I almost never have anything nice to say about Republicans or conservatives, and I don’t sugarcoat my distaste and fear of them. I don’t shy away from confrontation with the opposite side. But I don’t expect my elected leaders to behave like I do. I think expecting them to behave that way shows a certain naivete. First of all, the Democratic Party has certain distinct leaders. There are obviously the president and vice-president, and high ranking cabinet members. There are also the Senate Majority Leader and Majority Whip, and the Speaker of the House, Majority Leader, and Majority Whip. There are the heads of the DNC, DSCC, and DCCC. These people are leaders of the entire breadth of the Democratic Caucus, and they can’t just stake out a position on one side of the Caucus and ignore the rest. In fact, because their power derives from the most vulnerable members of the Caucus, they have obvious incentives to keep vulnerable members happy and protected. That’s just an institutional centripetal force that forces all sides towards the middle (and most of the money, too).
Because majorities are made through a mushy-middle, there are real tradeoffs when the ideological center of the party (which is different from the centrist fringe) exerts itself robustly. There have been times (e.g., The New Deal and The Great Society) when the Democrats had supermajorities in Congress and the willingness and ability to use their political capital aggressively while they had it to push through major progressive legislation. But, in those cases, there was instantaneous backlash. In 1938:
When the election results were in, Democrats had lost six Senate seats and 71 House seats in what former Roosevelt advisor Raymond Moley called “a comeback of astounding proportions.” Republicans nearly matched the Democratic national House vote total, 47 percent to 48.6 percent; if one takes into account overwhelming Democratic predominance in the one-party South, the GOP clearly led the House vote in the rest of the country. Democrats also lost a dozen governorships, including such crucial states as Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
…and in 1966:
When all was said and done, the GOP gained 47 House seats, three Senate seats, eight governorships, and 557 state legislative seats. Republican governors controlled 25 states, the most since the early 1950s. Republicans actually won a majority of the aggregated national vote for U.S. Senate. Of the 38 House districts where Democrats had replaced Republicans in 1964, only 14 remained in Democratic hands in 1966.
FDR and LBJ were definitely confrontational, and, jointly, they provide prototypes for what a lot of people would like to see out of President Obama. However, it isn’t as simple as that. First, it must be repeated, both FDR and LBJ started out with true two-thirds supermajorities. In the 75th Congress (1937-38), the Democrats held or controlled 79 out of 96 seats. In the 89th Congress (1965-66), the Democrats began with control of 68 out of 100 seats. President Obama has been operating with between 57 and 60 votes out of a hundred. He only controlled sixty from September 24th, 2009 to February 4, 2010. Second, FDR and LBJ lost 71 and 47 House seats, respectively, in the backlash against their policies. They also lost several Senate seats, governor’s mansions, and state legislatures. Their controversial agendas and confrontational styles did not come without high costs. Fortunately, what they were able to accomplish was worth that cost (as even most of the defeated Democrats would probably acknowledge in retrospect).
When we ask Obama to be similarly confrontational we need to keep these two things in mind: he doesn’t have the same majorities and confrontation has not historically led to electoral success (at least, not in the short term).
Now, how about progressive groups? Back in the 1930’s and 1960’s our politicians were always operating with a backdrop of civilian unrest and even riots. Today, people suffer in silence. Can progressives manufacture an outrage on the left that isn’t developing organically? Should they? And at whom should that outrage be directed? The president? Or his opponents?
Our present political culture has a different backdrop. Rather than the prospect of blood in the streets, we face the prospect of a return to power of the Republican Party. As long as the president is making good progress on a myriad of progressive issues, it doesn’t make sense to sow division on the left. Where action is stalled, or moving in the wrong direction, and the possibility for action exists, then criticism and rabble-rousing is warranted. But we can’t lose sight of what lies just beyond the horizon.
It’s in that context that we should revisit this 2006 conversation between David Sirota and Barack Obama:
But that question brings another one: whether Obama wants to challenge the club in the first place. “There’s no doubt that I will be staking out more public positions on more issues as time goes on,” Obama said cryptically. Does that mean he is going to be more confrontational? “The question is not whether you end up being confrontational,” he said in a tone that made clear he had been pondering that idea long before I brought it up. “The question is, Do you let confrontations arise as a consequence of your putting forward a positive vision of what needs to happen and letting the confrontation organically emerge, or do you go out of your way for it?”
Confrontation for its own sake is a fool’s errand, despite Sirota’s argument in favor of this strategy:
If, in fact, there are two separate and distinct political parties with separate and distinct ideologies and agendas, then going out of the way to elucidate those differences is a good thing. By contrast, pretending those differences don’t exist, or trying to totally eliminate/obscure those differences, dulls any vibrant discussion and undermines decisive legislative action.
This axiom should be axiomatic both for progressive organizations and for the White House itself. But clearly its not – and, unfortunately, it may take an bad mid-term election for the value of progressive confrontation to finally be taken seriously.
Again, confrontation is not a worthy goal but, at best, a means to an end. It is not always the best means and it has historically come with a political cost. To use but one example, Senator Olympia Snowe’s vote had been needed to pass the stimulus bill and the Wall Street Reforms. The absence of her vote caused the Democrats to water down the health care bill and to go through acrobatics to get anything passed at all. How would the president have benefitted if he had decided early on to use Sen. Snowe as an example? What if he had gone up to Maine and told her constituents she was a bad person with malevolent intent? What if he deluged her state with attack ads? Would she have felt pressure to cave in to the president? Or would she have lost all interest in cooperating?
