For Disappointed Democrats, Action is the Answer

On the left, there has been great disappointment with President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress.  The compromise on tax cuts and unemployment benefits announced yesterday underscores this.  Nonetheless, I think it is important to remember that this should provoke not only criticism and analysis but also practical action, and that the action should be predicated upon a recognition of accomplishment along with critique.

Many of Obama’s critics from the left, including Martin Plot I’m sure, do recognize the accomplishments of Obama and the Democrats.  But they are understandably frustrated with how things are going.  While I think we got a much better stimulus package under Obama than we would have under Republican leadership, that’s not saying much.

A significant effort to address structural problems with the economy, including its escalating inequalities, was not forcefully presented and defended as being economically wise and socially just.  The attack on the human rights abuses of the Bush era was too quiet at best, nonexistent at worst.  Given Martin’s experience with the Argentine dictatorship this is a particularly important point for him.  I understand and respect this.

And disappointment goes further: there was no climate change legislation, no immigration reform, and no labor law, making it easier to organize (The Employee Free Choice Act).  The Republicans succeeded in blocking numerous legislative actions and now they have control of the House and have the Senate under control, even more than before in the age of the ubiquitous filibuster.

So Plot’s critique is important.  Does this prove that the power in the United States is stacked against progressive change?
That power is not an empty space as Martin chooses to put it?  That the space, where power is exercised, is permanently occupied by corporate power and Republican interests?  I think not, primarily because it is easy to imagine things developing differently if the Democrats play their game better, and crucially if Obama had succeeds in (what I take to be his central political project) changing the nature of the center of American politics.  Further, I am far from sure that continued failure is on the horizon.  Things can turn around.

Indeed, I think they will.

With the election of Barack Obama the conversation about race and identity has changed.  We celebrate our diversity with our unity, rather than homogeneity. To be sure there is resistance, but it seems to me that this is clearly a rear guard action, as I have explained in earlier posts.

On the other hand, Obama, like Clinton before him, had as a task to demonstrate the importance of government in a democratic society and in the lives of its citizens.  Clinton failed and Obama is not doing so well in response to Republican–but especially Tea Party–opposition.  But I am not convinced that this is necessarily a lost game for those of us who are on the left of the center, and who want to change the center.

Even yesterday’s compromise has promising aspects.  While it stimulates the economy (however modestly), it will set the stage for a debate during the Presidential elections about the connection between the Republicans and the  wealthy and the connection between Democrats and those are hurt most by the economic crisis.

The rational approach to our economic situation is to stimulate now, address deficit problems in the middle and long term.  The Republican part of the bargain insisted on tax cuts for the wealthy, the Democrats part insisted on aid for the unemployed.

Two years from now, when the issue is to address the long term deficit, the Republicans will argue for continued advantages for the wealthy.  This could help move the center to the left.  Changing common sense is a long cultural march, and the events of the past days may in the end contribute to it.

And I am quite convinced that a third party, which I think Martin was hinting at in his first post, given the institutionalized arrangements in the U.S., would be a recipe for defeat.   Rather, Obama must find his voice.  And people on the left shouldn’t mourn, but organize, in support of the Democratic alternative in general, critical of specific policies and priorities when necessary.

I think ultimately the reason why the Republicans won this past round, beyond the anti-incumbent mood that is a result of the economic crisis, is that they successfully mobilized in opposition to the alternatives that were appearing in Washington under Obama’s leadership.  More democratic mobilization is the answer, not another party or a despairing diagnosis of American politics.