Thomas McKelvey Cleaver : We Are Made for this Moment

President Obama delivers second Inaugural address at the West Front of the Capitol, January 21, 2013. Photo by J. Scott Applewhite / AP.
Self-evident truths:
We are made for this moment

By Thomas McKelvey Cleaver / The Rag Blog / January 22, 2013

"For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth." -- President Barack Obama, January 21, 2013

See full text of President Obama's Second Inaugural Address, Below.

As several commentators noted during the Inauguration, President Obama is himself the living embodiment of this truth. Progressives may have been disappointed with various events and policies of the past four years, but the very fact of President Obama's existence as president is itself a revolutionary affirmation that America can change and grow.

Political geek that I am, I have long paid attention to presidential inaugural speeches. I will never in my life forget the electricity that ran down my spine when I heard President Kennedy say, "ask not what your country can do for you, rather ask what you can do for your country."

I think that has been my personal lodestone in all the years since; it certainly informed most of the most important decisions I made about my life. I do suspect, however, that my use of those words were not exactly as President Kennedy intended at the time.

Looking back four years, did any of us think we would hear these words from a president? "Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law -- for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well."

Given what we were told of Obama's views on this topic during the 2008 campaign, that he made this bold statement as boldly as he did in 2013 is proof that he grows and changes, too.

For me, the words that electrified me -- as had the words of President Kennedy -- were these:

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths -- that all of us are created equal -- is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.

As a participant in those movements for change over the past 50 years, the recognition of the importance of these three movements was clear evidence that, despite my differences with Obama over his imperial wars, he is still the most important progressive politician of the past 50 years, perhaps since FDR. Below is his speech, I have emphasized those sections that I thought were important when I heard them.

The text of President Barack Obama's second Inaugural Address, delivered Monday, January 21, 2013, from the West Front of the Capitol, follows below. All emphasis is added.

President Barack Obama's Second Inaugural Address

Vice President Biden, Mr. Chief Justice, Members of the United States Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens:

Each time we gather to inaugurate a president, we bear witness to the enduring strength of our Constitution. We affirm the promise of our democracy. We recall that what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names. What makes us exceptional – what makes us American – is our allegiance to an idea, articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth. The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob. They gave to us a Republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.

For more than two hundred years, we have.

Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free. We made ourselves anew, and vowed to move forward together.

Together, we determined that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce; schools and colleges to train our workers.

Together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play.

Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune.

Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone. Our celebration of initiative and enterprise; our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, are constants in our character.

But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action. For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.

This generation of Americans has been tested by crises that steeled our resolve and proved our resilience. A decade of war is now ending. An economic recovery has begun. America’s possibilities are limitless, for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention. My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it – so long as we seize it together.

For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. We believe that America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class. We know that America thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work; when the wages of honest labor liberate families from the brink of hardship. We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.

We understand that outworn programs are inadequate to the needs of our time. We must harness new ideas and technology to remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools, and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work harder, learn more, and reach higher. But while the means will change, our purpose endures: a nation that rewards the effort and determination of every single American. That is what this moment requires. That is what will give real meaning to our creed.

We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity. We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit. But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future. For we remember the lessons of our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty, and parents of a child with a disability had nowhere to turn. We do not believe that in this country, freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we make to each other – through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security – these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.

We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries – we must claim its promise. That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure – our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.

We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war. Our brave men and women in uniform, tempered by the flames of battle, are unmatched in skill and courage. Our citizens, seared by the memory of those we have lost, know too well the price that is paid for liberty. The knowledge of their sacrifice will keep us forever vigilant against those who would do us harm. But we are also heirs to those who won the peace and not just the war, who turned sworn enemies into the surest of friends, and we must carry those lessons into this time as well.

We will defend our people and uphold our values through strength of arms and rule of law. We will show the courage to try and resolve our differences with other nations peacefully – not because we are naïve about the dangers we face, but because engagement can more durably lift suspicion and fear. America will remain the anchor of strong alliances in every corner of the globe; and we will renew those institutions that extend our capacity to manage crisis abroad, for no one has a greater stake in a peaceful world than its most powerful nation. We will support democracy from Asia to Africa; from the Americas to the Middle East, because our interests and our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those who long for freedom. And we must be a source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the victims of prejudice – not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes: tolerance and opportunity; human dignity and justice.

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.

It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity; until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country. Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm.

That is our generation’s task – to make these words, these rights, these values – of Life, and Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – real for every American. Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life; it does not mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness. Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time – but it does require us to act in our time.

For now decisions are upon us, and we cannot afford delay. We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate. We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect. We must act, knowing that today’s victories will be only partial, and that it will be up to those who stand here in four years, and forty years, and four hundred years hence to advance the timeless spirit once conferred to us in a spare Philadelphia hall.

My fellow Americans, the oath I have sworn before you today, like the one recited by others who serve in this Capitol, was an oath to God and country, not party or faction – and we must faithfully execute that pledge during the duration of our service. But the words I spoke today are not so different from the oath that is taken each time a soldier signs up for duty, or an immigrant realizes her dream. My oath is not so different from the pledge we all make to the flag that waves above and that fills our hearts with pride.

They are the words of citizens, and they represent our greatest hope.

You and I, as citizens, have the power to set this country’s course.

You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time – not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals.

Let each of us now embrace, with solemn duty and awesome joy, what is our lasting birthright. With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history, and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom.

Thank you, God Bless you, and may He forever bless these United States of America.

[Vietnam veteran Thomas McKelvey Cleaver is an accidental native Texan, a journalist, and a produced screenwriter. He has written successful horror movies and articles about Second World War aviation, was a major fundraiser for Obama in 2008, and has been an activist on anti-war,  political reform, and environmental issues for almost 50 years. Read more articles by Thomas Cleaver on The Rag Blog.]

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ELECTION 2012 / Steve Russell : The Election Night Rhythm and Blues

The Obama Four celebrate victory in Chicago on election night. Photo by Jewel Samad / AFP / Getty Images.
From the POTUS to Sharon Keller:
The election night rhythm and blues

What got me off my leftist disgust with Obama high horse was the cold realization that we were about to lose victories won by our parents. We were in danger of dropping the baton.

By Steve Russell / The Rag Blog / November 8, 2012

AUSTIN -- I offer some reflections on the Silly Season now ending.

Waking up the next day, I was pleased to learn I did not dream that the POTUS was reelected and that Gov. Romney actually made a gracious concession speech. This was looking unlikely when I went to bed with Romney refusing to concede Ohio in the face of overwhelming evidence that the counties still out would not help him.

It was difficult not to chuckle at a tweet let fly by The Donald Trump calling the election a sham and advocating, I kid you not, “revolution!”

Pampered wealthy people, arise! You have nothing to lose but your tax shelters!

GMO labeling failed in California, which was rendered a probable outcome not by the merits but by the sums of corporate money that went into defeating it.

Recreational weed won in Colorado and in Washington. It’s only a matter of time until we can get high without being terminal cancer patients or chronic pain sufferers needing a prescription. Bad news for the liquor business.

Marriage equality scored three popular vote wins, becoming law in Maryland and Maine and beating back a ban in Minnesota! I saw this coming from being a university teacher. The younger generation, liberal or conservative, simply does not care who somebody else marries.

The Congress is improved by Alan Grayson returning and Allen West and Joe Walsh leaving. On the downside, Michelle Bachmann won by the drag of a knuckle.

Tammy Baldwin becomes the first out lesbian in the U.S. Senate, in a Senate with the most women to serve in that body ever.

The Tea Party remains the gift that keeps on giving to the Democrats, having now denied the Republicans slam-dunk victories sufficient to have taken control of the Senate.

