Subject: [big campaign] New Huff Post from Creamer -- Anniversary of Obama's Election
From: [email-masked]
To: [email-masked], [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 2009 09:21:21 EST
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One Year After  Obama’s Victory – We Are in the Opening Months of a New 
Progressive  Era 

As I watched Barack Obama’s victory speech, I thought that  America was on 
the brink of a new  progressive era.  I believe that  just as strongly one 
year later. 
I know there are many Progressives who are disappointed at the pace of  
change, or who believe that there are many instances when the Obama  
Administration should take bolder action.  Sometimes I am among them.  But there is no 
question that in the first nine months of his Presidency,  Barack Obama has 
begun to lead America in a fundamentally new  direction.  The success of 
this new  progressive project will certainly depend upon the decisions that he 
and those  around him make in the years ahead.  But it will also depend on 
the skill, resilience and resourcefulness of  the progressive forces in 
America. 
In evaluating his leadership – and the success Progressives have had  since 
that hopeful night in Chicago’s Grant Park -- seven points are  especially 
important. 
1). Obama has fundamentally changed the  political value frame. For the 
thirty years before Obama’s election, the  full constellation of right wing 
values charted the path for American political  and economic development.  
Obama has  shifted that value frame from the Right’s belief in unbridled pursuit 
of  individual interest, to the progressive commitment to the common good; 
from  selfishness to commitment to others; from division to unity; from fear 
to hope;  to the sense that we’re all in this together, not “all in this  
alone.” 
The Administration’s political messaging, its expressed beliefs, and its  
policy goals all embody these progressive values -- and many of its key  
personnel are deeply committed to those values as well. We have a White House  
where idealism is cool once again.  
2). Progressives are on the  offensive, not the defensive. After being in a 
defensive crouch for over  thirty years, Progressives have taken the 
offense. For years we have fought  about defending values and policies – defending 
Medicare, defending Social  Security, combating the ascendant Neo-Con 
foreign policy, defending the role of  government, defending unions, defending 
civil liberties, defending the incomes  of everyday Americans.   
Now the Right is attempting to slow our progress on climate  change, the 
rights of unions, civil liberties, a public option, immigration  reform, and 
regulating Wall Street. 
In the long battle between progressive and conservative values in  America, 
that denotes a critical  turning point – because in any type of combat, 
including politics – the force on  the offense almost always prevails.  
3). While the pace of many  big changes has taken longer than some had 
hoped, it is easy to forget the major  successes that have already been 
achieved.  Here are a few: 
* Saving the economy from complete meltdown – another Great Depression  
--following the failure of eight years of right wing economic policy and  
financial risk-taking “gone wild” – including his bold rescue of the American  
auto industry.   
* Laying the first layer of a foundation for longterm, bottom-up economic  
growth by passing the largest economic recovery package in history and a 
Federal  Budget that the Center on Budget Priorities called the most 
progressive budget  in half a century. 
* Abandoning the failed Neo-Con foreign policy and changing our  
relationship with the rest of the world. 
* Signing into law measures that had repeatedly passed the Democratic  
Congress but been vetoed by George Bush – the “Matthew Shepard” bill that  
expands the definition of hate crimes to include sexual orientation, expanding  
the State Children’s Health Care Program (SCHIP), and passing the “Lilly  
Ledbetter Fair Pay Act” that seriously strengthened the ability of women to 
seek  redress for employment discrimination.  
* The Administration and Congress ended a program of wasteful subsidies  to 
private banks that provided student loans using Federal money and used the  
savings to greatly expand Pell Grants to college students. 
* Executive actions like ending the “Global Gag Rule” that prevented U.S.  
foreign aid from going to family planning programs that even mentioned  
abortion – and changes in labor law enforcement that make it easier to organize 
 on the job. 
* Ending torture. 
* Funding stem cell research and generally restoring a respect for  science 
to government.  
* Setting and keeping to a schedule to end the American presence in  Iraq. 
* Putting in motion a legislative agenda that will make major progressive  
change:  providing health care for  all, creating clean energy jobs and 
addressing global warming, overhauling the  regulation of the financial sector 
and beginning to shrink its dominance in the  American economy, and passing 
comprehensive immigration  reform. 
4). Why have the major  initiatives in his agenda taken longer than some 
might have hoped?  Because, as a great American once said:  “power surrenders 
nothing without a struggle.”  You don’t just snap your fingers to make  
fundamental change.  That’s because  fundamental change alters the relations of 
power – it removes power and money  from one group of people and gives it 
to another. 
The insurance companies and big Wall Street banks were not about to just  
roll over and say “I give up.”  
Why is it so tough to pass real health care reform through a Congress  that 
is dominated by Democrats?  Because Congress is an expression of the 
distribution of power in  American society and that’s what Progressives are out to 
change.  Obama – and the rest of the progressive  forces in America – have 
to make change  starting with things as they are – not things as they wish 
they were.   
That doesn’t mean we can make fundamental change.  Nor does it mean we have 
to settle for  “gradualism” or accept the rules of the game as they are.  
It does mean that change is not neat and  simple.  It involves struggle and  
conflict.  It is war without  bloodshed and sometimes it isn’t pretty.  It 
means you can’t have the rain without the thunder and lightning – and  
sometimes it takes a little longer than planned. 
