Ever since the Clinton Health Care Plan went down in flames and the Gingrich Revolution rocked the nation, progressive Democrats have been on defense and operating on the margins of American political discourse. That’s a fact. We haven’t even been permitted to dream about major policy accomplishments and, overall, our sense of what is possible has withered on the vine. It got to the point where it was considered politically incorrect to even advocate for things like single payer health care in a political campaign. And, of course, all three Democratic contenders have tepid health care plans that they like to call ‘universal’ but only by changing how that word is generally understood.
Forcing every American to buy private health coverage from giant health insurance corporations (as Clinton and Edwards’ plans do) is hardly my idea of progressive policy, except in a world where progressive policies have been written off as impossible before the debate even begins. Obama’s plan isn’t much different, except that he doesn’t mandate that you buy coverage if you want to spend your money elsewhere for some dumb reason of your own. All of the plans offer subsidies for those that can’t afford to buy the coverage, which will soon be almost all of us. This is not vision. This is not ambition. This is weak tea. But it is thought to be radical in our current political environment, where Republicans have 49 senators and can filibuster any legislation that they can remain united against. And so it is.
Some will say that this is the politics of the possible. It’s pragmatism. I think it is the politics of Democratic battered wife syndrome and I think Paul Krugman has a Stage 5 case of the affliction. In discussing the Lessons of 1992 Krugman makes clear that he learned two things from the Clinton era. I’ll reverse their order here.
So what are the lessons for today’s Democrats?
…Second, the policy proposals candidates run on matter.
I have colleagues who tell me that Mr. Obama’s rejection of health insurance mandates — which are an essential element of any workable plan for universal coverage — doesn’t really matter, because by the time health care reform gets through Congress it will be very different from the president’s initial proposal anyway. But this misses the lesson of the Clinton failure: if the next president doesn’t arrive with a plan that is broadly workable in outline, by the time the thing gets fixed the window of opportunity may well have passed.
Krugman’s vision is limited to these pro-health insurance corporation bills, and he thinks mandates are an essential component to getting every last American to give their money to these corporations. Yet, Obama has said that he would prefer a single-payer system and that it is only political realism that leads him to propose an orthodox pro-corporate bill. He is, after all, running for the presidency of the United States, not Sweden. What do you think Obama will do if he discovers that he has a filibuster proof margin in the Senate and over 250 seats in the House? Do you think he’ll want to push the same tepid concession-to-political-reality health care bill that he campaigned on? I hope not. Ask yourself, what is more important: the fact that Obama helped bring 87,400 more Democrats out to vote in South Carolina than Republicans (Bush received 276,000 more votes than Kerry there in 2004) or that fact that Obama doesn’t push mandates in a pro-corporate health care bill?
Obama promises, although he cannot guarantee, a major political realignment in this country that will sweep aside petty concerns over minor differences in shitty health care plans. He promises to give us the kind of ruling majorities that gave us FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society. That is his radicalism. And that leads into Krugman’s second great lesson (although he lists it first).
First, those who don’t want to nominate Hillary Clinton because they don’t want to return to the nastiness of the 1990s — a sizable group, at least in the punditocracy — are deluding themselves. Any Democrat who makes it to the White House can expect the same treatment: an unending procession of wild charges and fake scandals, dutifully given credence by major media organizations that somehow can’t bring themselves to declare the accusations unequivocally false (at least not on Page 1).
The point is that while there are valid reasons one might support Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton, the desire to avoid unpleasantness isn’t one of them.
People said horrible things about FDR and LBJ but they didn’t let that stop them from getting their agendas enacted into law. And, let’s not forget that FDR and LBJ’s campaigns were a lot less radical than their post-landslide agendas. The landslides of 1932 and 1964 simply changed what was possible.
Krugman merely quakes in fear. He has no imagination for the big prize because he has been beaten to the margins of political debate and he no longer has the confidence to dream.
I’ll add one extra thing here because it is kind of funny. Vanity Fair has a big article this month about Richard Mellon Scaife’s ugly divorce, and Scaife has some interesting things to say about the Clintons.