Confrontation can be useful if the conditions are right. But safe politicians are not easily pressured, and other means such as flattery and assistance must be considered. A list of the large issues facing the president would be long and intimidating, but one of his biggest responsibilities right now is to keep the Republicans out of power. He should not put our majorities at risk the way FDR and LBJ did in their midterm elections unless he can prevail and the payoff is worth the risk.
What would you do in his shoes?
Of course “confrontation for it’s own sake” is foolish.
Obama’s failing is his avoidance of ALL confrontation whatever the reason. His kissing of Republican ass and refusal to take decisive action – see the damned stupidity of the Afghanistan policy – is what has lost the electorate.
What’s lost the electorate is the economy. You can reshuffle your argument to make that work (because the “avoiding of confrontation” is also a problem there), but what’s going on in Afghanistan has almost no bearing on his overall approval/disapproval ratings of the President. Also he pretty much laid out his Afghanistan policy during the election – he planned to pull out of Iraq and redeploy those troops to Afghanistan. I didn’t like it, but that was his plan then and it seems like what’s going on now is a fairly natural continuation of that plan.
What’s killing him among the electorate is the fact that we have 10% unemployment. That makes people edgy – people without a job are depressed and angry and people with a job are concerned that they’re going to lose it which makes them depressed and angry. If unemployment were at 3% his numbers would be back where they were when he was elected.
We are not a complicated people – it really is just that simple. The fact that unemployment is a very real worry for people has them on edge, and the fact that the pols in DC don’t seem to care has them even angrier than if the pols at least pretended like they cared.
my argument. It’s the same exact point. Republicans said the stimulus was too big so Obama accepted a smaller one – ignoring respected economists who argued that it was in fact TOO small.
Yes, he accepted a smaller one that passed with 60 votes with three Republicans (Snowe, Collins, and Specter) putting it over the top. So, how was he supposed to browbeat those three senators into doubling the stimulus? By going to Maine and yelling at Olympia Snowe?
a bigger stimulus? Did he even ASK for it?
The stimulus was held hostage by those senators, in a hostage situation you have two basic choices: give in to their demands, or say good bye to the hostage.
He had no “demands” of his own. Never even ASKED for a bigger stimulus.
Cowardice and ineptitude.
They did start out with a bigger stimulus, the one in the House that was passed was bigger than the one passed in the Senate, and from what I know about the situation, Obama himself originally wanted a stimulus that was larger than what the House had passed ($1.2 trillion went to $900 billion and $900 billion went to $780 billion).
And you still haven’t explained how President Obama was going to get the votes for any higher amount, rather you’ve come up with this:
Obama’s not inept, it’s people like you, who continue to pretend that if only Obama were “tougher” (whatever that means) somehow things would be different.
Show me where Obama requested a 1.2 trillion dollar stimulus.
You know something, even if I concede that I was wrong on that (which I believe I was, it was Kent Conrad who asked for $1.2 trillion, though he did support a bill that was larger than was ultimately passed (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7856589.stm) which was roughly $40 billion larger than the conference bill), it doesn’t change the substance of what I’m saying, that is, you haven’t given me any reason to believe that asking for a higher amount would have made any significant difference.
It’s the glorious loser effect, you’re more interested in saying “I told you so” than making any real progress.
you weren’t wrong. Obama asked for $1.4 trillion initially when he asked David Obey to put something together.
Read your link again and tell me where it shows OBAMA asking for a stimulus over a trillion dollars.
It shows no such thing.
Your link confirms what I said: Obama lacks the balls to aim high. He’s an appeaser.
Ed J, we can legitimately disagree over how much stimulus Obama could/should have asked for.
But to conclude from that, “Obama lacks the balls to aim high. He’s an appeaser.” seems, to me, to be an overstatement.
I’ll take them one at a time. First, the skinny state senator with the big ears and the funny name, who had lost his first attempt at moving up politically, decides to run for US Senate against (to my memory at least) two better-known, better-funded candidates. Then he looks around the US Senate and decides he’d be a better President than Sens. Clinton, Dodd, Edwards and McCain, and that he can beat them. Those examples alone are enough for me to conclude that, whatever problems Obama has, he doesn’t lack the balls to aim high.
Second, Obama had several chances to cut his losses and get a small, incremental win on health care reform. At each turning point, he decided to push forward and to go big. (That he won, even without the public option, is a bonus.)
Obama may not pick the fights I’d want and in the way I’d want all the time. But, having watched him the past three years, he’s definitely willing and able to aim high, and to keep pushing for what he wants and thinks he can accomplish. (Just my opinion.)
Um, he asked for $1.4 trillion. It started coming down as the administration began engaging with Congress and realized they didn’t have the votes. This isn’t rocket science, Ed.
Huh? Treasury was speaking on behalf of the Administration and on behalf of what Obama wanted, unless of course you think Treasury and Obama’s economic advisers regularly do things behind his back…
He does everything through others. When did Barack Obama, The President of the United States, stand up in front of his countrymen and demand a bigger stimulus. He didn’t.
That would be leadership.
Having Treasury do it for him was cowardice.
Wow, that statement was so damn stupid, I’m not even going to dignify it with a response…
When the president makes a big show of asking for something and tells us that it is absolutely necessary and nothing less will do, he can’t very well settle for less and tell us what he’s produced is sufficient. When the president asks for something, he needs to get it. Now, I don’t know what the right number was on the stimulus, but they presumably asked initially for more than they though they needed ($1.4 trillion) and then quickly moved down to $1.2 trillion.
