Season's Greetings from the IDF!

Upon unleashing a deadly wave of airstrikes on the Gaza Strip in its biggest operation in the region since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Jewish state's Defense Minister Ehud Barak declared ominously: "Now is the time for fighting." The Israeli action, which may soon be expanded to involve ground troops, is being justified as a response to rocket attacks launched by Hamas-affiliated Palestinian militants from Gaza into southern Israel. Whatever the rationale, this is yet another case of Israel's commitment to using violence as its primary means of political negotiation. Surely, there are some unsavory characters who lurk in the shadows of Gaza's slums waiting to kill innocent Israelis in order to inflict pain on their enemy. Yet none of these rocket attacks can compare in magnitude to the fury of the Israeli Defense Force's firepower which has so far killed at least 200 Palestinians over the course of a few hours. The international community, while calling for Hamas to halt its rocket attacks, is outraged by Israel's latest attempt to prove that "might makes right."

The timing of these airstrikes is also rather suspicious, as one gets the sense that leaders in Israel are uncertain about Obama's agenda for the Middle East--despite how much he tries to reassure AIPAC--and are thus now scrambling to achieve their military objectives in the region before the official end of the Bush-Cheney era. There are also upcoming elections in Israel, and this latest round of violence would appear to play right into the hands of Benjamin Netanyahu, the hard line Likud leader whose racially-tinged hawkishness towards the Arab world is both well-known and (to many observers) very frightening. If Netanyahu returns to the Prime Minister's office after the next round of voting on Feb. 10 2009, there will be virtually no doubt in which direction Israeli policy will be headed. Thus while it appears that Israel has failed in its mission to cajole the lame-duck Republican administration into starting one more war in the Middle East before riding off into the sunset, today's events indicate that leaders in Tel Aviv may be willing to follow Bush's lead and "go it alone." Thus with Gaza in flames and the world up-in-arms, it might be worth asking what seems in some ways like a ludicrous question: will Iran be next?

CLIMATE CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN

GREEN ALERT

SURELY there is no cause ultimately greater than preserving the sustainability life on earth, preferably including humans; with every passing moment it is increasingly obvious that our planet is becoming less stable/familiar, and it is clear that we must change our ways of life accordingly. From powerful storms and flooding to droughts and lightening-sparked wildfires, the signs of a climate in transition are all around us.

As most people are by now aware, former Vice-President Al Gore has, in the wake of being denied the White House in 2000, been engaged in a campaign to fight against global climate change. His Oscar-winning 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth gained widespread attention and helped lead to Gore's selection in October 2007 as a recipient of the Nobel Prize for his work publicizing the "climate crisis." As someone who until recently had far more credibility in Washington than among activists, Gore may be a highly imperfect messenger for the environmental movement. Then again, he is neither an environmentalist nor a scientific "expert," but a politician who converted himself into a developer of mass environmental awareness while appealing to national and world leaders through such initiatives as wecansolveit.org.

On July 17, 2008 Gore delivered a speech at Constitution Hall in Washington, followed that Sunday with an appearance on Meet the Press, in which he put forth a challenge to the nation: shift to one hundred percent renewable (wind, solar, and other carbon-free) sources of energy by 2018. While gaining broad public and political support, there were also those who questioned whether Gore's 10-year plan was feasible while wondering how it would be funded, especially under current circumstances. In addressing this issue with Tom Brokaw, Gore spoke of needing to"tax what we burn, not what we earn." There is no reason why industry should not pay what amounts to a fine for polluting the atmosphere and contributing to the instability of the climate. Yet in order to raise the immense amount of money necessary to rebuild the national energy infrastructure, those in the highest income bracket--$250, 000 per year and up--will inevitably have to pay a significantly higher percentage of their salary in taxes (as they should).

The question of how to fund such initiatives is especially important since it relates to the idea of ultimately repairing a severely damaged economic system by creating "green collar" jobs that put people back to work installing solar panels and building high-speed railways, for instance. Through its various pronouncements about job creation and infrastructure repair programs, along with a stated commitment to urgent action on the issue of climate change, the incoming Obama administration seems poised to move in the direction of such a Green Deal. Obama's choice of California Rep. Hilda Solis as the next Secretary of Labor would seem to confirm this conclusion (Solis is considered a pro-labor, "green jobs" expert), as would his recent meeting with Gore in Chicago (while it is at the moment unlikely that he would accept the position, there has been speculation that Team Obama has offered to give Gore an official Cabinet post as Climate Change Czar).

In a recent article, "Why Obama's Futurama Can Wait: Schools and Hospitals Should Come First in Any Stimulus Package," historian Mike Davis takes issue with Obama's stated priorities:

We are now at a crash site, and our priority should be to save the victims, not change the tires or repair the fender, much less build a new car. In the triage situation that now confronts the president-elect, keeping local schools and hospitals open should be the first concern, rebuilding bridges and expanding ports would come next, and rescuing bank shareholders at the very end of the line.

Davis' reference to the current Bush administration-engineered $700 billion "financial rescue package" is quite prescient, as no serious attempt to fix the economic meltdown can be successful if it begins be rewarding those who created the disaster to begin with. Beyond this, his argument is essentially that rebuilding the nation's infrastructure must take a back-seat to what he considers to be more humanitarian concerns: education and health care. Yet Davis does not fully explain why it makes sense to separate an immediate investment in schools and hospitals from a massive Green Deal-like socioeconomic program, especially since a growing green-collar job sector, along with higher taxes for the rich, would help fund the social services he thinks must be prioritized.

While not fully articulated, Davis' underlying premise is that a Green Deal might be utilized by elites to shore-up the system much like the New Deal is credited with having "saved capitalism." Progressive activists should therefore be wary of capital-intensive infrastructure development programs that do not offer immediate assistance to those being victimized by the economic crisis. This is an honorable sentiment indeed, yet it fails to consider the degree to which providing work for the jobless and preventing deaths as a result of collapsed bridges can be viewed as a humanitarian matter. Yet much more striking, given the particular focus of his work, is Davis' failure to clearly delineate how climate change should (or for that matter should not) be addressed in terms of socioeconomic policy.

He seems to be arguing--or at least implying--that climate change is not as serious a problem as many alarmists would have us believe, and that it fits the pattern of capitalism's tendency to cause environmental catastrophes that are subsequently manufactured into "natural disasters" easily exploited by those in power (See Davis' Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World). Still, Davis comes nowhere close to claiming that the global climate crisis is ultimately unreal or even unduly exaggerated. Indeed, the question of ongoing environmental devastation caused by human activity does not factor much at all into his pithy criticism of "Obama's Futurama." Instead, Davis refers to the incoming president's economic team as a "powerful and desperate coalition of interests...aligned to support the Keynesian shock-and-awe of major public works," but he does not characterize such elite support for government spending as in any way related to environmental policies.

So even assuming that a Green Deal would ultimately amount to another attempt to save the capitalist ship before it sinks, it's difficult to make a strong case for that outcome being worse than what may happen if we don't do anything (or at least not enough) to address the climate crisis. Maybe this sentiment is attached to the fact that many leftists today--unlike during previous eras--have an easier time imagining the end of the world than they do imagining the end of capitalism. Perhaps Mike Davis is thus simply staying true to his Marxist roots by choosing to focus on socioeconomic conditions rather than fret over the decreasing size of the earth's polar ice caps.

Yet it seems logical that environmental and economic reforms should from now on be increasingly integrated in some context, whether it be a Green Deal or in another manner. Indeed, even military planners are very seriously examining the potential threats posed by climate change and preparing "national security" strategies accordingly. For instance a Pentagon commissioned study published in October 2003 and released to the public in February 2004, "An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and its Implications for United States National Security", warned that

Violence and disruption stemming from the stresses created by abrupt changes in the climate pose a different type of threat to national security than we are accustomed to today. Military confrontation may be triggered by a desperate need for natural resources such as energy, food and water rather than by conflicts over ideology, religion, or national honor.

By this account there is no telling exactly how the global political-economy will be affected by the climate crisis, and it could under the right conditions produce unprecedented levels of migration accompanying a frightening wave of "resource wars" that would make the invasion and occupation of Iraq seem quaint. Especially in this light: though not perfect, a Green Deal that would seek to divert money away from the military-industrial complex and send it towards a broad array of domestic necessities might be the wisest course of action to follow at this critical juncture.

Keep Your Eyes on Sasha: The Littlest Obama Will Bring Real Change to the White House

A descendant of slaves, seven year-old Natasha (Sasha) Obama will soon be the youngest person to move into the White House since John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1961. And while she will not be in Cabinet meetings or receive "national-security" briefings, she does have the ear of the President (not to mention a lock on his heart). But more importantly, Sasha is an uncorrupted child who is just coming into consciousness and in whose eyes one can still see the glimmering magic of youth. While moving into the White House will surely change her, she--with her vibrancy and innocence--will surely also change the White House. Perhaps the ghost of Sally Hemmings will even find some rest.