The latest Tea Party fiasco was led by the two guys who wanted to be kinder and gentler about rape in order to crack down on abortion. That turned over Indiana and saved a seat in Missouri. This adds to Tea Party debacles in Delaware, Colorado, Nevada, and Alaska.

In Alaska, the mainstream Republican defeated in the primary won election as a write-in and as a result readily departs party discipline with no fear of the Tea Party.

Linda McMahon has now burned almost $100 million in her own money trying to buy a Connecticut Senate seat. McMahon has beaten the record for cost-ineffectiveness held by Texan John Connally, who spent $11 million in the 1980 Republican primaries to buy one delegate. (Another Texan, Phil Gramm, made a spirited run at the record in 1996, when he spent $8 million to get run out of the race by Pat Buchanan.)

Texas is, to blend a metaphor, still sipping on the Tea Party Kool-Aid. Hell, they’re sucking on the ice. So Texas goes until the demographics catch up.

So, now, whither the national GOP?

Will they decide that they lost for excessive crazy or insufficient crazy?

So far, the crazy has cost them control of the Senate. Taking out Dick Lugar in Indiana was particularly stupid. They gave up slam-dunk wins to embrace the crazy.

On the downside, over 40% of the country is crazy.

To the extent the crazy is driven by racism -- and it's hard to ignore the margins in the Old South and the continual bitch slaps on Hispanics -- that kind of crazy is doomed to demographics.

To the extent that crazy is driven my misogyny, the female body has a way to shut that thing down. The female body acquired that by the means shown in the pic that went around the web in the last week allegedly showing Susan B. Anthony being beaten down in the street for trying to vote. While the photo was of a different suffragist, the essential message is true.

Women vote. Get used to it. They are not going back.

The money for the crazy came from the 1%, but this election teaches they are going to have to fund a sellout from among the hoi polloi, because electing one of their own is not likely.

My favorite quote of this season is the metaphor mixed by San Antonio’s Julian Castro, when he said the American Dream “is not a sprint or a marathon -- it’s a RELAY.”

What got me off my leftist disgust with Obama high horse was the cold realization that we were about to lose victories won by our parents. We were in danger of dropping the baton.

The Donald speaks. Screen grab off Twitter.
The worst realization of 2012 is the degree to which we’ve allowed voter suppression in the name of stamping out virtually nonexistent retail voter fraud while ignoring computer-driven wholesale voter fraud. This is going to bite unless we stop it.

The outcomes were the usual mixed bag in a divided country, but I generally like them in the high profile races.

The worst outcome is the justice system in Texas, still roiled by party sweeps. Austin’s Third Court of Appeals, which used to be my judicial career goal, has lurched to the right. A guy I once put in jail for obstructing access to an abortion clinic is now on the Texas Supreme Court, having defeated a more mainstream Republican who committed the sin of birth with an Hispanic surname.

But the very, very worst of the lot is the easy reelection of Sharon Keller as Presiding Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Let me explain, so you can discount, if you choose, the views of a judge who was elected by the crazed voters of the People’s Republic of Austin, Babylon on the Colorado.

Suppose you have an ugly rape and murder of a teenage girl.

The only evidence is a statement by the defendant that required considerable bending to fit the facts: he bragged that he had consensual sex with a female hitchhiker, who was apparently an adult.

But the “scientific evidence” of a blood test “could not exclude” him.

The government was not proud enough of this case to seek the death penalty, which was probably a good thing for the defendant, as he was quickly convicted.

Many years of durance vile later, DNA testing becomes possible that DOES exclude the defendant and points to some unknown male as the perpetrator.

When these facts arrive in the Court of Criminal Appeals, Judge Keller deems them insufficient to require a new trial because of the possible presence of an unidentified co-ejaculator or prior consensual intercourse.

Never mind that the jury never heard this theory.

Never mind that the prior consensual intercourse theory required inventing a sexual history for a young girl that by all credible accounts did not exist.

In the service of what? The finality of judgments, the same argument against the DNA testing that kept Michael Morton in prison for an extra three years while the government fought the testing. Testing which in the Morton case not only exonerated an innocent man but also led to the arrest of another man, who had DNA in the system.

Now, if you believe the finality of judgments is not a value, you are an incompetent lawyer who ought not be put on the Bench.

But how heavily you weigh the value of finality is a matter of judicial philosophy. My own view is that finality is a much more weighty consideration in a civil case then in a criminal case, because in the latter case there might be a felon running loose, freed by the error.

That’s philosophy. If you agree, vote for me. If you don’t, vote against me. That’s fair and square if we choose to elect judges.

But that was not the main issue in Sharon Keller’s race.

She got a phone call from the defenders of a convicted murderer, pleading that they had a computer crash and were going to be later than five o’clock filing a petition for a stay of his execution scheduled for THAT NIGHT.

She would pretty much have to stay the execution, because the ground was that the U.S. Supreme Court has just agreed to hear another case containing the identical issue.

Her response? The courthouse closes at five. Be there or be square... or, more to the point, you have a dead client. Which is exactly what happened.

The "Honorable" Sharon Keller. Photo by Eric Gay / AP.
Now, let me expose my biases.

Go back to when I was a baby lawyer, newly licensed and just defeated in my run for Justice of the Peace. Persons in the system either did not know me or knew me as having just been rejected by the voters.

After 4 p.m. on a Friday, a woman came into my office with one eye swollen shut, busted lip, bruises all over her. She was afraid her husband would finish the job.

This was in the days before family violence protective orders, so the only remedy in court was a temporary restraining order in a divorce case.

This was also before computers, so I took a divorce petition and filled in her information and handed out pieces of it to both of our clerical persons and two other lawyers. They typed while I worked the phones.

I called the District Clerk’s office, because by this time it was past 4:30. I explained myself.

The clerk who answered the phone, who I assume did not know me from Adam, agreed to keep the office open until I could get the papers there and even went down the hall to count heads in the district judges’ offices. The clerk got back to me with the information that there were still three district judges working.

Within 45 minutes, I got the petition done and sworn to and filed. It was after six when a judge signed it and I hand carried it down to the Sheriff’s office, where the civil process unit was closed. The dispatcher called somebody in from dinner, and he promised me an attempt would be made that night.

I guess I was spoiled by learning my trade in Travis County.

After I lost that election, I had a couple of occasions to present bond applications to the man who defeated me at his home after hours.

Years later, after he had quit the Bench, he tracked me down where I was spending the night at my girlfriend’s house to present a bond. I signed it, but that’s not the point. The point is that I heard him speak for his client, regardless of the time on the clock.

I leaned my trade where there were district judges like Jim Meyers and Harley Clark and Jim Dear who you could roust out of their homes or away from the dinner table in the restaurant or out of the stands at a ball game.

There was no guarantee they would give you what you wanted, but the point was that they would hear you. At any time.

When I ran for judicial office again, because of the way I learned my trade, I knew both that I would make less money than most lawyers and that I would not get to work only eight to five, five days a week, and I would be giving up a certain amount of privacy.

Police need search or arrest warrants at all hours. Defense lawyers need consideration for bonds at all hours. Civil lawyers need temporary restraining orders at all hours. I believed, and still believe, that this is what a lawyer takes on by putting on the black nightgown and taking the oath.

You don’t promise any particular ruling, but you do promise to hear people who need to be heard.

Therefore, I’ve many times kept my office doors open past five for reasons a lot less weighty than considering whether the government will be allowed to kill a man that evening.

But maybe that’s just me, and maybe it’s just an artifact of where I learned my trade.

I hope it’s not just me, but I’m retired, and Sharon Keller cakewalked to reelection over a candidate with better paper qualifications who won the Bar poll and virtually every endorsement from all ends of the political spectrum.