Asked whether his infidelity is hypocritical, in light of his political commitments, he refers not to a moral principle but to his own personal history. “My first marriage ended with an affair,” he says, amused. And monogamy is not, he continues, an essential part of a good marriage. “I don’t want people throwing rocks at me in the street. But I believe in open marriage.” Philandering, Scaife says with a laugh, “is something that Bill Clinton and I have in common.”
Those are surprising words indeed to hear from a man who spent so lavishly to uncover Bill Clinton’s sexual peccadilloes and to advance the movement fueled by family values. But it would be a mistake to read the saga of Richard Mellon Scaife’s divorce as simply a story of moral hypocrisy. His treatment of women, especially his first wife, suggests a high regard for his own gratification. His commitment to conservative politics has never been primarily about upholding traditional morality; it has been about promoting policies that help to preserve his own wealth and that of people like himself. On the subject of Clinton his weather vane is now spinning wildly. Scaife speaks of a “very pleasant” two-hour-and-fifteen-minute private lunch with Bill Clinton at the former president’s New York office last summer. “I never met such a charismatic man in my whole life,” Scaife says, glowing with pleasure at the memory. “To show him that I wasn’t a total Republican libertarian, I said that I had a friend named Jack Murtha,” a Democratic member of the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. “He said, ‘Oh, Jack Murtha. You’re talking about my golfing partner!’ ” In the midst of these backslapping memories, though, Scaife goes carbuncle-eyed and refuses to answer on the record when asked if he still thinks Vince Foster’s suicide was, as he once told The New York Times, “the Rosetta Stone to the Clinton Administration.”
I’m sure the right-wing will have their loonies out in force to attack any Democratic presidency, but those loonies might not be quite so well financed now that Scaife has made his peace with the Clintons.
calvin recently read somewhere that the BIG GOPer group for ’08 is Freedom Watch. calvin thinks that means that they are free to watch you.
Anyway, this group of reactionaries has allegedly put together a war chest for the election. A figure of $250M was cited. That could explain why the GOP House and Senate Election Committees are running dry.
A third-party group could do a lot of damage and not have many proscriptions on their behavior. Think of Swift Boat written large. Very large.
The very nasty PR machine is gearing up for war. Do the Dems have a counter-punch ready? I doubt it. Will they pull a Kerry in the face of vicious attacks? Fight back effectively?
Every viable Democrat will be a commie, pinko, liberal Islamofascist who hates America and wants to destroy it. Unlike Bush, of course.
Is this the last stand of the rich, conservative white male?
The point is that while there are valid reasons one might support Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton, the desire to avoid unpleasantness isn’t one of them.
I’m really tempted to say, What a dolt! He’s not a dolt, but he’s being willfully ignorant to say that choosing Obama is somehow about a wish to “avoid unpleasantness.” I wish Krugman would stop insulting my intelligence.
Based on what I’ve seen, Clinton seems to be to the right of her husband, wrapped in shiny “I used to work with Marian Wright Edelman” gloss–even though her husband, Peter Edelman, resigned his post in protest after passing welfare deform. And that’s just one example.
But more to the point, Obama would be more EFFECTIVE than Clinton. From day one, she’d be fighting past battles–how does that help me now? She doesn’t change anything, she’s just more of the same. I don’t have 90s nostalgia. It’s not going to solve the problems we have now–some of them started by the Clinton administration that’s only accelerated and mutated under Shrub.
(The speed to contracting out our government really revved up under Clinton. We’ve always had contracting, but after “Reinventing Government” or REGO, the federal government was cut severely–but the work had to be done somehow. In come the contractors, promising the moon and stars on the cheap…only, it didn’t happen, of course. Sound familiar? Seems like somebody was governing with Reaganesque principles. Sadly, the REGO effort was led by Al Gore. Boy, has he come a long way.)
Obama has the leadership skills needed to change the game and make progress on issues that matter.
What part of that statement promises pleasantness? Um…none. He’s said time and time again that change won’t be easy, and it won’t. But just because he’s not yelling and jumping up and down doesn’t mean he won’t be effective. Often times, sound and fury signify nothing, and it’s the quiet ones you have to watch.
