On Obama and Progressivism

First, so there is no confusion, this is not Larry writing. This is one of the guest posters while he’s on vacation.

I wanted to comment on David Sirota getting a phone call and interview with Senator Obama that popped up last week or so. I encourage you to read the piece as David wrote a good article, allowed the Senator ample room to express his views and does a very good job of laying out an emerging progressive topic du jour: Is Obama a Progressive or Will He Disappoint?

David says we should tamper down our expectations as Obama will disappoint progressives with his insider/institutional approach to solving problems.

What he completely misses is there is no reason to be disappointed.

Before I start, let me scratch one itch.

Matt Stoller, I believe, is cornering the criticize Obama for the sake of criticize Obama territory and continues with this idiocy. I’ll tackle the insider first, institutionalist second and progressive third in the explanation, but while I’m at it with Stoller, are you kidding me?. The bit wasn’t sidesplitting, but hardly offensive. And you calling Stewart a weenie is beyond hypocrisy.

To the Sirota piece:

First, as a constituent and fan of the Senator, I agree with the other 71% of my state that he’s doing a good job. My problem is everybody else who fancies themselves a progressive crusader looking for signs that Obama has changed. They are worried that he won’t live up to their dreams.

David does too and he acutely understands why this effect occurs.

…He seems like everything to everybody, which is not necessarily his fault. Much of the media coverage of Obama has been personality focused, as the story of the son of a Kenyan and a Kansan, the third African-American senator since Reconstruction. Because the media have not looked as closely at his political positions, Obama has taken on the quality of a blank screen on which people can project whatever they like.

People, unfairly in my estimation, have a possessive view of the Senator. They project on him whatever they want. For most progressives he is supposed to be this liberal/progressive knight in shinning armor knocking down the walls of injustice and sweeping the Republicans from the face of the earth while restoring truth, honor and righteousness to this great country of ours.

Many progressives wonder whether Obama will show that an outsider can force real change in government, or that the Senate club has become so insulated that Mr. Smith can no longer go to Washington.

And therein likes the miscalculation. David, and some (not all) progressives heap on the Senator their way of changing things and their ideology.

I want to repeat that.

Their way of changing things and their ideology.

One more time.

Their way of changing things and their ideology.

I have no doubt in my mind the Senator’s intentions. He’s communicated them quite eloquently.

For alongside our famous individualism, there?s another ingredient in the American saga. A belief that we are connected as one people. If there?s a child on the south side of Chicago who can?t read, that matters to me, even if it?s not my child. If there?s a senior citizen somewhere who can?t pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it?s not my grandmother. If there?s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It?s that fundamental belief?I am my brother?s keeper, I am my sisters? keeper?that makes this country work.– DNC Speech 2004

The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice as long as we help bend it that way. — Election night 2004

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. You need to take up the challenges that we face as a nation and make them your own. Not because you have a debt to those who helped you get here, although you do have that debt. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate than you, although I do think you do have that obligation. It?s primarily because you have an obligation to yourself. Because individual salvation has always depended on collective salvation. Because it?s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential. — Knox college, 2005

Our nation is based on shared principles. Justice is our natural aim and when we seek it in the company of others, we achieve more for ourselves and for everyone. Sounds pretty damn progressive to me.

David either doubts the intentions, or how Obama will do it (I think the latter). He cites evidence.

For example, his signature legislation today is his “healthcare for hybrids” proposal, which would give away hundreds of millions to auto companies to relieve them of some of the costs of paying for retirees’ healthcare. In exchange, the companies would produce more fuel-efficient vehicles. The goals are unassailable, but the policy reflects the liberal carrot of appeasing a powerful industry rather than the progressive stick of forcing that industry to shape up by simply mandating higher fuel-efficiency standards.

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That’s actually a pretty damn good idea considering that much of Michigan is reeling from job loss attached to the Big 3. It gets people covered with health insurance instead of worrying that the auto companies will bolt on them, lessens our dependence on foreign oil AND gets both Democratic senators from Michigan to vote for it. Adding a stick to this policy adds costs to the auto companies. Like the rules or not, they work off current mileage standards. In case you didn’t notice, auto companies are not doing so hot these days (or do you think junk bond status is a good thing?).

Just one month into his term, the former civil rights lawyer defied the Democrats and voted for the class-action “reform” bill. Opposed by most major civil rights and consumer watchdog groups, this Big Business-backed legislation was sold to the public as a way to stop “frivolous” lawsuits. But everyone in Washington knew the bill’s real objective was to protect corporate abusers.

I’m going to go with the explanation he provided at the time. The bill wasn’t perfect, but it fixed some real problems with the law. And anytime a law bill comes up, I?m going to concede to the constitutional law scholar who’s actually participated in class-action suits.

This point is my favorite.

