ADRIAN BLEIFUSS PRADOS

The announcement that goateed turd, Rick Warren will deliver the invocation at Obama’s inauguration has sharpened the divisions in the progressive camp over what kind of relationship the left should cultivate with the new administration. I believe this has largely split around two competing analyses of presidential power. The first holds that Obama is our agent, an “inside man” working within the system. Proponents of this view, what I would fall the infiltrationist position, are more than willing to cut Obama as much slack as he needs. The last thing they want to do is blow Obama’s centrist cover and compromise so valuable an asset (in spook-lingo). As they see it, the coming Obama administration is a precious and delicate Fabergé egg that must be protected from the wicked forces that conspire to smash it. Therefore, it is alright to let BHO pad his right side a bit in order to stay safe. The alternative view is that Obama is actually a powerful, intelligent, well-connected and popular politician with heaps of political capital. He seems to have some decent values on a few issues, but ultimately his inclination is to do whatever is best for his own political career. In this view, Obama needs neither our help nor our protection. He doesn’t particularly care what we think. After all, the American left is weak and he owes us very little.

In my view, this decison is not really in our hands. Obama simply is the center of the power structure and we are at the margins. He is not our BFF. Moreover, our political system is not a neutral canvas that can be repainted with every election cycle. The canvas has a coloration of its own and that color is determined by the various, shifting interests of big capital. To use some dated language, it’s the problem of bourgeois democracy.

I think there is only one credible course of action, an attitude of targeted, constructive hostility toward the new president. He doesn’t need to be praised when he does the right thing (Obama is not a puppy) but he certainly should feel our slings and arrows when he goes astray. I’m excited about the progressive possibilities of the next 8 years. But as we think about the 1930s and 1960s, the real lesson of those eras is not that it’s great to have Democratic presidents — the real lesson of those eras is that politicians can do the right thing when they are pressured and feel it is the least painful strategic option. Some discussion of this HERE.