But they quickly discovered that there was no appetite for anything close to the big and that they didn’t have the votes. That’s when negotiations began in earnest with the two princesses from Maine and Arlen Specter, and with conservadems like Evan Bayh and Ben Nelson.
They made the case for the need, and they weren’t budging. The Republicans were under tremendous pressure to vote no on any amount.
Ed J thinks Obama could have persuaded them to go over a trillion by making a speech. Well, he made speeches. And he got what he got.
Thanks Booman, I appreciate the assist!
Obama needed sixty votes in the Senate for the stimulus, there were not 60 Democrats at the time, and there were a few Democrats (Ben Nelson) who wanted the smaller amount.
If you have a problem, take it up with the Senate, particularly Ben Nelson, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins (and remember, both Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are more popular in Maine than Obama is, his leverage against both of them is very limited).
But he doesn’t even use his leverage, other than war funding.
What leverage? War funding is always given except under extremely rare circumstances because there is no way to spin voting against feeding and clothing the troops, so it didn’t require any leverage to get it.
The President has no power over senate rules, and his ability to influence individual legislators is limited by the fact that he has no formal ability to punish or reward anyone. This isn’t a parliamentary system, the congress derives its powers from a different base than the president does, which makes his leverage extremely limited in scope (especially against members of the opposition party).
It’s often hard to tell exactly what leverage Obama (or any president) has, and what leverage he uses.
Having said that, there are certainly examples of times he’s used his leverage that have been emotionally unsatisfying (he said politely…) to me, e.g., keeping Joe Lieberman in the Democratic caucus, or making nice with Olympia Snowe.
In the end, the fact that Snowe voted for the (too small) stimulus, and that Lieberman has mostly voted with the Dems when they’ve needed 60 votes is, to me, evidence that Obama’s approach has worked as well as any other approach might have. There’s a big difference between having 59-60 Senate votes to play with, and having 79.
How about telling Joe that in return for welcoming him back into the caucus in 2008 that he didn’t expect him to filibuster his agenda? Nobody knows what sort of conversation Obama has with the conservative members of our caucus but its also possible that obama just struck bad deals with these guys. It may be a question not of Obama’s ideology but his competence. People aren’t born with an innate ability to strike good backroom deals, and such qualities certainly don’t get you elected president.
What exactly could Obama have possibly said to any of the conservative members of the caucus that would’ve guaranteed their support?
The problem remains that Obama, or any other Democratic president, has absolutely no leverage over Senators in states where he is unpopular (Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln fall into this category) or a guy who just wants to be an asshole for the sake of being an asshole (Lieberman).
I believe it was Joe Lieberman who told I believe the NYTimes that he was never pressured to support a public option. Nope, the Huff Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/21/lieberman-obama-never-pre_n_399355.html
Interpret that as you will.
So what? The chances of the public option being passed by the senate on the first go-around was non-existent, because Lieberman wasn’t the only one opposed to it, and pressure on him would not have changed that fact. You don’t get brownie points for losing a vote 58-42 instead of 57-43.
By the way, making some painful concessions for the sake of the larger goal is part of being a good leader, that some people decided the fate of a weak public option, (the one that was NOT tied to Medicare rates) which had very little chance of passage in the first place, should be the final say in how good a leader Obama is just defies the reality of the situation and paints a false picture.
whether Obama could have persuaded conservative Dems to support the public option nor why he never tried. But the fact that he didn’t try — untempered by any compensating gestures to the left — doesn’t sit well with me. While being open to future disclosures, in the absence now of contradictory information, I’m going to go with the simplest interpretation.
Obama had sky high popularity when he came in and the momentum of a large majority and a mandate for change. He could have said “Passing a public option is important to me and the American people.” He didn’t. Since he hasn’t tried to excuse that, why should I?
Your evidence is that Joe Lieberman said so, that amuses me a lot. And you’re also forgetting that Harry Reid, with the blessing of the Obama administration did attempt to get the public option tacked onto the original Senate bill. Unfortunately, it failed.
Your definition of “trying” seems to be “point a gun at senators’ heads to get what I want”
Yeah .. but you saw what happened when the “Cornhusker Compromise” became public .. or how Blanche Lincoln’s grandstanding didn’t do her any good … as someone up thread said .. we didn’t need Nelson’s vote for the end product .. just procedural(cloture) .. and Nelson decided to stick his neck out .. and got it chopped off .. why … I’ll never know .. I guess he was trying for his 15 minutes of fame .. the point being .. Nelson could have not gummed up the works … and just voted against the final bill .. but that wasn’t good enough for him or Lincoln
That Nelson and Lincoln (and Lieberman) were acting irrationally isn’t really relevant to whether or not there was something Obama could have done about it.
what would have happened if Obama drew a line in the sand over procedural votes? you make it seem like its perfectly normal for senators to obstruct their own party’s agenda and there’s nothing the President and congressional leaders can do about it. its a delicate game- push too far and they bolt the party. My view has been consistent from the start- Obama didn’t play this game well. Even allowing for the victories- they all took up too much time and left zero time for immigration or climate change.
You really don’t know any better than i do what carrots/sticks used against lieberman, nelson and lincoln.
Barack Obama is not “Grand Dictator of the Senate”, if he draws a line in the sand on procedural votes and a Democrat crosses it, he has no power to do anything about it.
