Sometimes I am a little harsh with Dennis Kucinich but there’s a reason that goes far beyond anything having to do with Dennis. Progressives have been down for so long, and have been so marginalized in our political culture, that we have no sophistication, we have no experience in governing, and we have almost no bench to staff Barack Obama’s administration. It’s almost amusing to watch my progressive brothers and sisters wring their hands everytime Obama’s campaign floats the name of a possible member of his cabinet. It almost inevitably results in accusations that Obama isn’t remotely progressive or dislikes progressives or is selling out progressives. Well…let me ask you. Who have we allowed to become the face of progressivism? Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich has a few wacky positions but he’s the one out there talking about single-payer health care, impeachment, and most forcefully advocating an end to the war. He’s a flawed messenger in the exact same way that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have been flawed messengers for the black community. You may want to defend them because they’ve at least been talking the talk, but it’s never good to have your interests represented by people that are easily marginalized. Never.
When Obama set out to beat the Clinton Team, he didn’t have the option of tapping into the power and influence of the progressive movement because we have no power and little influence. Very few progressives have served in an administration in our lifetimes. Most progressive politicians serve in very safe seats and don’t even need to raise much money to get reelected. When Obama looked around, the progressive movement was almost useless to him.
There was only one faction of the Democratic Party that had power and experience and influence to rival the Clintons, and they were loosely affiliated around former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle. Bill Clinton was unpopular in most of the South and all of the Great Plains and Mountain West. This is where Obama won the vast majority of his delegates and where he got the lion’s share of his most valuable endorsements.
There was no roster of experienced progressive foreign policy hands, so Obama reached out to the foreign policy establishment that had been most alienated by Clinton’s foreign policy. This happens to be people like Sam Nunn, David Boren, and Lee Hamilton, plus a roster of anti-Iraq War Clintonites.
Obama needed the cities (progressives) to win the nomination. And he owes progressives a lot. But when he looks around for progressives to staff his organization, the field is very thin. That’s more a matter of recent political history than any ideological decision making.
The result is that Obama has a coalition that is evenly split between the urban/academic areas and the Plains States and Mountain West (with a little Southern flavor thrown in), but in which the urban/academic Democrats are underrepresented. If Obama is smart, he will build up the progressive field. Most likely, he’ll do this by giving progressives deputy and undersecretary jobs and letting them gain seniority and experience.
But it annoys the hell out of me to listen to progressives complain about how little influence they have. The face of progressivism over the last eight years has been Dennis Kucinich. We won’t be taken seriously until the face of progressivism is less easily marginalized. And the media…oh, the media. We won’t succeed as a movement until we find a way to get the media to treat progressives with some degree of seriousness. Obama needs to show leadership or nothing will change.
I happen to be in BC right now. (We’re part-time residents.) As part of the upcoming Canada Day celebration, CBC Radio today had a long talk with some pollsters who were looking into what it means to be a Canadian, as far as Canadians are concerned.
One of the top distinguishing features, as far as the Canadians are concerned, is the Health Care System here. What emerged is that (1) the system is highly regarded by a huge majority of the population just on its own merits, but also (2) it’s highly regarded as an emblem of the commitment to equal opportunity and social justice that’s fundamental to the Canadian character.
Odd, no? That the population should be proud of a huge government program, not just for what it does for them, but for what it shows about them. Imagine that!
Great post. There’s always lots of that whining, and the response in the back of my brain is something like – “I may agree with his policies, but, man, Kucinich is a joke”. We need a charismatic, in-touch progressive. Does such an animal exist?
There will not be such a perfect progressive politician that you and Booman are pining for because of you, the so-called progressive. It’s not mainly a problem with getting candidates. It’s getting enough people to actually fight effectively for progressive policies.
By kicking Kucinich, you send the message to potential young progressives that you will be weak-kneed and back off from the fight and will accept right-wing attacks on your allies. Dennis Kucinich is but one politician that you centrist-minded so-called progressives denounce. You denounce all lefties as not living up to your perfect standards (and a standard you don’t even apply to conservatives let alone other Dems). It’s gotten so bad that your thinking has created an environment where the largest anti-war activist group in the country, one of the biggest progressive voices, was censured on the Senate floor last year. And you accept it. And have the audacity to blame Kucinich and true progressives for your failure.
