Kerry’s defeat reinforced the sense of dread that had been the defining aspect of my political life since Bush took office in 2001. At the time, we had already experienced the trauma of the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Iraq. I could scarcely believe at the time that things could be any worse, but less than a year later New Orleans was drowned by a hurricane and Republican incompetence. And this year, the bottom finally dropped out on an economy characterized by unsustainable debt and financial chicanery.

But as the saying goes, I suppose it’s always darkest before the dawn. The election of Barack Obama potentially marks the beginning of a new political era, something that was inconceivable just four short years ago. All throughout the Democratic primaries and the general election fight, I had been somewhat cool toward Obama. After all, he’s not one of us. He is a relatively centrist Democrat who has already floated the possibility of appointing Clinton-era neoliberal technocrat Larry Summers to the position of Treasury secretary. He offers the prospect of a wider war in Afghanistan and possibly Pakistan, and he certainly does not have any intentions of beginning to dismantle the foundations of U.S. imperial power.

But as I saw on the line stretching around my polling station and the delirious celebrations raging on the streets of New York last night, something’s starting to happen here. Obama has generated hopes and raised expectations among massive portions of the population. Considering the fact that the Democrats have gained large majorities in Congress and in state legislatures around the country, they will probably be able to push through some reasonably progressive legislation to deal with the economic crisis and institute limited redistributive programs. But they will inevitably disappoint those throngs of people who are expecting more than what we will likely get. The energy that the Obama campaign generated isn’t going to disappear, and people will demand that the administration go even further. Because of the crisis, the country will be receptive to a progressive agenda that points in the direction of a sustainable and just future. This is a once in a generation opportunity, and we can’t squander it.

But for the next few days, I just want to enjoy the fact that the sense of dread that has hovered over me for the last eight years has dissipated. I want to savor the fact that for the first time in a long time, I feel good about my country. And I want the collective joy that gripped my city, our country, and the world yesterday to be transformed into a political force that cannot be stopped. Obama isn’t going to do that alone. In fact, we will find ourselves fighting numerous battles against him over the course of the next four years. We have to build the movements that will make that transformation ourselves. There’s no other way.

Simply put, while Biden is normally touted as some sort of foreign policy sage, his specific policy prescriptions are generally pretty terrible. Like most mainstream Democrats, he was a staunch supporter of the invasion of Iraq. While he has since characterized his vote in favor of authorizing President Bush to wage the war as a mistake, as recently as last year he continued to portray Saddam Hussein as a threat to the United States and claimed that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction (see this transcript from Biden’s 4/29/07 appearance on Meet The Press).

Also, his preferred strategy for stabilizing Iraq by partitioning it into three autonomous ethno-sectarian states would be an absolute disaster for that country and for the region if implemented. As Foreign Policy In Focus Middle East expert Stephen Zunes has argued:

Given the mosaic of ethnicities and sects in Iraq, with various groupings having mixed together within both urban and rural settings for many generations, the establishment of such ethnic or sectarian mini-states would almost certainly result in even higher levels of forced population transfers, ethnic cleansing, and other human suffering. Given the intermixing of these populations in Baghdad, Mosul, and Kirkuk and scores of other cities, the potential exists for the most violent break-up of a country since the partition of India 60 years ago.

A violent sectarian breakup of Iraq would most certainly draw Iraq’s neighbors into the conflict, creating the conditions for a wider regional war (just ask a Turk what he or she thinks about having an independent Kurdistan on its border). Also, an overwhelming majority of Iraqis reject the plan as a foreign imposition that undermines national unity and sovereignty. While criticism has forced Biden to be relatively quiet about his partition proposal in recent months, and Obama himself has voiced some skepticism about such a plan, as Mother Jones recently pointed out Biden still supports partition.

Joe Biden as foreign policy expert is a media-created meme on par with the long-running claim John McCain is some sort of “maverick.“ In reality, Biden’s foreign policy perspective is generally simplistic, stupid, and dangerous, especially when it comes to Iraq. We can only hope that Obama’s good judgment in opposing the Iraq war in 2003 will also prompt him to oppose Biden’s ill-conceived and dangerous plan for that country’s future.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s statements (many of which I would agree with) questioned a notion that is deeply held by the overwhelming majority of American citizens: that this is a fundamentally moral and just nation. Wright did not just speak about the realities of race in the U.S. He forcefully denounced U.S. foreign policy and the notion that America is only a force for good in the world, even when it is committing or abetting horrific acts, such as the continuing Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. Most Americans simply can’t deal with the notion that their country perhaps does more harm in the world than good, or that others might view us with less than total admiration. I think after almost eight years of the Bush administration and its vast criminality, many people’s sense of the innate goodness of America has been unsettled. They want to feel good about America again and Wright’s statements strike at the source of such insecurities. I think the feeling that Obama might not be totally invested in the idea of a fundamentally benign America (recall the American flag lapel pin flap or the controversy over his wife’s comments about being proud of America for the first time during the campaign) and not just the fact that he is black might explain at least some of the incredibly strong reactions to some of the things that his former pastor said. And it definitely explains why he chose to give his speech in front of an enormous phalanx of American flags.

