Bill Maher (6/19/09): "We have a Center-Right Party and a Crazy Party... Democrats are the new Republicans"

One of my favorite rants from Maher since "Bush should just carry around an actual straw man with him to argue with. 'I believe in doing whatever it takes to keep America safe -- Straw Man here, nothing!'" (On the same show, Gloria Steinem I believe made the pithy comment "There are two kinds of people in the world: those that divide people into two groups, and those that don't.")

Anyway: Maher rants about the need for a "first party" and critiques Democrats and the lack of coverage of liberals/progressives in the MSM. And when he says "These aren't radical ideas. A majority of Americans are either already for them, or would be if they were properly argued and defended," it's not a liberal fantasy. See for example, part of my discussion with J-fave Becky here and the linked report I discuss in it on actual American public priorities here. (See also this post.)

Maher:

Last week in this space, I criticized President Obama for not fighting corporate influence enough, and it made some Liberals very angry. My phone rang off the hook.
...
As far as you folks on the Right that think that we're somehow in league --- we're not in league! I was criticizing Obama for not being hard enough on the corporate douche bags you live to defend. I don't wanna be on your team. Pick another kid.

So I stand by my words. But there is another side to the story. And that is, that every time Obama tries to take on a Progressive cause, there's a major political party standing in his way --- the Democrats.
...
We don't need a third party, we need a first party. You go to the polls and your choices are the guy who voted for the first Wall Street bailout, or the guy who voted for the next ten.

We don't have a Left and a Right party in this country anymore. We have a center-Right party and a crazy party. And over the last thirty-odd years, Democrats have moved to the Right, and the Right has moved into a mental hospital.

So what we have is one perfectly good party for hedge fund managers, credit card companies, banks, defense contractors, big agriculture and the pharmaceutical lobby --- that's the Democrats.

And they sit across the aisle from a small group of religious lunatics, flat-earthers, and Civil War re-enacters...who mostly communicate by AM radio and call themselves the Republicans. And who actually worry that Obama is a Socialist. Socialist? He's not even a Liberal. I know he's not, because he's on TV. And while I see Democrats on television, I don't see actual Liberals. And if occassionally you do get to hear Ralph Nader or Noam Chomsky or Dennis Kucinich, they're treated like buffoons.
...

Shouldn't there be one party that unambiguously supports cutting the military party? A party that is straight up in favor of gun control, gay marriage, higher taxes on the right, universal healthcare, legalizing pot and steep direct taxing of polluters?

These aren't radical ideas. A majority of Americans are either already for them, or would be if they were properly argued and defended. And what we need is an actual Progressive party to represent the millions of Americans who aren't being served by the Democrats. Because, bottom line, Democrats are the new Republicans.

h/t to BradBlog.

Point, Counter-punch

An interesting contrast of two articles on Counterpunch recently.

Nadia Hijab writes in "Small Changes Within the Confines of the Establishment: The Obama Difference:

Many have read much into Obama's speech - that was part of its genius - but it contained no policy announcements. That does not mean there are no policies. The Obama administration works differently from its predecessors in at least three ways... it doesn't do business on the basis of public pronouncements, the Obama administration speaks with one voice (the same tough line - settlements must stop, peace must start - is delivered by Mr. Obama; Vice President Joe Biden, who used to call himself a Zionist; Hillary Clinton, the former stridently pro-Israel junior senator from New York; Rahm Emanuel, who twice volunteered for the Israeli Army; the national security adviser, General James Jones; and the special envoy, George Mitchell), and this is an administration that does its homework. So, yes, nothing has changed on the ground yet. But because of the way it works, the Obama administration has a much better chance of bringing peace to the Middle East than its predecessors. Still, before breaking out the champagne, remember that Mr. Obama works within the boundaries of the American establishment. Within those narrow confines and given the present Israeli-Palestinian power imbalance, the Palestinians are likely to secure a bare minimum of rights while Israel walks off with the rest. Unless, that is, the Palestinians can rapidly tilt the balance in their favor - or unless Israel's intransigence does it for them.

