Let me put this simply: any time spent right now worrying about the GOP or its Noise Machine is a waste of energy. They lack any meaningful ability to oppose the moves that need to be made. Indeed, the ONLY way for them to recover relevance is for the Democratic Party to fail to lead America in dramatically reinventing itself.
We must stop thinking in terms of the old GOP/DEM duality. It is not currently relevant. But it is hard to see that because America has been locked in the 2-party dynamic for 200 years despite the fact that its IDEOLOGICAL dynamic has 3 positions:
Progressive -- Mainstream -- Reactionary
OK, so far, so easy. But see here is what has changed. Since at least World War II, the 2 parties split the mainstream middle. Then the THUGS made a run at commandeering the middle, and maintained enough illusions for a while to seem to come close. In the election of 2008, that play was broken, and the mainstream middle has—at least for the moment—stopped listening to the GOP.
This was a major political gain. It opened possibilities that simply were not there before. There was good reason to celebrate last November.
However, that victory was like winning the 1st round of the MLB playoffs. See that win as terminal, and it will quickly turn to ashes.
It is also like the playoffs in that YOUR OPPONENT CHANGES! And this is where political movements can go badly astray. Suppose Boston beats New York in round 1. Then, in round 2, they keep talking about beating New York. They talk about New York. They prepare for New York. It never occurs to them that their opponent has now become ... Chicago. Well, that would never happen in sports, but this is where most of the country is now. The media keep hyping the GOP. Well, they would, because they are largely owned by it. But look how many PROGRESSIVES waste time congratulating themselves on how badly the GOP is doing or worrying about GOP rhetoric or whatever. Folks, WE AREN’T PLAYING NEW YORK ANY MORE! WE’RE PLAYING CHICAGO!
And who is Chicago in this case? Well, it’s US. It’s a lot of Democrats and Independents who are glad Bushism has gone away and are hoping that the mainstream will reassert the patterns of normalcy that have been unshaken since the 1960s.
And get this: Barack Obama is Chicago! He is a committed mainstream American. He is, and he always has been. If you didn’t understand that his entire ideological world is concretely centered in the mainstream middle, then you didn’t get whom you were voting for.
Look. I am not condemning Obama. I am not writing an anguished post of horrified disillusionment. I knew whom I was voting for, and I believe in this moment of writing that he is far and away the best person we could possibly have in the White House right now.
What I am saying is that he is a centrist. A consensus guy. A statesman whose every instinct is to work WITH the institutions that be, the banks, the health insurance companies, the CIA, the military. He doesn’t want to confront them. He wants to play poker with them and gradually, over time, nudge them along in his direction a bit. That’s who he always has been and who he is now. When we look at his "disappointing" maneuvers on the banks, torture, single payer, etc. we need to understand that Obama represents the ideological mainstream of America.
Indeed, I have a private theory that he is living in the White House right now precisely because the media and financial powers that run this nation understood that he was a guy who would work with them. He wasn’t Spitzer or Edwards or Feingold. Yes, he was a DEM and to the left of the neo-Nazi junta that all but destroyed America, but the mainstream of America includes a lot of pragmatic people who realized that the Neo-Cons were lunatics and that the ideological pendulum had to be allowed to swing back a bit to the left. Not too far, mind. But a bit. And they perceived Barack to be a guy who could do that but could still be trusted to work with them. Pare health care spending a bit? Sure. But don’t let single payer on the table. Re-regulate the banks? In time, ‘cause no one’s wealth is safe without regulation. (Smart investors see that now.) But work THROUGH the bankers, don’t make any big banker pay a real price, and use the whole mess to hammer the auto-makers’ unions. Clean up intelligence and military policies? Yeah, but don’t challenge in any substantive way the hard-won exemptions from civil liberties restraints.
Isn’t that precisely what we have seen? It was inevitable. It is my belief that no actual, overtly committed progressive could possibly have won the White House. They would have HAMMERED Feingold and they have never given Kucinick a chance. Edwards was marginalized and then exposed. But they gave Barack a chance. They gave him the microphone. They let people laugh at McCain. They did NOT treat Barack the way they treated Gore and Kerry.
Well, if I believed all of the above, why did I support Barack? Because I also believed that he was a superb poker player who was almost certainly further left than they realized. I believed—hoped?—that he would play the long game, but end up pulling an FDR and going further than they thought he would.
And on that level, I am ... disappointed. Not despairing. But worried. The signs are not good. I think what we have seen so far shows that Barack Obama will not off his own bat INITIATE any major moves that require him to step outside the comfort zone of mainstream consensus.
Which means what? Well, it comes back to the battle we are fighting now, the one not with New York, but with Chicago. And the situation is different.
If you think I am saying that Barack is the enemy, you are falling into the trap of the old duality. Barack is not the enemy. He is OUR leader. He is US. He resides (slightly) to the left side of the mainstream segment of the spectrum. Broken-hearted disillusionists who rail against him are as far off base as the people who haven’t yet managed to face the fact that he really isn’t a Progressive.
No, the enemy in the battle that must now be fought is not Barack or even those maddening DEMS who betray us every 10 minutes. The enemy is an IDEOLOGY. The enemy is the mainstream belief that all is essentially well and that some minor fiddling around the edges will be enough.
