freelansing in Seattle

I’ve been saying it since before the inauguration: If progressives expect Obama (and the Democratically controlled Congress) to create the kind of policies we want, we have to organize and apply the public pressure to make them do it. We know that the corporate powers, with their enormous influence and abundance of resources, are not going to let the public interest trump their private interests without a fight. We know that Fox “News” is going to use its sizable sway to disinform the public, and that the rest of the corporate media isn’t going to do much better. We know that the right-wing worldview that has ruled our country for the past three decades is not going to go quietly into the night. And we know that last time we had a Democratic president, we witnessed eight years of triangulation toward some perceived political center, nothing that would offend any corporate benefactors, and an utter abandonment of progressive ideals.

And yet, political dynamics in the past year-&-a-half have followed a predictable trajectory. Progressives who worked their asses off helping to get Obama into power have worked considerably less hard at ensuring that he would exercise that power in the ways we’d hoped. Meanwhile, corporate lobbyists have redoubled their efforts, Fox has roused its rabble, right-wingers are rallying for a comeback, and Democrats continue their timid triangulations.

Almost a year into this new political era, the results are in, and they aren’t pretty. After a long trail of disappointments on many fronts, we now confront the sour stench of a health care “reform” bill that only the medical-industrial complex could love. (Say it with me: “Fuck mandates!” Requiring that citizens buy into a broken private insurance system is unacceptable.) And we are told to expect more compromises in the Senate. Ugly.

And yet, it would be even uglier if progressives hadn’t organized to pressure their representatives to guarantee a public option (not yet guaranteed) and other reforms.

To me, the lesson is clear: We will never see the public interest win out over private interests until we have an organized public force stronger than the private forces that now shape our public policies. Obama in the White House and a Democratic Congress does not equal a win — it merely represents an opportunity. Seize it or lose it.

In a similar vein, I want to reference a couple of articles in the current issue of Eat the State!, a newspaper I help publish. The first is by Seattle-based political author Paul Loeb, Eight Reasons the Democrats Lost Virginia & New Jersey — and How to Recover, a wise analysis of Democratic Party missteps and what we all could do better.

The second article is by my long-time associate & friend, Geov Parrish, who persuaded me to help him start up Eat the State! over 13 years ago, and whom I continue to work with all these years later (& who turned 50 today). In his Letter to a Friend this week, Geov takes his friend to task for continuing to believe in Obama while blaming those around him — his staff, Congressional leaders, etc. — for all failures. Geov notes that Obama selected the advisers in his administration, and that Obama himself takes full responsibility for his record. Geov suggests we take Obama at his word.

Geov concludes with these thoughts, echoing much of what I’ve said above:

We should also take Obama at his word when he instructed advocates for various progressive issues to be the change we want to see, and to make him toe a more progressive line. We should do exactly that, or at least try. There’s no guarantee of success, of course, given not only the institutional and political barriers to progressive policies of any type in this country (despite their public popularity), but Obama’s own preferences, as consistently reflected by his record. But it’s more likely to be an effective strategy than waiting for Obama, or any elected official, to suddenly see the light, seize the moment, wave a magic wand, and make it all better. The only way meaningful change has ever happened in this country has been when a meaningful, often massive popular movement pushed for it, and then kept pushing, sometimes for years, sometimes (as with the slavery abolitionists and suffragettes and labor and civil rights activists) for generations.

We have nothing like that today, but we could. The dissatisfaction, the anger, the desperation are all out there. Hatemongers on the right are distracting a lot of those folks with their usual scapegoating. But on the left, grassroots groups are desperate for money; some are shutting their doors. The economy has hurt, and the lack of the sort of corporate benefactors a lot of astroturfing conservative groups enjoy is always a handicap. But the biggest problem is the large number of people who were worn down by eight long years of Bush and Cheney and who want, now that their friend Barack is in office, to just go back to watching The Office, living their lives, and trusting that all that nasty politics stuff will just sort itself out without them.

It won’t. Barack Obama isn’t going to do it. His major hires are all creatures of the bipartisan Beltway consensus: lovers of war and American empire, beholden to Wall Street and big corporations. So is he. So is every president and every congressional leader in modern American history.

Some things will never change; just you wait and see. Literally. Or, if we get active, band together, organize, and push, it still might not change.

Without such an effort, there’s no chance at all. None. Obama’s not going to take our advice unless we show up at his door with millions of people and the hounds of hell. And even then, we might not get what we need and want. But if we get off our asses and demand it, at least we generate the one thing Obama can no longer realistically offer: Hope.