Part of the "candidate blogger" series -- I'll be blogging Wednesdays for Obama
I'm not connected to the campaign. The views expressed are my own.
When I was working with a homelessness advocacy non-profit in Chicago, my co-workers would drive down to Springfield for lobbying trips and would come back beaming about the young state senator who managed to charm everyone at Health and Human Services committee hearings and was one of our biggest allies. My friends and I eagerly watched his climb in the Senate race, and so his emergence on the national scene was somewhat less surprising to me.
I've posted several diaries on why I believe Obama is the most compelling advocate for progressive policies, about his uncanny ability to reach out to young people, and his calls for a new politics based on progressive values. I want to briefly summarize those points here, focusing on the big picture, and then lead into a remarkable answer Obama gave last week about what he intends to accomplish as a candidate for president.
Restoring Faith in Government
For Obama, the last eight years of the Bush administration have demonstrated the profound failure of the Republican governing philosophy, the moral and practical bankruptcy of the principle that "we are all in it for ourselves" --- which is not only a kind of cynicism about government but a kind of cynicism about the possibility of collective action, of movement politics. In the end, for Obama, who often works historical arguments into his speeches, progressivism is the deeper American tradition.
Our cynicism about politics, Obama said at the Take Back America conference, stems from "a failure of leadership":
It has to do with the philosophy they've peddled in this town for the last six years - a philosophy of trickle-down and on-your-own that says government has no role in solving the challenges we face and so it shouldn't even try.As Obama put it in 2006:
The problem isn't that their philosophy isn't working the way it's supposed to - the problem is that it is working exactly the way it's supposed to.Democrats will never face a more receptive audience for a new politics based on progressive values, on restoring faith in the ability of government to create change. It is not enough to win this election. This is our opportunity to lay the groundwork for elections to come:
And so I am eager to have this argument not just with the President, but the entire Republican Party over what this country is about.In other words, the Bush administration has presented us with the opportunity to build a progressive majority. America is ready as never before for a new politics based on progressive values.Because I think that this is our moment to lead.
The time for our party's identity crisis is over. Don't let anyone tell you we don't know what we stand for and don't doubt it yourselves. We know who we are. And in the end, we know that it isn't enough to just say that you've had enough.
I strongly believe that Hillary Clinton, for all of her strengths, cannot be this candidate, given her past history and associations. This kind of figure can only be someone new. And she isn't presenting a vision for a fundamental realignment of the electorate or for the future of the Democratic party, nor does she have the ability to articulate that appeal to new constituencies -- to reach disaffected moderates, youth and faith-based voters. (If you don't believe in the seriousness Obama's efforts to reach disaffected Republicans, take a look at his latest announced Dinner with Obama: two of four are former Republicans.)
A Progressive Majority?
During a question and answer session last week before the National Association of Black Journalists, Obama made an argument for his candidacy that he has sometimes made privately about why, given a strong field and a number of candidates with good qualities, he would be the better candidate than Clinton or Edwards. He could, after all, as he notes, wait another ten years and still be younger than most of the other candidates. And he can only risk his enormous popularity by running.
For one, he believes in the historic nature of this election, in the crucial opportunity that it presents. And second, in a reply worth quoting at length because it reveals just how ambitious Obama's vision is, he believes he has demonstrated a kind of appeal that no one else has:
But one of the things I had to ask myself was, is there something I can do as a Democratic nominee for president that no other candidate in the field or thinking about it can do? And I have the capacity, I believe, to attract new people into the process and change the political map in a fundamental way. And that's the only way that meaningful change is going to happen in America.
Think about this: Everybody is going to have a health care plan, everybody's going to have a plan for energy, everybody is going to come up and say we're going to deal with urban poverty and rural issues, but if we run on the same model that we've run on for the last three or four election cycles, which is basically you concede that 45% of the country is on the one side and 45% on the other, you've got ten percent in the middle, and they all live in apparently Florida and Ohio, [Laughter] and you try to eke out a victory, then the best you can do is win a fifty plus one victory. You eke out a victory, maybe you pick out a couple seats in the senate, a couple seats in the house. You haven't built up a working majority for broad-based, significant change.Obama then lays out the new constituencies his candidacy can bring to the table... which I bring to you after the jump.
It's surprising that this passage hasn't been picked up more widely in the media:
Now if I'm the Democratic nominee: Mississippi is in play. Because Mississippi is 40% African-American but votes 25% African-American.Obama is not advocating a grand compromise with the right, as is often suggested, rather he envisions a working progressive majority, a realignment of political life along progressive values.If I'm the nominee: Suddenly young people are coming out in record numbers.
If I'm the nominee: Suddenly independents and some Republicans who have not been interested in the kind of "tit for tat" politics, the sharply partisan politics of the last several years, they start listening to why a progressive agenda might be common sense.
We can scramble the political map. And that's the only way that real change is going to happen. That's how you get a universal health care bill passed. Because we've got not fifty plus one but a sixty percent majority in America, that insists that if we spend two trillion dollars year on health care, we shouldn't have 45 million uninsured.Obama argues that he has demonstrated the potential to bring more states into play and the ability to speak to groups not normally approached by the Democratic party.
Anyway, thanks to Jerome for the opportunity, and thanks for reading.
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