Let's Talk About Race

Al, I think Orwell was getting at the same thing as you in The Road to Wigan Pier (1935). Substitute "Socialist" for "white activist" and "working class" for "blacks and Hispanics" and, as they say, Bob's your uncle:

"It may be said, however, that even if the theoretical book-trained
Socialist is not a working man himself, at least he is actuated by a love of the working class. He is endeavouring to shed his bourgeois status and fight on the side of the proletariat--that, obviously, must be his motive.

"But is it? Sometimes I look at a Socialist--the intellectual, tract-
writing type of Socialist, with his pullover, his fuzzy hair, and his
Marxian quotation--and wonder what the devil his motive really is. It is often difficult to believe that it is a love of anybody, especially of the working class, from whom he is of all people the furthest removed. The underlying motive of many Socialists, I believe, is simply a hypertrophied sense of order. The present state of affairs offends them not because it causes misery, still less because it makes freedom impossible, but because it is untidy; what they desire, basically, is to reduce the world to something resembling a chessboard."

Being a white liberal I have only just begun to understand what racism really is and how much of it I had practiced in the past with out even really thinking about it.

This was a good article and it gets to the heart of what racisim is within the liberal party even if we dont want to admit it to our liberal selves~

Al,

You and Tim Wise were my salvation during the primaries, general election and especially now.  As a black woman living in America, I have lived outside of the "mainstream" for my entire life.  I have had some very difficult conversations about race with white progressive friends over the past two years.  It has been eye opening to say the least.  Thanks for continuing to speak truth to power especially knowing that the arrows are going to come swiftly your way.

I so often wish someone would tell the self-described blogger-activist folks over at Open Left and sites like it (and even many DKos diarists) to go spend a week reading the comments and posts at Jack and Jill Politics.  There's a rooting in reality at JJP that the activist types seem to have lost.

Of course why should they ever read JJP or The Field even - they're always right, always outraged, and are leading the progressive movement, doncha know?

I'm trying to formulate this - telling them to read those of a non-white activist perspective - as a challenge to them, but I'm not sure what I or we would tell them to do.  Do you think that putting down a bet on something with someone like Sirota or Bowers or Klein might get them to do it, and maybe open their eyes?

I've already started getting the first wave of sanctimonious "I told you sos" from former Hillary supporters who have been waiting so impatiently to pounce.  I'm bracing myself for the second wave.

I object to the media's framing of civil-liberty concerns as "left-wing".

Torture and civil liberties are not the property of the Left. I mean, for god's sake, these are basic things that everyone should agree on. There's plenty of middle of the road people (outside the elite CYA echo-chamber) concerned about this; and definitely the Ron Paul Right is as well. To call these issues left-wing is to trivialize them.

Also! It's possible to disagree with a president's decisions without being ready to dump him overboard. But that's not hype-y enough, I guess.

"People with concerns about civil liberties are unhappy with some of Obama's decisions" is a valid, and I think accurate, way to frame this. "The Left is sick of Obama" is just dumb.

Many of these decisions, I personally think, came because some poobahs in the Pentagon and CIA made Obama a proverbial offer he couldn't refuse. He needs our support now more than ever.

I realize that you're directing your attention to people who claim to speak for an integral group--"progressives"--without realizing that they're speaking for the group, "white progressives." There's no question that you're correct. But so what?

I guess at one level white progressives who don't like Obama (and black radicals like Glen Ford who haven't exactly been rendered weak-in-the-knees by the Obama duo) have failed to make organic linkages with other sectors that like Obama. Is this a problem? Of course it is. But there's a separate issue. You write,

"Because every time they do they’re saying that the 96 percent of African-Americans and the 73 percent of Hispanic-Americans (and a very considerable number of us lefties that are neither) who are more pleased than not with the new administration essentially don’t exist or that our opinions should not be considered as part of “the left.”"

What if they (or I, as it happens) think that being "more pleased than not" with the new administration is disturbing, or upsetting? What if I'm utterly disgusted with policy after policy after policy of the Obama administration?

To put it more concretely: there are abundant radical analyses of the economic policies that have been pursued by the Obama administration, sufficient, in my opinion, to prove that this is a government that doesn't care about working people.

So I wonder, how do we push against those policies while still announcing how much we like Obama? By prodding him to do better?

Also, what does it mean to say that an "opinion" should or shouldn't be "part of the 'left''? Is it coercive to say that some opinions are wrong-headed? Of course it isn't. So is there a problem when great sectors of American society who one wishes were more upset with Obama and would push him to enact different policies aren't? Including a well-known leftist writer, who is more "pleased than not" with Obama?

Al, when the hell was the American Left ever a unified front?lately?

of COURSE they don't speak for you. sometimes it seems like you don't want them to speak at ALL.

Slaney Black - You're absolutely correct about civil liberties not being an exclusive concern of "the left." Indeed, when it comes to some of the most controversial civil liberties issues, like the drug war, "progressive" members of Congress are among the worst violators. And if the Bill of Rights is the yardstick for American civil liberties, there's the sticky little matter of the Second Amendment that so many liberals like to skip over.

I thought it was just plain weird that the Politico article by Gerstein cited Andrew Sullivan's discontent over torture issues and gay issues as an example of this so-called discontent, because Andrew would be the first to say he's not "of the left." But he is a civil libertarian, which is a coalition that sweeps across the media version of the ideological spectrum.

Max - I agree with many of your points, but not this one. You write:

"there are abundant radical analyses of the economic policies that have been pursued by the Obama administration, sufficient, in my opinion, to prove that this is a government that doesn't care about working people."

While it is certainly the case that some of the new administration's policies are not great for working people (or, mainly, they don't go far enough in favor of them), it's blanket statements like "this is a government that doesn't care about working people" where I get off the bus. To wit:

- The return of progressive taxation under Obama, where even folks with incomes under the taxable bracket get Stimulus checks, and new taxation goes exclusively to the wealthiest five percent, is certainly pro-working people.

- The Stimulus itself - the largest public expenditure in the history of publics or expenditures - goes overwhelmingly to working and poor people: via medicare, public schools, construction jobs, extended unemployment insurance, green jobs, etcetera. That's absolutely pro-worker.

- Engineering it so that auto workers now have a 55 percent ownership in a major auto manufacturer is pro-working people.

- The use of the bully pulpit to say that the occupying Republic Windows and Doors factory workers in Chicago had a "just" cause, was super pro-worker.

- The facedown with the state of California in which the new administration told Schwarzenegger that if he cuts the pay of service workers he'll lose federal stimulus money, was a particularly bold pro-worker move.

This is an administration that is still lining up the votes for EFCA and for a worker-friendly form of immigration reform. I think we can take issue with areas in which it has not been as pro-worker (or has not yet made its moves one way or another, such as with NAFTA reform) without resorting to conclusions that the administration "doesn't care about working people." Would an administration that didn't care do any of the things I just listed in its first 120 days? I think those kinds of blanket statements deflate like tires over nails when exposed to the real facts.

