Considering that Barack Obama is currently vying for the Democratic nomination, I’ve held off discussing his “liberalness” — primarily because I want him to win the nomination, and at this juncture, the competition is still for “the base”. In exactly the same way Republicans are forced to pander to the hard right, the Democrats have to leave a fair amount of wiggle-room to appease their own hardliners.
As it happens, I don’t think the hard-left (the erstwhile “progressives”) will be happy with the Obama reality, but in a 3-person race in which a populist progressive participated (however newly minted), it really wasn’t a major issue. Edwards skewed everything left.
But Edwards is out, those who supported him are now faced with some choices, and you can bet they’re going to listen to the Sirota-speak. Of course, Hillary Clinton doesn’t shine well in that contest either, which leaves the progressive movement pretty much out in the cold.
Interestingly, the vast majority of attacks from the radical left merely enhance my view of Barack Obama. Take this one, for instance:
Never mind, for example, that Obama was recently hailed as a “Hamiltonian” believer in “limited government” and “free trade” by Republican New York Times columnist David Brooks, who praises Obama for having “a mentality formed by globalization, not the SDS.”
Well… yes. Given the utterly stupendous size of our federal government, any other view seems just a bit nuts. The federal government has gotten too danged BIG to be effective at much of anything — up to and including helping its citizens in a meaningful way. And for all the concern about the impact on American workers from international trade agreements and NAFTA, the reality is that our economy — and its citizen — gain enormously from them.
More:
In an interview with Klein, Obama expressed reservations about a universal health insurance plan recently enacted in Massachusetts, stating his preference for “voluntary” solutions over “government mandates.” The former, he said, is “more consonant with” what he called “the American character” — a position contradicted by regular polling data showing that most Americans support Canadian-style single-payer health insurance.
And I agree with Obama here, too. Government forcing citizens into a mandate is, imho, extremely un-American. Do we need Universal Healthcare? I think the answer is yes. Should citizens retain some control over how they handle their health care? Absolutely.
For the extreme anti-war left, this (somewhat spun) line will especially resonate:
Consistent with his denial and embrace of Washington’s imperial ambitions, Obama has refused to join genuinely antiwar forces in calling for a rapid and thorough withdrawal of troops and an end to the occupation of Iraq.
But I say thank goodness! It bothers me immensely that anybody would draw hard and fast lines in a shifting sand-dune. We should be doing our utmost to disengage, but the situation is fluid and evolving; a candidate who locks him/herself into a course of action today may very well end up looking like a fool a year from now.
It is this paragraph, though, that underscores the key difference between Barack Obama and the radical left:
Obama the Keynoter proclaimed that “every child in America” should “have a decent shot at life,” not that every kid deserves a full and decent life now and thereafter.
This is a profound ideological breach, and I don’t see any way to reconcile Obama’s more classical liberalism with liberal socialism.
Extreme progressives are not going to be any happier with Barack Obama than with Hillary Clinton, though not necessarily for the same reasons. And that’s okay with me, since candidates who would fit their bill wouldn’t align with the views of most of America anyway.
Obama’s approach is a hand up rather than a hand out, based on a fundamental respect for American citizens — and that view is one I agree with entirely.