Jerome a Paris wrote a provocative and interesting diary at Daily Kos yesterday. I have a few problems with its construction, which I’ll mention, but it’s worth looking at his overall point. My first problem is that he comes out of the box damning with faint praise by titling the essay Obama is better than the extreme-right. I don’t think this headline really reflects his point, but it does put anyone who might disagree with Jerome immediately on the defensive. He also makes a couple of logical leaps that aren’t supported. For example, he poses the following question.
…is the best way to meet progressive goals to be satisfied with whatever progress Obama is able to extract from an hopelessly conservative Senate, or to push for more, including by threatening such progress when it is on the table as a best-and-final offer?
My answer to this is that it isn’t an appropriate question. It assumes that your options are to be satisfied or to be destructive to the president’s agenda. It is quite possible to push for more, but to be satisfied with the final outcome in the narrow sense that you know you got something positive and did the best you could. To make this explicit, fighting for a better bill out of conference is something that all progressives support. The final product will fall short of what nearly all progressives desire. But it’s possible to be satisfied with what we get to the degree that you support its passage into law. That shouldn’t imply that you’re satisfied in the larger sense. After all, you didn’t get what you asked for. It just means that you support passing the bill rather than seeing the health care bill go down in flames at the last moment. Jerome sets up a false either/or here. But I understand his point, which is to ask us to ponder alternate strategies and how they might impact progressive goals in the longer term.
Jerome also makes another logical leap when he quotes me as saying, “The Republicans are fucking nuts and must be kept out of power for as long as possible,” and then adds this conclusion:
And thus you get Lieberman as the sane alternative to the Republicans – and Obama who nicely looks more liberal than Lieberman.
But there is no causal connection between me and my opinion and Joe Lieberman and his sanity. What Jerome is attempting to say is that somehow our fear of a Republican resurgence leads to the empowerment of Lieberman. Looked at closely, that assertion actually makes no sense. Joe Lieberman would have the same effective veto power if he caucused with the Republicans as he does now caucusing with the Democrats. We’d still need his vote to pass anything, and if not his vote, the vote of at least one other Republican. Lieberman’s power comes from the 60-vote cloture rule, and not from how he is treated by the president or the Democrats. Technically, the other 59 senators in the Democratic Caucus have the same ability to torpedo the president’s agenda, but only Lieberman campaigned for John McCain, and only Lieberman has deep-rooted resentments against the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
Yet, despite these flaws, Jerome raises an interesting question in this essay.
But where is the “fucking nuts” left that scares the right to death and makes them want to compromise with Pelosi at all costs? Where are the people arguing for 90% marginal tax rates on the rich, and cancelling the banking licences of banks that charge usurious rates on credit cards, and closing down the insurance licenses of companies that deny care to anyone, and setting minimum wages at levels that allow for decent living standards, and putting taxes on imports from countries that let kids work or have no environmental rules (all things that get very real public support if you actually ask people rather than pundits and lobbyists)?
To be scary, you have to take decisions that have consequences. If you don’t fight for what you say you stand for, you won’t get results, and you won’t get respect. And without respect, you won’t get votes, ultimately.
You might expect a Eugene Debs or Huey Long to come along on the left during these difficult economic times, but we haven’t seen that. There is no political representation for the far left, or even what passes for the mainstream left in most of Europe. We’ve seen left-wing populism before in this country, so its present absence can’t be some cultural thing.
And what is the price we pay for not having our own legions of teabaggers?
These are interesting questions. I’m interested in what people have to say about it. I could see the value of a scary left for moving the country as a whole to the left in the same way that the teabag protesters appear to have moved the health care debate to the right. The problem, for me at least, is that I don’t want to join this hypothetical left-wing teabag equivalent if they are exhibiting the same dishonest and (often) delusional characteristics. To put it in historical terms, I would have seen some value in Huey Long, but I would have supported Roosevelt over Long if they had matched-up in 1936. And this would be particularly true if I felt Long’s candidacy was going to throw the election to Alf Landon. That doesn’t mean that I would have disagreed with Long about everything, but I couldn’t support him overall, and certainly couldn’t support his rhetoric, style, and honesty.
In any case, this country doesn’t have much of a far left and what little it has has no representation in Congress. It’s interesting to contemplate why that is, and why we’re not seeing too many signs of a revival of a populist left even in this economy.
And yet, there is Bernie Sanders, elected as a Senator, a “socialist” through and through, the very definition of “far left”. And nobody seems to give two hoots, the media included. But he doesn’t seem to be interested in leading a revolution or a movement.