I hope I’m not the only person who finds this outcome to be a very sad and even tragic counterweight to some generally good national election results.

[Steve Russell lives in Sun City, Texas, near Austin. He is a Texas trial court judge by assignment and associate professor emeritus of criminal justice at Indiana University-Bloomington. Steve was an activist in Austin in the sixties and seventies, and wrote for Austin’s underground paper, The Rag. Steve, who belongs to the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is also a columnist for Indian Country Today. He can be reached at swrussel@indiana.edu. Read more articles by Steve Russell on The Rag Blog.]

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Jonah Raskin : 'Uncle Tom' Vs. Simon Legree, 2012

Uncle Tom and Simon Legree. Image from Uncle Tom's Cabin Reconsidered.
Election 2012:
'Uncle Tom' Obama 
Vs. 'Simon Legree' Romney

Ironically, on the eve of the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, modern-day Americans are once again in need of emancipation and without an emancipator anywhere in sight.

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / October 24, 2012

From the wilds of northern California, which is solidly Democratic, it looks and sounds to me, a registered Democrat, that the main issues of the 2012 presidential election are gas, guns, and what might be called gender.

Drivers here don’t like the fact that they’re paying higher prices for gas than ever before at the pump. They don’t like the fact that the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, was gunned down, or that U.S. guns ended up in the hands of Mexican drug lords in a botched operation known as “Fast and Furious.”

The price of gas close to home, the death of an ambassador far away, and guns spilling over the border with Mexico have all added to the sense of unease and anxiety that voters feel. On gender issues such as abortion and a woman’s right to choose, northern Californians are also anxious because they feel that a Romney victory would give conservatives the upper hand and leave women at the mercy of religious Catholics like Paul Ryan and religious Mormons like the Republican party candidate for president.

Not surprisingly they’re talking about fleeing to Canada.

The televised encounters between Obama and Romney have also multiplied anxieties. In the first debate, Obama's body language, tone of voice, and facial expressions suggested a candidate who had lost a sense of direction and urgency.

In the town hall meeting with questions from the audience he was agile on his feet and in his head, and in the last debate when it came to foreign policy he had more facts and a more comprehensive view than Romney. He sounded like the black emperor of the American Empire.

For Democratic voters here in Northern California, however, the President has seemed all too often ineffectual, burned-out, and like a man running scared. Sometimes he has seemed just plain silly as when he talked about "Big Bird" and funding for public TV as though he could simply ridicule Romney out of the race.

Voters here see Romney as energized, aggressive, and self-confident -- a man who plays on basic fears and whips them up, too. Northern Californians view Romney as an actor playing the part of a grandfatherly, paternalistic plantation owner and slick salesman who claims to know what’s best for the citizens who are slaves to their cars, to gas, to guns, and more.

They see the president himself as all too meek in the presence of the white plantation owner and when confronted with Wall Street plutocrats. Granted, he talks about the middle class, but he never talks about blue collar workers, pink collar workers, or about African Americans. Our African-American president seems to have forgotten about his own African-American roots, though I will still vote for him. I will cast my ballot for Obama and criticize him, too.

I know that the term “Uncle Tom,” which comes from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin has rarely been used fairly when applied to African Americans who have survived injustice, discrimination, and more for centuries. And with a sense of real dignity, too.

Still, Obama seems more than a little like an Uncle Tom: an African American who is meek and deferential when it comes to rich, powerful white men. Romney, with his size and shape, skin-color and smile, seems more than a little like a confident contemporary incarnation of Simon Legree, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s representation of the evil, insidious slave owner.

Stowe’s best-selling novel has long been credited with starting the American Civil War. When Lincoln met the author in 1862 he apparently said, “so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” There is no book today that expresses anywhere near the equivalent of the moral force of Uncle Tom’s Cabin; there is no movie or manifesto that has woken the conscience of the country to the current crisis.

Ironically, on the eve of the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, modern-day Americans are once again in need of emancipation and without an emancipator anywhere in sight. Our Uncle Tom president might take a page from history and learn from Lincoln himself, before the country, which is already deeply divided, descends even further into cultural and political warfare which would benefit no one.

Meanwhile, women voters -- the moral descendants of Harriet Beecher Stowe -- will have the power on Election Day to decide, more than any other single group, the fate of the nation.

[Jonah Raskin, professor emeritus at Sonoma State University is an author and a frequent contributor to The Rag Blog. Read more articles by Jonah Raskin on The Rag Blog.]

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Harry Targ : The 'Unfinished Revolution' of the Emancipation Proclamation

Emancipation from Freedmen's viewpoint. Illustration from Harper's Weekly, 1865. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
The Emancipation Proclamation:
The 'Unfinished Revolution'

The candidacy of President Obama in 2012 offers a continuation of the struggle for political rights against the most sustained racist assaults by neoliberals, conservatives, and tea party activists since the days of segregation.

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / September 25, 2012

"That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free… -- President Abraham Lincoln, “The Emancipation Proclamation,” January 1, 1863.

The Purdue University Black Cultural Center on September 21, 2012, organized a panel honoring the 150th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, the final version of which was issued by the President on January 1, 1863.

The proclamation declared slaves in the states rebelling against the United States to be free. It did not apply to those border states which had not seceded from the Union. In those states 750,000 slaves were yet to be liberated.

Celebration of political anniversaries provides an important opportunity to better understand the past, how the past connects to the present, and what needs to be done to connect the present to the future. As a participant on this panel I was stimulated to reflect on the place and significance of the Proclamation and the centrality of slavery and racism to American history.

First, as Marx suggested at the time, the rise of capitalism as a mode of production was inextricably connected to slavery and the institutionalization of racism. He described the rise of capitalism out of feudalism and the centrality of racism and slavery to that process:

The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief moments of primitive accumulation (Capital, Volume 1).

Second, the Emancipation Proclamation began a political revolution, abolishing slavery in Confederate states, but it did not embrace full citizenship rights for all African Americans nor did it support economic emancipation.

The historical literature documents that while Lincoln’s views on slavery moved in a progressive direction, the President remained more committed to preserving the Union than abolishing slavery. Until the Proclamation, he harbored the view that African-Americans should emigrate to Africa, the Caribbean, or Central America to establish new lives.

As historian Eric Foner wrote: “Which was the real Lincoln -- the racist or the opponent of slavery? The unavoidable answer is: both.” In short, President Lincoln, an iconic figure in American history thought and acted in contradictory ways.

Third, Lincoln’s growing opposition to slavery during his political career and his presidency was influenced to a substantial degree by the abolitionist movement. As an influential participant in that movement Frederick Douglass had a particular impact on Lincoln’s thinking.

Foner points out that on a whole variety of issues “Lincoln came to occupy positions the abolitionists first staked out.” He continues: “The destruction of slavery during the war offers an example, as relevant today as in Lincoln’s time, of how the combination of an engaged social movement and an enlightened leader can produce progressive social change.”

Fourth, the promise of the Emancipation Proclamation was never fully achieved. It constituted an “unfinished revolution,” the creation of political rights for former slaves but not economic justice. The former slaves remained dependent on the plantation system of agriculture; landless sharecroppers beholden to former slave owners.

Fifth, post-civil war reconstruction began to institutionalize the political liberation of African Americans. For a time Blacks and whites began to create new political institutions that represented the common interests of the economically dispossessed. But the collaboration of Northern industrial interests and Southern plantation owners led to the destruction of Reconstruction era change and a return to the neo-slave system of Jim Crow segregation.

Even the “unfinished revolution” was temporarily crushed.

