I like E.J. Dionne. I think he’s on to something in his latest column. He’s basically saying that President Obama is creating a center-left liberal establishment in Washington that is reminiscent of what we saw in the glory days between 1933-1968. Here’s where I think Dionne is wrong. It’s not really Obama who is creating this.
What’s going on is that the Democratic Party is expanding to include people who have been Republicans all their lives. This mainly involves ordinary citizens, but it also includes politicians. The Republicans are losing scientists and internationalists and people that have moderate views on social issues. They’re losing secular people and they are hemorrhaging anyone who isn’t white. The Republicans are polling terribly in every region of the country outside of the South.
The Democrats have a growing number of people that are moderate or even right-wing in their outlook. Because of this, they have to juggle a lot of balls to keep everyone happy. Managing the party becomes a center-left affair even though progressives make up the single biggest bloc of Democrats.
Obama has pushed hard for progressive aims in certain areas and had tacked towards the center in others. Where Dionne is right is that Obama has consciously moved to do two things. He’s used his appointments to lock in as big of a governing majority as possible. He retained Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense, appointed Ray LaHood as Secretary of Transportation, and tried to appoint Judd Gregg as Secretary of Commerce. He lured Arlen Specter into the Democratic Party. He let Joe Lieberman keep a committee chair and his seniority. He appointed his chief rival as Secretary of State. He courted the endorsement of Colin Powell and wooed Dick Lugar and Chuck Hagel into soft support for his presidency. He quickly moved to make up with John McCain.
Essentially, Obama was making it safe for moderate, reasonable Republicans and right-wing Democrats to embrace his presidency and become part of his coalition. This inclusiveness disarmed the Republicans and seduced the Democrats. Obama’s tent is so large that it isn’t reasonable to refuse to sit within it. The second thing Obama did was to match centrist messaging with centrist policy is some key areas. Other than on some civil liberties issues, Obama hasn’t abandoned any campaign promises, but he hasn’t tacked hard to the left either. His challenge is to moderates. He’s taking away arguments for opposing him.
To some degree, Obama has faced opposition from the right-wing of the Democratic Party. But he hasn’t faced unhappiness. He hasn’t seen any schisms. His harshest critics on the left have been on the far left. Yet, even they do not oppose him.
It might sound like I am agreeing with Dionne. It certainly appears that Obama is responsible for creating a new center-left consensus. But he is merely navigating something that was created all on its own. The country hasn’t so much become more left-wing as the Republicans have failed to represent people of a centrist mind-set. There is an upside and a downside to Obama’s approach.
To understand this we need to look back at George W. Bush. Bush was (s)elected without winning the popular vote or the Electoral College. He initially had narrow majorities in Congress. Yet, he governed as if he had won a giant mandate. He pushed as hard as he could to make as much change as he could and he pushed a hard-right agenda. This polarized the country and ultimately led to failure in every major field of endeavor. Yet, Bush did move the country to the right on regulatory policy and in the courts. He did get his war in Iraq and he did win reelection. Bush’s philosophy seemed to be that he needed to push to get things done with the limited time he had and damn the consequences for the prospects of a lasting Republican majority.
Obama has a bigger mandate and he has much bigger majorities in Congress. There is no question that he could push through really progressive changes if he didn’t care about maintaining his coalition or polarizing the country or re-empowering the Republican opposition. If he fails to do so, the opportunity could slip by. Large Democratic majorities only come along every so often and its important to make good use of them before they disappear.
What is the point of power, after all, if you don’t use it when you have it? That’s one side of the argument. The other side is that the Democrats can do more good in the long-run by building a ruling coalition. In beating the Republicans down to a tiny rump party, the Democrats ensure that we won’t be faced with periodic Republican resurgencies that cause serious and lasting damage to the Republic.
Obama didn’t create the center-left Establishment, but he is doing everything he can to protect and consolidate it. Whether his efforts bear fruit depends in large part on two factors. He must create a national health care system that fundamentally changes the contours of debate in this country by moving it far to the left. And he must avoid letting Afghanistan become this generation’s Vietnam.
Well, here you have it, the full contradiction. If he succeeds with either or both of these primary (I fully agree) goals, he blows up the coalition. No centrist wants a single payer or public option health care bill and every centrist regards Afghanistan as too big to lose.
So, perhaps one builds coalitions in order to blow them up. 🙂
There are a couple of issues with your assertions.
There are lots of centrists who want single-payer or public option health care. They mostly are not in Congress, but they are the constituents of folks who are. The question is how hard the left is willing to work to mobilize their support for single-payer health care.
The issue with Afghanistan is more complex. Your assumption is that Afghanistan is already this generation’s Vietnam. It is not. There is not yet the massive public opposition to the war that there was in the case of Vietnam. Obama does have some, a little, probably until the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq in 2010 to make progress.
