It's all OUR fault, right?

[LiberalEsto]

Washington Post columnist Harold Meyersons' column today argues that the reason we progressives haven't seen the changes we expected from the Obama administration is because we're not an organized movement. (I imagine he has never heard of Move-On.)

Although I like Meyerson's columns as a rule, I can't help but feel insulted that he places the blame on progressives rather than the corporatist DLCers in the administration.

So what do we need to do to convince the president and Rahm and Congress that we really, really meant it when we said we wanted real healthcare reform, serious climate-change control efforts, the end of Mid-east warfare -- you know, pesky little things like that?

Do we need to organize another Poor People's March like the one the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King organized in 1968? Do we need to try and set up a tent city on the National Mall to show that we're broke enough and unemployed enough and sick enough and screwed enough to deserve the care and attention and bailout money that the big banks received last year?

In my humble opinion, progressives were exhausted after fighting for 8 years to end Rethug rule and to elect a Democratic administration, and we expected our issues to be supported. But I am disappointed so far, and I think we can do better. Or rather, they could do better by us.

Without a movement, progressives can't aid Obama's agenda
By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/05/AR2010010502989.html

"Every Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson -- Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama -- has raised the hope that he would bring with him a new era of progressive reform. The legislative torrents of the New Deal and the Great Society -- a few brief years in the 1930s and the '60s that fundamentally reshaped the nation's economy and society -- are the templates that fire the liberal imagination.

Two great liberal historians -- the Arthur Schlesingers, senior and junior -- posited a cyclical theory of American political history, in which periods of progressive advance alternate with times of conservative reaction once every generation. And even when liberals have discounted this theory as too mechanistic, their hearts, if not their heads, have responded to the election of every Democratic president since LBJ -- each of whom entered office with a substantial Democratic majority in Congress -- with the hope that this time would be different, that a new burst of progressivism was at hand.

And each time, they have been disappointed. While Carter and Clinton could both point to progressive legislation enacted during their terms, many of their most significant achievements -- the deregulation of transportation, the consolidation and deregulation of finance, the abolition of welfare, the enactment of trade agreements with low-wage nations -- actually eroded the economic security that Franklin Roosevelt, Johnson and their congressional contemporaries had worked to hard to create."

[Deep13]

1. Well that and our lack of limitless resources. nt

[LiberalEsto]

5. When the banks "pay back" their bailouts

the money should be used for job creation, at the very least.

[Armstead]

2. Meyerson hasn't been paying attention

To believe there is no truly liberal/prohgressive movement is a classic case of either ignorance or smug elitism.

Apparently he is unfamiliar with unions, the many gressroots social movements on many issues and the actual activist networks that do exist. he apparently doesn't talk to many people outside of his circle either.

There was no opposition to Clinton's Corporate Agenda? I guess, for example, the writer was on vacation during the massive gathering against the WTO in Seattle in 1999.

Apart from "leftist activists" there are also many people who support progressive values and goals on many different levels throughout society. It is at least as prevalent as conservatism.

The problem is that he and others choose to seperate and marginilize "progressives" instead of recognizing that it is as American as cherry pie.

[Buzz Clik]

3. If you don't accept responsibility for your own failings, you stand no chance of succeeding.

Yes, we're poorly organized. We're only marginally unified on only a few issues. We can't even agree on what constitutes a liberal agenda.

All that needs to change.

[Jamastiene]

4. Only vote for progressive Democrats in the primaries, not the DLC chosen conservatives. n/t

[treestar]

22. That won't even work

You need more liberals in certain states, period.

Even the Democrats in Nebraska are conservative.

[dionysus]

6. he may have a point. the repukes quake in fear at the teabaggers.

i'd say there's a higher percentage of progressives in the dem party then there are teabaggers for the republicans.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

7. Given the utter absence of the left at the town hall meetings, I'd agree completely with him (nt)

[Armstead]

10. Maybe because we took the politicians at the word and believed their promises

yes there was not a big "teabagger" typoe presence at Town Halls. In retrospect that was a mistake.

But don't blame "progressives" (advocates of real reform) for the lack of a more vocal movement at the time.

The big mistake we made was believing Obama and the Democratic Congress when they promised that the bill would contain a pubic option and/or some expansion of Medicare eligibility and other real reforms.

We followed the advice of "moderates" and compromised. The problem is that the rug was ;pulled out from under us too late in the game.

Had the public option been taken off the table earlier, I think you WOULD have seen more widespread and visible activitiosm from progressives.

