---ooO-(_)'Spammer
2008-08-19 17:52:16 UTC
How Do We Seize the Obama Moment?
By Robert L. Borosage and Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation. Posted August
18, 2008.
Obama will be the president we want him to be if we mobilize support on the
progressive issues and ward off the influence of entrenched interests.
Electric. When Barack Obama receives the Democratic presidential nomination
before 75,000 people in Denver's Mile High Stadium on the forty-fifth
anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, new
possibilities will be born. A historic candidacy, a new generation in
motion, a nation yearning for change. Even the cynics running the McCain
campaign might be touched, if they weren't so busy savaging Obama as a vain
celebrity not up to the task of leading a nation.
No one should be blinded by the lights. It will take hard work to turn the
nomination into victory in a campaign that has already turned ugly.
Moreover, even if victorious, Obama will inherit the calamitous conditions
wrought by conservative failures -- a sinking economy, unsustainable
occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, accelerating climate change, Gilded Age
inequality, a broken healthcare system and much more.
Obama will also be limited by the constricted consensus of an establishment
not yet able to contemplate the changes needed to set this country right
again. To be successful, his presidency will have to be bolder and more
radical than now imagined.
A historic candidate, the forbidding conditions and the constricted
consensus make it vital that progressives think clearly and act
independently in forging a strategy over the next months. The following is a
contribution to a rich and ongoing discussion. We invite others to join it
at thenation.com in the weeks to come.
A Sea-Change Election
The Obama nomination sets the stage for a sea-change election, one that
could not only elect a Democratic President and increased reform majorities
in both houses of Congress but also mark a clear turn from the conservative
ideas that have dominated our politics for three decades.
In recent weeks, the media -- primed by a Republican strategy contrasting
Obama's purported doublespeak with McCain's alleged Straight Talk -- have
focused on Obama's compromises and backsliding. Much of the alleged
retrenchment has been exaggerated. Some of it -- like his fold on the FISA
wiretap bill, mixed signals on trade, the compromise on offshore drilling --
has been clear and deplorable. Many on the left were dismayed as the Obama
campaign trotted out advisers from a Democratic bench that had championed
the toxic Rubinomics brew of corporate trade and financial deregulation.
These concerns should not distract us from the central reality: this
election features a stark ideological contrast. Although marketed as a
trustworthy maverick, McCain accurately describes himself as a "foot soldier
in the Reagan revolution" and attests that "on the transcendent issues, the
most important issues of our day, I've been totally in agreement and support
of President Bush." He is committed to the full Bush catastrophe: continued
war in Iraq, more tax cuts for the wealthiest, more corporate trade deals,
more deregulation, more hostility toward labor, more conservative social
policies and reactionary judges. Indeed, he's Bush on steroids. McCain seeks
not only to privatize Social Security but also to unravel employer-based
healthcare, leaving people to negotiate alone with insurance companies
liberated from regulation. His bellicose posturing on Iran and Iraq is as
disastrous as his pledge of impossibly deep cuts in domestic programs. He
embraces the corporate economic and trade agenda that has so devastated the
American middle class. If he is defeated, it will mark the end of the Reagan
era.
Obama clearly offers a change of course. His victory in itself will require
overcoming the racial fears that have so long divided this country. He
carries a reform agenda -- largely driven by progressives -- into the
election: an end to the occupation of Iraq, using the money squandered there
to rebuild America; affordable healthcare for all, paid for by raising taxes
on the wealthy; a concerted drive for energy independence, generating jobs
while investing in renewable energy and conservation. He is committed to
empowering labor, to holding corporations and banks more accountable and to
challenging our trade policies. A social liberal, his judicial appointees
will keep the right from consolidating its hold on the federal judiciary.
Obama may not be a "movement" progressive in the way that Reagan was a
"movement" conservative, and he may have disappointed activists with his
recent compromises, but make no mistake: his election will open a new era of
reform, the scope of which will depend -- as Obama often says -- on
independent progressive mobilization to keep the pressure on and overcome
entrenched interests.
As this is written, an election Obama should win handily is locked in a
virtual tie. Both the Obama and McCain campaigns treat the race as a
referendum on Obama, with the former focused on getting Americans
comfortable with trusting a young African-American with an unusual name, and
the Rove minions in the McCain campaign intent on stoking the fears that
enabled them to assemble a white majority party in the past.
