The Audacity of Barack Obama.

[milkyway]

The tug-of-war between democrats and republicans has been fought in recent years within a center-right political box that has been in place since the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Before Reagan's presidency, the national political discussion was more to the left than it is today. Through his courting of so-called Reagan democrats, Reagan moved the political playing field to the right, and President Clinton had to operate within the confines of that box. If Clinton had come along before Reagan, he would have been a much more progressive president. It has been argued that John Kerry in 2004 ran to the right of Richard Nixon in 1972. That's how far right our country has drifted.

Barack Obama was right when he said that Reagan had a more transformative effect than Clinton. The Clinton presidency was affected and constrained by the Reagan presidency, resulting in many progressives being angry with the more pragmatic Clinton; the bush junior presidency has certainly felt no constraints placed on it by the Clinton presidency. Barack Obama is highly aware of this repositioning of our national politics, and one of his goals is to reposition the playing field back to the left. He said several years ago that he wants to reverse the rightward drift of our nation.

So how does Obama plan to do this when many of his positions seem centrist or only mildly liberal? Obama's philosophy is to build a broad coalition, a working progressive majority (he's used the word "progressive" numerous times)--not by using labels, saying I'm this and you're that so we can't be on the same side of an issue, but by bringing people together and finding common sense solutions to our problems, solutions that will be progressive but may not be labeled as such. He thinks that progressive values are fundamental American values that most people share, even though they might not consider themselves progressive. He appeals strongly to independents, who now make up over a third of the electorate.

Barack has said he's all about addition--finding ways to add people, not subtract or divide. He wrote in the mid-90's, "What if a politician considered himself an organizer?" This is how he sees himself--an organizer who builds coalitions to force change. A strong majority of Americans share the same views on our biggest problems--health care, climate change, global warming, Iraq, the economy. All that is needed to implement the desired policies is to harness the political power of this large majority and use it to drive change.

A 51%-49% president will have a difficult time with the contemporary republican leadership--they are obstructionists whose main goal will be to prevent any Dem president from being successful, the well-being of the nation be damned. To beat them you have to overwhelm them with numbers, adding independents and moderate republicans, peeling away from their political support.

Obama has shown he can do this, particularly in the plains states, the mountain west and even some states like North Carolina and Virginia. By not turning off centrists and independents with strident language (the kind we like to hear at DU) and drawing lines in the sand, Obama can redraw the electoral map--instead of fighting over Florida and Ohio every four years, we can turn the republican party into a regional party for a generation. The disaster of the bush presidency and the emergence of Obama have given the Dems a rare opportunity to transform the political playing field; the staggering number of young people coming out to vote for Obama attests to this.

Barrack Obama is not the kind of candidate we in the progressive blogosphere have come to view as our kind of candidate. He challenges our preconceived notions about what a candidate needs to do to most effectively battle the republicans. Obama seems mild by comparison. But he has bold plans for transforming this nation. Any of our other candidates from this campaign could make a fine president--but none of them have the potential to be a game-changer like Barack Obama. The republicans are very familiar and comfortable with doing battle with dems like our other candidates. They'll win some battles and lose some battles, but we're always playing the game by their rules, where someone like Michael Moore is considered by many to be an extremist although most every one of his positions is held by a solid majority of the American people.

No candidate has shown the potential to transform the political landscape like Barack Obama. Though some can now look back at the policies of JFK and say that his presidency wasn't all that liberal after all, it sure felt transformational at the time, and those brief years helped usher in a wave of tremendous changes.

Below are two links discussing Obama's vision of politics and this nation, with a few paragraphs snipped from each. The first is a post that Obama made at dailyKos.com in 2005, and the second is an article about him in 1995 when he was running for the Illinois Senate. And for those who think the appeal of Obama is mostly conceptual, without clear policy details, there is this from his website:

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/


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Obama discussed his political philosophy in a post at dailyKos.com two years ago:

<snip>

I am not drawing a facile equivalence here between progressive advocacy groups and right-wing advocacy groups. The consequences of their ideas are vastly different. Fighting on behalf of the poor and the vulnerable is not the same as fighting for homophobia and Halliburton. But to the degree that we brook no dissent within the Democratic Party, and demand fealty to the one, "true" progressive vision for the country, we risk the very thoughtfulness and openness to new ideas that are required to move this country forward. When we lash out at those who share our fundamental values because they have not met the criteria of every single item on our progressive "checklist," then we are essentially preventing them from thinking in new ways about problems. We are tying them up in a straightjacket and forcing them into a conversation only with the converted.