Sure he does, he just chooses not to do it. Look at the DNC’s expenditure for Ben Nelson.
You’re also ignoring that Obama’s legislative victories are the most significant progressive reforms undertaken in the last 40 years,
You mean HCR/HIR that is 1990’s Heritage Foundation RomneyCare? Sure it’s an accomplishment, but lets not act like we passed single-payer.
Obama is the party leader and head of the executive. Anything that has to do with party resources such as campaign funds, access to donors, relationships with advisors, consultants, etc, he controls. Anything that has to do with the executive branch, he controls. No he’s not the prime minister- that goes without saying. But to say the President only has the power to say pretty pretty please with a wavering congressman is laughable. Obama and Rahm know how to play the carrot/stick game- they’ve done it at times and at times they haven’t.
If you want specifics, I’d do this: through backchannels (for plausible deniability) I’d make it known to those three that confusing your procedural with your substantive vote will have an adverse impact on your relationship with the white house. that means, any friends or supporters up for administration jobs go to the back of the line. any pending requests with any federal agencies go to the back of the line. any requests for money from the DSCCC or DNC goes to the back of the line. Top party consultants and donors have scheduled meetings (a few months out, and they can be cancelled if you’re a team player) with up and coming politicians from your state about potential primaries.
Lieberman’s refusal to go ahead with the 55 medicare buy in is going to have some serious negative effects for my family. Politics is an ugly game and hard choices have to be made. But those choices have huge impacts on people’s lives.
Weirdly no mention of Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln or Joe Lieberman. Booman, the strawman description is pretty fair for a lot of your posts. Where progressives I think really lose it is when the 3 above named senators obstruct the already watered down and compromised neoliberal, third way legislation that is close to being passed by the senate. How would FDR have dealt with those guys? I’m not even going to mention LBJ because we know very well that they each would have received the “treatment” I want a big tent party and every dem senator should be allowed to vote their conscience on substance- but not procedure. I’m not asking Obama to browbeat Olympia Snowe I’m at the very minimum asking him to NOT support three senators who have obstructed his agenda and been key players in the Party of NO, milk the clock strategy that is shutting the one progressive window that was open in a generation.
Right, but Blanche Lincoln’s polls tell you what Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman’s would be if they were up for reelection. In the toilet. And, in Nelson’s case, simply because he has a (D) on the end of his name. It’s true that progressives in Arkansas and Nebraska are not too happy with these two senators, but their bigger problem is Obama’s approval numbers in their states. Progressive change creates a backlash, and there are ways to mitigate that backlash or exacerbate it. Shoving Ben Nelson into the Republican caucus isn’t going to help. It will just validate the idea that the Democrats are too liberal in those districts that give us our majority.
Obama is trying to maintain a coalition that incorporates the left, the center-left, and the center-right, and if he can’t do it, the GOP begins to take power back.
Too liberal? Because Ben Nelson is a corporate whore?
All good points, but putting aside the fact that we’d have gotten health care done sooner and thus probably have climate change done before the midterms if those three didn’t obstruct/threaten to obstruct neoliberal legislation, what would the general narrative be if Obama had more of the scent of a winner on him, rather than allowing those three to constantly thumb him in the eye? Nelson, Lincoln’s and Lieberman’s reelection prospects would all be better off if Obama is successful and government measures (which they are obstructing) are able to have a positive impact on the economy. The fact is, Obama failed to adequately bargain/threaten to get those three to give up their process vote and be free to do as they want with their substantive vote. Going back, oh about 12 months those were important distinctions that have melted together thanks to those three and the GOP.
The general public doesn’t understand the concepts of liberal and conservative. All three of them could have voted (substantively) against any legislation they wanted and pointed to the electorate that they did just . A fascinating post (and I mean this sincerely because I think you’re best suited to answer this) is what FDR and LBJ would have done if in Obama’s seat in September 2009. At that stage, Olympia Snowe was irrelevant and all that mattered were Lieberman, Lincoln and Nelson.
The issue, however, is your audience. For whom are you writing? If you are writing for opinion leaders in the progressive world, your comments make complete sense: “Don’t rile up the rank and file demanding Obama take a harder line. It’s bad politics.” That, I think, is your message.
But rank-and-file progressives are in fact emboldened and invigorated when Obama and other Democratic leaders push harder for progressive policies and fight more vociferously against right-wing demagoguery.
When it comes to independents and other voters, you accept their foibles and treat them as an audience that must be wooed. You would never tell a low-information swing voter to interpret Obama’s behavior as would a strategist. It just isn’t persuasive to average people to think that way. They interpret politicians’ behavior literally, not as political theater.
The rank-and-file progressives are no different in that respect. Asking them to tolerate Obama’s “insufficient progressiveness” (or whatever you want to call it) isn’t a good message for them to rally around.
I don’t think Obama has tried hard enough to rally his base. It’s a mistake the Republicans never make.
How would the president have benefited if he had decided early on to use Sen. Snowe as an example? What if he had gone up to Maine and told her constituents she was a bad person with malevolent intent?
You know this isn’t what people wanted. And I am surprised you’d stoop to this. The point of the rallies is to tell people to call Snowe’s(or Collins’) office and tell them that they should support the President’s plan. And it has the added benefit of getting on local TV as well. Heck, the only time he would even mention their name would be when he reminds people on who to call. There are a lot of other options out there that don’t involve Ben Nelson being Senator Geary’d.
