MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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It's time for progressives to stop fawning over the president and start following his example by pushing for change
By A Guy Called LULU on Fri, 11/09/2012 - 4:09pm |As a community organiser Obama was well aware that it was only by making demands on the powerful that the powerless could further their interests. As president he must be delighted to realise that all too few of his progressive supporters have grasped that reality.
URL:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/09/obama-drop-blind-devotion
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by A Guy Called LULU on Fri, 11/09/2012 - 4:10pm
I don't know too many people acting like "starstruck children" over Obama at this point in time. I do know quite a few folks who are elated that he won the election, given the alternative. The whole "fawning" notion seems to be a straw person argument.
by Bruce Levine on Fri, 11/09/2012 - 4:30pm
The cessation of fawning, whether it was an accurate charge against many or few, was hardly the end-point of the argument the writer makes. In your judgment, is there anything of significant importance about which Obama has been wrong so far or might be expected to be wrong about in the future?
How would you suggest finishing that last semi-sentence?
by A Guy Called LULU on Fri, 11/09/2012 - 5:03pm
...figure out how to ramp up well-conceived organizing and mobilizing efforts focused on concrete policy outcome goals that are or could become consistent with predominant public opinion.
Also, I wouldn't put it as "if progressives want to be taken seriously" but "if progressives want to improve their effectiveness..." [or "realize better results"]
I agree with you that the primary point of the article is uncontroversial. It's a point made by many progressive activists in this country, such as Van Jones. Any progressive who thinks the election results mean they can kick back and take it easy until the next election is out to lunch. If there are progressives who believe such silly things, I haven't come across any yet. The broadside about progressive "fawning" over Obama was misplaced and detracted from the author's main point.
by AmericanDreamer on Sat, 11/10/2012 - 9:59am
At least initially, here and at other sites, if you did not genuflect in Obama's direction - you were considered a shill for the other side.
by cmaukonen on Fri, 11/09/2012 - 7:16pm
I do appreciate the materiality of perception, and please don't think I'm rejecting what you and others felt. I can only say that my thing was always that there is a difference and a real difference between Obama and Romney. I can certainly understand why lots of left of center folks were unhappy with Obama and the first term. Personally, I always knew, for example, that he was never going to expend any political capital on seeking to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, and this is something he cited repeatedly during his first campaign. I also believe that his campaign has deliberately, for reasons of pragmatic and disturbing concerns, understated the role that labor unions played in the ground game that he is being lauded for. In short, does anyone really believe that the ground game in Ohio could have succeeded in places like Ohio without the UAW and the SEIU? Absolutely no way.
by Bruce Levine on Fri, 11/09/2012 - 8:42pm
Not very long ago you said that the Obama administration was doing great things for unions. Now you say that you always knew he would not expend political capital on an issue most union supporters feel is very important. Plus, he did not give unions their due and some of the reasons for that are disturbing.
I realize that these two things are not the totality of his union policy, but has something changed in that policy recently and have you changed your view, based on your attention to unions and your work with them, that he has been doing great things for unions to an opinion that he is not so great in that area but at least a lot better than Romney?
by A Guy Called LULU on Sat, 11/10/2012 - 1:06pm
That isn't exactly an accurate portrayal of what Bruce wrote back then, he wrote that the NLRB was pretty good because of the people the President put on the board. And yes, in that the President appoints people to the NLRB, they are much more likely to support Unions than not, and that makes having him President better than having a President Romney who would most certainly appoint people hostile to Unions.
by tmccarthy0 on Sat, 11/10/2012 - 6:02pm
Right up till Tuesday, progressives were being warned their criticisms could coat Obama the election. Now they're being berated for fawning over the guy.
Hey, make up your minds or shut the fuck up. Or maybe talk to some actual progressives and listen to what they are trying to say. I should take strategic advice from Younge, who uses the words liberal, progressive and radical interchangeably? Like I said, shut up.
by acanuck on Sat, 11/10/2012 - 2:41am
And I've heard that FDR anecdote a few too many times. Here's Gary Younge's iteration:
Yeah, poor, jobless and foreclosed people. It's not enough to volunteer your time and contribute a portion of the pittance you have to re-elect the president. You need to hire some high-powered lobbyists to go speak to the White House and Congress on your behalf. Don't you get how the system works?
Fuck. If an "overwhelming majority" of Americans really favor these positions, why is it the singular task of "progressives" to push them to realizatio? Like I said, fuck.
by acanuck on Sat, 11/10/2012 - 2:54am
Sometimes, I swear, you are the wisest one of all.
by Aunt Sam on Sat, 11/10/2012 - 3:31am
Progressive, liberal, and leftist-bashing is an unofficial religion in our country. For some people, it almost seems as though an argument for a course of action, if it is made by a self-identified progressive, liberal, or leftist, is ipso facto wrongheaded, on that account alone.
