[lbo-talk] Nichols: Why Obama can be pushed to the left (but will do nothing leftish without a push)

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Mon Jan 12 18:08:36 PST 2009


http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/12-9

January 12, 2009

The Progressive

How to Push Obama

by John Nichols

On November 4, the American people by a popular majority of more

than eight million votes selected as their new President a

Democratic contender who had been attacked by his Republican foe as

a radical who "began his campaign in the liberal left lane of

politics and has never left it."

If only.

<snip>

Obama continued: "I am somebody who is no doubt progressive. I

believe in a tax code that we need to make more fair. I believe in

universal health care. I believe in making college affordable. I

believe in paying our teachers more money. I believe in early

childhood education. I believe in a whole lot of things that make me

progressive."

Those were not casually chosen words. Barack Obama knows exactly

what it means to say he is a "progressive." When he does so, he is

not merely avoiding the word "liberal," as the sillier of his

rightwing critics like to claim. Obama actually understands the

subtle nuances of the American left. This is a man who moved to

Chicago to be part of the political moment that began with the 1983

election of leftie Congressman Harold Washington as the city's first

African American mayor, who studied the organizing techniques of

Saul "Rules for Radicals" Alinsky, who worked with proudly radical

labor leaders to defend basic industries and avert layoffs, who used

his Harvard-minted legal skills to fight for expanded voting rights,

who was mentored by civil libertarian legislator and federal judge

Abner Mikva, who discussed the intricacies of Middle East policy

with Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi, and who learned about

single-payer health care from his old friend and neighbor Dr.

Quentin Young, the longtime coordinator of Physicians for a National

Health Program. And, famously, Obama did not just make anti-war

sounds before Iraq was invaded, he appeared at an anti-war rally in

downtown Chicago with a "War Is Not an Option" sign waving at his

side.

Obama knows not just the rough outlines of the

left-labor-liberal-progressive agenda, but the specifics. He does

not need to be presented with progressive ideas for responding

appropriately to an economic downturn, to environmental and energy

challenges, to global crises and democratic dysfunctions. He has,

over the better part of a quarter century, spoken of, written about,

and campaigned for them.

I first covered Obama a dozen years ago, when he was running for the

Illinois state senate as a candidate endorsed by the New Party, the

labor-left movement of the mid-1990s that declared "the social,

economic, and political progress of the United States requires a

democratic revolution in America-the return of power to the people."

When we spoke together at New Party events in those days, he was

blunt about his desire to move the Democratic Party off the cautious

center where Bill Clinton had wedged it. And when we spoke in the

years that followed, as he positioned himself for a 2004 U.S. Senate

run, Obama told me that he saw Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold-the

lone dissenter against the Patriot Act-as the best role model in the

chamber.

So why not pop the champagne corks and celebrate Obama's nomination

and election as a victory for what the late Paul Wellstone described

as "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party"? Because knowing

the ideals and values of the left is not the same as practicing

them. As a Senator, Obama did not take Feingold as a role model.

<snip>

The way to influence Obama and his Administration is to speak not so

much to him as to America. Get out ahead of the new President, and

of his spin-drive communications team. Highlight the right

appointees and the right responses to deal with the challenges that

matter most. Don't just critique, but rather propose. Advance big

ideas and organize on their behalf; identify allies in federal

agencies, especially in Congress, and work with them to dial up the

pressure for progress. Don't expect Obama or his aides to do the

left thing. Indeed, take a lesson from rightwing pressure groups in

their dealings with Republican administrations and recognize that it

is always better to build the bandwagon than to jump on board one

that is crafted with the tools of compromise.

Smart groups and individuals are already at it. The United

Steelworkers union has been way ahead of the curve in critiquing the

financial services bailout and in working with Congressional allies

such as Ohioans Marcy Kaptur and Dennis Kucinich to challenge the

basic assumptions of a top-down bailout. The Laborers union has been

promoting a fully developed infrastructure-investment plan that

represents a smart stimulus. The American Civil Liberties Union is

already prodding Obama to keep a series of promises he made during

the campaign with regard to civil liberties and abuses of executive

power, and providing concrete examples of how he can do so. The ACLU

and other groups will be working with members of the Senate

Judiciary Committee such as Feingold to assure that Obama's Justice

Department nominees are asked the right questions.

Perhaps most impressive are the moves made by the California Nurses

Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, Physicians for a

National Health Program, and Progressive Democrats of America to

ensure that the option of single-payer is not forgotten as Obama and

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi establish their domestic policy

priorities. To that end, sixty activists from these and allied

groups met one week after Election Day at the AFL-CIO headquarters

in Washington with Michigan Congressman John Conyers, an early Obama

backer and the chief House proponent of real reform, to forge a

Single-Payer Healthcare Alliance and plot specific strategies for

influencing the new Administration and Congress.

The point won't be to teach Obama about single-payer. Less than six

years ago, he told the Illinois AFLCIO: "I happen to be a proponent

of a single-payer universal health care program. I see no reason why

the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history

of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on

health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody . .

. a singlepayer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And

that's what I'd like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get

there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White

House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the

House."

Since then, Democrats have taken back the House, the Senate, and the

White House. The man who set those prerequisites in 2003 will sit in

the Oval Office in 2009. But change didn't just come to Washington.

It came to Barack Obama. His statements, his strategies, and his

appointments evidence a caution born of the political and structural

pressures faced by Presidential contenders and Presidents-elect.

Whether the previous, more progressive Obama still exists within the

man who will take the oath of office on January 20 remains to be

seen. But the only way to determine if Obama really is the

progressive he claimed as recently as last summer to be is to push

not just Obama but the public.

Franklin Roosevelt's example is useful here. After his election in

1932, FDR met with Sidney Hillman and other labor leaders, many of

them active Socialists with whom he had worked over the past decade

or more. Hillman and his allies arrived with plans they wanted the

new President to implement. Roosevelt told them: "I agree with you,

I want to do it, now make me do it."

It is reasonable for progressives to assume that Barack Obama agrees

with them on many funda-mental issues. He has said as much.

It is equally reasonable for progressives to assume that Barack

Obama wants to do the right thing. But it is necessary for

progressives to understand that, as with Roosevelt, they will have

to make Obama do it.

© 2009 The Progressive

John Nichols is Washington correspondent for The Nation and

associate editor of The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. A

co-founder of the media reform organization Free Press, Nichols is

is co-author with Robert W. McChesney of _Tragedy & Farce: How the

American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy_

from The New Press. Nichols' latest book is _The Genius of

Impeachment: The Founders' Cure for Royalism_.



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