[GPSCC-chat] [ufpj-activist] Obama's prospects in 2012/Response to Bennis and Martin
fred
fredd at freeshell.org
Wed Dec 29 12:25:59 PST 2010
The progressive Green Party would welcome the thousands (or millions?}
of disgruntled Left Wing Democrats.
Fred Duperrault, Mountain View, CA
On 12/29/10 12:37 AM, Melvin Rothenberg wrote:
> Although Obama has made some tactical mistakes-particularly in his
> timing of his health care bill- I consider him far from politically
> incompetent. I think he has basically accomplished his legislative
> agenda. The trouble is that his agenda was not our agenda.
>
> It still seems difficult for progressives to grasp that Obama is a
> centrist, which means that his politics are sharply different from
> ours. He is very aware of the contradictions and acts very consciously
> and skillfully to marginalize us politically while minimizing the
> alienation of his electoral base. On every important issue, whether
> it be the Afghan/ Pakistan invasion, immigration, the
> prison-industrial complex, job creation, schools, the housing crises,
> tax policy we differ profoundly.
>
> If we look at Obama's legislative accomplishments there are only two
> that progressives can endorse. The Start Initiative is on balance
> positive but but of minimal, almost trivial, content in controlling
> nuclear weapons, and in any case badly motivated. To Obama it is
> mainly a gesture to Russia, in his attempt to line up Russian
> endorsement of sanctions on Iran- sanctions which in themselves are
> retrograde. The DADT repeal is a genuine step forward on Gay rights
> but has its downside in beefing up and legitimatizing the military.
> The other legislative achievements are either window dressing, like
> the financial reform act, which has no real substance, or so
> profoundly flawed that their negatives out weigh the positives such
> as the Health Reform bill, or actually reactionary with no redeeming
> feature such as extending the Bush tax cuts. The extension of
> unemployment insurance included in the tax cut bill should have and
> could have been done as a stand alone bill which would have certainly
> passed if fought for despite Republican noise.
>
> The central point of Mark Stahl's commentary is certainly correct.
> Our future as a political force does not lie either in pushing Obama
> left or convincing progressives to " Save the Dems". We only have a
> future if we can mobilize massively , in the streets and in the
> community, around our program and politics. We must take as models
> the Civil Rights and earlier Anti-War movements however we must be
> able to mobilize around a much broader set of issues. Such a campaign
> will involve pressuring elected officials, not on the basis of gaining
> partisan advantage, but positively in terms of social justice and
> negatively out of fear of civil disorder and upheaval. In this
> situation our focus cannot be on promoting or electing any particular
> politician or party. This is how these earlier movements accomplished
> what they did. In the process we might change the character of US
> electoral politics but this will be the result of our success not its
> precondition.
>
> Mel Rothenberg
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 12/29/10 1:18 AM, Mark Stahl wrote:
>> Phyllis Bennis and Kevin Martin, in a recent posting on AlterNet,
>> have written an excellent analysis of Obama's failed policy in
>> Afghanistan. However, I found their political discussion at the end
>> to be surprising and unsupportable, even though presented as a
>> potentiality rather than as a prediction.
>>
>> "If the president and his political team are as savvy as everyone
>> thinks they are (or at least were in the 2008 campaign), they'd
>> do well to get in front of that wave and run on a genuine peace
>> and green prosperity platform. Imagine if that happened, and
>> President Obama really did start paying attention to his anti-war
>> base, and began carrying out the dramatic shift in policy
>> necessary to insure a real withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan,
>> a genuine move to close Guantanamo, a final withdrawal of all
>> remaining troops in Iraq, a serious level of pressure on Israel
>> to end its occupation, as well as to launch a serious New New
>> Deal to create green jobs and rebuild the economy... Then not
>> only would the president likely coast to re-election, but the
>> Afghan and U.S. people would be the real beneficiaries -- instead
>> of banks, war profiteers and Wall Street -- and THAT election
>> would really be one for the history books."
>> http://www.alternet.org/story/149321/
>>
>> I realize that this is not a prediction, but since we are dealing
>> with politics and not fantasy, we have to assume that they believe
>> that this scenario is at least a remote possibility. However, such a
>> scenario is totally unimaginable, and there is no point in even
>> presenting it within a serious analysis of future possibilities.
>>
>> First, despite the media punditocracy, the recent successes on DADT
>> and START were not the result of Obama's "savvy" political team, but
>> of the utter collapse of the Republican strategy in the Senate on
>> these two issues. If Obama had a competent political team, his
>> approval rating wouldn't be so low, nor would his party have faced a
>> recent electoral defeat of historic proportions.
>>
>> Second, the history of the last two years is a total failure by Obama
>> and his administration on virtually every key issue, with a greatly
>> expanded war in Afghanistan, expanded secret wars in Pakistan and
>> Yemen, expansion of US military power in Latin America, harassment of
>> Muslim-Americans and the antiwar movement, indefinite detentions
>> without judicial review, inattention to the environment, bank
>> bailouts, tax breaks for billionaires, and an assault on the future
>> of Social Security.
>>
>> All the statements that Obama has made since the recent elections
>> indicate that he has not the slightest intention of reversing course
>> in any of these areas. In fact, all the indications are that Obama
>> will continue his militaristic policies around the world, continue
>> the assault on civil liberties, and initiate the coming "austerity"
>> in the US with cutbacks on Social Security, Medicare and other
>> services. In this context, the scenario that Bennis and Martin are
>> asking us to imagine is unimaginable.
>>
>> The US peace movement has been in a state of de-mobilization for the
>> last three years because of the influence of Obama-mania. However, I
>> believe that during the next two years, "Save Obama" or "Save the
>> Dems" is going to be a very hard sell for the antiwar public in the
>> US, in view of the abject failure of Obama, his administration, and
>> even "progressive" Democrats on virtually every key issue facing us
>> today.
>>
>> Mark Stahl, Providence RI
>>
>>
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