Let's Be Clear About Obama

[zenekar]

Let's Be Clear About Obama

by Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor's Cut blog

TheNation.com - posted on 11/23/2008 @ 9:52pm
https://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcu...ar_about_obama

There are some interesting conversations and debates
underway at thenation.com (see especially Chris Hayes
at Capitolism, "Left Out") and in the progressive
blogosphere (see Glenn Greenwald, Jane Hamsher, Digby
and David Sirota about why Obama has so few
progressives among his cabinet picks.) It's worth
checking them out.

I think that we progressives need to be as clear-eyed,
tough and pragmatic about Obama as he is about us.

President-elect Obama is a centrist at a time when
centrism means energy independence and green jobs and
universal health care and massive economic stimulus
programs and government intervention in the economy. He
is a pragmatist at a moment when pragmatism and the
scale of our financial crisis compel him to adopt bold
policies. He is a cautious leader at a time when, to
paraphrase New York Times columnist Paul Krugman,
caution is the new risky.The great traumas of our day
do not allow for cautious steps or responses.

At 143 years old ( that's the The Nation's age, not
mine), we like a little bit of history with our
politics. And while Lincoln's way of picking a cabinet
frames this transition moment, it's worth remembering
another template for governing. Franklin Delano
Roosevelt was compelled to become a bolder and, yes,
more progressive President (if progressive means
ensuring that the actual conditions of peoples lives
improve through government acts) as a result of the
strategically placed mobilization and pressure of
organized movements.

That history makes me think that this is the moment for
progressives to avoid falling into either of two
extremes --reflexively defensive or reflexively
critical. We'd be wiser and more effective if we
followed the advice of one of The Nation's valued
editorial board members who shared thoughts with the
Board at our meeting last Friday, November 21.

1. It will take large scale, organized movements to
win transformative change. There is no civil rights
legislation without the movement, no New Deal
without the unions and the unemployed councils, no
end to slavery without the abolitionists. In our
era, this will need to play out at two levels:
district-by-district and state-by-state organizing
to get us to the 218 and sixty votes necessary to
pass any major legislation; and the movement energy
that can create public will, a new narrative and
move the elites in DC to shift from orthodoxy. The
energy in the country needs to be converted into
real organization.

2. We need to be able to play inside and outside
politics at the same time. I think this will be
challenging for those of us schooled in the habits
of pure opposition and protest. We need to make an
effort to engage the new Administration and
Congress constructively, even as we push without
apology for solutions at a scale necessary to
deliver. This is in the interest of the Democratic
Party--which rode the wave of a new coalition of
African Americans, Latinos, young people, women,
etc--but they have been beaten down by conservative
attacks and the natural impulse will be caution and
hiding behind desks.

3. Progressives need to stick up especially
forcefully for the most vulnerable parts of the
coalition--poor people, immigrants, etc--those who
got almost no mention during the election and will
be most likely to be left off the bus.

[Katrina vanden Heuvel has been The Nation's editor
since 1995 and publisher since 2005.

She is the co-editor of Taking Back America--And Taking
Down The Radical Right (NationBooks, 2004) and, most
recently, editor of The Dictionary of Republicanisms,
(NationBooks, 2005)

She is also co-editor (with Stephen F. Cohen) of Voices
of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev's Reformers
(Norton, 1989) and editor of The Nation: 1865-1990, and
the collection A Just Response: The Nation on
Terrorism, Democracy and September 11, 2001.

She is a frequent commentator on American and
international politics on MSNBC, CNN and PBS. Her
articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The Los
Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Boston Globe.

Her weblog for thenation.com is "Editor's Cut."

She is a recipient of Planned Parenthood's Maggie Award
for her article, "Right-to-Lifers Hit Russia." The
special issue she conceived and edited, "Gorbachev's
Soviet Union," was awarded New York University's 1988
Olive Branch Award. Vanden Heuvel was also co-editor of
Vyi i Myi, a Russian-language feminist newsletter. ]

_____________________________________________

[phloem]

Yeah, let's be really clear about Obama....he's a war criminal, a member of the elite cadre of pro-Zionist defenders of capitalism at any cost. Vanden Heuvel and her ilk make a living posing as the spokespeople for the "left," all the while ignoring the massive injustices occurring every day in our names, by way of the U. S. military, the CIA, USAID, the NSA, and scores of other agencies that use our tax dollars to foment fear and use terrorism to maintain the status quo.

