I was planning on using my last few calm days at home this weekend to write some stunningly brilliant new blog posts, as well as go to the DC rally sponsored by A New Way Forward. But I got stuck home by the stomach flu, and did very little besides reading and watching TV.
Tomorrow, though, I'm forcing this grumpy old body back on the road for a second book-related trip to NYC, and a much anticipated first visit to Buffalo(!), the home of OpenLefter and book tour director Adam Bink. I'll try and do some writing while I am on the road.
Come and see us at the following places over the next few weeks. You can get more information and RSVP if necessary via the hyperlinks:
I just got back from my longest trip yet on my book tour promoting The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be. Outside of a quick trip to a Netroots Nation regional meeting in Denver, all of my book travel up until now has been to heavily Democratic cities on the east and west coasts, but this trip was right in the heart of the heartland: Missouri (a swing state leaning red), Kansas and Nebraska (2 thoroughly red states), Iowa (a swing state leaning blue), and the most thoroughly blue Midwestern state there is, Illinois.
Adam took some photos from the trip you can check out on our Flickr set here.
After this all-American, politically diverse, trip, I have certain things I can feel confident in reporting on:
• I continue to be heartened by the great response to the book's message - really good crowds, really responsive people, great questions, incredible passion about changing the country. There really is a movement building everywhere - yes, even in the red states - for big progressive change.
• The populist feelings about the banks are very strong. My biggest applause line every place I spoke was "If you are too big to fail, you are too big to exist." Even though I was speaking to strongly pro-Obama audiences, people were very troubled by his banking policies.
• In spite of the economy, people are still fired up enough to be coming to fundraisers. I was a speaker at three different fundraising events - for the Nebraska Democratic Party in Lincoln, the Iowa Citizen Action Network in Des Moines, and Citizen Action Illinois/USAction in Chicago. All of them were successes, with a combined crowd of over 400 people.
• People very much want to be involved in changing America. There was no sense at all that folks are passively waiting for President Obama to take care of things. Every single event I went to - every single one - someone asked a version of the question "What can we do to help change things?"
It was a great trip, and now I'm back in D.C. for a couple of weeks before heading out again. I look forward to continuing to spread the message about the history, and future, of the progressive cause in America.
I'm on a Midwest swing of my book tour and unlike my other trips so far, I am running into some Republicans at my book events (as well as spending some time with relatives who are Republicans). Part of that, of course, is that I am close to home, and in places like Lincoln, NE, people come out to see the hometown boy who has gone to the big city, even if they are of a different political persuasion. And part of it is simply location: there are simply a lot more Republicans per capita in Nebraska than there are in most of the cities I've been to on the book tour (SF, NYC, Boston, etc.).
It has led to some interesting questions and conversations which I love. There are few things I like better than a fun debate.
I have a nephew who is a very conservative Republican, and is also a strong debater. He has read The Progressive Revolution, which must have been tough for him to take, and is planning on writing me a long response, which I look forward to getting. But in the meantime, he pushed me very hard on the whole hope vs. fear theme of my book, said it was a cheap shot, that progressives have been using fear in their arguments as much as conservatives.
It's a worthy argument. More in the extended entry.
There is one more event I forgot to mention this morning that should be a blast. Tomorrow night, Friday, a bunch of my old friends in Des Moines are throwing a book party for me at Don Rios Cantina. If nothing else, it should be a fun night of excellent Mexican food, Iowa politcal tales, and my book tour director Adam Bink insisted there be a TV close by to watch scrappy Syracuse take down overrated Oklahoma (his alliteration, not mine). "The Book Store" on Locust Street will have copies of my book available at the event if you haven't gotten yours.
When I was out in Denver the weekend before last for the Netroots Nation in Your Neighborhood conference, Darcy Burner turned to me at one point (after a really fun and raucous dinner with about 20 people from the conference) and to me in a burst of pure spontaneous enthusiasm, "I just love grassroots progressives." What she said.
Being on the road promoting my book is a blast because I get to meet so many interesting people. I wrote earlier about Deb Kozikowski and her organization because I got to spend a lot of quality time with her, but there are so many interesting people you just meet briefly that I'd love to spend more time getting to know some day:
I'm currently in Amherst (which I was told immediately when I landed that it's pronounced with no "h"), which along with Northampton is a great lefty town- campuses, excellent, highly interesting food, great progressive folks who are all very nice. And apparently it's only an hour and 15 or less from all the places up here where I have friends but don't get to as much- Brattleboro, VT, Albany, NY, Hartford, CT. Tonight I'll be hanging out at the local Drinking Liberally along with the great Bill Scher, who had me on LiberalOasis Radio a while back, and am looking forward to an excellent dinner at the place Hillary took Chelsea when they were looking at colleges, interestingly enough.