If your reaction is that this is insane, why, yes, it is. Welcome to the world of progressives in America.
Several of the biggest issues the US needs now to confront, aggressively, are:
*high, growing and deeply entrenched inequality in incomes and wealth. Many will acknowledge this as a 30,000 foot proposition--and then oppose any and all actual measures to reduce it, while offering no feasible alternatives of their own.
*global warming and the parallel issue of moving away from the carbon-dependent economy as quickly as we can
*megabanks that are more too big to fail than they were before the crash. If we don't fix this, we are going to be back to 2008. The question is how soon--will it be 2 years? 5? 10?
*an elections non-system that is dangerously dicey--we are fortunate that we escaped this election with as (relatively) little chaos as we did. And, yes, it defies comprehension that the country that went through what this country went through in 2000 has not fixed this problem.
On *every one* of these issues it is progressives, liberals and leftists who are most aggressively making the case that we need to deal with them. And *they* are the ones who are treated as the crazy aunts in the attic, who are best neither seen nor heard. It has been ever thus in this country. Name a positive change in this society, one that has moved us closer to our professed ideals and better selves, and in most instances it has been progressives, liberals and leftists who have pushed the envelope, in the face of immense resistance and ridicule and sometimes outright repression.
Meanwhile moderates and vacuous "centrists"--regardless of which party they vote for-- hurl derision if not contempt leftward, rarely rightward, hemming and hawing while Rome burns. And we have maybe 30% of our public completely off the reality reservation.
What a country.
by AmericanDreamer on Sat, 11/10/2012 - 8:24am
Yeah, we both saw that happen. Plenty. I saw dissatisfied progressives warned of the danger of criticizing Obama quite a few times by lots of other progressives who were afraid that the criticism might hurt his reelection chances. You obviously have seen such warnings too since you say so right here. Often, the warnings came in the form of a suggestion to shut the fuck up. Not cool. Not before the election and not now.
Yeah, that's the other side of it. Maybe you are being a bit over-sensitive to a word meant to draw a distinction between the expressions of admiration guiding the choice of Obama and the necessity of following up on that choice by doing just what Obama has said in the past is necessary if what we chose him to do is to be realized. That is, the necessity of pushing him which is simultaneously the action of supporting him when he acts in accordance with what we hope of him and what we gave him our vote for.
Read it again and check your angry reaction. He isn't callously suggesting that the 'poor, jobless and foreclosed people' should get a lobbyist if they want relief because that is how to handle business in D.C. I read it as him suggesting that the progressives who believe these people need and deserve help should push Obama for support for those people, as well as for other progressive causes, and then support him when he tries to act on their behalf. It is precisely because those people who need the support do not have lobbyists that the author says we should quit automatically singing Obama's praises to his opponents and instead use whatever power our opinions and methods provide to pressure him, the person with the power. It is saying that those who hoped for and worked for Obama's election should not think that their role is over, that their part is done, that they won and can now sit back and watch Obama do, on his own and from now on, all the things they hope he will do. The point he is making is his belief that it is still largely up to us. It is not a done deal just because our guy won the election. The great relief which that win gave us should not fool us into thinking the fight is over and that Obama can be the stand-alone fighter for what we want him to accomplish.
I don't think there is a rational case to be made that the overwhelming majority of Americans agree on anything of political importance. Those of us who do agree with the importance of Obama supporting progressive policies need to make sure we keep the pressure on because the opposition surely will do so from their side.
That may be what you think is the best for us to do but I agree with Younge that we should now, having made up our minds and expressed them with our vote, do the exact opposite. We should definitely not "shut the fuck up".
by A Guy Called LULU on Sat, 11/10/2012 - 11:30am
This blog seems to be at least 4 years old, because I just haven't heard anyone fawning. I have heard gloating, laughter, sighs of relief and some people already talking about policies and what we can now do to adjust and push forward the health care law. But I haven't heard anyone fawning.
There is a little part of a certain community, and they want to fight, they want to make sure people acknowledge them, they want to hear that "we don't like the President" but we like him better than Romney. Well guess what, we mostly like him. And here is the other deal, people aren't stupid, the writer of that ridiculous blog thinks that progressives haven't grasped the reality of that only by making demands on the powerful that the powerless could further their interests. No shit, I think the Koch brothers et al, just found out one of our demands is, well more like a definitive statement, "You can't buy our elections MFer's", because they tried and while they tried they also ushered in the most liberal senate in decades. This writer was obviously looking for page hits, because his blog is not reality based.
by tmccarthy0 on Sat, 11/10/2012 - 9:08am