Going off the rails

CNN is now reporting that New Hampshire senator Judd Gregg is withdrawing his name from consideration for the position of commerce secretary. This shows a real lack of organization on Obama's part, and while Gregg was rather conservative as these things go (and therefore might not have been the best choice in the first second place), this suggests Obama's cabinet is going to be a real mess.

This on top of the Obama administration's announcement Monday that it endorses and is maintaining the Bush administration's position on protecting as state secrets information about Americans torturing prisoners.

Has the man lost the plot?

Join the effort!

In addition to the petition for a Cabinet-level Secretary of Arts, there are plenty of other groups out there pushing Obama in a progressive direction. What's your issue? Here are a few to choose from, and places you can add your voice to the discussion. Robert Scheer at Truthdig has some reasons why, and so does Naomi Klein, but really, you already know why. Just jump in.

 -Organic and local food: FoodDemocracyNow.org has a petition for a sustainable US Department of Agriculture and includes information on twelve people who would be good as high-level (though not at the actual top) officials in the USDA.

-Health care: A pair of Facebook groups are pushing former Vermont governor Howard Dean, a medical doctor, as the new secretary of health and human services.

 -Unions: MoveOn.org and the Service Employees International Union are teaming up for some pretty progressive labor pushes, as well as some other more generally progressive issues.

-Prosecuting Bush: Here's a story listing the lawmakers you should call to urge them to come forward and press charges.

-Support the stimulus package: Obama has asked for house parties to organize people to back it and contact their legislators.

How much does Obama <3 women?

So Obama is for women's health, right? I mean, he reversed the global gag rule and generally likes women, plus he has daughters. But he's clearly hoping that his daughters never end up poor and in need of birth control from Medicaid.

My new fave site

Those of you who aren't following the TakeBackBarack news-articles RSS feed, you should be - I continue to update that every day, sometimes multiple times a day, with stories from all over the Web about Obama's moves, decisions, and their significance. I promise you'll find interesting stuff there - I spend a good chunk of time digging around, and Google Reader's a big help, too. The feed is here: //www.google.com/reader/shared/user/12718493763117696582/label/TakeBackBarack

But my new favorite Obama-watch site is The Obameter, which tracks every single one of Obama's 510 campaign promises! You've gotta check it out.

He's the prez now

A brief summary of my thoughts since Inauguration Day:

-Closing Gitmo is great. Even spending a night in one of those cells was pretty bad - much less being waterboarded, starved, and otherwise tortured.

-Putting back the Geneva Conventions and the Army interrogation manual is also really a good sign for human rights around the world, as well as to restore America's standing among nations.

-Restoring the Freedom of Information Act is truly wonderful - we, the public, pay for the government, all its employees, every desk, every piece of paper. We own it - we have the right to look at it. We agree as a society to not look at certain aspects for specific reasons, but it is not the purview of government to tell us what information we're allowed to have - it is our purview to tell government what secrets it may keep.

-Not sure why the nominee for Director of National Intelligence thinks waterboarding isn't torture, after Obama and his attorney general-designate have made clear that it is. But then again, Dennis Blair isn't much of one for human rights, having helped violate the rights of the East Timorese at the hands of the Indonesian military.

-Ethics and transparency are good, so long as Obama doesn't give his friends free passes, and so long as he doesn't resent journalists asking about it.

All in all, a middling score.

Secretary of Arts!

A comment by Quincy Jones, the musician/composer/general arts supporter (and FOB - that's Friend of Barack, now), made during a post-election interview with has spawned an online petition drive to create a cabinet-level Secretary of Arts position. While it's unclear exactly what such a person would do, the very existence of the position would certainly raise the profile of arts and their contribution to national life, economic activity, and culture.

This is precisely the sort of effort I called for in the original piece. And John Nichols took a similar view in The Progressive on Monday, writing:

"The way to influence Obama and his Administration is to speak not so much to him as to America. Get out ahead of the new President, and of his spin-drive communications team. Highlight the right appointees and the right responses to deal with the challenges that matter most. Don't just critique, but rather propose. Advance big ideas and organize on their behalf; identify allies in federal agencies, especially in Congress, and work with them to dial up the pressure for progress. Don't expect Obama or his aides to do the left thing. Indeed, take a lesson from rightwing pressure groups in their dealings with Republican administrations and recognize that it is always better to build the bandwagon than to jump on board one that is crafted with the tools of compromise."

