[GPSCC-chat] [ufpj-activist] Obama's prospects in 2012/Response to Bennis and Martin

Fri Dec 31 06:30:05 PST 2010

It's easy to understand the frustration of so-called progressives/liberals with the "Titanic parties", according to a recent show on KPFA.  When examining the agenda of the last four most popular presidents (a list including Obama and Clinton), each of them were in perfect agreement on key policies: maintaining war; cutting taxes especially for the wealthy; austerity for the poor/elderly with regard to welfare, medicare, social security, etc.  It's an astonishing method of analysis!

I've begun to realize that the American cash cow lacks the critical thinking it takes for personal survival; even the lowly Roman slaves demanded bread with their circuses.
Andrea

On Dec 29, 2010, at 12:25 PM, fred wrote:

> 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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