There were a few times last Tuesday night when I couldn’t decide if I was witnessing an election or a sporting event. I was sitting in a filled-to-capacity Rathskeller, watching as the crowd favorite marched toward a dominating victory by accumulating point after stunning point. The assembled fans, by the end in near hysterics, counted down in unison as the clock ran out, and exploded in celebration a moment later when the game was officially called for their team. But this wasn’t a Wisconsin Final Four appearance, nor was it a prestigious bowl game. Rather it was the election of a candidate who had inspired a level of widespread collegiate devotion and passion previously found only in stadiums and arenas throughout the Big 10. The question we as a community are left with in the wake of this event is the same one we are left with after a major sports victory: For all the fanfare, was anything meaningful actually accomplished?
With Obama the answer at first glance seems to be a tentative yes. While his election does not alleviate the institutionalized racism felt by most non-white Americans, it does serve as an inspiring reflection of the hard-fought progress this country has made. Obama’s victory was also, as a recent Counterpunch article put it, “necessary as the only means Americans had to hold the Republicans accountable for their crimes.” The emotion felt in the Rathskeller Tuesday stemmed in part from the realization that after eight long years, one of the most disastrous governments in U.S. history had finally fallen. This too makes his win significant.
But the argument that Obama’s success will bring about progressive change simply because the administration he succeeds went so, so far in the opposite direction is entirely false. I ask the thousands of students who worked for Obama to go back, now that the urgency of the moment has passed, and critically examine what his ideas for this country really are. Look at his energy platform, and ask yourself if you really think the modest sums he has promised to invest in clean energy (much of which will go to “clean” coal and nuclear power), will bring about the drastic societal shift we need to create a green economy. Look at his foreign policy, and ask yourself how someone who supports permanent military bases in Iraq can really be anti-war. Most importantly, examine the people he is surrounding himself with. Not only are they not Washington outsiders excited to shake up the system, they are the most entrenched members of the Democratic establishment, ready to continue Clinton’s “third way” political mentality. From the super corporatist Rahm Emanuel, to the unforgivably hawkish Madeleine Albright, to the free market-loving Robert Rubin (whose deregulation measures as Clinton’s treasury secretary laid the groundwork for the current financial meltdown), Obama has assembled a team which promises to endlessly reassure his corporate backers that the change he will make will always be limited to the most petty of reforms. Ask yourself, in what way can that be construed as the path toward progress?
The point is that since ascending to the national stage, Obama has always been, and always will be, a centrist. Nothing he said during the long campaign or its aftermath indicates otherwise, and so we shouldn’t wait to be “disappointed” by Obama. Rather we should recognize and accept that our current system requires a politician to move permanently to the supposed center to win a major election. We should also then recognize, as journalist and author Naomi Klein argued last Friday on campus, that it is our job as concerned citizens to move that center. And to do that, we must think beyond elections and engage in true grassroots power building, power building that targets the core challenges facing our society. From the Progressive Era, through the 1960s, and up to the present day, the only time true social progress has ever been made is when ordinary people organized themselves and made radical demands on the establishment. As I mentioned in the first column of the year, even FDR knew that without extreme grassroots pressure none of his reforms could ever be accomplished.
Given that this is the Student Progressive Dane column, I will of course encourage you to begin creating such pressure by organizing where change comes most easily — at the local level. A good place to start is tomorrow’s city budget hearing at 5:30 p.m. at the City County Building (210 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.) Go and watch as some of our city’s most important social services are threatened, and then just imagine what would be possible if only a fraction of the campus energy that went into the Obama campaign was there to defend them.
Adam Porton ([email protected]) is a member of the Student Chapter of Progressive Dane.
