The Guardian: We have let Barack Obama down

[Writer]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/feb/12/barack-obama-change-left

When Obama came into office with a mandate for change, the left sat back and waited. Instead, we should have mobilised

That's where we've let Obama down. We on the American left – in a dysfunctional marriage with a bought-and-paid-for Democratic party, tamed by leechlike dependence on "non-profit" liberal foundations themselves funded by corporations, a women's movement obsessed by the abortion issue, a gay movement fixed on gay marriage – simply aren't up to the job. We have not backed up Obama with a serious antiwar movement (there isn't any), and our Big Labour is too weak to fight for itself, let alone for the rest of us. Grassroots activism still exists, but during the 2008 presidential campaign we slipped into the habit of allowing ourselves to be used purely as fundraising vehicles. Fundraising is no substitute for hell raising, as the Palin-loving Tea Baggers and Town Hallers are teaching us.

Obama came into office with a mandate for change. That should have been our signal not to sit back and wait for him to deliver but to mobilise to make sure he followed through. Instead, we relaxed our "Chicago muscle", the hard volunteer work that elected him. And I started my self-satisfying, ultimately pointless OBAMA BETRAYAL file.

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