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The Progressive Flank: Does It Exist?
TalkLeft —
Glenn Greenwald discusses a John Judis piece about the absence of a progressive flank in our political discourse. Both pieces are good and the themes not unfamiliar to readers of this blog. As if to confirm the thesis forwarded by Judis, Greenwald and others (including me), DemfromCt at daily kos played the "unhinged" card on Krugman, in the best traditions of A Sullivan (prior to his conversion from adulating Bush to adulating Obama) because Krugman was critical of Obama on the stimulus package. But it also brought to mind the attacks, led by Atrios , on ...
GOP War On Obama? No, Dems Fiddling While Rome Burns
Politics Daily —
... , Obama's structure of the permanent campaign keeps his supporters in full-time cover mode, unable to gainsay the president without indicting themselves along with, a situation writ large in the groups and organizations that changed their allegiance to Obama during the campaign. ...
Things Heard: e54v5
Stones Cry Out —
... If I was on the left, observations like this, “During the 2008 election, Obama co-opted huge portions of the Left and its infrastructure so that their allegiance became devoted to him and not to any ideas” would be quite troubling. ...
Friday Blogaround
Shakesville —
... | posted by Melissa McEwan | Friday, February 13, 2009 Blogaround-round-round, I blogaround! Recommended Reading: Greenwald: Obama and Liberals: A Counter-Productive Relationship Nojojojo: ...
Are We a Movement or a Political Party?
Open Left - Front Page —
... The alternative would, of course be awful. As Glenn Greenwald says, "on one issue after the next, one can vividly observe the harm that comes from a political faction being beholden to a leader rather than to any actual ideas or political principles." In the coming months, if we are "beholden to the leader rather than to principles" then it's pretty well guaranteed we're not going to achieve some of our most minimal goals. I'm no blind hopemonger, but I'm cautiously optimistic that after the bipartisan-backed Iraq War and financial deregulation, we're starting to learn that ...
Can The Banksters Be Trusted? Short Answer: Not For A Nanosecond
DownWithTyranny! —
... Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald is suggestion over at Salon today that if there really was a progressive movement in this country agitating for progressive values and principles and policies, President Obama would have a much easier time fighting off the reactionaries-- even if it causes him and the Democratic Party some pain from time to time. ...
We Are Not a Movement
Open Left - Front Page —
... and Glenn Greenwald decry the lack of a mass popular movement agitating all political actors, including President Obama, to enact a specific policy agenda. However, the decentralized, self-producing, public sphere multiplying reorganization of our society brought on by the self-publishing, network neutral Internet is in direct contradiction with the vision of a discrete, hierarchical organization working to enact specific policy agenda. We are well past the point of being able to create new, large, hierarchical organizations to agitate the government on behalf of a specific, ...
Remainders: Cupcakes
Ben Smith's Blog —
Propublica breaks down the stimulus package.
Del Cecato praises at Obama candor.
Blumenthal sees no damage.
Jared Bernstein gets blogging.
Janet Napolitano charged interest.
No Drama Obama is dramatic.
A Massachusetts letter-writer tells Andrew Card to lay off Obama's dress code.
Glenn Greenwald says left-wingers have lost their much-needed independence.
Obama, the religion.
And JMart and I will fight it out to cover this event (.pdf). ...
Deru kugi wa utareru
Corrente —
Greenwald today:
[T]here is very little political or media structure to Obama's Left that can or will criticize him, even when he moves far to what the Beltway calls the "center" or even the Right (i.e., when he adopts large chunks of the GOP position). That situation is extremely bad -- both for the Left and for Obama. It makes impossible what very well might be the apocryphal though still illuminating FDR anecdote:
FDR was, of course, a consummate political leader. In one situation, a group came to ...
Why Obama Needs A Liberal Opposition
Suburban Guerrilla —
... bill, while lamely urging Democrats to back it. Of course, all these groups may have thought the stimulus bill and the bailout were ideal, but I doubt it. I bet they had the same criticisms of these measures that Krugman or The American Prospect’s Ezra Klein or my own colleagues had, but they made the mistake that political groups often make: subordinating their concern about issues to their support for the party and its leading politician.
Glenn Greenwald:
During the 2008 election, Obama co-opted huge portions of ...
Grim tidings
The Sideshow —
Digby and Scott Horton discuss the fact that the torture regime of the Bush administration was pretty much as bad as it gets short of - as far as we know - deliberate murder of prisoners of war and other kidnap victims. And that, now, it seems, we are prepared to sweep it all under the rug. The simple fact is that George Walker Bush, Richard Bruce Cheney, and Donald Henry Rumsfeld deliberately conspired to commit the most heinous of crimes in our names. And we're okay with that? (Also: You do not negotiate with people whose goal is to destroy Social Security.) Krugman is waxing pessimistic today, saying that a lot is ...
On the Lack of Left-Wing Pressure On Obama
Open Left - Front Page —
... and Glenn Greenwald both published articles decrying the lack of concerted, effective, institutional left-wing pressure on President Obama. The specific context of their complaints was the smaller than needed size of the stimulus / jobs package. The argument was that if there had been more left-wing pressure for a larger package, the stimulus might have been a couple hundred billion dollars larger, and not included the alternative minimum tax fix. However, because so many progressive and left-wing organizations spent the last year dedicating themselves to supporting candidate, ...
Defending The "Left Flank?"
TalkLeft —
... provides a strange defense to "the Left" against Glenn Greenwald's charge that it allowed itself to be coopted by then-candidate Obama's Presidential campaign: ...