I remember Randy “Duke” Cunningham hissing, “Sit down, you Socialist!” at then-Rep. Bernie Sanders. That was about the worst I’ve heard hurled at him. I think Sen. Sanders is more interested in learning how to be the most effective Senator (just learning arcane Senate rules is a job and a half), and that takes time. We must remember that it took Ted Kennedy years to become “Ted Kennedy.”
But it was asked, But where is the “fucking nuts” left that scares the right to death and makes them want to compromise with Pelosi at all costs?
To a significant number of people, that answer would be Obama, Pelosi and Reid. Anything not wingnut is somehow “extreme left wing” which shows you how debased our discourse has become over the last 30 years, and most certainly within the last 15 years. That kind of propaganda is not going to change in a year, but I know we don’t have 15 years to center our language and politics, much less tilt it left.
Now that I think about it, it would be a first in this country, so in some ways, we’re proceeding without a map. Our turns left have really been a return to center when the right inevitably screws things up beyond recognition.
Yes, I spent 60 years thinking I knew the meaning of terms like “far-left”, “socialist”, “fascist”, “communist” but somebody changed the English language on me last summer and the only term I still understand is “wingnut”.
Can anyone explain why Nancy Pelosi has been demonized? This refined and polite grandmother? Was it something she said? I don’t think so. And Harry Reid, who is about as threatening as Richie Cunningham or Archie. The wingnuts act like these people are the terrifying “far left” rabblerousers that Booman is talking about, like they’re screaming in the streets and waving pitchforks at the barricades and sending their enemies to the guillotine.
Its not us, its them — they need boogymen and if the left doesn’t supply them then the wingnuts will take Pelosi and Reid — and Al Gore and Rachel Maddow and Barak Obama — and make them into scary radicals.
I think it’s the same kind of emotional reasoning that created the idea of the “liberal media.” The Right has been fighting socially with the left since Roosevelt’s left and working to break the progressive coalition FDR had created.
It’s worked and divided the country.
The fact is, however, that this coalition is demographically reemerging and led to the election of Barack Obama. But 2008 was the first electoral embodiment of this new coalition and it did not come out and support Democrats automatically.
The votes are there; but Democrats need to appeal to these folks and get them to the polling place. That is one reason why I am encouraged that immigration reform is on the table for 2010: this is a base issue that will motivate democrats IMO and help push up voting numbers.
Rhoda, you could not be more right. Democrats have been afraid to reach out to the very people most likely to support them, they’ve been told that winning coalitions look one way and it took the 2008 elections and someone David Plouffe to break out of that beltway thinking.
I haven’t heard much about how to capitalize in 2010 on the experience and grass roots organizing that was done in 2008, how do you think those factors will play out this year?
I would suggest that Joe Lieberman and his antics are a direct result of one “progressive” blogger, the one and only Jane Hamsher. I have a post on my new blog about her after looking into Jane “Time Warner” Hamsher on Google for a few minutes. The image she posted with Lieberman in black face and her attack on Joe’s wife recently may be the reason why we lost the medicare buy-in in this bill.
http://extremeliberal.wordpress.com/
While I’ve been having a hard time with Hamsher’s recent antics, it’s a real stretch to blame her for Lieberman joining the “No” caucus. Lieberman has been indulging in mischief and a has been a source of frustration for a long time — think about Clinton/Lewinsky or the debate with Cheney or his behavior in Bush v Gore or his whole attitude towards the WOT. There were many reasons that Hamsher made it her mission to unseat him (and continues to attack him), and while I’m sure that Lieberman is small enough to act out of animus towards Hamsher, it’s naive to think that he’d be on the right side of this one if only it weren’t for mean old Jane.
Don’t assume that she has more power than she does. Liebeerman is from Connecticut; the main industry is insurance companies. Need you know more?
Same reason as Kent Conrad on cap-and-trade.
Lol, this goes without saying. Regardless of his positions on the issues, the man was an incompetent legislator, getting absolutely none of his legislation through the Congress. Maybe he served as a voice from the left, thereby making other legislation seem plausibly “moderate,” but if you’re not getting anything through and you blast most of Roosevelt’s initiatives as selling out to big business without working to improve them, what are you there for?
As for the rest, I shall wait for others to comment before I comment further.
Also, I’ve been meaning to ask what your thoughts are on Micah Sifry’s newest piece on OFA:
http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/the-obama-disconnect
You weren’t asking me, Seabe, but I clicked and read the piece anyway. Some good points – albeit somewhat neutered by the now required hectoring tone. This sums it up, IMO:
The question becomes, what to do about it? OFA formed around the idea of electing Obama. Obama was elected. Mission accomplished. Now what?