My $.02–YMMV.
I was fortunate enough to hear Krugman speak in December and, although, when asked who he would support among the Democrats he was careful to say that he was not allowed to endorse anyone, we all walked away from his talk believing that if he had to choose it would have been Edwards. He said many positive things about Edwards and his proposed policies. I don’t recall him saying anything pro or con about the other two other than they all had proposed healthcare plans. I’ve found his criticisms of Obama interesting in light of that – in the same way I find it interesting that many Edwards supporters shift to Clinton.
My concern about Obama is this:
I hope not too. But there is nothing in his campaign that really tells me he won’t. His campaign is not about policy but about style. He uses “hope” and “change” and leaves us hoping that he is what we’ve projected onto him and that his definition of “change” matches ours.
I’m voting for him because I’m willing to vote for a chance for change that isn’t there with Clinton. But I don’t have a lot of illusions about what he will actually do. I do not think that, even with a filibuster proof margin in the Senate and a huge majority in the House, that he will propose throwing out the current health system, starting over from scratch and implementing single payer. There is nothing in his campaign that leads me to believe he would do that. There is nothing in his history as a United States Senator that shows him as that kind of leader.
Now, if he gets the nomination – maybe his campaign will change and he’ll start using his enormous political talents to build a mandate for such a specific change. But that’s just a hope on my part and I have no illusions about the odds of it actually happening.
Ditto. Actually, I’m still waiting to see what happens between now and the end of April to decide whether Edwards or Obama needs my vote more (Edwards is my first pick no matter the chances of him winning), but I feel like I already know what we’ll get if Hillary’s the nominee, and I’ve had enough of that.
I don’t understand why you responded to me with this. I know what he said in 2003. I don’t doubt what he said in 2003 was true. I don’t doubt he would like universal healthcare today if it were possible.
My doubts are that he will actually do it. Political reality.
Doesn’t mean I won’t vote for him.
see my latest post for my answer.
I have the same impression of Obama.
What seems to be happening is that Obama has managed to give many people hope that if he is put in a position where he can resume the true Democratic agenda of FDR and LBJ, he will do so. But as you note, he has said nothing concrete that gives one reason to think that he actually will.
But that is not to say that Booman is not right in thinking that if Obama actually advocated true single-payer health care at this point, the media would treat Obama no better than it has treated Edwards. At this stage, we can only hope that Obama is a stealth progressive candidate, as opposed to what he probably is, which is a corporate candidate to serve as a backup in case Hillary fails to win the nomination. The ruling elite is clearly much more comfortable with Obama than it is with Edwards, which makes me doubt whether Obama is truly a man of the people.
I find this kind of analysis to be ludicrous, no offense Alexander. Barack Obama has to make corporate America comfortable in order to have any chance at winning the presidency. That doesn’t mean that he is a New Democrat. He has been clear as a bell in the past that we would prefer a single payer system. But if he had run on one he would be relegated to Kucinich-ville. And, in fact, he is not being dishonest in promoting his health plan. If he is elected into a red/blue divided environment, that is the incremental strategy he will attempt. But it is only a concession to reality. If the reality changes, so will the health care plan.
I didn’t mean to suggest that Obama is a New Democrat. Still, voting for the bank-written bankruptcy bill went too far in the direction of making corporate America comfortable, IMO. On the other hand, one could argue that that vote is what made Obama’s candidacy “credible”.
Also, one should not ignore the fact that if all Dem candidates other than Hillary took Kucinich-like positions, the media would have difficulty in relegating all of them to Kucinich-ville. Still, the mood of the moment seems to be to try to give Obama the opportunity to prove that he is the man of the moment, and I’m willing to go along with that.
No offense taken.
Interesting. Here are the no votes on the bankruptcy bill.
NAYs —25
Akaka (D-HI)
Boxer (D-CA)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Corzine (D-NJ)
Dayton (D-MN)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Obama (D-IL)
Reed (D-RI)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Schumer (D-NY)
Wyden (D-OR)
Not Voting – 1
Clinton (D-NY)
Sorry. I wrote that in a hurry, and didn’t have time to check that, even though I thought I should.