Seen here (thanks to a paparazzo) sporting what admirers are calling "sassy vacation sunglasses" as she deplaned yesterday in Hawaii with her father in tow, less visible but more revealing is her multicolored peace sign t-shirt. On one level Sasha's fashion underscores the unfortunate fact that the 1960s counterculture and its symbols have become highly marketable and heavily marketed commodities. Yet this troubling development aside (although it should be examined and discussed in general), there is something fortuitously luminous about seeing the strong, black, and beautiful daughter of our new JFK/MLK hybrid president strutting her stuff in a sparkling peace sign without a care in the world (granted, no one was supposed to see this image...!?). If symbols matter, and they do, Sasha's a wonderful symbol for what the next generation of influential Americans may look like.

Don't Let the Shoe Hit You on the Way Out!

An Iraqi reporter hurls a shoe at Bush during his final visit to the country that the 43 US president chose to unilaterally invade and occupy. Said the man: "This is a goodbye kiss, you dog!"

Given the structure of international law, after Jan. 20, Bush may have much more than just flying footwear to be concerned about...

SAY IT LOUD: I'M GREEN AND I'M PROUD!

"I inhaled frequently. That was the point."
--Barack Obama, Nov. 2006

IF the Green Revolution is truly upon us, then nothing short of full decriminalization AND rationally implemented legalization of cannabis must be central to the "change we seek." Now is the time to begin a massive campaign geared towards pressuring (gently or more forcefully) President Obama and his minions to move beyond the insane folly of America's "controlled substances" policies--the tragedy of which is exemplified by a longstanding federal anti-marijuana bias that harms far more people than the outlawed plant itself ever has in its centuries of existence. Indeed, cannabis has numerous proven benefits, from its use as medicine for chronically ill patients to sustainable industrial/agricultural product, not to mention as a globally popular recreational drug used widely as a non-toxic alternative to alcohol as well as a mild (sacramental) psychoactive agent.

For reasons neither completely known nor relevant, 4:20 as a time and 4/20 as a date have become known internationally as symbols of cannabis culture, the latter marking a recognized annual day of celebration. Yet, April 20 is at this point an apolitical event that may in balance harm more than help the serious and important work of cannabis advocacy. All of this much change. April 20, 2009 ought to be a day when people of conscience across the world come together to call for an end to the "War on Drugs" by echoing the reggae prophet Peter Tosh's simple yet profound demand: "Legalize it!"

After Bush: A Center-Left Obama Coalition?

In 2004 after Bush and Cheney “won” another bitterly divided and contested election, Karl Rove heralded the dawning of a new "permanent Republican majority" driven by commitment to conservative cultural values at home and unwavering militarism abroad. Evangelical Christians in the American heartland along with suburban “soccer moms” (or what Sarah Palin calls “hockey moms”) were supposed to constitute the foot soldiers of Rove’s movement, which, in practice, was an extension of the “Reagan Revolution.” This Republican coalition was obviously not as strong as its leaders liked to suggest, and there is no doubt that the recent unpopularity of the Bush-Cheney regime contributed greatly to the GOP’s dramatically sudden demise (and certainly the ineffectual McCain-Palin campaign did not help the conservative cause, nor did the timing of the current financial crisis). Yet in the wake of losing the 2004 elections and facing four more years of Republican control in the White House and Congress, there was a concerted, and it now appears highly successful counter-movement launched by progressives who strategically chose to work with, if not from within, the Democratic Party.

The origins of this center/left coalition date most immediately to Howard Dean’s 2004 primary campaign during which he lost the nomination to John Kerry, but attracted media attention for having produced a largely youth-based, internet-run campaign that called for ending the Iraq War and drawing national focus towards such issues as health care, education, and energy reform. Not nearly as radical as the platforms of progressives like Nader or Dennis Kucinich, Dean’s ideas caught-on within mainstream liberal circles for this exact reason. As such, the Dean approach became a viable third-way between excessive compromise and excessive purism. This was at least the perspective of groups like MoveOn.org, which generated a great deal of grassroots enthusiasm for Dean’s campaign in large part as a refocusing of antiwar activity that had tried and failed in March 2003 to affect a change in policy by staging massive 1960s-style street demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq.

The Dean campaign offered a bottom-up organizing and fund-raising model that became a potent antidote to Karl Rove’s political machinery. Especially in the wake of their 2004 electoral defeat, activist Democrats in groups like MoveOn and Daily Kos (founded in 2002) redoubled their efforts to promote liberal and progressive media outlets while developing and strengthening new left-leaning think-tanks and policy groups designed to refurbish the infrastructure of Democratic electoral politics. For instance in 2003 former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta founded the Center for American Progress (CAP) as a means of directly countering the influence exercised by conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Dean, meanwhile, became chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2005 and began pursuing a “fifty-state strategy” designed after the goals of his presidential campaign. Dean’s party leadership produced the opening salvo of the GOP’s demise during the 2006 mid-term elections, when Democrats regained control of both the Senate and the House. It is difficult to say how much of the antiwar left participated in this electoral repudiation of the Republicans, but it was widely believed that the Democratic victory clearly signaled a public mandate to end the Iraq War. When the new Democratic Congress subsequently failed to deliver on this promise, there was a logical conclusion among many that only a change of power in the White House would allow the antiwar/progressive wing of the party to make any real policy difference.

Another key factor in the emergence of this new center/left formation has been a vibrant constellation of media outlets connected to, but also distinct from the growing liberal and progressive “blogoshpere.” Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now!, a news magazine that originated in 1996 through New York’s Pacifica Radio affiliate and now broadcasts on over 700 public radio and television stations, as well as the internet, bills itself as the “largest community media collaboration in the United States.” Democracy Now! has become a leading communications medium for progressives and some radicals affiliated with the alternative/IndyMedia movement, including activists aligned with both the Democratic and Green Parties.

At the same time, a somewhat surprising avenue of critical left-leaning commentary has emerged on MSNBC, a cable news collaboration between NBC (General Electric) and Microsoft. The network began operating in 1996, the same year that FOX News went on air, and its current flagship program Countdown with Keith Olbermann began in 2003. Having become known for his scathing criticism of the Iraq War and virtually every policy of the Bush-Cheney regime, Olbermann offers his outspoken political commentary and news coverage within a humorous and often fiercely satirical format designed to attract younger viewers and people who want to be entertained as well as informed. That said, Olbermann and his frequent guests from Newsweek (Richard Wolfe), The Nation (Christopher Hayes), and the Washington Post (Eugene Robinson), for example, combine liberal and progressive analyses presented in an intellectually stimulating manner.

Having first been a contributor and guest-host on Countdown, former gay rights (ACT UP!) activist Rachel Maddow recently began hosting her own show following Olbermann; The Rachel Maddow Show has become one of MSNBC’s top-rated programs while Maddow continues hosting her daily show on Air America Radio, a nationally syndicated liberal and progressive “talk-radio” network launched in 2004 as a potential antidote to the popularity of conservative voices like that of Rush Limbaugh. Both Olbermann and Maddow are openly supportive of Obama while also being critical of his more conservative tendencies. MSNBC is earning a reputation as the diametric opposite of FOX News—owned by Rupert Murcdoch’s News Corporation—which functions essentially as a rightwing propaganda outlet and makes very little effort to disguise its ideological bent. Other significant elements of this left-leaning media constellation include news/commentary websites such as The Huffington Post.com, Common Dreams.org, and TruthOut.org.

Perhaps the most interesting development of all within this context has been the large national and international popularity of the Comedy Central Network’s “fake news” programs, The Daily Show with John Stewart (1999-present) and The Colbert Report (2005-Present). Appealing initially to younger audiences who took no interest in the stale format of television news, John Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s programs have helped re-shape the commercial media landscape by offering brilliant and often hilarious political/social satire that has been devastatingly critical of Bush and Cheney while providing real news analysis embedded within the framework of satirical comedy sketches. Stewart delivers an openly left-leaning nightly “fake news” cast that parodies cable news programs by making fun of how they sensationally cover events of the day. The latter third segment of The Daily Show consists of guest interviews often featuring political leaders, for instance former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf appeared with Stewart in September 2006, and Barack Obama made his forth overall appearance (this one by satellite) on the Thursday prior to his being elected President. Stephen Colbert spun his program off from his role as a correspondent on The Daily Show, and very effectively plays an ultraconservative FOX News-like television host who refers to FOX's Bill O’Reilly as “papa bear.” Although it can easily be overstated, one should not underestimate the influence of Stewart and Colbert in terms of connecting with and informing young people while contributing to the foundation of a newly awakened progressive political culture with media icons ranging from Amy Goodman to Rachel Maddow.

