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In response to a comment in another thread in which the poster stated that there is no Left, that Obama doesn't owe it anything, that it never did anything anyway, I sat down and wrote this, somewhat in the style of the old "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" essay. Because in some, maybe many, respects, the Left is a bit like Santa -- it's more present in spirit than in the flesh.
So yes, Virginia, there is indeed a Left in America, a rational sensible Left. I'm not talking about the wild-eyed hippie anarchists portrayed by the establishment media in the 60s and 70s. Nor am I talking about an organized movement or party. The American Left is less organized than the Tea Partiers, and it probably gets less media attention, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
This American Left is more mature than its 60s ancestor, but some of the people who were part of that 60s grassroots movement are still Leftists today. Some of them were supporters of Eugene McCarthy or George McGovern or Bobby Kennedy who survived the disappointments of those campaigns without losing all of their idealism. Some of them were followers of Dr. King or Jesse Jackson, and they knew that racism is one of the symptoms of the sickness of classism.
Many on the Left were radicalized by what's called Second Wave feminism, that notion of women being real people, too. They know that freedom to choose when and if to have a child is essential to being a real person, not just part of one (a uterus) or a pre-determined specific kind of one (a mother).
Is there a Left platform? No, not really. But if there were, it would pretty much look like the platform contained in two documents written in the late 18th Century and ratified by the young states in 1789. We call one the Constitution, and the other the Bill of Rights.
And because the Left is sometimes today equated with a 20th Century movement called Progressivism, the Left acknowledges that the Constitution and its amendments are an attempt to progress from a well-intentioned start toward a more perfect finish. The Left understands that the world isn't perfect yet, but that only means we have to work to make it so. We can't rest on our laurels, nor can we give up just because the struggle is daunting.
So yes, Virginia, there is a Left. It may not be a formal organization, and it may not be a large organization, but it's still here, still alive and kicking.
Now, you may ask, Virginia, has the Left ever done anything?
And that's a perfectly valid question, Virginia. Since the Left isn't really a political party like the Democrats or the Republicans, it's difficult to see what the Left does. So let's go back to that platform thing, because I think it will help you understand better what the Left does.
The Left is more about ideas and ideals and less about party, Virginia. The Left stands for civil rights, the idea that's embodied in that "all men are created equal" statement. Not just men, of course, even though men were the only ones who had any chance of having a vote back when the Constitution was being framed. The Left recognizes that the Constitution was created with an eye to the future. That's what Amendments are for – bringing the Constitution up to date with the changing of public attitudes and even the changing of public knowledge. So the Left supports a living, flexible, perfectable Constitution rather than a carved-in-stone immutable document that might have been great in 1789 but just doesn't meet all the needs of folks in the 21st century.
So the Left stands for civil rights for EVERYONE, Virginia. Not just for men with property but all men, and all women, regardless of the color of their skin, regardless of their wealth or lack thereof, regardless of their religion, regardless of their sexual orientation. All people.
All people. For some people that's a difficult concept to accept. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, for example, who thinks the Constitution and its amendments don't apply to women. Apparently he doesn't think women are people.
Do you begin to see where this is going, Virginia? Most of the changes to the Constitution and its supporting body of federal law over the past 220 years or so have been made by people who promoted ideas of progress. Everything from abolishing chattel slavery to giving women the right to vote to regulating television and the Internet to highway and airline safety to the federal income tax and Social Security – that's what the Left has done.
Now, you're quite right to question whether everything that's been done should fall under the heading progressive or Left. Some things certainly haven't. That Patriot Act thing sure wasn't. But people on the Left are aware of that and they're working to change it. The Left believes in change, believes it's essential to the political health of the nation.
It was the Left that brought out the horrors of the war in Vietnam and encouraged the public pressure that eventually brought that shameful war to an end. It was and is the Left that has exposed many of the worst environmental disasters, from Love Canal to Prince William Sound to Grand Isle, Louisiana.
The Left stands for human rights, environmental rights, for peace and sustainability, for fairness and equality of opportunity. And part of that fairness thing is that the Left stands for an equitable distribution of a society's wealth. The Left believes that people who work for a living – and that's mos t of us, Virginia – should be adequately compensated for our labor. And yes, that means those who make their money through other means – like betting on the stock market or through inheritance – should pay higher taxes.
Some people don't like to hear that. As soon as they hear "higher taxes," they shout "That's socialism!" as if it were some horrible disease that would kill us like a plague.
But while taxes can be used to redistribute wealth, they are also used to provide the many many public services we've come to depend on: public schools, public roads, fire and police and other emergency services, parks and libraries. The Left knows socialism isn't a bad thing at all, and in fact it's very much a part of what we think of as our American way of life.
In many respects, Virginia, it was those beliefs in the fundamental principles of the great American experiment that put the Left, without any formal organization, staunchly behind the nomination and then the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States.
During the official and unofficial campaigning that went on before the 2008 Democratic primary elections, two candidates emerged as front runners. Early on, Hillary Clinton appeared poised to take the nomination as the first woman candidate of a major political party. But Barack Obama challenged her, and the question soon became would the Democrats nominate a Black man or a woman? Either candidate offered that tantalizing "first" appeal, and either would have fit that "change" model of the Left's platform. But ultimately, the majority on the Left threw their support behind Obama, not because he was necessarily more progressive or more liberal or more "left," but because, at least in part, Hillary Clinton represented ties to an administration that was LESS progressive, LESS liberal, LESS "left."