Obama's campaign will not succeed without the independent efforts of
progressive activists. One central task is winning support among wary white
blue-collar workers, the core target of the Rovian poison. This will require
persuasion as well as mobilization; the work of the AFL-CIO, Change to Win,
Working America, religious groups and others with a base in these
communities in swing states will be of critical importance.
Progressives generally -- and independent media and the blogosphere
specifically -- can contribute by reminding voters there's a clear choice in
this election, with McCain representing the same old, same old. While
exposing McCain's doubletalk, his Bush-redux agenda and the money and
interests behind the scurrilous right-wing independent expenditure
campaigns, progressives can also help build support for reform. The new
Health Care for America Now coalition, for example, has the resources to
expose McCain's healthcare folly, thereby building a mandate for universal
coverage. The antiwar movement should be challenging McCain's saber-rattling
on Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, helping to strengthen US support for a change
in course. With gas prices at the center of American concerns, the
environmental alliance around jobs and energy can consolidate support for a
concerted drive toward energy independence, while challenging absurd claims
that we can drill our way out of the crisis.
Driving Reform
While focusing on what is certain to be a difficult campaign, progressives
should start thinking now about strategy for an Obama presidency. Clearly
his election and inauguration would mark an exciting moment. At home, a new
sense of energy and idealism will be unleashed. Across the world, his
election will begin the process of restoring America's ravaged reputation.
Not only will Obama usher a new generation into politics, but for the first
time a President with experience as a community organizer will have the
ability to mobilize directly a dedicated following larger than any other in
politics [see our roundtable forum of community organizers].
In the first months of an Obama administration, progressives should be
pursuing an inside-outside strategy in relation to the administration. For
example, in the transition, we should push to place allies in strategic
positions, particularly in the areas of economic policy and national
security. The AFL-CIO and other groups are preparing lists of potential
candidates. These inside efforts should be complemented by watchdog
monitoring and reporting on potential nominees. No free pass should be given
to those who drove the financial and trade policies that led to the current
economic debacles or supported the invasion of Iraq, the worst foreign
policy fiasco in recent history.
For Obama to achieve his core promises, he will have to push significant
reforms early. As Dan Lazare has argued, our entire political system is
designed to block reform, not facilitate it. Periods of significant change
in American politics are rare, but they feature spasms of furious activity:
Roosevelt's first 100 days, Johnson's push in 1964-65, Reagan's reaction in
1981-82. Inevitably, these spasms don't last long before reaction sets in.
So it is vital to move rapidly and boldly and across many areas to have any
chance at success.
Obama's first decision -- to be made, no doubt, during the transition --
will be the most telling. He has pledged that he will instruct the Joint
Chiefs of Staff to prepare a sensible plan for ending the Iraq occupation.
Already, Democratic security advisers who initially supported the war are
calling for "conditional engagement," arguing that the United States can't
afford simply to set a timetable to get out. Thus it is vital that the peace
movement organize aggressively during the campaign, and mobilize
independently and visibly immediately after the election. The Obama White
House must have no doubt about the firestorm in Congress, in the streets and
within the Democratic Party that would be caused by a retreat from this
pledge.
If the Iraq promise is kept, progressives will sensibly work to help define
Obama's agenda from the inside and support key parts from the outside. He
will lay out a major initiative on jobs and energy. He has said that he'll
try to push through healthcare reform quickly -- although that is likely to
trigger trench warfare in Congress (and progressives will have to overcome
deep internal divisions to ensure that fundamental reform succeeds). Obama
will reverse many of the reactionary Bush executive orders, from the global
gag rule to secrecy excesses stemming from the "war on terror." His first
budget decisions most likely will have to deal directly with a broader
stimulus plan to get the economy going. He has pledged to support passage of
the Employee Free Choice Act, enabling workers to organize unions without
employer harassment.
But Obama will encounter formidable obstacles. He'll face a business lobby
girded for battle. Corporations have already begun moving more of their
money to Democratic incumbents and are snapping up former Democratic
legislators and staffers for their lobbies [see "Dollars for Donkeys" on
page 28]. They will do everything they can to stall healthcare and
drug-pricing reform, empowerment of workers and re-regulation of Wall
Street. Moreover, while Democrats are likely to enjoy larger majorities in
both houses, their caucuses are likely to be less progressive as they pick
up seats in very conservative, formerly Republican districts.