Barack Obama’s rapid ascendancy is in many ways connected to this conjuncture; his public opposition to the invasion of Iraq in 2002—while still a state senator—propelled him to victory in the Democratic primary over Hillary Clinton, who had been the odds-on favorite to win the nomination but whose vote to authorize funding for the war made her highly vulnerable. At the same time, while eventually gaining strong support from the corporate/financial sector, Obama’s campaign first developed along the lines of the Dean model and was able to build an unprecedented grassroots mobilization that capitalized on the Illinois Senator’s personal charisma and political savvy. As the campaign progressed, the idea of President Barack Hussein Obama became a powerful national and international symbol for generational, racial, and political transformation. In this manner, the global social movement that arose in support of Obama drew rhetorical strength from articulating this moment in history as an opportunity to reengage the fulfillment of Martin Luther King’s “Dream,” which in its broadest sense is a vision of a world free from racism, militarism, and poverty.

If this is a highly sympathetic and perhaps exaggerated portrayal of the nascent possibility presented by an “Obama Revolution,” it is presented in order to do justice to the tremendous significance of what occurred on November 4, 2008. Voters in the United States did not just elect the first African- American president, although the image of the Obama family on stage in Grant Park and their imminent arrival in the White House is surely historic. But there was a much larger, indeed a global victory against the forces of reactionary hatred being celebrated by weeping students at Spellman College in Atlanta and jubilant crowds in Harlem; a throng of hope-filled revelers surrounding the White House and spilling into city streets across the country. In Kenya (where a national holiday was declared), Indonesia, Japan, throughout Europe, both Israel and Palestine: the world celebrated hope having triumphed over fear.

There are, of course, serious questions about how far to the left of center Obama’s administration and the Democratic Congress will venture. John Podesta now leads the Obama transition team, and has helped install another former Clinton-insider as the new White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who is reviled by many progressives for his hawkish stance on Middle-East issues. These developments do not bode well for an immediate and decisive break with the status-quo, but neither do they preclude the development of a center/left coalition in alliance with supportive elements within the Obama orbit. It will obviously be essential to maintain a parallel track of organizing from outside the system, and in this sense there are already a number of arenas in which the left should begin articulating an oppositional stance to the new administration, the war in Afghanistan for instance. With Emanuel now in-place one might also imagine that Israel-Palestine policy could soon become a contentious issue. In fact, Emanuel’s selection may represent how the centrist Democratic Leadership Committee (DLC) associated with the Clintons is attempting to assert control over Obama’s agenda, which might otherwise lean in a more progressive direction closer to Dean’s wing of the party.

Nonetheless, the Obama campaign as a social movement has reopened space for public participation and progressive agitation. At the same time, the current financial meltdown has ignited the possibility of organizing a reformist coalition around the goal of pressuring for an FDR-like “Green New Deal” whereby current economic and environmental crises can be addressed through a strategically designed green jobs, infrastructure, and social services program that would aim to slowly dismantle the national security state by diverting resources to an ascendant environmental/welfare state. There is no guarantee that such a movement could be successfully built and/or maintained in the coming months and years—indeed, there is much reason to believe that Obama will be a disappointment to the left on several fronts, from trade and corporate taxes to military spending. And yet, the new President-elect set the stage rhetorically for what may be possible in the days ahead: “this victory alone is not the change we seek — it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.”

FROM FEAR...TO HOPE!

November 4 2008, Chicago
President-elect Obama:

"It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America...

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year, or even one term, but America — I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you: We as a people will get there...

This victory alone is not the change we seek — it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you...

This is our moment. This is our time — to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can."

With Hope Comes Love (Reggie Love, That Is)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/29/reggie-love-barack-obama

State of "the Left" Today

Just as social movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s emerged from a foundation laid by the radical politics of the 1930s, left-wing activists today continue to grapple with the actions of those would-be revolutionaries whose struggles culminated in the now iconic episodes of global rebellion that flared in 1968. Yet the history of this progression from an Old to a New Left (and now a post-New Left?) is by no means a straightforward or uncomplicated process that can be captured in the plethora of celebratory/nostalgic and generally simplistic accounts of “the sixties.” A critical (if also sympathetic) analysis of Left activism during this era therefore raises a number of questions and concerns of direct relevance to those still involved in “the movement” today. An understanding of the sixties as a period of “blocked cultural revolution” provides grounds for a much-needed discussion of the New Left’s goals and strategies or, as the case may be, its lack thereof.

By this account, the New Left emerged from a terrain shaped by the Marxist-Leninism of the 1930s, even as many of the “red diaper babies” who grew into this movement rejected what they saw as the old model of Communist-inspired organizing. Class analyses therefore gave way to a culturalist mentality whereby the revolutionary agenda entailed a reorganization of society into an egalitarian democratic community. Many on the New Left discarded the need to seize control of the state or liquidate capitalism, arguing instead for the creation of alternative and to some extent anarchist modes of life in which elected leaders and organized political parties had no role except as evils to be avoided. The question of violence intersected this split between those moving towards cultural revolution and those who remained committed to a class-based model of organizing; pacifism and the pre-figurative power of love guided the younger generation of activists, whereas those who still saw revolution as a matter of political-economy argued for the use of vanguardist violence in order to dismantle the global capitalist interstate system. The advent of powerful national liberation movements throughout the Third World bolstered the arguments of Marxist-Leninists against their (counter) culturalist opponents in the United States.

In seeking to understand the sixties historically and draw lessons for the Left today, it seems fair to identify both visions as having major flaws. For while the vanguardist approach modeled after the Bolsheviks was still partially applicable to revolutionary movements in the Third World, it was much less connected to the realities of social and political-economic life in the Unites States in the late 20th century. At the same time, the advocates of countercultural revolution operated in a somewhat sheltered sphere of activism that fostered creativity and individuality while failing to articulate a coherent revolutionary strategy. Thus as the early New Left gave way to a more “radical” approach characterized by the stunted actions of the Weather Underground, forexample, these attempts at violent revolution proved no more successful than the hippies’ efforts to cultivate a peaceful and loving society.

It is crucial that one not overlook the important gains made by the New Left, particularly in the realms of civil rights, feminism, gay rights, and environmentalism. It is equally important to recognize the contributions of those who have maintained a dedication to class struggle throughout the post-1960s era. Whether violent or nonviolent, the spirit of militancy and urgency that persisted throughout the sixties has set the stage, perhaps, for a new (post-Reagan) left-wing upsurge that has been long envisioned yet so far unrealized. The key is to understand how potential Left coalitions turned into opposing, if not warring factions that tended to rehearse old divisions rather than work together to find new solutions. In this sense, the Left might be best served by pursuing something close to the Gramscian model of coalitional praxis that offers a revolutionary strategy combining political-economic and cultural agendas. In the end, however, social movements of the Left will find their most success not by following a certain theoretical model but rather through developing an organic struggle based in a common purpose around which broad coalitions of political and social actors can coalesce.

It is currently being argued by many on the Left that the need to protect the viability of life on earth provides perhaps the most hopeful basis for renewing progressivism in the twenty-first century. If this were to be the case, a pro-environment movement articulated as collective opposition to the global threat of catastrophic climate change would become in essence a “meta movement” uniting various sub struggles in much the same way that opposition to Jim Crow and the Vietnam War gave “the movement” its coherence during the sixties. Of course with the possibility of general antiwar sentiment resurging in opposition to America’s costly “war on terror,” and now a global economic crisis that no doubt will worsen before it can be resolved, a movement connecting these three strains (environment, war, and economy) is actually somewhat foreseeable. That is, if Obama is elected president and takes office in 2009 with a Democratic super-majority in Congress. At this point, social movements on the Left would have an institutional framework in Washington from which to develop grassroots modes of action—a “Green Revolution”—in concert with governmental reforms on the scale of the Neal Deal and Great Society programs (a “Green Deal”?). Progressive ideas might thus gain ascendency and become “common sense” throughout society in much the same manner that conservatism blossomed during the Reagan Revolution.

So while engaging in electoral politics through the Democratic Party does not hold all the answers for the Left, a new regime dedicated rhetorically (and at least somewhat practically) to providing “hope” for the masses and bringing “change” to Washington is at this point the only real place to begin. Should a new era of progressive hegemony dawn in America and perhaps across the globe, it will become manifest decades from now long after Obama has come and gone, when the world will be a very different place. The 2008 presidential election is therefore a test as to whether or not the Left in the US can overcome its fractious divides and begin establishing long-term coalitions designed to gain power and govern effectively while maintaining an ideological commitment to generating reformist and revolutionary strategies from below.

Given the complexities of this task, there is no guarantee that it could be accomplished even if Obama wins. Certainly, such a movement will not coalesce if a newly mobilized Left is not ready to immediately begin allying with or forcefully petitioning/pressuring the Obama administration from within and without. However, should McCain win in November, or should he lose but nonetheless permanently remobilize the reactionary (racist) right-wing fringe that his campaign has now activated, the prospects for Left organizing will be greatly diminished. A McCain-Palin administration would present most of the same obstacles that the Left has faced under the Bush-Cheney regime. Meanwhile, an Obama-Biden administration that lacks a strong base of dedicated progressive support could eventually succumb to the anger and frustration of working-class whites in rural America who will be easily convinced that their problems are the result of the foreigners, socialists, and terrorist sympathizers etc. that have infiltrated the Democratic Party through Obama. In short, conditions at the present crossroads are ripe for a concerted effort to push the country towards something like a European social democracy (partial nationalization of US banks has, for instance, just been announced). At the same time, some variant of a violent reaction—call it fascism or whatever else—is lurking just beneath the surface of an American populace, racked with panic and fear, recently shaped by George W. Bush’s Republicans yet poised to swing decisively leftwards into the arms of Barack Obama’s Democrats.

