I've always been a bit skeptical of Obama. It seemed to me that he wasn't as sincere about his "progressive" stance as, say, Dennis Kucinich. I wondered whether he wasn't playing to a particular audience in order to win the nomination. Apparently I'm not the only one. There are a group of Americans who have become very nervous about Obama's move to the center. They've written an open letter to Barack Obama that's been published in The Nation [Change We Can Believe In].
The authors of the letter make the important point that the progressives who were attracted to the Obama campaign are the very ones who will ensure a victory in November. They are worried that these progressives will not make the effort to work for Obama if he continues to abandon the core principles that attracted them to the primary campaign.
We urge you, then, to listen to the voices of the people who can lift you to the presidency and beyond.I think they have a point but the more interesting question, from my perspective, is which one is the real Obama? Does he really believe in universal health care but is willing to make compromises for the sake of political expediency, or is he lukewarm on socialized medicine? Does he really believe that the USA needs to get out of Iraq because it never should have been there in the first place, or is he willing to compromise on that stance? What does he really think about the death penalty? Is he opposed on principle, in which case there's no compromise, or are his "principles" negotiable? Does he really expect to change the way things are done in Washington, or is that just something he says in order to get votes?
Since your historic victory in the primary, there have been troubling signs that you are moving away from the core commitments shared by many who have supported your campaign, toward a more cautious and centrist stance--including, most notably, your vote for the FISA legislation granting telecom companies immunity from prosecution for illegal wiretapping, which angered and dismayed so many of your supporters.
We recognize that compromise is necessary in any democracy. We understand that the pressures brought to bear on those seeking the highest office are intense. But retreating from the stands that have been the signature of your campaign will weaken the movement whose vigorous backing you need in order to win and then deliver the change you have promised.
There's a discussion going on about this on Pharyngula [Progressives put pressure on Obama] but most readers are avoiding the real question. One commenter (Amplexus) said,
My fellow godless hedonists,In other words, Obama is a liar and a hypocrite but that's okay because we all know that deep down he's a true believer.
Obama is totally on our side. He's just hiding some of his feelings to get elected. We cannot take a stand on principle, we cannot afford to. Obama is blurring his position to win over independents that he sure as hell is going to shake off when he gets elected.
Is that the common point of view among liberal Americans? Won't John McCain exploit this hypocrisy during the campaign?
24 comments :
I'm disappointed in the US voters who have fallen for the promise of Obama without considering his experience, his record, his character. It seems that Americans will buy anything, as long as it's marketed as "new and improved." They seem to have forgotten that the incumbent president also ran, in 2000, as "new and improved." As Tim Shilock wrote in a letter to the FT this week, "Barack Obama is largely a political hologram projected into thin air. But the US is a religious society that prefers faith and hope in all its forms to facts." Sigh.
I'm bitter about Obama and am poised on the point of not voting or voting socialist again. As for his shaking off the pose he has adopted, forget it. The Germans expected Hitler to calm down once he achieved power. Obama is not Hitler but he seems to be an ordinary politician - false and an opportunist. He won't do anything that amounts to anything so we can sit on our hopes.
In other words, Obama is a liar and a hypocrite but that's okay because we all know that deep down he's a true believer.
You mean that Obama is "Framing" his responses?
Uh, sinyet, do you mean Al Gore in 2000? he was Vice President. not even really running as new and improved, but that is my opinion.
As for Doctor Moran's question The USA is a unique democracy, in that citizen vote directly for a president. Let us think about this.
If he sticks to his completely left-wing views, how many people in the middle will he attract to vote? how many hard core Christians are going to the polls for him? How is he going to get the person who might be leaning for him but is afraid that the hype that FoxSnooze is spewing?
This is the problem with US politics, all people running have to convince the majority to vote for them. that means you have to convince people your views are really good (which means that you have to pull republicans over the border) or you can make some concessions to appease certain groups, in the hope that the move will cool some fears.
This is a tight rope walk - to many concessions, you alienate your own base (and give opponents weapons), too few, and you lose. Bush did this on a fluke, with fear of 9/11 in 2004 and really slick tactictics in 2000 he was able to not have to appeal to the left, and excite the right with "wedge issues" like gay marriage and stuff like that.
To the outsider (and to many insiders) it looks like a liar, flip-flopper etc. but how do you convince everyone to vote for you??
In short, you cannot win (unless you use sleazy near illegal tactics) if you maintain your polarity in the USA. sorry for the length of this, there is no simple explanation.
It's the old story, Senator Obama is the lesser of the two evils by a large margin. Just from the point of view of Supreme Court nominations, McCain would be a disaster.
The Supreme Court nominations by the next president will be having an effect on what happens in the USA long after the Iraq war has been consigned to the dustbin of history.
