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I have enjoyed reading the (mostly) thoughtful reactions to my post a couple of days back entitled “Time for a new conversation”, and have to admit that I was convinced by some of the arguments people made. Debcoop, Paul Rosenberg, and several others made really cogent, compelling arguments about the need for building a progressive narrative separate from the Obama narrative, and the need for having a strategic foundation underpinned with an understanding of where Obama is coming from and trying to get to.
Here are some further thoughts about narrative and strategy for progressives in the Obama era:
1) I was intentionally trying to be provocative in “Time for a new conversation”, and it clearly worked. I agree with debcoop that it would be helpful to know more about where Obama intends to end up on key issues in terms of plotting our own progressive strategy. But it is always hard to read Presidential tea leaves and motivations. What we can base our strategy on is what we know about the nature of modern Democratic coalitions.
Unfortunately, the Democratic coalition in the modern era has shifted more toward the corporate side. However, the progressive elements of that coalition still have enough collective strength that they ought to be using what juice they have to force more concessions than they generally get, wherever Obama personally may be on a given issue. Every single fight needs to be analyzed more in advance to see what we think we have the capacity to win.
2) We need to do better at keeping hope alive, as Jesse Jackson used to say. I know this may not seem like it is related very much to a discussion about how much we should be arguing about whether Obama is a progressive or not, but it seems to me that a lot of the Obama arguments are weighted with a sense of hopelessness and a level of cynicism that makes hope impossible. Now just to be clear before people start attacking me as being an apologist for Obama: I don’t believe Obama is a strong progressive, I have been disappointed in a great many things he has done, and I think his political strategy so far has mostly sucked. But I also believe what I was taught in my first organizing workshop (by Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation) 35 years ago: the only way you can organize people and win victories is if people have hope. Thinking that all is lost, that all Democrats suck, that Obama will each and every time screw us, that the forces of corporations and the right will win every single battle, or that none of the things we do win matter, is not conducive to winning anything important that matters in real people’s lives, or getting people to take action.
Read, if you can bear it, Eric Alterman’s 17,000 word piece on why the Obama administration has been a disappointment (he’s more on the “it’s not Obama, it’s the system” side of things). Page after page after page of unmitigated depression about how horrible things are for our side- and he likes Obama! If I believed it was as hopeless as all that, I would quit politics all together and just try to figure out how much money I could make. It is not a great way to inspire people to action. While I think we need to be realistic about the very big challenges we face as progressives, looking at what is possible and at the good trends is useful as well. Here’s some examples:
- Eric was dismissive of the blogosphere and the potential for new media, and he didn’t even mention most of the exciting organizing going on in the field. When I came to DC with Clinton in 1992, progressives were a scattered bunch of mostly weak single issue or constituency groups, whose main membership was an aging and passive direct mail list. MoveOn, the Huffington Post, Media Matters, the Center for American Progress, the Daily Kos, and Campaign for America’s future didn’t exist. And there were no major media figures with platforms on the progressive side of things. Now we have Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, Ed Shultz, the Young Turks, Dylan Ratigan, and the ever evolving, incredibly creative blogosphere.
- In the 1990’s, gays in the military and a tiny stimulus jobs program were crushed early, health care reform was a flaming disaster, and Democrats as well as Republicans were speeding down the track in the wrong direction on financial regulation. For all the flaws and compromises, in the last 18 months we have seen by far the biggest stimulus jobs package in history, a bill providing near universal coverage and some protections against the worst abuses of insurance companies, and a financial reform bill that audits the Fed, has an independent consumer protection agency, and wins some other solid regulatory victories.
- Here’s the other thing: as Chris has done such a good job of pointing out, the long term demographic trends play very much in our favor. People of color are rising dramatically as a percentage of the electorate, as are unmarried folks and non-Christian and/or less traditionally religious people. All of those demographic groups tend toward progressive politics, as does this generation of young people coming into the electorate right now.
I understand all the challenges, and I totally get the frustrations with Obama. But hope springs eternal, and history shows that progressive breakthroughs are possible even in tough times (sometimes especially in tough times).
3) The narrative thing on Obama is very tricky. I completely agree that we need to project a progressivism that is not Obamaism, an ideological center of gravity stronger, clearer, and more idealistic than Obama’s. But the experience from my earliest days in politics with the Carter presidency is not especially positive on this scene. Carter had a bad relationship with most progressives, got a strong primary challenge from the left, and had a general election third party candidate (Barry Commoner) with some major progressive endorsements running on his left. But Republicans and their allies in the media still pegged Carter as the personification of liberalism for a generation. And Carter did not push through a major deficit spending jobs bill, a universal health care bill, and a big re-structuring of bank regulations as Obama has. Not that we don’t have a great case, and not that we shouldn’t try to create a progressive narrative separate from Obama, but it will be a serious challenge.
That’s enough for one sitting. I have enjoyed the discussion on this topic, and have definitely moved as a result. I look forward to more dialogue on how to react to Obama, and- more importantly in my mind- how to win more progressive victories in the Obama era.
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