It is my view that America’s deepest problem is the inertia and complacency that result from 6 decades of relentless prosperity. Mainstream America—including many DEMS, many REPs, and many INDs—believes deep in its soul that things are basically and fundamentally fine. The business cycle swings bad, and then it swings good again. We should be careful with the environment, but things won’t really be that bad. Yes, our civil liberties are eroding, but Americans are the good guys—it’ll be all right.
You know that this is Obama’s world view when you see him select Summers and Geithner. It’s unmistakable. This is a brilliant statesman who listens to a wide array of perspectives ... and then brings only these guys along with him to work through the financial crisis with small moves that never threaten the mainstream assumption that bankers really do know best.
If you think that’s going to change on its own, you’re a fool.
There are only 2 possible ways for America’s or Barack’s ideological complacency to be effectively challenged and moved off the dime.
One is if the crises continue and worsen to the point where not only the GOP ideology, but also the MAINSTREAM ideology to break down. The problems with that scenario are twofold. One, if the crisis reaches that level of chaos, then totalitarianism becomes a better bet than progressivism at winning the context. Two, the level of damage done at that point would be so great that it may not matter much.
The other, political way is for Progressives to mobilize themselves to fight the 2nd round enemy. This means, 1st, ignoring the GOP, and, 2nd, finding effective ways to politically pressure OUR GUY. Barack has many virtues and great value. It is pointless to try to throw him under the bus as the disillusionists amongst us want to do.
And yet, there IS a battle to be fought. The ideology of inertia has to be tackled and beaten. Pressure has to be brought to bear to FORCE Barack and also Reid and Pelosi and Baucus and Specter to see that riding the mnainstream consensus is no longer an option. Barack, especially, needs to be led to see that we expect him to start fighting battles for us.
Because the final battle is the hardest of all to win. It’s the battle against hardened institutions. The military and its suppliers. The intelligence community. The big banks. Big oil. The health care industry. The media conglomerates. When you take those powers on, you aren’t fighting people. You’re fighting structures of immense resilience and stationary inertia. Think of Exxon patiently stringing out the Valdez law suit and walking away winners in the end. Damn, that’s tough.
And this is where Barack and all the mainstream Americans out there are, IMO, wrong. He thinks you can work with these institutions. I believe that is folly. To get anything more than superficial change, you have got to start waging some holy wars and winning them. You can’t finesse them or play the long game because they are not individuals or presidents with term limits, but institutions who can literally wait decades, centuries to prevail.
This is why Progressives are so frustrated and confused. We know that a battle must be fought. And then another. We’re smart enough to know that the timing has to be right and we know Barack is a very sharp operator. We know he’s a good guy, we know he is our big chance, perhaps our last chance. But in our bones we know that he is avoiding battles that need to be faced up to, and if he does that fdor another couple of years the chances will be gone.
Our current battle, Round 2, is with the IDEOLOGICAL TORPOR of the Democratic Party. That is our enemy, and it is a more lethal enemy than Rove ever was, because it threatens us from within. That battle must be fought to drive the Party into the battle with the institutions. And we have to win BOTH of those battles.
How to do it? I dunno. What in hell do I know?
I think, however, that what we have to do is pre-empt the inevitable political split. The current political alignment cannot last long. But I think the people who talk about the GOP splitting have it exactly wrong. The GOP has what it wants—ideological purity and irrelevance.
No, the divide is among US, between the Mainstreamers and the Progressives. Progressives need to start turning political pressure on the Mainstreamers ... yet somehow without wrecking the coalition. We can’t wage war against the Mainstreamers the same way we did against Rove Co. That would be foolish and self-defeating.
And yet, it must be real pressure. I think that includes ideological pressure. I think that, in some way, we need to say to the Mainstreamers, "Look, we are political allies at the moment, but we don’t believe what you believe and we are going to push you with every ounce of strength we have to see that battles need to be fought."
I actually think it would be POSSIBLE to start developing a clear ideological polarity between center and left. In fact, I think the process of that has begun and is inevitable. Of the 2 parties, the one which will split, I think, is the Democratic Party.
Perhaps we already have the model in Place. Look at Bernie Sanders. He works effectively in alliance with the Democrats. But he has taken up political and ideological residence to the left of it. Perhaps as people like Specter join the Dems it’s time for Feingold and Kucinich and others to join Bernie. The Progressive Caucus may need to become something more decisive. Work respectfully and cooperatively, but begin to stake some ideological ground for Progressive conviction. Maybe if a significant segment of the Democratic Caucus forces Nancy and Harry and Barack to understand that they cannot be just counted on to support Party inertia, we’ll start to see an actual dialectic.
And what of us? What of the army of people who helped defeat Rove Co. and is now nervously wondering if our efforts will be betrayed?
Well, let’s go to work. Not against the GOP. They are irrelevant. But let’s find some ways to organize in opposition to mainstream ideological inertia.
And of course, we’re already doing that. Lots of great work is being done on single payer and on torture—the 2 gateway battles that we have got to fight. Get busy with that stuff—as you already are. But 2 things, ...
- Ignore the GOP.
- Have fun storming the castle!