Day: January 23, 2016

Xpostfactoid, after considering the approach from Bernie and Hillary:

As Democrats mull how change works, consider Obama. Bernie Sanders' light sketch of single-payer healthcare Utopia has got Democrats debating their theory of change. Generate mass support for fundamental restructurings -- of healthcare, banking, wage law --or take any step you can, by legislative compromise or executive order, to make current institutions more progressive? Obama is often held up these days as a proto-Bernie who stoked the thirst for swift transformation in 2007-8 and then disappointed. But if Hope and Change was the Obama trumpet call, his bass note was always slow, hard, pragmatic step-by-step progress. Even at his most apparently messianic, Obama has always stressed the incremental nature of change for the better… The biggest flaw in Obama's theory of change was born of arrogance rooted in past personal success. He plainly thought he could win Republicans over by moving toward them. I don't think he fully corrected on that until the sequester took its first bite and he realized that Republicans wouldn't compromise to shut it off. That quirk aside, though, I don't think that Democrats ruminating over how change works can find a more nuanced or effective perspective than Obama's.

Progressives really need to get over this Green Latern Theory of Change. That if we just elect one person the revolution will come and all will be well, simply because President Sanders has the bully pulpit. Did you all learn nothing from Obama? You need to elect more than one person. In 2006, and 2008, we elected a shit ton of Progressive Democrats, and that still was not enough to get all that we wanted. Politics and policy enactment is a long never ending struggle that takes decades. And you have to do two things at once: defend the progress you have made while at the same time trying to take the next step. It's like walking in a Blizzard.