In the years leading up to the Roosevelt presidency you had the potential for 3 political parties in the US – Republicans, Democrats, & Socialists (Communists).
Communism was still largely untried, & was violently overthrowing governments around the world & promising a better way. Only as it was instituted & revealed to be simple tyranny by another name did it become discredited.
Where is a worker-oriented political movement today, anywhere in the world? Nowhere. Corporatism is firmly entrenched everywhere – from the “good ol’ USA” to “Communist” China.
European Socialism seems to me to be the best implementation of human rights that we’ve got, with the governments acting on behalf of the people against corporations.
The last time the US had a mass movement on the left was in the counter-cultural days of the 1960’s when the Vietnam draft and Civil rights were the Key issues. That led to the Nixon/Reagon era – with the Carter interlude only made possible by Nixon’s depredations, Ford’s incompetence, and by a temporary coalition between southern Democrats and the rest.
If you want a less centrist Obama administration you have to work for a more powerful and cohesive Democratic caucus in House and Senate. Obama is above all a technocrat, a process driven politician whose choices are driven by the real politique of congressional numbers.
Yes, reasonable centrists would never have succeeded in ending the Vietnam war or Civil rights abuses without pressure from the left. Killing MLK, JFK and RFK put paid to that lot. Reasonable centrists now will not end US wars, solve the Israeli Palestinian issue, reform the financial system or credibly address climate change.
But the notion that any President, without effective popular and congressional support can do all these things on his own is fanciful. Your responsibility as a citizen didn’t end when you voted Obama/Democrat. It was only the beginning.
People forget that politics is war by other means, and if those in power were seriously challenged politically then they would simply resort to the primary means – they’ve learned well from the French Revolution, there will be no more aristocrats on the chopping block. They’ve already instituted a Patriot Act and created a Department of Homeland Security “to protect our freedoms” and then dared us to defy their truth that war is peace (“fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here”).
Thoughtcrime won’t be too far behind…
Yes, Those Who Rule really do seem to be ready this time. They are simply waiting for the “left” or the “right” to get too “scary” so the velvet glove can be pulled off of the iron fist. I’m not sure the majority of Americans would turn down the volume on “American Idol” enough to notice martial law being declared.
I’m trying to remember what a “scary left” looks like: Would it be massive public demonstrations where we chanted, “Power to the People!”? Carried signs that read, “Get Your Corporations Out of My Government!”? “Eat the Rich!”?
Would the media cover these protests? Would they interview an enraged looking person who shouted, “I want Medicare for All! Republicans are fascists! They want to kill us!”
Sadly, I recall that hundreds of thousands of people in the streets didn’t make much of an impression pre-Iraq War. It was all too peaceful and orderly. Being scary would require something like forming a ring around the Capital building with actual pitchforks and torches. It would require being willing to be tear-gassed, tazed, beaten and hauled off to a detention facility…
The scary left was the pre-World War II left that organized industrial unions (finally running aground on the Textile Strike of 1938). And who successfully pressured for an agendas that bought labor peace through compromise on the New Deal agenda for labor issues and corporate regulation.
The scary left also had within it agents of a foreign country, the Soviet Union. That foreign connection finally provided the excuse to destroy the left, scary or not, in the US.
It was the CIO using “Wobbly” tactics that organized the industrial unions. And some of those organizers got their start in the IWW. When the AFL re-Gomperized the CIO the Left, which had spent a huge amount of time, effort, and money supporting the Labor movemeent was marginalized and we’ve never, really, recovered.
Yes, it was partially ‘Own Goals’ that did us in. The League for Industrial Democracy and Students for a Democratic Society hissy-fit and spat being one such.
If McCain had been elected, and the economy had really tanked with 25% unemployment, then you would have seen the “far-left” marching in the streets, I think.
[WARNING! The following is a message from a card carrying, dues paying, member of the Angry Left®. 🙂 ]
And they they would have all gone home and done nothing leaving the Ruling Class to ignore the whole thing and soldier on just as they have done since 1968 and the election of Nixon.
</despairing cynicism>
The current crop in DC by and large don’t give a damn about public opinion. If they did the HCR bill would be very different.
Under McCain it would, I concede, be worse in degree but, I submit, not in kind.
Outside of picket lines by factories, you never have seen the “far-left” marching in the streets since the Haymarket Massacre.
There never has been a far-left march equivalent to the KKK march in the 1920s, much less the Million Man March.
Interesting dialogue with Jerome’s diary. His question is:
Raises hand. Is that all it takes to be the “crazy left” these days? Here, Europe, or both? I qualify.
