Obviously, the White House has no taste for progressives. A cursory examination of administration policy shows how little they values their contribution on national issues or understands the critical need for Democratic candidates to obtain progressive support to win elections.
But Robert Gibbs’s petulance and ingratitude (as reported in The Hill) are still shocking in their depth of feeling and absence of contact with reality. Fortunately, Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee appeared on The Ed Show to set him straight:
What [Gibbs’s comments] said to me was that they actually don’t understand the critique of them by progressives.
It’s not hard to understand why. The White House thinks of progressives as a political group. They equate us to Tea Baggers. As long as they think of progressives in political terms, they will continue to miss the point.
Update (11 August 2010 at 14:12):
Progressive Campaign Change Committee now has this video up on their website. Thanks to Adam Green for alerting me to this.
End Update
I knew I should have posted this at 4:00 am (when I finished it), but there are some things more important that Daily Kos. Sleep comes to mind. While this was marinating, Eclectablog wrote this and Cenk Uygur wrote this. Nevertheless, I’m neither of them and I think my points stand on their own. As for the first, I don’t really care what the Obama White house says about people on the other side of the aisle. I’m not over there.
In any case, it wouldn’t hurt for the White House to get this message from multiple quarters.
In the unlikely case you missed what presidential press secretary Gibbs said, he told Sam Youngman, reporter from The Hill:
“They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.” … Gibbs’s tough comments reflect frustration and some bafflement from the White House, which believes it has done a lot for the left. … “There’s 101 things we’ve done,” said Gibbs, who then mentioned both Iraq and healthcare. Gibbs said the professional left is not representative of the progressives who organized, campaigned, raised money and ultimately voted for Obama. … The lack of appreciation or recognition for what Obama has accomplished has left Gibbs and others in furious disbelief.
Of course, I don’t qualify as a member of the “professional left”, since I don’t earn a dime from my opinions or any other political activity. But, I did vote for Obama and have helped build Democratic infrastructure. I personally think that what the professional left has been telling the White House is spot on when it comes to what progressives in the trenches think. In many cases, they don’t go far enough. (A quick look here would give you a few examples.)
But, not to put too fine a point on it, Mr. Gibbs, here’s where I agree with Adam Green:
I think even Robert Gibbs would admit, at this point, that he pretty much lost his cool. But, it really revealed something pretty important about the White House mentality towards the progressive movement. What it said to me was that they actually don’t understand the critique of them by progressives. And, if I could, in case folks in the White House are watching right now, I’d love to try to sum up, as succinctly as I can, what I think that critique is.
You know basically, millions of people have taken action through our organization, the Progressive Campaign Change Committee, Moveon, Democracy for America, and have even texted in to your phone polls [on The Ed Show], Ed, saying that the President should be stronger on issues like the public option and Wall Street reform. And, what the White House needs to understand is that we’re not the enemy. We’re the people who voted for you. We’re the people who woke up every day in 2008 and said, “What can I do today to get Barack Obama elected.”
And, unfortunately, you know, when we heard President Obama say on the campaign trail that the days of corporate lobbyists writing our nation’s laws are over, we believed him, and we want to hold him accountable to that. And, it’s very unfortunate when we see him then cut deals with the pharmaceutical industry, cut deals with the insurance industry, cut deals with the Wall Street bankers, refuse to fight Joe Lieberman and Olympia Snowe when they obstruct progress.
Green goes on to say that if the President will fight strongly for what he talked about in 2008 then progressives will have his back.
The Hill quotes Green as saying, “When Republicans opposed the stimulus and when Joe Lieberman opposed the overwhelmingly popular public option, the president could have barnstormed across their states and demanded they support policies that their constituents wanted.” I’ve made exactly the same point. The President needs to be making his deals with the American people, not the Republicans and not industry representatives. After he makes those deals, then he should go to those other groups and (on behalf of the American people) tell them what the deal will be. If anyone in Congress opposes those deals, then he should show up in their states or districts and go over their heads to their constituents. It is totally inexcusable for the White House to not be able to get a public option passed when the majority of voters in every poll favor it.
This isn’t “dictatorial”. It is not dictatorial for a President to use the considerable leverage of popular opinion to twist arms of legislators and get popular proposals enacted. No one here, to my knowledge, believes that the President can or should demand legislation that is neither supported by the majority of Americans nor in the public interest. However, we do believe in leadership. There’s an obvious difference. George Bush was dictatorial in going to war with Iraq. LBJ was a leader in getting civil rights legislation passed. See the difference?
The nub of the issue is Gibbs’s assertion that the White House “believes it has done a lot for the left”. I have to say, I don’t look at it this way. I look at it as a question of what the White House has done for the country. I’m not in this because of some abstract belief that what progressives want is good. I’m in it for the solutions. The White House needs to understand that what they did on healthcare is not a solution. It takes us in the wrong direction. I’m not interested in having something done on healthcare. I want a solution to the problem. Putting more money into for-profit healthcare insurance is definitively not a solution. It just lines the pockets of the people that want to prevent a solution so they can do an even more effective job of preventing one.
And, if Gibbs doesn’t like Obama being compared to President Bush, then perhaps the President could differentiate himself by repudiating the outright crimes of the Bush Administration on torture and illegal spying. Perhaps he could repudiate indefinite detentions and consider independent (let’s say judicial) review before assassinating Americans abroad. What’s to like about a continuation of the Bush policies on destroying democracy? If you don’t want progressives to think you’re like Bush, then you need to act differently from Bush, at least on the most destructive things he did.
