I will do whatever I can, with the humble means at my disposal, to get Barack Obama elected president of the United States. I want to state that upfront so that, should a pissing contest break out, we can refer back to it. The problem with establishing it, of course, is it betrays my hand, right? In conventional political metrics, it means whatever I have to say hence forth, and however it might faithfully represent the equally humble opinions of civil libertarian progressives/FDR Democrats like myself, it can be dismissed, because as a conscientious person, one who measures the greater good and the general welfare into his decisions, I must do the right thing. Obama and I agree on a lot of other stuff, my choices have been winnowed down, he's got me.
It's the aforesaid dismissal thing, however, that seems to sum up some of the sniping discourse here of recent, particularly as pertains to Obama's vote on the FISA bill. Or here's a pithier summary: it doesn't matter, shut the fuck up and get in line.
It doesn't matter, we have been told, because by all traditional estimates, by all established metrics of wonkery, this issue is a non-starter. The integrity of the Constitution, and we "single-issue" zealots who so fetishize it, can briefly take a backseat as the candidate takes measured tactical steps to expand his "base" beyond single-issue zealots like me. (I'm not, but one could make the argument that all good governance starts with remaining true to the social compact that makes people and geography into a nation.) Obama, we are told, is simply, craftily demonstrating how he can be more things to more people, riding a cyclical political tide. But some lingering questions keep cropping up in my mind, namely does politics based on wonk-reality actually work ["wonk" in this context connoting those superficial-minded bulwarks of conventional wisdom, not the purer policy-nerd iteration] and, if it does, why has the essential ethos of the Obama campaign heretofore been his steadfast vows to alter "business as usual" in Washington? More pointedly, if the idealistic fuel of the Obama movement has been to "change" the paradigm of wonk politics, is this not a powerful indication that the "center" to which the candidate is now running is amorphous at best?
Mainstream pundits, after all, gatekeepers of wonk reality as they are, got where they are by presenting the world in an easily digestible linear purview. Politics, for them, occur in parameters that have been drawn in wide cartoon lines: refer back to the horrifically cynical "hardworking-white-people"-as-intrinsically-racist meme and whatever sundry "clever" stereotype Chris Matthews thinks he came up with yesterday. Coalition-building based on an aggregation of core progressive policies delivered in unflinching messages (see Jon Tester, Donna Edwards) utterly confound wonks. Echoing wonk reality, much of the arguments in defense of Obama's FISA vote render it down to electoral politics versus the hard principles involved, the broader base doesn't care, why expend the political capital, "principle" won't earn him anything if he doesn't get elected. And yet, actual research shows that a stand on principle would put the candidate in good stead of a full 61% of the American public, who, according to an October 2007 poll by The Mellman Group, think the government should require a warrant to mitigate wiretapping U.S. citizens' international calls. The same poll found that 59% percent of voters opposed amnesty for telecommunications companies allegedly complicit in illegal wiretapping, and that the courts should decide their criminality, including 59% of self-described "moderates" polled.
Not to keep obsessing over FISA, spilt milk as that would be (as it has been sneeringly pointed out to me) — so let's look at the broader shift in issue-by-issue polling to try to define this "middle" that wonks insist Obama must win over. Forgive me for blockquoting myself here, but the numbers I cited in February on my own blog are necessary to make this point, as is the fact that I cited them in an item specifically intended to argue in favor of Obama over a triangulating Clinton and the "New Democrats" (as represented by their loathsome pitbull Rahm Emanuel):
We're just too wiggy out here on the fringe left. Rahm will hear none of this anti-NAFTA, corporate-bashing, anti-neoliberal (read "anti-neocolonial"), soft-on-terrorism (not bombing our problems away-and-by-the-way-creating-more). Nothwithstanding all this might cut to quick of the nation's problems, it all, by Emanuel's beshitted thinking, is just too off-putting to, um, the Republican Democrats out there . . . or something . . . his own pseudocon dogma seemingly precludes his reading any research, it is worth stating here: "progressive" has become the mainstream.
In fact, Media Matters for America (MMA) and the Campaign for America's Future in June issued a report that positively guts the pseudocon "centrist" artifice, with aggregated data from non-partisan sources such as American National Election Studies (NES), maintained by the University of Michigan, General Social Survey (GSS), maintained by the University of Chicago, plus data from the Pew Research Center, Gallup, Zogby, CBS/New York Times and NBC/Newsweek polls.