That being said, even tough I take issue with some aspects of Obama’s speech, I found it to be largely compelling and even moving in places. While denouncing Wright’s particular statements and disavowing any notion whatever that the U.S. or its allies (namely Israel) might be the source of oppression or instability in the international arena, he bravely refused to completely disown the man and the black church community from which he comes. He lucidly explained the history of racist structural inequalities that continue to constrict the lives of African-Americans and other people of color while deftly addressing the fears and resentments of working-class and downwardly mobile middle-class whites. In doing so he identified a common enemy - corporate power - as well as common goals: better schools, healthcare, housing and jobs for all. Before this speech, I was more enthusiastic about the excitement and movement surrounding the man’s campaign and not Obama per se. But after yesterday’s speech I’m more enthusiastic by the possibilities offered by the man himself. Clearly a lot of the right instincts are there. We have to do the political work necessary to allow him to act on them if he gets elected this fall.

I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 and even in 2004 (please don’t crucify me, the votes were cast in New Jersey where the Democratic nominee won handily both times against Bush). I have nothing but respect for his decades-long commitment to protecting American consumers and workers from corporate predation, and his criticisms of the American political system and the two main parties are for the most part undeniably accurate. But after witnessing his announcement yesterday on NBC’s Meet The Press, it’s clear to me that Nader’s 2008 campaign deserves no support from young people on the democratic left. This is a vanity campaign, seemingly motivated primarily by a personal vendetta, which will amount to nothing more than an enormous waste of time and energy for anyone that gets involved with it. Here’s why.

Nader represents nobody but himself at this point in his career trajectory. He is not attached to any third party, and is not the main spokesperson for any kind of existing social and political movement. All of the social forces that brought some substance to his 2000 campaign, namely students and youth, for better or worse are clearly in Barack Obama’s camp. They will not be going anywhere else, even if Obama makes no attempt to stake out a more progressive position before the November election, assuming he is the nominee (a possibility that looks more likely every day). Nader simply does not appear to have any substantive reservoir of electoral support to draw from, rendering his effort little more than a vanity candidacy. In this context, support for the Nader campaign represents a withdrawal from actual politics and an empty moral gesture. Where the hell were you the past four years, Ralph?

Further, I can’t discern one iota of strategic thinking motivating Nader’s latest decision to run for president, unless his “strategy” is to do whatever he can to make sure the Democratic nominee loses the election, as if this would somehow help the party and our country move in a more progressive direction. If anything, as an article in yesterday’s New York Times indicates, this run seems primarily motivated by Nader’s personal vendetta against the Democratic party, which worked to keep him off the ballot in many states in 2004. I was not happy with the party’s treatment of Nader during that election either, but he might as well have just gotten on Meet the Press and said “nanny-nanny-poo-poo” to explain to the Democrats and to the country why he’s running again. It’s much more accurate than his rather offensive comparison of himself to African-Americans under Jim Crow (a statement symptomatic of his general tone-deafness on issues of race and identity, I might add).

Michael Harrington, founder of Democratic Socialists of America (our parent organization), counseled us to aspire to build the “left wing of the possible.” This new Nader candidacy represents the exact opposite. There is no possibility of a Nader victory, and its only possible outcome besides total irrelevance is facilitating the continued occupation of the White House by the right wing. Young activists on the democratic left should offer critical support to the Obama candidacy and build relationships with young Obama supporters while pointing out the shortcomings of the candidate and the political tendency he represents broadly. As YDS activists have said hundreds of times, while electoral politics is incredibly important, it’s building the movement in our campuses and communities that matters most. Nader’s quadrennial crusade gets the equation exactly backwards and threatens to divide whatever progressive energies already exist. That’s a resource we can’t afford to squander.

While these new technologies have given us some tools to help us organize more effectively, they have serious political flaws that we cannot simply overlook. These sites are owned and influenced by massively powerful interests who use them as enormous data-mining operations to learn more about the cultural and consumer preferences of young people in order to market products to them more effectively. When you list one hundred of your favorite TV shows, movies and bands, you’re essentially participating in a corporate focus group. Facebook and MySpace capitalize on our friendships and social networks in order to increase profit margins for their owners. This is insidious and should be opposed by young people on the left.

Let’s get specific. The massively popular social networking site Facebook, which currently boasts about 60 million users, recently found itself at the center of a major controversy surrounding an application called Beacon, which showed Facebook users which products their friends were buying online. This enormously invasive form of marketing was too much for many of the site’s users, who organized a massive protest that forced Facebook to drop the application.

