Obama’s "dithering," as Bob Kuttner aptly labels it in his current Alternet piece, is particularly evident on crucial economic issues. I believe it can be explained chiefly by the Left (broadly defined) failing to act as the Left.
For example, Obama’s Automotive Task Force, composed overwhelmingly of Wall St. Democrats like Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner, is on the verge of delivering a devastating blow to US labor, our manufacturing base, and even Obama’s own stimulus plan with its directives to GM and Chrysler. The Task Force’s essential direction: save the GM and Chrysler ships by tossing tens of thousands more workers overboard. (See my recent articles in Z and elsewhere)
Yet John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO and Andrew Stern of Change to Win have been virtually silent on this, apparently putting all their eggs in the "card-check" union recognition bill (Employee Free Choice Act.) As the NY Times reported 3/7/09, corporations are moving jobs overseas and closing down divisions at an accelerated pace. But local struggles to stop the closings of profitable plants, even with other companies eager to buy the plants and keep them running, seemingly get no expanded visibility or support from the AFL-CIO or Change to Win.
Thus, at this point, the only substantial pressure that Obama feels is from "centrist" Wall Street Democrats in and out of Congress, supported by the vast majority of the punditry, who embrace the glories of corporate globalization and "free trade", view parasitic for-profit insurers as indispensable to our health care system, feel content with the richest 1% earning 22% of all income, and look forward to bringing Wall Street and the bloated financial sector back to the golden era of the early 2000’s (with a few token regulations added in to prevent "excesses.")
Meanwhile, the increasingly hallucinatory Republican Party has ceased competing with Democrats for the sympathies of working-class voters.
Labor and progressive members of Congress seem to be so grateful for a moderately liberal Democrat that they have utterly forgotten their responsibilities to speak up for those who are being shut down, shut up, and foreclosed upon.
But their silence and unwillingness to back up local struggles against plant closings and foreclosures means that Obama will continue to be tugged further and further in the direction of Wall Street Democrats.
I'm teaching in Labor Studies at Penn State and the University of Illinois in on-line classes. I've been continuing with my work as freelance writer, with my immediate aim to complete a book on corporate media coverage of globalization (tentatively titled The Giant Sucking Sound: How Corporate Media Swallowed the Myth of Free Trade.) I write frequently for Z, The Progressive Magazine's on-line site, The Progressive Populist, Madison's Isthmus alternative weekly, and a variety of publications including Yes!, The Progressive, Foreign Policy in Focus, and several websites.Ā I've been writing a blog on labor issues for workinginthesetimes.com, turning out over 300 pieces in the past four years.My work specializes in corporate globalization, labor, and healthcare reform... I've been a progressive activist since the age of about 17, when I became deeply affected by the anti-war and civil rights movements. I entered college at University of Wisconsin Milwaukee just days after watching the Chicago police brutalize anti-war demonstrators at the Democratic Convention of 1968. I was active in a variety of "student power" and anti-war activities, highlighted by the May, 1970 strike after the Nixon's invastion of Cambodia and the massacres at Kent State and Jackson State. My senior year was capped by Nixon's bombing of Haiphong Harbor and the occupation of a university building, all in the same week I needed to finish 5-6 term papers to graduate, which I managed somehow. My wife Carolyn Winter, whom I met in the Wisconsin Alliance, and I have been together since 1975, getting officially married 10/11/81. Carolyn, a native New Yorker, has also been active for social justice since her youth (she attended the famous 1963 Civil Rights march where Dr. King gave his "I have a dream speech"). We have two grown children, Lane (with wife Elaine and 11-year-old grandson Zachary, who introduced poker to his classmates during recess)Ā living in Chicago and Rachel (who with her husband Michael have the amazing Talia Ruth,5, who can define "surreptitious" for you) living in Asbury Park, NJ. My sister Francie lives down the block from me. I'm a native of the once-heavily unionized industrial city of Racine, Wis. (which right-wingers sneeringly labeled "Little Moscow" during the upheavals of the 1930's), and both my grandfathers were industrial workers and Socialists. On my father's side, my grandfather was fired three times for Socialist or union activity. His family lost their home at one point during the Depression. My mom's father was a long-time member of UAW Local 72 at American Motors, where he worked for more than 30 years. Coming from impoverished families, my parents met throughĀ a very low-cost form of recreation: Racine's Hiking Club.
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