The Progressive: Why a Primary Challenge to Obama Is a Bad Idea

Why a Primary Challenge to Obama Is a Bad Idea
By Matthew Rothschild
Editor of The Progressive
December 9, 2010

I’m as unhappy with Obama as the next progressive, but I don’t think it’d be a good idea to mount a primary challenge to him, and here’s why.

.... the boomlet for challenging Obama reiterates the fallacy that Presidential politics is the crucial arena for political activism. We, on the progressive side, have been investing way too much time and energy here.

Getting behind a Presidential candidate, whether a challenger or a frontrunner, rarely builds a movement. It invariably inflates a personality and, when successful, turns that into a phenomenon centered around one charismatic figure rather than a program for substantive change (see Obama). As such, it is a diversion and a drain.

If, as Howard Zinn taught us, progressive social change happens from the bottom up, let’s focus our attention at the grassroots: organizing unions, fighting at the local and state level for raising the minimum wage and getting paid sick leave, legalizing gay marriage and marijuana, converting to solar, rallying for peace and for getting out of Afghanistan, and passing resolutions at city and county councils, and then in statehouses, to amend the Constitution to say, once and for all, that corporations are not individuals and may not spend money on elections. Other crucial issues—like single payer—cry out for attention, and for volunteer hours, and for funds that all too often get squandered in the Presidential playoffs.

Please read all of the writers reasons for not running a primary candidate and the full article at:

https://progressive.org/wx120910.html

people who have been thrown under the bus? So far, I cannot see any union member voting for him. If they go any nearer to cutting Social Security, he will lose every senior and their families. Are there enough left over for him to win?

are going to vote for a tea party wackaloon? After the last month? They are going to sit on the sidelines and allow the tea party to win?

They will vote for the dem and the dem will be President Obama.

Who would teachers and union people vote for? A Green that will likely get crushed in the general election, and if by the most remote chance elected, have NO chance of getting anything approved? The view expressed by you is akin to the one by the OP that panned Proctor and Gamble for not converting to totally green pop bottles in one swoop. No sense that there is nothing in life that goes from zero to done to perfection instantly.

irrelevant.

The midterm elections have shown that unrestricted corporate money will dominate political campaigns from now on.

And, I'm afraid the most progressive candidates out there have little chance against multiple-million dollar ad campaigns and the complicity of the "objective" mainstream media covering elections.

I want Pres. Obama to court the Progressives... or at least just bullshit us a little.

I want a Primary challenge that is taken seriously... where issues are debated.

I want Pres. Obama to win his second term ........ by a hairsbreadth.

I hate being taken for granted.

So a movement has to be engaged in. But I wonder how a message can be sent otherwise? Therein is the dilemma.

If he doesn't, he can't win anyway.

And no, it's not our fault.

no one from the left will present a remotely serious challenge, and he knows this. To the extent the left bothers to mount any challenge, the left will be rejected even more strongly. There is nothing to the left that he needs to "outflank" or even bother paying attention to.

No doubting it now.

is a bit unclear to me. My comments were more directed at the usual left wing circular firing squad. One can always move more left, even I, a pacifist, environmental scientist, clerk of a quaker meeting that marries same gender couples, could manage to move slightly more left.

The point is that there is no point in President Obama doing so. There is no threat to his left, not even the faint image of a threat. Left wing circular firing squads do not even manage to elect city commissioners. We could however stage an epic divisive argument over who is sufficiently "left" to serve as our champion. I have participated in a few of these over the years. I would however be stunned if in the end we picked a "champion" that got more than 2 percent of the primary vote.

If we enact this stupidity, the President will use the contrast to exhibit his "centrist" tendencies, and very little more will come of it.

Where we should focus energy is in retaking state houses, shoring up the senate, and retaking the US House. There has been a movement in the post industrial midwest that plays well to our hand, we should focus our efforts at that, and ousting tea party wackaloons everywhere, all of them.

President Obama would sign liberal legislation, what we need to do is put some on his desk.

Once we put a real piece of liberal legislation on his desk, and he vetos it, I will reconsider my support.

Well, Obama did that in 2008 and will probably do that again in 2012.

I totally agree with that. I've long ago given up any president (ESPECIALLY Obama) solving our problems or advocating for progressive positions.

My problem is that he actively works against and puts up road blocks to grass roots efforts.

So yeah, we can't rely on him to help us.......but how do we get him to not actually block us and hinder our causes?

He has not earned my vote. But I always hear he has to have it by default.

Do you think he'd block them? Truth is that he never quite had that during his first two years. He had to corrall the Blue Dogs in the House, which nearly cost him HCR there (i.e. Stupak) and the Blue Dogs and conservadems (i.e. Lieberman, Bayh, the Nelsons, et. al) in the Senate, which also nearly cost him HCR and other legislation there. If we had a "Bernie Sanders" majority in the House and Senate that would be willing to pass legislation funding a closure of Gitmo and a repeal of DOMA, and a bunch of other progressive goodies, do you honestly believe he's going to fight against them and/or refuse to sign them once passed? We need continuous mobilization at the grassroots level in order to win local and national elections, as well as keep the heat turned up on Congress and President and get them to listen IMHO. This is why the Republicans remain credible opponents- they have an army of volunteers fighting us in the trenches every single day and the Republicans steadfastly listen to them because they make the most noise. We need to be down in the trenches fighting them too every.single.day if we want to see the kind of change we want actually come to fruition IMHO.

