SEATTLE - As the vice-presidential speculation intensifies, we cannot lose sight of just how intense the populist uprising is in our country today - and how it is, fundamentally, a backlash to conservative economic policies and liberal capitulation in the face of those policies. This is what the cover of my new book, THE UPRISING, metaphorically depicts - and what the cover of this recent edition of The Economist portrays, as well (they look alike, don't they?). And this is why my new newspaper column this week says that Barack Obama should not pick Hillary Clinton for vice president - but an anti-Clinton.
It is undeniable that Hillary Clinton - whether you like her or not - represents Clintonism, a brand of politics that is about trying to appease Big Money while pretending to serve ordinary people. It is politics that tries never to answer organized labor's age-old question: which side are you on? Of course, even with such "third way" nonsense, practitioners of Clintonism always end up taking a side - money's side - whether it's championing NAFTA, deregulating the telecommunications industry, voting for the bankruptcy bill, supporting the war in Iraq, or shredding important Wall Street laws like the Glass-Steagall Act.
As part of the launch of THE UPRISING, I debated CNN anchor Lou Dobbs on his radio show, and now I have the audio. You can listen here.
Dobbs is the subject of a chapter in the book - a chapter that has made a bit of news, because in it, Dobbs claims he supports increasing immigration levels.
The chapter on Dobbs in THE UPRISING looks at how his show - in my opinion - deliberately separates the issue of free trade from the issue of immigration specifically to stoke anger. Dobbs rarely connects his admirably progressive views on trade policy with his critique of immigration policy - when, as I've shown before in my newspaper columns, the two policies are interconnected. In the radio debate, I bring this right up to Dobbs - and he says my point about the connection between lobbyist-written trade policies and immigration policies is one from the "left" and motivated from "guilt."
As THE UPRISING shows, Dobbs epitomizes both the positive potential of today's populist uprising to change our country's economic policies, and the negative potential of today's populist uprising to stoke anti-immigrant and xenophobic sentiment. He is a populist - sometimes a progressive populist, sometimes a right-wing populist. I give Dobbs credit for inviting me onto his radio show to vigorously debate the issue and his tactics. Listen here for the whole thing - and if your interest is piqued, pick up a copy of the book and read the chapter on the CNN icon. It was one of the most interesting to report.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - What you see here is a slide from the audiovisual presentation about THE UPRISING that I unveiled yesterday at a Campaign for America's Future event in Washington, D.C. It is a graph showing Gallup's survey that documents Americans confidence in different institutions - and, as my new newspaper column today shows, it is an image that should give us hope that today's populist uprising is, in fact, a progressive opportunity...if we seize it.
In my presentation (which you can come see at many of the events I am doing all over the country in the next month), I make the case that today's political topography resembles that of the late 1970s - just like back then, we are facing a Mideast crisis, a financial crisis, a potential inflationary crisis and an energy crisis (incidentally, the Washington Post's front-page this week actually noted some of the similarities).
As you can see from the Gallup polling graph above, Americans had little confidence in Congress in the late 1970s - and that helped the Right use an anti-government message to take the uprising of that age channel it into the full-fledged conservative movement that has now dominated our country for the last generation.
Today, Americans have lost further confidence in Congress, which would seem to bode well for conservatives and their anti-government ideology. Except other factors have also changed - namely, Americans' confidence in Big Business and the financial system. While in the late 1970s Americans were relatively confident in those economic institutions, today we are not, meaning progressives critique of corporate power and economic inequality can compete against the Right's anti-government rhetoric.
But that's only the beginning of why today's populist uprising - though occurring on both the Right and Left - favors progressives.
HUNTINGDON VALLEY, PA - I write to you this morning from my parents house in Pennsylvania, after being up late last night appearing on CNN to discuss the role of the Internet and the Netroots in THE UPRISING (you can watch it here). It's been a terrific first week of the book tour - the crowds have been fantastic. After the kickoff in Burlington, Vermont with uprising leader Bernie Sanders, I headed to Madison, Connecticut for a reunion event with my other old boss - Ned Lamont (event photo at right, video here). With an overflow crowd in Madison, Ned and I joined Connecticut Citizen Action Group (CCAG) in a discussion about the state of the antiwar uprising - a topic that is the subject of my latest syndicated column, and a major excerpt of THE UPRISING just published in In These Times magazine.
The antiwar chapter of my book is probably the most controversial - and was also the toughest to write. The basic thesis is that the campaign to end the Iraq War is split between what Matt Stoller has astutely called "The Protest Industry" and what I call "The Players" - and that both the split and The Players' specific strategy has weakened the antiwar uprising.
For years now, polls have shown the majority of Americans oppose the Iraq War. In 2006, that antiwar consensus in the mass public first propelled Ned Lamont to his shocking primary victory over Joe Lieberman, and then antiwar Democratic challenger candidates across the country to victory in the general election. Those candidates, as I say in my latest column, learned the Lamont Lesson - namely, that ignoring Washington's pro-war Democratic Party "strategists" and ignoring what THE UPRISING calls "The McGovern Fable" actually wins national elections.
But after the election, The Players - ie. the group of professional antiwar organizations in Washington - focused huge amounts of resources on an antiwar lobbying strategy that aimed all the pressure on Republicans. This, even though Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and therefore had the power to stop bills to fund the war. The Players, in short, put their partisan affinity and cocktail party friendships ahead of the antiwar cause.
That helped marginalize The Protest Industry - ie. the grassroots marchers and protesters against the war - even more than it has marginalized itself through its own tactics. And now it is 2008 - a deja vu moment whereby the country opposes the Iraq War and Congress continues to nonetheless fund it.
Luckily, as my column this week notes, the antiwar uprising is changing its tactics as the Fall election nears.
For a good summary of what the book is about, check out this week's Newsweek, which featured a Q&A about the book in its Periscope section. The book features chapters on (among others) the Netroots/blogosphere, the antiwar movement, new labor organizing efforts, the Minutemen, Lou Dobbs, the Working Families Party and shareholder activism. It includes icons like Sister Pat Daly, Brian Schweitzer, ACORN's Bertha Lewis, Ned Lamont - and yes, OpenLeft's own Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers. The relevance of the book is exemplified by this morning's headlines about the presidential candidates campaigning in the Mountain West and about a powerful shareholder resolution being filed at ExxonMobil's upcoming shareholder meeting. Both of these topics are chapters in the book.
Right now, I'm here in Burlington, Vermont, where tonight U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders will join me at the first event of the national book tour (to see the full book tour schedule, go here). This is an appropriate launching point for the book.
STATE BLOGS
This is an ongoing blog series from the national book tour of The Uprising. You can order The Uprising at 