Yes, there are differing views on the left of whether the sum of the parts is more positive than negative or not, and how much so. But if I went out and made statements like "the left is thrilled with the new administration" (something I've never done) I would be deservedly criticized just as I am whacking those who claim that "the left has soured" or some such thing. The only intellectually honest position is to say that "the left is debating and has no consensus yet on how it feels about the new administration, with strong pro and con voices on each side."

It is particularly grating to see who is claiming to speak for the left: a gaggle of folks who for the most part have never organized anything, much less successfully. That's why I keep stressing that the dividing line on the left pretty much tend to form between the "organizers" and the "activist-academic" tendencies. And I continue to work to try and inform what that division means in terms of how people approach political action (as in my various "activism is not organizing" posts).

I don't mind having that discussion at all, with you or anybody else. I think it's a healthy discussion. 

Cage Free Brown - Oh, gawd, how infantile is that comment? It's oh so typical of the stance of the so-called "progressives" I'm criticizing. They turn being criticized into a call for them "not to speak AT ALL." Oh really? When have I ever called for silencing anyone?

To say "don't tell lies" and "don't make shit up" and "don't you dare claim to speak for me" is not a call for censorship. To the contrary, it's fighting silly and bad speech with better speech. It's such a victim mentality to, when you're criticized, claim dishonestly that your critics are somehow censoring you. It's childish. Normally I wouldn't approve such a ridiculous comment like that, devoid of content or factual argument, containing only an immature accusation of motive that the facts don't support. But since your outburst serves as a convenient foil through which to use as an example of exactly the kind of Children's Table petulance that I'm arguing is counter-productive, thank you for it.

Cage Free Brown - Not to pick on you, but when you refer to "the American left" as a "they" that is somehow apart from me, that's very indicative of the kind of behavior I criticized in this essay. You can say a lot of things about Giordano, but the suggestion that I'm not at least as much a bona fide part of the American left - and if deeds count, more so - as the folks I'm critiquing, you simply make the point of my essay with a perfect example of that exclusionary thinking that I'm lambasting.

If measured by sheer mileage on the odometer, scar tissue, and success in organizing, there really aren't many folks left that can claim to outflank me on that front. And among those that do outflank me, there are many - from Pete Seeger to the surviving organizers of the Southern Civl Rights Movement - whose views on this new administration are much closer to mine than to yours. 

When we who have been doing the heavy lifting all these years hear from people who haven't that "they" are the left and we are somehow something apart from it, well, they're asking to be spanked each time they (or you) do.

Al, I really don't see myself as a petulant guy.

I think, over the last few months that you're really grinding your teeth over what you see as bad form.

well, shoot. okay, they're YOUR teeth.

I think it's like the Spanish teacher who will only let people in the class participate if they speak spanish. Que lastima!

what I call "the American Left" I really see as a Heinz-57 sort of thing. I really think our power is in our inclusion. I'm sorry, I don't see a lot of inclusion in implying racism. It doesn't mean there's nothing to it - just that I don't see it.

is we've got a whole lot of what you more politely call "activist-academics" and what I would refer to as armchair quarterbacks, who are calling foul on Obama before he's even got his entire team in place, the Treasury is still half-empty of its appointments, and he is getting filibustered in his Interior undersecretary, and the entire opposition party organizing to filibuster ANY of his six potential SCOTUS nominees as soon as he names one.  These shrill hyperventilators saying that Obama is "selling out" are not only impatient, but they don't speak for the majority, and they don't speak for me either.  They speak for themselves, and they aren't looking at the facts.

Cage free brown - The problem with the ketchup analogy is that if the onions keep telling the tomatoes they're not in "the ketchup" (or "what the left thinks") eventually you'll have no tomatoes in your ketchup. From the 1970s through 2007, that ketchup bottle you described may have had both, but mostly self-segregated: white on top, red on the bottom. That may have all the ingredients, but it ain't ketchup until they all learn how to work together and make it a priority to do so.

That's the complaint some of my friends make.  They don't seem to be aware of anything Obama has done to further progressive goals.  So thanks, Al, for the list above.  I can use it.

The fact that people who call for restricting our borders also go on to complain about the Spanish-language “oprima el número dos” phone options on customer service lines only goes to show that there is a greater issue at play here than the simple matter of the law, or whether someone is “undocumented."

Al, thanks for your insights -- as usual right on but unfortunately, still necessary -- Seems like these trends arent changing

Obama has been amazingly successful.  Even in such a short time, his courage reflected in the ability to talk openly to every faction and tell us his honest decisions and opinions is a total revolution. Whether pro-choice at Notre Dame or not wanting to be shoved into economic decisions by PAUL KRUGMAN NOBEL PRIZE WINNER, or even the courage to change his mind about releasing the torture photos - he has shown openess and a patience with us that is remarkable.

What is amazing to me is two fold:  It seems that some on the left want an autocrat dictator to just say its going to be x and ram it down the throat of the opposition. The other surprise is that there seems to be so little patience or understanding of how to handle complex and interconnected issues --or that political capital has to be treated in a way to make sure that you have some for the long haul. 

Up till now, I have been just puzzled about why this might be so -- the left progressives are not stupid or unaware of complexity so why this headlong rush to the exits after 3 months and progress on so many fronts?

I have to sadly begin to acknowledge that you may be right -- that there may be subtle racism working.  It just makes no sense otherwise -- no sense...

OpenLeft has all male frontpagers. There are many fewer women esteemeg in progressive blogging. White men dominate and think people who don't get it aren't as informed as they are. I hate it!!!

I am grateful that the folks you criticize throw down the cash when the great Kos asks them to but, these same people made me cringe when I volunteered during Jerry McNerney's 2006 campaign. I got that who's this vato look from them.  It's weird.  The left is divided in Stockton, CA just as you describe it.  Which may explain why most successful working people I know in town do not identify as progressive or liberal.  They do not like being talked down to by so called well educated people.  

It actually makes the OpenLefters look even more ridiculous when they claim to speak for the Entiret Entire Left©, especially considering that women are quite a bit more likely to call themselves "liberal" than men (anyone think it's an accident that in every single state, women tended to outnumber men in the Democratic primaries and vice-versa in the Republican primaries?)

thank you for speaking up as you do.

...do I deserve credit in the same measure Al's blaming the white-and-reacting-to-the-Obama-presidency-with-internalized-racism?

I didn't think so.  I certainly wouldn't presume to say so.

But if I don't get credit for transcending race, I'm pretty sure Al shouldn't generalize and assign blame to Obama's progressive critics on the blanket basis that they're falling victim to their internalized racism.