Let's get moving!

Take Back Barack on TV

The Take Back Barack effort is on TV throughout January around the nation, thanks to Liberty News TV. (It's a non-profit progressive outfit based here in Portland, and they accept donations!)

Here's the clip - click here for a map to see where you can watch the whole show on your TV!

Bizarre signs of concern, and a bright spot or two

First up, what about this whole Leon Panetta as CIA director thing? On the good side, he's a civilian with long experience navigating the halls of power in DC. On the bad side, the CIA is badly screwed up and Panetta has no real prior knowledge of running an intel operation (sure, he handled some intel stuff as Clinton's chief of staff, but that's pretty different). On the good side, he is likely to do what Obama wants, and will probably be direct with Obama about any disagreements. On the bad side, he offers no signal as to what Obama wants from the CIA, and in this tea-leaf-reading exercise we call "covering the transition," we could really use a signal about that - especially given (see below) the problems with his Director of National Intelligence.

Now, on to a few other items:

In the "What, Me Worry?" department:

--It's hardly territory exclusive to progressives that it's bad policy for big industries to sue thousands of individual customers, the way the RIAA has for years. It's simple economics that companies that sue their customers will see their customers go elsewhere. So what's Obama doing choosing as a public servant a man called "the RIAA's favorite lawyer"? Unless, of course, he's not supposed to be a public servant, but an Obama servant. We need to push Obama on this.

--Obama has supported a massive domestic-spying program conceived and implemented by the Bush Administration. While Obama's Justice appointees seem generally opposed to Bush's torture decisions and other terrorism-related policy disasters, it's unclear whether they will feel the same way about spying on Americans. We need to get commitments from Obama, and from each of them in their confirmation hearings, to overturn not just some parts of Bush's terror-creating terrorism policy, but ALL of them.

--After our economy has melted down, in large part due to poor regulation of securities, who should oversee the securities market? Of course! An industry insider who's buddy-buddy with all the people who have destroyed the economy so far. We need to make sure that her confirmation fails.

--Obama's tax cuts are a larger-than-expected part of his financial stimulus plan, and are so broad as to perhaps go beyond the "middle class tax cuts" he promised during the campaign - and which are badly needed.  He's probably doing this to secure Republican votes, but he might not succeed at it anyway. We need to push him to take the bold steps we all know are needed, and to stand up to conservatives who seek to block him.

--We had previously reported on concerns about Obama's pick for Director of National Intelligence, Maine-born Admiral Dennis Blair. That reporting is being deepened and expanded over at Democracy Now. We need to hold Blair accountable for his actions by torpedoing his nomination.

--And it seems really bizarre to say this, but can it be that some of the people Obama has picked for his cabinet don't agree on global warming? Maybe he should take them all to Hawaii to watch the islands sink. We need to make sure they understand reality.

In the "Every Little Thing's Gonna Be All Right" department:

--The Daily Beast has some great ideas for how Obama's technology czar can make government better, more efficient, more open, and more responsive to the people. We need to push these ideas.

--The world community is responding very positively to Obama, and we may be restoring much of the political and moral capital we squandered during the Bush years. We need to make sure we continue this trend.

--There are some good ideas and some clear expectations being laid out for Obama by journalists and thinkers throughout the country. We need to do more of this. It's about us, not him.

A growing movement

You know you're on to something when somebody puts out a rush-edition book on the topic. And sure enough, in yesterday's mail, arrived Yes, We Can! 365 Ways to Make America A Better Place, by Paula Munier. It lists an action a day for an entire year that readers can take to improve America. Among the ideas are several we're looking to Obama for leadership on, and others will push him in progressive directions. Here are some examples:

-teach an unskilled laborer a marketable skill

-switch banks if your bank took bailout money and won't report how it's spending it

-shoot a documentary about local corporate greed

-start an e-mail campaign against instances of government waste

-support legislation to regulate Wall Street (a separate action is to support regulating the banking industry, too)

-report environmental hazards to the EPA

There are many more, including supporting local businesses, patronizing arts organizations and artists, getting fit, helping others, etc.