DEBATING THE DEBATE: OBAMA, THE NEOCONS, AND AMERICAN EMPIRE (Follow-Up)

SPECTACLE '08/
EMPIRE WATCH

BRANDON'S REPLY:

As always, I love your optimism and enthusiasm, though i think you may be reading too much into Obama's internationalism and his connection to Brzezinski.

Brzezinski was perhaps the loudest critic of Obama's much touted plan to "surge" US forces in Afghanistan, describing his proposal as falling into the "Afghan trap" he set for the Soviets (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f031f936-56a0-11dd-8686-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1), but then Zbig was one of the loudest voices calling for a confrontation with Russia over Georgia- Zbig has an an acute case of what Roger Morris calls "the Baltic Syndrome" -- east Europeans driven by ethnic and national hatreds of Russia that render them incapable of any truly realistic fp analysis. But I think Zbig is neither here nor there. He says that he supports the campaign, but will not take any formal adviser role because he doesn't want to be forced to subordinate his analysis to the dictates of domestic lobbies (bywhich he means AIPAC). He would like to keep his ethnic and national hatreds pure, in this sense. And Obama for his part wants to have nothing to do with Zbig for fear of alienating his AIPAC base of support.

My sense is that there is no grand strategic thinking here, only election year posturing. The Dems have long believed that they demonstrate their fp and national security credentials by outflanking Republicans on the right in Afghanistan. They have not however, succeeded in explaining how escalating America's involvement in that country will make the situation any better, nor have they explained how exactly we are going to pay for said escalation (Fareed Zakaria had a great discussion with Rory Stewart on the subject a couple weeks ago:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0809/07/fzgps.01.html).

Afghanistan is indicative of the moral, political and intellectual bankruptcy of the Dems (AKA the "me too" party) as a whole. I understand why the Dems are so eager to appear the Me Too Party on fp issues (see forthcoming post) but I think this kind posturing lacks moral courage and is strategically stupid. For eg, I have no idea why on god's green earth Obama would choose to tell O'Rielly that the surge has succeeded "beyond our wildest dreams," instead of arguing (as Dreyfuss did on DN this morning) that it flew in the face of all expert opinion and has kept us in there spending $10b a month for two more years. He could also compliment the intelligence of the electorate by citing the wealth of expert analysis that attributes the decrease in violence in Iraq (though still incredibly high) to factors intrinsic to Iraqi society and politics- namely the Shi'ite victory over their Sunni rivals in an Iraqi civil war that successfully imposed ethnic and sectarian segregation on a formerly integrated society (isn't it amazing how dramatically violence dropped in Virgina from 1865 to 1866-- the funny thing about civil wars is that once one side wins, violence goes down...).

when it comes to fp, Obama has assured all those that matter that he will not produce any dramatic departures from received practice and wisdom.

Sure, he may be better than McCain, but that is really not saying much. Its a bit like saying JFK was better than Nixon in 1960. Sure, I guess so, but isn't this a rather dubious distinction? Isn't JFK the one that escalated US involvement in Vietnam? Would Nixon have done the same, or would he have continued his predecessor's policy of limiting US involvement? We can never know, but what we can know is that presidents can become prisoners of their own rhetoric-just as JFK was held hostage to the discourse of communist containment - so too is Obama (BHO) trapped in the discourse of the GWOT. I don't suppose that it will be easier to challenge its dominant symbols on Nov 5, than it will be on Nov 3.

My sense is that the Dems will continue to get railroaded on fp issues until they invent a new language for challenging the presuppositions of received wisdom, and we will continue to be saddled with the burdens of Empire (ie low levels of public investment, high levels of public debt, and an anti-intellectual, anti-dissent, quasi-fascist political culture).

As I said in the post, economic circumstances may sweep BHO into the WH, and may force him to reevaluate priorities once there. But even if it turns this way (as I sincerely hope it does), Obama will have contributed nothing to the more fundamental task of refashioning the symbols of American national identity, and articulating a new vision of America's place in history and the world. On the contrary he will have the dubious distinction of having been on the wrong side of that struggle.

September 29, 2008 11:13 AM

Brandon said...

One little addition: JFK was a prisoner of the discourse of communist containment that HE HELPED CONSTRUCT (most famously by challenging the republicans from the right for going soft against the Ruskies (the "missile gap." and allowing a detente to to take shape)).

Discursive deconstruction is not just for our friends in the lit dept-- "going with the flow" is best left to dead fish.

MY THOUGHTS IN RESPONSE:


For the most part, I don't think we disagree about much other than how best to confront and/or negotiate the realities of the Democratic party's hegemony over the American Left. The Democrats of today are a Center-Left party just as the Republicans are fundamentally of the Center-Right. Both of course are rooted in the European liberal-humanistic tradition (à la John Locke), although the contemporary GOP offers a more "conservative" articulation of liberalism symbolized by the thinking of, say, Edmund Burke. Our "two-party system" thus presents a pair of dialectically antagonistic political opponents that are ultimately more similar than not in most philosophical respects. According to Louis Hartz in The Liberal Tradition in America, this ideological cohesion, i.e. lack of Marxian "class struggle," is attributed to the absence of European-style feudalism in US history (antebellum Southern plantations being the closest thing). While Hartz's theory has significant holes, it does make a compelling case for the argument that a lack of mass peasant-to-proletariat conversion in America laid the foundation for what became a lack of class consciousness and, ultimately, the failure of socialism to take root on any significant scale. There being no actual Ancien Régime to rebel against--only an upper-echelon of citizens organized into a putatively benevolent political class--there has been no truly profound social antagonism along the lines of Paris in 1848 or Russia in 1917. Without an essentially feudal/aristocratic order that would beget its revolutionary overthrow, there has permeated the Horatio Alger mythology pointing a patriotic working-class upwards towards the always just out-of-reach "American Dream." Rather than contest the power of the ruling petit-bourgeoisie, people seek to join it.

Progressive liberals are thus often only marginally different (if not indistinguishable) from conservative liberals: Joe Lieberman, anyone? So with regard to either Obama on Afghanistan or JFK on Vietnam, one might generalize that the Democrats are ultimately good capitalist-imperialists just like their Republican colleagues. That said, we don't have the "luxury" (as they do in, say, Sweden or Spain of casting a meaningful vote for a functioning Communist, Socialist, Green, Labor or Social-Democratic, etc. alternative to the major liberal and conservative parties. We have no coalition governments with assemblies comprised of a myriad different factions representing constituencies across the political spectrum. Rather, we have two centrist parties that are in fact today heavily leveraged by corporate power. Furthermore, there is no cohesive anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist political force ready to materialize any time soon. This was all too evident during the recent Wall Street crisis and $700 billion Congressional bailout brouhaha: there is no Marxist-Leninist oriented discourse available to provide a "serious" (that is taken seriously) response to what can plausibly be characterized as the real-time demise of free-market ideology if not capitalism generally. The "critical Left" has been relegated to either stomaching whatever pathetic solution the Democratic leadership offers, or bitterly yet ineffectively denouncing it.

The same can be said for what remains of America's overseas military-economic empire and the ideology of "exceptionalism," i.e. "Manifest Destiny," upon which it is premised. As US global power over-extends itself in Iraq under the watch of a coalition led by the far Right, the moderate Democratic Left proposes only to scale-back and downsize, if not just refocus the nation's "foreign entanglements." While the Cold War provided justification for US interventionism as a means of promoting Lockean ideals throughout the world in response to the spread of communism, the liberal-conservative foreign policy Establishment now wrestles with how to craft a Global War on Terror (GWOT) into another long-term paradigm under which a new "American Century" can be sustained. And clearly, whether it be in the Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires, or the fact of a swiftly "rising" China/ Euro-Asian power bloc that virtually owns whatever remains of the US economy, signs abound that the much anticipated "end of American empire" is upon us. Yet we shouldn't look to the Democrats to begin immediately calling for the dismantling of the military-industrial complex.

So what should we be doing?

Rather than simply bash the Democratic leadership's centrist foreign policy, the critical Left might focus its attention on how to articulate a substantial and coherent strategy that could challenge a potential Obama administration to move in a progressive direction just as Bill Clinton found that he could not govern effectively without sliding to the right so as to please Republicans in Congress. Recent conservative successes can no doubt be attributed to the strength of their coalition in these regards. If there is a new Democratic administration alongside an enhanced Democratic majority in the House and Senate come January 2009, there ought to also be an energized progressive coalition that includes members of Congress as well as movement activists associated with MoveOn, Code Pink, and any grassroots organization interested in solidifying a leftwing hegemony.