Many years as a young country girl I came to the big city (SF -- it was big city to me!), met and married a young black man (when it was still illegal in some states). We became a magnet for other "mixed" couples and there would be long, passionate discourses about race, "the man," and the "establisment." As young and naive as I was, something struck me as inherently wrong in these discussions... there was all this passion, love and concern for justice and civil rights - yet, as I looked around the room i saw only black male and white female faces. We had become an elite club and effectively discounted (and feared) the thoughts and concerns of black women. That was many years ago, the divorce (from the "club" and later from the man) was ugly and my story is long, but to the point of your post... i recognize the same folks, just a different arena. The self-absorption, the inability to recognize one's own arrogance, the underlying assumptions that "we" know best and the absolute ignorance of the concerns, perspectives and even the existence of a host of folks seen as "other.." 40 years... so much has changed, and so much remains the same. Thanks for telling the truth, Al...

Thanks for this very necessary essay. What I find so remarkable is how so many so-called liberals or progressives with whom I work and speak with fail to do the continuous hard work of reflection. The "left" as you have been characterizing it has too many subscribers who sincerely see themselves as finished products--more highly evolved of course than their conservative cousins--needing no more work. This is not only hubristic but painfully naive. From my own vantage points, I see the most nefarious racism in America not being promulgated by men with silly white hoods but by "good" liberals in the academic and activist communities you justly lambast. I see it before my eyes every day. And my fear is that the number who refuse to do the daily gut-check of one's own moral condition is diminishing, especially among the left. 

TW - I'm not big on the idea that members of a dominator demographic group deserve "credit" for having "transcended" some of the muck we've been socialized for generations to think and feel about race (or gender or the other various categories). No credit is needed. It is (or should be) its own reward, because the better a society, the better life is for you and me. Save the merit badges for the Scout groups.

The moment any of us say "I am not racist (or sexist, etcetera) in any way" is often the moment when something pops up to prove us wrong about ourselves. Turning the tide on all that crap isn't a destination; it's constantly moving train. It's also too often a way for some to say "oh, but those other people are!" And that gets kinda nasty, too.

Being "in lockstep" with Obama or anyone else doesn't mean one has transcended race. Nor do I think it's a desirable place to stand. Being "in lockstep" with anybody is a slippery slope. Think of where the term comes from!

As Brendan notes, none of us are "finished products."

Or as a late friend of mine told me at a very young age, and it's stuck with me ever since: "The day I stop evolving is the day I hope to be obliterated off the face of this planet." Nobody, but absolutely nobody, is free of the muck yet.

Al,

Thank you for your response, but I still disagree (shocking, I know). You offer a list of pro-worker policies, and then conclude that this is a pro-worker administration. To be fairer, you write,

"This is an administration that is still lining up the votes for EFCA and for a worker-friendly form of immigration reform. I think we can take issue with areas in which it has not been as pro-worker (or has not yet made its moves one way or another, such as with NAFTA reform) without resorting to conclusions that the administration "doesn't care about working people." Would an administration that didn't care do any of the things I just listed in its first 120 days? I think those kinds of blanket statements deflate like tires over nails when exposed to the real facts."

You're correct that these policies will help workers. They will make their lives better. I consider myself a revolutionary socialist, but have not the slightest patience for criticisms of "reformism." Reforms, as you suggest, are precisely what make people's lives better. But I'm concerned that you're focusing on smaller policies and ignoring bigger ones. Take Obama's policies vis-a-vis the financial sector. I'm going to quote at long length, from Michael Hudson, whose work I imagine you're familiar with:

"Now that the details of the new, larger but definitely not improved bank giveaway of between $2 and $4 trillion more have been leaked out in time for Wall Street’s Davos attendees to celebrate, we may ask whether, financially speaking, the Obama Administration should best be thought of as Bush-3 – or indeed, whether it is still on a pro-creditor trend that may better be traced as Clinton-5, or perhaps even Reagan-8. Since 1980 the financial sector has made a sustained money grab at the expense of labor and “taxpayers.” More accurately, it has been a debt grab, on the opposite side of the balance sheet from assets.

Backed by Larry Summers, Boris Yeltsin’s Harvard Boys transferred trillions of dollars of Russian mineral wealth and public enterprises into the hands of kleptocrats. That was an asset transfer, pure and simple. In 1997, to be sure, the IMF gave Russia a loan that immediately disappeared into the kleptocrats’ bank accounts, to be paid out of subsequent oil-export proceeds. But assets were the name of the game. Today’s U.S. giveaway has a new twist. The analogy is the “watered stocks” and bonds of yesteryear that railroad magnates and Wall Street emperors of finance gave themselves and their political mouthpieces, simply adding the interest coupons and dividends onto the prices charged the public as if they were real “costs.” Today’s version – “watered Treasury bonds” – are being created on the public sector’s balance sheet. “Taxpayers” must pay bear the interest charges – leaving less for the infrastructure investment that Mr. Obama suggests we may need.

The Bush-Obama bailout bore “small print” stipulations that have already given Wall Street a decade’s tax-free status by letting it count its financial losses against its tax liability. So not only has there been a great fiscal giveaway, there has been a tax shift off finance onto labor and industry. States and localities already have begun to announce plans to sell off roads and airports, land and other public assets to the financial sector in order to finance their looming budget deficits (which localities are not allowed to run under present legislation). No federal funding has been granted to finance the cities as their tax receipts plunge. There has been a token amount to relieve some low-income families saddled with junk mortgages. But this does not involve actually giving them a spendable money “bonus.” Their role is simply to be trotted out like widows and orphans used to be, as justification to bail out banks for their bad gambles on currency, interest rates and bond derivative gambles. Insolvent debtors are merely passive vehicles to get a book-credit of mortgage relief that the government will turn over in their name to their bankers to make these institutions whole."

I am also assuming that you, like everyone else, has been following this stuff extremely closely. So Obama's policies are giving nickels to workers with one hand while using the other to turn the tumblers on the lock that'll secure them in a state of penury for decades. You can point to the employee free choice act, or the stimulus (which wasn't half of what even Paul Krugman thought necessary, and he's by no means a radical economist), and say, justly, truthfully, these are helping workers. What's more, they're easy to explain, too. They're easy to explain to the people working 60-hour workweeks, which is why Obama's approval rating is so high: it seems like he's doing well by them. But I don't think he is. I don't think so because I have the time and the inclination to see what the larger policies are--policies that I think despicable.

What puzzles me is your support for him, because it seems that we who have the luxury of sitting down and poring through explanations of financial chicanery, economic architecture, macro-economic long-term planning and the like, may have a clearer view of things. There's nothing elitist about saying so.

You write that "The only intellectually honest position is to say that "the left is debating and has no consensus yet on how it feels about the new administration, with strong pro and con voices on each side."

This is fair. But how long should this debate continue? At what point might we say, Obama's policies are enormously deleterious to working people's futures, the world's future, the ecology's future? Where I stand should be readily apparent, no question. Pace people's concerns about Obama "spending" his political capital, I think his actions thus far are blaring. I think he's waging class war.

