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.
