http://obrag.org/?p=563

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All American progressives should unite for Barack Obama. We descend from the proud tradition of independent social movements that have made America a more just and democratic country. We believe that the movement today supporting Barack Obama continues this great tradition of grass-roots participation drawing millions of people out of apathy and into participation in the decisions that affect all our lives.

We believe that Barack Obama’s very biography reflects the positive potential of the globalization process that also contains such grave threats to our democracy when shaped only by the narrow interests of private corporations in an unregulated global marketplace. We should instead be globalizing the values of equality, a living wage and environmental sustainability in the new world order, not hoping our deepest concerns will be protected by trickle down economics or charitable billionaires. By its very existence, the Obama campaign will stimulate a vision of globalization from below.

As progressives we believe this sudden and unexpected new movement is just what America needs. The future has arrived. The alternative would mean a return to the dismal status quo party politics that have failed so far to deliver peace, health care, full employment and effective answers to crises like global warming.

During past progressive peaks in our political history-the late Thirties, the early Sixties-social movements have provided the relentless pressure and innovative ideas that allowed centrist leaders to embrace visionary solutions. We find ourselves in just such a situation today.

We intend to join and engage with our brothers and sisters in the vast rainbow of social movements to come together in support of Obama’s unprecedented campaign and candidacy. Even though it is candidate-centered, there is no doubt that the campaign is a social movement, one greater than the candidate himself ever imagined.

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The "Progressives for Obama" project was always doomed, largely because the candidate was determined to pull the rug from under it at his earliest opportunity. That time has arrived, in such dramatic fashion that even the corporate media recognize that Obama's sharp Right turns are irreversible and much more clearly reflect his essential political nature.

Obama chuckled last week at the very thought of having been "tagged as being on the Left" - and then unceremoniously jettisoned those Leftists that had taken it upon themselves to claim him as one of their own. In case "the Left" didn't get the message, Obama wrapped the insulting rejection in a Zanesville, Ohio speech announcing his "faith-based" appeal to Reagan Democrats and Bush Republicans.

But the most important reason that "Progressives for Obama" should have never existed is its utter lack of content. Leftists attempted to impose themselves on an electoral campaign where they were not wanted, and yet persisted in identifying with an organization over which they had no control, no ability to provide content. It was a game of make-believe, that has run its illogical course. Frankly, the project can also be seen as an act of opportunism, an attempt to graft the Left onto a corporate campaign that at some point must eject it like a foreign body….

We were subjected to ideological nonsense such as: the Obama campaign is inherently progressive because it has excited millions of new potential voters. Therefore, progressives must publicly identify with Obama, take care to be seen as allies, and never do or say anything that might harm his candidacy. We were even told that the excitement surrounding Obama constituted a "movement." But of course, there was never a social movement that was devoid of content, and excitement is a politically neutral quality that can be generated by the Left or the Right - or in wholly apolitical circumstances.

If popularity and excitement are hallmarks of progressivism, then "American Idol" is a valuable progressive institution. …

What "Progressives for Obama" have collectively done, is to allow Obama to "pass" for what he is not: a progressive….

Bill Fletcher, the former TransAfrica president and current executive editor of BlackCommentator.com, was a founder of "Progressives for Obama." Although Fletcher declared that he was not an Obama supporter on January 17 of this year, by March 24 he and others were hallucinating a "movement." …

Tom Hayden, another "Progressives for Obama" founder, also imagines a kind of donut movement, a progressive circle with a non-progressive middle, where the candidate stands:

"I first endorsed Obama because of the nature of the movement supporting him, not his particular stands on issues. The excitement among African-Americans and young people, the audacity of their hope, still holds the promise of a new era of social activism. The force of their rising expectations, I believe, could pressure a President Obama in a progressive direction and also energize a new wave of social movements."

Nothing of that nature will occur, because Hayden and other progressives are not organizing to make it occur. They are too concerned with remaining "for" Obama. Not only are Hayden's and Fletcher's peculiar "movements" without political content - they emerge like magic, requiring none of the hard work of organizing….

