Progressives Have Leverage NOW: Use It Or Lose It

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By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers

As with most Americans, my emotions were on overdrive last Tuesday night as the symbolic and actual enormity of Obama's victory hit home. So much to think about, but for the first few days I felt as if I were wandering through a dream-world and was somewhat fuzzy in the head.

Now, after a week of coming down and ruminating on the meanings to be derived from this tumultuous event, here are five observations that may resonate with (or perhaps even provoke) you.

1. OBAMA THE SUPPOSED "RADICAL"

Despite outrageous Republican lies during the campaign that Barack Obama was a "socialist/Muslim/terrorist-supporting" danger to the Republic, in reality he is a pragmatic centrist, with generally liberal leanings. In this, he is reminiscent of our most recent Democratic president, Bill Clinton. Obama is not a consistent progressive, not a radical, he's not about to lead a social revolution.

President Obama will be presiding over a serious economic recession that could well turn into a mini- or even prolonged Depression. Given that situation, probably the most we can hope for in his first few years in office is a slow movement away from the most catastrophic of CheneyBush policies. Turning a ship of state in roiling open waters takes a lot of time and extraordinary dexterity.

Does this mean that progressives should back off and keep their mouths shut while Obama is attempting that delicate, turn-the-boat-around maneuver? Should we simply agree to support him based on trust that he'll do the right thing?

Not at all. Certainly, despite the Democratic landslide last week, Republicans already are declaring that Obama won "no mandate," and that the election results are evidence that the country is in a "middle-right" mode. Therefore, they loudly assert, Obama should not push liberal programs but should govern from the "center" (by which they mean right-center). The HardRight extremists, the Limbaugh/Drudge/Savage wing out there on the far edges, certainly are not going to agree to any "honeymoon" period for the new President and already are attacking fiercely, ( www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-onthemedia9-2008nov09,0,4216330.story ) based on their claim that the Republicans lost because they "weren't conservative enough."

We can't let the Republicans dominate the field with their attempts to frame and frustrate the Obama presidency.

Already, Obama's initial appointments and economic advisors and most of those talked about as possible Cabinet officers seem to be within the frame of "middle" or even "middle-right" Establishment mode. (Some of the economists meeting with Obama are even partially responsible for the deregulationist attitude that led to our current recession.)

All of this means that we progressives, who furnished a lot of the money and ground troops and votes for the Obama victory, need to gear-up and speak-up now. A squeaky wheel gets the grease. If we don't make our desires known now, Obama may well drift even more to the center, perhaps even to the center-right, as he tries to accomodate the conservative Republicans in the Senate in order to get legislation passed.

This doesn't mean we on the left should be unmindful of the political difficulties facing the new president. He may have to compromise, tack right, on occasion, and we understand that. But we need to exert a strong, forceful, constant pressure that keeps him mindful of the correctness of many progressive and liberal policies. In other words, we must create an antidote for rightwards drift.

2. RE-PROTECTING THE CONSTITUTION

Obama stayed "on-message" throughout the entire campaign, and had precious few news conferences, leaving little room for discussion of how he might start altering the CheneyBush Administration's cavalier attitude toward the Constitution. During the past eight years, under a cockamamie, neocon-extremist theory of "the unitary Executive" as the ultimate "decider" for everything (the term we use for leaders in other countries trying something similar is "would-be dictators"), Constitutional protections were shredded and the "separation of powers" between the Executive and Legislative branches was rendered essentially non-existent by CheneyBush.

Progressives need to lean on Obama to appoint a civil libertarian/strong Constitutional advocate as Attorney General. We need to hold Obama's feet to the fire if he attempts to continue the CheneyBush approach to civil liberties, torture as state policy, over-reaching executive branch, signing statements that try to vitiate laws passed by Congress, etc.

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Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (more...)

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