One other point. I don’t think confrontation has anything to do with it really. Look how confrontational Dubya was. That never hurt him personally. And it took 6 years to even do him minimal damage at the polls. Give the large Democratic majorities you mention, naturally they wouldn’t be able to hold them forever. Maybe there are better candidates. Maybe some of it(1966) was the Southern Strategy taking hold and Southern Democrats warming up to the Republicans.
One other thing, you don’t reward obstruction(Ben Nelson) with a $500,000 wet kiss from the DNC.
Bush’s popularity was an artifact of 9/11, and the only reason the Republicans were able to do so well in the 2002 midterms and to hold the presidency in 2004.
And look at how his confrontational attitude served him with his Social Security privatization scheme, it killed his numbers.
So you think Bush could have won the day if he was less confrontational about Social Security? I don’t think so. Privatizing it was always, and is always, a bad idea.
But it did kill his popularity, which is what you were talking about.
And my larger point was that George Bush’s popularity stayed artificially high because of 9/11 anyways, so any comparisons made to W are going to obstructed by that point alone.
Bush was maximally aggressive on nearly every front, both legal and illegal, and look at his legacy and look at who currently controls Congress. The positive things he did (in the sense that nothing got blown up) like NCLB and Medicare Part D didn’t require aggression. Well, okay, Part D required aggression against his own party. He has nothing to show for his aggression and confrontational style except a transitory amount of electoral success and a crippling debt he left the country (in money and spirit).
sorry, i call bullshit on that. My previous job at a multi-service human services org included writing articles for our on-site senior center’s newsletter, and medicare part D was not a positive accomplishment for anyone but the drug industry.
here’s the cached version. Please keep in mind that this was vetted by an executive director as well as senior center staff, and can’t be dismissed as relentless negativity and permanent outrage
and don’t even get me started on No Child Left Behind, which has left behind significant numbers of children,taken money from struggling schools that need it, and continues to inform “race to the top” which most teachers will tell you is NCLB with a different name.
I took care of signing my mother up. The process was so convoluted, the information so contradictory, that I thought for sure it would blow up for Republicans. I thought there are so many people either signing up for this or helping someone sign up for this that when they see how incompetent and consumer-unfriendly a Republican-designed program is, they’ll never vote for them again.
Alas, no. I had it all wrong.
But I don’t think that Obama will fare as well with HAMP.
At the old job, i would see elderly widows so confused by the process they were sitting in the lobby crying because they couldn’t understand the forms, lost coverage, and were made even poorer than they already were.
but I want to try this out.
I’m making my way though Thomas Sugrue’s “Sweet Land of Liberty”, a history of the (largely forgotten) northern civil rights movement of the 20th century. (Excellent book.)
Sugrue has a chapter that covers, basically, the first two years of JFK’s presidency. Here’s the first half of the concluding paragraph of that chapter:
“Activists had put open housing on the table and had forced concessions from the Kennedy administration, however symbolic. They had taken the Kennedy administration’s executive order on affirmative action and run with it. And they had used the administration’s emphasis on job training and job creation to launch grassroots antipoverty efforts. Kennedy’s cautious innovation had created a feedback loop effect, empowering civil rights activists, who, frustrated at the gradual pace of change but emboldened by their victories, put more pressure on the White House. The White House responded with a little more.” (p. 285)
In many ways our society and our politics are wildly different from the early 1960s. But I was struck by the dynamic Sugrue described: progressives organizing to force the Kennedy administration to respond. The administration responding cautiously. Progressives taking the new opportunities created by the administration’s responses (e.g., affirmative action) and organizing to put new pressure on the administration.
To create the kind of deep, lasting change we want will require that kind of feedback loop. It places a responsibility on the Obama administration to respond to organized pressure (from its left as well as from its right). And it places a responsibility on progressives to organize for power, and to seek for and recognize opportunities created by the Obama administration to organize more deeply and widely.
Yes, Kennedy had to be nudged in the CR area. Coming to office with a vy narrow MOV of 100k votes, he wasn’t about to make any bold moves too soon that actually could have set back the movement or stopped its momentum.
Like Lincoln with the EP, he was going to wait until the time was right to act, and by mid-63 he did act boldly with the CR bill, the most comprehensive such bill since Reconstruction. Then when the March on Washington was announced, his admin worked closely with the CR leaders to make sure it was a success, because failure would have probably killed the bill dead in its tracks.
Of course, in CR in the 60s, you had the dynamic charismatic leader MLK leading the charge, with a few more fringe groups helping to make him and his cause even more of an establishment preference. No such dynamic forceful and consequential leader for the progressive left today, alas, in just about any area we’re concerned about. Lots of wonks and bloggers and nice well-meaning folks, but no great leaders to rally the troops and get them organized and highly visible and impossible to ignore.
Brodie, thanks for your thoughtful response.
I’m reminded that politics is more art than science. For example, we remember the Emancipation Proclamation as a bold step by Lincoln. But the Proclamation only freed slaves in areas not controlled by the Union. (There’s a reason many African-Americans observe Juneteenth—because it wasn’t until June 19, 1865 that the last slaves were freed.) Garry Wills (among others) is insistent on this point about Lincoln: he was a great politician because he was a careful politician—having a strategic vision of where he wanted to go politically, but also having a cautious and keenly honed tactical sense of what was politically possible at any given moment in time.
