A couple of hours before President Barack Obama offered a boffo revival of his 2008 campaign persona during a boisterous rally at the University of Wisconsin, Sen. Bernie Sanders was analyzing why the president was in a political pickle in the first place.
Sanders, the independent from Vermont who caucuses with the Democrats, speaks warmly of Obama. But unlike the man in the White House, Sanders actually is a socialist and believes devoutly in grass-roots, class-based politics.
And it is his faith in the power of a progressive movement organized around a clear set of commitments that lies at the heart of Sanders’ critique of where the president went wrong.
“Think back to two years ago,” Sanders said during an interview in the only Senate office decorated with a medallion of Eugene V. Debs, the legendary American Socialist leader. “There were rallies involving 80,000 to 100,000. Obama was running the best campaign I’ve seen in my lifetime—and I’m pretty critical.”
“Why are we where we are today?” he continues. “The most serious mistake the president made was not, in a sense, continuing the thrust of his campaign, and forgetting all he accomplished.”
Sanders does not discount what Obama and congressional Democrats achieved through the economic stimulus, health care and financial reform. But he argues that by replacing a mobilizing approach and clear progressive goals with an insider strategy aimed at compromising with a few moderate Republican senators, Obama deactivated his own enthusiasts. These are the very people the president was trying to motivate in Madison.
“While Obama and the Democrats have a large number of achievements, it was not enough,” said Sanders. “We needed to be bolder.”
Yet Sanders will do all he can to help Democrats win this fall, and therein lies the paradox for progressives. It’s true that many on the left are frustrated with White House calls for them to buck up and grow up. Jane Hamsher, who blogs at Firedoglake, sees the administration’s taunts as setting up the left as a “fall guy” if Democrats lose.
But progressives keenly understand how much their aspirations would be set back if an increasingly right-wing Republican Party wins one or both houses this fall.
Read more at www.truthdig.com
No comments:
Post a Comment