Here is a dumb political strategist saying dumb things about political strategy. Former President Obama cannot help himself, is perhaps the best defense one may offer. Under Obama's watch, the Democratic Party scarified itself to his aura, lost State house after State house, blew control over the Congress, and is still trying to crawl back from the wreckage of paying undue homage to one individual who simply was not up to enunciating any coherent vision.
How many times do we have to prove that, on issue after issue, the majority of Americans embrace policy solutions that are otherwise called "far left?" And, if one accepts the polling data year over year on issue after issue, which data is legion and goes across various pollster entities, why is it that the best Obama could push for--as opposed to push through--was Mitt Romney's rickety and Rube Goldberg machine inspired Affordable Care Act aka "Obamacare?" Obama has never had a policy-based vision for the nation, and, so can only focus on cocktail party strategizing among the rich-set with whom he interacts. In 2008, Obama sold himself akin to a brand of butter, and people poured all their assumptions behind his unusual name, his physical attractiveness, his glib speaking style, akin to a talk show host, and were therefore led into a media-political consultant-class belief that Obama, upon assuming office, was playing "multi-dimensional chess," when he was just playing, or really fiddling while America descended deeper into economic inequality, and rural America, and the mid-west, continued to fall further and further behind the growing city-states of the coasts and individual areas such as Chicago, Dallas, Houston, and Denver.
Obama arrogantly refuses to see the policy and strategy dispute among progressives and the corporate Democrats. The dispute exists as the result of activists and, frankly, American citizens who are not in the donor class, wanting to promote the public policies pollsters see and know are popular. Obama, though his words, deeds, and aura, sees politics as the entertainment branch of industry, taking as a guide, instead of a warning, Frank Zappa's trenchant insight. Obama's approach to politics has been, and continues to be, to massage the message, tamper downwards any substantive, let alone stylistic enthusiasm (not for him our wish that he be the Angry Obama), and obscure differences in a fetish for bi-partisanship, when bi-partisanship, since the end of World War II, brought about the demise of unions, the war against Vietnam, the overextended Empire, the corruption of nations we claim to want to help (whether in Pakistan after the Tilt away from a far more open-government and secular oriented India, or with Israel, with Israel returning the "favor" by helping our police behave more like military occupiers), and the trade treaties that sided with corporations, not people or the environment, and decimated much of the Mid-West, while leaving rural America further and further behind.
Back in 1988, it had become clear to activists in the Democratic Party that the Old Time Religion of the New Deal was no longer something a majority of Americans appeared to support. The majority of voting Americans appeared to have lost faith in those types of policies, and, while that itself could be seen as a product of corporate media and the decline unions had suffered, it was a fact of political life if one wished to move Democratic Party candidates from the Loss to the Win column. Therefore, people who were neo-liberals and business oriented Democrats, back when the phrases were given a positive connotation, told people such as myself, who believed in New Deal policies, "You and your union friends can no longer drive the bus. Let us drive, and we will secure at least the culturally liberal victories our nation needs to overcome the cultural sins of our past and then present, and we will work to balance some economic justice along the way, if we can."
1988 was the year of Dukakis, and, while Dukakis lost, in a rare historical situation where a sitting Vice President won the office of the presidency, there was momentum for the position neo-liberals and business oriented Democrats were pushing for. By 1992, that position became dominant in the Democratic Party, and, those of us who were New Dealers, who also wanted to protect the position of reasonable people on the US Supreme Court, and trying to stem the tide of labor union reverses, agreed, however reluctantly, to let neo-liberals and business oriented Democrats drive the bus. In 1992, I supported pro-union, pro-industrial and pro-rural America, Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, for president, even though I lived in Southern California. I worried out loud and with passion about those in the mid-West and rural areas who were being ignored, pushed aside, and undermined by global economic trends, and shouted against the Reagan-Bush negotiated NAFTA (back before many knew what it was), saying it would codify into international law the very trends undermining working class families.* But in the end, I said, No to Ross Perot (perhaps my gravest error of political judgment, as I really did and do admire the Little Texan, who was pro-choice by the way, and not obsessed against gays, contrary to his persona), and, instead, supported the neo-liberal ticket of Clinton and Gore. As I joked at the time and for several years thereafter, it was the only time I listened to Rush Limbaugh and right wing Congressman Robert "B1-Bob" Dornan (R-Orange County, CA), who promised me Bill Clinton was a secret Communist. And for those who said, "We didn't elect HER!", meaning Hillary Clinton, I was a Hillary fan at the time, based upon her then friendship with Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund. I would answer proudly to those angry at the very idea of Hillary Clinton, "I did!" Well, that was the last time I listened to right wingers' fantasies about Democratic Party candidates--and Ms. Edelman, and her wonderful husband, Peter, soon saw the error of their trust in Hillary Clinton, let alone Bill Clinton.