[ClassWarrior]

11. Lesson learned: Make SURE and DOUBLE SURE we get what we want, even if we have "promises."

Activism begins with you. Tag - you're it! (Thom Hartmann)

NGU.

[LiberalEsto]

14. What does NGU mean?

I really don't know.

I do understand your point about taking responsibility for our own activism.

Since 1969, I have marched and protested and written letters and carried signs and worked on political campaigns and voted diligently and donated what little money I had to anti-war and progressive causes. I've posted comments about issues on DU and elsewhere, given money to Move-On, made phone calls to elected officials, phonebanked, worked to get out the vote and handed out Democratic literature outside the polls on election days. I've lost count of the times I've attended mass marches on Washington DC. I joined the Citizens Party in the late 1970s, and became a Democrat again in the mid-80s.

At this point I am mentally and physically worn out, unemployed, depressed and broke. I'm still a few years away from retirement, but I don't know if I'll manage to find a job to retire from. And I am hugely disappointed in this administration, so far.

[ClassWarrior]

16. Never Give Up.

My personal motto since November, '04.

Thanks for asking.

NGU.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

12. Yeah, they promised...

and then we allowed the underlying conditions for the bill to deteriorate to the point where the promises could not be delivered. Don't try to absolve guilt.

[Armstead]

13. NO I am responding to your claim that a lack of mobilization was apathy

My post was in response to your claim that somehow the fatal flaw of "the left" is that they did not push hard enough, anf the implication was that they either didn't care enough or were too weak and stupid to effectively organize.

People who otherwise would have -- to varying degrees -- mobilized to support a public option and oppose the basic enshrining of private insurance through corporate mandates, did NOT BECAUSE THEY AGREED TO GO ALONG WITH THE DEMOCRATIC STRATEGY BASED ON A PROMISE THAT WAS NOT KEPT.

That's a simple fact.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

17. The implication is that they thought the game was over on election day.

Instead of realizing it had only just begun. They handed the ball to Obama and then went to sleep. In the meantime, the right kept on fighting and deteriorated conditions to the point where these "promises" could not be met because we lacked the votes in Congress to get it done.

Honestly, I'm fairly certain that we'd still have had a Lieberman issue either way. We might not have had a Nelson issue, however.

[Armstead]

18. I'd say it was based on promises made this year -- and it wasn't sleeping

Pprogressives" (I hate using that word to seperate those with particular views on an issue) did not fall asleep after the election.

On health care, it was made crystal clear that there would not be a real single payer system, but Obama and Congress kept reassuring that there would be a public option of some kind included, as well as other positive changes. Thus it was hard to get a bead on and deal with.

(In contrast to the teabaggers and republicans who had a simple target -- any democratic healthcare proposal.)

And there was active engagement by reform advocates during all this. But it tended to get ignord and shunted aside.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

26. Interesting that you bring that up

and, as I recall, it was none other than Barack Obama who reminded everybody on election night 2008 (and maybe he even mentioned it at the inauguration too) that his election was the beginning of NOT the end of bringing change to the country and that true, lasting, substantive change would require everybody to keep on working together.
Unfortunately, for as hard as those of us on the left work, the right seems to work even harder and they have more capital, resources, and of course, access to the media than we have. We've made the internet pretty much our domain and the right still hasn't been able to utilize it as effectively as we do but we still don't have as powerful of a voice as we need to and we all need to figure out how to increase our resources and/or mobilize more effectively to get what we want.
That being said, of course, I never imagined that we'd see wholesale dramatic change during the first year and maybe not even during President Obama's first term- mostly because there is so much of a mess to clean up after the past 8-14 years of Republican control (either of Congress or the WH or both) that it's going to take some time to get back to some semblance of equilibrium and I hope that Obama and the Democrats are going to be able to hold on long enough for them to be able to be able to patch things up enough and manage to keep Repubs from marching back into Washington and start mucking everything right on up again. I never expected all of the Bush policies to fall the instant that Obama took office and I knew that he would initially struggle with reversing/ending some of them. However, it's hard for me to believe that the Obama presidency is a failure at this stage and/or to honestly believe that Obama is basically a kinder, gentler, Democratic version of Bush. He ain't perfect but I for one sleep a LOT better at night knowing that he and his team are running things as opposed to Bush, Cheney, PNAC, et. al.

[treestar]

21. Crazy

If one wants something that bad, one would have checked out the Democrats elected, known some were Blue Dogs and known that Lieberman was, well, Lieberman.