In contrast, (though not strictly speaking, in complete opposition), Jennifer Loewenstein writes in "New Rhetoric for the Coloner-Settler Project: How Much Really Separates Obama and Netanyahu?":

Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama have one thing very much in common: both of them have nearly the same vision for the future of “Palestine”. They may not recognize it yet, but sooner or later, whether Netanyahu remains in power or is replaced by someone who speaks Dove-Liberalese better, they will shake hands and agree that the only thing that really separated them in the early months of President Obama’s administration was semantics: the language each man used to describe what he saw for the future of Palestine, or “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” –a phrase that suggests there are two sides each with a grievance that equals or cancels out the other’s and that makes a just resolution so difficult to formulate. How deeply have we been indoctrinated. If President Obama’s speech in Cairo signified anything, it was that the likelihood of a dramatic shift in United States’ policy toward Israel in the coming years is almost nil... Barack Obama has sent Benjamin Netanyahu the message he most seeks, whether Netanyahu recognizes it or not: continue your colonial-settler project as you have been doing; just change the vocabulary you use to describe it. Then nobody will get upset or notice that the status quo will persists. In the meantime Nasrallah and his followers in Lebanon will be shaking their heads in disbelief at the service Obama has just performed on Hizbullah’s behalf.

Loewenstein lays out the numerous problems Obama didn't address (such as the "illegal use of white phosphorous on the densely populated neighborhoods of Gaza City and beyond? The cluster bombs and fleschettes? The rocketing, fire-bombing and bulldozing of entire neighborhoods? ...[Israeli Defense Forces'] attack on hospitals, schools, ambulances, UN buildings and shelters, food warehouses, businesses, factories and family homes... [Israeli opposition to] the UN fact-finding mission on the commission of war crimes during its relentless assault... [the] planning [of] Operation “Cast Lead” six months prior to its beginning, or when the ceasefire was still in effect... the cantonization of the West Bank into a series of disconnected ‘island’ villages and towns; the de facto annexation and militarization of the Jordan Valley; the encirclement of the economy-stripped Palestinian enclaves by the annexation wall whose boundaries incorporate the theft of the best agricultural land and resources in Palestine for Israeli use only; The status quo grid of interstate, “Jewish only” highways connecting the settlement blocs to Israel so that they are inseparable and indeed indistinguishable from the Jewish state itself..."), and an allusion to the Palestinian casualties during Operation "Cast Lead", estimated to 1400, 85% of which were reportedly civilians. In contrast, I remember hearing on NPR casualties among the Israelis from rocket attacks; I feel like it was around 100-200 max. This references the one other thing I wanted to bring up: to me, there comes a line, a line VERY SOON, where the number of people you're killing as "collateral damage" (nominally untargeted civilians) becomes an equal horror to the number of civilians the other side may kill intentionally ("terrorism"). Chomsky discusses this a lot in other contexts (as well as in this one), calling the civilian casualties of (often "just" wars) "state terrorism". Call it what you will, I don't excuse it. A life is a life is a life to me -- especially in the case where the life snuffed out is not the one who attacked you. That it is a countryman or countrywoman of the person who attacked you is as immaterial as when civilians are intentionally killed and it's justified by pointing out their collusion or support of attacks on another aggrieved party in turn. If we claim only military targets are justifiable targets, we cannot simultaneously claim that military attacks killing large amounts of non-military citizenry is justifiable.

But of course, we do. Hiroshima and Nagasaki nominally had military value, but were entire cities. But the justification to this day is that it prevented later heavy casualties. So how come it's ok to kill civilians when the cause is important enough to us but it's not ok when the cause is important enough to others? (Not that I think it's ok in either case, but I'm asking for moral consistency on our part. Silly, perhaps -- but hypocrisy, to me, cannot be morality.)

I've wondered afield here. Go read the Counterpunch articles.

Um... Happy Monday?

More on Sotomayor

She's hardly a die-hard fan of the little guy.

In the linked Slate article by Emily Bazelon, Bazelon lays out how Sotomayor can be very convincing; in the cited case, she convinced a conservative and liberal judge, both of who started out opposed to her view, to switch sides and sign on to her decision in a case where "empathy" would lead you to believe one might side for the trucker in this case over the off-duty cop:

But what's striking, of course, is that she persuaded them to undo a verdict in a case that a jury saw as rife with police abuse of power. "You read this unanimous opinion, and it would seem to be the Republican judge who is driving this decision that she just signed on to. When in fact it was exactly the opposite," one observer said.