1988 was the year of Dukakis, and, while Dukakis lost, in a rare historical situation where a sitting Vice President won the office of the presidency, there was momentum for the position neo-liberals and business oriented Democrats were pushing for. By 1992, that position became dominant in the Democratic Party, and, those of us who were New Dealers, who also wanted to protect the position of reasonable people on the US Supreme Court, and trying to stem the tide of labor union reverses, agreed, however reluctantly, to let neo-liberals and business oriented Democrats drive the bus. In 1992, I supported pro-union, pro-industrial and pro-rural America, Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, for president, even though I lived in Southern California. I worried out loud and with passion about those in the mid-West and rural areas who were being ignored, pushed aside, and undermined by global economic trends, and shouted against the Reagan-Bush negotiated NAFTA (back before many knew what it was), saying it would codify into international law the very trends undermining working class families.* But in the end, I said, No to Ross Perot (perhaps my gravest error of political judgment, as I really did and do admire the Little Texan, who was pro-choice by the way, and not obsessed against gays, contrary to his persona), and, instead, supported the neo-liberal ticket of Clinton and Gore. As I joked at the time and for several years thereafter, it was the only time I listened to Rush Limbaugh and right wing Congressman Robert "B1-Bob" Dornan (R-Orange County, CA), who promised me Bill Clinton was a secret Communist. And for those who said, "We didn't elect HER!", meaning Hillary Clinton, I was a Hillary fan at the time, based upon her then friendship with Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund. I would answer proudly to those angry at the very idea of Hillary Clinton, "I did!" Well, that was the last time I listened to right wingers' fantasies about Democratic Party candidates--and Ms. Edelman, and her wonderful husband, Peter, soon saw the error of their trust in Hillary Clinton, let alone Bill Clinton.
It is a funny thing about now. Now, it is clear New Deal values and policies are back in style and popularity. And, when progressives say to the neo-liberals and business oriented Democrats, "If you want Democratic Party victories, now is our turn to drive the bus, and restore the economic dignity of the poor and the middle class and finishing the New Deal--especially when you, too, recognize the new Gilded Age in which we live," well, the neo-liberals and business oriented Democrats largely balk and snarl. They act like it is still 1992. They speak with condescension dripping from the arrogant personas of the professional class, the corporate executive class, the DC-centric high powered political strategy organizations, and use the Human Resource Department language so well honed, to say any demand we jettison the now-old ways are a "circular firing squad," an appeal to division, not unity, etc. What Obama is doing is gaslighting progressives who, again, per that pesky polling data, speak to the political realities of the current moment. For, if people like Obama and the Clintons were interested in unity for a successful political strategy, they would say, "Yes, progressives, yes, union leaders, please drive this bus. We agree with you we must get back some economic equality, and leverage our cultural gains to ensure the New New Deal is not mostly geared to the white working class, but to all middle, working and poor classes regardless of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and the like."
But, no. People like the politically dumb Obama, who knew how to sell himself as a brand in 2008, arrogantly refuse to leverage a successful political strategy to earn the support from what are a majority of Americans, including independents and Republicans. Instead, they, again, gaslight progressives, presenting an Us v. Them mindset to tell progressives to capitulate to their economic worldview, when the nation is clearly in a New Deal moment. In doing so, they prove David Frum's famously brilliant dictum about the American political party duopoly: The Republican Party's leadership fears its base. The Democratic Party's leadership hates its base.
So, former President Obama. You are the one who needs to stop with talk about circular firing squads. It's the start of a primary, for God's sake, where policy ideas should be shared and debated. You, Mr. Former President, are the one who is blind to the moment. You are the one who already showed, when you were President, a near-complete inability to galvanize coalitions across the nation to rebuild our nation, to rebuild a political party that, for nearly three generations, was a workers' party, and which had bravely overcome a racist past and pedigree. You want a victory in 2020 in the Senate and in the White House? Then, you should be humbly saying it is time for Democrats across the nation to unite around a new and green oriented New Deal, a set of policies that, for once in American history, attempts to consciously avoid racist compromises and legacies--and makes criminal justice reform and fighting racism in the criminal justice system an equal priority. It is time to say AOC's and Bernie's policy proposals are those a majority of Americans support, send messengers to the corporate cable news shows who will say out loud and proudly these proposals are the new "mainstream," the new "moderate," and move the Overton Window to where we may all stand in the light.
*This is why I reject an over-reliance on the City Mouse/Country Mouse or Urban/Rural divide analyses. There are plenty of people such as me who deeply care about the lives and environment of those who live in rural America and in the Mid-West Rust Belt areas. The continuing public policy crimes against these people have been inexcusable, and have contributed to the polarized discourse among rural and urban people across our nation.