Gibbs apparently tried to make peace with a follow up in The Huffington Post (as reported by Sam Stein):
We should all, me included, stop fighting each other and arguing about our differences on certain policies, and instead work together to make sure everyone knows what is at stake because we've come too far to turn back now.
Explain to me how that would work. Progressives pretend there are no policy differences and stop criticizing the White House. At the same time, Gibbs will stop fighting us. Then, we’ll all get along and we’ll all get what we want.
Wait a second! Not exactly. We’ll all get along, but the White House will get what it wants on policy and progressives will get nothing (except incidental crumbs). Let me humbly suggest that this non-apology apology has the effect of making the whole thing worse.
Not to mention that it doesn’t even deny the initial accusation. It just tells us that they still think they’ve accomplished things that progressives should like, so we should be happy. First of all, I think every progressive would give the White House full credit on those things that we think needed to be done. Democrats (with real leadership from the Obama team) prevented a total meltdown of the financial system and probably saved us from a 1930s style depression. They negotiated nuclear arms reduction. They reformed college student loans to eliminate the middleman. And, Obama pretty much single-handedly reset our relationship with the world. But, which one of these things is progressive in nature? The big-ticket items of the Obama Administration are competent government. That’s not something for progressives to write home about. That’s the minimum standard for a functional government. There’s no sense in which the Obama Administration is out there fighting for progressives or moving the progressive agenda forward. They’ve picked off a few progressive things when they could, like fair pay for women. For comparison, Nixon created the EPA.
Just as an aside for Karen Hunter, we are not looking for anyone to pander to us. We aren’t just some political group, like the right. Progressives form the core of the Democratic Party. He isn’t throwing us a bone when he comes from the progressive side on an issue. He’s using us as a resource to solve problems. A big part of the difficulty is that the White House apparently honestly feels like they are rewarding a constituency when they promote a progressive idea. No. They are simply reaching into the tool bag of ideas and pulling out one that works. And, in doing so, they are going back to their roots. He can’t win this way. He doesn’t get points from us. It’s not a game. To the degree he gets anything, his satisfaction has to come from doing a good job for the country.
I think it’s a fair question for Gibbs and others in the administration to ask us, what would satisfy you? Does a Democratic administration need to provide “Canadian healthcare” or “eliminate the Pentagon”? Does it need to abandon Afghanistan and pull every last troop out of Iraq?
No, but there are three non-negotiable demands I would make:
(1) I want to see forward progress on core planks of the Democratic platform, not marches in the other direction (like we saw with healthcare). Specifically, I want to see progress on climate change. I want to see a commitment to creating jobs and to increasing wages. I don’t want to hear another word from you guys about tax cuts*, regardless of who they are for. Your job is to increase incomes, not cut costs. Your job is to create wealth-producing jobs. And, when someone’s rights are on the line (as they are with gays in the military, for example, or gay marriage, for another example), I want to see you live up to modern standards of civil rights. While we’re on the subject, that makes net neutrality non-negotiable, too. And, I want to see you make your deals with the American people, and I don’t want to hear about any more deals made with Republicans or their backers. In short, I want to see an effort to enact what we, as Democrats, agree on, not some watered down version that’s inclusive of what our political opponents want.
(2) I want to see real progress made on restoring democracy. That specifically means acknowledging the criminal behavior of the Bush Administration, even if the end result is some kind of pardon for the chief criminals. It specifically means that the executive will allow independent judicial review of all wiretapping and other espionage, along with clear adherence to the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. It specifically means respecting habeas corpus, except in the exact times and places where civil order has broken down (as in actual battle zones). And, let’s just be clear about this: a military tribunal is not sufficient to prove guilt to my satisfaction for anyone other than our own troops. Use the civilian judiciary or you sew doubt about whether you’ve proved anything. In short, I want progress on extending democracy in America, not curtailing it.
(3) Lastly, I want an end to complaints about progressives criticizing the administration. I don’t want to hear another White House official whine about how progressives don’t support Obama. They showed up in droves to elect him; and, unless you keep punching them, they’ll vote for him again. You need to welcome criticism from progressives because you can use it to fight back against the insanity from the right. Nothing we say can be used against you in an election. What are the Republicans going to say? “Obama’s too liberal”? Not likely. And, look, you earn our respect and support; then you get it. That’s the rule. Live with it.
Let me be clear, Mr. Gibbs. I would be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich were President. But President Obama is no President Kucinich. If you are having a hard time understanding why you “do 101 things for progressives, but you still don’t get credit”, then maybe you ought to just phone up Dennis and ask him for some advice. Frankly, it might help if you had a progressive on the White House staff. Clintonian New Democrats are not progressives. They are just Democrats that have caved in on certain principles.
Look, progressives have thought long and hard about what’s good for the country. We view our proposals as what’s best for everyone. If you’ve got a better plan, then you’d better be prepared to explain why it’s better, not just claim it’s the only viable political solution. Everything progressives have fought for is politically feasible if presented to the American people clearly and cogently, especially for a President with a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate. When the White House fails to adopt core progressive responses to the nation’s problems, it isn’t our political sensibilities that are offended. We just don’t think the administration understands the problems and their solutions. If baffles us and frustrates us and infuriates us that members of the Obama inner circle are so thick. We don’t really think you’ve accomplished enough for progressives because we don’t think Obama is a progressive or that he’s trying to accomplish anything for progressives. When he adopts Republican solutions (tried and true ones from the Heritage Foundation, like personal mandates), we can’t even tell if he’s a Democrat.
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* Taxes are not too high. Incomes are too low. If you are having problems paying your taxes, then you need a raise, not a tax cut. Any Democratic politician that says the words “tax cut” should be fired for helping Republicans get elected.