The other two judges had decided to rule to uphold a jury verdict and a $600,000 award for damages for a trucker who, whatever the merits of his suit (he was found not guilty of assault against the officer, who he got into an altercation with over a payphone, back in the 90s, where trucker Jocks claimed he explained he had an emergency with his truck broken down further up the highway and the cop refused to reliquish the payphone; fight ensues; the cop claims Jocks made no mention of an emergency and started a fight for the phone) seems to have been quite thoroughly punished for a crime it was ultimately determined he didn't commit:

fter his arrest, Jocks was held for 24 hours and ended up having to make 28 court appearances before he was found not guilty of felony assault. He spent $20,000 on legal fees, lost his truck driving job, and had to give up full custody of his daughter, who went to live with her mother, his ex-wife. That dire, black moment on the LIE truly cost him.

Frayster Joe_JP observes that this actually fits in with what we know of Obama, like his upholding of some Bush era atrocities:

Given the mixed feelings some have with recent actions by President Obama (e.g., preventive detention), this should not surprise. In fact, though he was specifically talking about his views on a "living Constitution," Obama in Audacity of Hope suggested his model is Justice Breyer. Someone Rachel Maddow recently suggested was more centrist than liberal (and at times tecnocrat), and various of his opinions can be used to back that up. But, the game has to be played, so she is tarred by the likely subjects when they should be quite happy she was chosen.

Dionne appears to have it quite right. And the last thing we need on the court in this J's opinion is another "law-and-order" type, inclined to "[use her] formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak". Where did you hear those words before? They were Obama's objection to the nomination of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. Although O may have been talking about minorities and plaintiffs in cases against large commercial interests, it's worth remembering that the police very much are often the ones who are the strong (such as in the trucker case where, when the off-duty cop had enough, he pulled his gun and put it to Jocks' head), and Sotomayor appeared to have used her formidable skills on his behalf.

Dionne: "And even though they should support her confirmation, liberals would be foolish to embrace Sotomayor as one of their own because her record is clearly that of a moderate. It is highly unlikely that she will push the court to the left."

Circling the Center: Recommended readings

I hope to get to more commentary on yesterday's post at some point, but for the time being, the Continuum's recommended reading for today consists of two articles by the WaPo's E. J. Dionne, Jr:

Obama's Center-Left two-step

Obama's Anti-Roberts

In the first, Dionne (I keep wanting to add "Warwick") analyzes Obama's governing style, and finds it to (thus far) be an updating of Bill Clinton's triangulation (though I think Dionne implies, but does not say, that Obama's strategic compromises more authentically represent his political philosophy compared to what was widely seen as Clinton's more calculating political, well, triangulation). Obama is trying to tack to the Left, in Dionne's estimation, but only just:

He is out to build a new and enduring political establishment, located slightly to the left of center but including everyone except the far right.

The problem Dionne finds with this is that the ObamAdministration is trying to do this in part through only slightly sub rosa message control, pitching different messages to different audiences, but in a sort of blatant way that I think took Dionne slightly aback:

Last Thursday afternoon, for example, the White House invited in journalists, mostly opinion writers, to sell them on the substance of the president's big speech on Guantanamo and the treatment of detainees.

Unbeknown to the writers until afterward, they had been divided into two groups, one more centrist with a sprinkling of moderate conservatives, the other more liberal. (I was in the liberal group.) The president made an unscheduled appearance at each briefing. As is his way, he charmed both groups.

The idea, as far as I can determine, was to sell the liberal group on those aspects of Obama's plan that are a break from George W. Bush's policies, and to sell the centrist group on the toughness of the president's approach and the fact that it squares with Bush's more moderate moves later in his second term[...]

[...] The disturbing aspect of Obama's effort to create his new political alignment is that building it requires him to send rather different messages to its component parts. Playing to several audiences at once can lead to awkward moments.

Besides to playing to different audiences leading to potential awkwardness, there's the possibility of trying to please everyone and instead pleasing no one (apparently not yet the issue, at least in the meetings Dionne discusses), as well as the vague dishonesty of it. My concern, at the least, is that Obama isn't and never has been particularly left-liberal. He really has kept much more of the Bush Admin era extra-legal Constitution-busting executive apparatus than I'd like (or, you know, would argue is right, just, constitutional, or in keeping with his promises). In short, I'm afraid not just of his pitching his message to different audiences, but in his triangulating to towards the Right of not just where his critics claim he is (Far Left), from where he's perceived to be (Leftist Wing), but from where he actually is (Center Left); when you start your position in the middle, your only direction to compromise to farther towards the right (since the liberal-left can be taken for granted, usually).

