It really does mystify me why this community, and most of the liberal blogosphere, has been so enthusiastic about Barack Obama as a candidate. Yes, he is a compelling and inspiring speaker, and yes, he had the courage and foresight to oppose the Iraq war even at the height of the militaristic frenzy of 2002.
But there are negatives about him too; negatives that bother me as much as similar complaints about John Kerry in 2004. Once again, I feel I am getting a candidate I have to hold my nose for; rather that someone I'd truly get excited about - such as, say, John Edwards.
This is not to say Hillary Clinton is any better; I have just as many doubts about her, for some of the same reasons. However, her negatives hardly need elucidation on this site; she is already deeply unpopular here, and with her chances of winning looking increasingly slim, there is no point in criticizing a candidate who may soon be on the way out.
My doubts about Obama go all the way back to late 2005, when he posted a diary here at Daily Kos. In it, he was sharply critical of not just the netroots' policy positions, but the entire way we view the world.
We tend to see the Republican Party as a plutocratic, militaristic, fundamentalist party to be resisted with every ounce of fight we can muster, and we have nearly as much contempt for Democrats who make nice to them as we do for Republicans themselves. Our biggest complaint is that for so many years Democrats, afraid of scurrilous Republican attacks, have retreated and compromised without shame. From the Iraq war to the bankruptcy bill to Supreme Court nominations, the Bush team gets its way.
Obama voted against John Roberts' Supreme Court nomination. Yet he actually posted on Daily Kos to defend those Democrats who didn't. In it he wrote things like
I think this perspective misreads the American people....Americans are suspicious of labels and suspicious of jargon. They don't think George Bush is mean-spirited or prejudiced.....They don't think that corporations are inherently evil...
But to the degree that we brook no dissent within the Democratic Party, and demand fealty to the one, "true" progressive vision for the country, we risk the very thoughtfulness and openness to new ideas that are required to move this country forward. When we lash out at those who share our fundamental values because they have not met the criteria of every single item on our progressive "checklist," then we are essentially preventing them from thinking in new ways about problems. We are tying them up in a straightjacket and forcing them into a conversation only with the converted.
This could have been written by David Broder. Obama hastened to mention that he didn't support compromise on core principles. Yet here he was, on Daily Kos, defending those who voted for John Roberts, a vote which he himself did not cast!
We are at a transformative moment in American politics. Not since 1932 will our next president have the opportunity he will have now - to move the country decisively in a progressive direction. Not since 1968, when America drifted into the right-wing nightmare it is only now starting to emerge from, have we had a truly 'watershed' election. This is no time for timidity, for being non-ideological, for rejecting checklists and solidarity. It is a time to be tough as nails, to never underestimate the opposition, to recognize your enemies for who they are.
Bipartisanship is surrender. Bipartisanship is what brought us the Iraq war, the bankruptcy bill, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and a long line of shameful Democratic failures. When Obama talks of inviting everyone to the table - including the right wing - and working out a consensus, that sounds distressingly familiar to what Democrats have already been doing for many years - selling out.
Obama's actual policy positions are reasonably progressive, though I still prefer Clinton's health care plan to his. What bothers me the most is that he can't seem to resist making these rhetorical genuflections to the gods of centrism:
- His Social Security comments. Again, Obama's actual policy (raising the payroll tax on high income earners) is not centrist. But his rhetoric - buying into the entitlement hysteria trumpeted for years by both mainstream and conservative media - was.
- His attacks on a union-funded 527 as a "special-interest group". I don't think Obama would ever propose any anti-union legislation. But, to make a relatively minor political point against John Edwards, he was willing to attack unions.
- His Reagan remarks. Much has been said defending them, but after reading his original text carefully I just can't agree. Obama spoke of the "excesses of the 1960s and 1970s" and "that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship...had been missing". Just what were these excesses? The Great Society, school busing, affirmative action, abolishing the death penalty, or detente? It would have been one thing to argue that Reagan was a skilled demagogue who used the crises of the 1970s to shift the country to the right. It's quite another to claim that a conservative icon had a legitimate point.
- His reprise of the Harry and Louise ad. I am one of those who believe Clinton's health care plan (and before it, Edwards'), with individual mandates accompanied by subsidies, are more likely to work than Obama's voluntary approach. But that is not the point - the imagery is. Harry and Louise shattered hopes of universal health care in America, and helped greatly to the Republican takeover of Congress and the 12-year horror story that ensued. It is a bitter memory for progressives, but also a bitter lesson - how we could expect no quarter from Republicans, how even those who at first admitted that health care reform was necessary, refused any and all negotiation, and demagogued any progressive solution into oblivion. Yet not only was Obama making a demagogic, even dishonest, attack on Clinton's health care plan, he was using conservative imagery, conservative themes, to do so.
None of this means I will not support or work for Obama in the general; he may not be a John Edwards, but he is infinitely better than John McCain. But in this day and age, rhetoric matters. You cannot give new life to a progressive agenda if you are paying lip service to conservative memes and homage to conservative icons. You achieve progressive change by leading, not by following; by boldly confronting the status quo, not by lashing out to defend it.
What I fear most was described by Jerome Armstrong:
It's mistakes like these that make me think that if Obama gets the nomination, it's going to be disgusting to watch as he turns against progressives in his bid for the middle, and as he says, that's the way he'd govern too.