Progressives will enjoy their greatest strength mobilizing independently to
support Obama's promises. We can organize constituent pressure on
politicians who are blocking the way, something even a President with
Obama's activist network would be loath to do. We can expose the lobbies and
interests and backstage maneuvers designed to limit reforms. Now that
newspapers increasingly lack the resources for investigation, progressive
media, online and off, and the independent progressive media infrastructure
-- from The Nation to Media Matters to Brave New Films to The Huffington
Post -- must assume a greater role in monitoring the opposition, even as we
mobilize activists in targeted districts across the country.
In doing this, we can help give backbone to the Obama agenda, even as we
supply muscle and energy to help pass it. The best way to achieve this is to
generate large-scale independent-issue campaigns. A clear example is the
Healthcare for Americans Now Coalition, which is ready to take on the
insurance companies and support the White House's commitment to universal
care. The new Half in Ten Campaign, spearheaded by ACORN and the Center for
American Progress Action Fund, will help ensure that poverty does not
disappear from the agenda. Progressives generally should join the AFL-CIO
and Change to Win in their drive to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. The
Apollo Alliance and a range of environmental efforts will support the
initiative on jobs and energy.
Acting in support of Obama will require challenging legislators in both
parties who stand in the way, a task progressives should undertake
aggressively. The Service Employees International Union has already taken
the lead in announcing a $10 million "accountability program," designed to
force politicians to heed the will of their voters, with a new plan --
Justice for All -- as the core vehicle. This should be complemented by other
independent efforts, despite likely objections from the Democratic
Congressional leadership and possibly the White House. Democrats should be
on notice from their own constituents that they will be expected to help
move reform, not stand in its way.
The Constricted Consensus
The great challenge for progressives is whether the energy and idealism
unleashed by the Obama candidacy -- and the collapse of conservatism -- can
expand the limits of the current debate. McCain promises merely more of the
same bankrupt policies, but Obama's reform agenda is itself limited by a
very constricted establishment consensus that is an obstacle to real change.
On national security, both candidates have pledged to increase the size of
the military, adding billions to a bloated budget that already represents
nearly half the world's military spending. Both assume America's role as
globocop; neither suggests unraveling the US empire of military bases. Both
seem intent on deepening the occupation of Afghanistan. Neither has dared to
embrace the conservative RAND Corporation's conclusion that the very notion
of a "war on terror" is counterproductive, and that aggressive intelligence
and police cooperation should be the centerpiece of our strategy.
Obama has called for a second stimulus plan focused on new energy and
rebuilding America, but he hasn't suggested anything like the major public
initiatives -- the combination of public investment, revised global economic
strategy, industrial policy and financial regulation -- that would be
essential to get the real economy moving again while responding to the
threat of catastrophic climate change.
Obama has made affordable healthcare for all a centerpiece of his agenda,
but he has not addressed the unraveling of the private social contract once
delivered through corporations and unions. It will take independent efforts
to drive an economic bill of rights, from healthcare to pensions to Social
Security to guaranteed paid vacation, in addition to paid sick days and
family leave.
Obama laid out promising principles for financial reform in his Cooper Union
speech in March, but he hasn't challenged the Wall Street bailout, nor has
he mobilized support for policing the shadow banking system that has proved
so destructive in its greed.
Obama defends liberal social reforms, but a serious war on poverty -- or an
initiative to transform our brutal criminal system of injustice that is
devastating the lives of young minority men -- is not yet on the agenda.
And while Obama is a former professor of constitutional law, he hasn't
called for dismantling the imperial presidency. It will take independent
efforts to reclaim for the Congress and the people the powers Bush has
arrogated to the presidency.
This corrosive consensus reflects the entrenched power of the established
order. It is enforced by aggressive lobbies -- the military-industrial
complex, Wall Street, corporate interests -- and rationalized by
well-upholstered house scholars. The establishment's strength is its ability
to simply exclude alternatives from serious consideration.
After the first flurry of activity, an Obama administration may well realize
that the dire condition of the country demands a far bolder agenda than what
is now on the table. Progressives should recognize that an Obama
administration would have no alternative but to be one of constant
experimentation. We should embrace the best of the public-policy proposals
that scholars are developing in our universities and think tanks. These
ideas challenge limited assumptions about government and call for everything
from dismantling our empire of military bases to curbing the imperial
presidency, from passing progressive tax reforms to strengthening the public
commons. Again, independent campaigning -- particularly regarding concerns
not high on the national agenda -- will help lift issues into the
mainstream.
