D.C., I got this email from a friend in progressive politics:
I'm reading The Uprising now and I'm wondering how you think (the new Health Care for America Now (HCAN) coalition) is going to work? Is this another AAEI? Or something better that will build real grassroots support? I like the idea of targeting Blue Dogs and putting organizers on the ground.
My friend is referring to the controversial chapter in my book about Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI), which was also excerpted in In These Times.
The crux of the chapter is about how the antiwar uprising was hurt by a strategy that put a massive amount of resources into a top-down, Washington insider campaign whose major outside-the-Beltway activity was astroturfing, not real grassroots organizing - and whose strategy was a purely partisan one: namely using the war as a political weapon only against Republicans, regardless of whether that would actually help end the war.
The AAEI fiasco was an example of Autocratic Progressivism - the kind where organizations acting in the name of the progressive movement structured the operation in an autocratic, undemocratic, insular fashion - a "trust the Beltway elites" model that defies Saul Alinsky's most basic principles of organizing.
Two initial tidbits of news tell me that HCAN is going to be different.
Per the reporting I've done for my book and for the New York Times magazine on Western populism and energy politics, check this out this story from the Associated Press. Basically, the Bush Bureau of Land Management looks like it is trying to crush progressives state and local efforts to better regulate oil and gas drilling in the Rocky Mountain West.
This smells like one of those lame-duck, industry gifts that presidents try to give corporate donors on the way out of office - not sure it will work, but the shenanigans have officially started.
This week, I'll be doing a public book discussion at TPM Café - my first post is up and you can join in here. Also on Wednesday July 9th, I am scheduled to appear on Diane Rehm's national NPR show and on Bob Edwards' XM NPR show, and on Lou Dobbs Tonight on CNN. Check local listings for these shows - I hope you tune in.
Thanks again for all your support for THE UPRISING - it has really made a huge difference. Without your support for the book - in both buying it and in telling your friends about it - it wouldn't be getting out there. That it is, in fact, getting out there is just example of how the progressive message of the book is breaking through because of grassroots support. When you support progressive books - whether mine or someone else's - you are engaging in an act of activism.
Rejecting the fake centrism of Washington and the true centrism outside the Beltway, Barack Obama today tacked back to the progressive middle on trade, slamming John McCain for pushing a corporate-written trade deal with the murderous Colombian regime. From CBS News:
This morning, the Obama campaign argued that McCain's trip highlights his support for Bush's economic polices. In an email to reporters, spokesman Tommy Vietor wrote, "Senator McCain's trip to Mexico and Colombia just underscores his insistence on continuing George Bush's failed economic policies that have left nearly 2.5 million more workers unemployed-including unfair trade deals that have been written by lobbyists."
Vietor also noted a New York Times report which says that McCain advisor, Charlie Black, earned $1.8 million for lobbying on behalf of the leading oil and gas exporter in Colombia. "This is more of the Washington politics that has left American working families struggling to compete in a global economy by putting the lobbyists and special interests first," Vietor said.
A few weeks back I wrote a newspaper column about how the politicians supporting the Colombian trade deal have blood on their hands - there's no other way to put it. I also wrote a newspaper column about how trade could be the single most decisive issue in the election - if Obama stops flirting with Wall Street and starts representing the uprising of working Americans who are sick and tired of unfair trade policies. Let's hope this is the start of the latter.
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