I want to let all the Boston-area folks know that tomorrow, Wednesday at 7 PM, Shai Sachs over at MyDD and Reading Liberally-Cambridge, along with ActBlue, will be hosting me for a discussion about my new book and opportunities for progressive change with the Obama Administration. It's at The Democracy Center at 45 Mt. Auburn Street near Harvard Square. Stop on by.
There's been a fair amount of commentary in the blogosphere about David Brooks column in the New York Times the other day asserting that not one, not two, but four different "senior" Obama officials reached out to him after a critical column to assure him that, in Brooks' words, they are not "a group of liberal crusaders," and that they are not "engaged in an ideological project to overturn the Reagan Revolution."
I'm headed up to the great commonwealth of Mass next week on the book tour. If you're around, please come on by, I'd love to meet some OpenLefters from up there. And if y'all would promote the events to your networks, it would really be great.
The reason I'm doing all this traveling is to build the progressive movement- not just in terms of the message of the book, but in terms of the fact that I'm giving all the proceeds from the sale of the Progressive Revolution into projects to build progressive infrastructure. If we work together to push hard enough, we'll be able to build the infrastructure tools we need to create the serious, lasting change we need right now.
Schedule below, hope to see y'all there. All are free and open, and some involve excellent food and drink.
One day during the Presidential transition, when I had been named the liaison to the progressive community, someone observed to me that "my people" didn't seem to be very happy. I responded that it was not the job of the progressive movement to be happy.
I wasn't intending to be snarky. My point was that progressives' job is to keep pushing, keep organizing, keep agitating, keep demanding better things. Martin Luther King said that people kept asking him when he would be satisfied, and he answered, we will never be satisfied "until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."
It's the nature of our movement to never stop fighting for things to get better, there are of course substantive issues where at least some progressives are going to part ways with Obama. On foreign policy, the most important areas of concern so far are leaving so many residual forces in Iraq and expanding forces in Afghanistan without a clear understanding of the overall strategy (including an exit plan). On the economy, some of us remain extremely concerned about the Geithner/Summers bank bailout strategy, which appears to be too much of a continuation of the Paulson bailout strategy while giving banking executives far too much leeway and far too little accountability. These are not small issues.
Having said all that, though, I find myself walking around in a little bit of shock that a President, at least on the central strategic approach to the big policy issues, seems to be following the path I would advocate.
While the work on stabilizing the banking system, passing the Obama budget, and working on the other big issues the President has prioritized will all continue steadily along in the coming months, it is clear that health care reform is the next big debate on the President's mind. The first big signal of this was the way he deftly, and rightly, turned the fiscal responsibility summit into mainly a discussion on health care reform, and then announced on the spot that there would be a health care summit next week. Then, in his speech to the nation Tuesday night, he made a push for fundamental reform this year. And finally this week, his budget includes a $634 billion "down payment" on the money needed for health reform. Clearly the President is gearing up for a big battle.
As one of the earliest members of the Clinton White House health care team, I am very encouraged by the early strategic signs coming from President Obama. As I discuss in my book, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, we made some big mistakes in the Clinton drive for health care reform that doomed our chances for victory, and President Obama's early decisions suggest that they are learning at least some of the right lessons from that experience. Here are some things I am encouraged about:
1. Obama said we needed to do serious reform this year. In early 1993, President Clinton got convinced by Bob Rubin and other corporate Democrats to delay pushing for health care until 1994, after the first budget fight and after they could push their beloved NAFTA through. President Obama set a great tone in his speech Tuesday night: We're going to go big, and we're going to do it this year.
2. Putting a down payment into the budget. Rubin and his allies also convinced President Clinton that reducing the deficit was more important than health care, and that money for health care should all be done later. It was a huge mistake, making the budget numbers for health care reform politically unpalatable. While President Obama hasn't put in every dollar needed for health reform in this budget, he has sent a budget that does have a significant $634 billion down payment.
3. Leaving the details to Congress. Another major mistake was to take the first year of Clinton's term to write an excruciatingly detailed piece of legislation. The result was that we spent a year being lobbied by every outside group imaginable on every detail of the bill (I personally met with over 1,500 different groups on the bill that year) and then as soon as it got sent to the Hill, that same lobbying process began with Capitol Hill. In the meantime, we lost momentum and passion, and the insurance industry picked us apart by focusing on the tiny details of the bill in their infamous Harry and Louise ads.
Obama is sending clear signals that he is going to leave the details of the legislation up to Congress.
We have a long way to go to pass a serious health reform bill, and the obstacles are big to getting it done. Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, LBJ, even Nixon all tried before President Clinton's plan went up in flames. But Barack Obama knows how messed up our health care system is, and he knows we need big change. I'm glad he has the guts to take it on, and I'm glad to see his early strategic moves on it are smart ones.