But apparently, this episode was indicative of just one aspect of Facebook’s particular awfulness. Recently I received an email from LabourStart, an excellent online resource for union movement news and a center for online union activism, detailing how Facebook banned a prominent Canadian union organizer from its site because he was using it to organize workers. As the email puts it:

“Derek got a note from the good book, telling him he was trying to add too many friends, and should calm down a bit, or else. Now as a union organiser, he’s quite likely to want to add lots of friends - it’s kind of what he does. So he waits a bit and tries again, and is told he can’t add any more at the moment and to wait and try later. Fair enough. He waits a bit more and tries again, same message. By now, he’s probably frothing at the mouth and muttering “must organise, must organise,” so he has another go to see if the coast is clear, and promptly gets himself a ban. That being a ban from Facebook itself - no more profile, no access to the stuff he’s built up, no appeal.”

Why would Facebook’s administrators care whether or not someone was using their site to organize workers? Well, it turns out that the company’s top executives and investors are right-wing libertarian fantasists. According to a recent piece by Tom Hodgkinson in the Guardian, Peter Thiel, the man responsible for putting up the money necessary to get Facebook off the ground, is an uber-libertarian venture capitalist whose ultimate goal is to use the Internet to free capital from any and all restrictions. “You can’t have a workers’ revolution to take over a bank if the bank is in Vanuatu,” he gleefully intones.

Even though MySpace is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, I actually find it to be less offensive in its marketing efforts than Facebook. The advertising on MySpace tends to be rather dumb and clumsy, and to my knowledge they’ve never engaged in anything so offensive as Facebook’s Beacon initiative. I have also never heard of any attempt on the part of MySpace to ban progressive activists. Still, we don’t watch Fox News Channel and we should be looking for ways to reduce our presence on their website.

How can we go about ending our support for these powerful media conglomerates while still making use of the benefits of social networking technologies? While the non-profit development of Web 2.0 applications is unfortunately not very widespread, there are options. Ning is an online application that offers users tools to create their own online social networks, and as of yet it has not been purchased by any large and horrible company. Even better, Drupal is a non-profit venture that allows users to freely create a wide range of Web 2.0 applications including web
portals, blogs and social networks. While it might be tough to wean large numbers of young people off of Facebook and MySpace, as socialists we should be doing everything that we can to fight the commodification of information and friendship that these sites represent.

Throughout our nation’s history, the labor movement has been the most effective means by which working people have come together to protect their interests and improve the quality of their lives. One can point to the weekend, eight-hour day, occupational health and safety standards, health insurance, child labor laws, and a range of other achievements as proof of the power and necessity of unions in the lives of all workers.

This is why the recent announcement by the Department of Labor that the percentage of unionized workers in the U.S. dropped to 12 percent (and 7.4 percent in the private sector) in 2006 is so troubling. In the 1950s, about one-third of all American workers were in unions, but since then, this number has steadily declined. It’s no coincidence that the economic security of American workers has declined since that time as well.

While massive changes in the national and global economy have eroded the unions’ traditional base in manufacturing, one of the biggest reasons why unions have not been able to keep pace with these losses is because our nation’s labor laws make it too hard for workers to organize unions and does not do enough to punish employers who harass, intimidate, and fire workers during unionization campaigns. Under the current labor law, which has not been significantly altered since the 1930s and 1940s, workers who want to form unions must petition for a government-sponsored election. After the petition is accepted by the government, there is a period of up to 50 days in which each side organizes their supporters for the vote.

It sounds democratic on paper, but in reality, management often resorts to a range of tactics, many of them illegal, in order to fight off a unionization campaign. I witnessed this myself when I worked as an organizer with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), when I saw the nursing home workers I worked with harassed, intimidated, and sometimes fired for pro-union activities, even though such actions are illegal under U.S. law and violate basic principles of human and civil rights. Most times, the only punishment management receives (if they even receive a punishment at all) is a small fine, which is just seen as part of the cost of doing business.

According to polls, tens of millions of American workers say they would join a union if they could, but all too often, the prospect of employer resistance stands in the way. That’s why anyone interested in improving the fortunes of American workers needs to support a promising legislative initiative called the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which currently has the bipartisan support of 44 Senators and 215 Representatives in Congress. If passed, the act would make it easier for workers to form unions through a simple card-check procedure. If a majority of workers in a workplace sign cards saying they support the creation of a union, the union is formed. This would eliminate the lengthy campaign period that often crushes unionization drives. It would also allow for improved mediation of contract disputes after a union is formed and would stiffen penalties for employers who violate workers’ rights.

Democratic socialists and our allies in the U.S. need to make supporting the EFCA one of our main concerns, and the election of a new Democratic majority in last November’s elections has presented us with the opportunity to actually implement it. It is a perfect example of the type of “non-reformist reform” that a pragmatic radical politics is built upon because it carries the potential to redistribute relations of power within the economy while improving the everyday lives of working people. It also represents a crucial opportunity to revive and strengthen the labor movement, which is and has always been the backbone of socialist and progressive politics in the U.S. and around the world. Without vigorous and vibrant unions, we might as well pack up our tents and go home, because a viable left movement simply cannot exist without them.