I'm not talking about the fact that he didn't push harder for things I think he should have pushed harder for. I'm talking about things that are 100% in his power that he 100% on his own either did or did not do.

My standard is the same for him as it is for Republicans: consistency of values and beliefs. And someone who has the power of the veto pen over the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and doesn't use it, but then turns around and talks about deficits and spending cuts, etc. is not someone who is fighting for the same things I am.

Anyone who appoints the people that he has to his cabinet (again, only he did this, not the Senate) and on his economic team is not someone who is fighting for the same things I am. Senate or not.

Obama is someone who has internalized every right wing trope of the past 3 decades: Military force is strong foreign policy, the defense budget is never to be cut, and trickle down economics works. Every single action he's taken on these fronts has started and ended with the idea of no compromise on these 3 things. And now thanks to the fact that we have a Democratic president who is essentially codifying these things as conventional wisdom our work in fighting against these things is that much harder.

Bottom line is that I 100% believe Obama is a blue dog. Someone who may have a few actions and values on which he's on our side but who ultimately still approaches the world from the view of beltway wisdom Reagan era Republican talking points.

People that would contribute time and money to an Obama primary challenger are better advised spending that time and money organizing in their hometown and cities and making change at the local level. Republicans have as their goal, winning local elections for offices like sheriff, auditor, ect. Progressives remain fixated on the national level, while republicans take charge locally. Look no farther than Wisconsin and Ohio, republicans in those states have been building up from locally for better that a decade. Learn people, or we are going to get our asses kicked.

a democratic Howdy Dowdy shows up.

a primary challenge. If there is one, it would almost certainly be symbolic.

The serious problem that President Obama faces in his current re-election campaign is that segments of the base will not actively support him in 2012. Unless there is a divide in the republican party (between conservatives and tea partiers), it will be a difficult election.

organizing, not presidential politics.

Get rid of the mindset that thinks if we could just elect the right person, things will get better. It's a fantasy completely ungrounded in the reality of where and in whom the real Power in this country resides -- hint: it's not in the person of the President.

The office of the President is nothing more than the public relations chief for Imperial America, Inc.(tm) The President doesn't rule, the President IS ruled, by those who actually hold the reins of Power -- the financial elites and the MIC.

There is no one person who will be able to buck that system and wave a magic wand to make it go away. The only way to really change the system that holds the President just as captive as everyone else, is through a mass movement from the ground up.

No one will save us, only WE can save ourselves by mounting an unrelenting and concerted challenge to the entire system. Hoping for someone beholden to the System to free us is sheer foolishness.

sw

and President Obama HAS but he has some limitations placed on his power (i.e. the inability to legislate) and, unlike the last "commander-in-chief", President Obama actually appears to be trying to maintain the proper balance between the Presidency and the other branches. That being said, we need to mobilize more at the grassroots level and fight for a more progressive majority in Congress if we actually want to get good legislation passed.

While radical republicans are winning seats locally and making life hell for the poor and unfortunate. I am not a blind DU fan, I think the MODs don't allow the gloves to come off and let us go at it as long as no name calling is involved. But the issue that crates me is that some of the most virulent President Obama critics have one of more or the following going on.

-don't contribute to DU upkeep or do so grudgingly.
-give the flimsiest ass-ed excuses for not contributing to the one charitable cause that I witnessed since joining DU.
-view is that all problems are solved from a national level, while being blind to republicans taking local office and overrunning functions such as school boards.
-want the perfect solution to every problem, now!
-love street protests as opposed to collecting local power and making street protests unnecessary.

in order to have one's POV given serious consideration? $$$ = intellectual value. I see.

The rest of your post is too silly to address but that one line kinda says a lot, doesn't it?

the other side is so far to the right that obama has become a old time liberal republican.

Obama would have been considered a VERY conservative republican.

Just shows how far to the right our country has been dragged.

I voted for Hillary in the primaries. Buyers remorse is running rampant for the Democrats.

It's a bad idea because, should a challenger come along, the Party will ensure NO resources goes to a challenger and, if that doesn't work, they'll "Dean" him. I've watched it happen and I'll never forget the lesson.

I saw it happen, too.

I think Bernie would get our issues out there and help Obama look even more like a right wing centrist.

Don't you think another 4 might also?

I get the pessimism though, that America is a right-wing, redneck nation, smart-hating nation and FoxNews has the numbers to prove it.

I didn't really want Obama to be prez in the first place, but I voted for him because I liked the idea of McCain even less. And I definitely dislike things like Manning, Guantamo and the USAPATRIOT act. Other than that Obama's a nice person with some accomplishments like healthcare, tax refunds etc., slowing job loss, but we need a real dem with some backbone!

I will vote for Obama, however, a primary challenge would give him pause for thought. His lack of concern for his party base has been a problem for some time and must be addressed.

But I also don't see Obama being renominated in 2012, either.