It’s why we had a perfect storm for Democrats and liberals this year but somehow ended up worse off for it because our conservative Democratic politicians suck. And you want to suck up to them instead of replacing them with real progressives like Kucinich. This defeatism you display is why John Kerry, a war hero, got swiftboated by a war avoider. It’s why you will probably allow Wes Clark to get swiftboated. He’s a great attacker against McCain’s strength and we’ll see if Obama has the wisdom to even defend Wes Clark here, let alone Kucinich. My bet is Obama will do what you’re doing to Kucinich–attack an ally to make yourself seem more adequate and sensible. It’s a short-sighted and bad strategy even progressives are playing here. You guys are doing it yet again. You feel bad so you lash out at progressives.
In short. It’s not the candidates. It’s you. You do not demand that candidates stand up for liberal positions and you shoot anyone to the left of you because they don’t perfectly represent liberalism as you imagined they should.
Maybe you just have a hard time believing that it could possibly be the fault of the salesmen than their product doesn’t sell or the fault of the lawyer that his client loses his case.
Sometimes the product is good and it still doesn’t attract enough buyers.
And sometimes the salesman really works for a competitor.
Then get other salesmen out there. You are the one that is basically “whining” because the ideal spokesman (in your mind) hasn’t appeared to represent progessivism. You’re like the young woman who has been dreaming of her wedding day forever and has so many unrealistic expectations she’s guaranteed to be disappointed.
Booman. You hate Kucinich because you hate yourself.
Why do you have to focus on Kucinich’s flaws so much? Every politician has flaws and I really believe you have an unhealthy fixation on what you perceive to be Kucinich’s flaws. You don’t apply nearly the same analysis to other candidates. You’re kuckoo over Kucinich. And I believe it’s because you can’t handle your imaginary conception of the perfect progressive candidate being sullied.
Your constant complaints about Kucinich is way for you to ignore your own failures. You are passing the buck. Or you are kicking the dog because your husband beat you.
You sided with a conservative Democrat and had the gall to call him “progressive” and now that you are looking foolish you’re trying to spin like a top. So you pull out the easy pot shots–Kucinich is kooky.
What? Would you actually have a spine if Kucinich was out of the picture? I’ll help you take him out if it will work. But I’ve seen this before. You are piling on Kucinich to hide your won inadequacies. Left to your own devices you’ll be licking Obama’s boots and be telling us how he’s secretly a progressive and how he’s better than Kucinich anyway . . .
If Barack Obama is a conservative Democrat then there are basically no non-conservative Democrats in the entire Senate. I’ve had people tell me as recently as yesterday that Barbara Boxer is a conservative because she didn’t support Ned Lamont. People have ridiculous expectations.
This entire post is about the mechanics that force any candidate to the center, but also more specifically about how it worked in this election. And it’s about progressives whining about their lack of influences and inability to keep Obama on the left.
He had no choice and it’s mostly our fault, not his.
We let our movement and our ideals become synonymous with Dennis. He couldn’t do it all by himself.
Nope, you are just plain presumptious in your descriptions of where I’m coming from. Your rigid dogma is almost as loathsome to me as the rigid dogmas of the right.
How about Joseph Stiglitz for Council of Economic Advisors? He’s a (pseudo) Nobel laureate and former chief economist of the World Bank. Who alive can match that combination of academic and “real world” credentials? He’s right out, though, right? Because he’s too far left? Let Obama appoint Stiglitz and I’ll buy that he’s a progressive.
It’s possible to look at the various pieces of evidence that Obama is a centrist and come up with other explanations, but what is the evidence that he is progressive? We all know those National Journal rankings are bunk right? They cherry-pick the votes they look at, as opposed to the academically-accepted NOMINATE system, which consistently reaches different conclusions. They had Kerry as “most liberal” in 2004, and have admitted that he would not have gotten that rating under the criteria they used for Obama. I don’t see how Obama comes out to the left of Bernie Saunders.