Then there is the Iraq War. Obama says that during his 2004 election campaign he “loudly and vigorously” opposed the war. As The New Yorker noted, “many had been drawn initially by Obama’s early opposition to the invasion.” But “when his speech at the antiwar rally in 2002 was quietly removed from his campaign Web site,” the magazine reported, “activists found that to be an ominous sign”–one that foreshadowed Obama’s first months in the Senate. Indeed, through much of 2005, Obama said little about Iraq, displaying a noticeable deference to Washington’s bipartisan foreign policy elite, which had pushed the war. One of Obama’s first votes as a senator was to confirm Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State despite her integral role in pushing the now-debunked propaganda about Iraq’s WMD.

1. The campaign didn’t take the speech down, they redesigned their website and the New Yorker was wrong on this one. 2. In 2005 he loudly proclaimed he wasn’t going to rock the boat because he was a freshmen senator and was going to focus on IL issues (like he’s done marvelously with the VA). 3. The Rice vote was, as he stated, because the president deserves his own pick and his own foreign policy. That vote was never supposed to be a proxy for his position on the war. His vote was respect for the institution of the presidency.

And to suggest political expediency for Obama’s more forceful condemnation of the war is again misreading his entire first year. He kept a low profile on all issues except IL stuff for his first year. He practiced something Washington is almost completely devoid of: humility.

To further suggest ?retreat and equivocation? hallmark the Senator?s position on the war over the last year is an insultingly heaping pile of cynicism. I?ve never been to Walter Reed, called a grieving family who lost their son or daughter in battle or ever visited Iraq and talked to the troops but I know he has.

David then goes on to cite endorsements for Duckworth over Cegelis and Lieberman over Lamont as more evidence of the lack of progressivism. I’ll certainly agree with David that the less progressive candidates have been chosen in these instances, but I’m not sure that will ultimately lead to less progressive policies in the Congress. If that argument held, George Ryan would never have emptied death row. Politicians, like all people, are not so predictable. I think Obama’s choices in these cases were respectively tactical and loyal.

Finally, because this piece is way too long, we’ll end on the Senator’s words and Sirota’s reply.

[Obama:]”If the only way to solve a problem is structural, institutional change, then I will be for structural, institutional change. If I think we can achieve those same goals within the existing institutions, then I am going to try to do that, because I think it’s going to be easier to do and less disruptive and less costly and less painful…. I think everybody in this country should have basic healthcare. And what I’m trying to figure out is how to get from here to there.”

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Obama is telling the truth–he’s not opposed to structural changes at all. However, he appears to be interested in fighting only for those changes that fit within the existing boundaries of what’s considered mainstream in Washington, instead of using his platform to redefine those boundaries.

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The crashing the gate approach, David’s approach, many progressives’ approach.

But not all of ours. I consider myself progressive, and I am perfectly satisfied with the Senator’s approach to change.

I think Abraham Lincoln was progressive, and the crashing the gates approach wasn’t Lincoln’s. Read over your history of Lincoln and you see this great struggle throughout the country, throughout the Republican Party to push him towards emancipation. He always resisted until he felt the country was ready to change.

His own cabinet officials, notably Salmon Chase, accused Lincoln of appeasement of the South but he always had a singular goal in mind: preserve the union. He had to appease the South and resist emancipation because he couldn’t afford to lose the border states of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Tennessee.

I think Lyndon Johnson was progressive on civil rights and he was the ultimate insider (the question of his views on race are a huge historical debate. I’ll let historians debate whether he was a true racist going along with public opinion or just going along with the club and waiting for the right opportunity, but you can’t argue with the Voting Rights Act). His goal was always his own ambition, but his approach was deft and astute manipulation from the inside.

I won’t pretend to know what Senator Obama’s goals are or his focus. Nor do I worship my own shortsighted analysis so highly as to divine that the Senator is an insider first, institutionalist second and progressive third.

I do believe that he sees his path to change through what’s possible, practical and real in his estimation. I believe that is quite progressive and sure as hell smarter than loudly shouting at a closed door in your face. And since he is the one elected by the people, I’ll let him enact change however he sees fit.

Now, some will retort that the country already agrees with the progressive agenda and their is no reason to shirk from it. In a world where equal time and attention were paid towards the issues, we would win many of the legislative battles we fight. But unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. The Republicans control everything and the agenda. The only reason we have traction now is because a hurricane in New Orleans completely changed how people view the president and the GOP.

Think about that. Abu Gahrib, no WMD, a terribly managed war and hundreds of millions of dollars spent by Democrats and we could not show Americans how incompetent they were. It took one of the worst national disasters in our history to change a majority of this country. That is how hard it is to break through to the American consciousness.

So to suggest that a progressive can just change the agenda with forceful declaration of their beliefs and to just rail at the system ignores reality and how the world works. I’m pretty sure that Obama gets this and that is why he has chosen the path he has in Washington.

People forget that squeaky wheels are replaced as often as they are greased and that you can’t have progress without actually moving forward.

Obama has done nothing so offensive to my progressive values since he was elected that will dissuade me from believing his sincerity in what I quoted above. The fact that some people feel so emboldened to assume the mantle of progressivism and question the Senator’s intentions or how he goes about accomplishing them from their perches in the blogosphere seems wholly presumptuous and arrogant.

You don’t speak for me, you don’t know him and what worries me is that I’m not sure you care as long as you get to see your name in print or someone link to your blog.