Today's Washington Post also asks what will become of the movement that backed Obama. The biggest hint is at the very end, when the reporter describes the thousands of neighborhood and house meetings organized with the social-networking tools on my.BarackObama.com to push Obama in the people's direction.

In recent days, Matt Stoller at Open Left has chronicled how various members of Obama's team differ from progressives on policy positions, and reveals that the administration is to the right of House Dems, but about in the center of Senate Dems. He warns that while Obama's strategy of incremental change may be hailed as "pragmatic" by those who wish to oppose him, but "incrementalism isn't a different path to the same place, it could be a different path to a different place."

Paul Krugman at the New York Times has warned that Obama's cabinet picks are squandering political capital he will badly need in the days ahead.

The Nation has editorialized that the key to Obama's success - or the signal of his failure - will be his approach to fixing the economy, and whether his reach is vast enough to effect sweeping change. And elsewhere in the same publication, a progressive blogger has said: "There's been a lot of hand-wringing about what Obama is going to do with his e-mail list, but that has it a bit backward... It's really, What is the list going to do with Obama?"

And it goes without saying that the whole mess between Israel and Hamas is so disastrous and so dire that Obama will probably have to wade in on the afternoon of Inauguration Day.

So where does this leave us, out here in progressive-land, waiting for our president-elect to have time to think about us? The answer is to continue the house meetings, to continue the e-mail campaigns, to continue to pressure Obama to do what needs to be done. We need him less than he needs us.

A few more ruminations

I'll be taking a few days off for the holidays, but I'll try to check in and respond to comments and post stuff every couple days.

Here are a few tidbits I've found especially interesting recently:

Brent Budowsky has the closest thing to a Take Back Barack essay I've read yet.

The Libertarian Party has decried Obama's foreign policy, or at least his indicators of policy, saying we'll be in Iraq and Afghanistan for "his entire presidency."

The Obama transition team is still using the campaign Web site, to organize more house meetings and to show off the ones that have already happened.

A Dallas resident has posted a list of five Dos and five Don'ts for the Obama administration. No surprises here - they are why we elected the man.

Michael Pollan, a man some wanted to see as the Secretary of Food, has denounced Obama's pick of Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture, noting - among other pointed observations - that Vilsack didn't use the word "food" in his first remarks as a nominee.

Even though Dick Cheney has confessed to war crimes, people in the know suggest that nobody will be held accountable. How that serves as a deterrent to others, or a statement to the world that it's unacceptable, is beyond me.

The New York Times suggests that Obama's plan to spend billions on fixing the country's roads, bridges, railroads, and buildings might not have the effect he's hoping for, which is a warning that Obama needs to remember to stay true to those who elected him, and to whom he has promised protection.

And Mother Jones suggests that Obama may fail to change Washington - and that it may change him instead. A chilling warning indeed.

Perhaps some promise

President-elect Obama's commitment to restore honesty to the core of federal science policy (and science-related policies) is definitely encouraging. The biggest potential pitfall is that the Bush administration also claimed to base its decisions on science - even when it censored science to serve political ends. (This involved paying lip service to science while actually subjugating it to ideology.)

I don't believe Obama will engage in this kind of deception, but it's worth keeping an eye out.

Also, Glenn Greenwald had a good piece on Salon on Friday, in which he asked when Dems haven't tolerated, included, and accommodated. And, he notes, we're suspicious of Obama's quavering and middle-seeking "because we know where it ends." And we're sick of that.

Robert Parry over at ConsortiumNews also explains that what we're seeing is more of the same, and not the Change We Need.