You're just not a powerful enough majority to get what you want with that Senate. You would need for Nebraska and Montana and North Dakota to have more liberals. That's what you need. The system is not corporatist, blah, blah, blah, it works, but giving low population states a bit more power, and those states happen to be conservative. As long as that is the case, this country will be moderately conservative. That's just a fact. All the blaming in the world won't change the right people's minds.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

25. +1

[Armstead]

27. "You"? .....I'm a garden-variety liberal. Is that too exotic for some Democrats these days?

[Hello_Kitty]

29. I went to 2 town hall meetings and tried to get into another

But that one was overcrowded from all the teabaggers from outside of the community taking all the available spots. Don't say we weren't there. We were.

BTW, town halls that were held in largely minority communities were well-attended but ignored by the MSM because the teabaggers didn't show up for them.

[blueworld]

8. Et tu, Meyerson? His analysis is slightly flawed, I think

Carter's & Clinton's progressive legislation eroded our economic security? Well, geewhizz, I'd disagree with that. And Double-gee-whizzzywhiz, I wouldn't call lopsided trade agreements with low-wage nations progressive legislation either.

With all due respect to the Schlesingers, all of human history has been cyclical: action? Equal & opposite reaction. Airplane gets off course? Guidance system kicks in.

What does Meyerson think of journalists who cover tea baggers & Joe the plumber but not anti-war protests? Has he mentioned all the Republican majorities that gutted every social safety net while deregulating every corporation & giving out endless tax cuts? Does Meyerson see adversarial journalism where FACTS are demanded for the public?

All I see is the Rovian trick of tossing out endless inaccurate accusations which the press then circles like a dog with a dingleberry. No facts - just crap.

The Progressive agenda can't possibly progress until the mega-corps & monopolies are removed from the legislative process. Politicians fear loss of donations and BAD PRESS. Does Mr. Meyerson have a a proposal whereby real Progressives get a chance to DELIVER BAD PRESS by delivering real facts?

Maybe we should print them on the side of a balloon & launch them from coast-to-coast.

:rant:

[ClassWarrior]

9. Have you done everything - EVERYTHING - you can to promote a progressive agenda?

This isn't about blame. It's about personal responsibility.

NGU.

[kenny blankenship]

15. Oh it couldn't POSSIBLY be the fault of an out of touch Washington establishment

it just HAS to be progressives' fault that Obama and half of the Democratic Party are as Reaganite as George Herbert Walker Bush. We failed to support Obama's agenda - that's why he turned into a corporatist. All our fault. All our fault! Always.

Go fuck yourself, you Wash-Po shitbag.

[avaistheone1]

19. Progressives have given our money, time and resources to elect Dems and these same Democrats ignore

the progressives. Obama and Pelosi are two good examples of that.

We fight to get these people elected, we call them and write to them and tell no bank bailouts AND THEY GIVE US BANK BAILOUTS, we tell them no more Iraq and Afghanistan wars AND WE GET MORE AND CONTINUED WARS. And so on ad nauseum.

The progressives have done their part. Our Democrats have not done theirs.

[ClassWarrior]

23. I repeat... have you done everything - EVERYTHING - you can to promote a progressive agenda?

NGU.

[avaistheone1]

31. I repeat.....

YES. Unless of course, I give up my job and work on this fulltime. Maybe you could pay my mortgage?

[treestar]

20. You're just blaming your opponents for being your opponents

Blaming the DLCers for beating you.

If you want something, you have to go out and get it, not just blame the opponents for trying to get what they want.

[TheKentuckian]

24. Yeah, let's go out and either make low population states reduce their representation

or make them liberal breeding grounds for a couple generations to take over.

The game is rigged. The Republicans are about as whittled down as possible and like 4% of the population holds the country hostage. There is no path to going out and getting anything within the framework of the game.

[LiberalEsto]

32. It would be so nice

if the DLCers could remember that, at least in theory, they're supposed to be Democrats. And that we're supposedly on the same team.

However, like the Republicans, the DLC and its ilk are aligned with the corporations against the rest of us. That's why they get to make use of huge amounts of corporate money and lobbying power. These things aren't available to progressives to any significant degree. It ain't a fair fight.

Things won't change unless by some miracle we achieve two things: serious, far-reaching campaign finance reform, and the elimination of corporate personhood.

[Orsino]

28. It's our fault that there are too few of us?

That dog doesn't quite hunt.

How about non-progressives accept some responsibility for being ignorant or corrupted?

[depakid]

30. I'm sure this bit of drivel pleased the senior editors at Pravda on the Potomac

probably why it was written.

Bottom line what comes out of the Post is no better than Fox- and sometimes worse, as some still afford the paper credibility that it's long since lost.