I'm working as hard as I can to get Obama elected, and I'm addicted to reading the latest posts on Kos, OpenLeft, HuffPo, etc. Obama's convention speech, particularly his statement that the Republicans expect us all to go the bootstrap route, even without boots, implies that he would institute humane and progressive reforms. But the progressive critics of Obama raise a question for which I have no answer - why are we silent in our concerns about the war and the labor movement?
Check out Naomi Klein on this conundrum:
http://therealnews.com/...
Naomi Klein is saying that progressives are becoming part of the Obama machine, and they will be ignored if they do not maintain their independence from his campaign. Wall Street investors give him money and they bluntly criticize at the same time the policies that they feel would be disastrous to their interests. The hiring of Jason Furman (big Walmart apologist) to advise on economics is a slap to SEIU members and their president, Andy Stern, who supports Obama. MoveOn (a group I work with) has also fallen silent on the war. Klein points out that Obama has no plan to end the war, and he intends to leave the Green Zone intact. Did I really even know that before hearing this interview? No.
We are so afraid of losing that we seem to have made ourselves invisible. I understand the anxiety, the feeling that so much is at stake in this election. Is it fair to ask, "What would Martin Luther King have done?"
Do we think that Obama is saying one thing in order to get elected, and will bring in more progressive reforms once he's in office?
From my MoveOn work I know that the entire focus is on electing Obama, and then holding him accountable to his campaign promises. Is that a bad strategy? Should we be increasing our visibility now as a force to be reckoned with post-election? I think the MoveOn idea is that our participation now will show Obama later that he must listen to us. It fits with the rhetoric of "Change happens from the bottom up."
So my question to activists is, how do you think about this? And how do you act on it?