The political environment was of a public who rightly felt that the federal government was not working for them to the point of jeopardizing their survival. For the first time in over 30 years of phoning Dems in campaigns, I heard many of them say they were not voting in the primary b/c they planned to vote Republican in November. Since "prime" Democrats (Democrats who vote in primaries) have never done this before, this can only be understood as a desperate protest vote.
So, I thought, the progressive candidate needs to say something dramatic to show he understands how abusive this government has been toward "regular" people. Something along the lines of, "I'm going to fight to change the rules so that no one will be able to say, 'The corporations own the place'." (He had already declared he was taking no corporate donations to his campaign.) Then list a number of measures he would fight for to that end, building up to the declaration that he would fight to take control of the gov't away from the hands of the few wealthiest, and put it back in the hands of all the rest of us. I will be your representative joining you to "take back our government"!
Then I realized that as a Democrat running to join a federal government that has a Democratic President and a majority of Democrats in both houses of Congress, he was in a bind. If he said what he needed to say for the electorate to understand his true colors, the incumbent Democrats would hear that as a declaration of war against them, or at least a loud indictment of them. If elected, he would be treated as a traitor. His proposals would go nowhere. His district would be last in line for needed supports to its large employers. He would be more marginalized than a Republican.
That is why, in other states, in a year which was made for the triumph of the progressive point of view, TeaPartiers were winning on what should rightly be the progressive message, "Take back our government!" When a Democratic President defines Democratic Party orthodoxy as corporatism, and opposition to the resulting damaging measures as heresy, progressive are put in a bind just at the time when their message should resonate the loudest. This is the dilemma of two-party gov't in a country with rules strongly handicapping additional parties. And Obama knows it, has calculated what is the resulting power equation, and what he needs to do to stay on the "right" (more powerful) side.