Let's Be Clear About Obama

by Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor's Cut blog

TheNation.com - posted on 11/23/2008 @ 9:52pm
Let's Be Clear About Obama

There are some interesting conversations and debates
underway at thenation.com (see especially Chris Hayes
at Capitolism, "Left Out") and in the progressive
blogosphere (see Glenn Greenwald, Jane Hamsher, Digby
and David Sirota about why Obama has so few
progressives among his cabinet picks.) It's worth
checking them out.

I think that we progressives need to be as clear-eyed,
tough and pragmatic about Obama as he is about us.

President-elect Obama is a centrist at a time when
centrism means energy independence and green jobs and
universal health care and massive economic stimulus
programs and government intervention in the economy. He
is a pragmatist at a moment when pragmatism and the
scale of our financial crisis compel him to adopt bold
policies. He is a cautious leader at a time when, to
paraphrase New York Times columnist Paul Krugman,
caution is the new risky.The great traumas of our day
do not allow for cautious steps or responses.

At 143 years old ( that's the The Nation's age, not
mine), we like a little bit of history with our
politics. And while Lincoln's way of picking a cabinet
frames this transition moment, it's worth remembering
another template for governing. Franklin Delano
Roosevelt was compelled to become a bolder and, yes,
more progressive President (if progressive means
ensuring that the actual conditions of peoples lives
improve through government acts) as a result of the
strategically placed mobilization and pressure of
organized movements.

That history makes me think that this is the moment for
progressives to avoid falling into either of two
extremes --reflexively defensive or reflexively
critical. We'd be wiser and more effective if we
followed the advice of one of The Nation's valued
editorial board members who shared thoughts with the
Board at our meeting last Friday, November 21.

1. It will take large scale, organized movements to
win transformative change. There is no civil rights
legislation without the movement, no New Deal
without the unions and the unemployed councils, no
end to slavery without the abolitionists. In our
era, this will need to play out at two levels:
district-by-district and state-by-state organizing
to get us to the 218 and sixty votes necessary to
pass any major legislation; and the movement energy
that can create public will, a new narrative and
move the elites in DC to shift from orthodoxy. The
energy in the country needs to be converted into
real organization.

2. We need to be able to play inside and outside
politics at the same time. I think this will be
challenging for those of us schooled in the habits
of pure opposition and protest. We need to make an
effort to engage the new Administration and
Congress constructively, even as we push without
apology for solutions at a scale necessary to
deliver. This is in the interest of the Democratic
Party--which rode the wave of a new coalition of
African Americans, Latinos, young people, women,
etc--but they have been beaten down by conservative
attacks and the natural impulse will be caution and
hiding behind desks.

3. Progressives need to stick up especially
forcefully for the most vulnerable parts of the
coalition--poor people, immigrants, etc--those who
got almost no mention during the election and will
be most likely to be left off the bus.

[Katrina vanden Heuvel has been The Nation's editor
since 1995 and publisher since 2005.

She is the co-editor of Taking Back America--And Taking
Down The Radical Right (NationBooks, 2004) and, most
recently, editor of The Dictionary of Republicanisms,
(NationBooks, 2005)

She is also co-editor (with Stephen F. Cohen) of Voices
of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev's Reformers
(Norton, 1989) and editor of The Nation: 1865-1990, and
the collection A Just Response: The Nation on
Terrorism, Democracy and September 11, 2001.

She is a frequent commentator on American and
international politics on MSNBC, CNN and PBS. Her
articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The Los
Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Boston Globe.

Her weblog for thenation.com is "Editor's Cut."

She is a recipient of Planned Parenthood's Maggie Award
for her article, "Right-to-Lifers Hit Russia." The
special issue she conceived and edited, "Gorbachev's
Soviet Union," was awarded New York University's 1988
Olive Branch Award. Vanden Heuvel was also co-editor of
Vyi i Myi, a Russian-language feminist newsletter. ]

_____________________________________________

[Tars]

"I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people who are convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference after another."

Ellen Goodman


"Lasting change is a series of compromises. And compromise is all right, as long your values don't change."

Jane Goodall