Here it will be vital to sustain a reform infrastructure independent of the
administration or the Democratic leadership in Congress. Progressives in the
Senate and House, many grouped around the Progressive Caucus, can provide
both leadership and a public forum for new ideas. Independent research
institutes -- like the Institute for America's Future, the Institute for
Policy Studies, the Economic Policy Institute and others -- can help think
outside the establishment box. Progressive bloggers can track the limits of
the debate and give new ideas greater visibility. Reform leaders at the
state and local levels, coordinated by centers like the Progressive States
Network, can champion legislation -- like paid sick days, mandated vacation
minimums, early childhood education, tighter regulation of insurance
companies, creative financing for energy conservation projects -- that will
be a model for the national agenda. Grassroots organizing -- neighbor to
neighbor, supported by the energy of the young, linked to national concerns
-- will be essential if Obama's election is to generate thoroughgoing
reform.
When John F. Kennedy was elected President, he too summoned a new generation
into politics. While Kennedy's agenda was limited, the energy he unleashed
helped build the civilizing movements of the following decades -- the
antiwar, civil rights, women's, environmental and gay rights movements.
America now is very different from the America of the 1960s. Those
movements, nurtured in the cradle of postwar prosperity, assumed the country
could afford to be more just. This generation has grown up with much greater
economic insecurity, is laden with debt and is struggling to find decent
jobs. It faces an economy that cannot be sustained -- and must be
transformed.
But once more a young and exciting candidate, seeking the presidency after a
long and failed conservative era, can spark the hope and sense of
possibility that carry far beyond his campaign platform. Progressives should
be focusing less on the limits of the Obama agenda and more on the
possibilities that a successful candidacy opens up.
As a former community organizer, Obama has taught that "real change comes
from the bottom up." It comes about by "imagining and then fighting for and
then working for -- struggling for -- what did not seem possible before." As
President, he will face conflicting pressures, and undoubtedly he will
carefully pick his fights. The movement that he has called into being will
have little choice but to embrace his charge and mobilize across the country
to achieve what "did not seem possible before."
AlterNet is a nonprofit organization and does not make political
endorsements. The opinions expressed by its writers are their own.
Robert Borosage is co-director of the Campaign For America's Future, and he
has written on political, economic, and national security issues for
publications including The New York Times and The Nation.
Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor of The Nation.
By Robert L. Borosage and Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation. Posted August
18, 2008.
Obama will be the president we want him to be if we mobilize support on the
progressive issues and ward off the influence of entrenched interests.
Electric. When Barack Obama receives the Democratic presidential nomination
before 75,000 people in Denver's Mile High Stadium on the forty-fifth
anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, new
possibilities will be born. A historic candidacy, a new generation in
motion, a nation yearning for change. Even the cynics running the McCain
campaign might be touched, if they weren't so busy savaging Obama as a vain
celebrity not up to the task of leading a nation.
No one should be blinded by the lights. It will take hard work to turn the
nomination into victory in a campaign that has already turned ugly.
Moreover, even if victorious, Obama will inherit the calamitous conditions
wrought by conservative failures -- a sinking economy, unsustainable
occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, accelerating climate change, Gilded Age
inequality, a broken healthcare system and much more.
Obama will also be limited by the constricted consensus of an establishment
not yet able to contemplate the changes needed to set this country right
again. To be successful, his presidency will have to be bolder and more
radical than now imagined.
A historic candidate, the forbidding conditions and the constricted
consensus make it vital that progressives think clearly and act
independently in forging a strategy over the next months. The following is a
contribution to a rich and ongoing discussion. We invite others to join it
at thenation.com in the weeks to come.
A Sea-Change Election
The Obama nomination sets the stage for a sea-change election, one that
could not only elect a Democratic President and increased reform majorities
in both houses of Congress but also mark a clear turn from the conservative
ideas that have dominated our politics for three decades.
In recent weeks, the media -- primed by a Republican strategy contrasting
Obama's purported doublespeak with McCain's alleged Straight Talk -- have
focused on Obama's compromises and backsliding. Much of the alleged
retrenchment has been exaggerated. Some of it -- like his fold on the FISA
wiretap bill, mixed signals on trade, the compromise on offshore drilling --
has been clear and deplorable. Many on the left were dismayed as the Obama
campaign trotted out advisers from a Democratic bench that had championed
the toxic Rubinomics brew of corporate trade and financial deregulation.