Beyond the question of whether you want this man to be the first person you see in the morning (except for Michelle, we hope), there are serious concerns about having the Director of National Intelligence be a member of the military (albeit retired). While Dennis Blair is a Mainer, he is also a retired four-star general. The problem here is conceptual, but could become actual. The military - and government intelligence agencies - exist to serve the civilian leadership of the country. Obviously, the military has a martial mindset. If that takes too much precedence in intelligence gathering and analysis, then our civilian leaders could be led in a direction that civilian analysts might suggest against. (UPDATE: According to the Nation, Blair made the US (more) complicit in the 1999 violence in Timor. And the NYT reports that he tried to waterski behind a destroyer he commanded in Japan.)

Also, it's very encouraging to see Obama focusing on the middle class so much. As always, the key questions: Is the middle class growing? Are middle-class people prospering? are vague and noncommittal. As the effort takes shape, let's look for serious metrics to be involved, like the number of uninsured (and underinsured), high-school and college graduation rates, and so on.

BTW, Dissident Voice last Friday began a series called, I'm guessing, "Obama's Unprogressive." Here are the first three installments: "Obama's Unprogressive People," "Obama's Unprogressive Foreign Policies," and "Obama's Unprogressive Domestic Policies." Interesting reading, for sure!

Catching up and thinking about tolerance

I've been catching up on the blogosphere and reading Andrew Sullivan's commentaries on Obama's choice of conservative evangelical pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation on Inauguration Day. Sullivan and others appear to have struggled mightily and come to terms with the selection, saying it appeared abominable at first but is perhaps a new and giant symbol of Obama's "post-partisan" politics. 

While I commend their intellectual effort and attempt at compassion, I have to caution liberals and progressives about being too inclusive. Remember, we got to the Bush administration by being inclusive, patient, tolerant, and easygoing. We got to the Dems' takeover of the Congress in 2006 - and their utter failure to do anything good about Iraq, warrantless wiretapping, or holding Bushies accountable - by being accepting, and by believing that "this is a process" in which "things take time."

That viewpoint has been proven false, a failure, a senseless tragedy. Certainly, wrong-thinking people need to be shown the error of their ways. But that presumes they are willing or able to do so. Some are, to be sure - others aren't.

And this is where Take Back Barack begins. We need to be clear about what our expectations are. I very much believe that progressive ideas can withstand the test of public debate. But does every single perspective have to be taking into account in every single debate? Conservatives and centrists have thrown out progressive ideas without a second thought for decades. I am not saying we need to do the same, but we should certainly not waste our time on failed policies or ideas that have proven themselves useless or damaging.

It is, if you'll pardon a one-sentence digressive analogy, ridiculous to be in a position where your mother-in-law and your lawyer are drowning, you can only save one, and you ask: Should I go to a movie, or have lunch? (H/T The Book of Stupid Questions.) It is similarly ridiculous to be in a position where human rights and dignity are being eroded left and right and ask "Should we consider doing more of those things?" We have no time to waste on pro forma consideration of old, tired ideas that have no future.

I say the same to those, like Sullivan, who seem to be accepting Rick Warren now as part of Obama's "post-partisanship." And I caution against believing that the partisans - who definitely still exist, and wield great power in DC - will look kindly and benevolently upon such feel-good tactics. You can't get beyond partisanship unless all sides agree to do so. Maybe Obama is playing a great chess game, and maybe he will prove to be a unifying force like none in history. Sure, I hope so. But I don't delude myself into thinking it's going to happen, and I don't delude myself into thinking it's even likely unless progressives speak up for what we deserve. I still say we lose nothing by continuing to voice our concerns, or by continuing to demand what we want.

Today's roundup

Sorry - it's been rather a day here, so while I'm waiting for the call to be on the radio (we're taping it so I don't have to get up at 1:30 am to attempt to be coherent), I'll offer a summary of some of my thinking so far. (I'll also marvel at how quickly this TBB meme is expanding.)

I've had several really interesting exchanges with people - and have been very entertained by various comments suggesting I'm either a moonbat or a wingnut or both. In any case, these exchanges have helped me sharpen my point, and have deepened my belief that Take Back Barack is the right move at the right time.

First, today's Obama-pointments. Mainly centrist, with a dash of conservatism and a pinch of liberalism.