You’re a salesman and you’re pissed off because you can’t figure out how to sell what Kucinich is selling, mainly because Peace, Love and Happiness come across in your world (narrow, conservative) as weak.
I give you 15…eh, maybe 20 years, if we all make it that long, before you finally realize that for all your smarts, you still haven’t grown up yet.
You’ll get tired of being bullshitted someday.
In the meantime, for the next 15-20 years (I think Booman is smarter and give him one year) we will get displaced anger at the “radical left” because what Booman is selling is tainted goods.
He knows the Kucinich pot-shots score so well so he does it repeatedly when he wants to pass the blame for yet another defeat for progressives. What, our conservative Democrat gutted the 4th Amendment? Where’s that kook Kucinich to beat around? It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. And when liberals lose almost every single policy battle he’s got nothing to feel good about so he beats up on those to the Left of him.
Evidently it makes him feel like a big boy to beat up on Kucinich. You know, the only politician that actually has the courage to fight for the ideals he CLAIMS to supports. Funny that.
way to miss the point.
“There was no roster of experienced progressive foreign policy hands, so Obama reached out to the foreign policy establishment that had been most alienated by Clinton’s foreign policy.“
Yeah, well, now his new foreign policy team looks like Bill Clinton revisited, and every one of them has serious blood on their hands. Not inspiring to someone who watched for eight years as loved ones in Iraq suffered under Clinton’s policy of regime change by genocide.
First, it is so nice to read something thoughtful so early this morning and to have the opportunity to chew on it and respond…
I don’t think there’s any possibility we’ll be marginalized unless we marginalize ourselves. I’ve been quite frustrated by posters who say, “I was all for Obama but he’s made one move I don’t like; maybe I’ll stay home.”
With influence comes responsibility. It’s not just sitting on your tush and typing in snarky comments, but thinking, reading, evaluating, and spreading the word outside of the small communities in which you participate. We can lose our influence by acting like a fibrillating heart–because we are, in fact, the heart of the progressive movement today.
The last primary was a great thing. It proved that old money couldn’t take it. Now the bigger challenge. But there’s great threat out there.
My own view: Big oil’s efforts to shake free leases to the remaining land on earth and under the ocean aren’t going well, and so the effort to create havoc in Iran to raise the gas prices through the roof. Arguing about angels on the heads of pins won’t win an election. There WILL be some international crisis, and that’s why Obama is triangulating so that they can’t box him in with their plan. The Republicans are still one-trick ponies and can’t envision a different series of chess moves.
So how did this happen? Why is it that the progressive perennials are Kucinich and Nader?
It seemed to me that Feingold really had the chance to be the standard bearer. For that matter, even Chris Dodd came off during the primaries as being mildly progressive.
Obama, IMO, is a centrist who will open up the system a little bit. I know he will disappoint me and I know that his administration won’t do everything I want it it do. But stopping McCain is incredibly important.
It seems to me that progressives get themselves into one of several traps. The biggest one is identity politics. Frankly, the “Rainbow Coalition” strategy lost me, and I think clearly lost a long time ago.
The other trap is that people like me get perceived as “out of touch” and “elitist” because we like to shop at whole foods and read books.
Still, I have to wonder what the progressive movement would be like today if the “academic left” had spent its time campaigning for national health insurance instead of deconstructing shakespeare.
shorter boo: i hope the obama admin gives me a job.
just funnin with you, bro. 😉
seriously, this is an interesting essay and i thank you for writing it. it’s very stimulating, if painful, to think about why progressives have failed to achieve power for the last few decades, and what opportunities we willl and won’t have in an obama admin. i’m glad that such a strong obama supporter is willing to state flatly that obama hasn’t reached out to the progressive community very much. i sort of disagree with your reasons why, but i completely agree that progressives lack power and share a heap of blame for why that is.
this is worth a blog post in response so i’ll take the rest of my comments there. nice post.
send us a link when you’re done.
you’re right. It’s embarrassing. I mean, even ron paul has been more effective challenging his own party, never mind challenging democrats.