Here is what I was thinking of:
You misunderstand me.
I have no reason to believe that Obama isn’t progressive. My concerns aren’t related to what I think he believes should be accomplished in a perfect world. They are related to what I think he believes can be accomplished in this world and what I think he will actually try to accomplish.
And my own concerns that coming into the Presidency without a specific mandate from his campaign will limit what he can accomplish.
Whether Obama is progressive in his “heart” or not is of no consequence. If you’re “progressive” but think that it’s impossible to significantly accomplish progressive goals, so that you don’t even try to, then as a practical matter, you’re not really progressive.
“Must” should bring about “can”. That is progressive thinking.
I guess I don’t really see this as being at odds with what Krugman has been writing for some time now.
You and Obama may well find your pony. Who knows? What Krugman, Obama, Edwards and Clinton all seem to be proposing is a kinda shitty, but doable contingency for use in case of the very real possibility that your pony never materializes.
exactly, but let us not praise those that cannot deign to search for the pony.
I screwed up my link. Anyway, I hope we find the pony and I think differ with you in that I think Krugman is looking for the pony. He’s jaded, wears a beard and he’s an economist for pity’s sake. we can’t expect someone like that to think that finding the pony won’t be a brutal, irritating and nauseating affair. I don’t think that means his vision is limited however. We might wish that our presidential candidates would respond to inquiries about their thoughts on Reagan by spending a few minutes photoshoping the gipper onto a Summer’s Eve package, we can’t expect them to go around acting like bloggers. Similarly, we can’t expect bearded economists to go around being optimistic about the great pony hunt. That’s not their bag.
When Hillary criticized Obama for supporting a single-payer health care system, you had to know that we are into a more extreme version of Clintonism and Republican Lite, or maybe just the term Republican would apply. And then to hear Klugman’s advocacy is just too much.
Sigh. This may all turn out to be the easy part. If indeed we get a super majority in Congress & a Dem president, we still gotta beat our heads against the wall so that our Dems don’t end up being their own obstructionist opposition party. Obama may bring lots of persuasion to the office but I hope he carries a big stick as well.
BTW, good news eh that Tom Davis has decided not to run again!
The paucity of hope among progressives the last decade is well founded and you are grossly mistaken if you think a large Obama victory will change the dynamics within the Democratic party. The Democratic party has successfully silenced and bought out progressives. Right-wing Democrats don’t even bother pandering to progressives and they take their vote for granted. Sure, there might be a wink wink given to progressives, like this argument that Obama will really bring about progressive health care reform, wink wink, when he gets elected.
Progressives have written themselves out of the story of American politics this last decade and I see few signs of hope. The blogoshpere is one sign of hope as that is about the only place where progressive ideas are shared. Other than the blogosphere–progressives have absolutely nothing to be happy about. In fact, progressives have so utterly failed at politics that it’s time to throw the old playbooks out the window. Really. Start over again. And as much as I respect Booman’s analysis, one would have to be a sucker extraordinaire to have hope that Obama and his “mandate” will enact progressive policies.
There is NO ONE making progressive arguments in mainstream political circles. Progressives have silenced themselves for the good of the Democratic party. That’s why you see “progressives” purposely picking right-leaning candidates as a strategy. That’s why you see progressives loathe the one candidate that espouses progressive policies–Dennis Kucinich. Progressives are so used to defeat that they cling to the hope that right-leaning Democrats like Hillary or Obama somehow secretly believe in progressive policies and that sometime in the future they will show the courage to fight for these policies–as if the lack of courage now is simply strategic (as Chris Mathews would say, “Ha!”).
Why you would think the Democrats would all of a sudden move to the left after an Obama landslide is beyond me. In fact, I see a Clinton repeat–move to the right to compromise with the “moderate” Democrats that will be riding Obama’s coattails and have the final say on legislation. Sure, the Republicans can’t stop health care reform, but the Democratic party has moved so far to the right that it doesn’t matter. The %25 of Democrats that are right-wing will make sure that we get Republican corporate health care reform.
