I was sitting around venting to my wife about today's rec list. I explained to her how I love the many passionate educated progressives on Daily Kos but at times we seem to delve into a useless meta mode. I am constantly suckered (by my own faults) into these meta diaries, to see the carnage and inevitably I engage.
As my wife was listening to me whine, she said you should read this article. She recently purchased a magazine called UTNE Reader. In the current issue David Schimke (editor) wrote an editorial "The Long Haul". I thoroughly enjoyed Schimke's take on today's progressives and I aim to take his advice and "dispense with the whining"
He starts off the article by explaining how Ralph Nader was a hero of his.
His populist rhetoric prompted me to get involved in politics at a young age. His groundbreaking work as a consumer advocate motivated me to pursue a career in journalism. His tireless pursuit of the powerful in the name of the powerless still serves as an inspiration.
At the same time Schimke realizes that Nader's assertion that there is no true difference between Republican and Democratic candidates is a farce. Yet this notion is still embraced by a portion of today's progressives.
One need only revisit George W. Bush’s reaction to 9/11—or consider what a President Gore would have done in the same situation—to conclude that Nader’s self-aggrandizing claim is as contemptuous as it is intellectually crude. Yet it’s this very sort of mantra, adopted in one form or another by a host of progressive thinkers, that gives otherwise rational, passionate people an excuse to disengage from the political process.
Schimke continues on, analyzing some of Pres. Obama's successes and failures during his first 14 months and poses these questions:
So why are so many progressives jumping ship before the midterm elections? When did the palpable energy of election night 2008 become so antagonistic?
He references three authors Paul Rodger Loeb, Dana D Nelson and Barbara Ehrenriech.
Loeb notes that:
many voters were so hungry for radical transformation that they expected it to happen overnight. Additionally, a number of young voters, who helped push Obama over the electoral edge—and could well deliver a second term—lack perspective. They simply don’t know what it means to fight for something over the long haul. "What I’m trying to do in the book is convey to people what it takes to live the life of an activist," Loeb says. "It’s not about losing one battle or vote and going home. It means persevering. It means persisting in the face of defeat."
Schimke takes from Nelson the role of democracy and the role of the President:
Dana D. Nelson (interviewed in the Sept.-Oct. 2008 issue of Utne Reader) argues that presidentialism, a word she used at the time to describe the centrist appeal of McCain’s "straight talk express" and the cult of Obama, "trains us to want the president to take care of democracy for us instead of remembering that democracy, properly defined, is our job."
Finally from Ehrenreich, Schimke talks about the reasonable expectations.:
"Hope is an emotion, a yearning, the experience of which is not entirely within our control. Optimism is a cognitive stance, a conscious expectation, which presumably anyone can develop through practice."
I've completely butchered this article and I suggest reading it in its entirety. But I'll leave you with his closing paragraph:
It’s time for progressives to act, not as Nader says, but as he’s done. I remain certain that President Obama is committed to turning this country around. We just need to dispense with the whining and push him in the right direction.