Anyway.

Dionne (not Warwick)'s other article talks about how Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is the most conservative choice Obama could have made, pointing out that conservatives should be pleased instead of fighting, and liberals should be vigilant, and while they (we) shouldn't oppose her nomination, nor should we be glad for it:

News accounts from the 1990s consistently described her as a "centrist" in her politics. Her lead sponsor when she was first named as a judge, the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was hardly a conventional liberal. Obama may have found himself an empathetic judge, but she practices her empathy from the middle of the road.

A careful analysis of her record by Business Week, for example, concluded that she is a "moderate on business issues" and would fit the court's current alignment on such questions.

She also upheld a ban on federal funds going to family planning groups that provided abortions overseas. Sotomayor wrote that "the Supreme Court has made clear that the government is free to favor the anti-abortion position over the pro-choice position, and can do so with public funds."

Dan Gilgoff, on his excellent "God and Country" blog, points out that Sotomayor also ruled in favor of a group of Connecticut antiabortion protesters who asserted that police "used excessive force against them at a demonstration." He concludes that her "thin record on abortion is most likely a relief" to pro-life groups. In picking her, Obama sent another signal that he is serious about seeking common ground on abortion.

On how we should see this nomination, he continues

Liberals should not take the bait of the right-wingers by allowing the debate over Sotomayor to be premised on the idea that she is a bold ideological choice. She's not. But if conservatives succeed in painting this moderate as a radical, they will skew future arguments over the court. In fact, liberals should press Sotomayor on her more conservative decisions on business issues, an area in which the current court already tilts too far right.

Go read the whole thing.

*EXTRA SPECIAL BONUS EXCELLENT DIONNE WARWICK QUOTE ON EMPATHY:

Conservatives -- particularly those who run direct-mail outfits and want a big court fight -- would love the decision over Sotomayor to hang on Obama's call for judges who show "empathy." They would cast her as a dangerous activist willing to bend the law to produce the results she wants.

They want to turn Obama's argument on its head and claim that Sotomayor would show bias in favor of those who share her background -- and never mind that they dismiss such assertions when they are raised with respect to white, conservative, male nominees.

(emphasis added)
Three words for that observation: AMEN and DAMN STRAIGHT.

Obama and Fools' Gold Environmentalism

Read today's CounterPunch story by Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank on how the ObamAdministration is letting us down on the environment.

From quietly continuing Bush Administration policies to drill offshore, support nuclear energy, de-list wolves from the Endangered Species Act, continue flawed market-based policies towards pollution that haven't worked for sulfur and likely will not work for carbon/Global Climate Change, it's a sad, poor bag, not really compensated for by his rather more admirable stance on Guantanamo Bay.

Excerpts from St. Clair & Frank:

It’s not just the wolf that’s been hung out to dry. Shortly after Obama’s inauguration, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke announced they were revoking an 11th hour Bush directive that weakened the ESA listing process. However, shortly thereafter the Dept. of the Interior refused to repeal a special rule that would have granted the polar bear protection from the impacts of global warming. Salazar said his agency does not believe the law was intended to address climate change, even though many policy analysts believe the ESA could be used to limit the issuing of permits for development projects that would potentially threaten the polar bear by emitting additional greenhouse gases. "The Endangered Species Act is not the proper tool to deal with a global issue - global warming," Salazar said... The Obama administration, under Salazar’s watch, is refusing to lead the way in protecting the bear’s dwindling populations. Of course the oil and gas cartels were unabashedly pleased with the decision. So much for thinking globally and acting locally.

'We welcome the administration's decision because we, like Secretary Ken Salazar, recognize that the Endangered Species Act is not the proper mechanism for controlling our nation's carbon emissions,' said American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard...

