Beyond Barack Obama
Lefty focusing on the president and his shortcomings
distracts us from the work we need to do

by Richard Flacks

In These Times

January 27, 2011

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/6857/beyond_barack_obama

The growing progressive drumbeat about President Barack
Obama's failed presidency, coupled now with fantasies about
opposing his re-nomination, or with anguished hand-wringing
about his failure to communicate, to lead, etc. etc.,
dismays me. This hysteria is rooted in fear and anger over
the intransigence of the corporate plutocracy we are up
against. But the answer to corporate dictatorship and
kleptocracy has to come from social movements - not the
White House. History strongly suggests that grassroots
disruption that threatens to unravel the social fabric is
the fundamental impetus to real reform.

Yet the loudest voices on the left keep wishing that Obama
would lead such a movement. It's a natural wish - since the
work of movement-building is hard, risky and costly for
those who take it on. But to wish for The Leader and to cry
when he seems to abandon us is childish, and it bespeaks
impotence.

Let's start by giving up a lot of BS about "principle."
There is no history of Democratic Party or liberal principle
that Obama is betraying. FDR's compromises to achieve Social
Security and labor legislation abandoned African Americans
with effects still strongly felt in our social order. No
Democratic president was able to pass universal healthcare
and all bargained away any chance of achieving it. It was
FDR who gave J. Edgar Hoover the authority to spy on the
Left, and JFK who gave him the same to spy on Martin Luther
King. Bill Clinton's abandonment of welfare and his other
`triangulations' were larger and more cynical betrayals than
Obama's (so far). Obama's record of accomplishment,
leadership and betrayal stacks up well against all his
predecessors.

And let's stop using ideological yardsticks to judge
politicians. Is Obama "really" a progressive? Whatever he
tells us he is, he must be a pragmatist in the real world he
works in. And we should appreciate and even welcome that!

Ideology is a very poor predictor of integrity or action.
Ideology is not what determines the political assessments
that most Americans make. This is a big topic, but one
advantage the Left has over the Right these days is that the
latter is driven by narrow ideological thinking and
therefore inevitably going to fail to connect with the
American majority.

A big reason we aren't yet in the midst of a movement on the
Left has to do with the faults of the leadership in the
national progressive organizational world. For example, it
took months for the national organizations to call for a
march on Washington for jobs. The One Nation event turned
out to be a good start toward some kind of national agenda -
and yet I don't see much evidence of a concerted follow-up
to it.

Many of the national leaders are now saying that they intend
to be more assertive and independent. But even with a will
to mobilize, strategies for effective action have to be
grasped - and defining these is not an easy matter. Equally
important, there is a loss of "vision" - an absence of
articulate expression of how a better world might look.

Lefty focusing on Obama distracts us from the work we need
to do.

What progressives have to try is to implement strategies
that directly challenge corporate and financial domination.
These have to include direct action that disrupts the
institutional order. One essential theme: The costs and
burdens of economic contraction and austerity must not be
borne by the weakest and poorest.

The disgusting cycle, perpetuated by the Obama tax deal,
that gives virtually all economic gain to the very top of
the income pyramid has to be disrupted.

The wars, which hugely drain the public budget, have to be
resisted.

Demands that might actually help people materially - and
help the economy as well - need to be voiced and acted on -
a massive mortgage write-down being one obvious example.
Movement- based organizing on such issues needs to find
targets that can be seen and addressed. For example, make
locally accessible banks and their executives responsible
for the mortgage crisis.

A final suggestion: Progressive organizations need to
reinvest in college campus organizing. Instead of seeing
students just as election time fodder, we need to consider
that the campus is the primary space for generating deep,
extensive discussion and debate about the social future.
It's also the place where human energy for bold and creative
action can be generated. Back in the early 1960s, a few
unions and older liberals more or less recognized their own
political staleness, and put a little money and
encouragement behind the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee and Students for a Democratic Society - even as
these upstart groups made them nervous because they weren't
"disciplined."

Once again, the progressive side needs activist energy that
isn't controlled by big organizational practices and
perspectives - energy and thinking that can break molds and
invent new modes. But if we spend a lot of our energy in
anguish and attacks on Obama, our own cynicism may ruin the
chance to spark new possibilities.

[Richard Flacks, an emeritus professor of sociology at the
University of California, Santa Barbara, is the author of
Cultural Politics and Social Movements (co-editor, 1995);
Beyond the Barricades: The '60s Generation Grows Up (1989);
Making History: The American Left and the American Mind
(1988), and many articles on social movements, left culture
and strategy.]

___________________________________________

Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.

Submit via email: [log in to unmask]

Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3

Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq

Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe

Search Portside archives: http://portside.org/archive

Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate