I never subscribed to the “feet to the fire” agenda of Progressives for Obama, who said we should support Obama despite his lack of commitment to anti-war and other progressive views because he would be depending on our support once he was elected and would therefore be more responsive to those views. Since Obama is now the President-elect, there is no other choice for progressives with any hope of influence on the Obama administration but to try to hold him strictly to the principles in which we believe as his administration proceeds. I’ve submitted an article to that effect to Common Dreams (a website on which I have yet to be published despite several attempts): a challenge to progressives for Obama do what they promised to do, and to confront Obama whenever he was “wrong” from our perspective, especially in the critical period of “transition” in which he is putting together the team of people who will run the government after he becomes President.
A great starting point for this confrontation (if progressives have stopped celebrating their great victory) would be the just-announced Obama choice to be his White House chief of staff, the Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel. This choice should create a couple of spine-shivers. Lest we forget, Emanuel was the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for the 2006 election, in which the House turned from a Republican to a Democratic minority, a result widely interpreted as a mandate for a change in political direction for the country, especially a change toward expeditious withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, the expectation of the majority of American voters. The trouble, as John Walsh pointed out at the time, was that Emanuel used his power of controlling campaign funds raised by the DCCC to put in a “fix” in which only those Democrats would be supported who were not in favor of such withdrawal. The result of Emanuel’s “fix” was history, as they say: the Congress that convened in January 2007 sorely disappointed the expectation of Americans that the election of a Democratic Congress would get us expeditiously out of Iraq.
Much as this first personnel choice may have shocked the progressive conscience, it should not have surprised us that much. Obama himself, though as an Illinois Senator not exactly one of Emanuel’s “anointed ones,” behaved in much the same way on at least one congressional race in the 2008 elections. As Glenn Greenwald pointed out, Obama identified as an important “ally” a Blue Dog congressman from Georgia, John Barrow, who both strongly supported the telecommunications immunity which Obama ultimately supported, and spoke strongly against a “cut and run” policy of withdrawal from Iraq. Barrow’s opponent, Regina Thomas, took opposite positions and was defeated by Barrow in the Democratic primary.
The press is once again celebrating both the Obama victory and the extended Democratic control of Congress as part of the “end of an era,” presumably of the Bush era. With functionaries like Emanuel in the White House and Barrow in Congress, both Democrats, we might wonder a little how much “hope” for “change” we can have in the “era” that lies ahead.
Jerry D. Rose – Editor, The Sun State Activist
Recent Comments