The Activist: a statement for the new president

The 2008 United States presidential and congressional elections constituted a historic victory for progressive forces as we elected our first African-American president, Barack Hussein Obama, and dramatically increased the number of Democratic Party seats in the Senate and House of Representatives. This year American voters voiced a clear repudiation of the Republican Party’s corruption, incompetence (such as the botched response to Hurricane Katrina and the blundering of the Iraq War), and mismanagement of the current financial crisis. The defeat of John McCain and Sarah Palin, whose campaign ventured into divisive right-wing populism, neo-McCarthyism, and racially charged guilt-by-association, was a critical rejection of reactionary politics.

The Democratic Party now controls the legislative and executive branches; however, they will in all probability be, pending the results of the Minnesota contest, a few seats shy of a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate. Obama, who openly ran as a moderate, will undoubtedly desire to govern in a “centrist” fashion. Nevertheless, these political limitations are still not as important as the new opportunities available to us.

Progressive social movements need to capitalize on the energy and excitement aroused by the Obama victory. We must offer “critical support” to his administration and begin pressuring him to enact policies that benefit America’s working-class majority. The Left helped to propel Obama into the White House; we should not allow him to appease corporations, conservatives and neoliberals in the name of “bi-partisanship.” Our task is to ensure that he lives up to his promise of “change we can believe in.”

Young people overwhelmingly voted for Obama. Obama captured two-thirds of under-30 voters – a nine point increase from what 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry received. Young people accounted for 18% of the electorate; this number dramatically increased Obama’s ultimate margin of victory on Election Day. Of white people, the only age bracket to vote the majority for Obama were youth. The Young Democratic Socialists, who joined with our peers in demanding a mandate for change, must now also work to organize progressive youth to pressure the Obama administration from the left. Many young people who were first politically engaged and energized by this campaign will now be looking for a new venue to express their activism. YDS must work directly with these new voters, however, we cannot send them commanding polemics from on high; we must meet them where they are.

There will be those on the sectarian Left who dismiss every bad Obama decision as a “betrayal.” They may also ridicule the new idealists who will inevitably be disappointed when Obama does not act as the progressive that they expected him to be. But the response of young socialists should not be to say “we told you so,” but to patiently explain why liberal disappointment must be transformed into militant democratic radicalism and why capitalism is fundamentally at odds with democracy.


FULL ARTICLE:
http://theactivist.org/blog/editorial-committee-inaugural-statement