The solution to Afghanistan will involve more than the withdrawal of American troops. Some of those elements of the solution might be falling into place. The Indian election has solidified the rule of the Congress Party, making relations with Pakistan easier at a critical time when the Pakistani military has realized that India is not its greatest enemy–the Taliban within Pakistan is. That is the shift that has been dramatized in the Pakistani military’s drive into the Swat Valley and the internal propaganda about the religious oppression that the Taliban was doing in the Swat Valley. Look for similar action in the northwest provinces. There is a growing reaction against Wahabism in Pakistan.
Hamid Karzai’s demands that US troops refrain from air strikes and his alliance with two powerful warlords helps move Afghanistan towards stability, ignoring the human rights implications. Stability buys time for a political solution.
Which leaves the sole focus of US policy in Afghanistan. Removal of terrorist training camps and the al Quaeda leadership and infrastructure. For most independents, centrist or otherwise, this is what is too big to lose. It is not beyond imagining that through diplomacy these folks are picked up to be extradited to the US for trial, just as the 1993 World Trade Center bombers were.
Centrists would regard that as a major national security victory even as US troops rapidly left Afghanistan. The Republicans would be apoplectic about Obama “endangering national security by depending on law enforcement and bringing terrorists to stand trial in the US”.
I don’t see how this blows up the coalition.
What is in doubt is that Obama can succeed in a different way than has occurred in the past. Only time will tell.
The first battle is health care. Progressives must begin to mobilize support for single-payer and put electoral pressure on a Republican Party in retreat. Single-payer is the litmus test for any member of Congress seeking re-election in 2010.
Sounds good, just like winning the lotto though, what are the odds.
Also, to my knowledge, Obama has never supported single payer, and isn’t even saying that the lack of a public option would be a deal breaker. If he won’t fight, we won’t even have public option.
He has voiced support for single-payer in the past. But not in Congress or on the campaign trail and certainly not since becoming President,
IIRC … he said single payer is what we should have .. but he has admitted that it will never pass Congress .. so that is why he doesn’t support it … so yeah .. he basically admitted that Congress(and specifically the Senate) is a bunch of WATB’s
The other big issue which could destroy Obama is if the bank bail-outs end up burdening generations of Americans with huge debt repayment bills, or indeed if they result in lasting damage to the USA’s dominance of the world economy. The fact that these problems were not of his making is neither here nor there. People will blame him if the US empire is no longer so dominant in 4/8 years time.
He cannot keep handing out money to the banks every month while at the same time taking single payer off the table. The left sees it as pandering to the health ins. companies.
Sending hundreds or perhaps thousands of our men and women into the armpit of the world-Afghanistan- isn’t going to help him either.
I’m sick of his bi partisan crap. After 8 years of hell, I did not vote to put a “centrist” in office.
His SCOTUS pick will tell alot.
I know Obama can give a good speech and that his intellect is in working order. Where I have my doubts is his spine, his backbone and how hard he will fight for what he believes in. Health care and Afghanistan will be the acid tests for his courage and while I wish him the best, I will not grant him a freee pass so he can woo more Republicans and build a stronger coalition.
It is time to show what he’s really made of; I sure hope he has some steel amidst all that flowery eloquence.
I think that the vast majority of Americans, when not looking for terrorists under their beds or some other Republican-generated fear, are looking for things that a progressive government would provide. My sister, who whines about single-payer after watching Fox, has to pay through the nose because she’s a cancer survivor. She’s happy her husband is on Social Security and can’t wait for herself to get on it. So the point is that she loves single-payer, she just doesn’t know it. And she’s to the right of Attila the Hun. Likewise, most Republicans who lined up behind Bush when Iraq and Afghanistan were his wars are quite ready to end them now that they’re Obama’s wars.
If Fox’s broadcasting licenses were revoked and the network disappeared tomorrow in a month Obama’s support would go up another ten percent. It’s a false antipathy being generated against him and in a world of fair and balanced reporting much of that antipathy would disappear.
++++
That said, Obama’s issues aren’t with the voters as much as they are with the permanent government. The banks, which pulled us into this latest depression, are basically refilling their coffers without benefit to the economy. Where does their power come from? I ask because that power will have to be defeated for our economic structure to be stabilized.
Easier to measure is the military/intelligence component of the permanent government. They’ve got the guns, they’ve got the dossiers on everyone, they’ve got the ears listening in our everyone’s phone calls. I have wondered how the FBI, using statutes for catching terrorists and drug dealers, ended up catching a New York governor who was getting too vocal about the mortgage scams that the Bush Administration wouldn’t prosecute. And I wonder about John Edwards’ girlfriend. It was revealed in the National Enquirer, which years ago was bought and recreated into the tabloid rag it is by Generoso Pope, a CIA propaganda man, and allegedly funded by mobster Frank Costello. If you were around for the sixties you know that the intelligence wing had a lot of propaganda rags out there circulating as well as plenty of reporters and editors who always slanted in their favor. Why wouldn’t they continue? And wouldn’t bringing down Pretty Boy Edwards serve the healthcare industry?
Then there are the oil companies. What is Afghanistan but the straw that sticks into all the oil and natural gas of the Stans to the north of it? It’s not al Qaeda, it’s not democracy or women’s rights or he Taliban or stopping opium, although they’ll all be dangled in front of our eyes.