These concerns should not distract us from the central reality: this
election features a stark ideological contrast. Although marketed as a
trustworthy maverick, McCain accurately describes himself as a "foot soldier
in the Reagan revolution" and attests that "on the transcendent issues, the
most important issues of our day, I've been totally in agreement and support
of President Bush." He is committed to the full Bush catastrophe: continued
war in Iraq, more tax cuts for the wealthiest, more corporate trade deals,
more deregulation, more hostility toward labor, more conservative social
policies and reactionary judges. Indeed, he's Bush on steroids. McCain seeks
not only to privatize Social Security but also to unravel employer-based
healthcare, leaving people to negotiate alone with insurance companies
liberated from regulation. His bellicose posturing on Iran and Iraq is as
disastrous as his pledge of impossibly deep cuts in domestic programs. He
embraces the corporate economic and trade agenda that has so devastated the
American middle class. If he is defeated, it will mark the end of the Reagan
era.
Obama clearly offers a change of course. His victory in itself will require
overcoming the racial fears that have so long divided this country. He
carries a reform agenda -- largely driven by progressives -- into the
election: an end to the occupation of Iraq, using the money squandered there
to rebuild America; affordable healthcare for all, paid for by raising taxes
on the wealthy; a concerted drive for energy independence, generating jobs
while investing in renewable energy and conservation. He is committed to
empowering labor, to holding corporations and banks more accountable and to
challenging our trade policies. A social liberal, his judicial appointees
will keep the right from consolidating its hold on the federal judiciary.
Obama may not be a "movement" progressive in the way that Reagan was a
"movement" conservative, and he may have disappointed activists with his
recent compromises, but make no mistake: his election will open a new era of
reform, the scope of which will depend -- as Obama often says -- on
independent progressive mobilization to keep the pressure on and overcome
entrenched interests.
As this is written, an election Obama should win handily is locked in a
virtual tie. Both the Obama and McCain campaigns treat the race as a
referendum on Obama, with the former focused on getting Americans
comfortable with trusting a young African-American with an unusual name, and
the Rove minions in the McCain campaign intent on stoking the fears that
enabled them to assemble a white majority party in the past.
Obama's campaign will not succeed without the independent efforts of
progressive activists. One central task is winning support among wary white
blue-collar workers, the core target of the Rovian poison. This will require
persuasion as well as mobilization; the work of the AFL-CIO, Change to Win,
Working America, religious groups and others with a base in these
communities in swing states will be of critical importance.
Progressives generally -- and independent media and the blogosphere
specifically -- can contribute by reminding voters there's a clear choice in
this election, with McCain representing the same old, same old. While
exposing McCain's doubletalk, his Bush-redux agenda and the money and
interests behind the scurrilous right-wing independent expenditure
campaigns, progressives can also help build support for reform. The new
Health Care for America Now coalition, for example, has the resources to
expose McCain's healthcare folly, thereby building a mandate for universal
coverage. The antiwar movement should be challenging McCain's saber-rattling
on Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, helping to strengthen US support for a change
in course. With gas prices at the center of American concerns, the
environmental alliance around jobs and energy can consolidate support for a
concerted drive toward energy independence, while challenging absurd claims
that we can drill our way out of the crisis.
Driving Reform
While focusing on what is certain to be a difficult campaign, progressives
should start thinking now about strategy for an Obama presidency. Clearly
his election and inauguration would mark an exciting moment. At home, a new
sense of energy and idealism will be unleashed. Across the world, his
election will begin the process of restoring America's ravaged reputation.
Not only will Obama usher a new generation into politics, but for the first
time a President with experience as a community organizer will have the
ability to mobilize directly a dedicated following larger than any other in
politics [see our roundtable forum of community organizers].
In the first months of an Obama administration, progressives should be
pursuing an inside-outside strategy in relation to the administration. For
example, in the transition, we should push to place allies in strategic
positions, particularly in the areas of economic policy and national
security. The AFL-CIO and other groups are preparing lists of potential
candidates. These inside efforts should be complemented by watchdog
monitoring and reporting on potential nominees. No free pass should be given
to those who drove the financial and trade policies that led to the current
economic debacles or supported the invasion of Iraq, the worst foreign
policy fiasco in recent history.
For Obama to achieve his core promises, he will have to push significant
reforms early. As Dan Lazare has argued, our entire political system is
designed to block reform, not facilitate it. Periods of significant change
in American politics are rare, but they feature spasms of furious activity:
Roosevelt's first 100 days, Johnson's push in 1964-65, Reagan's reaction in
1981-82. Inevitably, these spasms don't last long before reaction sets in.
