Category: Barack Obama

Obama & The Overton Window

There are all sorts of post-mortems on the Massachusetts Senate race today and what it means for health care reform. But Peter Daou, former Clinton internet operative, has a must-read post on the larger questions of how the Obama administration has failed to achieve its goals after one year. Daou concludes:

Progressive bloggers have been jumping up and down, yelling at their Democratic leaders that the path of compromise and pragmatism only goes so far. The limit is when you start compromising away your core values.

This is really key. Compromise is not a path to victory, nor is bipartisanship. Going out and starting a panel to cut social security and entitlement programs is not what the doctor is ordering. Passing health care reform, improving it immediately through reconciliation, and then moving on to a strong jobs and infrastructure package, on the other hand, is what is needed. The administration and Congressional Democrats need to show America what successful Democratic governance looks like…and that answer can’t be “similar to Republican governance.” They have to draw contrast, move the Overton Window to the left, and find new ways to make this country work.

Havel on Obama, China & Tibet

The Wall Street Journal has an interview of former Czech president and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Vaclav Havel. In it Havel speaks about Obama’s handling of China and the Dalai Lama and the elemental mistakes he is making in his policy towards Tibet and appeasement of China. After comparing Obama’s early dealings with China to French prime minister (and Munich architect) Edouard Daladier, he talks about his own efforts to outreach to the Dalai Lama and China’s response.

Politics . . . means, every day making some compromises, and to choose between one evil and another evil, and to decide which is bigger and which is smaller. But sometimes, some of these compromises could be very dangerous because it could be the beginning of the road of making a lot of other compromises, which are results of the first one, and there are very dangerous compromises. And it’s necessary, I think, to have the feeling which compromise is possible to do and which, could be, maybe, after ten years, could be somehow very dangerous.

I will illustrate this with my own experience. Two days after I was elected president, I invited the Dalai Lama to visit. I was the first head of the state who invited him in this way, directly. And everybody was saying that it was a terribly dangerous act and issued their disapproving statements and expressions. But it was a ritual matter. Later, the Chinese deputy prime minister and the foreign minister came for a visit and brought me a pile of books about the Dalai Lama and some governmental documents about what good care they have taken of Tibet, and so on. They were propagandist, fabricated books, but he felt the need to explain something to me.

I had a press conference with this minister of foreign affairs. And he said, “It was wonderful, meeting, because we were speaking openly. Mr. Havel gave me his opinion, and I explained the opinion of our government. I gave him this book, and he thanked me for it.”

This was unbelievable! Why did they feel the need to explain their point of view to the leader of such a small nation? Because they respect it when someone is standing his ground, when someone is not afraid of them. When someone soils his pants prematurely, then they do not respect you more for it. [Emphasis added]

Havel is right to criticize Obama’s tepid behavior when it comes to China and Tibet. He and Secretary of State Clinton have both tacked towards appeasing China with regard to Tibet and human rights, while extracting no concessions in return. Rather than standing their ground — the ground of America’s respect for human rights, freedom and democracy — Obama and Clinton have shown their fear of China and negotiated with themselves. Not shockingly, China has not budged an inch. Havel is a smart enough person and accomplished enough world leader that when he says Obama has “soil[ed] his pants prematurely,” listeners should pay attention. Havel knows what he is talking about and his critique should cause thoughtful reflection within the Obama White House and at Foggy Bottom.

Uygur: “Shake him off his foundation”

I think Cenk Uygur’s post on Huffington Post today is a really important marker that people who are about the progressive movement and moving the Democratic Party to the left should read. After conceding that Obama is, more than anything else, a cautious politician who will naturally move to the center in any debate, Uygur moves to how the progressive base should be responding.

The next time Obama pushes a corporate agenda, progressives have to knock him upside the head. Deny him. Or as the kids would say, send his shit. And make a big stink out of it. Draw everyone’s attention to how far right Obama is and how out of whack he is with the American people.If that scares you and you start to worry about damaging a Democratic president, you’re never going to win at this game. You’re never going to get the policies you want. They don’t listen to reason, they listen to power.

…

If you don’t move the island, the rest is futile. You have to shift the ground underneath them. And the only way to do that is to create such a strong and aggressive progressive movement that they cannot help but notice it – and respond to it. Move the center and you’ll move Obama. And he’ll move the country. There is no other choice.