The liberals whining about Senator Obama (by the way, I am no great fan of his and did not vote for him in the primary) and who are threatening to stay home or vote for Nader should remember what happened in 2000 when Al Gore wasn't sufficiently liberal for their taste so that they voted for Nader. Do any of these folks think that Gore was not the lesser of the two evils in 2000? Does anybody think that nominees as bad as Roberts and Alito would have been proposed by Al Gore?
It does kind of suck that we don't have a parliamentary system in which parties can build coalitions with other parties by seating a sufficient number of candidates. The more liberal parties and the more conservative parties are not going to be anything more than activist social clubs because they have no chance in our system.
I'm a Democrat, and while Obama is not "my guy" I am sufficiently vested in the prospect of him being in charge of the nominees for the next Supreme Court nominations to look past the differences I have with him. As a progressive, I think it will be important to have a feisty, more liberal Congress in there to keep Obama on guard against moving too far to the right. So, if he has to pander a bit to get elected, well, it sucks. BUT to abandon the U.S. to another Republican, especially one like McCain would just be giving in to defeatism.
I don't know what the hel sinyet is talking about. Character, record, etc are not an issue for Obama when compared to McCain.
No, I am not disappointed in Obama. Yes, my views are more similar to, say, that of Kucinich.
But Kucinich doesn't have the political skill that Obama has; hence I have a chance of getting more action on the issues that are important to me with Obama there than I would if Kucinich was there.
Obama has a strong intellect and an understanding of people; he knows that people will support an issue if they have some ownership of it. Hence, he will compromise an issue or two in order to get actions on other important issues.
Disclaimer: I am active in local politics and several of the local (state and city) politicians that I have campaigned for know Obama on a personal level.
I fail to see how anyone can support Obama after doing a little research into his record, which really shouldn't take very long considering how little he's done. Why do people support Obama? I don't get it. It certainly can't be because of his accomplishments. Is it because of his words and promises? I certainly hope not. If history has taught us anything, it's that people will say anything to be elected. Bush claimed to be a "compassionate conservative" and we all know how that turned out. I hope that US voters take the time to do some research into their presidential candidates instead of swallowing the bullshit that the media is trying to force down their throats.
(Note: I'm a Canadian student and I'm not trying to suggest that McCain is a better alternative. I'm just shocked and dismayed that Obama is the presumptive democratic nominee at all. His policies, as half-baked as they were, have never been all that progressive compared with some of the other candidates and his resume is disturbingly thin, even with the padding.)
In other words, Obama is a liar and a hypocrite but that's okay because we all know that deep down he's a true believer.
Is that the common point of view among liberal Americans? Won't John McCain exploit this hypocrisy during the campaign?
Nah, too much intrigue there for most Americans to grasp. Remember, the majority of Americans really are complete idiots. They're not deep thinkers, and they distrust those who are. That's why Bush got elected twice.
Guess what: Barack Obama is running to be leader of the United States of America, not of Canada, not of Berkeley, not of Candyland.
Obama is (probably) going to be President of the US of Freakin' A, the country that brought you the A-bomb, burned down cities in its own South, and gave Tim McVeigh (and a helluva a lot of other people) a lethal injection. America means business, whether that is just doing business or blowing things up. Tojo and Milosevic, to name a couple, paid the price for messing with Uncle Sam. Yes, America messes up big time, a lot, but the rest of the world would be f___ed without us.
Inevitably, Commander in Chief Obama is going to have to be responsible for some collateral damage, gray area surveillance, yada yada yada. So be it. (But nothing as bad as what France got away with in Rwanda.)
George W. Bush can enrage - and hence galvanize and mobilize - the Left, but President Obama can do something far more wounding to leftists - he can disillusion them. Frankly, I can hardly wait.
Obama on the death penalty, from The Audacity of Hope:
"While the evidence tells me that the death penalty does little to deter crime, I believe there are some crimes – mass murder, the rape and murder of a child – so heinous, so beyond the pale, that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage by meting out the ultimate punishment."
Published in 2006, long before his post-primary move to the center.
Also, from The Audacity of Hope:
"I also think [the Democratic] party can be smug, detached, and dogmatic at times. I believe in the free market, competition, and entrepreneurship, and think no small number of government programs don't work as advertised. ... I think America has more often been a force for good than for ill in the world; I carry few illusions about our enemies, and revere the courage and competence of our military. I reject a politics that is based solely on racial identity, gender identity, sexual orientation, or victimhood generally. I think much of what ails the inner city involves a breakdown in culture that will not be cured by money alone..."
Obama has never really been that left. His health care plan during the primary season was not progressive. He is not a different type of politician; he is a more talented one. Ever read his answer on same-sex marriages. Talk about a politicians answer. He plays both sides- against gay marriage but for equal rights for homosexuals. Talk about a cognitive disconnect. Matt Gonzalez detailed a little why Obama is not a progressive let alone a leftist. As usual with politicians, follow the money.
http://www.counterpunch.org/gonzalez02292008.html
a liar and a hypocrite
Isn't that definition number 2 in Websters under "politician"? Or maybe it was The Devil's Dictionary.