As for the leadership and organization of the civil rights movement, well…, books by the dozens continue to be written about that. Having read a few of them, I’d say first, there’s no question Martin Luther King, Jr. was a charismatic orator and leader. Second, the NAACP, CORE, SNCC and the Urban League (to name just four of the most prominent organizations) were not “a few more fringe groups”. They each contributed mightily to the movement. Third, the movement produced Dr. King, not vice versa.
As for the progressive left in the post-King era, the gay rights, feminist and immigrant rights movements are three branches of “the left” that have had (and are having) a significant impact and are doing so without having a single, charismatic leader. Immigrants, in particular, have been successful in organizing hundreds of thousands of people at mass rallies (far more so than the much-ballyhooed “tea party” movement).
I would say the same positive conclusions GWills reaches about AL, that you cite, would also apply to JFK in the CR area, though I doubt if Wills has granted Kennedy that much in his writings over the years (at least judging by his late-70s anti-Kennedy book). Kennedy’s keen political judgment has been largely overlooked or downplayed by historians, who tend to fall into the usual LBJ worshipping trap, but a few have noticed it (notable among them, LBJ’s famous biographer Rbt Caro).
Re fringe groups, at least in the ’63 period it might have been more accurate to say fringe elements or overheated personalities here and there — Malcolm X for instance, or the young John Lewis of SNCC, whose original speech for the MOW, taken out by March leaders, was rather incendiary in some respects, or the hotheaded author James Baldwin — who tended to make MLK and the movement he represented more palatable to the political establishment. Of course, by 1966 it was a different story — SNCC had been taken over by firebrand Stokely Carmichael, and the Black Panthers emerged, shotguns in hand, and generally there was much more open grumbling that MLK and his SCLC were going about things too softly and slowly.
Re dynamic leaders being absent today, I tend to think they’re still an important element which the left movement could greatly benefit from to organize around and put a human face on their cause, though I do have my 60s upbringing bias. And I think the jury is still out about the effectiveness today of the largely leaderless movement in the various areas you list.
Charles Payne wrote a history of SNCC and the Mississippi Freedom Movement titled “I’ve Got the Light of Freedom”. In it he distinguishes between the “community mobilizing” and the “community organizing” traditions within the civil rights movement, and asserts the importance of both in the movement’s successes.
Of the major civil rights organizations, SNCC, following the lead of people like Ella Baker and Septima Clark, best exemplified the organizing tradition: slow, deliberate, relational work, aimed at identifying and developing indigenous leaders, with an emphasis on an ongoing cycle of activity that included building relationships and trust, careful preparation for targeted action campaigns, and ongoing reflection and learning about the work by both leaders and organizers.
Dr. King himself emerged as a leader from the Montgomery bus boycott. That boycott was years in the making, and was carefully organized by leaders like E. D. Nixon, Joanne Robinson, Rosa Parks and others. There’s a remarkable letter from Mrs. Robinson, written to the Montgomery mayor 18 months before the boycott, warning him that there had been extensive discussions within Montgomery’s Negro community involving 38 (!) different organizations of the possibility of collective action (including a boycott) regarding the bus company’s practices.
I guess the point I want to raise up is that there is a living, breathing, ongoing, dynamic relationship between leaders and mass movements. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a 3rd generation minister in the Black Church—the most significant African-American social institution in the Jim Crow South—so he was well prepared to be a leader in his community. However, it was the Montgomery movement that raised him up and created the opportunity for him to be a civil rights leader—first in Montgomery and then more widely.
One problem you illustrate is that our political office holders are our leaders. The right obviously, has been captured by non-office holders, but there is a huge value in having leaders of the Dem party not always be elected officials. Then you have vocal voices both in and our with real clout. That’s why Dean at the DNC was so valuable. The establishment hated him so hard, but he was undeniably a party leader. So Dean confronted because he was not an office holder and because of his own personal style and his support among the netroots. And it worked because Dean was a team player at the end of the day.
I don’t find the example of the 1936 and 1966 elections particularly accurate in the “confrontation” context you set out.
FDR had his confrontations for sure in ’37 with the Court then with trying to purge his party of a few he saw as anti-ND; both were failures. But the big deal going into ’38 was the unforced and bizarre blunder by FDR in going Hoover with the economy all of a sudden (budget slashed including jobs programs) with the result that unemployment shot back up to 20%. Try running as a ND Dem in that environment — Roosevelt’s own “depression w/n a Depression.”
’66 involved less confrontation than nervousness and even anger over LBJ’s unforced and bizarre blunder with suddenly sending the US into a major war in VN. Yes, there was some anti-CR backlash that year, the sense among a certain segment, on second thought, that maybe CR was too much too quickly for them to accept. But imagine how depressed the Dem base was with all of a sudden a major war to defend, with the draft acting to take our young men into harm’s way every day.
So, yes, I’d recommend Obama avoid such unforced and unnecessary blunders. Unfortunately, he’s halfway there to making Afghanistan a full-blown blunder — jury’s waiting for his Dec 2010 decision — and he’s already partly blundered early on with a weak stimulus bill which should have been 50% larger.
Obama is obviously doing the wrong thing, as far as the pouting progressives are concerned. It’s better to make empty losing symbolic gestures that validate their ideology than get any results, tainted by moderation or compromise or not.
I agree that this is the question to answer.
As I understand the HAMP program, the administration had $50 billion dollars to set it up however it wanted to, not subject to Congressional compromises, and it’s been a failure. I’d shake it up, get the right people to run it, and make it an example of what principled, liberal government can do when Democrats are unfettered by having to appease Conservatives.