Sixth, over the next 100 years African Americans, workers, women, and other marginalized groups continued the struggle to reconstruct the political freedoms implied in the Emancipation Proclamation and temporarily institutionalized in Reconstruction America. The struggle for democracy culminated in the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, and the rising of Latinos, women, and gays and lesbians.

Finally, the contradictions of victories achieved and the escalation of racist reactions since the mid-1960s continues. And, most vitally, the unfinished revolution continues. The question of the intersection of race and class remains as gaps between rich and poor in wealth, income, and political power grow.

In this historic context, the candidacy of President Obama in 2012 offers a continuation of the struggle for political rights against the most sustained racist assaults by neoliberals, conservatives, and tea party activists that have existed since the days of segregation.

At the same time Obama’s reelection alone, while vital to the progressive trajectory of American history since 1863, will not complete the revolution. The need for social movements to address the “class question,”or economic justice, along with protecting the political gains that have been achieved, will remain critical to our future.

One hundred and fifty years after the Emancipation Proclamation the struggle for democracy, political empowerment, and the end to class exploitation, remains for this generation to advance.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical -- and that's also the name of his book from Changemaker Press which can be found at Lulu.com. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Carl Davidson : What Should Progressives Do in November?

Dynamic duo. Graphic by DonkeyHotey.
What to do in November, and beyond

The 2012 election will be one of the most polarized and critical elections in recent history. And it will have little to do with Obama's record... which is why we are voting for him.

By Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Carl Davidson / AlterNet / August 21, 2012

[There has been substantial discussion on the Left of late about the proper role of progressives in the upcoming presidential elections -- and whether it's appropriate, or politically correct, to support a "lesser evil" Barack Obama. The Rag Blog's email discussion group has been abuzz with this debate. Many believe, for a number of reasons, that the elections should be boycotted or even actively opposed. Bill Flether, Jr. and Carl Davidson address these issues here. It's a long piece, but highly relevant and well worth the read. -- Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog.]

Let’s cut to the chase. The November 2012 elections will be unlike anything that any of us can remember. It is not just that this will be a close election. It is also not just that the direction of Congress hangs in the balance. Rather, this will be one of the most polarized and critical elections in recent history.

Unfortunately what too few leftists and progressives have been prepared to accept is that the polarization is to a great extent centered on a revenge-seeking white supremacy; on race and the racial implications of the moves to the right in the U.S. political system.

It is also focused on a re-subjugation of women, harsh burdens on youth and the elderly, increased war dangers, and reaction all along the line for labor and the working class. No one on the Left with any good sense should remain indifferent or stand idly by in the critical need to defeat Republicans this year.


U.S. Presidential elections are not what progressives want them to be.

A large segment of what we will call the "progressive forces" in U.S. politics approach U.S.elections generally, and presidential elections in particular, as if:

1. we have more power on the ground than we actually possess, and
2. the elections are about expressing our political outrage at the system. Both get us off on the wrong foot.

The U.S. electoral system is among the most undemocratic on the planet. Constructed in a manner so as to guarantee an ongoing dominance of a two-party duopoly, the U.S. electoral universe largely aims at reducing so-called legitimate discussion to certain restricted parameters acceptable to the ruling circles of the country.

Almost all progressive measures, such as Medicare for All or Full Employment, are simply declared "off the table."  In that sense there is no surprise that the Democratic and Republican parties are both parties of the ruling circles, even though they are quite distinct within that sphere.

The nature of the U.S. electoral system -- and specifically the ballot restrictions and "winner-take-all" rules within it -- encourages or pressures various class fractions and demographic constituency groups to establish elite-dominated electoral coalitions. The Democratic and Republican parties are, in effect, electoral coalitions or party-blocs of this sort, unrecognizable in most of the known universe as political parties united around a program and a degree of discipline to be accountable to it.

We may want and fight for another kind of system, but it would be foolish to develop strategy and tactics not based on the one we actually have.

The winner-take-all nature of the system discourages independent political parties and candidacies on both the right and the left. For this reason the extreme right made a strategic decision in the aftermath of the 1964 Goldwater defeat to move into the Republican Party with a long-term objective of taking it over.

This was approached at the level of both mass movement building, e.g., anti-busing, anti-abortion, as well as electoral candidacies. The GOP right’s "Southern Strategy" beginning in 1968 largely succeeded in chasing out most of the pro-New Deal Republicans from the party itself, as well as drawing in segregationist Democratic voters in the formerly "Solid South."

Efforts by progressives to realign or shift the Democratic Party, on the other hand, were blunted by the defeat of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964, and later the defeat of the McGovern candidacy in 1972, during which time key elements of the party’s upper echelons were prepared to lose the election rather than witness a McGovern victory.

In the 1980s a very different strategy was advanced by Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow insurgencies that aimed at building -- at least initially -- an independent, progressive organization capable of fielding candidates within the Democratic primaries. This approach -- albeit independent of Jackson himself -- had an important local victory with the election of Mayor Harold Washington in Chicago. At the national level, however, it ran into a different set of challenges by 1989.

In the absence of a comprehensive electoral strategy, progressive forces fall into one of three cul-de-sacs:

1. ad hoc electoralism, i.e., participating in the election cycle but with no long-term plan other than tailing the Democrats;
2. abandoning electoral politics altogether in favor of modern-day anarcho-syndicalist "pressure politics from below"; or
3. satisfying ourselves with far more limited notions that we can best use the election period in order to "expose" the true nature of the capitalist system in a massive way by attacking all of the mainstream candidates.

We think all of these miss the key point.


Our elections are about money and the balance of power.

Money is obvious, particularly in light of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. The balance of power is primarily at the level of the balance within the ruling circles, as well as the level of grassroots power of the various mass movements. The party that wins will succeed on the basis of the sort of electoral coalition that they are able to assemble, co-opt, or be pressured by, including but not limited to the policy and interest conflicts playing out within its own ranks.

The weakness of left and progressive forces means we have been largely unable to participate, in our own name and independent of the two party upper crust, in most national-level elections with any hope of success. In that sense most left and progressive interventions in the electoral arena at the national level, especially at the presidential level, are ineffective acts of symbolic opposition or simply propaganda work aimed at uniting and recruiting far smaller circles of militants.

They are not aimed at a serious challenge for power but rather aim to demonstrate a point of view, or to put it more crassly, to "fly the flag." The electoral arena is frequently not viewed as an effective site for structural reforms or a more fundamental changing of direction.

Our politics, in this sense, can be placed in two broad groupings -- politics as self-expression and politics as strategy. In an overall sense, the left needs both of these -- the audacity and energy of the former and the ability to unite all who can be united of the latter. But it is also important to know the difference between the two, and which to emphasize and when in any given set of battles.

Consider, for a moment, the reform struggles with which many of us are familiar. Let's say that a community is being organized to address a demand for jobs on a construction site. If the community is not entirely successful in this struggle, it does not mean that the struggle was wrong or inappropriate. It means that the progressives were too weak organizationally and the struggle must continue.

The same is true in the electoral arena. The fact that it is generally difficult, in this period, to get progressives elected or that liberal and progressive candidates may back down on a commitment once elected, does not condemn the arena of the struggle. It does, however, say something about how we might need to organize ourselves better in order to win and enforce accountability.

In part due to justified suspicion of the electoral system and a positive impulse for self-expression and making our values explicit, too many progressives view the electoral realm as simply a canvass upon which various pictures of the ideal future are painted. Instead of constructing a strategy for power that involves a combination of electoral and non-electoral activity, uniting both a militant minority and a progressive majority, there is an impulsive tendency to treat the electoral realm as an idea bazaar rather than as one of the key sites on which the struggle for progressive power unfolds.