This country doesn’t have a far left because of at least 50 years of political suppression and another 50 of cultural marginalization. That’s what all those claims from Dick Armey’s teabaggers about “Socialism” and “Communism” in the public option and cap-and-trade were about. Keeping the far left marginalized.
There is no far left representation in Congress. Marginalization has proceeded so far that a democratic socialist is considered “far left”.
Populism is not rampant because of fear. Fear of losing your job, your mortgage, your house, the ability to rent, your credit rating, your career. And that fear is justified. Just ask any of the 1960s generation who even went to help end poverty in urban or rural communities how that looks on their resume. Especially if they took a good part of the 1960s or 1970s doing it. If liberalism is punished, the far left is informally blacklisted as much as the far right is kept on wingnut welfare. But there is significant public anger and populist sentiment. Which will erupt from below not be “led” by highly visible bloggers or cable TV personalities. The question is that when that happens, who is going to provide the voice and leadership to make it effective in transforming the political conversation for the better.
The self-conscious “far left”, those still enmeshed in the controversies of 19th century social philosophy have proved for a century that they are not the ones.
I question whether teabaggers have moved the healthcare debate to the right. It hasn’t here. It certainly has moved it to the right in the Village. The real issue is that there is a populist conversation going on among ordinary people behind closed doors that is not getting into the public debate. The divisions among family, friends, co-workers, and neighbors that the Gingrich/Limbaugh revolution sowed and Beck tries to profit from is easing. Ordinary people are experiencing reconcilation in their personal networks. Politics and religion are beginning to be able to be discussed once again without personal anger. Privately those who defend Bush publicly in their personal networks are expressing doubts and even disillusionment. Even as the Democrats in their network express disappointment in the Congress and for a minority the president. And the other side of this comes out in essentially populist terms – the big institutions vs. the little guy, disconnect with legislatures and Congress, fecklessness of leaders and managers.
Some enterprising politician is going to tap into this mood. It won’t be Dick Armey and his Tea Parties; it won’t be Sarah Palin; it won’t be Alan Grayson or Dennis Kucinich and definitely not Ralph Nader or Noam Chomsky (if only for old age). Folks understand that there are some politicians trying to get them to follow their agendas.
The price we pay for not having our own legions of teabaggers is not very much. The price we pay for not understanding that the grassroots is not enamored by ideological divisions or partisan division but wants results that benefit the “little guy” is immense. And could potentially damage the republic if the wrong leader comes forward to claim it.
I’m scared to death of this. I’m just as worried about who will be the scapegoat; obviously in tea party circles it’s undocumented workers.
Otherwise, as always, nice post.
Excellent post, as usual, Booman. This is a point I’ve been trying to make myself – with no success. The only visible organizing happening around HCR throughout this whole process has been in opposition to it. Granted it was enabled by powerful corporate interests but – optically – it proved to be effective. The left appeared to prefer to stand on the sidelines and hurl insults than to mount an organized offensive drive. Maybe HCR came too soon after the election and everyone was just exhausted from winning back the WH and both houses of congress. Maybe people with health insurance just didn’t feel the sense of urgency required to sustain an organized movement in support of the people without it. Who knows? Whatever the reason, it created a vacuum into which a whole lot of crazy poured and made the whole issue much harder than it needed to be for actual legislators. A populist groundswell would have provided ample cover for the ones with the jitters from conservative states and districts.
It’s clear that the wrong lessons have been learned, unfortunately. I don’t see any calls to organize from the left. Just a steady stream of Obama Sucks, Rahm is the devil, etc. All so easy. And pointless. But it keeps the TV bookings up for folks like David Sirota, Jane Hamsher, and Arianna Huffington. My advice for Year Two would be to ignore (seriously) those folks and get back to doing the work of organizing, campaigning if you will, as if our lives depended on it. The miscreants aren’t going away, but there’s no requirement to dignify their counter-productive tactics. History itself will sweep them aside.
From what I’m seeing by the likes of Jane LIEberman Hamsher and others is that it’s much easier to band with the right wing fringe of America to take down Obama and the Democrats to punish both than it would be to actually come up with a coherent useful plan to positively effect HCR.
Laughing hard…
When you discard all of the hyperbole and absurdist characterizations of the current political system the bottom line is that you get the politics you have the votes in Congress for…no more and no less.
There are not 60 progressive votes in the Senate. There’s not even a progressive majority in the House.
Why not?
Because we didn’t elect them.
So what do you do?
A reformer who’s invested in actual reform (as opposed to invested in upping their page views) will take what can be gotten today with the idea that that incremental change will make more profound change easier to achieve and easier for the electorate to accept.