I think this is pretty important analysis. Obama isn’t going to move to the left on his own – doing so would mean he’d have to fight with conservative and centrist Democrats to make them do something. He is averse to that sort of action. Instead, he has to be made to understand that the progressive base’s support is plastic and will shift away from him if he continues to ignore it. The surest way of demonstrating this is for progressives to create a space for him to occupy more to the left – to move the Overton Window and create enough space for him to move without having to actually fight for it himself.

Uygur thinks the best place to do this is in the fight for financial regulation and I think he’s right. The added bonus is that beyond the Democratic Party being to the left of Obama on it, the entire country is already substantially supportive of serious regulation of Wall Street.  There will be real opportunities here; hopefully leaders on the left seize them and try to force Obama to the left for the good of the country and his presidency.

Cruickshank on the White House & Movement Building

Robert Cruickshank, who does incredible work as the Courage Campaign’s policy director, has a must-read post at The Seminal on FireDogLake. Here is a large excerpt:

The collapse of support for the bill reveals a deeper and growing divide, an unwillingness of most Americans to embrace a flawed process. In particular, progressives – activists and voters – need a clear, signal victory in order to avoid complete 1994-style demoralization. Something big and bold, something clearly progressive that forced moderates and conservatives to concede something important, something that will give more people a reason to rally to Obama’s defense when he is in a difficult place.

Comprehensive immigration reform along the lines of the Grijalva proposal would achieve this. Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would achieve this (and repeal of DOMA would be a grand slam). Firing Geithner and Summers would achieve this. Breaking up some of the big banks would achieve this. And yes, a public option of some kind would have achieved this.

Instead we have a White House and a Senate Democratic leadership that still believes we live in the 1990s, where the “left” is weak and has little popular support. They’ve not understood the transformative effect of the 2000s and Bush in particular, who helped create a genuine American left with real and widespread popular support for the first time in 40 years.

The White House does not view progressives as equal partners, as people who have legitimate concerns and priorities that need to be included in any deal. They still take the Clintonian view that the “left” can be appeased either through a few nice words in a speech, and if that fails, can be crammed down by being told they’re wreckers, being told this is the best progressives can get, being told that progressives are irrelevant (even while the WH’s defensive actions show they’re anything but irrelevant).

The White House hasn’t yet grasped that some basic and timeless rules of politics still apply: that you have to deliver something to your supporters to keep them on board. Something that excites them, something that gets them motivated. Ever since 1993 Democratic presidential Administrations have assumed those rules are in abeyance, where supporters will stay on board out of fear of Republicans, unwilling to act on their beliefs or frustrations out of an internalized belief that America is a conservative place hostile to progressive values.

The Bush years destroyed those internalized frustrations. Congressional Democratic support for the Iraq War destroyed what existed of progressive acceptance of that Clintonite strategy, and freed the left to actually feel confident in asserting its own values regardless of what the Democratic leadership says, because any trust in that leadership was destroyed in 2002. Obama understood this out of necessity during the primary, when he had to embrace this to defeat Hillary Clinton. But once that was achieved, he went right back to the old Bill Clinton strategy of appeasing the center-right and assuming progressives would simply go along with it – and once elected, Obama surrounded himself with old Clinton hands who espoused the same basic view of politics.

Powerful stuff. But I think the most important piece of writing by Cruickshank comes at the end, where he echoes a sentiment that I have been writing about here for the last few weeks:

Until he sees progressives as genuine partners, Obama will face declining political fortunes. That’s his problem, something he and his team should and eventually will address. For our part, progressives should concern ourselves with how to further build up our own institutions and power, instead of wasting time trying to prop up a weak president who views us and our views and our work with contempt.

The added bonus to focusing on building progressive infrastructure and power is that doing so makes it harder for the progressive base to be rolled by the  party establishment in the future. We will be better suited to affect our goals and make sure that elected officials do not turn their backs on the base after our donations, volunteerism, and writing help carry them into office. And, eventually, this infrastructure building, along with internal leadership cultivation, will bring us to a point where the progressive online movement can regularly and successfully field our own candidates for often and stop projecting our values onto people who do not share them.

Aravosis on Bush v Obama

I’m traveling for work this week and totally booked in meetings, so my blogging is going to be very light.

But I wanted to flag John Aravosis’s post from earlier today, “The GOP had at most 55 Senators during Bush’s presidency.” Aravosis is providing an important reminder that legislation, even controversial legislation or legislation relating to life and death, war and peace, can be passed in the absence of a super majority. Obama and Reid are dealing with more seats in their caucus than Bush ever had.