The shifts within the Right and the rise of irrationalism

Contrary to various myths, there was no "golden age" in our country where politicians of both parties got along and politics was clean. U.S. politics has always been dirty. One can look at any number of elections in the 19th century, for instance, with the Hayes-Tilden election of 1876 being among the more notorious, to see examples of electoral chicanery. Elections have been bought and sold and there has been widespread voter disenfranchisement.

In the late 19th century and early 20th century massive voter disenfranchisement unfolded as part of the rise of Jim Crow segregation. Due to gains by both the populist and socialists is this era, by the 1920s our election laws were "reformed" -- in all but a handful of states -- to do away with "fusion ballots" and other measures previously helpful to new insurgent forces forming independent parties and alliances.

What is significant about the current era has been the steady move of the Republican Party toward the right, not simply at the realm of neoliberal economics (which has also been true of much of the Democratic Party establishment) but also in other features of the "ideology" and program of the Republicans.

For this reason we find it useful to distinguish between conservatives and right-wing populists (and within right-wing populism, to put a spotlight on irrationalism). Right-wing populism is actually a radical critique of the existing system, but from the political right with all that that entails. Uniting with irrationalism, it seeks to build program and direction based largely upon myths, fears and prejudices.

Right-wing populism exists as the equivalent of the herpes virus within the capitalist system. It is always there -- sometimes latent, at other times active -- and it does not go away. In periods of system distress, evidence of right-wing populism erupts with more force. Of particular importance in understanding right-wing populism is the complex intersection of race, anti-immigrant settler-ism, "producerism," homophobia, and empire.

In the U.S., right-wing populism stands as the grassroots defender of white racial supremacy. It intertwines with the traditional myths associated with the “American Dream” and suggests that the U.S. was always to be a white republic and that no one, no people, and no organization should stand in the way of such an understanding. It seeks enemies, and normally enemies based on demographics of "The Other."

After all, right-wing populism sees itself in the legacy of the likes of Andrew Jackson and other proponents of Manifest Destiny, a view that saw no inconsistency between the notion of a white democratic republic, ethnic cleansing, slavery, and a continental (and later global) empire. "Jacksonian Democracy" was primarily the complete codification and nationalization of white supremacy in our country’s political life.


Irrationalism is rising as an endemic virus in our political landscape.

Largely in times of crisis and uncertainty, virulent forms of irrationalism make an appearance. The threat to white racial supremacy that emerged in the 1960s, for instance, brought forward a backlash that included an irrationalist view of history, e.g., that the great early civilizations on earth couldn’t have arisen from peoples with darker skins, but instead were founded by creatures from other planets. 

Irrationalism, moreover, was not limited to the racial realm. Challenges to scientific theories such as evolution and climate change are currently on the rise. Irrationalism cries for a return to the past, and within that a mythical past. A component of various right-wing ideologies, especially fascism, irrationalism exists as a form of sophistry, and even worse. It often does not even pretend to hold to any degree of logic, but rather simply requires the acceptance of a series of non sequitur assertions.

Right-wing populism and irrationalism have received nationwide reach anchored in institutions such as the Fox network, but also right-wing religious institutions. Along with right-wing talk radio and websites, a virtual community of millions of voters has been founded whose views refuse critique from within. Worse, well-financed and well-endowed walls are established to ensure that the views are not challenged from without.

In the 2008 campaign and its immediate aftermath, we witnessed segments of this community in the rise of the "birther" movement and its backing by the likes of Donald Trump. Like many other cults there were no facts that adherents of the "birthers" would accept except those "facts" which they, themselves, had established. Information contrary to their assertions was swept away. It didn’t matter that we could prove Obama was born in the U.S., because their real point, that he was a Black man, was true.

The 2012 Republican primaries demonstrated the extent to which irrationalism and right-wing populism, in various incarnations, have captured the Republican Party. That approximately 60% of self-identified Republicans would continue to believe that President Obama is not a legitimate citizen of the USA points to the magnitude of self-delusion.


The Obama campaign of 2008 at the grassroots was nothing short of a mass revolt.

The energy for the Obama campaign was aimed against eight years of Bush, long wars, neoliberal austerity and collapse, and Republican domination of the U.S. government. It took the form of a movement-like embrace of the candidacy of Barack Obama. The nature of this embrace, however, set the stage for a series of both strategic and tactical problems that have befallen progressive forces since Election Day 2008.

The mis-analysis of Obama in 2007 and 2008 by so many people led to an overwhelming tendency to misread his candidacy. In that period, we -- the authors of this essay -- offered critical support and urged independent organization for the Obama candidacy in 2008 through the independent "Progressives for Obama" project. We were frequently chastised by some allies at the time for being too critical, too idealistic, too "left," and not willing to give Obama a chance to succeed.

Yet our measured skepticism, and call for independence and initiative in a broader front, was not based on some naïve impatience. Instead, it was based on an assessment of who Obama was and the nature of his campaign for the presidency.


Obama was and is a corporate liberal.

Obama is an eloquent speaker who rose to the heights of U.S. politics after a very difficult upbringing and some success in Chicago politics. But as a national figure, he always positioned himself not so much as a fighter for the disenfranchised but more as a mediator of conflict, as someone pained by the growth of irrationalism in the USA and the grotesque image of the USA that much of the world had come to see.

To say that he was a reformer does not adequately describe either his character or his objectives. He was cast as the representative, wittingly or not, of the ill-conceived "post-Black politics era" at a moment when much of white America wanted to believe that we had become "post-racial." He was a political leader and candidate trying to speak to the center, in search of a safe harbor. He was the person to save U.S. capitalism at a point where everything appeared to be imploding.

For millions, who Obama actually was came to be secondary to what he represented for them. This was the result of a combination of wishful thinking, on the one hand, and strongly held progressive aspirations, on the other. In other words, masses of people wanted change that they could believe in. They saw in Obama the representative of that change and rallied to him.

While it is quite likely that Hillary Clinton, had she received the nomination, would also have defeated McCain/Palin, it was the Obama ticket and campaign that actually inspired so many to believe that not only could there be an historical breakthrough at the level of racial symbolism -- a Black person in the White House -- but that other progressive changes could also unfold.

With these aspirations, masses of people, including countless numbers of left and progressive activists, were prepared to ignore uncomfortable realities about candidate Obama and later President Obama.

There are two examples that are worth mentioning here. One, the matter of race. Two, the matter of war. With regard to race, Obama never pretended that he was anything other than Black. Ironically, in the early stages of his campaign many African Americans were far from certain how "Black" he actually was. Yet the matter of race was less about who Obama was -- except for the white supremacists -- and more about race and racism in U.S. history and current reality.

Nothing exemplified this better than the controversy surrounding Rev. Jeremiah Wright, followed by Obama's historic speech on race in Philadelphia. Wright, a liberation theologian and progressive activist, became a target for the political right as a way of "smearing" Obama.

Obama chose to distance himself from Wright, but in a very interesting way. He upheld much of Wright's basic views of U.S. history while at the same time acting as if racist oppression was largely a matter of the past. In that sense he suggested that Wright's critique was outdated.

Wright's critique was far from being outdated. Yet in his famous speech on race, Obama said much more of substance than few mainstream politicians had ever done. In so doing, he opened the door to the perception that something quite new and innovative might appear in the White House. He made no promises, though, which is precisely why suggestions of betrayal are misplaced. There was no such commitment in the first place.

With regard to war, there was something similar. Obama came out against the Iraq War early, before it started. He opposed it at another rally after it was underway. To his credit, U.S. troops have been withdrawn from Iraq. He never, however, came out against war in general, or certainly against imperialist war. In fact, he made it clear that there were wars that he supported, including but not limited to the Afghanistan war. Further, he suggested that if need be he would carry out bombings in Pakistan.

