July 23, 2010

• Kabuki Democracy

  If you take the time to read one lengthy piece on politics this year, I strongly  recommend Eric Alterman’s Kabuki Democracy: Why a Progressive Presidency Is Impossible, for Now.

  It’s 17000 words. It’s extensive. It’s detailed. It’s extremely well written. 

  And I don’t agree with it at all.

  Okay. That’s not fair.  I actually agree with the VAST majority of it.  I think Alterman does an extroardinary job describing in great detail what can be called the Progressive Critique of the current state of our Democracy. If you don’t understand where Progressives and Liberals are coming from and what they are going on about when they rail against a system gone haywire, you would do well to read this piece. It will paint the complete picture for you in the way we liberals and progressives see it. The corruption. The imbalance of power. The disgusting cravenness of the media. The broken Senate. The revolving door. The disproportionate influence of lobbying. It’s almost all there.

  In fact much of the middle of this piece should ring true in the ears of many conservatives and libertarians and independents as well who perceive the very same problems with nearly the same roots. Certainly I should think that anyone who looks at things honestly would be outraged at the way the system we live in has continuously broken down over the last thirty+ years thanks to the greedy dishonest actions of perverse men with power. The facts really are hard to assail.

  However, it’s Alterman’s overall argument that these facts are meant to support that I totally find difficult to accept.  Basically he asserts that all of these systemic problems he’s described are reasons why we need to cut President Obama a little slack. It’s because of all these things that it is impossible for Obama to be any more progressive than he has been.

  OK… Why? 

  It’s true, structural problems limit what a President can do. True. We’ve all known that. But there’s an assumption in Alterman’s piece that in lieu of those many structural problems, Obama would be a Progressive President. That half of the argument he has far from proven. And many many people on the left present arguments on a daily basis based on concrete actions the current administration has done and is doing that certainly seem to suggest he wouldn’t be progressive even given a chance.

  Just to give the simplest example, there was extraordinary consternation amongst the gay rights community when the Obama administration chose to vigorously defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court.  There was no reason to do that. It’s hard to see how he scores any political points short or long term because of that action. In effect it seems like he’s just throwing gay people under the bus just because he wants to or thinks that’s the best thing to do.

  Now perhaps he is doing some deeper calculation in order to prevent greater risks down the line. Maybe he’s playing “4 Dimensional Chess” as Jon Stewart likes to say in order to outsmart and outwit the structural constraints Alterman has described.

  But I find that very hard to believe. 

  If the drubbing the Democrats are about to face in the November election are a sign of 4-Dimensional Chess brilliance, I think I’ll stick with the good old fashioned kind.

  There really is another possible explanation. It could be not just that these structural factors are impeding Obama from doing what HE wants to do. It could very well ALSO be the case that the Obama administration is itself a structural factor impeding our ability to get what WE want done. Both can be true at the same time.  Both likely are true at the same time. Obama might be more progressive if there weren’t quite so many forces allied against him. But at the same time… probably not all that much more progressive. Probably only a little bit more progressive. Because in truth, if you examine his speeches and his policy proposals, Obama himself is not and never was particularly progressive.

  Is it so hard to imagine that part of the struggle to have a progressive President might also entail a struggle against an administration that thinks progressivism and liberalism are “f-ing retarded”? That this administration might be nearly as much of a hindrance to having a truly progressive presidency as any of the republican presidents we’ve had in the past? Indeed, isn’t it possible that he might even be MORE of a hindrance, since he legitimizes radical conservative ideas by making them seem bi-partisan? It’s ALWAYS harder to fight against your own friends and family who might support Obama initiatives BECAUSE it is Obama proposing and supporting them than it is to fight against a clear enemy that is proposing the same.

  That being said, so what? Maybe despite that Alterman is right that we have no choice really but to assume that Obama is really playing the long game and is brilliantly playing within the confines of the system better than anyone else could be expected to. And our only real hope if we want to see a Progressive Presidency is to create a movement for change so large in 2012 that it compels Obama to be the President that he deep down wants to be or else has no choice but to be because of the strength of our movement. Maybe…

  But I want to note that Alterman is asking progressives to take a pretty HUGE risk. It seems like a pipe dream to me, but let’s imagine it anyway.  What if we do  abide by this strategy and we create that movement and in 2012 there really is his massive progressive movement?   What happens when Obama still chooses not to govern progressively? What he slaps away the hands of liberals, calls them “f-ing retards”, proceeds to cut social security, start a war with Iran, and hires the most industry friendly people he can fine. And when we try to pressure him with our “movement” we run into another structural impediment created by Bush and Obama and the last few prior presidents the excessive power and unaccountability of the Executive branch. He just laughs at our “pressure”.