Frankly, I deeply despise Obama, although I understand both emotionally and intellectually that this is a feeling that I must suppress while talking or organizing with people who share my aspirations but still support Obama.

Like all Republicans, many liberals do not mature from political puberty.  Obama now has responsibilities that no dough-faced liberal will ever have, and, unlike, Bush, is trying to be President of all Americans, not just the 51% he needs.

I think that rather than racism a better way to describe it is tribalism.  To me racism is believing something incorrect or unproven about another race.

However they specifically aren't believing anything about other races, genders, or even classes.  They are saying "We with our narrow cultural outlook are correct on everything".

Which to me is fundamentally more about being against diversity and differing opinions than it is racism. 

I think the main thing they need to realize is that their "principles" are just rationalizations.  When they don't vote, vote for nader, and piss off their allies they do so because they are happy enough with the status quo.

I commend you for admitting that you don't see it. The question to ask now is why don't you see it. Isn't that precisely the point that Al is arguing. Why don't the self-proclaimed leaders of the Left and Progressives SEE African-Americans, Hispanics, working class people, etc.? Why don't they see reality, that is, who has been working for civil rights, ending torture (see our prison system), wage equity, etc. all along without a modicum of the resources we take for granted and in spite of being hardest hit? What we see is influenced by what we consider to be normative. In a country founded on white supremacy it is not hard to glean what is considered normative. Also, the issue is not that only those who speak Spanish can speak. The issue is two-fold: 1. Speech has consequences and exclusionary speech hinders rather than furthers the goals these so-called activists espouse, especially when there is no organizing on their part and they live in de facto class-based segregation. Thus, Al's post as well as of others calls a bluff. If you were truly interested in these goals why would you continue to make these choices? 2. If one is going to speak, then one should be ready for the consequences of it in terms of resistance from precisely those who are being excluded. Otherwise, one is asserting one's own right to speak through asking others to not exercise that same right. As Hillary Clinton said during her campaign, if you can't stand the heat, then get out of the kitchen. 

I'd like to build on what I said earlier in this post about the consequences of speech. The people that support Obama are demonstrating patience, long-term strategic vision and analysis, and a willingness to work it out in the trenches at ground-level in their communities even though these communities are often the hardest hit rather than ejaculating on blogs to quell whatever anxiety they have and calling it activism. In other words, we know how difficult it is to make even a modicum of change in entrenched institutional structures, we know the double standards, we know the disappointment of friends and allies turning on you because they cannot bear to see themselves through someone else's eyes while we do not have a choice (read DuBois on this),we see what happens to our children, and we know the daily harassment and degradation and what it does to one's soul. I'll quote a line from Toni Morrison's Beloved: "you can't win, you can't get even, and you can't get out of the game."

Are these bloggers/activists implying that the support of these communities is unthinking support for a fellow minority and not thought out? Isn't that what is meant by not including them as support that actually counts? 

Max - Of course you despise the young President. I would, too, if I were the sort of activist that, with no better strategy to change the United States, simply hoped that "the system" would come crashing down and then cross my fingers and hope that the hardship leads the people to revolutionary socialism rather than authoritarianism (which is what really happens more than half of the times that systems do fall to the ground).

I'm sympathetic to revolutionary socialists and understand what it is to be one. I think its possible to "multi-task" political action and have one utopian dream (whether that be democratic socialism, marxist-leninism, economic libertarianism, maoism, trotskism, "Albania-was-the-only-true-socialism," primitivism, lifestyle anarchism, social anarchism, or my own tendency of anarcho-syndicalism; an egalitarian and democratic society self-managed by the workers at the most local level possible, without the corrupting hand of a centralized state) and also be relevant to the attainable battles and victories of the present. I'm not one that thinks they are mutually exclusive.

I've oft referred to the three "lost decades of the left" in the United States, when the adherents to all those forms of utopia turned their backs on community organizing and thus shattered into homogeneous demographic market niches where white and black and brown and yellow and red, and women and men, and people of different generations and economic classes were unable to hang together and therefore were hung separately, one after another.

And along comes this Obama cat to resurrect community organizing, to inspire and train a new generation to do it, and he wins the biggest platform for getting things done imaginable: the presidency of the United States.

If I were still basing my political activities on the myth that if people denounce and protest the masses will file in behind the vanguard, I'd really hate the guy, because he proved better at it than any other model of recent decades.

But I saw the futility of the old models years ago, and simply slipped under the border to create and organize a new one in my own field of journalism.

However much you may despise the young president, though, you have to acknowledge that your freedom to organize for your own goals, with far less government repression, has been expanded exponentially by his election and his presidency. I myself find it hard to despise someone that measurably increased my freedom as an organizer of the left. But, then again, I'm not green-eyed with jealousy that he was able to accomplish what everyone else was not. That's because I'd been urging all my colleagues of the left to do precisely that - resurrect community organizing - for years, and you didn't bother to even consider it. But he did. And in doing so, he showed even you a path out of the maelstrom of these hyper capitalist times.

But I've been reading you for a long time. You, evidently, haven't been reading me for a long time, or even for a short time. Unfortunately, you didn't even bother to read my comment, and instead responded to A Preconception: that of The Revolutionary Socialist. The Revolutionary Socialist, to be sure a member of that undifferentiated mass, The Revolutionary Socialists, thinks along the following lines:

"I would, too, if I were the sort of activist that, with no better strategy to change the United States, simply hoped that "the system" would come crashing down and then cross my fingers and hope that the hardship leads the people to revolutionary socialism rather than authoritarianism (which is what really happens more than half of the times that systems do fall to the ground)."

You add,

"If I were still basing my political activities on the myth that if people denounce and protest the masses will file in behind the vanguard, I'd really hate the guy, because he proved better at it than any other model of recent decades.

....

However much you may despise the young president, though, you have to acknowledge that your freedom to organize for your own goals, with far less government repression, has been expanded exponentially by his election and his presidency. I myself find it hard to despise someone that measurably increased my freedom as an organizer of the left. But, then again, I'm not green-eyed with jealousy that he was able to accomplish what everyone else was not."

You side-stepped my central argument, and are fiercely fencing a straw-men. Your condescension is scarcely shocking, but that hardly makes it merited.

Here's an idea: don't talk to your idea of whom I am. Stick with the words on the page. The words on the page said nothing about a "vanguard," and merely said something about how long-term Obama economic policies are going to do a lot more damage than the good that will come out of the short-term ones you admire.

The words--written by the person, and not the straw-man, the revolutionary socialist--said that people with time and leisure should be able to see through Obama's beneficial reforms to his radical structural policies that will be more injurious in the long-run. Such people could even try to communicate these facts to other human beings, were they feeling particularly puckish. Such people don't live in an activist ghetto, and some of them spend enough time with poor black people, certainly a lot more time than they spend in an activist-intellectual ghetto, to know that evincing hatred of Obama is totally counter-productive. But honesty doesn't count for much when we're in a discussion with Our Elders in Organizing and Life, and Our Betters in Leftist Credentials (not one part of which has anything to do with the merits of words being said. If you need to fall back on such credentials, quit beating around the bush. Say: I know better than you, you upper-middle class white privileged asshole, and listen  to me)

The other discussant--that'd be you, Al--decided it would be eaiser to not engage the point than to engage it, to say, organizing is eaiser under Obama rather than harder. I take it you're implicitly conceding the ground of "caring about workers"?