—-
So I think that Obama’s vision, or the vision he presented when he was being elected, is in harmony with most Americans, far more than voted for him. His problem is that that vision isn’t in harmony with the bankers, the generals and the oil companies and other corporatists. It’s not left-right, never has been really. It’s top-bottom, and I don’t see Obama in the present constellation of power culling any vigorish to change rules of the house.
The only way to counter money power is with people power. That means progressives doing a better job at persuading the persuadable among their friends, family, co-workers and neighbors and getting off the progressive fixation on Fox and the ditto-heads.
We now know where the majority in this country stands, given the information. Getting them off their duffs to fight for issues that actually help them is the current challenge.
Blue Dogs should face heat from their constituents. Is it possible to organize that enough to unfreeze the Congress?
yup. it appears he “just wants us all to get along”
I’m very disappointed in his lack of spine. I often wonder if we were duped by this smooth talking, very smart and very charismatic politician. If he doesn’t man up soon he will lose the base and will be a one term president. Unfortunately for him and us I guess, he seems to care about what the wingnuts think.
He will never ‘lose’ the base, if by that term you mean left.
Who else is there for them to vote for?
No matter how he disappoints, he is the man in place at this point in time. The Republicans are almost certain to nominate a crazy to run against Obama, making the choice between Obama and national suicide.
Obama’s only chance of being a one term is not in losing the base, but in losing the moderate Republican and right leaning Democrat. So far he has shown that he believes THEY are his ‘base’.
He is probably right.
nalbar
So far he has shown that he believes THEY are his ‘base’.
He is probably right.
Are they gonna donate to his 2012 campaign? Are they going to work/volunteer for his campaign?
Maybe not, but I sure as hell won’t.
There are other parties and it completely for them. It is also possible to replace a party. If the republicans are disappearing because the dems are becoming republicans that makes room for a lefty party.
There is no question that he could push through really progressive changes if he didn’t care about maintaining his coalition or polarizing the country or re-empowering the Republican opposition. If he fails to do so, the opportunity could slip by.
Are you serious? What change could polarize the country? Reforming health care? What issues has he pushed the Senate on lately? Sounds like he is leaving everything there to Reid. At what points will he push and prod and demand the Senate pass certain bills because they are important and it is what the American people deserve? At what point does he tell the banksters enough is enough? I wish I could agree with Dionne but I think this column is his wishful thinking. Not what it actually happening. So far, Obama is more JFK than LBJ or FDR.
More JFK than you could possibly know.
I’d be very pleased if Obama turned out to be another JFK. He pushed for progressive measures (CivRts, Test Ban Treaty and beginning of detente with Russkies and new beginning, using quiet back channels, with Castro) while keeping the country out of war (no combat units to Nam) and united and very much behind him (except for losing some southern white support).
Such was not the case with LBJ for instance, who badly divided the country over his disastrous Nam policy. Though for sure Johnson did move legislation through in the 64-6 period, helped after 64 by a huge Dem majority in Congress — 68 Dems in the senate and some 295 in the House. Only FDR enjoyed such overwhelming cong’l numbers on his side.
Let’s hope Obama is as smart as JFK in not getting the US bogged down militarily overseas, and let’s hope he’s smart and tough enough to take on the Pentagon and CIA when they foot drag on reform or come up with another of their stupid hawkish schemes.
And meanwhile, will Obama turn out to be as savvy as Kennedy and FDR were in dealing with the economy?
I don’t disagree with the post. I was just referring to the Sword of Damocles. Or the Mannlicher Carcano of Dallas.
And Lyndon Johnson pushed through a ton of stuff by playing on Congressional mourning for JFK’s death. As I’ve learned more I believe the greatest thing JFK did for the country after the Cuban Missile Crisis was die for it.
I’m not sure I agree with the proposition that Obama “could push through really progressive change,” or much more progressive change than he is actually attempting.
Consider this: on the policies where Obama has made the Left unhappy, there is significant, determined opposition from moderates and the right. For example, many of us are displeased about the prospect of preventive detention. But those who complain about this rarely acknowledge the storm that would ensue if Obama did not employ that option, to some degree. And it is hardly clear that the storm would only come from the far-right.
What will be telling is if Obama declines to push for the most progressive option where the opposition seems powerless to stop it, such as in making his S.Ct choice.
I agree that pursuit of long-term majorities does not always justify abandoning the best short-term legislative answer. But I’m not convinced that Obama has really sacrificed much that he could have obtained anyway.
I agree that pursuit of long-term majorities does not always justify abandoning the best short-term legislative answer. But I’m not convinced that Obama has really sacrificed much that he could have obtained anyway.
Has he tried? Why did he even bother with that statement about 80 votes on the stimulus? All you get with 80 votes is a seriously watered down bill(unless it is war spending .. or proclaiming Bible Day … or slamming MoveOn.org) .. has he even tried to twist Congress’ arm on the Public option?