Shane
Getting Rolled By Obama Is A Wake-Up Call for the Uprising By David Sirota
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As OpenLeft's Matt Stoller has written, Obama has quickly taken control of the Democratic Party apparatus - which is what he should be able to do as the titular head of the party now. However, what Obama has also done is taken over key pieces of outside progressive infrastructure and ignored other pieces. Moveon.org, for instance, spends much of its time echoing Obama's message and attacking John McCain rather than using the election as an instrument of leverage to exert pressure on both Obama and McCain on major issues. In other words, Obama has effectively taken over Moveon - or at least its strategic focus. As evidenced by his FISA vote, Obama is also ignoring the Netroots.
This is not what Obama should be able to do - and his ability to do so should be a wake-up call that we still only really have a weak progressive uprising, and not a full-fledged progressive movement. A full-fledged progressive movement would have institutions that could not be categorically taken over or ignored by a presidential candidate of either party. Those institutions would be truly independent, issue-first, party-second institutions with enough grassroots strength to demand attention.
Of course, we have some of these institutions at the state and local level. For instance, New York's Working Families Party is issue-first, Democratic Party-second with a huge grassroots base that makes it fairly impervious to being fully co-opted or ignored by Democratic Party candidates, whether in the Empire State or nationally. The labor movement is another such institution.
But a lot of the much-vaunted new progressive infrastructure is so partisan focused that a presidential candidate who has been on the national stage for less than four years is able to take it over in a matter of months. That, of course, threatens to relegate this new infrastructure to total obsolescence if Obama wins the White House (if the only organizing issue of this infrastructure is winning the White House, then by definition, the infrastructure ceases to be important once the White House is won). Worse, there isn't - and won't be - as strong a pressure system as we need if we are going to get real change.
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http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/10/getting_rolled_by_obama_is_a_w/