None of these should be controversial positions. Really, they should be nearly as straightforward as arguing that the federal government has three branches. However, all three have faced significant, though admittedly minority, dissent on Open Left. The reason for the controversy over such straightforward claims is that all three help create space for justifiable, left-wing criticism of Obama's transition. However, such criticism will not share the majority opinion of the Democratic Party not only on Obama's position, but really on anything, for a while. As such, even websites like will face such dissent.
Right now, whatever Obama comes out in favor of will become the majority position within the Democratic Party. If, over the next year, Obama says that we need to tear down the health care system and start from scratch with single-payer, then a majority of Democrats will quickly come to share that position. If, over the next year, Obama argues that it is time to invade Pakistan, then a majority of Democrats will come to favor that position. If he decides that Dick Cheney needs to be Secretary of the Interior, or Noam Chomsky needs to be Secretary of Education, a majority of Democrats will come to agree with him. Right now, whenever Obama makes his support clear on anything, that position will either remain, or become, the majority position for Democrats nationwide.
As I explain in the extended entry, having a majority of Democrats always agree with the leadership of the Democratic Party is a major change from the 2002-2008 era.
One of the things that made the netroots so vital in the Democratic Party was that when it dissented from the leadership, it often did so while representing the majoritarian position in the Democratic Party. A majority of the netroots, like a majority of the Democratic Party, opposed the war in Iraq despite the wishes of the Democratic leadership of the time (Daschle and Gephardt). This led, in part, to the candidacy of Howard Dean, which, in 2003, posed a real threat to much of the Democratic establishment. Much the same can be said of Joe Lieberman, who lost the Democratic primary in Connecticut despite the public support of virtually every single Democratic member of the Senate. Lieberman's popularity among Democrats in Connecticut continued to drop, as 65% voted against him in the 2006 general election, and only 21% registered a unfavorable opinion of him in the latest poll on the subject. In this case, the netroots were the forerunners to a majority position within the Democratic rank and file. That was also the case with the Democratic Congress, whose performance the netroots had overwhelmingly soured on after the Iraq collapse in May and the FISA atrocity in August. Before long, 80% of Democrats also came to disapprove of the Democratic Congress, and Republicans came to approve of the Democratic Congress more than Democrats
Those days of the netroots leading a majority of rank and file Democrats in opposition to the decisions of the Democratic leadership are over. Now that Obama is at the head of the Democratic Party, what he says will be the majority positions. I don't know how long this will last, but it cold be several years. If Democratic electoral prospects continue to be bright, if Obama has a lot of success in passing legislation, and if the state of the country starts to improve, Democratic dissent against Obama will continue to be a minority position in the party. Given that I hope all of those things will happen, I suppose that not even I am looking forward to a point where left-wing criticism of the Obama administration is more widely tolerated.
As Daniel De Groot wrote a while back, people move toward the winners after an election. Obama won. As long as that keeps happening, the party will move toward him, not anyone or anything else. As long as Democrats are winning, intra-party reform movements will probably have a difficult time.
Help us sustain our work by taking our reader survey. If you've already taken it, just click on the link, and your responses will be added to our results.