--Dem Hilda Solis for SecLabor. She's a strong pro-labor person, who is being touted as pro-union, though her remarks upon her appointment had almost nothing to say about unions. Sure, she said she would "work to strengthen" them, but the examples she gave - and her major policy accomplishment in California of increasing the minimum wage - were very much non-union in nature. (That is, while they help union workers, they advance the interests of non-union workers at the same time.) 

--GOPer Ray LaHood for SecTransportation. He's an anti-abortion guy - though that's perhaps less important in a transportation official than one in, say, public health. His record on oil and transportation are mixed. He supported the auto bailout last week, and voted to end the moratorium on offshore drilling. But he also voted to make OPEC illegal, and opposed oil and gas subsidies for exploration.

--Dem Karen Mills (a Mainer!) to head the Small Business Administration. She's been touted as "a venture-capital expert," though what her firm does is anything but clear. Also uncertain is how she'll be able to handle the SBA's chief task - loaning money to businesses, and offering loan guarantees, in this credit market. And what she'll do to help the millions of Americans who run "microbusinesses" remains to be seen. (Disclosure: I'm an NASE member.)

--Dem Ron Kirk as US trade representative. Another Clintonite and former DC lobbyist, Kirk is a Southerner (of sorts - he's from Texas) who has supported NAFTA but opposed the "Fast Track" system. How much clout he will wield appears to be in question - a previous candidate for the job declined it because he feared trade would be too low a priority for Obama. (Interestingly, Kirk was a finalist to be SecTrans, so maybe this is a second-choice situation for him, too.)

Now then, as I've had e-mail exchanges with several folks, I've come to a deeper understanding of this visceral feeling I have of worry about Obama.

Progressive ideas and ideals can't stand up for themselves. We have to stand up for them. Our ideas can prevail in rigorous policy debates, and we can't shy away from them for fear of conflict or political messiness.

Only time will tell whether Obama will do the right things, the things we voted for him to do - withdraw from Iraq, improve our education system, fix healthcare, green the economy. Many liberals and progressives are counseling us to wait and see, to give Obama a chance to make change.

That is the wrong path. We cannot sit back on whatever laurels we may have heard by electing Obama and let him do what he and his advisors want. We must remain constantly involved, a constant force to push Obama, his advisors, and Congress to do what we know needs to be done.

He might just do the right things, even if we left him alone. But we can't take that chance - especially with the advisors he has chosen. Maybe he can take the Clinton out of Hillary and the McCain out of Jim Jones. Maybe they will come around - or even already have - to share Obama's views on many topics. But I'm not willing to bet my future, my country's future on that.

We need people in office who will listen to progressive ideas, who will give them serious consideration. We have gone far too long - decades - with leaders who dismiss progressive concepts out of hand. Many of them have just been invited back into the White House. They have tons of practice putting progressivism aside. It's clear that the policies they espoused aren't working. We need to make sure they listen.

Obama called on us to stand up and take our country back. We need to do that - and we start by Taking Back Barack.

Taking Back Barack on the radio

Many of the comments about Take Back Barack so far have been from conservatives shouting with glee, calling Obama a "snake-oil salesman" and a "con man," and apparently suggesting I'm a sucker for believing his promises. But it appears the progressive community might be paying some attention. Early tomorrow morning (East Coast time) - so early it's late at night Pacific time - I'll be on the Phil Hendrie Show talking about the Take Back Barack effort.

It starts at 1 am Eastern, 10 pm Pacific. You can listen live here, or find out what station in your area is broadcasting it here.

A couple of samples for the Phoenix's coverage area - Maine: WLOB 1310 AM and 96.3 FM. Massachusetts/Rhode Island: WTKK 96.9 FM and WSAR 1480 AM. Both from 1-4 am.

Starting out well

So Rick Warren's been chosen to give the invocation at Obama's inauguration. Anybody else super-excited to see a rabidly pro-life, anti-choice, anti-gay evangelical cleric blessing Obama and the nation? Fine, so he cares about poverty and children in Africa. You don't have to turn over too many steeples to uncover exciting, progressive clergymen and -women who feel the same way about those issues, and who recognize that legislating things like pregnancy and partnership are never good. (I won't launch into my tirade about how government is good at - and necessary for - balancing needs between competing interests, but terrible at - and should avoid - attempting to balance desires between different perspectives.)