Despite this, much of the antiwar movement and many other supporters assumed that Obama was the antiwar candidate in a wider sense than his opposition to the war in Iraq. Perhaps "assumed" is not quite correct; they wanted him to be the antiwar candidate who was more in tune with their own views.

With Obama's election, the wishful thinking played itself out, to some degree, in the form of inaction and demobilization. Contrary to the complaints of some on the Left, Obama and his administration cannot actually be blamed for this.

There were decisions made in important social movements and constituencies to

1. assume that Obama would do the 'right thing,' and,
2. provide Obama 'space' rather than place pressure on him and his administration.

This was a strategic mistake. And when combined with a relative lack of consolidating grassroots campaign work into ongoing independent organization at the grassroots, with the exception of a few groups, such as the Progressive Democrats of America, it was an important opportunity largely lost.

There is one other point that is worth adding here. Many people failed to understand that the Obama administration was not and is not the same as Obama the individual, and occupying the Oval Office is not the same as an unrestricted ability to wield state power. "Team Obama" is certainly chaired by Obama, but it remains a grouping of establishment forces that share a common framework -- and common restrictive boundaries. It operates under different pressures and is responsive -- or not -- to various specific constituencies.

For instance, in 2009, when President Zelaya of Honduras was overthrown in a coup, President Obama responded -- initially -- with a criticism of the coup. At the end of the day, however, the Obama administration did nothing to overturn the coup and to ensure that Honduras regained democracy. Instead the administration supported the "coup people."

Did this mean that President Obama supported the coup? It does not really matter. What matters is that his administration backtracked on its alleged opposition to the coup and then did everything in its power to ensure that President Zelaya could not return. This is why the focus on Obama the personality is misleading and unhelpful.

Image from Toonari Post.
No struggle, no progress

President Obama turned out not to be the progressive reformer that many people had hoped he would be. At the same time, however, he touched off enough sore points for the political Right that he became a lightning rod for everything that they hated and feared. This is what helps us understand the circumstances under which the November 2012 election is taking place.

As a corporate liberal, Obama's strategy was quite rational in those terms. First, stabilize the economy. Second, move on health insurance. Third, move on jobs. Fourth, attempt a foreign policy breakthrough. Contrary to the hopes of much of his base, Obama proceeded to tackle each of these narrowly as a corporate "bipartisan" reformer rather than as a wider progressive champion of the underdog. That does not mean that grassroots people gained nothing. Certainly preserving General Motors was to the benefit of countless auto workers and workers in related industries.

Yet Obama's approach in each case was to make his determinations by first reading Wall Street and the corporate world and then extending the olive branch of bipartisanship to his adversaries on the right. This, of course, led to endless and largely useless compromises, thereby demoralizing his base in the progressive grassroots.


While Obama's base was becoming demoralized, the political right was becoming energized.

It did not matter that Obama was working to preserve capitalism. As far as the Right was concerned, there were two sins under which he was operating: some small degree of economic redistribution and the fact that Obama was Black. The combination of both made Obama a demon, as far as the right was concerned, who personified Black power, anti-colonialism and socialism, all at the same time.


The upset Right and November 2012

We stress the need to understand that Obama represents an irrational symbol for the political Right, and a potent symbol that goes way beyond what Obama actually stands for and practices. The Right, while taking aim at Obama, also seeks, quite methodically and rationally, to use him to turn back the clock. They have created a common front based on white revanchism (a little used but accurate term for an ideology of revenge), on political misogynism, on anti-"freeloader" themes aimed at youth, people of color, and immigrants, and a partial defense of the so-called 1%.

Right-wing populism asserts a "producer" vs. "parasites" outlook aimed at the unemployed and immigrants below them and "Jewish bankers and Jewish media elite" above them. Let us emphasize that this is a front rather than one coherent organization or platform. It is an amalgam, but an amalgam of ingredients that produces a particularly nasty U.S.-flavored stew of right-wing populism.

Reports of declining Obama support among white workers is a good jumping off point in terms of understanding white revanchism. Obama never had a majority among them as a whole, although he did win a majority among younger white workers.

White workers have been economically declining since the mid-1970s. This segment of a larger multinational and multiracial working class is in search of potential allies, but largely due to a combination of race and low unionization rates finds itself being swayed by right-wing populism. Along with other workers it is insecure and deeply distressed economically, but also finds itself in fear -- psychologically -- for its own existence as the demographics of the USA undergoes significant changes.

They take note of projections that the U.S., by 2050, will be a majority of minorities of people of color. They perceive that they have gotten little from Obama, but more importantly they are deeply suspicious as to whether a Black leader can deliver anything at all to anyone.

Political misogynism -- currently dubbed "the war on women" -- has been on the rise in the U.S. for some time. The ‘New Right’ in the 1970s built its base in right-wing churches around the issue in the battles over abortion and reproduction rights, setting the stage for Reagan’s victory. In the case of 2012, the attacks on Planned Parenthood along with the elitist dismissal of working mothers have been representative of the assertion of male supremacy, even when articulated by women.

This in turn is part of a global assault on women based in various religious fundamentalisms that have become a refuge for economically displaced men and for gender-uncomfortable people across the board.

The attack on "slacker," "criminal," and "over-privileged" youth, especially among minorities, is actually part of what started to unfold in the anti-healthcare antics of the Tea Party. Studies of the Tea Party movement have indicated that they have a conceptualization based on the "deserving" and "undeserving" populations.

They and many others on the right are deeply suspicious, if not in outright opposition, to anything that they see as distributing away from them any of their hard-won gains. They believe that they earned and deserve what they have and that there is an undeserving population, to a great extent youth (but also including other groups), who are looking for handouts.

This helps us understand that much of the right-wing populist movement is a generational movement of white baby-boomers and older who see the ship of empire foundering and wish to ensure that they have life preservers, if not life-boats.

The defenders of the 1% are an odd breed. Obviously that includes the upper crust, but it also includes a social base that believes that the upper crust earned their standing. Further, this social base believes or wishes to believe that they, too, will end up in that echelon.

 Adhering to variations of Reaganism, "bootstrapping," or other such ideologies, they wish to believe that so-called free market capitalism is the eternal solution to all economic problems. Despite the fact that the Republican economic program is nothing more or less than a retreading of George W. Bush's failed approach, they believe that it can be done differently.


Empire, balance of forces and the lesser of two evils

The choice in November 2012 does not come down to empire vs. no-empire. While anyone can choose to vote for the Greens or other non-traditional political parties, the critical choice and battleground continues to exist in the context of a two-party system within the declining U.S. empire. The balance of forces in 2012 is such that those who are arrayed against the empire are in no position to mount a significant electoral challenge on an anti-imperialist platform.

To assume that the November elections are a moment to display our antipathy toward empire, moreover, misses entirely what is unfolding. This is not a referendum on the “America of Empire”: it is a referendum pitting the “America of Popular Democracy” -- the progressive majority representing the changing demographics of the U.S. and the increasing demands for broad equality and economic relief, especially the unemployed and the elderly -- against the forces of unfettered neoliberalism and far right irrationalism.

Obama is the face on the political right’s bullseye, and stands as the key immediate obstacle to their deeper ambitions. We, on the left side of the aisle, recognize that he is not our advocate for the 99%. Yet and quite paradoxically, he is the face that the right is using to mobilize its base behind irrationalism and regression.

That’s why we argue that Obama's record is really not what is at stake in this election.

Had the progressive social movements mobilized to push Obama for major changes we could celebrate; had there been progressive electoral challenges in the 2010 mid-term elections and even in the lead-up to 2012 (such as Norman Solomon's congressional challenge in California, which lost very narrowly), there might be something very different at stake this year.