Beyond that, by applying such tests, we are hamstringing our ability to build a majority. We won't be able to transform the country with such a polarized electorate. Because the truth of the matter is this: Most of the issues this country faces are hard. They require tough choices, and they require sacrifice. The Bush Administration and the Republican Congress may have made the problems worse, but they won't go away after President Bush is gone. Unless we are open to new ideas, and not just new packaging, we won't change enough hearts and minds to initiate a serious energy or fiscal policy that calls for serious sacrifice. We won't have the popular support to craft a foreign policy that meets the challenges of globalization or terrorism while avoiding isolationism and protecting civil liberties. We certainly won't have a mandate to overhaul a health care policy that overcomes all the entrenched interests that are the legacy of a jerry-rigged health care system. And we won't have the broad political support, or the effective strategies, required to lift large numbers of our fellow citizens out of numbing poverty.

The bottom line is that our job is harder than the conservatives' job. After all, it's easy to articulate a belligerent foreign policy based solely on unilateral military action, a policy that sounds tough and acts dumb; it's harder to craft a foreign policy that's tough and smart. It's easy to dismantle government safety nets; it's harder to transform those safety nets so that they work for people and can be paid for. It's easy to embrace a theological absolutism; it's harder to find the right balance between the legitimate role of faith in our lives and the demands of our civic religion. But that's our job. And I firmly believe that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, or oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. A polarized electorate that is turned off of politics, and easily dismisses both parties because of the nasty, dishonest tone of the debate, works perfectly well for those who seek to chip away at the very idea of government because, in the end, a cynical electorate is a selfish electorate.

<snip>

My dear friend Paul Simon used to consistently win the votes of much more conservative voters in Southern Illinois because he had mastered the art of "disagreeing without being disagreeable," and they trusted him to tell the truth. Similarly, one of Paul Wellstone's greatest strengths was his ability to deliver a scathing rebuke of the Republicans without ever losing his sense of humor and affability. In fact, I would argue that the most powerful voices of change in the country, from Lincoln to King, have been those who can speak with the utmost conviction about the great issues of the day without ever belittling those who opposed them, and without denying the limits of their own perspectives.

<snip>

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/30/102745/165/500/153069

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Here is an excellent article from the Chicago Reader in 1995 in which discussing Obama's strategy and goals, and how he sees himself foremost as an organizer, empowering people to create change:

<snip>

What makes Obama different from other progressive politicians is that he doesn't just want to create and support progressive programs; he wants to mobilize the people to create their own. He wants to stand politics on its head, empowering citizens by bringing together the churches and businesses and banks, scornful grandmothers and angry young. Mostly he's running to fill a political and moral vacuum. He says he's tired of seeing the moral fervor of black folks whipped up--at the speaker's rostrum and from the pulpit--and then allowed to dissipate because there's no agenda, no concrete program for change.

<snip>

"In America," Obama says, "we have this strong bias toward individual action. You know, we idolize the John Wayne hero who comes in to correct things with both guns blazing. But individual actions, individual dreams, are not sufficient. We must unite in collective action, build collective institutions and organizations."

<snip>

"What if a politician were to see his job as that of an organizer," he wondered, "as part teacher and part advocate, one who does not sell voters short but who educates them about the real choices before them? As an elected public official, for instance, I could bring church and community leaders together easier than I could as a community organizer or lawyer. We would come together to form concrete economic development strategies, take advantage of existing laws and structures, and create bridges and bonds within all sectors of the community. We must form grass-root structures that would hold me and other elected officials more accountable for their actions.

<snip>

http://www.chicagoreader.com/obama/951208/