So it is vital to move rapidly and boldly and across many areas to have any
chance at success.
Obama's first decision -- to be made, no doubt, during the transition --
will be the most telling. He has pledged that he will instruct the Joint
Chiefs of Staff to prepare a sensible plan for ending the Iraq occupation.
Already, Democratic security advisers who initially supported the war are
calling for "conditional engagement," arguing that the United States can't
afford simply to set a timetable to get out. Thus it is vital that the peace
movement organize aggressively during the campaign, and mobilize
independently and visibly immediately after the election. The Obama White
House must have no doubt about the firestorm in Congress, in the streets and
within the Democratic Party that would be caused by a retreat from this
pledge.
If the Iraq promise is kept, progressives will sensibly work to help define
Obama's agenda from the inside and support key parts from the outside. He
will lay out a major initiative on jobs and energy. He has said that he'll
try to push through healthcare reform quickly -- although that is likely to
trigger trench warfare in Congress (and progressives will have to overcome
deep internal divisions to ensure that fundamental reform succeeds). Obama
will reverse many of the reactionary Bush executive orders, from the global
gag rule to secrecy excesses stemming from the "war on terror." His first
budget decisions most likely will have to deal directly with a broader
stimulus plan to get the economy going. He has pledged to support passage of
the Employee Free Choice Act, enabling workers to organize unions without
employer harassment.
But Obama will encounter formidable obstacles. He'll face a business lobby
girded for battle. Corporations have already begun moving more of their
money to Democratic incumbents and are snapping up former Democratic
legislators and staffers for their lobbies [see "Dollars for Donkeys" on
page 28]. They will do everything they can to stall healthcare and
drug-pricing reform, empowerment of workers and re-regulation of Wall
Street. Moreover, while Democrats are likely to enjoy larger majorities in
both houses, their caucuses are likely to be less progressive as they pick
up seats in very conservative, formerly Republican districts.
Progressives will enjoy their greatest strength mobilizing independently to
support Obama's promises. We can organize constituent pressure on
politicians who are blocking the way, something even a President with
Obama's activist network would be loath to do. We can expose the lobbies and
interests and backstage maneuvers designed to limit reforms. Now that
newspapers increasingly lack the resources for investigation, progressive
media, online and off, and the independent progressive media infrastructure
-- from The Nation to Media Matters to Brave New Films to The Huffington
Post -- must assume a greater role in monitoring the opposition, even as we
mobilize activists in targeted districts across the country.
In doing this, we can help give backbone to the Obama agenda, even as we
supply muscle and energy to help pass it. The best way to achieve this is to
generate large-scale independent-issue campaigns. A clear example is the
Healthcare for Americans Now Coalition, which is ready to take on the
insurance companies and support the White House's commitment to universal
care. The new Half in Ten Campaign, spearheaded by ACORN and the Center for
American Progress Action Fund, will help ensure that poverty does not
disappear from the agenda. Progressives generally should join the AFL-CIO
and Change to Win in their drive to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. The
Apollo Alliance and a range of environmental efforts will support the
initiative on jobs and energy.
Acting in support of Obama will require challenging legislators in both
parties who stand in the way, a task progressives should undertake
aggressively. The Service Employees International Union has already taken
the lead in announcing a $10 million "accountability program," designed to
force politicians to heed the will of their voters, with a new plan --
Justice for All -- as the core vehicle. This should be complemented by other
independent efforts, despite likely objections from the Democratic
Congressional leadership and possibly the White House. Democrats should be
on notice from their own constituents that they will be expected to help
move reform, not stand in its way.
The Constricted Consensus
The great challenge for progressives is whether the energy and idealism
unleashed by the Obama candidacy -- and the collapse of conservatism -- can
expand the limits of the current debate. McCain promises merely more of the
same bankrupt policies, but Obama's reform agenda is itself limited by a
very constricted establishment consensus that is an obstacle to real change.
On national security, both candidates have pledged to increase the size of
the military, adding billions to a bloated budget that already represents
nearly half the world's military spending. Both assume America's role as
globocop; neither suggests unraveling the US empire of military bases. Both
seem intent on deepening the occupation of Afghanistan. Neither has dared to
embrace the conservative RAND Corporation's conclusion that the very notion
of a "war on terror" is counterproductive, and that aggressive intelligence
and police cooperation should be the centerpiece of our strategy.