Progressives have to stop playing political games. They need to start fighting over the issues. Instead of giving Democrats free passes and clinging to ill-defined notions of “hope” and “change”–they need a platform and they need to objectively measure candidates against this platform. Any objective analysis against a progressive platform would mean no progressive would support Hillary or Obama and would only vote for them as a last effort to stop a Republican from getting elected. It’s not rocket science. We know that Obama will not fight for universal government run health care. Nor Hillary or Edwards. Why pretend that they are secretly for this? Why not use our power and withhold our support from them unless they work with us to get what we want?
Until the Democrats start articulating and running on promises to enact progressive policies there is no beneffit to throwing your support to them. We’ve learned that right-wing Democrats only respond to sticks–that’s why they listen to Republicans. So blindly throwing Obama your support only means he will take you for granted and never listen to you. You need to beat him with a stick if you want him to listen to you. Progressives only power right now comes from their ability to beat conservative Democrats with a stick.
Obama is not secretly for single payer, he is explicitly for single payer. That’s the whole point of the last two essays.
This idea that he is some right-leaning corporate Democrat is ridiculous. If he were he wouldn’t have demanded he DLC remove his name from their list of members. He’d be a New Democrat. You think that is a liability in a presidential race? It means something that is not and never was (unlike Edwards).
He will govern much like a New Democrat if he faces a Republican Senate that can block everything and a Blue Dog Democrat coalition that he depends on in the House. So will anyone else. And that is the current situation, so everyone is campaigning as though that is the situation they will face next January. My point, is that there is no reason to believe that we’ll face the same kind of Congress. All signs point to a blowout.
Oops. Comment below was in response to your comment.
But, I see no sign that simply having more Democrats automatically means less blue dog or DLC obstruction. In fact, with the new Democratic congress this year I think it is safer to assume that a landslide Democratic victory will mean a Democratic party even farther to the right.
I haven’t looked at the individual races as close as you have so I’m going on my gut here.
But in general, I would rather have fewer Democrats that are more liberal than more Democrats that are more conservative. In other words, I want to lose some battles in the short term so that we can win in the long term. The Republicans have been the party of ideas and they are winning the long term war. We see the Republicans winning the ware when we see how Democrats have adopted Republican ideas over the last 2 decades. I want to fight over ideas–and eventually force the Republicans to adopt liberal ideas or accept defeat.
If we do not engage in fighting over ideas and instead choose to exclusively play electoral chess we will “win” a landslide victory but see the Democratic party eviserated. I think it’s already too late. Look–you’re touting Obama’s progressivism so either I’m completely clueless about his policies and have not given him his due credit or you’ve been suckered into thinking he is something he’s not.
I hope you’re right.
Okay.
Follow me on this.
The old New Deal/Great Society ruling coalition was based on white segregationist southerners making an uneasy alliance with northern blacks and lower class ethnic whites. We don’t want to go back there, but any new ruling coalition is going to have a lot more conservative people in it than the rump of a party we have been operating with. It’s not exactly something to celebrate, but it is an inevitable consequence of people switching parties and allegiances.
So, yeah, when we won a thirty seat majority last election we brought in a bunch of conservative Democrats (in Indiana, in Pennsylvania, in Texas, in Arizona, and in Florida).
Likewise, if we win another 30 seats, we’ll take in more conservative Dems. But, here’s some good news, almost all the seats we are likely to win in the upcoming election come from Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. These are mostly suburban seats that are trending Democratic in a big way. They are tax-sensitive seats, but they are ready for some serious aid on paying for health care and education.
We could easily pick up 3 Cuban seats in the Miami area, which would be an interesting change of pace, but also bring a new sensibility about Cuban policy into the party.
A landslide election will change our party in good ways, and in some bad ways. But the main thing is that it will totally discredit the southern-culture Republican rule of the last 16 years and put us on a new course. Should you support it? Why on earth would you not?
Yes, the wink wink part is explicit but it is only intended for a small audience so the effect is wink wink. How many people care about the DLC list? Hillary supporters and people like you who are progressives. He has adopted some rhetoric and demanded to be removed from the DLC list and that apparantly establishes his progressive bona fides to you? See how easy that was? He’s now co-opted progressive support without really doing anything or fighting for real progressive policies. I just don’t see how progressives have been bought off so cheaply these last few years.