There's space for a real discussion here, of course, but when the envirnoment in which it could take place has been filled with subtle, suggested ad hominems and stinks of better-than-thou condescension, it's not exactly a pleasant place for it.

"That's because I'd been urging all my colleagues of the left to do precisely that - resurrect community organizing - for years, and you didn't bother to even consider it. But he did. And in doing so, he showed even you a path out of the maelstrom of these hyper capitalist times."

And in this last, elegant put-down, the "you" enters the scene. Despite knowing nothing about me, "you" didn't bother to even consider it. But that opaline messiah Barack Obama, so articulate that we needn't consider his negative policies but merely the positive ones? He's showing me "a path out of the maelstrom of these hyper capitalist times," (pray Al what is hyper-capitalism?) presumably by further institutionalizing the role of finance capital. But that's an academician's discussion.I expected having chosen my words with care, you'd do the same the first time around. No such luck.

Max - One of our fundamental disagreements is with your claim that "long-term Obama economic policies are going to do a lot more damage than the good that will come out of the short-term ones you admire." I'm not "ceding the ground" on my observation that the alternative to what many are arguing (along the lines of that the financial industry should be allowed to fail rather than having the government keep that from happening) would fall hardest and fastest precisely on the workers and the poor.

And that short term economic crash - on the backs of the many, not just the few - would, in my view, create a tailspin that would cause far more long term damage too, including the likely rise of an authoritarian right in power in the United States that surpasses even the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush years in the violence and harm that it causes to workers and the poor.

I think you're being a bit oversensitive at the "revolutionary socialist" stuff because my critique of it is from the "libertarian communist" left. I'm not inventing your opinions based on a stereotype. I read, above, your endorsement of the critique offered by Michael Hudson, and I'm basing my words on that. He's essentially saying "let them fall," without regard to the "who" they will fall upon if the government doesn't intervene. If you don't adhere to Hudson's view, you might want to distance yourself from those parts of it that you disagree with when you cite his opinion on the steps the new administration has taken regarding the financial industries. My sense of where you're coming from is based on that, and not on the words you use to define your "tendency" on the left.

Al, people of my generation use the phrase "revolutionary socialist" without getting too caught up in sectarianism about it. So far as I know (having almost no social intercourse with other "activists") no one of my generation thinks it suggests Leninism, except some nutcase junior-sycophants at Revolution Books. I would've been as happy to write, eco-anarchist, anarchist communist, whatever. More democracy not less, less elitism, not more. But that's peripheral.

What isn't peripheral is the a guy like Michael Hudson doesn't advocate the system crashing. He advocated the nationalization of the banks. So did a lot of other radical economists. Now, people are stuck with loans they can't afford, which the government could have fixed easily. Most of the population will be in debt for the rest of their lives due to Bush-Obama policies. They will pay and pay and pay their debts until they can't pay them any more, at which point presumably the government will write them off or take them over. What is that but a give-away to the wealthy? How is it "pro-worker? to have workers spending money servicing debt owed to millionaires and billionaires when that spending could as easily go into real consumption, having an aggregate Keynesian effect not so different from this much-heralded stimulus package (with what 30 billion dollars for mass transit??)

I can't write about this stuff off the top of my head, or not as i'd like to, but the point stands: the choice was not between letting the system cascade into chaos (who advocated that??? not Hudson) and the financial "recovery plan." It was between the latter (essentially kowtowing to financial oligarchy) and REAL nationalization. Which is held to be politically impossible. Because...

@ Al - Thank you again!

@lucidimente

I like your comparison. It gets me thinking about how many times I'm reading "progressive bloggers" and have the sense that they are not writing about causes with real flesh and blood people. There are a number of valid and purposeful motives for writing, but it seems to me that many motives have little empathy for the people caught in the problem.

This is another reason why organizing is such a priority. It keeps us elbow to elbow with other real people in all their varieties and complexities. It helps to keep us grounded when we also hold more abstract ideas about the change we seek.

But it is easier to hangout by my computer all day and blog about torture photos than go help out Ibrahim, Ali or Dianna (who have actually been tortured).

Al, people of my generation use the phrase "revolutionary socialist" without getting too caught up in sectarianism about it. So far as I know (having almost no social intercourse with other "activists") no one of my generation thinks it suggests Leninism, except some nutcase junior-sycophants at Revolution Books. I would've been as happy to write, eco-anarchist, anarchist communist, whatever. More democracy not less, less elitism, not more. But that's peripheral.

Not to intervene in this conversation, but, I think that's part of the problem. "Revolution" and "socialism" are terms that have very deep histories, and Al has been taking these self-identified progressives to task for their seeming lack of knowledge about about what advocating for certain acts might entail for the larger social body. There is a paradigm shift that is at stake here, and certainly we do need one on the level of our economy and our government, but without acknowledgement of the way our current beauracracies and systems are currently entangled with everyday folks' lives; a lot of this is operating on a very elite policy/theoretical level.

Also, there's a question of responsibility here -- many of these same folks seem willing to dole out blame about why we're not in a progressive paradise without trying to create a mass movement to actually get us there. (Which, in the wake of the online social networks created by the opposition to Bush II, is a real surprise; but to repeat what has been written here before it's easier fighting against a generalized enemy rather than generating/advocating for specific policies.) They speak of the "people" and yet continue to lobby/complain to elite pols and other blogger power players as if these were the people who would create a national momentum for radical change. This comes from not having a SPECIFIC idea (with an understanding of local history and demography) of exactly what and for whom you are advocating.

Which may explain why these same folks are neglectful of communicating/connecting their ideas on the local level. And that "local" is increasingly non-white. For ex, if your idea of the working class is mostly white working class (US-born) citizens, then you're going to have rather retrograde and exlusionary ideas about what policy is best for the working and poor of this country. As it is, progressives who sympathize with the union movement have just barely begun to deal with the realities of global capital and industry. There are very few in the mainstream political blogosphere who can make connections between American workers, undocumented immigrants, and workers in developing nations in a way that leads to serious organization among all of these folks, from which would come serious policy. For me, these types of holes are what Al's use of the word "racism" implies.

Also,  when people either call themselves small-s socialists or refer to socialist ideas of revolutionary restructuring and chastise a mainstream/bourgeois party for not acting on them, actual Socialists will probably just laugh. If you want to advocate for radical change, then work for it through a party that will address it in that way and not a party that by definition has to come at everything from the middle, and saddled with corporate interventions that are systemically entrenched.