Hence, imagine if the Obama-Biden White House (having begun a de-escalation in Iraq) introduced a bill to fund the war in Afghanistan that was rejected by a bloc of antiwar Democrats in Congress who were able to win over some (libertarian) Republican support. The House of Representatives' initial rejection of the Bush-Paulson Wall Street bailout has illuminated a newly fractious political atmosphere seeming to produce a realignment, on one hand, towards economic populism--77 Democrats (many from the Black, Latino, and Progressive Caucuses) voted along with the majority of Republicans against the bill. How this realignment might translate into Congressional action in the realm of foreign policy is unclear, yet one could at least envision a scenario whereby progressives in the House work with allies in the Green Party and elsewhere (read: Dennis Kucinich, Lynn Woolsey, etc. team-up with Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney) to push for a massive shift of resources from foreign intervention towards health care, education, infrastructure, and renewable energy. Since a massive reduction in defense spending may be the only way to pay for the social programs that Obama has rhetorically committed himself to, progressives should contemplate how to effectively challenge the nascent GWOT consensus and make isolationism popular once again across the political spectrum. Such a reality could be foreseeable, even if not necessarily likely, with Obama and the Democrats in the White House.

So its ultimately not just a question of Obama being better than McCain, just as Kennedy was better than Nixon in 1960 or "Kang" better than "Kodos" in 1996. The question is whether or not progressives might form a coalition that could have actual influence in the direction of national affairs. Given all the dynamics of Obama's current function in American society, the political terrain would be infinitely more ripe for a major transition should he win and take office with Democrats in control amid a "new" Great Depression demanding another New Deal. At this moment, we should be working for the solidification of a Social Democratic bloc that can operate in a critical alliance (when possible) with the Obama-Biden administration to produce a progressive reformation of American society at the dawn of the "global century."

The stakes are too high for anything but a grand vision of how to work with what we are being given, and cooperate with whomever we can, in order to create the other world that we all know is possible. If we are to succeed in this albeit lofty goal, the critical Left must be willing to abandon a certain sense of ideological purity in the interest of creating the conditions that will be most conducive to radical reform and, perhaps, revolution. While the "change we need" certainly does not end with a new Democratic administration, any hope therein would surely never begin should John McCain become the 44th President of the United States.

Thus it boils down to three simple words: OBAMA, OR BUST!

DEBATING THE DEBATE: OBAMA, THE NEOCONS, AND AMERICAN EMPIRE

The following exchange took place recently between myself and a close collaborator at the Center for Empire Studies, who on 9/27/08 posted

out-Hawking the Hawks:

Mr. Congeniality chooses to cede all foreign policy arguments to his rival. But you can't really blame him, the decision to take the Iraq War off the table, and make the election a referendum on economic issues worked brilliantly for John Kerry...

Why Obama continues to embrace discredited neo-conservative interpretations of political developments in places like Georgia and the Middle East is beyond me. He seems to accept the notion that the American electorate is so stupid that it has no tolerance for nuance on issues such as "Israel's right to defend it self against an Iranian nuclear holocaust," or the "threat of Russian aggression." (though in Obama's defense, there is a theory out there that argues that if you treat someone like they are stupid for long enough, they may indeed become stupid. As PT Barnum observed: "you'll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." I don't suppose that we should let the fact that Mr. Barnum died in debt overshadow the simple elegance of his formula...)

Obama may get lucky and be able to ride bad economic headlines into the White House, but when it comes to the more fundamental problem of coming to terms with American Empire, apparently we are not the ones we have been waiting for. Apparently they will come along some time later. Perhaps they will be able to reframe foreign policy issues in more realistic, less militaristic and ideological terms than "we" are currently able to.

I wonder how they will manage to do that.
Posted by Brandon at 12:02 PM

TO WHICH I REPLIED:

I offer this response in the interest of solidarity:

Unfortunately, the blindly pro-Israel and now "pro-Georgian" foreign policy position shared by Obama and McCain is reflective of the larger framework within which American Empire has operated since the end of WWII, and is by no means solely a "neocon" ideology. Of course, the now infamous neoconservatives (Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, etc.) have played a major role in perpetuating US imperialism first through the anti-communist "cold war" framework," and now through a "war on terror" against "radical Islam (Islamofascism)." McCain, with his vast resume as a militant American nationalist, has had ties to the neocons for several decades stretching back to their ascension during the "Reagan Revolution" and the beginning of a new "special relationship" between Israel and the United States. McCain's top foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann, for instance, is a participant in the neocons' Project for a New American Century and Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, while also being a paid lobbyist to the president of...Georgia!

So the neocons, who rose to prominence in the 1980s through advocating the unilateral imposition of American power, teamed-up with partners on the far Right in Israel and allies in Washington to refocus the "Free World's" post-cold war attention on a "terrorist" enemy lurking in the Middle East. Having peaked after 9/11 and the fulfillment of longstanding plans to re-invade Iraq, this imperial structure built on an anti-terrorist foundation has weakened to the point of near collapse. Thus by working through a proxy regime in Georgia, what's left of Bush's "coalition of the willing" in Washington and Tel Aviv is prodding Russia into joining the fray (which could eventually include Moscow defending Iran against a US/Israeli attack) thereby reigniting/reconfiguring their "Long War" into a more familiar struggle among "Great Powers." McCain is 150% behind this plan that would heighten global tensions dramatically through a new articulation of Bush's zero-sum "you're either with us, or with the terrorists" formula.

For his part, Obama appears to be more of an internationalist who nonetheless seeks to protect and extend American global leadership. An Obama foreign policy in this manner has the promise of being similar to that of the Carter administration, as in fact Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski is now advising Obama. Of course, Carter was at the last minute denied a speaking role at this year's DNC probably because of his recently outspoken defense of Palestinian rights. For his part, Brzezinski has also earned opposition from neocons and others affiliated with the "Israel Lobby" (to the point of being labeled anti-Semitic) for his advocacy of a more "evenhanded" approach to the Middle East. The Obama campaign is clearly distancing itself in public from the Carter Middle East strategy, yet it is still unclear exactly how an Obama administration would or would not revise its stance on Israel/Palestine once in office.

Ironically, Eastern Europe and Russia are considered more within the purview of Brzezinski (who is of Polish descent); some in fact consider Obama to be aligned with a Brzezinski-led faction in the Democratic Party--also associated with billionaire Hungarian emigre financier George Soros--that would engage in a "realist" approach to projecting US power while shifting attention away from the Middle East and towards Eastern Europe/Russia. By this account, Obama's defeat of Hillary Clinton in the primary election was a victory for the Brzezinski/Soros faction in cahoots with Howard Dean's DNC, which is opposed to "neocon fellow-travelers" such as Evan Bayh affiliated with the Clintons' Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).

To whatever extent Obama may be connected to such a "realist" anti-Clinton/anti-neocon axis within the Democratic Party, it would be fully resonant with his campaign's foreign policy proposals centered on shifting focus and resources away from Iraq towards "winning the war" in Afghanistan. In addition to the stated goal of "rooting out al Qaeda and the Taliban," this strategy has the obvious effect of placing Central Asia and Eastern Europe/Russia at the center of US geopolitical interest. This would certainly make sense as far as Brzezinski is concerned, given how he bragged in his book "The Grand Chessboard" that he personally helped bait the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan--what he calls the "Afghan Trap." Indeed, while it escalated dramatically under Reagan and his neocon advisers, CIA sponsorship of the anti-Soviet Afghan mujahideen began under Carter and Brzezinski. So beyond the rhetoric of fighting terrorism, Obama's focus on Afghanistan amounts to a 21st century version of the "Great Game" for control over the strategically vital borderlands between Europe and Asia.

His promise to escalate the war in Afghanistan is therefore the most troubling aspect of Obama's foreign policy, particularly since it legitimizes the concept of "war on terror" and accepts the narrative framed by his neocon/American nationalist rivals. By how fully it either embraces or rejects the notion of building a foreign policy platform around retaliating against bin Laden and other "terrorists" for 9/11, the next administration will determine whether or not the neocon-inspired "war on terror/long war" has any chance of congealing into an all-encompassing framework reminiscent of the Cold War. Sadly, Obama's position regarding Afghanistan and Pakistan cedes too much ground to the neocon, i.e. Bush/McCain agenda by proclaiming to end a "failed strategy" in Iraq only to pursue a similar strategy in Central Asia. The same may be said of Obama's current positions on the Arab-Israeli conflict as well as recent fighting between Russia and Georgia.

Yet, there are important nuances and crucial differences between the McCain and Obama foreign policies. The militant nationalist Bush/McCain vision promises to reinvigorate the war on terror paradigm by folding the familiar Russian enemy into a new bellicose framework in which "radical Islamic terrorists" and allied states such as Syria and Iran pose the "transcendent threat" of our generation. The Obama-Brzezinski realist/internationalist vision, however, avoids such dubious rhetoric while proclaiming that terrorism is one of many challenges facing the international community including climate change, nuclear proliferation, genocide, hunger, and disease.