The most important battle at this moment in politics isn't actually the one between Democrats and Republicans. We Democrats won that convincingly in November (and two years prior to that as well), and are winning it overwhelmingly in public opinion polls. For the moment at least, the Democratic-Republican thing is less a fight and more of a rout. For now, the more important battle is between Obama's own progressive vision of big bold change vs. the DC establishment (including many Democrats, some of whom work for the President) and conventional wisdom.
President Obama, in his speech Tuesday night to the Congress and the nation, has called on us to think big, be bold, and make major change. He has said that he wants a fundamental reform of health care to provide universal coverage and real cost containment, that he wants to re-structure our fossil-fuels based energy system, that he wants major change in our system of public education, that he wants to completely rebuild and restructure our financial regulatory system. Obama has described his already-passed massive economic recovery package as only a first step toward fundamentally rebuilding our economy.
These truly are big, bold ideas- and thank goodness they are, because these gigantic problems we are facing will not be solved by small, cautious solutions.
More of what I'm talking about in the extended entry.
Update: I mis-wrote... the actual time is 9 PM EST/6 PM PST.
We've reached that point in promoting my book that I'm now ready to take the next step. You know what I'm talking about. Avatars.
Jay Ackroyd of Virtually Speaking, who also is virtutally sitting down with Katie Halper and Juan Cole among other great folks (and I'm told Rick Perlstein's avatar was, appropriately, Nixon himself for his interview), will be chatting with me about my book, The Progressive Revolution, tomorrow, Thursday the 26th at 9:30 PM EST/6:30 PM PST9:00 PM EST/6:00 PM PST.
If you're on Second Life, the location for his studio is here.
If you're not, you can listen to the radio interview on BlogTalkRadio by clicking here.
President Barack Obama is a youthful, well educated son of an immigrant, and Republicans are clearly trying to get some of his magic to rub off on them, so they asked Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal-the youthful, well educated son of immigrants-to give the response to Obama's speech last night. Good idea to have a fresh face given the GOP brand is in such disrepair. The problem is that he gave the same old arguments Republicans and conservatives have been giving us for a very long time.
Republicans made those arguments the last eight years, saying that tax cuts and smaller government would lead to prosperity. The results were, well, shall we say, less than delightful.
Just got back from CA, but heading back out west this weekend- the good people at Netroots Nation are putting on the first-ever Netroots Nation in Your Neighborhood, a one-day mini-conference of discussion, networking, and drinking (yes, drinking, see the schedule). It's in the Denver suburbs, in Westminster.
I'll be out there for an afternoon panel on how we progressives can take advantage of this moment and create what I call in the book a "Big Change Moment", a major shift in our politics and policy.
The schedule is here, and registration is only $10, so for OpenLefties in the area, come on by and be sure to say hi. It'll be worth your while, lot of good folks coming. I'll also having books there on sale courtesy of Tattered Cover, an awesome indie local I frequented during the convention.
Having spent almost all of my 30-year career in politics very consciously staying behind the scenes, it still feels a little strange running a campaign for myself. Although I have not, and never intended to run for office myself, promoting the ideas of a book about the progressive cause feels exactly like a campaign. It is a really fun process, extremely challenging and exhausting (especially given the ... the book industry is in), but exciting nevertheless because I feel like I am contributing something to the bigger movement. Like every good campaign, we have the basic campaign components in place: field, media, events, online strategies, organizational outreach, and a consistent message. The only thing we don't have involved is an advertising strategy, but I even have an idea about that, which I'll relate below.
One thing we discuss here on OpenLeft a great deal is the role of the progressive movement in an Obama Administration. I also discuss it in my book in terms of the roles movements have played with past President- how FDR said "make me do it", Lyndon Johnson's relationship with the civil rights movement.
This Thursday in D.C. I'll be talking about that along with Deepak Bhargava of CCC, Miles Rapoport of Demos and Nate Loewentheil of the the Roosevelt Institution. Event details are here, hope y'all can stop by for some deep meta thoughts (and food/drink). We'll also be selling copies of my book.
One thing I am learning about the book business is that, like progressive organizing in general, you can't rely on anything other than your own capacity to organize to spread the word. Publishers and book store chains have lost the willingness or capacity to do marketing for any but the most famous of authors, so you are on your own. Just like with bloggers and local activists, you are on your own to build your own infrastructure. The good thing is there is a movement which is ready to help. And fortunately for me, I have a staff which is awesome, all of them great at putting together campaigns.
Speaking of Chris' post on the number of readers we have in DC, Google Analytics tells me we have a whole bunch of readers out in the Bay Area. For y'all, I have good news- we're taking the book tour for The Progressive Revolution out to the Left Coast on Sunday.
Netroots Nation, Commonweal Institute, Equal Justice Society, and a number of individual friends are throwing a book party this Sunday 2/15, 6-8 PM, at Mercury Lounge in San Francisco, 12th and Folsom. Booksmith, a great local indie seller, will be selling copies, and I'm told there will be sweet potato fries served. We're at a little over 100 RSVPs, so be sure you RSVP here and come hang out.
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