Aravosis  writes:

What the GOP lacked in numbers, they made up for in backbone, cunning and leadership. Say what you will about George Bush, he wasn’t afraid of a fight. If anything, the Bush administration, and the Republicans in Congress, seemed to relish taking on Democrats, and seeing just how far they could get Democratic members of Congress to cave on their promises and their principles. Hell, even Senator Barack Obama, who once famously promised to lead a filibuster against the FISA domestic eavesdropping bill, suddenly changed his mind and actually voted for the legislation. Such is the power of a president and a congressional leadership with balls and smarts.

How did they do it? Bush was willing to use his bully pulpit to create an environment in which the opposition party feared taking him on, feared challenging his agenda, lest they be seen as unpatriotic and extreme. By going public, early and often, with his beliefs, Bush was able to fracture the Democratic opposition (and any potential dissent in his own party) and forestall any effort to mount a filibuster against the most important items in his agenda.

It’s not about the votes, people. It’s about leadership. The current occupant of the White House doesn’t like to fight, and the leadership in Congress has never been as good at their jobs, at marshaling their own party, as the Republicans were when they were in the majority. The President is supposed to rally the country, effectively putting pressure on opposition members of Congress to sit down and shut up. And the congressional leadership is supposed to rally its members to hold the line, and get the 51 votes necessary for passing legislation in a climate where the minority is too afraid to use the filibuster. When you have a President who is constitutionally, or intellectually, unable to stand for anything, and a congressional leadership that, rather than disciplining its own members and forging ahead with its own agenda, cedes legislative authority to a president who refuses to lead, you have a recipe for exactly what happened last night. Weakness, chaos, and failure.

This is a pretty brutal assessment.  But the difference is stark. Bush showed unflinching conviction that his agenda was the right course and he made damned sure Congress was with him, at least during his first term. Obama has not forced or led Congress to be where he needs.

Of course, this also gets at the Democrats’ fundamental inability to use procedure to their advantage. We got whipped under Bush and now are getting beat at a game in which the same rules apply. We just never used the rules we had to strengthen the minority when we were in the minority. As a result, looking at 2000-2009, there is a real contrast to what counts in the Senate. It only takes 51 votes to pass a piece of Republican legislation, while it takes 60 votes to pass a piece of liberal legislation. Because their leaders know how to play the game and our leaders want to rise above the game in glorious, yet unattainable, post-partisan unity.

There is plenty to put at the feet of Obama and Reid in the failures of the health care fight. But many of these problems are more systemic. It’s not that Aravosis is wrong, it’s that he’s talking about a dynamic that extends to liberal Democrats going all the way back to the early 20th century efforts to pass civil rights legislation. The left has always been out-maneuvered in the Senate and now is no different.

Actually, the difference is now Democrats are in a position that should assure them victory with even the most minimally savvy legislative plan of attack. This strategy has not been found. I don’t know if it’s because it’s a simple lack of understanding of legislative procedure, a lack of understanding of the real situation in a caucus that includes Lieberman, Lincoln, Landrieu, and Ben Nelson, an absence of actual liberal beliefs by Obama, or a refusal to lead with conviction by Obama.

The result is that despite massive electoral victories in 2006 and 2008, the Democratic Party has miles upon miles to go before they will defeat the ghosts of incompetence past and the insidious damage a lack of memory inflicts upon their efforts today.

Schrei on Obama’s Nobel Speech

Up at the Huffington Post, Josh Schrei has a provocative take on President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. Schrei writes:

Obama’s speech, in all its wandering glory, smacked of the somewhat bewildered attempts of a true American son to reconcile his deep seated idealism against an almost impossible pragmatism. Along the way, it inadvertently summarized the great tragedy of American foreign policy since World War II — the inability to rectify our lofty ideals with what it is we actually do in the world, which, often times, really isn’t that positive and certainly isn’t that clear.

