Is There Life After the Shellacking?: A Post-Election Program for the Democratic Party

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The Right—meaning the Tea Party, most Republican elected officials in Congress, Fox News, and several very large corporations—is attacking the Obama administration not for failure, but for success. Obama not only bailed out General Motors (GM), he put in an overseer to ensure the company made sound investment decisions. It worked. He put money into banks, but also increased the regulation of financial institutions. It worked—in staving off financial collapse—and the stock market has rebounded. He pushed through health care reform, establishing the principle that health care is an entitlement. He has reduced some of the military’s worst excesses (torture) and fired the military commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan when the general challenged Obama’s authority. He put through a stimulus bill that prevented local governments from large-scale layoffs, avoiding hugely diminished public services. He diminished political in-fighting within the Democratic Party after a very bitter primary battle for the presidency. In short, he showed signs that government could work effectively in tackling big problems. This is why he is under attack from the Right.

The Right has been lavishly funded to make the opposite case. Its funders have pocketed trillions from reduced taxes and reduced government regulation of its financial transactions. The justification for such minimalist government is the argument that government doesn’t work. This is what makes Obama a threat. If he is willing to interfere with GM and financial markets, what will be next?

The reason why the Left—meaning an uncongealed assortment of labor unions, black and Latino leaders, a minority of Democrats in Congress, a broad array of civic advocacy groups, and some liberals at MSNBC—is sulking about Obama is that they don’t feel his administration has done enough. Banks failed and got bailed out, managers got undeserved multi-million-dollar bonuses (paid for by taxpayers)—yet needed jobs didn’t come out of any of this. Key provisions for improving health care were stripped out of the health care bill, or never introduced. Many billions targeted for infrastructure are tied up in federal and state bureaucracies, never reaching the ground, where they would create jobs. The administration is expanding the war in Afghanistan, at an incredible cost, with no clear prospect of resolution. Perhaps most aggravating, Obama’s political operatives appear to have lost interest in the tens of thousands of grassroots activists that helped him win office. Key members of the Obama political team appear to not understand movement building, while the Tea Party is grooming grassroots leaders across the country. To some, this feels like a betrayal. Many on the Left were excited about Obama, but not about his policy program. They supported him because his speeches suggested he understood the need for bottom-up movement building to push government reforms. Most knew even modest reform would be fiercely contested every step of the way.

While many of the Left have become frustrated and critical of the Obama administration for compromising one or another legislative initiative, this criticism is partially irresponsible. Obama said repeatedly, before and after the election, that he needed civic leaders “to lead.” He emphasized that he could not change major federal policies by himself. When the Right organized—at the grassroots level—to fight health care reform, the Left did not counter-organize until the very end of the process (too late). When Obama did not introduce comprehensive immigration reform, there was a barrage of criticism from immigration advocates, but little grassroots organizing on the issue to help move the congressional opposition. The exceptions—students rallying around the DREAM Act and undocumented immigrants mobilizing against raids in Arizona—stand out precisely because they are a stark contrast to the ineffective insider-lobbying approach of other advocates. Labor unions focused initially on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) and never managed to explain why EFCA should matter to people losing their homes to foreclosure, or to blacks and Latinos unable to get into...