Is Barack Obama really a progressive? That is the question being asked daily, in many different ways by pundits and bloggers, in a tone that suggests the questioner has already decided in the negative.
We have David Sirota calling the White House’s economic team a “squad of corporate lackeys disguised as public servants,” and concluding in the Huffington Post that a “… ‘Make Him Do It’ Dynamic…will ultimately be the difference between substantive change and mere hopeful rhetoric…”
I hear this general sentiment repeated in many different progressive circles. Why isn’t the president standing up more forcefully for the confirmation of Hilda Solis? Why wasn’t the stimulus plan bigger? Why isn’t the president demanding that the labor and environmental provisions of NAFTA be enforced, now!
Our job at the Ethix Merch blog is always to come back to the question – what’s best for workers and the environment? And this simple criterion always leads back to one simple, round number: 60.
On the road to progressive change, the president must almost always travel through the Senate, where 60 votes are required on any vote that the minority decides to filibuster: including the confirmation of Hilda Solis, the Employee Free Choice Act, the stimulus package, changes to NAFTA, etc. etc.
A lot of progressives seem to have decided that only by “taking to the streets” can we hope to persuade Obama to be the kind of president who can usher in the changes we’ve all been pining for.
But in the face of the unchangeable “60,” how will all of our pushing and prodding do any good whatsoever? Do we really think that street-level advocacy by groups such as the AFL-CIO and Change to Win will result in “aye” votes from Republicans in the U.S. Senate?
Every historical moment is different. I’m afraid that, in this moment, progressives are in danger of forgetting that the person in the White House is a friend, but a friend who has decided, quite rationally, that perfection is the enemy of the good.
When Obama says, as he did in the presence of the Canadian prime minister this week, that it’s important to make the labor and environmental protections in NAFTA enforceable, I think we’ll do well to take the man at his word, line up behind his agenda, and trust that he’ll make the moves he can make, in due time and in consideration of the very real power of his political opponents in the Senate.
