November 5. 2008 from Tarek Milleron on Vimeo.
“The election is over and we must begin turning our country around now, or the opportunity may not come again. By quickly organizing ourselves in each of the 435 congressional districts, over the next 100 days, we can make single-payer healthcare, a living wage, and a less militaristic society our long-term reality. We must do this because the founders of these United States gave us the power to do it. Please watch the video and sign up today.”
People may be surprised to know this, but if you listened to the content of his speeches, it was clear: Obama may be progressive in some ways, but generally he is a conservative, especially on foreign policy and economic issues. This is from today’s Democracy Now.
“ARUN GUPTA: Well, I think it was really unfortunate that Obama supported the bailout. I think one of the things to understand about Obama, there is the potential there for it to be a transformative presidency if it comes from below; he, himself, is not going to be a transformative president. He’s ultimately a conservative. He’s very conservative on economic issues, foreign policy. Yet, given the extreme rule of the Republicans over the last year, that conservativism became a change, compared to what the radical right-wing positions of the Republicans.
The bailout itself, I think you could argue, has been a complete failure. While the rest of the country was focused on the election, what’s been going on is that the Treasury has been allowing the banks to essentially self-regulate. They’re not putting any demands over how this money should be used to get the credit markets going. So what they’re going to be using it for, they’re going to be paying out these mass of dividends still. They’re going to be using it to acquire weaker rivals. They’re going to sit on it.”
Obama won’t be a transformative president without a lot of progressive pressure. The signs of pressure are beginning to appear: Obama has already appointed Rahm Emanuel as his new chief of staff, and Emanuel is a conservative Democrat, outspoken in his support of Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank. Obama will continue to be pulled by the right-wing and the conservatives in the Democratic party. There are already signs that he wants to cut some “entitlement” programs, which would be disastrous for people during a recession. The end result of these more conservative policies would be that Obama won’t then represent those who elected him, the progressives who organized his “anti-war movement” and the vast majority of Americans, who are the progressive majority. We need to keep the momentum swinging to the left or it will go back to the right. It’s time for landmark laws that respond to the will of the people but the movement that got Obama elected needs to keep the pressure on. Since the money won’t be there as it was before, people have to keep connected and do this through our own types of media and social connections. We can’t let this drop.
The Nader campaign is organizing one of these connection organizations, but everyone who is progressive needs to stay involved. We need to fight for single payer universal health care, a living wage, a just foreign policy, solar power, fighting climate change seriously, and the de-militarization of the U.S. culture. We need to stop using war as a form of “diplomacy”. Obama has a lot of potential, but he could easily swing in the wrong direction on some issues, and he needs to know we are not going to stop being involved and adding our own pressure.
We need a genuine social movement that takes over where the Obama movement left off. Get involved in some ways if you can and listen to the next podcasts from Civilianism for ideas on how we can do this.
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