To be sure, Team Obama is not promising to dismantle the American Empire. But, they are pledging to engage in a more tempered use of military power in which multilateral decision-making is a means of balancing the perceived "national (material) interest" with imperatives of global stability. A stark contrast therefore arose during the September 26 presidential debate with respect to McCain and Obama's assessments of how the current economic crisis (and $700 billion bail-out plan) might affect their respective agendas. McCain, showing his true militant nature, proposed a government "spending freeze" for everything but the military and veterans' benefits. Obama, on the other hand, answered the question by stating which programs he would remain committed to funding: energy independence, infrastructure redevelopment, affordable education and health care. Thus while still affirming his commitment to a "troop surge" in Afghanistan, Obama did not repeat during the debate his previous statements about increasing overall military spending. Moreover, he appeared to leave a door to demilitarization open by not mentioning defense spending at all among his top priorities within the context of a severely constrained budget. In fact, he went one step further in this direction on Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer (9/28) by suggesting that he might cut "foreign aid" in order to divert money towards a Wall Street recovery while not sacrificing the main tenets of his agenda.

What does all of this mean? Perhaps nothing. Maybe Obama is just another Democratic "wolf in sheep's clothing" who poses no dramatic departure from the miserably corrupt status-quo. Perhaps he should come out and declare that he wishes to end America's role as the preeminent military power by closing down its far-flung "empire of bases" (to use Chalmers Johnson's phrase). That Obama doesn't choose to take this stand could in theory make him ultimately no better than Bush or McCain.

Yet in light of economic circumstances, an internationalist Obama foreign policy would by nature provide breathing-room for the Left to enact serious pressure towards demilitarization. Team Obama has already produced ambitious goals in terms of creating a New Deal-type economic recovery based on renewable energy production. Such a "Green Revolution" has only become more viable and indeed more necessary now that the nation is in the midst of a financial meltdown threatening to rival (or even surpass) that which produced the Great Depression.

Ultimately when it comes to articulating and implementing a vision for how the world ought to be, "we are the ones we've been waiting for." Barack Obama is simply a politician and at best also the flawed figurehead of a political movement far larger than him or any individual. Unfolding economic collapse may now provide the opponents of imperialism with an opportunity to make the case that money should be spent on healing/rebuilding the nation rather than housing troops in Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Germany, Djibouti, Diego Garcia, Colombia, Guantanamo Bay, etc. At this critical juncture in which a number of factors and forces are converging, our generation is faced with perhaps its best and last chance to hoist a leader up and carry him on our shoulders as we march progressively into the future. With a President Obama ensconced in the White House, we just may have an opportunity to write a new, positive page in American history. Under a McCain-Palin administration, we'll be singing "bomb, bomb, bomb," from Moscow to Tehran.

Drastic times are beginning to call for drastic measures; as America and the world appear to be at a 1930s-like crossroads, two candidates offer drastically different possibilities for the fate of the United States. Indeed, the Obama option is not perfect from the perspective of the Left. But how picky should we really be at a time like this?

1968-2008: OUR TIME FOR CHANGE HAS COME? (Part III)

SPECTACLE '08

BY most accounts Obama delivered a stellar performance during his August 28 acceptance speech in front of 85,000 supporters at Mile High Stadium (Invesco Field). While not making reference to Dr. King by name--and in that manner not allowing racial politics to overshadow the wider imperatives of his speech--he nonetheless concluded by channeling the historic nature of the moment, weaving his campaign themes together with an eloquent plea to rekindle the collective aspirations articulated in "I Have a Dream." Obama bellowed from the convention podium:

This country of ours has more wealth than any nation, but that's not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military on Earth, but that's not what makes us strong. Our universities and our culture are the envy of the world, but that's not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

Instead, it is that American spirit -- that American promise -- that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend...

And it is that promise that 45 years ago today, brought Americans from every corner of this land to stand together on a Mall in Washington, before Lincoln's Memorial, and hear a young preacher from Georgia speak of his dream.

The men and women who gathered there could've heard many things. They could've heard words of anger and discord. They could've been told to succumb to the fear and frustration of so many dreams deferred.

But what the people heard instead -- people of every creed and color, from every walk of life -- is that in America, our destiny is inextricably linked. That together, our dreams can be one.

'We cannot walk alone,' the preacher cried. ' And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back."

America, we cannot turn back. Not with so much work to be done. Not with so many children to educate, and so many veterans to care for. Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save. Not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend. America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise -- that American promise -- and in the words of Scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.

The Democratic National Convention in Denver came on the heels of Obama's highly successful overseas trip designed to demonstrate his grasp of foreign policy and prove that he could pass the "commander-in-chief" threshold. In Iraq the Senator appeared about as "presidential" as possible while meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki who all but endorsed Obama's timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces. After capping his stop through the Middle East and Western Europe with a July 24 speech in front of 200,000 people gathered at Victory Column in Berlin's Tiergarten Park, Obama turned his attention towards the selection of a vice presidential running-mate. In what was initially viewed as a generally pragmatic and strategic choice, Team Obama named Joe Biden of Delaware--the sixty-five year-old chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Biden matches if not surpasses McCain's legislative bona fides (35 years in Congress) and is considered an "expert" on foreign affairs. He therefore helps negate what has been perceived as Obama's most glaring weakness: inexperience.

Biden's foreign policy leaves much to be desired among many progressives, as he voted for the 2002 Iraq war authorization and his general views on the Middle East are conventional, i.e. titled towards the Israeli perspective by default. Yet, his selection has also been more tolerable to Obama's leftwing base than would have been a number of the rumored alternatives, such as Senators Evan Bayh (Indiana) or Hillary Clinton. To be sure, Biden is thoroughly enmeshed in the Beltway establishment and doesn't exactly have a strong record of reform. Still, he is hardly among the worst of the worst in the Democratic (let alone Republican) party when it comes to being a corrupt "Washington insider" in the pocket of "special interests" (perhaps his greatest offense relates to connections with the credit-card companies based in his hometown of Wilmington). For the most part Biden is regarded as an amiable and independent-minded politician who offers his candid opinion on a regular basis, often straying from the party's proscribed "talking points." Furthermore, having a working/middle-class background filled with personal and familial tragedy, Biden's biography tugs at liberal heart strings in a manner similar to Obama's--he is in fact considered one of if not the "poorest" member of the U.S. Senate with a current net worth of around $300,000. Biden has also become a highly vocal critic of Bush-Cheney policies, although he could have used his powerful Senate position to do more by way of holding the White House accountable for its dubious actions in the "war on terror," i.e. torturing detainees, spying on law abiding U.S. citizens, and misleading the nation into an (arguably) illegal war. To his credit, the Delaware Senator recently affirmed Obama's stated commitment to pursue criminal charges against members of the Bush-Cheney administration if and when merited by investigations. Thus, Biden's selection can be seen as an attempt to combine the older senator's realistic grasp of "how Washington works" with the younger senator's desire for reform. And if Obama represents the reemergence of an RFK-like figure appealing to young progressives, it should be noted that Biden shares a birth date (separated by fourteen years) with Robert Kennedy on November 20. Meanwhile much like Obama today, during his primary campaign in 1988 many compared Biden's efforts to Kennedy's 1968 run for the nomination.


BEYOND THE CONVENTIONS

An estimated 38 million people watched Obama's speech in Denver, the largest audience ever for a political convention. "Mainstream" media discourse focused on the willingness (or lack thereof) among Clinton supporters to get on board with Obama-Biden, as well as which part of the ticket was going to most aggressively attack McCain. At the same time, "independent" media including Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! covered both the DNC and RNC (in St. Paul Minnesota) from an "un-embedded" point-of-view that focused as much on people and issues excluded from the conventions as on the choreographed speechifying inside the Pepsi and Xcel Energy Centers. DN's comprehensive coverage, "Breaking with Convention," offered incisive analysis of the insidious confluence of money and politics typified by these televised gatherings produced in partnership with corporate sponsors who also happen to be campaign contributors. Perhaps most egregious (or at least obvious) in these regards, the AT&T logo was emblazoned across an official 2008 DNC tote bag distributed to delegates, which reminded critical observers that while AT&T donates significantly to the coffers of both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, the company could have suffered greatly due to pending civil lawsuits alleging that telecommunications companies collaborated with the dubious Bush-Cheney "warrantless wiretapping" program. Thus while these tote bags may seem benign enough, as noted by media critics such as Glenn Greenwald they symbolize the symbiotic relationship that exists between politicians and corporations like AT&T, which in fact threw a lavish private party for Democratic legislators in Denver that has been construed as an expression of gratitude for those who supported the retroactive immunity provision in the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.

