Saving
Obama, Saving Ourselves
Tuesday,
September 4, 2012
Tom
Hayden
The threat of a
Romney-Ryan regime should be enough to convince a narrow American majority to
vote for Barack Obama, including the disappointed rank-and-file of social
movements. A widening of economic and racial inequality. Cuts in Medicare and
Medical. More global warming and extreme weather. Strangling of reproductive
rights. Unaffordable tuition. The Neo-cons back in the saddle. Two or three
more right-wing Supreme Court appointments to come. Romney as Trojan horse for
Ryan the stalking horse and future presidential candidate.
The consolidation of
right-wing power would put progressives on the defensive, shrinking any
organizing space for pressuring for greater innovations in an Obama second
term. Where, for example, would progressives be without the Voting Rights Act
programs such as Planned Parenthood, or officials like Labor Secretary Hilda
Solis or EPA administrator Lisa Jackson?
But the positive case
for More Obama and Better Obama should be made as well. History will show that
the first term was better than most progressives now think. A second-term voter
mandate against wasteful wars, Wall Street extravagance, and austerity for the
many, led by elected officials including Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders,
Barbara Lee, Raul Grijalva, Jim McGovern and Keith Ellison, would be, in the
language of the Pentagon, a target-rich field of opportunities.
Why Obama’s achievements are dismissed
or denied by many on the white liberal-left is a question worth serious
consideration. It may only be a matter of legitimate disappointment after the
utopian expectations of 2008.
By Tom Hayden
September 5, 2012
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