I'm not too concerned about the outcome of Tuesday’s election. There's only one major issue facing America today and it's not that the Democratic congressional majority is too slim. It’s time to put to rest the myth that electing more democrats will lead to the change we believe in.
While you may not yet be ready to accept this, the primary issue facing America today is an increasingly successful movement by wealthy shareholders of multinational corporations seizing power and rights from individuals.
Choose any issue e.g. the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, health care, the environment, job loss and the decline of the middle class, immigration, gay rights, the drug war, campaign finance and you will find corporate influence either directly driving policy or manipulating the issue to build power.
The battle between industry and individuals pre-dates our republic but we are essentially in the midst of a rapidly escalating class war in which ordinary Americans are losing.
Despite the rabid media coverage of the Tea Party this year, few reports noted the common thread of concern for individual rights that stretches across the American political spectrum. This can be seen most clearly in the universal outrage to the Supreme Court's awful Citizens United decision, from radical left to radical right. Surely, there is an opportunity here to bring people together for change.
Oedipus Wrecks: Obama's Failing Presidency
From the day he took office, President Obama and his advisors have been working feverishly to avoid the "missteps" that led to the Clinton midterm backlash. That which they so deeply feared and worked to avoid may now be upon them. How did this happen?
Much of Obama's current political weakness stems from his adoption of terrible policy, often favoring corporations, which can be torn apart by both the left and the right.
The fact that everyone hates a bill does not necessarily indicate good compromise. In Obama's case, it's usually indicated bad policy that solves nothing for anyone.
I often joke that Obama is the most successful Republican president since Reagan. Most of the major legislation he's signed follows in the conservative mold, solidifying corporate power and occasionally giving lip service to the rights of individuals.
It's certainly possible that Obama is a progressive who has been poorly advised to govern as a centrist in order to avoid the kind of political midterm defeat that he ironically now faces. The problem is that he was elected on a platform for change and he's leading preservation of the establishment.
Compromise Legislation Not Values
It's simply not credible when the century's greatest orator throws up his hands saying he doesn't have the votes.
It's okay to compromise on legislation but never our values. Unfortunately, Obama compromises both, in his rhetoric and his legislation.
The health care bill is a blatant giveaway of tax dollars to corporate insurers without the consumer protections and cost controls needed to actually make anything work. The most blaring defect to me is the right of insurers to drop coverage of the seriously ill by paying a $100 per day penalty.
Similarly, there's no great mystery to why we're in the midst of a jobless economic recovery. Obama has continued decades old policies of globalization that reward the export of jobs and production by corporate entities that pay almost no tax here at home.
For some reason, Obama negotiates by staking out weak compromise positions on terrible legislation then fighting for them. He’s essentially been trying to lead towards the middle rather than advocating for sound public policy that works. This country needs not a Commander but an Educator in Chief willing to take risks to push us forward.
The events of this election cycle demonstrate that people across the political spectrum intuitively sense that there's something increasingly wrong with our country but don't necessarily know how to direct their energy. Sadly, President Obama abdicated the mantle of change the day he stopped leading the way to actual reform.
Neither has the Democratic Party fought for individual rights. Repeatedly over the past two years, mainstream democratic leaders with strong ties to corporate money and lobbyists have undermined sensible legislation.
The failures of this Congress have finally convinced me that electing more democrats will not provide the change we need. In fact, I’d rather have principled gridlock than what we have now - silent acquiescence to increasingly bankrupt policies.
If anything, it’s the lack of leadership by Obama and the Democrats that have led to today’s widely predicted election losses. It’s certainly not the platform of unrestrained corporate power of the Republican Party and the fragmented Tea Party, itself a child of corporate lobbyists.
The Way Forward
What’s most notable to me about the first two years of Obama’s presidency is the near complete and utter failure of key progressive groups. Anti-war activists, climate activists and health care activists pretty much all failed to effect change.
It’s time for progressives to stop blindly funding and supporting the corporatist Democratic Party and its candidates hoping for change that never comes.
Neither can we continue to fund the ineffective strategies used by many progressive nonprofit organizations.
How hot will we let the planet get before we admit to ourselves that the tactics we’ve been using are failing? How broke our country? How corrupt our government?
It’s time for progressive nonprofits and activists to fight the growth and consolidation of corporate power as their primary agenda. It's time for us to collaborate to strengthen individual rights and deconstruct corporate power.
I’m a big fan of the Community and Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) for two reasons: 1) they are out there on the front lines teaching activists about the historical, cultural and legal framework of corporate power in America and 2) they are teaching activists how to focus on building rights rather than falling into the tired failed scripts that most organizations follow.
I think this election cycle has actually helped highlight the opportunities to build bridges between the left and right in America. As an example, CELDF often works with dyed in the wool Republicans working to protect their communities from the environmental and economic harms from corporations.
If we really are the ones we’ve been waiting for then it’s time we recognize the battlefield isn’t terrorism…it’s the wealthy shareholders of multinational corporations stealing our democracy, playing the least educated among us as pawns to cast the deciding vote.
What are we going to do about it?
