On supporting the President - Democratic Underground

ProSense

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Fri Jun-18-10 06:45 PM
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On supporting the President

I never understood the position that not supporting the President will produce a desired result.

Results come via support, which includes pushing. You may have voted for the President, but it doesn't end there. He still needs our support.

You can best believe a lot of people who support the President are pushing their ideas and arguments through members of Congress, the institution that will have an impact on the strength of the President's agenda. Does anyone think that Rockefeller would resist supporting climate change if the majority of his constituents were pushing him to support it?

That's the problem with the notion that a vote is all it takes, that this is all about the President, it isn't.

Two views:

Deepak Bhargava

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Yet, in some sense, blaming a politician for being a product of a broken political system which gives too much weight to the powerful interests of the status quo begs the question of how we counter the forces which obstruct the hopes of millions of people. Great changes in our history have always come through mass pressure from the outside combined with receptive leadership in positions of power. Presidents don't create moral urgency; social movements do and Presidents respond.

The central lesson of American history is that it takes social movements to get big things done. Abolition, women's suffrage, and the reforms of the New Deal and the Great Society were not fast or easy wins, nor were they brought about by a single election or by a President handing change down like manna from heaven. The passion and the power for big change came from below in each of these instances.

As we look at the next two years and consider the changes we'd like to see, we need to realize that the important question is not what the Obama Administration does or does not do. The important question is: Are we capable of mounting the kind of mass movement that can create a cycle of transformative, progressive change in the country. Whether President Obama turns into FDR or LBJ, or Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter, is only partly about what he does. I'd argue that it's mostly about what we do.

So far we have not done enough. Since the 2008 election, the only mass progressive movement has been the immigrant rights movement, and this absence is worrisome particularly in light of the biggest economic crisis the country has seen in many years. There have been some very encouraging signs of life over the last few months with protests at Wall Street and here in Washington, but in the populist uprising on economic issues, it has really been the Tea Party movement that's held sway in the debate.

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Katrina vanden Heuvel

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At the same time, progressives have come to a realization. What we see, some 500 days into the Obama administration, is a president obstructed by a partisan Republican opposition, powerful entrenched corporate interests, and a minority of corrupt or conservative Democrats. The thinking is that if progressives organize independently and forge smart coalitions, building a mass movement for reform with a moral compass that can transcend left-right divisions, we may be able to push Obama beyond the limits of his own politics, overcome the timid incrementalism of the establishment Democratic Party and counter the forces of money and power that are true obstacles to change. As Arianna Huffington has said, "Hope is not enough. . . . We need a 'Hope 2.0' that depends not on what President Obama or other politicians say or do but on what we as progressives do."

That's what key progressive groups -- Labor, netroots activists and others -- were trying to do in supporting a primary challenger to Democratic Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln. But the Obama administration, which had endorsed Lincoln, apparently misinterpreted the progressive position as a threat from its base. The White House political operation turned prickly. And after Lincoln prevailed (with massive aid from establishment Democrats), anonymous White House operatives called reporters to trash organized labor for flushing "$10 million of their members' money down the toilet on a pointless exercise."

Actually, the point of the exercise was that those opposing Obama's reform agenda will not get a free pass. And there will be more efforts like it. To name a few: Labor will continue to devote resources to accountability primaries in several states this year, MoveOn will be campaigning to counter corporate influence, and the NAACP, SEIU and the Center for Community Change are organizing a march for jobs in October.

This agitating role isn't a new one for the progressive movement. Progressives organized a remarkable mass movement seeking to stop the Iraq war before it began. They built a counterweight in the blogosphere to challenge the mainstream media and the right. They created the coalition that beat Bush on Social Security. They gave Democrats their voice on Iraq, energy and health care that helped to take back Congress. And they inspired a junior senator from Illinois to think that something was moving with such strength that he might run and win the presidency.

Now, with resistance imperiling the Obama's change agenda, there is an understanding that it is time for progressives to mobilize independently once more. It doesn't matter whether you think Obama has done the best that he can or that he has compromised too easily. What's important is to alter the balance of power. And that means recruiting and mobilizing to unleash new energy into the debate.

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