Obama now challenges his critics on the Left to go back and read his previous policy pronouncements. He is on firm ground, here. The folks who were misreading his Iraq, NAFTA and other positions were largely progressives who were pretending that Obama was one of them. Writers such as Paul Street, Kevin Alexander Gray and our own BAR crew have understood Obama all along: that he is an imperialist, a corporatist, and opposes measures designed to redress specific Black grievances in the U.S. society. It is the "Progressives for Obama" who have tended to distort his record. …

For straight language and unambiguously progressive politics, support Cynthia McKinney, who is expected to win the Green Party presidential nomination, this week in Chicago. There is little chance that the courageous former congresswoman from Georgia will win the White House, but she won't lie to you, and from her truly progressive campaign a real "movement" may grow.

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Originally posted by KeyStone:
Frankly, Harper is probably more left wing than either Clinton or Obama, but I guess he might be the best of the three.

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Not that saying that Obama is a little less bad than Harper would be under the same circumstances is what I'd call a glowing review...

[ 10 July 2008: Message edited by: Agent 204 ]

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If popularity and excitement are hallmarks of progressivism, then "American Idol" is a valuable progressive institution. …

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That nails the Obama-rama campaign on its head. The myth and fandom around the campaign did resemble a cult rock hero fanfest. I think the wheels are starting to fall off that bus now that he has that nomination.

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A friend called me a few days ago from Massachusetts, astounded at a WBUR radio program featuring Glen Greenwald from Salon.com and Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation, in which vanden Heuvel not only unflaggingly defended Obama's open and bald embrace of right-wing positions during the last few weeks against Greenwald's criticism, but also did it from the right herself, calling him a "progressive pragmatist." She affirmed Tom Hayden's insistence on the Progressives for Obama blog that the candidate is a progressive, but a new kind of progressive, or some such twaddle. In response to Greenwald's sharp rebuke of Obama's FISA sellout, she acknowledged that he had "missed an opportunity to lead."

Defending his June 30 patriotism speech that included a gratuitous rehearsal of the right-wing line about anti-Vietnam War protesters from the "counterculture" who "blamed America for all that was wrong in the world" and the canard about antiwar activists "failing to honor" returning Vietnam veterans, which Obama asserted "remains a national shame to this day" despite the fact that is an utter lie, vanden Heuvel pointed again to Hayden's endorsement as a sign that Obama's cheap move must be okay because, after all, Hayden was a founder of SDS.

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Back in 2000 ‘luminaries’ of the left such as Phil Donahue, Michael Moore, and Ani Difranco (all current Obama supporters), were seen working all across America for Ralph Nader’s presidential campaign. Michael Moore had called Bill Clinton “the best Republican president we’ve had since Abraham Lincoln.” He had also called the Democratic Convention of that year, “the other Republican Convention.” Back at that time, he said, “Clinton did things that Reagan and Bush could only dream of.” And lastly, he put it better than I could have said it, “The smartest thing the Republicans could do to continue the Reagan Revolution is to actively push for the election of Al Gore.”

The Michael Moore of the present day has become what Michael Moore of 2000 worked so adamantly against, taking on the role of head cheerleader for the Republican-lite policies of the Democratic Party.

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A box of Obama Waffles is seen in Washington, Saturday, Sept. 13, 2008. A vendor at a conservative political forum was selling boxes of waffle mix depicting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as a racial stereotype on its front and wearing Arab-like headdress on its top flap. The product was meant as political satire, said Mark Whitlock and Bob DeMoss, two writers from Franklin, Tenn., who created the mix and sold it for $10 a box at the Values Voter Summit sponsored by the lobbying arm of the Family Research Council

Why is it that in a country where the stakes are so high during elections, the campaigns are at the intellectual level of a demolition derby?

[ 13 September 2008: Message edited by: al-Qa'bong ]

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Why is it that in a country where the stakes are so high during elections, the campaigns are at the intellectual level of a demolition derby?

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Because insecure people with inferior minds who don't want to deal with real issues must always reduce their opposition to a subject for laughter. And of course, that's what the locker room crowd around Harper are doing to Dion.

But what gives it a particularly sick touch in the U.S., is the involvement of creations like the "Family Research Council". Try to imagine the dialogue at their meeetings.

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Originally posted by al-Qa'bong:
"Point box toward Mecca for tastier waffles"?

Why is it that in a country where the stakes are so high during elections, the campaigns are at the intellectual level of a demolition derby?

[ 13 September 2008: Message edited by: al-Qa'bong ]

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Originally posted by al-Qa'bong:
"Point box toward Mecca for tastier waffles"?

Why is it that in a country where the stakes are so high during elections, the campaigns are at the intellectual level of a demolition derby?

[ 13 September 2008: Message edited by: al-Qa'bong ]

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