Our family reunion has come and gone, and before (and after) I had goo-gobs of work to do so I’ve only had time to lurk on the tubes here and there.
I have to rush off to a meeting as we speak, but I agree with what you wrote here. My intimate knowledge may be dated, but although I think that we are just beginning to really develop progressive voices to engage in the debate, we’re still behind.
The Progressive Caucus has 72 Members, and at one point counted the former Democratic Whip (David Bonior, who many of you remember as John Edwards’ campaign manager) and Nancy Pelosi, who was the Democratic Leader (before Dems won control). I’m sure they also claim a few chairman/chairwomen now. And it was a mess under the various “leaders” (though I can’t speak knowledgeably about Lee and Woolsey’s leadership). I have a few inside-baseball examples that are the rough equivalent of watching paint dry, but all told–they are not respected/feared like the CATs (Conservative rethugs group) because they let dumb things derail them. Or, at least it was when it was my job to pay attention to these types of things a decade ago. (One exception was trade i.e. NAFTA–there was a gallant effort, but the Clinton WH just joined up with the repubs–but then, the Prog. Caucus could count on other allies.)
And that’s just in Congress.
Part of it is that we’ll always be at a disadvantage, because we’re saddled with both trying to be activists and groom people to work advance progressive thought, messages and policies. It’s hard; it takes money and time, especially when large swaths of the public have been conditioned to see progressive values as nutty. So when you have a Dennis Kucinich as your messenger, people automatically tune out. It’s not fair, it’s not right–it’s what it is.
And I know I’ll be taken to task (donning Kevlar vest) but if you had to ask folks to choose between FISA and foreclosure, you know where people’s priorities are. Yes, the wholesale giveaway of the Bill of Rights should piss off every American, but it doesn’t. Part of it is media coverage or the lack thereof. But part of it is what people see. People believe, at least in theory, that they don’t have anything to hide, so why should they give a damn?
But if they’ve lost a house, on the verge of losing house, or look around and 20% of homes in their neighborhoods have foreclosure signs…um, THAT’S their immediate priority.
And we’re talking about FISA.
Which only reinforces every bullshit notion they’ve ever been fed about progressives.
The answer isn’t to not talk about FISA–or any other issue that seems to be 100 miles away from food, shelter, gas money and keeping a job with some benefits–but to talk about it and raise the issues in a smarter, more sophisticated way that’s tied in with the day-to-day.
Understand that we have the harder job. We are trying to undo almost 40 years of right wing memes, policies and imposed mindset masquerading as received wisdom. But we’ve got to build the bench with people are talented enough to carry out this mission. It’s not enough to be “right” on the positions; you need someone who can get people to get on board.
Right now, the best people Obama has are the folks who worked in Congress (but not under the Clinton admin) who never bought into Clintonism or just didn’t work for them for whatever reason OR the disaffected Clintonites who (broadly speaking) were always progressive and tried to do the best they could inside or people who soured on triangulation.
There are no easy answers, but it just is not enough to be right.
It’s as if you hate yourself so you project your own inadequacies upon actual progressive candidates. I guess you are waiting for that perfect hypothetical progressive candidate–you know, the good looking war hero that cannot be attacked for his liberal views–only that will never happen in the current environment–even Wes Clark is a dirty fucking hippy if you haven’t noticed. I like Dennis Kucinich because he’s done trying to play your stupid likeability personality game. Kucinich stopped trying to please everybody and simply started fighting for progressive issues. He’s learned there’s no pleasing a weak-kneed loser that is willing to give away everything without a fight–which describes the Democratic party approach to politics the last 25 years.
Gee. I don’t know why we don’t have more progressive candidates when the progressive “activists”, like you, immediately get attracted to conservative Democrats because they have a cool personality. Why didn’t progressives band together and push for a progressive candidate or progressive issues this campaing? Instead we got the progressive brand, a cool hip black dude, but without any substance and who is tacking to the right as quickly as he can.