Off-shore oil drilling and a new generation of nuclear power plants represented the sum total of the McCain/Palin energy plan. Though it seemed like political comedy at the time, this strategy has now been at least partially embraced by the Obama administration. As the clock approached midnight on the final eve of the Bush administration, his Interior Department put forward a rule opening 300 million acres of coastal waters to oil drilling. According to the hastily prepared decree, the leasing was to begin by March 23. Enter Salazar with a maneuver that is typical of the Obama approach to environmental politics. Instead of killing the drilling plan outright, Salazar merely extended the analysis period for an additional six months. The environmental lobby was given a procedural crumb, while the oil hounds still had its long-sought prize on the table for the taking... Ken Salazar, accompanied by a consort of oil lobbyists, held four town hall forums this spring on off-shore drilling and left that distinct impression that he was leaning toward what he called a “comprehensive approach” to energy development, in which the oceans will be mined for off-shore wind, wave power and, yes, oil. This is proving to be an administration that doesn’t know the meaning of the word “no”...

Down in Appalachia things are not much better, where the coal extraction industry was recently given the green light to proceed with 42 of its 48 pending mountaintop removal permits. While Obama speaks out about the negative impact of the aptly named mountaintop removal, where whole mountains are blown apart to expose thin lines of coal, he is not willing to take on an industry that continually pollutes rivers and threatens public health. 'If you still have an Obama sticker on your car, maybe think about scraping it off and sending it to the White House with your objections,” says Mike Roselle of Climate Ground Zero, who is working hard to stop mountaintop removal in West Virginia and elsewhere...

When it comes to CO2 emissions, the EPA has also been more bark than bite. While admitting that greenhouse gases are a threat to human health, the agency will not necessarily move to regulate industry emissions. White House climate czar Carol Browner and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson initially said that such a declaration would 'indeed trigger the beginning of regulation of CO2,' but only weeks later Jackson reversed her belief that industry would be affected by the White House’s admission. Speaking before the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Jackson said on May 12: 'The endangerment finding is a scientific finding mandated by law ... It does not mean regulation.'

Read the whole thing here.

(And by the by: a big FUCK YOU to the numerous Senate Democrats who voted to block spending on closing Guantanamo Bay. Jason Linkins on the HuffPo says it nicely:

...it is nonsensical to be told by the grown-ups who preside in the House and Senate, as well as those who pundit for a living on the teevee that American prisons -- sufficient to house all manner of depraved criminals -- were not up to the task of also housing the terrorists currently at Gitmo. Apparently, these grown-ups are unaware of America's awesome and terrifying ability to incarcerate people while simultaneously possessed by the belief that these detainees have MAGIC POWERS. Last week, the House GOP crafted a dumb bill called the Keep Terrorists Out Of America Act, sculpted from pure angel feces. And this week, the Senate Democrats caved in to the nonsense, removing the funding that President Barack Obama requested in the war spending bill to close the prison.

Read his takedown of this moronitude here, where he also links to Jon Stewart's excellent takedown, where, "in just six minutes time, delivered what should be considered the most comprehensive mocking of this cavalcade of poor reasoning, bad decisions and unadulterated stupidity.")

Republicans: Saving the economy ruins the economy (seriously?)

There's been a meme that's been getting bigger and bigger, much to my profound annoyance; that of the right/Republicans claiming that not only did FDR's New Deal not help end the Great Depression, but rather helped prolong it. The Heritage Foundation, some kooky hyper-libertarian on Colbert a couple months ago, Ron Paul on Bill Maher's Real Time with Bill Maher. (Not that Ron Paul isn't a kooky hyper-libertarian.)

David Sirota wrote at Salon two months ago about this, as part of a larger analysis of Obama's stimulus package.

Sirota:

[Obama rejected] conservatives' increasingly loud claims that the New Deal "prolonged the Great Depression" - claims that are demonstrably false. As Census data shows, the pre-WWII New Deal spending and regulatory agenda resulted both in robust GDP growth rates and the single biggest decline in the unemployment rate in American history. Unbelievably, conservative think tanks have resorted to quite literally lying about government data, claiming, as the Heritage Foundation has, that the "New Deal never drove unemployment below 20 percent." As you can see from the Census Bureau's verifiable data from 1936 and 1937, that claim is a patent lie - and it's great that Obama and his economic team seems to understand that.

Sirota also points out how raising taxes does not hurt productivity or GDP growth, according to, you know, research rather than rhetoric, and according to a Republican's analysis, GDP growth is larger from infrastructure building than from tax cuts. Of course, I myself could give a shit about GDP growth, for nine reasons from Sunday, but once again the work/blog balance calls out, and work, I must go to her.

