At this point, I am about 99% sure that more than half my progressive blogging cohorts would absolutely insist, if they had lived through the 1930’s, that Franklin Delano Roosevelt is nothing by a center-right centrist who has nothing but contempt for the real Left. I am certain that they would say the same of every Democratic president since FDR. Maybe there is some secret history to this country that I am totally unaware of where Dennis Kucinich-Democrats ran everything and the consensus view of mainstream D’s was that we should have Scandinavian-style economic and social policies.
Now, don’t get me wrong…I’m not picking on Dennis, nor I am suggesting that we shouldn’t pursue policies that are in some areas further to the left than we’ve ever seen in this country. I’d be all for a mildly radical shift to the left. I’d be enthusiastic about it if Barack Obama refused to entrust anyone in government that had anything to do with either the Iraq War or the financial meltdown. But that’s not what Obama ran on, and that’s not how FDR went about solving our problems. That’s not how Lincoln went about solving our problems.
Obama’s agenda is farther to the left than anything we’ve seen since at least Lyndon Johnson, and Congress has never in its history seen a Democratic Party so united in its leftward tilt. It doesn’t matter whether Obama has centrists and moderate Republicans as part of his coalition. What matters is if he can unite (enough of) this country behind a common purpose to get things done.
People really need to stop whining and figure out how they can help.