@ PJ - excellent, excellent interjection. You are so right - the key to understanding the frustration and anger of this group of armchair critics is that they are screaming from the periphery. It must be incredibly frustrating to feel so right and have no one listen to you, because no one knows who the eff you are! Having a listening ear to your great ideas is earned by being involved in the lives of people, who then with one voice may support your voice, if so convinced. This sounds like quintessential activist vs. organizer stuff.

Found it here: http://thejusticefactory.blogspot.com/2007/08/fundamentals-of-grassroots...

who got it from Aaron Schutz, who blogs here: http://educationpolicyblog.blogspot.com/

Schutz has had some critical things to say about Obama's brand of organizing, and blogged briefly @ Open Left. But compare his well-researced and empirically grounded posts, tempered with nuance, to most of what gets posted there and you'll see exactly where those bloggers are going wrong -- as advocates, as journalists, and as leaders in terms of producing original ideas either about policy or political strategy.

Also, it's worth pointing out that he and his cohorts focus on the specifics of their cause in their blog -- educational equity -- rather than gadlfy into the pointless cluster**** of Obama's DC. In other words, they know where and how they can affect change, and it's not dominated by what's happening among the elites.

Further back and forth between Al and Max would be great. I've complained that Al isn't being honest about the administration's severe economic failures for some time now, and indeed, the basic Al strategy has been avoidance, and while it is Al's blog, it is rather disappointing to discover that a person presenting themselves as a journalist model would be practicing what appears to be willful blindness. The racism arguments really don't wash with me, my problem with this administration is pretty much all about the economy. The decisions, other than the mercy killing of Detroit, are very depressing. I thank Max for doing the work and stating the case. As I have asked repeatedly, why don't we get to the point here? If the economic fallout we are living through right now is something that other administrations, Republican and Democrat created, well OK, I agree, BUT, this is now, and the daily economic news and the Washington management of the crisis is just not acceptable. Is this about racism? Al does not know who I am or how I have lived or what I do, but I'll reveal one little secret: I have worked with my hands for more than 75% of my income and have done that for over 38 years. I don't find the current Obama Administration policies to be worker friendly in the long or short term. But I am not a product of academia nor am I a lawyer, nor a former derivatives dealer, nor a professional political analyst. So, I suppose my bizarre little opinions can be safely patronized. I still maintain a great deal of respect for the potential the Obama administration has to effect economic change, but the reality isn't up to speed. I still hope that Al begins to address the economic failures truthfully because, other than this area, I very much respect his work. In short, I'm disappointed at present, but Orwell had his moment of epiphany, and Al's may be on the horizon.

RC - You can fairly opine that I'm wrongheaded, uninformed, not-progressive-enough (whatever that would mean), or any other number of adjectives or nouns regarding my opinion that this is the most pro-worker administration in the United States since that of Roosevelt. (And, really, I've yet to see anyone say with a straight face that Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton or Bush II have been more worker-friendly than this one.)

But where you don't encourage the "back and forth" you seem to crave is when you stoop to the level of "Al isn't being honest" or that I don't "address the economic failures truthfully." Cockroaches and snakes can't crawl so low as to to turn a difference of opinion into a slimy accusation of dishonesty.

It's not even clear what you want me to have a "back and forth" about other than the general milieu of the administration's "management of the crisis." I can try and guess that you're referring to the "bailout" (a misnomer for what are government loans to financial services companies, upon which it seems likely that the taxpayer is going to get a profit upon return in the overwhelming majority of cases now that the potentially mortal wounds have stopped bleeding), but I haven't seen a single detailed alternative proposal (not from Krugman or anyone else) as to what to do differently (other than from the "let 'em fall" crowd) except for the very vague proposal of "bank nationalization."

Never mind that the crisis (and with it the loans that some call "bailouts") is not exclusively a matter of banks: the proposal of "nationalization" would only impact the parts of the financial services industry that are lending institutions. Should the insurance companies and investment houses be "nationalized" too? And if so, what is the exact proposal? 

Nobody, but nobody, has offered a detailed piece of legislation that we could look at on the merits. Instead we get calls for use of the "Swedish model" (a country with an annual Gross Domestic Product of $341 billion that temporarily nationalized its banks some years back) and are told that it proves it would work for the United States (a country with a $14 trillion GDP, about 40 times larger than that of Sweden). Excuse me if I find that not credible.

What am I supposed to debate and discuss? A vague set of concepts on the terms of those that haven't gotten their shit together to make an actual detailed proposal? My non-response to nonsense makes sense to me and I deduce to a great many folks with common sense.

I've been "disappointing" some people ever since I first put pen to paper so many years ago. If a writer isn't upsetting somebody his opinions have the firmness of oatmeal. I don't care if you're "disappointed" because I am honest about my views and I let the chips fall where they may. A writer doesn't write to win popularity contests. Any writer that does is a hack.

But don't call me dishonest and expect to be taken seriously. Your problem is more likely with my honesty in refusing to "go along" with the groupthink of the blogosphere - right and left - that rails in faux-populism without ever proposing a detailed alternative plan.

Thank you for your post. I agree that a continuing discussion is critical. However, I would suggest that racism and the economy are not two separate issues. What is the demographic make-up of workers (this includes the much-publicized "white rural vote" of the primaries) and in what jobs? Which communities are hardest hit and what are they saying about Obama and the policies in effect? Is it not fair to say that there is criticism but that there is a also a sophistication to these criticisms because they include context, history, recognition of institutional realities, actual organizing, etc.? Can one not argue that this is a far more productive and less self-aggrandizing/careerist way of practicing democracy? Issues of racism may not wash with you but they are a concrete reality for many Americans, hard-working Americans (to quote Hillary Clinton again). 

I'm happy to retract the dishonesty statement in full and I appreciate your addressing the concept of our President being worker friendly. Indeed there are plenty of very studied plans available that are at odds with the administration's path. When I am not busy later this evening I will list them and add a very few short words to sum them up. Nationalization is not the only suggestion that has been made, nor has the immense amount {over 7 trillion US pesos, not 1 trillion} of subsidy occurred without intense protest. Yes, we do have an enormous difference of opinion on the topic, and while I do not blame the Obama Administration at all for the March of the Bubbles over the recent decades, the immediate and long term future in economic terms is a very different world than the one we just crashed out of and sooner or later the Fed, the Treasury, The Congress, The President and even the Judiciary are going to have to help the public face facts. I don't feel that presenting an argument about the current misapplications of trillions of dollars is even necessary as the results of these compromised decisions will be very apparent before the calendar year expires. However, I will prepare a list and refute the statement that no other ideas have been offered. There have been quite a few beside the "Swedish", the "Kablooie" and the "Nationalize" schools of thought. And finally, for now, I don't take my cues from Krugman, but I do monitor him to understand the present status of the MSM accepted wisdom. I will also readily agree with Al that the problem is an intense nightmare with no simple way out. There won't be any magic wand, there will be plenty of pain to go around. By now, "will be" is probably past tense.

