It’s in the book
Which apparently, despite an almost obsessive compulsive effort to hawk his own book, David Sirota seems to think Barack Obama hasn’t really made clear his position on structural globalization issues even though, it’s in the Audacity of Hope as two quotes I picked out below address.
“But it is downright destructive to peddle the idea that paying teachers
more or better funding the No Child Left Behind Act will be th
majore key to solving the problems inherent in a globalization
policy that incentivizes slave labor, sweatshops, union busting
and environmental degradation.”====================
As I wrote in my profile of Obama in The Nation, when it comes to these structural issues, he is a man who seems caught between his background as a community organizer in touch with real people, and his current existence surrounded by Washington insiders and consultants who, by profession, push politicians to avoid challenging power. Peddling the Great Education Myth is the ultimate way to avoid challenging power. If this is just a fleeting tactic and Obama goes on to get serious about the real heart of our economic challenges, then he may be the great presidential candidate Democrats need. But if this aversion to confronting power previews the rest of his campaign, there will indeed be a major opening for a real populist candidate to win the nomination and the presidency.
Here are the quotes from Obama in The Audacity of Hope:
On page 174:
“And while upgrading the education levels of American workers will
improve their ability to adapt to the global economy, a better education
alone won’t necessarily protect them from growing competition…In other
words, free trade may well grow the world-wide economic pie — but
there’s no law that says workers in the United States will continue to
get a bigger and bigger slice.”
Obama continues on Page 176
“This doesn’t mean however that we should just throw up our hands and
tell workers to fend for themselves…I am optimistic about the
long-term prospects for the U.S. economy, and the ability of U.S.
workers to compete in a free trade environment — but only if we
distribute the costs and benefits of globalization more fairly across
the population.”
Immediately after that passage Obama talks about how workers need a need social safety net, and spends about 10 pages talking how workers need better unemployment and trade adjustment assistance, and introduces the concept of wage insurance, expanding EITC, better bargaining power for unions, portable pensions, health care, bankruptcy reform to fix the garbage that was passed, etc.
I get the skepticism of the media frenzy. It’s kind of funny to watch and all, but one thing the blogosphere is around to do is to put a check on the press’ coverage, not simply take it at face value. Because Obama didn’t give a long policy based speech in the one that was aired, does not mean that Obama hasn’t taken positions or doesn’t have them. Having watched him in 2004, he was the policy wonk out of a very talented Democratic field. In this field the policy wonkishness goes up to a different plane, but he’s still well documented.
Well documented if you take what Obama says in things like books that he writes and not just one speech on C-SPAN.
December 13th, 2006 at
there are some people who are paid Hillary supporters like Daou and I believe Sirota. So, it’s no surprise.
But, being that I’m from Illinois I find the attention thing fun. When people ask where you are from and you say Illinois, you no longer get the, oh. You get, oh Obama is your senator. And they ask questions.
To anyone who says they don’t know his stand on things or has no policy thoughts I point to Amazon and say, get his book. then tell me that.
December 14th, 2006 at
Amen. Unfortunately there is a camp of Democrats, particularly well represented in the blogosphere that thinks that because education is sometimes touted as a panacea, that any suggestion that education is an important part of competing in a globalized world is just more “DLC pabulum”. This seems very reactive to me, first of all because of the knee-jerk DLC-bashing, and second because education is one of if not the most important part of helping workers adjust to economic change. And because we’ve done such a poor job at providing wide-open access to education, there are opportunities for orders of magnitude improvement, not just tweaks. Whatever else you do, you simply cannot address the economic change implied by globalization without education. You may or may not like Obama’s particular version of that, but to suggest that this makes you an out-of-touch insider is basically just populist resentment (which, near as I can tell is David Sirota’s modus operandi) and poor policy to boot.
December 14th, 2006 at
Finally, somebody in the blogosphere checks Mr. Sirota’s power. He’s attacked Obama in numerous liberal blogs and when people like yourself took issue with that, he didn’t fight back. He “fought” back with immature retaliation posts which put gasoline into the fire. He also attacked Barney Frank on fair-trade and nitpicked certain quotes Rep. Frank made that suggested that he was a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” when it came to being against free-trade. Rep. Frank by the way has gotten consistent high-marks and identified as a fair-trade supporter, who voted against both CAFTA and NAFTA and recieves a 100% grade from the AFL-CIO. Now I’m not familiar with Senator Obama’s rather short record, but he seems to have fallen victim to Sirota who seems to eat his own kind once in a while. I hope the rest of the Democratic Party won’t do the same.
December 14th, 2006 at
david sirota represents what is wrong with the blogosphere. imagine if he and bloggers like him spent as much time attacking republicans as they did attacking democrats!
December 15th, 2006 at
Actually, anon, Sirota seems to represent not bloggers, but what a lot of bloggers fight against… the unethical gotcha lies based on completely out-of-context or deliberately misinterpreted quotes.
December 15th, 2006 at
Hmm…”populist resentment”…oh, what a stinging rebuke…
Seems to me you eventually have to choose whether you are on the side of the populace or on the side of the elite. And when Obama’s ardent supporters are attacking those horrible “populists” I think we can at least now figure out which side Obama’s supporters are on…
Thanks for the revelation…
(Someone who knows what years of unemployment feels like, who has many friends in the same boat, who knows which laws passed by who caused it, and who resents it…just like a huge amount of the populous populace…)
December 16th, 2006 at
But what has he accomplished on the federal level? What legislation dovetails with the empty pronouncements published by the writer of the text to which he has attached his name? List at least three.
December 16th, 2006 at
Anonymous, that’s mostly a canard. Considering that he’s a freshman Senator from the minority party, I don’t think his record is so bad (coming from a guy who is also skeptical of him, but for other reasons.) Go here for the answer you seek.