Some might call that moving the Overton Window. And some who are screaming loudest about doing so lately are so fixated on doing so rhetorically (“Kill the Bill!”) that they are oblivious to the possibility that the current health care bill not only moves the window, it also insures millions of folks who don’t currently have coverage in the process.
If that’s not to your fancy then get your ass out there and elect a more progressive Congress.
Yep! Electing more REAL progressives to the Senate would be a good place to start but apparently….it’s much easier now to support republican candidates (as Hamsher most likely will do) to punish the Democratic Party for the rest of eternity! See?
Our political problems, as ever, come down to three things: 1) poor public education which does not enable average citizens to recognize their own interests; 2) disastrous public communications which consistently tell citizens that things are true and important which are not, and don’t tell them things which ARE true and important; 3) an economy so dominated by an economic elite that it has intimidated the entire political class into doing its bidding.
The outcome is that politicians are terrified to admit that they are terrified of the power of the economic elite and engage in diffused rambling from the left and emotional ranting from the right. The media carry right-wing themes and haven’t got the wit or desire to inform citizens of what is actually going on. Citizens know that something is deeply wrong but have almost no one pointing out what it is that is wrong. And so we wander into disaster…
Booman Tribune ~ Where is the Far Left?
bingo
don’t trust nuclear, clean coal, crap and trade, or shale oil, meanwhile sun and wind all around for almost free, considering the dividends… people need direction and examples.
Jerome has crossed the line between blogging and concrete action, i am surprised there isn’t more of this in the can-do USA.
great discussion, i thought he should have x-posted here too.
well done booman, for putting it back on the discussion table.
Booman,
Excellent post, but I have one nit to pick.
The hypothetical left-wing movement would not have to be dishonest and delusional (like the teabaggers), nor would they have to arise only as followers of someone like Huey Long.
On the other hand, you do need some sort of emotional hook.
TPO
OK. I don’t think most of the people here get it.
The media and most people who are being broadcast work on the assumption that there is a single continuum between left and right and everyone falls on it. The assumption is that everyone is either liberal or conservative, just to different degrees. But that’s just the people working within the system.
There is a third group. They are the radicals who want to destroy the system and start over. Their way. These are people outside of normal American politics, and they have taken over the Republican Party. They can briefly be described as the insane.
It doesn’t help much that as the media has fragmented it has taken to giving the insane individuals a great deal of media support. In previous years such crazies would have simply been ignored. These days they lead the news because they draw eyeballs. That’s where Michelle Bachman has come from. (Locally she is elected by the extremist radical evangelicals who are pushing R. J. Rushdoony’s and James Dobson’s effort to create a new nation run by laws under God. See also the Family. Florida’s Katherine Harris was one of them, as is Sarah Palin.)
The Democrats then are a group of the sane who are working to stop the insane from regaining control of the government. This is really a reaction to the earlier takeover that was conducted when Bush/Cheney were in charge. Congress is right now split between the sane and the insane, not between the left and the right. The Democrats are in fact an alliance of the more sane but include both liberals and conservatives.
Nancy Pelosi has been able to work with this mess, but the Senate is structurally designed to be extremely conservative and favor the rural wealthy. The traditions of the Senate are built up to favor this structural limitation.
The insane Republicans are using this. They have misused the tradition of the filibuster to force a supermajority of 60 votes for everything. That means that all Senate legislation is conducted by the 60 sane Senators but requires unanimous consent of the 60 votes. The Republicans are so insane they have driven the 60 sane liberal and conservative Senators to work together unanimously, but as Ben Nelson proved that is a very fragile alliance. Big money and big corporations are using this political instability to get what they want from the government.
There would be a far left if the crazies weren’t running the Republican asylum. As it is, those who would make up the far left are mostly working with other sane individuals to stop the radicals. The left is in the business of improving the system, not of destroying and replacing it. Currently they are in the business of trying to protect what is good about the current system. But they don’t have the kind of privileged protected perch like the right does in the Senate. Put the Senate on a simple majority basis, or better yet eliminate the Senate altogether and you will see more far left appear.
If that happens, the media (what is left of it) might take notice of the far left. As it is the far left individuals do not have the kind of power to block legislation that the radical Republican crazies do, so the media ignores far left individuals even as they celebrate the radical Republican individual crazies.
Monied interests aren’t going to assist any far left ideas. Corporate control of our country is basically complete.
Not as bad as the 1890s.
exactly the problem.