I was surprised at how many people who are otherwise skeptics accepted that Obama was going to bring "change" simply because he said he would. I don't think there's been a single national politician in the last 50 years who hasn't promised to "change Washington" (including, now, McCain). The vast majority have never tried and the few who have were quickly defeated by the system. American government is a giant machine that we cannot dismantle while it is running. Short of dismantling it, the best we can hope for is someone who knows how to run it a little better, who can install some better safety devices for the passengers and keep it from running over everyone else on the planet.
But the first rule is that anyone who hopes to do even that much has to get ahold of the wheel.
By their deeds ye shall know them...
Obama has either the most, or one of the two or three most, "liberal" voting records in the U.S. Senate. However, as he's explained a few times during the campaign, and as he explained at length in "The Audacity of Hope," he does not wish to see the perfect become the enemy of the good. (One commenter quote-mined that section of "Audacity" to make it seem as if Obama's a closet conservative. What the full section actually says is that Obama has respect for some ideas near and dear to conservatives, but at heart he tends to be liberal.) That is, he would rather see something imperfect but mainly beneficial accomplished than fail while gloriously sticking to his ideological guns.
After all, if you're a member of a U.S. Senate divided nearly equally between Democrats and Republicans, you need 10 or so Republicans to agree with you in order to cut off debate and bring legislation to a vote under parliamentary rules; you need 7 more to override a Bush veto. So which do you prefer, a politically ineffectual doctrinaire liberal, or a more pragmatic politician who's able to accomplish some, though not all, of what you wish for? (Yes, I still laugh at Kucinich's remark that Bush's goal in announcing a NASA program to put men on Mars was to look for weapons of mass destruction there, but what percentage of the vote did Kucinich pull in the *Democratic* primaries? How effective has he been as a legislator in getting laws passed that accomplish liberal goals? Going back to his early political career as the head of a local government, how effective was he as the mayor of Cleveland? Hint: Not very.)
In order to accomplish anything at all, both Obama and McCain have to be elected first, which means they have to "run toward the center." In order to be effective as Presidents, they have to have political support from legislators and the people. Gaining sufficient support almost inevitably means compromising ideological "purity," unless you've got a Reaganesque landslide mandate. Vote for McCain and your choice is someone who approaches those compromises from the right; vote for Obama, and you've got someone who approaches them from the left. Vote for another candidate or not at all, and you're helping the major candidate you dislike most. As always, the choice is in your hands.
If I were a true progressive, I probably wouldn't publish anything in a far-right, Neo-Nazi rag like counterpunch.
Won't John McCain exploit this hypocrisy during the campaign?
No, because he's doing the same thing on the other end of the spectrum.
To be president, you have to actually get elected. Since it is a de facto two party system, you first have to get nominated. This means that during the primary season, Democrats try to appeal to the Democratic base, i.e. the Left, and once nominated they try to appeal to the Center. The Republican candidate is doing a similar dance between the Right and the Center. Yes, it sucks; it seems to actually encourage duplicity in politicians. Yes, Obama is by far the lesser of the two available evils.
NucleoMancer says,
The USA is a unique democracy, in that citizen vote directly for a president.
The USA is unique in many ways but that ain't one of them.
Lots of countries vote directly for their president. The USA doesn't. Instead, American voters vote for electors who meet in their state capitals on a specific day to cast their votes for President and Vice-President.
Because of this indirect system, the winner of the election may have fewer total votes than the loser (e.g. 2000).
In short, you cannot win (unless you use sleazy near illegal tactics) if you maintain your polarity in the USA. sorry for the length of this, there is no simple explanation.
Nonsense. There's another possibility. You could campaign as a politician instead of an idealist. You could openly proclaim that you will try your best to achieve certain goals but tell your supporters that you may have to compromise.
What you should not do, in my opinion, is campaign as an idealist progressive during the primaries in order to beat a "politician" and then switch to political appeasement mode after you've won the nomination. That will really piss off your strongest supporters, not to mention the supporters of your opponent.
From The Audacity of Hope: "I also think [the Democratic] party can be smug, detached, and dogmatic at times. I believe in the free market, competition, and entrepreneurship, and think no small number of government programs don't work as advertised."
It appears that Sen. Obama can talk a good game, but let's see if his policies match-up. It would be a nice change for the Democrats to reject irrational dogma and accept reality-based economics. But I'm not counting on it.
What you should not do, in my opinion, is campaign as an idealist progressive during the primaries in order to beat a "politician" and then switch to political appeasement mode after you've won the nomination.