  Can you imagine the extraordinary sense of despair and disillusionment that would capture hold of the left? It’s one thing to be disappointed now when we know in the back of our head that things are sooo hard that there might be an excuse for all the things we see that are going wrong.  But it’s quite another to try *again* and be slapped in the face again and for NO reason!! People would explode. Who knows what kind of blow that would do to the long term prospects of the left?

  Admittedly it’s all speculation on my part. But so is Alterman’s more positive suggestions.  The real question is SHOULD progressives and liberals take the risk?

  Regardless, it’s clear to all of us that we need to organize around progressive ideals and push to get people to understand that the lies coming out of Fox News are in fact NOT what liberalism are about. The only question is, is the more effective strategy for doing that to organize around the Obama administration or AGAINST the Obama administration. 

  This is not an academic choice. Liberals are not generally the type to be inclined to withhold their critique of injustices.  If we are, however, to use Obama as a rallying point we would of necessity have to speak our praises of his administration louder than our critiques in the hopes that he get re-elected or in fear of saying something that might hurt his chances of re-election. That Health Care turned out weak we would have to stress is a result of Republican obstructionism and corporate interest (which is true)  but also de-emphasize that it was the Obama administration’s cow-towing to those interests that partly made it possible (also true). And similarly in our defensive of the Democratic party on any number of issues. That idea doesn’t sit well in my stomach. It sounds kinda sick. I’d do it if it were the only choice, but barring that I’d much rather approach issues honestly than engaging in that sick kind of pragmatism.

  Alternatively we really could try to throw our support around a third party or a primary challenge or an independent candidate. We could push very hard to oust Democrats who haven’t served our interests up to and including the President even at the risk of possibly helping conservative candidates. It might even be substantially in our long term interest to push the debate further to the left and defeat the grotesque false narratives arising out of the Right even if it results in some minor republican victories. It could easily be the case that putting more pressure against Obama might cause the Obama administration to govern in a more left wing fashion. Right now, they seem to react only to those critiques levied by Fox News. Maybe we should focus far more on changing that dynamic.

  Of course the risk of that is the more you criticize Obama on real topics the more likely people are also to believet he ridiculous false criticisms coming out of the right. The time we spend attacking him instead of defending him just allows false narratives to flourish distorting the national conversation. And that too feels a little sickening and wrong. It’s sort of like throwing Obama to the wolves in order to push a better candidate.

  I honestly don’t know which strategy makes more sense. Honestly I think it’s probably neither. Rather I think the game will need to be played in much smaller dimensions with tiny movements sparking up across the country fighting injustice and intolerance without a thought to how it plays in the media circus and Washington politics.  If the movement gets big enough and united enough and influential enough, it won’t matter whether they support Obama or someone completely different. As long as the movement doesn’t get suckered the way the Tea Party is being suckered by the Republicans and the way many in the Elect Obama movement currently feel suckered by the Obama administration.

  But right now I only see the smallest of stirrings of that kind of movement here and there. People are discouraged and disheartened (not to mention broke) and with good reason.

  So there’s one further aspect of the Alterman piece I think is incredibly important. The message of hope. It is right for Alterman to remind us that not long ago it would have been seen as an impossibility for a very young, inexperience mixed black man with a name that rhymes with Osama and a middle name of Hussein to actually win the Presidency. But he did. WE did. We got him elected against all odds.

  And throughout history all meaningful change seems impossible before it actually happens.  There’s no reason to think that at this time we can’t make it happen to. We just need to engage in the boring day to day activity of learning, understanding, building communities, organizing, protesting, sharing, teaching, dispelling ignorance, and growing as we day by day continue to make this world, just a little bit at a time, better.

  50 years ago if I were alive I wouldn’t have had the right even to vote. 150 years ago I would have been a slave. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not all that long ago. If you could time travel back to 1960 it would be a world unrecognizable to the world we live in today. We enjoy extraordinarily more freedom as a society now than people could ever have imagined back then.  And sure not everything is better now. Change always cuts both ways. But it’s hard to say the overall history of the last century as not being primarily a time of great social progress around the world. 

  In 50 or a hundred more years who knows what more social progress we might achieve if we fight to achieve it? We just can’t let the fear and despair overwhelm us. I often find that a tall order myself especially of recent days. But we all have to continue to pick ourselves up and do our part. Again and again and again.

  So I agree wholeheartedly with the quote Alterman borrows at the end of his extroardinary piece. “If not now, when? If not us, who?”

  • 6:36 pm
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