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Can the Left Stage a Tea Party?
Oct 3rd, 2011 | 16 responses
WASHINGTON — Why hasn’t there been a tea party on the left? And can President Obama and the American left develop a functional relationship?
That those two questions are not asked very often is a sign of how much of the nation’s political energy has been monopolized by the right from the beginning of Obama’s term. This has skewed media coverage of almost every issue, created the impression that the president is far more liberal than he is, and turned the nation’s agenda away from progressive reform.
A quiet left has also been very bad for political moderates. The entire political agenda has shifted far to the right because the tea party and extremely conservative ideas have earned so much attention. The political center doesn’t stand a chance unless there is something like a fair fight between the right and the left.
It’s not surprising that Obama’s election unleashed a conservative backlash. Ironically, disillusionment with George W. Bush’s presidency had pushed Republican politics right, not left. Given the public’s negative verdict on Bush, conservatives shrewdly argued that his failures were caused by his lack of fealty to conservative doctrine. He was cast as a big spender (even if a large chunk of the largesse went to Iraq). He was called too liberal on immigration and a big government guy for bailing out the banks, using federal power to reform the schools, and championing a Medicare prescription drug benefit.
Conservative funders realized that pumping up the tea party movement was the most efficient way to build opposition to Obama’s initiatives. And the media became infatuated with the tea party in the summer of 2009, covering its disruptions of congressional town halls with an enthusiasm not visible this summer when many Republicans faced tough questions from their more progressive constituents.
Obama’s victory, in the meantime, partly demobilized the left. With Democrats in control of the White House and both houses of Congress, stepped-up organizing didn’t seem quite so urgent.
The administration was complicit in this, viewing the left’s primary role as supporting whatever the president believed needed to be done. Dissent was discouraged as counterproductive.
This was not entirely foolish. Facing ferocious resistance from the right, Obama needed all the friends he could get. He feared that left-wing criticism would meld in the public mind with right-wing criticism and weaken him overall.
But the absence of a strong, organized left made it easier for conservatives to label Obama himself as a left-winger. His health care reform is remarkably conservative — yes, it did build on the ideas implemented in Massachusetts that Mitt Romney once bragged about. It was nothing close to the single-payer plan the left always preferred. His stimulus proposal was too small, not too large. His new Wall Street regulations were a long way from a complete overhaul of American capitalism. Yet Republicans swept the 2010 elections because they painted Obama and the Democrats as being far to the left of their actual achievements.
This week, progressives will highlight a new effort to pursue the road not taken at a conference convened by the Campaign for America’s Future that opens Monday. It is a cooperative venture with a large number of other organizations, notably the American Dream Movement led by Van Jones, a former Obama administration official who wants to show the country what a truly progressive agenda around jobs, health care and equality would look like. Jones freely acknowledges that “we can learn many important lessons from the recent achievements of the libertarian, populist right,” and says of the progressive left: “This is our ‘tea party’ moment – in a positive sense.”
What’s been missing in the Obama presidency is the productive interaction with outside groups that Franklin Roosevelt enjoyed with the labor movement and Lyndon B. Johnson with the civil rights movement. Both pushed FDR and LBJ in more progressive directions while also lending them support against their conservative adversaries.
The question for the left now, says Robert Borosage of the Campaign for America’s Future, is whether progressives can “establish independence and momentum” while also being able “to make a strategic voting choice.” The idea is not to pretend that Obama is as progressive as his core supporters want him to be, but to rally support to him nonetheless as the man standing between the country and the right wing.
A real left could usefully instruct Americans as to just how moderate the president they elected in 2008 is — and how far to right conservatives have strayed.
E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne(at)washpost.com. (c) 2011, Washington Post Writers Group
16 Responses to “Can the Left Stage a Tea Party?”
Hmmm, surprised EJ didn’t mention the Wall Street protests as a possible Left Tea Party catalyst …
The big issue with the political left is they are not politically savvy. The right dominates the media, they dominate conversation, they are much better at attracting attention and followers, they are much more organized and much better at running the litmus test needed to keep a movement from fracturing under a collage of diverging goals.
The Left is scattered, diluted, leaderless, rudderless. They are too reliant on decaying institutions: unions, government employees. They seem to shy away from charismatic leaders, they have abandoned Obama and have put no one else up front. They have no unified goals, they are fractured and divided and don’t know where they are going or want to go.
If the Left wants to become relevant and in the debate, they’ve got to get it together. Our nation & political system is in big trouble, and part of that reason is we’ve lost balance between right & left.
It’s like one kid jumped off the see-saw because he doesn’t want to play anymore.
We already have a “Tea Party”. It’s called the Blue Dogs and they are the very reason we didn’t have a better, more generous, Healthcare Bill.
The left did have a Tea Party, IT WAS THE civil rights and anti-war movements in the 1960′s. Today the Left is without a cause. If the Tea Party wins in 2012 and implements the Fountainhead utopia the are deluded that this will turn us around, the middle class will have to embrace the left to get their share of economic cake and pie…
The only reason that “The right dominates the media, they dominate conversation, they are much better at attracting attention and followers…” it because they’re
ownedcontrolled and managed lock-stock-and-barrel by “Money and Power, Inc.”The ‘powers-to-be’ (small case) of the Republican Party have sold out the American PEOPLE for the few crumbs that the top 3% of the world (not just the United States) dole out to them for the ownership their souls.
Or, you know, the problem might be that the federal government is in deep financial trouble, and most solutions that progressives want call for more federal spending.
Federal Government in deep financial trouble, eh? Kinda like the USSR was in “financial trouble” after their ‘righties’ spent the bank on a 10 year war in Afghanistan and then tried to “fix” THEIR mistakes completely on the backs the people (general citizenry).
You might have a point there Elwood… And it’s all the more a shame that American “righties” (small case) have chosen to ignore history and punish “We the People” for their failings and ineptitude.
Oh yeah, and make sure to “try” and blame it on the progressives… Too funny!
@SteveK
And, once again, your response doesn’t match my comment. I was talking about the current proposals, not who is to blame, or how we got here.
It never fails to amaze me that there really are some who want to talk about the current proposals without complicating matters with the “who is to blame” or “how we got here” details that, IMO, should go into every serious decision.
Generally these are the same people who don’t want to be bothered with looking into the consequences of their proposals and/or actions either.
How very simple life would be…
Prof-
We need more spending in the short term.
One tea party is bad enough.
How is having two extermist groups good ?
I had the same thought as Patrick. While the Tea Party did provide a short term boost to the GOP, they also nominated terrible candidates with no chance of winning, further polarized the party and attempted to chase away moderates. In the long run they are probably a net loser for the GOP in terms of national opinion. Why would Democrats want to use that as a model?
Maybe when both parties go fringe we can get a moderate third party?
Um, yeah, that’ll happen :rolls eyes:
Rudi is right, the closest leftward equivalent of today’s tea party would be the activists of the 60′s. Unlike the TP’ers though, they actually had worthwhile causes and successes.
And btw, if the labor movement and the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam war movement were “extreme”, then we clearly need more of this kind of “extremism”.
Touché!
Barky, I like your first post, it summarizes the situation nicely.