Dennis Kucinich or the lack of candidates is not the problem. The problem is that liberal-minded people, and there are a lot of us, DO NOT stand up and fight for our issues. The right-wing does this. We do not. And this post is a perfect example of the loser attitude liberals have. This should be the height of liberal activism. Instead, we were sold a pig in a poke by a smooth salesman. And progressives like you immediately made the deal for cheap. You got nothing out of it. And you guys sold your loyalty to him for a pittance. But now he’s out there appealing to the PUMAs and throwing bones to some rube in Appalachia, while his “identity politics base, the urban progressive, is totally ignored.
No. We’ll get what we deserve–a center-right establishment Democrat. And we only have so-called progressives to thank for that. It’s not Kucinich’s fault. He tried and you laughted at him.
What I don’t want is to have my ideas represented by a poor salesman. It’s not all Dennis’ fault. There is collective blame to go around. The blogosphere gave progressives a voice in media but it hasn’t given us a face in congress or in presidential politics. When Feingold was thinking of running, he had by far the most support in the blogosphere and almost none of that support transferred to Dennis. That’s almost completely a result of Kucinich’s lack of credibility even among the blogosphere. Stick up for him all you want. Next you’ll tell black folk that they hate themselves because they’re tired to death of seeing Jackson and Sharpton on their teevee.
My thoughts on this (pre-coffee, so they may not make sense): Progressives need to figure out what they want. Everyone calls themselves a ‘progressive’, but I’ve yet to hear ONE cohesive meaning. Many so-called progressives think that it’s just another word for ‘liberal’.
This progressive ‘movement’, has been weak, at best, in recruiting and electing progressive politicians. How many times do I have to watch the ‘progressive’ candidates get pushed aside by progressives in favor of the one who would most likely win? If progressives put their money and actions where their mouths and blogs are, then maybe there’d be more elected officials who meet the progressive standard.
Then there’s Kucinich. If progressives did act in their best interest, then they’d work hard to reframe and support Kucinich. As it is, they mock him just as much as the right does. There’s no basis behind it, but fear of being maligned. Instead we’re subjected to a lot of projection on candidates who are centrist or more right of liberal and a lot of hoping that phone calls and withholding of cash is going to make these people into progressives. That’s not going to work.
Politicians like Sen. Jim Webb, Sen. John Tester or Rep. Claire McCaskill are never going to move to the left and it amused me to see progressives falling all over themselves for these nearly-GOP candidates. Yes, great, they gave Democrats a majority in Congress and if that’s the goal then great, but I really don’t care to hear any more whining about how Kucinich is the face of progressivism when there’s been no action in getting a new face.
It always seems like there is an over-emphasis on the executive however (i.e. the President). We could elect the most progressive President in history, and without a Congress that was willing to help, that President would be blocked from accomplishing anything.
I guess I have always felt that to gain more credibility, the progressive movement needs to work to elect more local officials. Mayors, county executives, state representatives, and so forth. This is the farm team from which Congressmen and Senators are oftentimes developed.
Good lord, Boo. Didja ever notice that whoever is the most noticable progressive voice of the day is wacky, crazy, loopy, a hippy, unserious, deluded, hates america and you mom too, etc?
Think Howard Dean, Ned Lamont, Russ Feingold or Dick Durbin. Maybe what they say is threatening to the military-media-corporate status quo? Maybe that why you only hear negative things about them. That silly Kucinich also had this to say a while back about Iraq: “Today we’re faced with over 500 casualties, a cost of over $200 billion. And it could rise – the casualties could go into thousands and the cost could go over half a trillion – if we stay there for years.”
Yet he’s the unserious clown while the presidential canidate that sings songs about bombing other countries is a foreign policy heavyweight. Your hope for a “serious” progressive voice is contradictory – progressives, no matter what they say, can never be (and will never be) respected or taken seriously on the national stage by virtue of what they believe. That’s just how it is.
“it’s never good to have your interests represented by people that are easily marginalized. Never.”
Thanks, Boo. It is truly amazing how many lefties do not comprehend this simple fact.