So when people try to tell you, Virginia, that there is no Left in America or that if there is, it's never done anything, you just tell them that there is indeed a Left in America, and it was that Left that put Barack Obama in the White House. Without a Left, there would have been no abolition movement, no votes for women, no civil rights movement, no Voting Rights Act, no Peace Corps. In short, Virginia, without the Left there would have been no Barack Obama to become President Barack Obama!
But you also asked about the future, Virginia. You asked what the Left can do to make the future better for your generation and for generations to come.
Well, for one thing, Virginia, the Left needs to continue to make itself heard. That's not always easy to do. The Left, because it's not very well organized, doesn't have the focused energy of the right. The Left doesn't have its own media presence and media voices, though it's trying. One thing the Left does have is Barack Obama.
Stop laughing, Virginia!
Oh, it's true. As President, he hasn't exactly lived up to all the promises he made as a candidate, and it's very true that many on the Left are more than a little bit disappointed with him. And that disappointment comes partly from our own impatience. We had our hopes built up during the 2008 campaign that this time we not only had a candidate who could win – not like McGovern and even Dukakis – but also a President who would fulfill the promises of the campaign. Real hope for real change was what we saw in candidate Obama.
Now, two years after the election victory, a lot of those promises are waiting to be kept. The war has drawn down in Iraq, or at least it's not on the front pages any more, but the fighting has escalated in Afghanistan. The promised withdrawal has been moved out. The gay rights issues of repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" – a policy of the Clinton era which hindered Hillary Clinton's bid for the presidency – and of same-sex marriage have not been addressed satisfactorily. The economy remains in a shambles with high unemployment and higher underemployment. Wall Street continues its bankster ways, taking taxpayer bailout money and giving it to executives who already have more than they can spend in a lifetime. The BP oil catastrophe has not been resolved. Global warming is still not being addressed. Mine safety. Health care. Taxes. So many issues and so few resolutions.
As a result, many on the Left are disappointed, disillusioned, and even angry. And they point to specific issues where they feel their interests were ignored and where the administration of Barack Obama gave in to the interests and wishes of the Right. The Left cites the appointments of many many conservative Democrats or even Republicans to the Obama cabinet and other high-level advisory posts.
Most of all, however, the Left complains that Obama has seemed more interested in stubbornly pursuing a strategy of "bipartisanship" even though no one on the other side seems willing to join him. The Right wants everything their way or not at all, and the Left sees Obama moving further and further and further away from the ideals they believed he held as deeply as they did.
They see, too, that the recent losses for the Democratic party in the 2010 elections were a sign not that the Obama administration failed because it moved too far to the left but that its constant movement toward the right led to its failures. It's not only that they didn't get enough votes from the center or even the center-right, but they lost votes from the Left.
You see, Virginia, most voters aren't students of politics. They may pay some attention to the issues that affect them directly, like Social Security or unemployment benefits or health care, but they don't study the positions of the various candidates in detail and they don't connect the issues to the candidates to the parties to the power struggles. It's understandable, then, that most voters cast their ballots in a more emotion-driven decision than a rational consideration of whether their vote will really effect the desired results. Many voters in 2010 probably voted for "change" because they weren't happy with the current situation on various issues, whether on taxes or the economy or jobs or the wars or whatever. But many of them probably didn't understand that while "progress" always implies "change," change alone is not always progressive.
That's why the current situation with regard to criticism of President Obama's policies is hard for some people to understand. Some people, even some on the Left, see the President as not just a person but as the embodiment of their own personal hopes and dreams. They have identified with his campaign slogans and even with the expectations they had for his presidency. And so it's difficult, emotionally difficult, for them to admit he has flaws and that his Administration has not lived up to its campaign promises.
They see criticism of him as criticism of themselves, for having put their faith in him. And even though some of them consider themselves Democrats or Progressives or even part of "the Left," they are less concerned with issues and more concerned with personality. They don't want to admit that there is much in the Obama administration that is not at all liberal or progressive or Left.
The real problem, Virginia, is that President Obama himself seems more concerned about appeasing the Right than with doing what is right. His policies have not broadly benefited working people as much as they have benefited corporations and wealthy people. And so those of us on the Left are vocal about our complaints, not because we want President Obama to fail, but because we want his right-leaning policies to fail. We want him to move further to the Left, not further to the right.
We on the Left are less likely to get caught up in the cult of a personality; our focus is on ideas, ideals, and issues. We want our ideas to succeed, and we would like President Obama to implement policies that promote progressive ideals. If he is willing to try to do that, then we will be behind him 200 percent, Virginia. And we will probably even vote for him rather than for a Republican challenger, because we know he cannot possibly be as bad as they are.
But not being as bad as the Republicans isn't good enough for us. We want our president to be more than just not George Bush or not John McCain or not Sarah Palin. We want a president who is an active, vocal advocate for the original living ideals of the United States. If we get a president who is anything less than that, then we will let him know. That is our right, Virginia, and that is our Left.
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