Obama has called for a second stimulus plan focused on new energy and
rebuilding America, but he hasn't suggested anything like the major public
initiatives -- the combination of public investment, revised global economic
strategy, industrial policy and financial regulation -- that would be
essential to get the real economy moving again while responding to the
threat of catastrophic climate change.
Obama has made affordable healthcare for all a centerpiece of his agenda,
but he has not addressed the unraveling of the private social contract once
delivered through corporations and unions. It will take independent efforts
to drive an economic bill of rights, from healthcare to pensions to Social
Security to guaranteed paid vacation, in addition to paid sick days and
family leave.
Obama laid out promising principles for financial reform in his Cooper Union
speech in March, but he hasn't challenged the Wall Street bailout, nor has
he mobilized support for policing the shadow banking system that has proved
so destructive in its greed.
Obama defends liberal social reforms, but a serious war on poverty -- or an
initiative to transform our brutal criminal system of injustice that is
devastating the lives of young minority men -- is not yet on the agenda.
And while Obama is a former professor of constitutional law, he hasn't
called for dismantling the imperial presidency. It will take independent
efforts to reclaim for the Congress and the people the powers Bush has
arrogated to the presidency.
This corrosive consensus reflects the entrenched power of the established
order. It is enforced by aggressive lobbies -- the military-industrial
complex, Wall Street, corporate interests -- and rationalized by
well-upholstered house scholars. The establishment's strength is its ability
to simply exclude alternatives from serious consideration.
After the first flurry of activity, an Obama administration may well realize
that the dire condition of the country demands a far bolder agenda than what
is now on the table. Progressives should recognize that an Obama
administration would have no alternative but to be one of constant
experimentation. We should embrace the best of the public-policy proposals
that scholars are developing in our universities and think tanks. These
ideas challenge limited assumptions about government and call for everything
from dismantling our empire of military bases to curbing the imperial
presidency, from passing progressive tax reforms to strengthening the public
commons. Again, independent campaigning -- particularly regarding concerns
not high on the national agenda -- will help lift issues into the
mainstream.
Here it will be vital to sustain a reform infrastructure independent of the
administration or the Democratic leadership in Congress. Progressives in the
Senate and House, many grouped around the Progressive Caucus, can provide
both leadership and a public forum for new ideas. Independent research
institutes -- like the Institute for America's Future, the Institute for
Policy Studies, the Economic Policy Institute and others -- can help think
outside the establishment box. Progressive bloggers can track the limits of
the debate and give new ideas greater visibility. Reform leaders at the
state and local levels, coordinated by centers like the Progressive States
Network, can champion legislation -- like paid sick days, mandated vacation
minimums, early childhood education, tighter regulation of insurance
companies, creative financing for energy conservation projects -- that will
be a model for the national agenda. Grassroots organizing -- neighbor to
neighbor, supported by the energy of the young, linked to national concerns
-- will be essential if Obama's election is to generate thoroughgoing
reform.
When John F. Kennedy was elected President, he too summoned a new generation
into politics. While Kennedy's agenda was limited, the energy he unleashed
helped build the civilizing movements of the following decades -- the
antiwar, civil rights, women's, environmental and gay rights movements.
America now is very different from the America of the 1960s. Those
movements, nurtured in the cradle of postwar prosperity, assumed the country
could afford to be more just. This generation has grown up with much greater
economic insecurity, is laden with debt and is struggling to find decent
jobs. It faces an economy that cannot be sustained -- and must be
transformed.
But once more a young and exciting candidate, seeking the presidency after a
long and failed conservative era, can spark the hope and sense of
possibility that carry far beyond his campaign platform. Progressives should
be focusing less on the limits of the Obama agenda and more on the
possibilities that a successful candidacy opens up.
As a former community organizer, Obama has taught that "real change comes
from the bottom up." It comes about by "imagining and then fighting for and
then working for -- struggling for -- what did not seem possible before." As
President, he will face conflicting pressures, and undoubtedly he will
carefully pick his fights. The movement that he has called into being will
have little choice but to embrace his charge and mobilize across the country
to achieve what "did not seem possible before."
AlterNet is a nonprofit organization and does not make political
endorsements. The opinions expressed by its writers are their own.
Robert Borosage is co-director of the Campaign For America's Future, and he
has written on political, economic, and national security issues for
publications including The New York Times and The Nation.
Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor of The Nation.