That isn't my reading of what Obama's done. I see his idealism, both during the primaries and now, directed mainly at the hope of getting past the divisive politics that is so ingrained in the U.S. system through gerrymandering (i.e., Congressional districts are set up to be won by right- or left-wingers, with few centrists to hold the middle together). Not surprisingly, this has resulted in gridlock that has kept Congress from acting effectively either to legislate or to check Presidential power.
Senator Clinton, unfortunately, is so connected with her husband the ex-President in the minds of conservatives, and thus vilified by association, that she seemed to offer little chance of bringing the warring factions together, in spite of a fine legislative record that might indicate otherwise. (Part of that legislative record which I wouldn't describe as "fine" is her early support for the Iraq war, probably a political necessity given that the largest city in the state she represents was the primary target on 9/11. It's noteworthy that in the midst of a primary campaign for Senate he wasn't favored to win, Obama stood against the war at likely political cost to himself.)
It's precisely Obama's expressed willingness to compromise that has left him open to the current criticism. I don't see that as a change in his position. As I and others have mentioned, this same stuff is in "Audacity of Hope," written in 2006. Admittedly, Obama mentioned this less often in the primary campaign, but at that time the issues most discussed were naturally those most important to liberals rather than those that might present opportunities for compromise with conservatives.
Was it politically expedient for Obama to mention compromise with conservatives less often during the primaries, and allow it to be a subtext in the race with Clinton under the heading of "electability" (that is, people generally understood conservatives would surely rally to defeat Hilary, but would be less enthused by the prospect of opposing Obama)? Of course. The man didn't get where he is without being ready to take advantage of political expediency, and it would be difficult to think of an elected President who would be so foolish as to pass up such opportunities when they are presented.
What you should not do, in my opinion, is campaign as an idealist progressive during the primaries in order to beat a "politician" and then switch to political appeasement mode after you've won the nomination. That will really piss off your strongest supporters, not to mention the supporters of your opponent.
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Probably they will not. Many will go along with him no matter what. They fear the other side that much. He campaigned to get into the Senate that we vote against the Patriot Act but once in the Senate voted for it. He really did not get much flack for that, minor bump.
YOu also have to realize Senator Obama really did not campaign per se as a progressive. His health care plan was more to the center than those of Senator Edwards and Clinton. He voiced the typical Democrat lines against same-sex marriages but believing homosexuals should not be discriminated against. What he did well though was frame things to get the attention of more liberal Democrats. With skillful framing you do not lie. He also was not saddled with being in the Senate for the Iraq War vote. He is not anti-war, pro-peace per se but of all the major candidates in the Democratic Party he is the one who could easily distance himself from the Bush version of war. That gave him room to really get his campaign going (not to mention rack in tons of money not just from small donors but big timers as well, look at opensecrets.org).
If I were a true progressive, I probably wouldn't publish anything in a far-right, Neo-Nazi rag like counterpunch.
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??? They are very critical of Israel but so are a number of Jewish Americans. Heck some of the greatest supporters of Israel in the US are not pro-Judaism but rather evangelic Christians who think it is their job to help usher in the end days.
Some of the guest posts in that vain (critical of Israel) do get a little close conflating Israel and Judaism but Neo-Nazi? No.
As for Matt Gonzalez, you are talking about a guy who ran to the left of Gavin Newsom during the latter's first run for Mayor. Gonzalez almost pulled an upset. The Democratic Party sent out the big guns to make sure Newsom won and did not loose the office of the mayor of San Francisco to a member of the Green Party.
Sandwalk readers,
In a country where saying you're a "liberal" has, over the past two decades, been recast to mean that you're thought of as a marxist traitor, Obama must downplay his "liberalism" to stand any chance of being elected.
For some, Obama may have become the lesser of two evils. Lets face the facts, these "evils" are miniscule compared to that which the Bush administration began and the Republican heir, McSame will certainly continue.
No politician is perfect, but can anyone here say that the course of history would have been the same today if Al Gore had been awarded the presidency? I've been a registered voter since 1968 and I've only had two candidates elected for a total of three terms... I'd prefer a win this time.
ponderingfool
Some of the guest posts in that vain (critical of Israel) do get a little close conflating Israel and Judaism but Neo-Nazi? No.
Counterpunch published an article (front page no less) by Eric Walberg:
http://www.counterpunch.org/walberg06042008.html
When not writing for Counterpunch, Walberg publishes articles (sometimes under the pseudonym "Simon Jones") for various neo-nazi websites. I won't link to such sites on Larrys' blog, but names such as "Jewish Tribal Review" should clue you in.
When a magazine prominently publishes a neo-nazi, no progressive should even consider associating themselves with it. I'm sure Matt Gonzalez is genuinely progressive (his article was interesting indeed) - he just needs to be more selective in the venue he chooses to publish.
Go 'bama!
Progressive taxation is obsolete. The USSR is dead.
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