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_.