But while Obama's choice is "causing [the] first real rift with progressives" - or so Huffington Post suggests - this effort is taking off. You can read some of the (so far) 16 comments - of which only one is gibberish, and that, literally: "ceguyomvpaxcetgolubxagbjzlwlcr" - on the initial post.

A little lower is a compendium of the comments from those of you who e-mailed. (Not to worry, I'll keep your names to myself.)

But I do want to highlight one in particular, from a Republican strategist here in Maine: "We like him more now that he is being sensible." I offer this to those of you who suggested I was pushing too hard, too soon, and expecting too much from Obama.

In response, I say: The Republicans have decided what they think of Obama based on his choices so far. We should too. We have more to learn from the Republicans about getting things done and playing the game of politics than they have to learn from us. (See Leahy's delay of Holder's hearings, something Republicans would never have agreed to.)

We need to play the game of politics, but play it with our goals in mind, and with tools like relentlessness and courage. Right now, Obama has chosen a team who have proven they can play politics with old centrist goals in mind and with the old Democratic tools - lassitude, lily livers, and whining. This is precisely why I am worried, and I believe that the fact that a Republican strategist thinks this way is confirmation that we progressives need to act now.

That said, here are the other comments I've gotten in my e-mail so far:

--The hits keep coming: today Obama announced his secretary of Corn Subsidies [and] the fact that Rick Warren, anti-choice, anti-gay rights fundamentalist, will deliver the invocation at his inauguration. The Progressive movement doesn't even get bone.

--I disagree with both your premise and your cause, but I'll see if I can work in a mention of some sort. Or maybe you don't want me to! ;-)

--I agree with a lot of what you wrote. One area of difference is the idea of taking back Barack - he was my 4th choice, and really I only supported him because McCain was so f'n awful. What many of his appointments demonstrate is that we're in for another spell of Corporatism Lite, hardly the change that his campaign espoused (and many of us doubted would actually come to pass).  suppose the idea of a true progressive ever getting a whiff of the White House is pretty stupid after all.

--Please stop. Please stop now. Relax. I supported Obama from the first inkling of his run. Part of the change that I voted for, as a lifelong progressive, is to move us beyond these ideological food fights and tandrums. Obama promised to bring people together, to find common ground and common purpose. You can't do that with only one side of the room. You can't do that with just one party. And you sure as heck can't do it with just one segment of one party. The problems this country faces are so massive, and so historically unprecedented (they didn't have climate change during the great depression, for instance), that they require a great mobilization of people across the country, and across the political spectrum. Obama can't do that by filling every one of his cabinet positions with someone who passes a narrow ideological or partisan test. After decades of work on progressive causes, I've slowly but certainly come to some humility about what progressives know, and what they don't know. Progressives don't have all the answers - particularly on the economy - any more than the neocons did. Truth and wisdom isn't allocated that way, to one particular segment of the population. Its scattered around like pieces of a puzzle that need to be rounded up and reconstructed. Progressives simply don't own all the pieces of the puzzle, though they do own some important ones. The last thing we need in Washington, in my view, is yet another ideologically-driven narrow agenda, that takes us toward arrogance and division. Oh, and by the way, the guy isn't even in office yet. I'm not ready to write him off just yet.

--gotta build a coalition Jeff. He hasn't done anything yet, give him a chance.

--good work..i agree..he's drifting ever further to the right..i gasped when i heard about the evangelical speaking at the inauguration...argh!

--I completely agree!! I sent an email around yesterday in a panic about his appointment for Sec of Ag. (bad choice!) we so wanted someone such as Michael Pollan: //www.pollanforsecretaryofagriculture.com/ wtf is going on?? I am sure you saw this one too ie. his pick for sec of education: //www.truthout.org/121708R

 --Thanks for sending me this, I have been feeling a tad uneasy and feeling a bit like I was conned..where the hell is the change? I will send this out to folks I know because many of us are feeling this way yet no one wants to speak out about it too much.