At its broadest, versus the underlying conservative presumption that government must be winnowed down to nothing, the MMA report found that 58% think the government should be "doing more" — such as, say, assuring Americans of healthcare. It cites a February CBS/New York Times poll that found 76% of Americans willing to roll back Bush's vast tax cuts in order to assure all Americans get access to healthcare, and that 82% would be willing to pay $500 more in annual taxes to insure all Americans. It tracked only 20% of Americans who think government services should be cut, and, citing Pew, and 69% who think "the government should care for those who can't care for themselves, steadily trending upward every year since 1994. And 58% disagree with the statement that "corporations generally strike a fair balance between making profits and serving the public interest.
A rolling NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll tracked Americans thinking corporate-counseled "free trade" agreements harmful to the US economy growing 16 points to 46% between 1999 to 2007, while those who thought they "helped" fell to just 28%. As to organized labor, its lot winnowing for years, '92-'00 included, amid and onslaught of government and corporate attrition, downsizing and job exportation, Pew found 56% of Americans held a favorable opinion of unions, just 33% unfavorable, corroborated by Gallup's 59-29% ratio. As to the past four administrations' institutional coddling of our wealthiest citizens and corporations, Gallup in April found 66% considered taxes on upper income people "too low," 71% percent thinking the same of corporations.
A full 86% of Americans want the government to invest in the research and development of alternative fuels for cars, 84% want it to impose higher pollution standards for businesses, 82% favor stronger enforcement of existing environmental law, 81% want it to invest in developing solar and wind power resources and 79% want stricter federally-mandated auto emissions standards.
In short, the triangulators seem intent upon triangulating on a demographic that doesn't exist.
This ostensible centerward shift, thus, seems not only to be off target, and idealistically nebulous, but also appears to eschew a position that sets one off from the miasma of conventional talking-points politics. For Obama, that is/was the unabashed ideal of people-empowerment in the face of a) the reactionary, fear-mongering, aggrandize-the-wealthy politics of the GOP and b) the cynical, divisive, K Street-fellating essence of Mark Pennesque politics-as-marketing. In so going off the wonk script, Obama discombobulated the pundits, who had all but crowned Clinton Queen as of September 2007. It is nothing less than eerie that I am now analyzing his current tactics by referring back to the same points I used against Clinton.
The New Democrats' own ugly track record of fielding right-wing Democrats — sorry, "moderates" — not only diluted the Democratic brand to the point where a linear-thinking country club buffoon could be elected president twice, it yielded the welter of Blue Dog sellouts that rubberstamped the war, left war-crimes and crimes against the Constitution go unpunished, and, even post-Nov.7, made sophistic abominations like the FISA bill possible. And so, we disprove Machiavelli yet again, as is inevitable, because fucked up means — "just get em elected" —always effect fucked up ends.
Back then (again, apologies) I wrote: "My measure of any candidate, every two years, is how much I have to keep their feet to the fire, to stay on their ass, for all my emails and phonecalls and blog rants are worth — and the more they dissemble, the more they whore themselves, the more corporate money they mainline, I can see my workload increasing. I'm fine with that, such that the work is necessary, even if I am working for a day in America when it isn't."
I understand that day will never actually come, and yet, if I am to abrogate those responsibilities as a citizen, to shut the fuck up and get in line — if that is what the party, or the FISA vote apologists are saying to me — I would like it to be that explicit. If the "new" party resembles the old one we worked so hard to change, if it remains in the hand of wonks who, as I wrote then, "see nothing intrinsically bad about the system other than they don't have the reins," if the "new paradigm" simply fades into the old and thus ceases to be, that might be salient, if cautionary, information to glean. If my responsibility as a party member trumps my responsibility as a citizen in this newly dawning day, I would like to know. It won't mean I will eschew the work where Obama or Tom Harkin or Dave Loebsack require fire to their feet — just the opposite — but it will give me a better idea of with whom I am working, and how much work remains to make this nation live up to its promise — with the party or without.
I will deal with the FISA vote, post-"tantrum" — and, yes, I realize I am some kind of outlying malcontent and how insignificant my work and piddling little vote actually are — but I will not fall in line with it. Not in the face of everything that has been sacrificed in the name of real politick in the last 28 years, not at the brink to which the nation has been ushered in the last seven, and not, most importantly, when it works foursquare against the consensus best interests of my fellow citizens. For those of you who have suggested that I do, well — I will say this: I am your ally, as I am Barack Obama's, up to the point where my dissent, and that of the great majority, is ruled heretical and unspeakable. We have been told that enough for the last seven and a half years.
Politicians get my support, but never my fealty.