PJ,

I'm not sure how to respond to your comment, since it's unclear if it's directed at me or not. Most of seems to to be far too oblique to actually be a direct response to what I wrote, except for this last paragraph:

"Also,  when people either call themselves small-s socialists or refer to socialist ideas of revolutionary restructuring and chastise a mainstream/bourgeois party for not acting on them, actual Socialists will probably just laugh. If you want to advocate for radical change, then work for it through a party that will address it in that way and not a party that by definition has to come at everything from the middle, and saddled with corporate interventions that are systemically entrenched."

Now, no one here is chastising the Democrats for not acting on "socialist ideas of revolutionary restructuring." No one here has espoused a party line on socialism, hence the Small S. Some of us commenting here even wrote about their distaste for people who speak bitingly of "reformism," although that comment didn't lend itself to patronizing, tortuous mis-reading, so one understands why it got bypassed.

The discussion is this: that the Obama administration is continuing on a course of financialization of the economy while doing little to nourish the underlying productive sector. The argument is that this isn't good for working people.

Nouriel Roubini, writing yesterday:

"we cannot rule out a double dip W-shaped recession with the wings of a tentative recovery of growth in 2010 at risk of being clipped towards the end of that year or in 2011 by a perfect storm of rising oil prices, rising taxes and rising nominal and real interest rates on the public debt of many advanced economies as concerns about medium term fiscal sustainability and about the risk that monetization of fiscal deficits will lead to inflationary pressures after two years of deflationary pressures."

Wait a second: why would we bear witness to a scenario of rising nominal and real interest rates? Could it be because of all the paper the government has issued as it has bailed its way out of the crisis?

Al: the loans the government has made to the banks are indeed loans. Again, Roubini, a couple weeks ago:

"Fifth, estimates of net retained earnings before writedowns are massively beefed up by the direct and indirect subsidies that the government is providing to the financial system: with the Fed Funds rate and deposit rates now close to 0% and with banks having been able to borrow since last year about $350 bn at close to 0% interest rates given the FDIC guarantee on new borrowings the bank can now earn a fat net interest rate margin that is a direct subsidy to financial institutions. The Fed is also losing a fortune on its three Maiden Lane funds that purchased toxic assets of Bear Stearns and AIG. On top of this major US financial institutions got a massive direct subsidy from the bailout of AIG. Overall, the US government has committed – between liquidity supports, recapitalization, insurance of bad assets, guarantees – over $13 trillion of resources to the financial system and already provided $3 trillion of such resources to the financial institutions.  The financial system is already effectively a ward of the state in spite of the fact that all these direct and indirect subsidies have bailed out both the shareholders and the unsecured creditors of financial institutions. Even taking into account the fact that not all of these resources will represent a net long term loss to the US taxpayer even a conservative estimate of the net subsidy to the banks’ shareholders and unsecured creditors may be above $500 bn."

500 billion? Isn't that roughly what the stimulus came to once you X out the tax cuts which will have a minimal keynesian effect? Isn't the government in effect diverting vast resources into shoring up the financialization of the economy?

Al:

Today is not my day to compare Obama's policies with those of all previous presidents vis-a-vis their general treatment of workers. Obviously increases in purchasing power per/capita, decreases in Gini coefficient, increases in HDI, decreases in overall indebtedness, as units of comparison aren't necessarily fair, since Obama's operating within a structural context not of his own making (emphatically not that he's shown the slightest inclination to challenge it).

As for proposals re: nationalization--Here's Obama, explaining why nationalization wouldn't work.

""

Sweden, on the other hand, had a problem like this. They took over the banks, nationalized them, got rid of the bad assets, resold the banks and, a couple years later, they were going again. So you’d think looking at it, Sweden looks like a good model. Here’s the problem; Sweden had like five banks. [LAUGHS] We’ve got thousands of banks. You know, the scale of the U.S. economy and the capital markets are so vast and the problems in terms of managing and overseeing anything of that scale, I think, would — our assessment was that it wouldn’t make sense. And we also have different traditions in this country.

Obviously, Sweden has a different set of cultures in terms of how the government relates to markets and America’s different. And we want to retain a strong sense of that private capital fulfilling the core — core investment needs of this country."

And here's Doug Henwood, commenting:

"

Now it’s admittedly refreshing to have a president who can talk like this after one who couldn’t. But how much of a departure from Bush’s political philosphy is this really? He admits that the Swedish approach worked better, but then explains that we just can’t do it that way here. It’s un-American, you see. And to make that argument, he mobilizes a lot of nonsense.

Yes, Sweden “had like five banks,” but our major, system-threatening problems come from not that many more institutions. The little guys can be taken care of the usual way, like forced mergers with aid from the FDIC or outright takeovers by the same. Which, by the way, is a kind of nationalization, and something entirely routine, even here in the super-special USA.

He really gets to the heart of it, though, when he gets to the “different cultures” claim. Sweden is a social democracy, and the U.S. isn’t. And so we just have to do things the American way. But our way of doing things is the problem. Several decades of letting financiers do their thing and then bailing them out when they got in trouble have finally put us in a serious crisis. Obama simply cannot get his mind around the fact that our whole economic model is in trouble. So the only way he can imagine getting out of that trouble is by applying the same medicine that got us into trouble. There’s something oddly Hegelian about this: “the hand which inflicts the wound is also the hand that heals it.” But Obama isn’t talking about moving to a higher level of consciousness. Quite the contrary: it looks more like he just wants to go back to the old way of doing things."

I could spend more time dredging up quotations from Kurgman, Stiglitz, Pollin, Roubini, Henwood, Bellamy Foster, et al on why the current policies are either ineffectual or class war at the level of policy, why nationalization would work (most of the banking in this country is extremely concentrated--you suggest that American vs Sweden is a bad comparison because America is bigger. But the problems wouldn't be technical, nor managerial, You just have an inchoate notion that it wouldn't work, against the advice of a bunch of PhDs, Nobel Prize winners, and generally brilliant fellows counseling the opposite).

And the notion that someone should've drafted a proposal for nationalization when Obama ruled out consdering it before the jump? That seems a strange argument. Why would anyone have wasted their time with it?? Obama never seriously considered it in the first place.

Your main line of argument is that the serious proposals haven't been made, if they were made, they were insufficiently detailed to be considered seriously, and if they were detailed, they wouldn't work, and anyway, the American taxpayer is going to profit on the "loans" (Al, where can I get a loan with 0 percent interest??). And where's the money coming to come from to pay off the toxic loans? Presumably Obama's stimulus package, which may not even pull us out of recession. This seems a problematic brief.

Anyone who wishes may scroll down about 1/15 of the way at this link:

http://www.rgemonitor.com/roubini-monitor/256694/ten_reasons_why_the_str...

For 2 PDFs, the 2nd of which is more interesting and relevant to our conversation. There are solutions. There are reasons that the Obama administration ignores them.

