There are days where many of us need a reason to get up in the morning.
Days where we need to feel like there is a reason to even keep fighting. Like you're holding back a rickety wooden door in a house surrounded by zombies. You feel like you're merely holding back the inevitable downward spiral. Fighting for another day. Fighting to keep the house. Fighting to make ends meet. Fighting to stay in place, at best. Fighting to just get through another 18 hour period with a roof over our heads or a car to get from point A to point B, just so we can wake up and do it all again. It's a consistent, urgent, pressing, central occupation of time and energy. Every minute.
Each morning is like facing a chasm. Like a desert. And each morning you lie to yourself, "today, I will find water." And you set off.
You know what I mean.
I'm leading in to a meta about a diary called What Happens if Obama Loses the Left?, by a diarist whose insistence on pressuring politicians I often agree with. A diarist I admire.
But with whom I currently disagree...and find the subtext of his/her recent diary somewhat disturbing. The subtext feels as though he or she means "What happens if Obama loses the Real Left."
We all have seen the tensions on the blogs between the members of the Center-Left and the Issue-Left. The CL are the people who portray activists pushing for their issues as "wanting a Pony" or insist that Obama has only been in office for __ number of months.....you know, the people who confuse political activism with impatience.
The people who think that speaking up for a cause you believe in is....rude, or means that you HATE Obama.
Obama obviously NEVER has to worry about losing them. They have no expectations, and thus cannot be dissapointed. They are willing to settle for whatever crumbs Obama will toss them.
I can only speak for myself, of course.
I would probably be the Center Left in that equation. The silly bastard begging for scraps.
I don't think I've ever accused anybody of "wanting a pony" and if I have, I'm sorry.
But don't characterize me as a sycophant with "no expectations" who "cannot be disappointed."
Such a characterization is as shallow as the characterization that an "Issues" liberal or a "Real" liberal simply "wants a pony;" that he or she simply needs his or her one issue and is willing to throw us all under the bus to get it.
If anything the underlying sentiments are the same.
We all fear being thrown under a bus. "Issues" liberals fear it from the hand of those who seem willing to give ground for Something A Little Better...and the so called "Center Left" fear it from those who seem willing to hang us all for the sake of a single issue.
I'm not fighting for scraps.
I'm fighting to survive.
I don't confuse political activism with impatience. I see single-issue obsessions as wedges that divide an otherwise cohesive party from moving the whole agenda forward, even incrementally.
And this notion of Obama "losing" the "real" "issue" liberals gives more fuel to my fear that these single issue obsessions could derail forward momentum.
Do you want to know what happens when Obama loses the Left?
We all lose.
When the so called "issue" left are lost, and have given up hope that they can sway this president with the admirable calls to be loud and boisterous, that's it. They "Left" are exiling themselves.
A party is made up of the people in it. It's not made up of the people Not In It.
This notion of "losing" the "Left" is what terrifies me from the talk of Obama as a traitor.
I NEED to believe this is going to work. I NEED this to work.
I NEED the Left to stay.
Stop talking of Obama "Losing" anybody.
Just fight. I need something to believe in. For the love of all that's good, I NEED something to believe in. I need a reason to get up in the morning. A reason to keep fighting.
Don't leave.
Update [2009-6-17 0:56:14 by Muskegon Critic]:
Based on some comments below, I want to emphasize that I'm only taking issue with Bhudy's characterization of the "center left" If you're into a single issue...scream! By all means. Scream louder! We need you. Everybody needs you.