But before I go, I got on to all of this by reading this article on The Root about the racism that barred the New Deal from helping Blacks anything remotely near as much as it helped Whites, the need for African-Americans today to vocally and forcefully act and support the stimulus, and its spending in the "blackest" states, like Louisiana and Mississippi, whose governors have threatened not to spend stimulus money sent to the state to provide aid to the unemployed and other programs to help the economically disadvantaged, despite the fact that "in two of the blackest states, both with governors threatening to reject the aid, Mississippi and Louisiana, the rate [of unemployment] is three times that of whites". So yeah, go read Michael Dawson's article, too.

So here are your talking points/marching orders/background information sources to go out there and fight the conservative unreality-based-community, because seriously, yo, this shit about the New Deal prolonging the Great Depression -- pending some SERIOUSLY stronger and more mainstream analyses -- is getting on my last mother-lovin' nerve.

Raj Patel's Apology

Raj Patel "apologizes" to Obama for a number of presumptuous assumptions about what "change" meant.

A brilliant ironic letter, much in keeping with how I feel about it all.

Happy New Year to All!!!!!

Your... Bible is a. Lie...

The title of this post is brought to you in ShatnerVision (tm).

There are many things to be said about Obama's choice of Rick Warren to provoke, er, invoke, er, deliver the invocation at his inauguration. Sarah Posner says some of them in the Nation:

There was no doubt that Obama, like every president before him, would pick a Christian minister to perform this sacred duty. But Obama had thousands of clergy to choose from, and the choice of Warren is not only a slap in the face to progressive ministers toiling on the front lines of advocacy and service but a bow to the continuing influence of the religious right in American politics. Warren vocally opposes gay marriage, does not believe in evolution, has compared abortion to the Holocaust and backed the assassination of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

And. The hits. Just keep on! Coming!

J-Mom (aka J-Mom, PhD aka Dr. J-Mom aka Prof. J-Mom) had this excellent hypothesis: since Obama is enjoined from saying too much about the Blagojevich scandal (hey-oh! did I spell that right on my first try?) and people keep trying to hang it around O's neck somehow, despite much proof of anything substantive to hang, he used his political savvy and determined that starting a tempest in a teapot was a wise way to go. Something to distract people from a circumstance beyond his control about which he can do little, by giving them something else to get outraged at. Now, to be sure, I am among the camp that thinks his choice of Warren is substantively bad and an affront to gays and those who support equal rights for humans of all flavors regardless of what other consenting adult they wish to marry, but strategically, it is a tempest in a teapot. That is, it sends a signal that is worrying, but if it really were a "wag the dog" type move, it would be in the knowledge that while this may cause discomfort, he can win back those he loses on the Left through actual substantive action later on. Which is absolutely true -- this is affronting, but if he follows with actively promoting gay rights when his administration actually starts, well, all wouldn't be forgiven, but enough would be that this would be a wise wager on his part.

I don't know that J-Mom, Phd is correct, but I don't know that she's wrong, either. It's a fascinating hypothesis, and one practically unresolvable barring a personal admission from P-E B. H. O.

Worthy of Note

Posting this here, without much more comment -- too much to do right now, I'm afraid.

From July 28, 2008 Democracy Now!:

Remarks by journalist Ryan Lizza

RYAN LIZZA: Look, you have to remember, Obama was from Hyde Park. It’s one the most liberal State Senate districts in Illinois. He could have been as left-wing, as liberal as he wanted. But he wasn’t. He was always—and, you know, there are various reasons he wasn’t. I think genuinely he’s—he was a little to the right of some of his constituents. But I also believe that he had his eye on higher office, and he was careful not to be pigeonholed as too far out on the left.

And his speech at the antiwar rally is a good example of that. And just like redistricting, I think you can argue that if he hadn’t opposed the war in Iraq, he would not have been a plausible presidential candidate, because that was the key distinction, of course, with Hillary Clinton. But the speech was not a—what you might call a typical antiwar speech. He started off by talking about wars that he supported: the Civil War—he talked in almost glorious terms about the Civil War and World War II. Now, nobody opposes the Civil War and World War II, so they’re not exactly the riskiest things to support. But he was in front of a pretty, you know, partially pacifist crowd, and it is an antiwar rally, and he was very careful to point out that—where he disagreed with folks in that crowd. In other words, he was trying to push off the left a little bit. He was trying not to be defined as strictly an antiwar candidate.

