Obama is an historic figure. The first African-American president. He’s not a very good president, however. Whether historians judge him our third second-rate leader in a row, or our second third-rater in a row, now seems to depend on how charitable they wish to be.
One of the few really positive contributions he’s making to our governance these days is his role – an unintended role – reigniting progressive politics. While conservatives on the right have furiously and successfully been organizing to advance their goals, progressives in the left have long demonstrated an unseemly passivity. They were lulled into this state assuming that merely by electing enough Democrats to positions of political power their interests, those of the middle class and yes, even the poor (remember them?), would be appropriately served.
Mr. Obama and Democratic leadership generally have put the lie to this assumption. Shown themselves to be servants of the same groups as those also served fulsomely by those the other side of the political aisle. The only major difference being that Democrats sometimes seem embarrassed while doing so.
Here are the facts. Wall Street triggered our present economic crisis in 2008. Wall Street is now richer and more powerful than ever. The nation’s richest, especially the top one percenters, were getting an exorbitant amount of national wealth before the 2008 crash. Today they are getting an even larger percentage. The poor are being abandoned. The middle class are getting squeezed badly. Democrats in Washington and state capitals have allowed or actively abetted this process.
It’s silly for progressives to look to them passively in hopes they will do better on their own accord. Rather, we should look for inspiration about what to do from those on the conservative right. They haven’t achieved power these days by simply going along with the Republican Party as-was, but by demanding action, action!, on issues they deemed important. They demanded Republicans do what the conservative right wanted or forfeit its support and votes.
So here’s what I’m thinking now. My progressive thinking. I am no longer someone Democrats can take for granted because Democrats are sometimes a tad better than the other guys. Don’t try to diddle me with slick rhetoric then break your promises. Don’t sympathize. Don’t graciously deign to hear my complaints. That game’s done. I’ll tell you what I want done. You do it or cross the aisle because my backing won’t be there to help you keep your cushy positions.
Here’s what I want done now. I want budgetary pain shared by all. I want Wall Streeters to pay a larger share because they did so much to cause the problem, a share in the form tax hikes on big banks and their executives, and a transaction tax on flash traders. I want foolish, Bush-era income tax rates for the rich taken away and a far stiffer trustafarian tax (previously called the estate tax or the death tax) to be raised. At the level of state government, I want a “millionaires tax” like the one vetoed by New Jersey’s Republican governor last year put into place so that programs for the poor and earned benefits for union workers don’t have to bear an out-sized portion of budget balancing austerity.
This is what I want. What I think most progressives want. What no party in this country now seems willing or able to fight for. And if the Democrats won’t give it to me, well…they’ve seen in past years what happens to Republicans when they don’t service the conservative right.
Oddly, I’m less disappointed with Mr. Obama and other Democratic leaders than relieved. Indeed, I feel liberated. I know them now. More importantly, I understand how to reach them. They can be rolled. The right has been rolling them for years. It’s time to get the rolling going the other way.
I feel like a boy again. In the sixties and early seventies the battle was against an ossified, misfiring foreign policy establishment. Now its against an ossified, badly skewed, top-dominated economic policy establishment. The battle lines have clarified. Finally.
Once more into the breach, dear friends. Once more!
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