Instead, what we have is the face of open reaction vs. the face of corporate liberalism, of "austerity and war on steroids" vs. "austerity and war in slow motion."

This raises an interesting question about the matter of the "lesser of two evils," something which has become, over the years, a major concern for many progressives. Regularly in election cycles some progressives will dismiss supporting any Democratic Party candidate because of a perceived need to reject "lesser evil-ism," meaning that Democrats will always strike a pose as somewhat better than the GOP, but remain no different in substance.

In using the anti-‘lesser evil-ism’ phraseology, the suggestion is that it really does not matter who wins because they are both bad. Eugene Debs is often quoted -- better to vote for what you want and not get it, than to vote for what you oppose and get it. While this may make for strong and compelling rhetoric and assertions, it makes for a bad argument and bad politics.

In elections progressives need to be looking very coldly at a few questions:

Are progressive social movements strong enough to supersede or bypass the electoral arena altogether? Is there a progressive candidate who can outshine both a reactionary and a mundane liberal, and win? What would we seek to do in achieving victory? What is at stake in that particular election?

In thinking through these questions, we think the matter of a lesser of two evils is a tactical question of simply voting for one candidate to defeat another, rather than a matter of principle. Politics is frequently about the lesser of two evils. World War II for the USA, Britain and the USSR was all about the lesser of two evils.

Britain and the USA certainly viewed the USSR as a lesser evil compared with Nazi Germany, and the USSR came to view the USA and Britain as the lesser evils. Neither side trusted the other, yet they found common cause against a particular enemy. There are many less dramatic examples, but the point is that it happens all the time. It’s part of "politics as strategy" mentioned earlier.

It is for these reasons that upholding the dismissal of the "lesser evil-ism" is unhelpful. Yes, in this case, Obama is aptly described as the lesser of two evils. He certainly represents a contending faction of empire. He has continued the drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. His healthcare plan is nowhere near as helpful as would be Medicare for All. He has sidelined the Employee Free Choice Act that would promote unionization. What this tells us is that Obama is not a progressive. What it does not tell us is how to approach the elections.


Approaching November

The political Right, more than anything, wishes to turn November 2012 into a repudiation of the changing demographics of the U.S. and an opportunity to reaffirm not only the empire, but also white racial supremacy.

In addition to focusing on Obama they have been making what are now well-publicized moves toward voter suppression, with a special emphasis on denying the ballot to minority, young, formerly incarcerated, and elderly voters. This latter fact is what makes ridiculous the suggestion by some progressives that they will stay home and not vote at all.

The political right seeks an electoral turnaround reminiscent of the elections at the end of the 19th century in the South that disenfranchised African Americans and many poor whites. This will be their way of holding back the demographic and political clocks. And, much like the disenfranchisement efforts at the end of the 19th century, the efforts in 2012 are playing on racial fears among whites, including the paranoid notion that there has been significant voter fraud carried out by the poor and people of color (despite all of the research that demonstrates the contrary!).

Furthermore, this is part of a larger move toward greater repression, a move that began prior to Obama and has continued under him. It is a move away from democracy as neoliberal capitalism faces greater resistance and the privileges of the "1%" are threatened. Specifically, the objective is to narrow the franchise in very practical terms. The political Right wishes to eliminate from voting whole segments of the population, including the poor. Some right-wingers have even been so bold as to suggest that the poor should not be entitled to vote.

November 2012 becomes not a statement about the Obama presidency, but a defensive move by progressive forces to hold back the "Caligulas’ on the political Right. It is about creating space and using mass campaigning to build new grassroots organization of our own. It is not about endorsing the Obama presidency or defending the official Democratic platform.

But it is about resisting white revanchism and political misogynism by defeating Republicans and pressing Democrats with a grassroots insurgency, while advancing a platform of our own, one based on the "People’s Budget" and anti-war measures of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. In short, we need to do a little "triangulating" of our own.


Why do we keep getting ourselves into this hole?

Our answer to this question is fairly straight forward. In the absence of a long-term progressive electoral strategy that is focused on winning power, we will find ourselves in this "Groundhog Day" scenario again and again. Such a strategy cannot be limited to the running of symbolic candidates time and again as a way of rallying the troops. Such an approach may feel good or help build socialist recruitment, but it does not win power. Nor can we simply tail the Democrats.

The central lesson we draw from the last four years has less to do with the Obama administration and more to do with the degree of effective organization of social movements and their relationship to the White House, Congress, and other centers of power.

The failure to put significant pressure on the Obama administration -- combined with the lack of attention to the development of an independent progressive strategy, program and organizational base -- has created a situation whereby frustration with a neoliberal Democratic president could lead to a major demobilization. At bottom this means further rightward drift and the entry into power of the forces of irrationalism.

Crying over this situation or expressing our frustration with Obama is of little help at this point. While we will continue to push for more class struggle approaches in the campaign’s messages, the choice that we actually face in the immediate battle revolves around who would we rather fight after November 2012: Obama or Romney? Under what administration are progressives more likely to have more room to operate? Under what administration is there a better chance of winning improvements in the conditions of the progressive majority of this country?

These are the questions that we need to ask. Making a list of all of the things that Obama has not done and the fact that he was not a champion of the progressive movement misses a significant point: he was never the progressive champion. He became, however, the demon for the political right and the way in which they could focus their intense hatred of the reality of a changing U.S., and, indeed, a changing world.

We urge all progressives to deal with the reality of this political moment rather than the moment we wish that we were experiencing. In order to engage in politics, we need the organizations to do politics with, organizations that belong to us at the grassroots. That ball is in our court, not Obama’s.

In 2008 and its aftermath, too many of us let that ball slip out of our hands, reducing us to sideline critics, reducing our politics to so much café chatter rather than real clout. Let’s not make that mistake again.

[Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a racial justice, labor, and international writer and activist. He is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum, an editorial board member of BlackCommentator.com, the co-author of Solidarity Divided, and the author of the forthcoming “They’re Bankrupting Us”: And Twenty other Myths about Unions. He can be reached at billfletcherjr@gmail.com

[Carl Davidson is a political organizer, writer and public speaker. He is currently co-chair of Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, a board member of the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network, and a member of Steelworker Associates in Western Pennsylvania. His most recent book is New Paths to Socialism: Essays on the Mondragon Cooperatives, Workplace Democracy and the Politics of Transition. He can be reached at carld717@gmail.com.]

Read more articles by and about Bill Fletcher, Jr., and Carl Davidson on The Rag Blog.

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Lamar W. Hankins : Obama's 'Rage' and Other Fairy Tales

Ragin' Obama: The right-wing view.
Obama’s 'rage' and other fairy tales

When I think of Barack Obama, I never think rage. I have raged against him on more than one occasion, but Obama never rages back. In fact, he is ridiculed by the same right wing for being too cool.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / June 5, 2012

The man with so much money he doesn’t know what to do with it, Joe Ricketts, is bankrolling a documentary based on the book by Dinesh D’Souza, The Roots of Obama’s Rage. This book is further evidence that the right wing has no sense of irony.

When I think of Barack Obama, I never think rage. I have raged against him on more than one occasion, but Obama never rages back. In fact, he is ridiculed by the same right wing for being too cool. It appears that the right wing is just confused, in an Orwellian sort of way -- rage is cool, war is peace, etc.

D’Souza’s book posits the thesis that Obama has a “Kenyon, anti-colonial” world view. Republican presidential aspirant Newt Gingrich was channeling D’Souza during his campaign when he said: "What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]? That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior."

Of course, if Obama really did have an anti-colonial world view, I would be enthusiastic about him, but that is not the case. An anti-colonialist would have already ended the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan by American military forces. An anti-colonialist would not have joined NATO in the bombing of Gaddafi’s forces in Libya. An anti-colonialist would not be using drones regularly in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere.