At the same time, he made a—if you read it today, it still stands up very well. He made a very powerful case against the Iraq war at a time when a lot of Democrats weren’t doing that. But there were certainly some politics in mind. And if you talk to some of the people who were in that audience that day, one of the common things you hear is, “Wow, this guy is not just talking to us, he’s talking to either some statewide or national crowd. This speech seems pointed for the—seems more like for the history books than just for us here at this antiwar rally.” And this comes up throughout Obama’s political history. He often had his eye on the next rung of the ladder, if you know what I mean.

Also, balanced, interesting, and challenging comments from Cornel West on DN! here.

AMY GOODMAN: Who else would you like to see in President Obama’s cabinet?

CORNEL WEST: In terms of various other positions?

AMY GOODMAN: Sure.

CORNEL WEST: God, that’s a good question. I mean, I haven’t really thought about it. I just want to see some progressives. I just want to see some folk who are willing to take a stand for working people, take a stand for poor people, willing to talk about poverty. I mentioned some of economists themselves—

AMY GOODMAN: Right.

CORNEL WEST: —the Kuttners and the others, but I don’t have a—

AMY GOODMAN: How about your colleague at Princeton University, Paul Krugman?

CORNEL WEST: Oh, Paul Krugman. Oh, my god. Yes, indeed, indeed. Paul is probably even a little bit too progressive and prophetic. He probably needs to stay outside, like myself, and be Socratic and prophetic and just tell the truth to the people in power. But he’s my very dear brother and comrade, and of course I salute his Nobel Prize. It’s rare that you see a progressive economist receiving a Nobel Prize in that way.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, why is it that the names you’ve just named of progressives are not being bandied about in any way as possible people in his cabinet?

CORNEL WEST: That’s a good question.

AMY GOODMAN: And the names that you named, like Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, these are the closest advisers to Barack Obama.

CORNEL WEST: You know, I fear that Brother Barack might be challenged by what Bill Clinton was. When you have been an outsider to the establishment, you want to make the establishment feel secure, and therefore, you want to recycle names that the establishment feels are legitimate names. And therefore, you’re reluctant to step out too far, because you’ll be unable to proceed and unable to govern with a smoothness that you think ought to be characteristic of your regime. And so, he ends up selecting people who the mainstream are going to herald as legitimate, rather than make that break and acknowledge this is a new day, and it ought to be the age of everyday people, the age of ordinary people. That’s what I think. And it’s ironic, because there’s a sense in which Brother Barack Obama might be reluctant to step into the new age of Obama and remains looking backward to the end of the Clinton moment. And I say, no, we need to break free. Now, it could be like FDR: he’s just reluctant, and we’ll have to push him. And that’s fine.

AMY GOODMAN: And how will that pushing take place, do you think, with such tremendous passion—

CORNEL WEST: We’ve got to organize—yes.

AMY GOODMAN: —supporters—passionate supporters of Barack Obama, who pushed him from the outside?

CORNEL WEST: That’s right.

AMY GOODMAN: Now that he is the state, how do people organize?

CORNEL WEST: Well, we use, in many ways, his own words. He says that he wants the bottoms up. That’s fine. We organize, we mobilize. We don’t look simply for a top down. The Clintonites have often been top down. It’s the bottom up. We organize, we mobilize. We consolidate our organizations. And in the end, of course, we may have to take to the streets. That’s how people’s power is expressed, but it’s expressed in a critical and, for me, in a loving way.

I do still support Brother Barack Obama gaining access to the White House, because he was the best that America could do at this particular moment in the midst of imperial occupation in Iraq, war in Afghanistan, financial Katrina, legacy of Katrina in New Orleans, wealth inequality, dilapidated housing in chocolate cities, disgraceful school systems, unacceptable levels of unemployment and underemployment, not enough access to healthcare for fellow citizens across race and region, not enough access to childcare. At this moment, the best America could do was Brother Barack Obama, liberal, centrist.

Will he govern like a progressive Lincoln? Will he triangulate like Clinton? Will he be an experimentalist like FDR? Those are the challenges. I hope he’s a progressive Lincoln. I plan to be—aspire to be the Frederick Douglasses against, to put pressure on him.