The Nation: Re-Elect the President

[babylonsister]

http://www.thenation.com/article/170345/re-elect-president#

Re-Elect the President
The Editors
October 3, 2012 | This article appeared in the October 22, 2012 edition of The Nation.




Progressive opinions on Barack Obama’s first term are as conflicted as his record. These differences are a sign of a diverse and spirited left, and we welcome continued debate in our pages about the president’s record and policies. But that discussion should not obscure what is at stake in this election. A victory for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan in November would validate the reactionary extremists who have captured the Republican Party. It would represent the triumph of social Darwinism, the religious right, corporate power and the big money donors who thrive in a new Gilded Age of inequality. It would strike a devastating blow to progressive values and movements, locking us in rear-guard actions on a range of issues—from the rights of women, minorities, immigrants and LGBT people to the preservation of social insurance programs and a progressive tax structure. Inside the Democratic Party, Obama’s defeat would embolden the Blue Dogs and New Dems, who have greased the party’s slide to the right. Whatever disappointments we have with Obama’s first term—and there are many—progressives have a profound interest in the popular rejection of the Romney/Ryan ticket.

snip//


But while the antiwar and civil liberties communities have challenged Obama, he has largely been spared the vigorous denunciations liberals heaped on Bush. We have never been silent about our objections to Obama’s misdeeds, and we don’t ever intend to be. But if on some foreign policy and national security matters the president has shocked his progressive supporters by edging the needle to the right, Mitt Romney promises to move it even further—embracing again the “enhanced interrogation techniques” promoted by Bush and Cheney and moving into lockstep with Israel’s dangerous war games with Iran. No matter who is in the White House, a revived peace and antiwar movement has a lot of work ahead of it in the next four years—but it is impossible to imagine any progress on that front with a Romney administration in power.

Indeed, this is true for any cause that progressives care about. Republican rule in Washington promises not just the closing of progressive possibilities but the repeal of gains won by the great social movements of the twentieth century. It would mean the entrenchment of the class interests of a tiny, disconnected elite that looks down on the rest of society with barely concealed contempt and has made explicit its aim to shred the social contract and rig the game in its favor, whether through an assault on voting rights, an expansion of the power of big money in politics or by stacking the courts with right-wing extremists.

The threat is clear: we can’t afford a Romney/Ryan victory. Progressives made real advances during Obama’s four years in office, and we can build on the lessons and struggles of his first term if he’s given a second. But with the so-called fiscal cliff looming at year’s end, and with Obama gesturing toward a Grand Bargain that concedes far too much to the right, it would be a mistake to believe we can cast our votes and go home, secure in the knowledge that our nation’s social contract with all its citizens will be protected. What was true in 2008 is still true today: electing Obama is a necessary first step, but the more complex challenges commence after election day.