Max - I think you're confusing zero percent interest rates by the Fed with what people call "bailout" (the direct government loans to financial services that in most cases do require the companies to share the wealth back to the lending government when and if it is generated). So let's not talk apples and oranges.

The Fed (and I wish it weren't so) is an independent entity. The president doesn't control it.

And the argument of "why draft legislation when the president already says he is against it" is wrongheaded because, A. History is replete with legislation (say, the Civil Rights Act of 1964) that didn't have the support of the president when it was drafted but that became the vehicle for community organizing around it to arouse public opinion sufficiently to change the executive's position, and B. It is such a slothful attitude that I frankly question the commitment of those who adopt it.

Perhaps I am naive to take it as a given that everybody agrees that one man should not have all the power of government vested in him; that the US has three branches of government and a system of checks and balances precisely to avoid that from happening. And yet some "progressives" these days seem to be insisting that Obama, as president, invoke dictatorial powers or that his failure to do so is somehow a cop out. We can see this in the debate over Don't Ask Don't Tell ("Don't follow the law as it is Mr. President!") from the same folks shouting "Follow the law and prosecute (fill in the blank) for past tortures!" I find that attitude anti-democratic to the extreme, and, again, lazy and slothful for its situational ethics.

One of the problems I've had taking Henwood seriously over the years is his tendency to distort a rival position, and he does it here again: Obama speaks of "different cultures" and Henwood accuses him of saying the Swedish plan was somehow "un-American." Am I really supposed to take such schoolyard arguments - or those who make them - seriously? On the blogs, he'd be called a "troll" for such inflammatory nonsense.

If you want bank nationalization you have to convince the public. That requires organizing. To organize, you need a credible specific demand to rally around. That generally requires either legislation or some other detailed position. It has to move from vague talk of "nationalization" to, say, "The Feingold-Frank Nationalization Law" (I'm just pulling two names out of you-know-where; they haven't sponsored any such bill at this point.) And then you have to knock on doors and demonstrate public support.

The best way to guarantee you don't ever get that public support is to position your proposal as something that is against the most popular political leader among the very constituencies that would be needed to create that critical mass of support! As an organizer, I roll my eyes at the way the folks advocating it are going about it. I mean, I'm sympathetic with nationalizing virtually every public utility and human need, but I'm realistic to know that the US government has become so bureaucratic as to manage things badly - often as badly as the private sector - and that it is unpopular as a manager with the public as a result. If you and others knocked on doors to advocate your position, you'd get a big fat reality check on the attainability of what you seem to be demanding.

And this brings us back, full circle, to "let's talk about race." If you can't convince the pillars of progressive American politics to support a progressive initiative like that - including African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans and young people in general - your proposal is a non-starter. And any president that moved that far ahead of public opinion on something like that would be in political trouble by the mid-term elections.

It goes back to Alinsky's rules: "Never go outside the experience of your people." You want nationalization? Organize for it. You want to succeed in that organizing? Figure out a way to surgically separate the anti-Obama despising and whining from the organizing efforts! Otherwise, you'd just be spinning your wheels and trying to spin mine.

Polls in March showed large majorities in favor of temporary nationalization. You also keep on switching the terms of the discussion. Before, it was technical lack of feasability. Or lack of serious proposals. Now the problem is the public didn't or doesn't want it. Except it does, as polls suggest.

So you write, "The best way to guarantee you don't ever get that public support is to position your proposal as something that is against the most popular political leader among the very constituencies that would be needed to create that critical mass of support! As an organizer, I roll my eyes at the way the folks advocating it are going about it. I mean, I'm sympathetic with nationalizing virtually every public utility and human need, but I'm realistic to know that the US government has become so bureaucratic as to manage things badly - often as badly as the private sector - and that it is unpopular as a manager with the public as a result. If you and others knocked on doors to advocate your position, you'd get a big fat reality check on the attainability of what you seem to be demanding."

So who are those 56 percent in favor Al? What do we do, say, well, Obama is against nationalization, but you're for it? And thence how could we possibly conclude that Obama is a worker-friendly president when polls prove that he has popular support for a solid--not the best--remedy to this mess we're in and he won't support it because he's too trapped in neo-liberal ideology?? Things are getting close to tautology here.

I have to say Al, that you are the only person and I mean the only person that gets it. Some of these lemmings on the left are no better than the conservative trolls on the right when it comes to parroting their favorite talking points. Krugman is their new demi-god. Let me tell you something about our nobel prize winner. He's a free-marketeer. He still believes strongly in NAFTA. He thinks that its still the greatest thing since sliced bread! Apparently he hasn't gotten the memo that our whole economy is offshore. He says to nationalize like its as easy as falling off of a horse. The head of the FDIC, Sheila Bair I believe, said that she didn't have the authority to nationalize the huge banks and that she would need congressional approval to do so. Governing folks, isn't as easy as writing a column for the NY Times. Where the outrage should be is at 12 democrats in the Senate who refuse to vote for caps on interest rates and cramdown provisions in mortgage bills. This is when outrage should be used to get our reps to do what we sent them there to do. But instead, all i ever hear is whining that President Obama isn't doing enough! Its outrageous. President Obama is not an absolute ruler. Is the left afraid to engage the Senate? I don't get it.  Keep up the good work Al.  

Al, you wrote a couple of posts back that "some 'progressives' these days seem to be insisting that Obama, as president, invoke dictatorial powers or that his failure to do so is somehow a cop out. We can see this in the debate over Don't Ask Don't Tell ('Don't follow the law as it is Mr. President!') from the same folks shouting 'Follow the law and prosecute (fill in the blank) for past tortures!'"

If I were a betting man (ha), I'd wager that by the time Obama leaves the White House, Don't Ask Don't Tell will be a thing of the past and "Dick Cheney" will be a new way of saying "Benedict Arnold." Which brings me to Lincoln. Richard Hofstadter famously wrote in The American Political Tradition (1948) that "The Emancipation Proclamation . . . had all the moral grandeur of a bill of lading," this because it applied only to slaves in states that were not subject to Union control, and because  Lincoln presented is as a military measure rather than a moral one. Yet as Garry Wills points out in Lincoln at Gettysburg (1992), it was precisely Lincoln's respect for his own Constitutional authority (Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, etc.) that set in motion the larger aims of the abolitionists. "A new generation of [NB] black historians finds in the [Proclamation] a realism, a recognition of the black contribution, that avoids the condescension of doing things for the slaves. . . . Lincoln recognized a superiority of black 'freedom fighters' to white shirkers from all mankind's struggle. . . . The strictly military measure did not contaminate (though it increased indirect pressure for) voluntary emancipation in the border states and the fostering of the civil procedure that would lead to passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, freeing all slaves, in 1865."

When people say that Obama is a student of Lincoln, I don't think they realize how right they are.

Wow!  Nice quote!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/14/cramdown-versus-credit-ca_n_203...