With a new President — who obviously has great eloquence, a discerning mind, and admirable vision but has both inherited the gaffes of his predecessors and has an almost pathological addiction to the middle of the road — we are faced with our most muddled picture yet… in which we understand the value of the ideals we helped put forward post Second World War, but also know that we currently stand in violation of many of them; in which we eloquently stand for freedom and the individuals right to it and at the same time obtusely see war and occupation as one of our main instruments of forwarding that right; in which our leader stands on an anti-war platform while signing troop deployment orders; and, perhaps most paradoxically, in which we understand that the rise of societies who have no interest in our carefully crafted goals of freedom — like China — are a real threat to the very existence of those goals, yet choose to help them every chance we get.

This is a pretty apt summary of the internal tensions found in Obama’s speech. But Schrei makes the tension more explicit as he moves to close:

“Somewhere today, in this world, a young protester awaits the brutality of her government, but has the courage to march on.”

Generally, when men of character invoke such a scene, they do so because they actually intend to do something about it, not just because they are trying to please. And while President Obama has quoted this injustice, and made himself seem more sympathetic in doing so, and drawn out of us the emotions that make us feel that he is a person that really cares, the truth is that — as of yet — he is not doing a thing for this young protester.

Instead, his speechwriters capitalize on her suffering while simultaneously throwing accolades to her oppressors. (Again, see China)

At some point, this President will not be able to ride on the fumes of great — or in this case, not quite as great — speeches that play on the heartstrings of those of us who believe in justice, and will have to actively forge justice, if that is his road.

Now, as Josh points out, the tension is by no means limited to Obama. It has been a feature of every American president’s foreign policy since Truman. But coming from the lips of a young American president who has captured both our country’s and the world’s imagination to the point of being recognized for a Peace Prize in his first year in office, the tension grates harder than it might otherwise.

To put it a different way, Obama has to find ways to make sure that “change we can believe in” has less to do with the mechanical events of elections and more to do with actual realization of policy aspirations. It’s not enough to talk about the virtue of pro-democracy protesters in totalitarian regimes, especially when it comes (to pick one example) hand in hand with complete silence on China’s human rights abuses.  At some point, Obama has to stop being content with oration and start leading with the force of his actions.

Feeling Things Out

I think there’s a problem with the progressive online movement today. We came into existence under a bad Republican president and a strong Republican majority in Congress. The Democratic Party was in electoral decline. No Democratic message was effectively resonating in the face of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, deregulation of markets, and a massive housing bubble that would later crush the American economy.

In an environment with very little oxygen, the best ideas began to flourish through the netroots.

People supported proud Democrats who didn’t shy from their principles when attacked from the right. Candidates ran as fighting Dems. The blogs truth-squaded the media and organizations like Media Matters, ThinkProgress, Democracy for America, True Majority, and Credo Action became key points of power for the left to influence politics and policy.

Additionally, elected Democrats had incentive for being strong advocates against the policies of the Bush/Cheney Republican Party. Strong, principled stands were rewarded. No one — with the possible exception of Joe Lieberman — was looking to get into bed with the GOP. There was a real space for activists in the progressive base to find timely partnerships with politicians who would be there advocates.

These forces combined to help give Democrats huge electoral victories in 2006 and 2008, including control of the White House and historic margins in both the House and the Senate.

That’s when the trouble started.

With a Democrat in the Oval Office and Democrats running the legislative agenda, the online progressive movement, which came into being precisely because our representatives lacked power, now had the people we’ve worked with over the last 8 years in control. Instead of being opponents, groups and individuals are forced to be proponents. But there’s something about this which hasn’t been a good fit: namely, imperfection of the people we put into office.

If Bush and the Republicans offered a bad bill on domestic surveillance, the response was easy. Oppose it. If it’s made marginally better, the response was easy: don’t give in, keep opposing it.

But now the tables have been turned. Legislation that doesn’t look so good is being offered by Democrats. Progressive groups can’t easily come out against things on whole, so there’s a focus on making small parts of legislation better. But even with these efforts, the Congress and the White House seem fundamentally inclined for less progressive legislation and caving to the requests from a few conservative Democrats. In essentially no cases are conservaDems being bullied to make room for more progressive legislation.

Groups, bloggers, unions, everyone it seems is having a hard time figuring out how to react. Do you put intense pressure unto opposition on key legislative initiatives? Do you only fund challenger candidates? Where is the right balance at a time when opposition to the President’s agenda is not a label anyone seems content to wear with pride?

My take is that this first year under Obama is part of the learning curve. There must be space for progressive groups, bloggers, and activists to stand by their principles, regardless of who is in office. There must be a way to effectively pressure those in power, regardless of their party. And there must be a balance that allows pressure campaigns on the ruling Democrats to be effective while simultaneously ensuring that the GOP doesn’t spend the next two to four cycles sopping up Democratic seats in government.

