"New and Not Improved"

This is the appropriate title of today's editorial in the New York Times, criticizing Obama for his reversal on several major issues since winning the primary:

We are not shocked when a candidate moves to the center for the general election. But Mr. Obama’s shifts are striking because he was the candidate who proposed to change the face of politics, the man of passionate convictions who did not play old political games.

Since winning the primary in early June, Obama has indeed repositioned himself on major issues in significant ways: Fundraising; public-finance; interest groups, for now in the form of faith-based initiatives; and illegal wiretapping. The Times also expresses its dismay with his position on gun control and the death penalty.

While it is typical for Democrats to tack right after the primary to resposition themselves to win the general election, the debate about Obama's reversal is more heated than usual since he portrayed himself as a new type to politician who would transcend the old ways.

But his shift in positions so far suggests that he might actually be what some were worried about he was all along: A centrist camouflaged as a transformational politician, and not the other way around!

Also see yesterday's post on this. This is a debate that will go on for a long time as people try to figure out who Obama "really" is. There can be no doubt that he is new; but is he really different? Or perhaps better: How different can a candidate for the US Presidency in 2008 really be?

Perhaps he could allow himself the 'luxury' of portraying himself as being 'above' if not 'beyond' politics-as-usual only during the primary; or perhaps he even had to in order to win it. Be that as it may, it is more than ironic for such a shrewd politician as Obama to pretend to be post-political. To be political means, among many other things, to take a position. One can be as little post-political as one can be post-positional, as it were.

Whether you like it or not, and whether you know it or not, you are always already positioned, simply by virtue of being in the world. One cannot not have a position. We all occupy a location in space and time, and more importantly in society and culture, including the economy, politics, law, education, what have you. More often than not, it seems that where we stand depends on where we sit ... - but that is, I was going to say, a different debate, until it occured to me that it actually is quite relevant.

In order to win the presidency, there is a certain number of things you have to do. But by doing all these things, chances are you come to conform almost totally with the system. Perhaps the system has come to function in such a way that it only allows those to run successfully who don't fundamentally challenge and threaten it, as commentators such as Alexander Cockburn have suggested. It should come as no surprise that candidates such as Ralph Nader or Dennis Kucinich never make it very far. But if the contemporary US political system operates in such a way that it almost automatically and necessarily co-opts the candidates, how can it be changed? How can you lead if you have to follow the demands of the system most of the time? How can you change the system if even trying to do so is precisely what will make you loose?

In any case, if you don't assume and defend your positions, especially in politics, others will do it for you - and that's of course the last thing you want to happen, especially in the midst of a campaign. So whenever you communicate, make decisions, take measures, allocate resources, vote, etc., you position yourself, for everyone to see in bright daylight. And now we can see how Obama is repositioning himself. Do actions still speak louder than words? And what is the relationship between rhetoric and action, between slogans and decisions, between words and deeds? Does it still make sense to talk about 'integrity' in this context?

The Interplay of Movements and Electoral Politics (Panel, Left Forum 2008)

Strange how predictable some things are. The Left Forum, probably the biggest leftist conference in the world, yesterday evening concluded a whole weekend of panels and discussions, and it is not mentioned at all, and not only in the mainstream media, but not even in the leftist media, with this exception, a podcast of a panel on the prospects of a more coherent left. This is very ironic, because coherence is one of the many things not only the left is lacking, but also most of the presentations I attended at the Left Forum.

What is going on here? What a missed opportunity, all the more that it coincided with the Fed bailing out Bear Stearns, which some call 'the ultimate financial scam,' probably with more to come. Most leftists would agree that capitalism is in crisis, and yet the biggest anti-capitalist conference in the world gets no coverage!

From my rather limited experience at the Forum, one of the many problems is the often stark discrepancy between panel descriptions and panel performance, which was certainly the case here. This was the description: 'Focusing on particular movements, the perennial dichotomy between doing electoral work or movement work will be examined, as will what can we learn about the impact of electoral politics on political movements, and the impact of political movements on electoral politics.' Sounds promising, doesn't it? That's what I thought, too.

Alas, the promise was not kept, for hardly any of the issues were addressed, much less systematically. Curiously, none of the attendees seem to mind. Is this lack of professionalism a more general problem on and of the left? In any case, this is really too bad, because these are really important questions, and are being addressed by what in our report, Finding Strategy, we termed 'movement-electoral strategies,' which try to articulate these two components. Perhaps most well known is one variant of this type of strategy, the inside-outside strategy, especially as practiced by Progressive Democrats of America.

Dorian Warren, political scientist at Columbia University, said that Frances Fox Piven had asked him to talk about 'Electoral/movement dynamics in the labor movement,' adding that she would have been much better on this topic. He then proceeded to talk primarily about the perennial question of why an influential labor party never emerged in the US, and in very general terms. Potential 'solutions' to this problem include reforming the electoral system to make third parties viable, focusing on the local rather than the national level, and promoting municipal socialism. Unfortunately, as generations of political scientists have conclusively demonstrated for decades, the prospects for creating viable third parties are very close to zero. As Domhoff and many others have suggested, it is strategically much more effective to concentrate on transforming the Democratic Party into a more progressive organization by forming left-liberal alliances.

Howard Hawkins, Teamster, and former candidate of the Green Party in New York, and editor of Independent Politics: The Green Party Strategy Debate (2006), emphasized how important it was to build an autonomous left party. He concluded: 'Basically, we have to build a vast party of the left.' This sentiment seems to be widely shared at the Forum in general.

This is remarkable: After more than a century of failure, many leftists still pursue this chimera. This leads to an important question: How long do strategies have to fail before they are being abandoned in favor of more realistic ones? Apparently, for all too many, a century of failure is not enough. What a terrible waste of precious resources, and what a huge opportunity cost. Just imagine what could have been achieved instead. This is a key strategic insight: Strategy is as much - or perhaps even more - about what what you don't do rather than about what you do. There are still way too many losing strategies being pursued on the left. It is high time to abandon them.

Ron Scott, member of the Detroit Black Panther Party and a TV producer, primarily talked about the importance of building long-term personal relationships in building a movement. The other two panelists did not show up.