But, we’re not far off, another generation of alternance between a consevative Democratic party and an ultra-conservative Republican party, we might see capital concentration and outright ownership of governments (federal/state/local) and we may have the same ripe conditions.
we’re getting there 🙂
The Left lacks national organizations. A hundred years ago the Socialist Party numbered in the hundreds of thousands and could get millions of votes. Since that time faction fighting and, it must be said, second and third rate leadership has gutted the previously existing organizations and prevented new ones from being created.
As Tarheel Democrat has already observed this dynamic still exists.
The Right can afford to buy astro-turf, eliminating the need for local organizing, and directly fund national institutions to push their agenda. We can’t. We have to self-fund and that requires accumulating money in dribs and drabs from a large donor base. Requiring, again, a national organization or, at least, a national bank account with a national disbursal agent. 😉
Until we have a national organization outside of the Democratic Party we are doomed to irrelevance. The Democratic Party has not, and will not, give-up corporate “sponsorship.” Whether one votes for a Democratic Party candidate is a tactical decision NOT a strategic decision for constructing a Left Wing national organization, as such. I note depending on the Democratic Party to push Left Wing policies hasn’t worked for forty years so if you’re in a hole … stop digging, insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results … so do something else.
“It’s the media, stupid.”
This country has extemely conservative news media and commentators. Even the blogosphere doesn’t reward far-left viewpoints.
I’m reading about America in the 1950s, and how McCarthyism arose. It was so bad that when some researchers took portions of the Constitution out and showed it to people, they said it sounded like communist propaganda.
We need to build a serious media that doesn’t just opinionate, like all the talking heads on MSNBC. We need a left-wing media that actually reports on labor strikes, wage imbalances, and local activist victories, so we can truly educate and inform and generate a broader understanding of an alternative way forward for this country.
Anti-Left mass media delivered propaganda started in the 1920s along with J. Edgar Hoover’s and Palmer’s Red Raids and concurrent violence against local Left organizers. The 1950s Commie-Hysteria didn’t just spring forth from the brows of Zeus; it was the result of decades of effort by the Right.
BTW, due to the rise and establishment of the US Global Empire and the Cold War the governing and ideological presuppositions in the US changed dramatically. Neo-Conservativism has a longer history than most people realize.
There is some overlap with neo-conservatism and liberal interventionism.
Support Democracy Now!
Even though it’s obvious Amy Goodman is on the left, until she brings on her guests, she does what she is supposed to do: she reports. You wouldn’t even know her stances until you see who her guests are. Her questioning doesn’t reflect her own opinions, she doesn’t frame the questions in biased ways; she just brings on guests and asks them questions that we should be asking.
The Real News is another, but they are too conspiracy for my taste.
The talking heads on MSNBC are quite diverse in style and substance, even given their opinionating–which is MSNBC’s way of competing with Fox. You get what you hire.
Amy Goodman and DemocracyNow comes closest to the media that you describe. There was a time when Pacifica News Service was exactly that type of media. I’m not sure what Pacifica is up to now; I haven’t heard their byline in a while.
And then there are the blogs. Create a blog that does the sort of journalism you want to see. I believe there is an audience for it. I know I would read it.
1) “satisfied with” = do with (and voting for the bill)
Izzy has made some impassioned pleas on eurotrib to support the bill as a good thing for many people, an argument I can’t ignore. Even you think that the cost in terms of future credibility of the progressives for agreeing to a diluted bill is heavy, maybe it’s worth it if the bill has enough good content.
Of course, many people argue that the bill really isn’t that good. I don’t know if we’ll know until it actually gets enforced.
2) As to “making Lieberman look sane” – the problem is that people are basically saying that Obama doesn’t have 60 votes – and not even the 51 needed to ram things through. Which means that the real count is not the number of “Democrats”, but the number of Senators which can actually vote for progressive policies.
There is one part of the bill that makes it worth supporting from a policy standpoint — Bernie Sanders’s expansion of community health clinics and the medical service corps. That is sorta a VA-for-all sort of approach.
If I were in the Senate and that provision came back intact from conference, I would vote for the bill. And that is why I don’t fault Sanders for his vote reporting out the Senate bill.
I think this is exactly right, and you are right to point this out to Jerome.
This is truly the bill’s only saving grace. The rest of it is garbage though, in varying degrees… will help a few people, but mostly, by nowhere near enough…give people some minor sense of security, at the great cost of being a massive subsidy to the hated Insurance industry, which given Gramm-Leach-Bliley basically amounts to yet another bailout of the financial services industry generally speaking.