I guess time will tell but I think progressives are setting themselves up to get suckered again. Why support a candidate? Is Obama really worth supporting?
You’re right. I’m sure that he’d be right on the cusp of defeating the Clinton machine and he’d have just as much money as she has, if he had come out with a plan to screw the HMO’s, dismantle the WTO, nail the pharmaceutical corps to the wall, and withdraw all American troops from Japan, Germany, Korea, and the Middle East.
Who do you think is getting the ‘wink’ here?
Isn’t this half-Kenyan inner-city community organizers’ road tough enough as it is? You would have him run on an anti-corporate, anti-Establishment platform?
He’s prepared to govern either way, but there is nothing in his background to make me think he won’t take advantage of opportunities if they arise.
Look. I’m realistic. I understand that I will not get a president that shares my liberal beliefs. And yes, Obama is not terrible. He’s better than Hillary and certainly better than the Republicans. So I will reluctantly support him if I have to.
Where we disagree is how to change this upside down world where conservative fascistic policies are not only possible but enacted and progressive polices are non-starters. I agree with you that this is the current fucked-up state of affairs.
But I will fight for my beliefs. I understand that it seems couragous for any politician to say, for example, they are against the drug war or against expanding our military. But how do you challenge this conventional wisdom without taking it head on? No one even makes the progressive argument anymore. They are too scared. So naturally normal people assume progressive ideas are loser ideas.
For example, we imprison more people per capita than any other country in the world and even progressives are scared to make the argument that this is bad!!! What’s the matter with us? It’s politically impossible because no one even tries. At one point Republican governing philosophy was thought of as kooky–but because they were willing to fight they were able to eventually enact their platform into law. Progressives are scared to be thought of as kooky so instead of fighting for their ideas they cave.
We need to change what’s possible. And until progressives actually have the courage to fail–actually vote their platform–we will be stuck in the present reality where progressive policies are automatic losers. My God. Look what the Republicans stand for–indefinite war, torture, repeal of habeas corpus, tax cuts for the rich, spying on Americans, saying fuck you to the world, and general government incompetence. They have the radical agenda and you let people tell you that progressive policies are kooky?
That’s our fault and we are reduced to HOPING that Obama will somehow really fight for progressives.
You say you are realistic…
Look at the white dude in the race. He’s pretty. He give really great speeches. He’s been a candidate for vice-president and run a national campaign. He’s barely on your teevee and he can’t raise any money compared to Clinton and Obama. Look at Kucinich, who people only expected to produce cookies from his Keebler tree.
If you really are realistic you are not going to mumble about the fact that a half-Kenyan politician from an urban environment, with the same middle name as the man we are at war to depose, is not calling to empty to prisons of black drug offenders.
I don’t think you are realistic. I think you’re impossibly idealistic and unrealistic. That Obama has gotten this far is a minor miracle and if, at any point, he had taken your advice, he would have immediately failed.
Having said that, I think he could be bolder and that he would have a better mandate for change if he he added a little progressivism around the edges. But his margin of error is needle-eye thin, and you know it. Deep down, you know it.
He is not a white-guy from rural Arkansas or North Carolina or Georgia. And he can’t run like a typical progressive politician from Chicago. It doesn’t mean that he isn’t a progressive politician from Chicago.
And if he has to govern this country in a red/blue split condition, he will govern it in a distinctly moderate way. He’s flexible like that, as he should be.
What is “impossibly idealist” to you is realistic to me because I do not think my policy goals are crazy. I believe in them. And as I have told you, I value your horse race analysis and this macro picture you paint is important. But you are setting the bar so low that Bill Clinton becomes. Look, we live in a very right-wing culture. Conservatives so dominate politics that even us progressives have internalized this message so that our policy goals are crazy and are not to be attempted. So yes, I know my beliefs will not be signed into law by the next President, but I am realistic in the sense that the only way to get my beliefs enacted is to fight for them.
