Democracy for Vancouver

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Over at OpEd News in an article titled What’s the Matter in Madison?, the author makes the comparison of the Christian Right being to the Republicans what Progressives are to the Democrats:

…essential to an election victory, easily rallied and a dependable source of funds, but not to be considered seriously in any policy decisions. As Evangelicals are mocked by Wall Street, so Progressives are mocked as a fringe element by the likes of Pelosi and Reid. Progressives are the one group the Democrats think they’ll never have to pander to, as we’ll always be first to fall in line while asking for nothing in return. We lose issue after issue– FISA, war funding, single-payer health care and dozens of others, yet we’ll be the first to tell each other, “Forget FISA, think of the Supreme Court. Forget single-payer health care, think of the Supreme Court.” Then, when another corporate shill is appointed to the Court by a Democratic president, we’ll look ahead to the next election with our silly sad vows of Never Again, Never Again.

Now that Obama has the nomination wrapped up, the conventional wisdom is that he must swerve to the center in order to win against McCain.  And we are seeing lots of examples of that in fact happening.

There is something very distorted about this strategy but it is a reality that must be dealt with nevertheless.

Practically every poll out there indicates that the voters of America are overwhelmingly not in “the center” but in fact are “Progressives” even though many of them do not identify with the label.  We want single payer health care, withdrawal of our troops from Iraq, diplomacy rather than saber rattling towards Iran, stricter gun control, better environmental regulation, higher taxes for the upper income group, etc.  The list goes on and on.  It is only the extreme media bias caused by a highly concentrated media oligarchy that tricks some of us into believing that progressives values are somehow not in line with what the majority of us desire.

So if the majority of us are not centrist but hold progressive values and most of the rest hold regressive values such as being pro-war, anti-gay, pro-torture, pro-wiretapping, etc., who exactly is in the “center”?  In my opinion, there is almost no one there.

So why would Obama diss his progressive roots when he stands to gain little or nothing by doing so?

The reason Obama must move to the regressive side of the continuum is actually because he must convince those already holding power and their media puppets to support him.  Otherwise you will see the media conglomerates go after him and crush him in the general election.  They can and they will.  If you don’t think this is true, look at what happened to Kerry, Dukakis, Dean, etc.  These people were defeated more because of how the media treated them than because of a lack of support among the electorate.  The media trashes them and the electorate gives up on them as a result.

The tail is wagging the dog in this country because the dirty little secret is big media gets people elected (especially) at the national level, not voters.

So my point here is to understand that no matter how much Obama wants to support progressive values, he cannot do so and expect to win the Presidency.  And because this is true, we have two choices.  We can forego voting for him and see if the disaster of a McCain Presidency will be enough for us to make big changes to the course we are on or we can vote for him and hope that he follows in Bush’s footsteps and becomes a President that is totally unlike the positions he must take in order to get elected.  Worst case scenario if we elect Obama is we get a younger, more intelligent McCain in disguise.

None of us really knows how someone will govern once they attain power through elected office.  (see Hitler, Nixon, Bush, et al).  So no matter how far to the center Obama goes from here to election day, I am giving him a pass.  I’ll keep my fingers crossed that the man behind the curtain is a good, intelligent man who will do his best to change America for the better, once elected.