I hear and understand that position.
feet of the Democratic party itself. You write:
Well, a decade or so ago, there was indeed a growing movement in the US on the left, a lot of us were active in it. We were the Greens. And, before you go on about what an egomaniac Nader was, keep in mind he wasn’t the only one. And, for proper left bona fides, take a look at Peter Camejo’s serious resume and outstanding service to the progressive cause in California. There’s a man who fought for our values until his untimely death.
Thing is, being a Green supporter back in the 1990’s, out of raw disgust at the Clinton administration and it’s conservatism on welfare reform, botching health care, Nafta, Cap Gains Tax cuts, the list goes on…well, I think we all know the reaction within the party to apostates who actually had the balls to say fuck it, we’re going to try to build a party on the left, the corporate take-over the the Democratic party has tainted it, made it unable to advance the interests of working people anymore.
And, we also all know how that goes over, even today, within the party, which I think fundamentally understands it has really angered the left (for nearly four decades now), and because of this sensitivity to the vulnerability to losing the left flank, needs to discredit that flank whenever it speaks up, because if in fact that left flank succeeded in building a party capable of pulling in 5% nationally, you can pretty much kiss the Democrats, the corporate-owned Democrats we know of today, goodbye. They’d be forced to the left, and thereby lose a lot of their corporate funding
In any event, it’s not entirely accurate to say that there are no voices on the left speaking out. Even today, there are, Jane Hamsher for starters. But…look at the reaction from Democratic partisans….looks like a mirror image of the reaction Nader and us Greens got in the late ’90’s. And, just as Hamsher will be forever blamed, if HCR doesn’t pass, for that defeat, Greens themselves continue to be blamed for Dubya.
This logic translates into leadership, even within the party. Remember how Dennis Kucinich is a loon? If you were a supporter of his in 2008, you were a loon too. And, of course, Kucinich got his share of ire for voting against the weak House bill… I imagine he’ll have to share the blame with Hamsher if he votes against the even shittier conference report…Personally, I won’t lose any sleep if it does.
The problem with most third party movements. And look at politics1.com to see how many of them there are is that they try to spring to the national level prematurely. And they don’t have the organization to pull that off.
Being able to create a third party got a lot easier with the internet and especially blogs.
But to do it you have to be aware of the math in my sig line. And remember that to capture a seat in Congress today, you need to move 175,000 votes. And for the Senate, your best bets are states in which a Senate seat requires less than 600,000 votes to win. That’s why conservative Republicans went after small states.
It is fully possible for a progressive third party to pull of a major election victory in a so-called deep red stronghold if they can deal with the math. There is that much fluidity and anger at the major parties out in the boonies. And a Green Party victory in a place like, say, Idaho or Utah or Louisiana, would be a more effective shot across the bow of the Democratic Party than being a spoiler once again.
vote their pocketbook. Not when they’re able to make ends meet…then other things come into play. But, when they can’t make ends meet…that’s where the action is, an opening for the left.
Personally, I think it’s quite possible that we are perhaps only a generation away from that point, where enough people have a hard time making ends meet, that they are receptive to not just a charismatic message, but a credible approach to their troubles.
And, personally I don’t think either US party, being in varying degrees owned by corporate America, a corporate America whose interests are fundamentally different from working people, will be able to express a credible approach to solving their problems.
As for the rest, of course you are right but then, I have no interest in dealing with the undemocratic system of government which is in effect in the US – no real reform can happen within it, it is broken, owned by the wealthy and hopelessly condemned to expressed the policy preferences of the wealthy. Policy preferences which, followed to their logical conclusion, will lead, as history has always shown, to a crisis which will be big enough that no amount of money and force can mask the fact that people can’t make ends meet, and the ruling elites have no answers. Meantime, do what little you can to make lives better (unfortunately, in America, this usually means eschewing politics, making direct action, which feels better but is less efficient) but position strategically so that you don’t discredit yourself for delivering the message you will need to deliver in a decade or so.
The last time this happened in the US was the 1930’s, but it happens with relative frequency throughout the world. The more neo-liberal the regime, the more prone to crisis. And so, it can also come about quite quickly. For instance, I don’t think anyone thought it possible two years ago in an economically extremely neo-liberal, deeply pro-American Atlanticist country like Iceland would vote in a hard-left/soft left coalition government led by a lesbian labor union leader. But, that’s what they did.
Re: to Iceland
The problem in the US is the left doesn’t have the sort of political bench with policy smarts who could take the helm of a 2-million person bureaucracy and an almost equal-sized military. The internal politics of running a large bureaucracy or even operating within the Congress takes some actual experience doing that. If you can’t run a major city or even a small city and haven’t been in a city council or a legislature, you’ll wind up like George W. Bush even if you have the smarts unless you can bring in competent direct reports who have had that experience. And that is the Catch-22 for those who want to jump in at the national level.