As the Democratic and Republican wings of the nation's political and corporate elite gathered in celebration, dissent was therefore on display both outside and inside the conventions halls. Protesters in Denver and St. Paul were met by a massive and heavily militarized police presence designed to intimidate activists and preemptively destabilize their antiwar/anti-establishment mobilizations. While Democracy Now! provide unfiltered coverage of these demonstrations, Amy Goodman was arrested outside of the RNC as she and two of her producers were swept up by riot police who overreacted violently to sporadic vandalism among groups that had broken away from the peaceful gatherings. Meanwhile inside the DNC, Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich delivered a characteristically impassioned speech that appealed directly to the progressive wing of the party. A twice presidential candidate in the 2004 and 2008 Democratic primaries who has within the last year introduced--so far unsuccessfully--articles of impeachment against both Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, Kucinich told the convention (in part):

Wake Up America! In 2001, the oil companies, the war contractors and the neocon artists seized the economy and added $4 trillion of unproductive spending to the national debt...Wake up, America! The insurance companies took over healthcare. Wake up, America! The pharmaceutical companies took over drug pricing...We went into Iraq for oil. The oil companies want more. War against Iran will mean $10-a-gallon gasoline. The oil administration, they want to drill more, into your wallet. Wake up, America!...

Now, this administration can tap our phones. They can’t tap our creative spirit. They can open our mail. But they can’t open economic opportunities. They can track our every move. But they lost track of the economy while the cost of food, gasoline and electricity skyrockets. Now, they have skillfully played our post-9/11 fears, and they’ve allowed the few to profit at the expense of the many. Every day, we get the color orange, while the oil companies, the insurance companies, the speculators, the war contractors get the color green. Wake up, America!

Kucinich is dedicated to the "global peace and justice movement" along with those who took to the streets in Denver and St. Paul. Yet, he continues to work within the Democratic Party while many of his allies criticize it from the Left. Thus in June Kucinich told Amy Goodman of his reservations about Obama's apparent abandonment of the progressive ideals that seemed to have helped him win the primary: "This election...is about hope, certainly, but it’s about something else, too. It’s about shifting away from policies that have destroyed our economy. And I am looking forward to having a conversation with my good friend Barack Obama about what he intends to do about matters relating to NAFTA, about Social Security privatization, about whether or not he’s going to be leaving troops in Iraq...before I give a personal endorsement." Although it is unknown whether or not he has had a recent conversation with the Illinois Senator, Kucinich withheld his official endorsement of the Obama-Biden ticket until the very end of his convention speech.

At the same time, Texas Congressman Ron Paul is perhaps the Republican equivalent of Rep. Kucinich in terms of electoral politics. A physician and longtime legislator who was the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate in 1988, Rep. Paul generated a wealth of enthusiasm among disaffected young conservatives during the 2008 primary season. As part of a grassroots internet following, Paul's "Campaign for Liberty" attracts a diverse group of political affiliates under the banner: "The Revolution Continues." Paul's platform has some ideological agreement with the Left, especially in the realm of foreign policy where he calls for an end to "U.S. imperialism" and the closure of all American military bases across the world. Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, for instance, struck a similar chord at the first Democratic primary debate in South Carolina on April 26 2007. When NBC's Brian Williams asked the assembled candidates about "the three most important enemies to the United States"other than Iraq, Gravel answered: "We have no important enemies. What we need to do is to begin to deal with the rest of the world as equals...We spend more as a nation on defense than all the rest of the world put together...The military industrial complex not only controls our government, lock, stock and barrel, but they control our culture." Therefore after being quietly excluded from subsequent Democratic debates, not to mention the DNC, Gravel made an unsuccessful bid to become the 2008 Libertarian nominee. Ron Paul, meanwhile, more or less excluded himself from the RNC and instead organized a "counter-convention" across the river at Minneapolis' Target Center where at least 10,000 people shadowed the GOP's nomination of John McCain at a "Rally for the Republic." Staking its claim on a return to the (conservative) principles of the Constitution and Bill of Rights regarding small government, controlled spending, and an isolationist foreign policy, the "Ron Paul Revolution" is also fiercely committed to pure "free-market" capitalism, i.e. total financial deregulation (a la Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman) as well as staunch support for the Second Amendment.


THE "THIRD PARTY" FACTOR

A true maverick within the Republican Party (unlike McCain) who is generally respected even among opponents, Paul steadfastly refuses to compromise his ideals by endorsing this years' GOP ticket. Instead, Rep. Paul rather surprisingly organized a "Third Party Press Conference" in Washington D.C. on September 10 in which independent candidate Ralph Nader and Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney joined with the (rightwing) Constitution Party's nominee Charles O. “Chuck” Baldwin. At this forum Paul urged his supporters to throw their efforts behind one of these candidates rather than vote for the "lesser of two evils." Libertarian nominee, and former Georgia Republican Congressman Bob Barr decided at the last minute to skip this event. But according to the the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Barr joined the other candidates in signing a "statement from Paul pledging their support for limited government, personal liberties, bringing U.S. troops stationed abroad home, and for an investigation into the Federal Reserve." Whether they be from the far Left or the far Right, this collection of odd political bedfellows--Paul, Nader, McKinney, and Barr is coherently united around the goal of reforming government in order to expand the political process beyond the "broken" two-party system. In an intriguing twist, Barr--who had helped lead the 1998 impeachment of Bill Clinton--has asked Paul to join him on the Libertarian ticket. However, the Texas Congressman has apparently declined his former colleague's offer.

Excluded from debates and otherwise not covered seriously by the mainstream media, the Green and Libertarian Parties in particular have rather sizable and devoted followings that would conceivably be represented in Congress if the American version of electoral democracy were closer to European-style multiparty (coalitional) parliaments. It is also fairly obvious that Ralph Nader's political fortunes would be quite different if the media landscape were not dominated by the interests of Time Warner (CNN), Disney (ABC), General Electric (NBC), Viacom (CBS), and NewsCorporation (FOX). After his 2000 run as a Green when he arguably siphoned enough votes from Al Gore to help put Bush over the top, Nader ran again in 2004 as an independent earning less votes and less attention. Nader's 2008 running-mate is Matt Gonzalez, a former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who as a Democrat-turned-Green lost a close race for mayor in 2003. But the independent Nader/Gonzalez ticket is floundering in many respects this election cycle, and thus during a June 25 interview with the Rocky Mountain News Nader caused a minor controversy when he made the following remarks: "There's only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He's half African-American." Nader added: "Whether that will make any difference, I don't know. I haven't heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What's keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn't want to appear like Jesse Jackson?"

Although some pundits unfairly attacked Nader's comments comparing Sen. Obama and Rev. Jackson as racist, a more sober assessment might echo the words of Joan Walsh who asked in her June 25 Salon.com column: "Is Ralph Nader Losing It?". The same day on MSNBC's Hardball Walsh joined host Chris Mathews and others including Bob Herbert of the New York Times in agreeing with Obama, who after rebutting claims that he hasn't addressed certain issues, declared: "Ralph Nader is trying to get attention. He‘s become a perennial political candidate. I think it‘s a shame because if you look at his legacy in terms of consumer protections, it‘s an extraordinary one. But at this point, he‘s somebody who‘s trying to get attention and whose campaign hasn‘t gotten any traction." Nader has indeed not received as much attention in 2008 as he did in 2000 and 2004, in large part because of the historic nature of this year's campaign and the fact that, unlike either Gore or Kerry, Obama has a genuinely progressive base of supporters. Hence the cries of outrage at Obama's perceived abandonment of his core constituency, which was more or less at the heart of Nader's charge that the Illinois Senator is simply another centrist Democrat aligned with Wall Street and the corporate oligarchy. Yet such a critique of Team Obama's strategy of triangulation, or perhaps of the candidate's apparent willingness to compromise his ideals, is rather different from Nader's musings that "he wants to show that he is not a threatening...another politically-threatening African-American politician. He wants to appeal to white guilt. You appeal to white guilt not by coming on as a black is beautiful, black is powerful. Basically, he‘s coming on as someone who is not going to threaten the white power structure, whether it‘s corporate or whether it‘s simply oligarchic, and they love it. Whites just eat it up.”

Granting that he could have phrased himself better, and giving him the benefit of doubt as far as his intentions, it still seems rather clear that Nader is not grasping the complexities of racial politics--nor of race in politics--by decrying the fact that Obama is trying to reassure the ruling elite that he's on their side. The Senator is, after all, effectively attempting to become the ceremonial leader of a global "white power structure." Nader surely knows that it would be foolhardy for any candidate--black or white--to expect to run for and become president by appealing primarily to people in poor communities who don't contribute to campaigns and, quite often, don't vote. Jesse Jackson, Dennis Kucinich, or Nader himself might be the president today if the American electoral system were truly democratic in that sense. This is exactly why it is promising that--despite his obligatory entanglement in the murky and dubious realm of power politics--Barack Obama remains connected to a grassroots (progressive) orientation informed by his ethnic heritage and solidified through experiences in Hawaii, Indonesia, and Chicago's South Side. This life story as a multiracial community organizer and constitutional lawyer/law professor separates him from other presidential candidates, as well as from other high-profile black politicians such as Colin Powell and Condaleeza Rice. Unlike previous African-American presidential hopefuls on the Left including Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton, who were known as civil rights leaders and never gained sufficient antional support, Obama has developed his image as a political leader who supports causes attached to the legacy of the civil rights movement without being seen as an activist. He can therefore claim to be "post-racial" in the sense of not being a candidate whose constituency is defined by skin color and limited to those who look similar to himself. Nader's blanket dismissal of Obama as simply more of the same therefore ignores reality: it is truly phenomenal for a black man to potentially be a few months away from entering the White House, let alone an African-American with progressive roots who appeals culturally to the largely depoliticized "hip-hop generation" yet has managed to not be vilified as a "black candidate" in large part because of being half white.

