Obama Ate the Left, And We Shouldn't Blame Him At All. But What Do We Do Now?
by: David Sirota
Fri Nov 21, 2008 at 20:03
My good friend, Chris Hayes, asks a simple question, echoed by the Progressive magazine and Chris Bowers - why hasn't Obama appointed a single movement progressive? Certainly, a number of progressive voices and institutions have suggested such movement progressives (and there have been many blog posts right here about that). The question has nothing to do with ideological purity - nothing at all. It's just a simple, fair and honest question considering exit polls and post-election surveys showing the country thinks it voted for a left-of-center progressive that will end the war, reform NAFTA, reject free-market fundamentalism, and then considering that Obama has appointed almost exclusively war hawks, NAFTA proponents, and free market fundamentalists.
And the answer to the question, in my opinion, is because Obama effectively ate a huge chunk of the left. And really, Obama didn't eat a huge chunk of the left, celebrity did.
What I mean to say is that we live in a culture that now organizes around celebrity - and Obama knew it, and knew that lots of left organizations aren't really ideological - they are, if anything, organized around the Democratic Party and Bush hatred. So he basically figured out that if he could become a celebrity - and a Democratic Bush-hating one - he could swallow up a huge part of the "progressive infrastructure" and organize it around him (and all the hateful "if you question Obama, you hate Obama" comments that will inevitably be at the bottom of this diary actually confirm this!). And we shouldn't blame him for being a "celebrity" - it's not an epithet. And we shouldn't blame him for seizing his moment. Not at all.
This, by the way, is very different from the Reagan model. Reagan was a telegenic, for sure - but he was a product of a movement. In the age of celebrity worship - the age where we literally organize AROUND celebrity - Obama is a movement unto himself.
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UPDATE: The knee-jerk anger in the comments section really substantiates the fundamental point of this diary better than the diary itself. To discuss reality about power, the progressive movement and Obama is to automatically subject oneself to vicious personal attacks from those who simply do not want to discuss anything that considers the possibility of independent pressure on Obama. I mean, hell, this is a diary that does not fault Barack Obama in the least - that indeed says he's a progressive. And still - still! - the attacks flow. It's really truly a perfect example of how Obama has successfully organized a huge swath of America around him - not around issues. And again, he deserves no blame at all for that. None at all. The question is simply how to organize in that environment? If asking that question is committing a crime or being "self-promoting" - then dear lord, what are we ever allowed to ask?
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