An anti-colonialist would not be continuing the decades-long involvement of this country in Colombia. An anti-colonialist would not maintain the 50-year embargo against Cuba. An anti-colonialist would not be funding the expansion of military bases in the Middle East. An anti-colonialist would not continue funding the wide-spread violation of human rights by the military in Colombia.

An anti-colonialist would not be maintaining 900 military installations in 130 countries around the world. An anti-colonialist would not be expanding the military, whose primary use historically has been colonial expansion on behalf of American commercial and economic interests.

D’Souza, Gingrich, Ricketts, and all the other anti-Obama zealots seem incapable of seeing Obama for what he really is -- a mainstream American exceptionalist with a colonialist mentality. Every president in my lifetime has pursued a colonialist agenda, some more than others. Obama fits right in the middle of this group -- not the most expansionist, but not anywhere close to being the least expansionist.

Unlike the earlier colonialism, where we actually controlled the apparatus of government in other countries, we now use our military might and economic leverage (directly and through the World Bank and the United States Agency for International Development) to control the policies of other countries. None of this has changed under Obama.

Ricketts’ other raps against Obama are economic. Ricketts believes that Obama is promoting socialism, driving up the deficit, and spending too much. This view is based on the bank and auto bailouts and a cursory look at spending and debt increases since Obama has been in office.

Ricketts seems to have forgotten that it was Bush who began the auto and bank bailouts, and it was during Bush’s terms that the federal debt almost doubled. Bush also increased entitlements -- mostly his Medicare prescription drug program. Of course, Congress shares responsibility for all of these debt increases.

As the Associated Press has noted, the public debt tripled under President Reagan, and has gone up by half under President Obama. I’m not arguing that debt is not a problem. I am arguing that Obama’s performance is not what his critics claim.

Many economists take the position that debt needs to be addressed, but this should be done gradually. But people like Ricketts, Paul Ryan, and Romney favor austerity at a time when the lack of government spending will keep the economy from recovering quickly. Economists Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Robert Reich, Simon Johnson, and others believe that the lackluster economic recovery is due largely to limited government spending where it counts the most, and that declining federal government revenues are a result largely of the supposedly temporary Bush tax cuts that have been continued.

Simon Johnson, an MIT professor with vast worldwide economic experience, has written:

Our modern debt surge is much more about declining federal government revenue than it is about runaway spending... The smart approach is to begin the long and not-so-nice work of controlling deficits while allowing the economy to grow... The kind of austerity now being experienced in Europe is absolutely not what is called for in the United States. We have time and space for a fiscal adjustment, particularly because the world remains favorably inclined to buy United States government debt, and this holds down our long-term interest rates.

Helping state and local governments keep teachers, police, and firefighters on the job, as well as funding infrastructure projects will be a greater boost to the economy than has bailing out the banks.

Ricketts’ (and D’Souza’s) claims that Obama is a socialist and anti-colonialist have been rejected by two bellwethers of conservative thought -- columnist George Will and The Weekly Standard. The oft-cited socialism indicator -- the Affordable Care Act -- is no more socialist than the health care proposals of Harry Truman and Richard Nixon, and its most controversial aspects were originally Republican ideas.

Ricketts justifies his alliance with D’Souza by pointing to what he believes is D’Souza’s great scholarly work. That work is based on a ridiculous syllogism that is partly fact, partly speculation:

1. Obama admired his father and wanted to emulate his views;
2. Obama’s father grew up in Kenya as an anti-colonialist; therefore,
3. Obama wants to be an anti-colonialist and change this country’s foreign policy accordingly.

Even if this syllogism were accurate, it would contradict, not explain, Obama’s pursuit of a colonialist agenda as outlined above. Far from being predictive of Obama’s behavior, as D’Souza claims, it explains nothing about Obama because its base assumptions are wrong: Obama was actually disillusioned with the anti-colonialist ideas of his birth father and has followed a foreign policy path trod by most of his modern predecessors.

U.S. foreign policy would be far different if the U.S. actually respected the autonomy of other countries and engaged other countries through bargaining and mutual benefits, rather than through economic manipulation, military threat, covert interventions, and war.

The arc of justice that Obama likes to talk about is working against the U.S. in many parts of the world. In South America, for instance, countries are electing leaders who are willing to combat colonialism in all of its manifestations. Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela, and to a lesser extent Chile and Ecuador, are seeking control over their own resources and moving toward greater economic justice and cultural rights for their indigenous people.

Joe Ricketts, Dinesh D’Souza, the Tea Party true believers, and others who despise Obama may have available to them the great wealth that it takes to produce slick video attacks on the objects of their wrath, but that doesn’t give their views authenticity or accuracy.

The one thing that we can know for certain is that their rage is far greater than any emotion or action we have seen from Obama to date, and that rage is directed at their own delusions.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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Carl Davidson : Shameless Republicans and the State of the Union

Newt and the "Food Stamp President." Image from The Economist / Keep on Keepin' On!
We're all in the same boat?
On the topic of Obama, the
GOP can't even blush anymore

By Carl Davidson / The Rag Blog / January 25, 2012

If Hollywood gave Oscars for shamelessness, the Republican responses to President Obama's State of the Union speech last night, Tuesday, January 24, would have swept the field.

Take Indiana's Gov. Mitch Daniels, who gave the official GOP response:

"No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others," he said. "As in previous moments of national danger, we Americans are all in the same boat."

Amazing. One top GOP candidate, Newt Gingrich, is running around the country attacking Obama as the "Food Stamp President," while the other, Mitt Romney, whose newly released tax returns show he takes in more in a day than a well-paid worker does in a year, critiques Obama's business skills using a shuttered factory as a stage prop.

Obama, of course, never shut down a single factory, yet that was precisely the business Mitt Romney -- and his outfit, Bain Capital -- was famous for, including shutting down a factory in Florida, where his video message was being recorded.

"All in the same boat" and "castigating others" indeed. Governor Daniels uttered these words as the state he presides over is currently engaged in a notorious "right-to-work-for-less" battle to strip Indiana's workers of their ability to bargain collectively.

Like many Americans, I watched the President's speech with a critical eye. As he detailed a number of manufacturing and alternative energy industrial policies, I thought, finally, he's giving some voice to his "inner Keynesian" and forcing a crack in the neoliberal hegemony at the top. I cheered when he took aim at Wall Street and declared, "No more bailouts, no more handouts, and no more cop outs."

On the other hand I winced more than once at the glorification of militarism and the defense of Empire -- I'm one quick to oppose unjust wars and who has long believed a clean energy/green manufacturing industrial policy needs to trump a military-hydrocarbon industrial policy.

This speech was also Obama in campaign mode. One thing we've learned over the last four years is that his governing mode is not the same thing, and requires much more of us in terms of independent, popular, and democratic power at the base to make good things happen.

But one thing is clear. My critical eye has nothing in common with what's coming from the GOP and the far right. The first Saturday of every month, the pickup trucks from the local hills and hollows, growing numbers of them, fill the parking lot of the church on my corner, picking up packages from the food pantry to help make ends meet.

In these circumstances and lacking better practical choices, I'll go with the "Food Stamp President" any day of the week.

[Carl Davidson is a national co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, a national board member of Solidarity Economy Network, a writer for Beaver County Blue, the website of PA’s 4th CD Progressive Democrats of America, and a member of Steelworkers Associates. He is the author of several books, including New Paths to Socialism, available online. In the 1960s, he was a national leader of SDS and a writer and editor for the Guardian newsweekly. This article was also published at Carl's blog, Keep On Keepin' On!. Read more articles by Carl Davidson on The Rag Blog.]

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