And if Obama really in his heart of hearts was a community organizer, it that reality of needing experienced direct reports that has put him in the position he’s in.
The left in Iceland had a bench.
The left certainly has a bench in the US. They’re just not even considered for the team because that team is chosen by the Democratic party, and the corporate paymasters are not okay with certain types of leaders like James K Galbraith or Joseph Stiglitz….to name just a couple of the economists who would step in and tomorrow do a better job than Summers and Geithner working for working Americans.
You over emphasize the executive as well, which is a bit of an American disease. We’re talking policy…consensus building in a framework of public service is also important.
There are also quite a few decent lefties who are also elected officials in the ranks of the Democratic party. But, they are of course, while also on the bench, pretty far away from actually having a proper place at the table whenever anything important is negotiated.
The problem is not advisers; there are loads of good lefty advisers for all sorts of policies.
The problems is that governing is more than policy, it is implementation of policy. And that requires some sort of oversight. And unless you going go all Grover Norquist on the federal bureacracy, you still have to manage the Senior Executive Service to follow policy. And even then you can’t be sure what shows up in local communities.
Consensus building is important in public service, but at some point some designated consensus stater has to say “the discussion is over; this is what we are going to do”.
These are not abstractions to me; I’ve seen the complexities in organizations of approaching a hundred thousand employees. It works like a 12-person meeting within each department but harmonizing differences between departments can be time-consuming to the point of paralysis.
I have no doubt there are a lot of decent lefties in the Democratic Party. But would they bolt to a third party? I was saying that there was not a large enough bench of third party or independent lefties who had those sorts of experience.
the discussion gets more and more absurd.
now it’s not just “where is the left?” but “where is the ‘far’ left?”
assumptions are being made, i.e. there is this vast, powerful left base or movement in the U.S.– and this is a total joke. there is no such thing.
unfortunately what I see here is yet another example of educated people falling for the propaganda generated daily by corporate controlled MSM.
There is a populist base in the US. There is no experience left base that can appeal to it and hasn’t been since the Communist purges of the late 1940s and 1950s.
Heck not even the AFL-CIO has found a way to appeal to it. Their successes of late have been the result of total disaster in industry management — in NC, management locked the doors and had a fire sweep through a chicken plant; and Smithfield Foods had a management team that totally alienated its workforce. But this does not translate to left-oriented policies. Or Congress would have made sure to pass real healthcare reform.
yes, there’s a populist base but now its face appears to be the teabagger mob– which of course immediately reminds me of:
Sinclair Lewis
then there’s the base (ignored) called “we the fifty percent of the eligible voters who do not vote”. how are THEY categorized? doesn’t this group, finally mobilized, represent an even larger “threat” than the “vast” Left?
The face of the populist base as a teabagger mob is a media creation.
The true populist base have not chosen their actions, their direction, or who they will follow.
And at the moment, they are not unified or trending left or right.
Based on what I see out here in the boonies, a real threat of fascism exists only on C Street at the moment. And as they have been made pubic, that threat has diminished. Their model was silent coup from the top, not populism from the bottom.
And post-Bush, the church folks have become less enamored of politics. They’re feeling pretty cynically used at the moment. Oh, most of them see through Palin’s ambition as well.
He HAD interesting points which I will ponder, but I didn’t pick up until reading THIS diary. The original’s title turned me off. Jerome should know better. If he wants his diaries read by “both sides” of DKos, do not use titles that are cybermagnets to ONE side.
Anyone who espouses views that are “leftist” is either ridiculed or ignored by the media. All of the media. The left is still associated in the minds of the public with communism and The Soviet Union. The right wingers, no matter how crazy they are, are associated with good old bible thumpin’ Americans.
Barack Obama could have begun to turn the tide on this. If he had the courage.
The great political economist Henry George tapped in to a huge uprising of US popular sentiment over 100 years ago with his ‘Single Tax’ approach, which essentially involved the taxation of privilege rather than people.
Here in the UK, the “Red Tory” Phillip Blond’s Civic State has been stealing the clothes of the Labour tradition of solidarity and the Common Good.
The Civic State | ResPublica
Blond’s call to
certainly appeals to me and also to many I know on the Left. But I feel that Blond will have great difficulty convincing a Tory government to implement any policies aimed at implementing these tenets.
I believe that it is possible to conceive – as Henry George did – of a narrative, and policies implementing the narrative, which will appeal to the 95% of US citizens who have been pillaged in the last 30 years by monolithic Corporations on the one hand, and disempowered by a monolithic bureaucratic State on the other.