Today I went to a progressive conference in Chicago called, “Festival of Democracy: Unleashing Radical Imagination.” Unfortunately, the radical imagination is pretty limited when it comes to the upcoming elections. The first panel featured Bill Fletcher, Quentin Young, and Laura Flanders (of RadioNation).
Fletcher, co-founder of the Center for Labor Renewal, said: “My concern around Obama is related to an episode in the original Star Trek” where an alien can “change form to be anything that someone wants him to be.” According to Fletcher, “the masses of people want change” and “we’re investing our hopes in what we want to be here.” Fletcher called it “magical thinking” at the political level.
Quentin Young noted, “I told everybody, he’s going to break your heart, and he’s lived up to that.”
Laura Flanders described going to an Obama rally, and being more in love with the crowd than the candidate. (She wrote about this here.)
I asked the panel about Obama, and in their answers none of them mentioned the question of Obama vs. Hillary Clinton. It’s as if Obama were running against some idealized conception of progressives, rather than participating in a real election where progressives face a pragmatic choice: Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Any progressives who imagines that there is no difference between Hillary or Barack simply doesn’t understand the candidates or the meaning of progressive values. Because Democrats are likely to win in 2008, in terms of progressive politics there is nothing so important to decide in the next ten weeks as Hillary vs. Barack.
Fletcher reported that black supporters of Obama had told him, “‘Give the brother a chance’” and responded, “The last time I heard that was with Clarence Thomas.” Comparing Obama with Clarence Thomas reveals how terribly Fletcher fails to understand Obama or his movement. It’s a new version of Naderism, that sees no differences between candidates because all of them fall short of his ideals.
Fletcher doesn’t want to support any candidates, he wants to light “a fire under each one of them.” That’s noble, but naive. The only reason why Hillary Clinton has made any moves to the left in this past year is due to the challenge from Obama (and, to a lesser extent, John Edwards). So without Obama, the progressive fire moving Hillary goes out. Progressives can only “light a fire” under a politician such as Obama who is willing to listen to them.
Quentin Young, the wonderful doctor and advocate of universal care, replied: “it’s not possible” to vote for Obama. He said, “How could I vote for him?” since he would not promise to get all troops out of Iraq by 2013. Of course, none of the leading Democrat candidates would promise that, nor is it necessary to ban all troops from Iraq in order to end the war there. Young is another progressive who won’t support Obama because he’s not a perfect progressive.
Laura Flanders gave a list of reasons why progressives wouldn’t embrace Obama: “He supported the invasion of Lebanon,” he “sat out” the vote on the Iran declaration and “didn’t vote against it,” he “didn’t even vote against the MoveOn” resolution and “failed to take a position on the Daley Burge police torture.” She’s right that those may be the reasons progressives believe in opposing Obama, but they’re not very good reasons. First of all, on almost any relevant stands, Obama is better than Hillary Clinton. Obama is not going to denounce the government of Israel, but as his stand on the Iraq War showed, he is capable of resisting the rush to war.
The police torture issue, however, is a perfect example of why Obama should be elected president. Obama did far more than take a position against police torture. He got legislation enacted to help stop it. On an issue where the (Democratic) governor Rod Blagojevich promised to oppose any legislation, Obama was able to get support in Illinois from the police lobby and from Republicans as well as Democrats. He got an excellent bill passed requiring videotaping of police interrogations in capital cases. And Blagojevich changed his mind and supported Obama’s bill.
Flanders is right that “it’s our job to be hard on him.” But it’s also our job as progressive analysts to be hard on Hillary Clinton, and to draw clear distinctions for voters between a progressive candidate such as Obama and the non-progressive candidate.
In the second panel, Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University blamed Obama’s shift to the right on the Middle East on “the kind of advisors, the kind of politicians with whom he has chosen to surround himself.” Khalidi claimed that all of the major candidates “will not deviate more than a few millimeters from a set of positions” even though most of the American people oppose these ideas. And when it comes to the Middle East, “on this issue, Barack is almost indistinguishable from all the other candidates.” It’s true that Obama has been far from perfect, and too anxious to pander to the Washington establishment with more militant rhetoric. However, Obama has spoken out against the possibility of a war with Iran, and he has been the most consistent, forthright critic of the Iraq War among all the major candidates. Khalidi’s claim that all the candidates are the same simply isn’t true, even if it’s the case that Obama fails to do enough to criticize the Bush Administration policies.
Salim Muwakkil, senior editor at In These Times, complained about Obama, “he is completely squandering the promise he had when he entered the race” and added, “it is such a disappointing situation.” Well, anyone who has high hopes about a successful politician is bound to be disappointed, and Obama inspired higher hopes than just about any other politician of our time. But we shouldn’t elect candidates with the lowest expectations and be happy if they accomplish anything. We should elect progressive candidates with the highest expectations and push them with a political movement that forces them not to betray those ideals. I’d rather be disappointed and have a better world.