Take the war on drugs. My beliefs are not weird or extreme. My beliefs are very similar to most other advanced Western nations. Europe does not imprison such a huge portion of its citizens for non-violent drug use. And it certainly doesn’t imprison black people like we do. My beliefs are eminently less crazy than the current state of affairs. Yet, I’m the crazy one for not wanting to lead the world in imprisoning its citizens (I guess we’re #2 now that North Korea has beat us). I’m the crazy one for thinking we shouldn’t imprison about 1/2 of all black men and then disenfranchise them.
Until some mainstream politician has the courage to lead on this issue and other progressive issues we are doomed. So yes. My advice is to run a President that would lead on this issue and would lose the election. The long-term effects of having a presidential candidate make the case and lose is much better (more practical–more realistic) than your solution of not even trying. In fact, you simply adopt the opponents’ belief that imprisoning the most people in the world is a sacred cow and shall not be challenged–so we’ve already lost before the game is even started.
That should read: “setting the bar so low that even Bill Clinton is a progressive hero.”
I wish we could edit our comments. I need to get an editor.
Sigh.
This is exactly my problem with progressives getting caught up in the fight between Hillary and Obama. Obama has a very weak reform platform (some would call it “weak tea”!) that he knows will never be enacted and then Hillary slams him for being left-wing. Boom. They’ve totally marginalized the progressive position and redefined the “left wing” view on this. “Progressive” supporters of Obama are then left defending Obama’s weak tea as the “liberal” position.
Fwiw, I think a president will have to use the power of commutation or pardon to help fix our criminal justice problems. Maybe commute every black man’s sentence for cocaine so that it is equal to a white man’s sentence for cocaine.
Well, if you have your heart set on losing this election to make a larger point, I guess you’re right to complain about the efforts of Obama.
I have my heart set on winning–not losing! I truly believe my position is the most practicable–over the long term. I think we share many of the same policy goals. It’s the manner of achieving victory that we disagree on. I am simply pointing out that the liberal platform is dead and will remain dead until more people inisist on fighting for it. Liberals that claim to be for the liberal platform but always insist on running away from it is what causes the problem. Look at it as a negotiating strategy. One side immediately indicates that they are willing to give away the majority of their demands and the other side sticks to their principles. Democrats ALWAYS lose the negotiation because they ALWAYS give in ahead of the actual negotiation. Until we get a tough negotiator we will lose. Read that closely, because I’m practical I’m for negotiation and compromise–I just want to be a tough negotiator and at least, at a minumum, want someone to make the argument for the liberal cause. We have no one that does that.
I simply think it’s time to throw the old playbook out the window and start over. You can blame me (I’m the easy target) for the state of affairs right now. You say it’s guaranteed loserdom if we vote for a real progressive. I say it’s the Democrats fault for putting us in this situation in the first place. After decades of unilateral cutting and running from a liberal platform liberal is now a dirty word. If liberals would have stood and fought they would have lost a few elections but they would be in a much better position right now–on the issues. Liberals keep tacking to the right and never spending their political capital! And it’s always the same song and dance with right-leaning Democrats. It’s always cave-in now and sometime in the future we will be strong enough to fight. How much of a sucker do you have to be to fall for this every time? So many liberals think they are being smart and coy by playing electoral chess and voting for the conservative Democrat. Newsflash: it’s not working and more of the same will not work. Please do an honest assessment of what victories the Democrats have gained over the last two decades using this strategy. If your strategy is so smart and I am a secret loser that likes losing let’s fully analyze the victories the Democrats have won. Because I don’t see any.
As I said, time will tell if your man from Hope, er, your man with hope (or is it change? I get so confused by the buzzword of the moment) will buck the almost two decade trend of Democrats being losers. I wouldn’t bet on it . . . but I guess hope springs eternal.
I think the most telling distinction between Clinton and Obama is the unitary executive.
I don’t know how Obama views executive power, I presume based on his viewpoints that he takes a more strict constitutionalist view of the matter … that the President is not a dictator.
I simply do not believe that Hillary Clinton will not use the powers of the President expanded by Bush and Cheney: signing statements, wiretapping of political opponents, stacking the bureaucracy with loyal appointees. The Clintons use whatever tools are available to them to achieve their ends.