While it is appropriate and worthwhile to be skeptical of Obama's policies and campaign strategies, one must question the wisdom of Nader's decision to launch haphazard attacks that seem to have earned him only a brief spurt of negative media attention focused on personality rather than substance. Moreover it is clear from Obama's reaction to Nader's comments that it might have in theory been possible for the longtime consumer advocate to have formed a political coalition with the onetime community organizer now seeking the nation's highest office. Yet Nader's stubborn and awkward combativeness all but assured Obama's subsequent distancing from the man who, despite being a tireless crusader for social justice, may be most remembered for having helped (s)elect George W. Bush in 2000. Admitting that he has no chance of winning the presidency in 2008, Nader could have pursued a more strategic campaign aimed at opening a critical dialog with the Democratic candidate in order to press Obama in a progressive direction. To that end, he and Matt Gonzalez might have been better off working from within the Green Party, but instead their independent campaign overlaps and in some ways duplicates the efforts of former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and her Green running-mate Rosa Clemente. Although claiming to be in solidarity with McKinney and Clemente, Nader and Gonzalez are inevitably cutting into their votes and ultimately diminishing the strength of the Greens as a progressive center-of-gravity.

Ousted from the House of Representatives by energized opponents, and essentially banished from the Democratic Party, the firebrand McKinney recently relaunched her political career with the Green Party; Clemente is a journalist and self-described "hip-hop activist"of Puerto Rican descent who was raised in the South Bronx. Like Nader and Gonzalez, McKinney and Clemente are having a difficult time gaining traction with voters during an election that has been so focused on the nation's first would-be black president. Hence, their evident frustration during a July 21 interview with Democracy Now!, when Clemente was prompted to tell Amy Goodman: "There have been some people caught up in Obama-mania, as I call it and other people, that are upset [about the possibility of the Greens taking votes away from Democrats], but they don’t understand, I think, right now the situation that we’re in. They don’t understand that the Democrats and Republicans joined forces to keep the Green Party off the ballot. They don’t understand that we are being whited out of every mainstream and even some progressive media." Therefore striking a defiant if not also hostile chord, she continued: "And my question to them [Obama supporters] is always, or my response: if we are not telling the truth, if we are not about empowering the majority of the American people, why are forces that are worth $200 million, $300 million not only keeping us off the ballots, but not even talking about us."

Clemente's rhetorical stance is indicative of a tendency among ideologues on the Left to masterfully diagnose problems without being able to develop a strategy for overcoming them. Furthermore, such progressives often value idealism more than pragmatism in political leaders who thus find themselves "preaching to the choir" as their radical rhetoric alienates those who haven't already been won over. Many therefore respect what McKinney and Clemente (as well as Nader and Gonzalez) represent, while questioning the long-term effectiveness of their campaigns. From this perspective Amiri Baraka of the Black Arts Collective published an uncompromising critique of those who are voting Green rather than standing with Obama as the only prospect for real and immediate progress from within the electoral system. According to Baraka: "The people who are supporting McKinney must know that that is an empty gesture. But too often such people are so pocked with self congratulatory idealism, that they care little or understand little about politics (i.e. the gaining, maintaining and use of power) but want only to pronounce, to themselves mostly, how progressive or radical or even revolutionary they are."

Sure enough, Baraka tapped into a controversy that has fractured the American Left more or less since 1968 when the assassination of Robert Kennedy amid an escalating war in Vietnam perpetuated chaos at the DNC in Chicago and opened the door for Richard Nixon's ascendancy. What had in fact climaxed that year as the inchoate beginning of a socialist-inspired global revolution lost its cohesion and unraveled sending the movements of the "sixties" in divergent and often competing directions. In a recent reflection among scholars and activists on Pacifica Radio's Against the Grain (KPFA) titled "Appraising '68", Barbara Epstein and John Sanbonmatsu argued that, as an outcome of 1968, a rather large portion of the Left--often informed by some version of anarchism--views either electoral politics in general or the two-party system specifically as a tool of the ruling elite; another camp, inspired by elements of postmodernism, rejects the oppressive nature of "politics" in favor of a liberating "culturalism" devoted to exploring identity formation and related concepts. While productive and perhaps even essential in an intellectual/academic sense, this factionalism has contributed to a steady decline of progressive influence in national electoral politics since the late sixties. Scholars such as Epstein and Sanbonmatsu therefore refer to the insights of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, whose theory of cultural hegemony posits that power is ultimately attained through overlapping economic and ideological struggles in which the dictates of political compromise often necessitate the formation of strategic coalitions. Although debate continues over how to best navigate the current system, one important lesson of 1968 is that progressives can continue ignoring electoral politics only at their own peril. Whether this means going Green with McKinney, standing firm with Nader, or casting a vote for Obama is a somewhat separate question. So to is the issue of how progressives can and should re-unite after the election, especially under an Obama-Biden administration.


THE "OTHER SHOE" DROPS

Yet as the 2008 election enters its final forty days, it appears as though neither McKinney nor Nader will be a serious factor, especially compared to the potentially larger impact that Bob Barr and Ron Paul could have among conservatives. Moreover, whatever momentum may have developed inside the ranks of third party campaigns was surely blunted by the McCain camp's shocking vice-presidential nomination of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, a deeply religious political neophyte with hard-line conservative views and none of the heretofore requisite qualifications for national office. Thus providing an emergency shot of adrenaline to a campaign that desperately needed to shift the nation's focus, Palin's RNC speech in fact drew slightly more viewers than Obama's historic moment in Denver, as did McCain's remarks the following evening. Many Left pundits gravitated to the notion that Palin's selection as the GOP's first female VP candidate was a cynical ploy designed to peel "white working-class" women voters--especially disaffected Hillay Clinton supporters--away from the Democrats. Yet with her performance in St. Paul, it became clear that her primary function on the campaign trail would be to provide red meat for the conservative base by using a combination of attacks and one-liners to reignite the "culture wars," i.e. debates over abortion, gun-control, gay marriage, etc. She thus went immediately for the jugular against Obama while defending her record as Mayor of Wasila, Alaska, telling the convention: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening.

We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco."

For a while it looked like the GOPs' quite risky decision to select Palin might just pay-off, as she began drawing large crowds and became a fresh face who could deliver a great speech; some even began calling her the "Republican Obama." With the help of Palin's self-styled image as "an average hockey mom"-turned reformist politician who successfully challenged the corrupt Alaska lawmakers in her own party, McCain managed to recapture his branding as a Senate "maverick" willing to buck the Establishment. No doubt informed by a lack of enthusiasm for McCain, the GOP campaign that had been built on touting experience as an antidote to the risk involved in electing Obama suddenly felt compelled to begin promising its own version of change. While keeping Palin far away from the press, and in fact pursuing a reinvigorated "attack the media" strategy of defense against mounting scrutiny of her record (as well as McCain's apparently hasty decision), for a few days the election reached the peak of inanity as political commentators parsed the meaning of "lipstick on a pig" in order to detect a hint of sexism in Obama's stump-speech. Meanwhile conservative women took to wearing Palin paraphernalia and chanting, with reference to the Governor's energy policy: "drill baby, drill!" But just as Republicans could claim to have recaptured momentum and changed the election narrative to their advantage, the "Palin bubble" began to burst. This occurred first as serious questions arose regarding the Governor's honesty, as she for instance claimed to have resisted Alaska's infamous pork-barrel "bridge to nowhere" project when in fact she had initially supported it. Meanwhile the Alaska Senate is currently investigating the possibility that Palin wrongfully fired the state's public safety commissioner for personal reasons and is now covering-up her actions; thus, "Troopergate" threatens to be a major political headache for the McCain campaign as an official bipartisan report will be completed on October 10.

As all this was brewing, a sudden Wall Street nosedive on September 15 in what appears to be the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression permanently changed the conversation. Both candidates have now been forced to react to an unfolding financial meltdown of unkown proportions. Combined with an increasingly tense geopolitical situation in the Middle East, and now also between Russia and the West, it is beginning to seem more than a little bit like the 1930s all over again. What will be the effect on the election of collapsing financial markets alongside a proposed $700 government bailout at a time when the Iraq war has already depleted the Federal Reserve? Is Obama promising to be the next FDR as much as the next RFK? Where, for that matter, are Bush and Cheney these days? Is this just the begining of a whole new page in both American and world history?

Stay tuned...