5). The importance of a President  that is both committed to progressive 
values and cool under fire is not simply  manifest when it comes to passing a 
legislative agenda.  It is critical when it comes time to  deal with any 
form of real crises.   
In 1963, John Kennedy relied on his own steady temperament and  progressive 
values to defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis that nearly led to nuclear  War 
with the Soviet Union.  Think how lucky we were that George Bush  and Don 
Rumsfeld were not the ones with their fingers on the nuclear  trigger. 
This Administration demonstrated its ability to deal with major crises as  
soon as it walked in the door and acted decisively to avoid another Great  
Depression.  America could  confront any number of other unexpected dangerous 
crises on any given day.  It ought to literally make the people of  America 
sleep better tonight that  Barack Obama, and not George W. Bush or John 
McCain or Sarah Palin, sits in the  Oval Office to deal with them.  
6).  The key for us – and for Obama – is not  to miss this historic window 
of opportunity to make real structural change – to  emerge from battle 
having changed the relations of power.  That is the central element that will 
allow  progress to continue and accelerate. 
The key to health care reform, regulatory reform, energy legislation, and  
immigration reform is to get the  architecture right.  Quantitative 
questions we can compromise on now – and fix later.  But we have to get the  
qualitative things right the first time.  
We must have a public option  in a health care bill, not just to provide 
consumers with more choices or put  downward pressure on health insurance 
rates.  We need a public option to change the  relations of power in the health 
care industry.  We need to take power away from private  insurers who have a 
stranglehold on our health care and put it into the hands of  voters, 
citizens and and consumers who make choices.  
We need to change the  regulatory architecture of the financial sector to 
reduce its outsized power, to  change the perverse incentives that promote 
reckless risk-taking, and to prevent  it from siphoning off all of our nation’
s economic growth from ordinary  Americans as it did during the last eight 
years.  
We need to change the rules of the  economic game that incentivize the 
discharge of greenhouse gases and enslave us  to foreign oil. 
And Progressives need to change the immigration laws to take 12 million  
people out of the shadows – and, by the way, to change the balance of 
electoral  power in a number of key states. 
Progressive success ultimately revolves around our ability to change the  
relations of power – to democratize power in our society.  Obama and those 
leading his  Administration understand that and have launched an agenda to 
help make it  happen. 
7). Finally, how long the window  for progressive change stays open depends 
entirely on our ability to forge an  enduring progressive political 
majority – among the electorate, in Congress and  in our state Legislatures.   
In the near term, that means holding our ground in the 2010  mid-terms.  Of 
course the major  factor affecting our success in 2010 will be Obama’s 
ability to show progress  creating jobs. That will certainly require a good deal 
more Federal stimulus  early next year. 
It will also require continued attention to great messaging and to  
political organizing. So far Obama has done his politics with enormous  skill.  His 
approval rating stands  at a robust 56% in most polls and fewer Americans 
(20%) self-identify as  Republicans than at any other time in a 
quarter-century.  We’ve done a good job helping the  Republicans marginalize themselves –
 but of course Sarah Palin, Glen Beck, Rush  Limbaugh and the Tea Party 
gang haven’t needed much help guiding their party out  to the margins of the 
political playing field.  
Obama’s commitment to political organization has not diminished.  His 
political organization, Organize for  America (OFA) has blossomed into a major 
force.  By and large, Obama has done a masterful  job cultivating and 
maintaining the relationship of his administration to the  many elements of the 
progressive base. 
But our success in 2010 also rests upon Obama’s ability to deliver real,  
meaningful change on his big-ticket items over the next six months. Someone  
suggested the other day that if we can’t get everything we want on health 
care  or regulatory reform, we should stall action and ask the voters to send 
us more  progressive Democrats.  Unfortunately, history tells us that if 
Obama doesn’t deliver on things  like health care reform, his numbers and the 
Democratic brand will sink and  leave many Democratic candidates for Congress 
looking for other lines of work.  
We have to win health care reform and the other items on our agenda  before 
the next election season.  That doesn’t mean we should settle for wins in 
name only. Completely  apart from the importance of changing the relations of 
power in  America, real change is necessary to  produce the final 
ingredient for electoral success in 2010: Obama needs to be  able to reinvigorate the 
base – to inspire once again.  To inspire the base we have to deliver real  
change.  For instance, we can’t  settle for a health care bill that is not 
affordable and doesn’t have a public  option -- and if it takes a bloody 
fight to get them, we have to have the  stomach for the task.    
A lot has happened since November 4, 2008 and the plot line will thicken  
over the next six months.  Barack  Obama will be the leading man in this 
drama. But, just as in the campaign, there  is also no doubt that this story 
will have a cast of thousands who will have an  enormous amount to say about 
the outcome.  And I am more convinced than ever that the 2008 Obama slogan got 
it  right:  “Yes We  Can.” 
Robert Creamer is  a long-time political organizer and strategist, and 
author of the recent book:  “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” 
available on _amazon.com_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/Listen-Your-Mother-Straight-Progressives/dp/0979585295/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206567141&sr=8-1
) . 

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