I don’t know what this sort of activism looks like. Experimentation must take place and risks must be taken. And in reality, while the hostile environment of the ascendant Republican Party from 2000-2008 was a natural environment for progressive activism to emerge, so to is the current environment a hostile one that must also breed a new wave of effective progressive activism.

Schrei’s Open Letter to Obama

Josh Schrei has written an open letter to President Obama following his trip to China. It’s powerful, honest and true. Here’s a passage:

As a lifelong Tibet supporter, I have endured 15 years of meetings with Senators, Representatives, and Chiefs of Staff and have been told roughly the same thing in every single meeting. We have to engage. We have to give them what they want. We can’t upset them.

Suppose for a minute that on the occasion of my first meeting I had a newborn son. And suppose that child had been raised solely according to the philosophy of those meetings. “We can’t upset him. We can’t offend him. His feelings get hurt when we ask him if he’s cleaned his room….”  What would I have now? A 15-year-old, overly-entitled, spoiled rotten, immature, selfish, brutal bully with the keys to the car. Beijing’s leaders deserve none of the leeway we have given them. None of it.

Today, I saw the statement you gave after the meeting you had with China’s Hu Jintao. To call it a statement would be to give you far too much credit.  Sir, they invoked your ethnic heritage and your love and study of one of the greatest men in modern history and used it to justify one of the greatest abominations of the modern era. Where is the outrage?

You are more than that tepid diplomacy. You are MORE than the man who stands idly by while lovers of truth and justice are slaughtered. You are meant to be their champion. And if not you, in this rapidly declining world, then who? Who???

Coming Away with Nothing

There was a great deal of hoopla last month when President Obama broke with tradition and declined to meet with the Dalai Lama when he was in Washington, DC. While no American president has had a formal state visit with the Dalai Lama in the Oval Office, presidents of both parties have made it tradition to meet with the leader of the Tibetan government in exile every time he comes to DC. This pisses off the Chinese government to no end and the presumption was that if the Obama administration shirked the Dalai Lama, it would please the Chinese government and make them more likely to negotiate with the US on other key issues. In effect, Obama was voluntarily making concessions to the Chinese government with no concrete concession in return – only the presumption that doing so would yield results down the road.

Not surprisingly, this strategy failed.

On the currency:

Mr. Obama did not appear to move the Chinese on currency issues, either. China has come under heavy pressure, not only from the United States but also from Europe and several Asian countries, to revise its policy of keeping its currency, the renminbi, pegged at an artificially low value against the dollar to help promote its exports. Some economists say China must take that step to prevent the return of large trade and financial imbalances that may have contributed to the recent financial crisis.

Mr. Obama on Tuesday could only cite China’s “past statements” in support of shifting toward market-oriented exchange rates, implying that he had not extracted a fresh commitment from Beijing to move in that direction soon.

On Iran and nuclear sanctions:

The administration needs China’s support if tougher sanctions are to be approved by the United Nations Security Council. But during the joint appearance in Beijing on Tuesday, Mr. Hu made no mention of sanctions.

Rather, he said, it was “very important” to “appropriately resolve the Iranian nuclear regime through dialogue and negotiations.” And then, as if to drive home that point, Mr. Hu added, “During the talks, I underlined to President Obama that given our differences in national conditions, it is only normal that our two sides may disagree on some issues.”

On climate change:

Mr. Obama announced a setback on another top foreign policy priority, climate change, acknowledging that comprehensive agreement to fight global warming was no longer within reach this year.

Again, none of this is surprising, except perhaps to the administration. We’ve watched the Tibetan Government in Exile make concession after un-returned concession to the Chinese government for the last number of years. In all cases, China has taken these concessions and then continued to attack and smear the Dalai Lama, while making no concessions of their own. Now we see the Chinese government doing exactly the same thing to the US government’s non-negotiated concessions.

China is never going to compensate the US for political concessions we made when negotiating by ourselves, just as they will never do the same for the TGIE, just as the Republican Party will never recognize concessions Democrats make with themselves prior to sitting down at the negotiating table. Given that essentially no DC Democrats — the White House included — have learned how to negotiate from strength with the GOP, it’s not shocking that their efforts to appease China at the expense of Tibet have failed.