I have serious problems with the diary at the top of the rec list. It unleashed a sympathetic reaction by tapping into frustrations we all feel. But it is embarrassing that such hand-wringing is the expression of Daily Kos less than three weeks into a new Administration when President Obama just expanded CHIP legislation and is about to have Hilda Solis confirmed as the first decent Labor Secretary in half a generation.
I also believe that while that criticism is fair, it's flat out wrong. Bloggers critique as citizens--but when the assumptions are wrong, wrong conclusions follow.
Or should we declare defeat for the new congress and administration yet? If you're interested in actual links and thoughts there's blogging below...
Andrew Levison has made a fascinating analysis of President Obama that directly counters the armchair-progressive whining so inherent in the former diary:
These assumptions are rarely stated explicitly, but they are implicit in much of the progressive concern about Obama’s political strategy – the widely expressed fear that he is essentially "leaving achievable progressive victories on the table" because of his commitment to pragmatism and bipartisanship. Having won 53% of the vote and with 59 Democratic senators, it is often argued that he is clearly in a position to seek more progressive, radical or dramatic changes than those which he is actually seeking. To many liberal and progressive commentators, it seems almost self-evident that Obama could demand and get "more" of a progressive agenda enacted if he behaved in a more aggressively hyper-partisan fashion as George Bush did after the 2004 election. Thomas Frank clearly expressed this liberal-progressive view -- and frustration -- by saying that "Obama should act as if he won."
But there is good evidence (which we shall see below) that Obama’s political strategy is actually based on an essentially sociological rather than political science perspective. It rests specifically on one key sociological insight -- that the political strategy required to enact significant progressive social reforms is substantially more complex and difficult than is the strategy required to simply resist social change.
When significant social reforms threaten to directly affect major social institutions, enacting such reforms requires two things beyond simply wining an electoral victory:
- The opposition of the key social institution or institutions affected –which in most cases include either the armed forces, big business or the church – must be neutralized or at least very significantly muted.
2. A certain baseline level of sociological support (or at least relative neutrality) must be obtained among a series of pivotal social groups. Sociologically and demographically speaking these groups - religious voters, military voters or business voters -- are often predominantly working class, red state voters.
As a result, the coalition necessary to achieve major social reforms will require more than a knife-edge 50.1% majority. Translated into national levels of public support or approval, a commanding majority of as much as 60% may actually be necessary.
I encourage you to read the whole piece, because he explains both a) where Obama is likely to go and b) his interaction with progressives, who misunderstand this approach to politics. This would require thinking, not reacting. If Obama's tactics are wrong, there stem from his understanding of the civil rights movement, not the doings of Clinton and Bush:
The idea that opposition from major social institutions must be overcome and that the support or neutrality of specific social groups must be obtained is an unfamiliar notion in conventional American politics, but it is a fundamental axiom of successful movements for social change. Martin Luther King’s strategy in overcoming Southern segregation (which Obama studied in the 1980’s) included both successful negotiations with the municipal power brokers in cities like Montgomery and Birmingham in order to moderate their opposition to integration and also extensive but less successful efforts to build economic alliances with lower income whites and other non-elite groups. King considered that social reforms supported by only a knife-edged majority coalition of the educated and the non-white poor were substantially more likely to produce polarization and backlash rather than steady social advance.
Negotiating with the racists and the greedy? That's not change we can believe in!
I believe some people here express sentiments we all share but wrap them in an unconscious or misguided belief we should copy Bushco's tactics in the pursuit of right--we should steamroll our way through, hell or high water. Alienating any and everyone who isn't on board. This interests me because while we are currently undoing the damage of Bushco, we seem to want to do exactly the same sort of routine, only to be undone, presumably, by subsequent opponents in a future cycle.
But I know a lot of young and Independent voters, and half of them didn't vote for Obama because he was "liberal" or progressive or whatever, they voted for him because he clearly was different from Bush/McCain in both goals and tactics. It's the same kind of sensibility, right or wrong, that got Eisenhower elected when almost no other Republican could become president. Eisenhower was not hated even by Truman voters, but widely loved.
Raging against the Republicans might feel good, but as an administrative policy it's political idiocy. Not because I'm an expert, but because Machiavelli sure as hell is, compared to masturbatory complainers:
Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated... But when it is necessary for him to proceed against the life of someone, he must do it on proper justification and for manifest cause.
These are going to continue to be frustrating times, but the age of Clinton-Gingrich-McCain-Bush-Cheney spats-and-snubs is going to end.
Congress has failed in manifold ways. I am for the vicious primarying of DiFi, J-Rock and Harry Reid. I do not doubt we have much of a house to clean.
But there is a lot of good being done and a lot of change that needs to happen beyond the lowest common denominator's immediate notice. Truth, tone and the Democratic Party much?