I’d make many bold recess appointments. I’d make a huge issue out of the abysmal rate of nominees voted on because of …
Republican dereliction of duty. Not obstructionism, not bullying, not anymore of the Party of No bullshit. Democrats can’t complain about Republicans acting like children without looking like children ourselves and the Party of No is tacit acknowledgment that Republicans have their shit together. There’s nothing inherently negative about obstruction. Face it, we wish we had had the assertiveness to pull off 1/2 of what they’re doing as the minority and it rings hollow to complain about something we secretly admire.
I’d make it known to the base, either directly or through well-placed leaks, that I’m unhappy about the health care reform results, even if I’m not. I’d make sure that my base knew that I’m disappointed that we didn’t get a public option and that I’m looking for the next opportunity to get it, even if I don’t think it’ll ever happen.
But this is the crux of it – the base is disjointed because we don’t know whether Obama’s decisions and outcomes are regretted pragmatisms or representative of the ideology we convinced ourselves to ignore when we were in love or even the true face behind the campaign’s intentional deception, or while we’re at it, the learning curve of a naive executive, or for better or worse, the character flaw of an obsessive conciliator. I think it’s because of this uncertainty that we’re so fractured and so passionately reactive to him and each other.
Also, nominate Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
And I would have more press conferences. The rarities of these is ridiculous.
As always, one of the joys of this blog is the comments section, which follows intelligent posts with intelligent discussion. I also appreciate the general civility. To my point:
It seems backwards to me to make comparisons of Presidents. We should be comparing contexts. If we compare Obama to FDR or LBJ, we put them as individuals at the beginning of a causal relationship: x leads to y, or FDR pushed for this, and Social Security happened, or LBJ hammered these people, and the Civil Rights Act happened. Obama’s achievement is by comparison less impressive from a Left point of view than either FDR or LBJ if one takes this approach.
More valid would be to begin with a comparison of contexts. The economy in 2008/early 2009 was crashing, but not nearly to the extent nor for as long as that in 1932/early 1933. Desperate times indeed call for desperate measures, but from a practical perspective, the only one worth taking for those who are interested in actually making people’s lives better, those measures are limited by the extent of the desperation at hand.
It is worth noting that while it is true that economists argued and continue to argue that the stimulus was too small, those same economists will argue the same thing about the New Deal, in its Keynesian aspect. It was the war spending (not the war itself, it should be stressed) that flooded the economy with enough money to replace that lost in the collapse. I recall reading somewhere that had the New Deal been twice as large (or something like that) it would have ended the Depression itself. FDR, too, had his limits. It is also worth noting that Social Security, as initially passed, was not nearly as comprehensive as that proposed by Francis Townsend.
It would be naive to suggest anything like “Obama is always doing the best possible under the circumstances,” but I think that a lot of us on the Left do not sufficiently appreciate the extent to which the Right has conditioned the terms of the debate and, therefore, placed practical limits on policy. Obama is working under a particular set of constraints not shared by FDR or LBJ. There is no massive groundswell of progressive movement at this moment in history. We should not forget the number of people physically in the street demanding a better life in the ’30’s or ’60’s, nor should we forget how much stronger organized labor was in those times.
To chalk the insufficiency of this or that policy to incompetence without a real discussion of context among other things gives much too much agency to particular individuals.
I would attack, attack and attack till their is blood in the street and the heads on the points of the WH fence.
Your article misses a very important point about FDR losing his majority after having it for 4 yrs. He listen to Republicans and raised taxes and stopped spending when the Federal government was the only organization capable of spending. The result was we/the USA returned to the Depression. The rest of the world was gearing up for war which kept them from returning to the Depression.
As to the kind of attack I would have is I would go to a sign where 44 is accused of being a National Socialist in every House district in the country and ask the following questions has anyone who is mentally challenged ever been asked to go to a death camp. I would ask if there children have had to register w/ the local Democratic party?
I would ask have we ever asked a Jew in this District to wear a yellow star? I would ask if the Nuremberg laws have been introduced into the House or Senate. I would remind them of what the Nuremberg laws did in terms of stealing Jews assets from them. I would call out every Jewish organization, a community that prides itself on its knowledge of history and ask why every Jewish Congressman or Senator remains silent to these racist accusations? I would grill Rep Cantor on the house of the floor about this. Has any Jewish American even heard of such legislation or death camps being formulated by the Democratic party?
I would ask has legislation ever been introduced to make Islam the official religion of America?
I would ask if the President has declared martial law and been elected to supreme omnipotent leader of the US after the Democratic party burned down the Capitol building?
I would ask if African Americans should be bred into supermen?
I would ask did we have an election, cite the results and then ask did the Democrats come to majorities in the WH, the Senate and the House by illegal activities? have any committee’s, rules or any other legislative process occurred w/o legal input form the Republican members of Congress?
You can’t attack people like Beck, Limbaugh w/ cabinet members or legislative member. This is where a Democratic war room comes in. You have to fire off to each and every news/media organization a refutation of any and all Republican nonsense by every means of communication possible.
This means 44 needs to grow a pair. He has to be willing to use OFA to counter Republicans. He has to be willing to use and combine Democratic party leaders w/ OFA. this means a counter attack. He needs to stop referring to them as our friends and colleagues; by no means do they meet that description. He needs to use his cabinet members explain what their program is. He needs to write the legislation so that it helps people immediately as opposed to in three years like the health reform legislation.
This is just the first series of steps.
People still have this bizarre belief that back in the day people like LBJ and FDR didn’t water stuff down. They stood firmly behind 100% progressive legislation and never wavered. Are you kidding me?
When LBJ had the chance to get universal health care LBJ not only didn’t get it, he found the task too daunting and didn’t even try.
Imagine if Obama had done the following. Instead of going for some kind of universal healthl care he created a program just for the poor (Medicaid). Oh, and it only covers poor kids and their care givers. No adults. He created a health care program for the poor that originally didn’t friggin cover adults.
Then when average life span was something like 70 he creates a plan that doesn’t kick in till you have one foot in the grave (Medicare at 65).
Oh and this program also has no prescription drug benefit, doesn’t cover home health services, and also does nothing for the disabled. This was the original Medicare and Medicaid LBJ created.
There isn’t one person in the left blogosphere that wouldn’t be screaming for his head.
And FDR, the towering Political figure of his day passed a Social Security Act that was a racist piece of shit. It extended no benefits to blacks, hispanics, immigrants, the self-employed, clergy, railroad workers, state and local gov’t workers, federal employees, the disabled, survivors and their dependents, employees of not for profits, and had NO cost of living adjustment. I think it covered 2 people.
It was a total racist piece of SHIT. Oh and FDR also didn’t attempt health care. FDR a guy in a wheel chair passed a version of social security THAT DIDN’T COVER THE DISABLED.
People also forget the second thing FDR did once in office. The second act to become law under the New Deal, after the Emergency Banking Act, which was a progressive piece of legislation, was a conservative bill, the Economy Act. It cut salaries of government employees and benefits to veterans, the latter by 15 percent. Imagine Obama being in the White House for all of 5 minutes and cutting the salaries of the military and Government workers.
Let’s also not forget FDR cutting back on spending and throwing the economy back into recession, stacking the board of his National Industry Recovery Act with center right people including a Reynolds Tobacco executive as it’ head.
Oh yeah, he also threw Americans in internment camps.
Oh, and he also did nothing for Universal health care.
Oh, and that watered down pice of shit he passed called Social Security didn’t pass until his 3rd year in office.
Oh, and the minimun wage didn’t get passed until his 6th year in office.
With all that, he was the best. Thank goodness for him. My point is FDR wasn’t the FDR everyone makes him out to be. And same for LBJ. For every supposed non liberal thing Obama has done you can pretty much find something equivalent with FDR.
Am I saying FDR + LBJ were horrible? Of course not. They were great. I’M just saying that if you hold them to the same standard as Obama you should be pretty pissed at them, not saying Obama should be more like them.
I’ve been trying to remind people online of some of these same points for years about LBJ (took what he could get, but not much more) and to a lesser extent FDR, but folks tend to be stuck in their old, distorted paradigms of these historical figures, and the actual truth tends to get pushed aside as unwanted or annoying facts that get in the way of a good already-scripted story.
Though I’d disagree that LBJ was “great” as you conclude. No president in my book who starts a massive unnecessary war, and lies about doing so to Congress and the public, can be called great. He badly lost the confidence of the people, who rightly grew not to trust him, then his VN War badly split the country, so deeply that it led to the election of Dick Nixon.
FDR, otoh, did not start any unnecessary wars, though he was flawed for other reasons that you cite. Still, a claim to greatness or near greatness.
It would depend on the issue and the person. I might go to Iowa and pressure Chuck Grassley, or somewhere where someone would feel the pressure. Snowe and Collins aren’t up for re-election and even if they were they’re extremely popular (they get re-elected with 60-75% of the vote). They’re not going to respond to pressure from their constituents.
Really, because of the Southern Strategy, Obama doesn’t have that much leverage. Missouri, maybe? Iunno how we even have someone like Ben Nelson in our caucus in the first place. Then again, there are a few states where I don’t know how to campaign, and Nebraska (and the Mid West) is one of them. What he can’t afford is to push Nelson out, which would definitely happen with added pressure. That’s just what we need…a conservative dickwad joining the Republicans more than he already does, and setting a media narrative for a good two weeks that the Democrats are too liberal for poor wittle centrist Ben Nelson.
What should be done is primarying. That’s it. Work for better Democrats. I read last week on a FDL diary some person in comments saying “I plan on working against the Democrats!” or something to that extent. Christ all mighty…
Also, once again, David Sirota proves that he’s a a know-nothing toolbag. I’m always surprised when he doesn’t self-reference to his “syndicated blog” in his posts, though. That’s a step-up for him.
That’s just what we need…a conservative dickwad joining the Republicans more than he already does, and setting a media narrative for a good two weeks that the Democrats are too liberal for poor wittle centrist Ben Nelson.
If you are gonna worry about what the idiots in the TradMed say, you are sad indeed. I don’t see you with a radio show in a major market, a newspaper column, or a resume that includes working for a number of different politicians on it.
One thing that is clear from the responses is what are we being “confrontational” about. This part of the post makes it amibigous, Where action is stalled, or moving in the wrong direction, and the possibility for action exists, then criticism and rabble-rousing is warranted. But we can’t lose sight of what lies just beyond the horizon.”
I want to be very clear it is about the rampant racism and anti pluralistic American society I am talking about. The nuances of passing legislation require confrontation to but it has a different nature. I would ask that Booman clarify what he meant by confrontation.