Mark Rudd, Obama Supporter
Mark Rudd, founding member of Weatherman, gives his analysis of Barack Obama's to-do list and timetable in a post on The Rag Blog.
In sum, according to Rudd, Obama is pretending to be a centrist. It's all a ruse to eventually put his extreme Leftist agenda into place.
That's not my perspective of what's going on at the "OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT ELECT." That's Weatherman Rudd's view. He believes there's a method to Obama's centrist madness.
Rudd writes:
If you're anything like me, your inbox fills up daily with the cries and complaints of lefties. Just the mere mention of the names Hillary Clinton and Lawrence Summers alone conjure up a litany of horrendous right-wingers appointed to top level positions.
Betrayal is the name of the game.
But wait a second. Let's talk about a few things:
* Obama is a very strategic thinker. He knew precisely what it would take to get elected and didn't blow it. He used community organizing methods to mobilize a base consisting of many people who had never voted before or who regularly don't vote. Few other candidates in my lifetime have taken this road, which is contrary to conventional political wisdom. (Paul Wellstone was a wonderful exception to the rule.) But he also knew that what he said had to basically play to the center to not be run over by the press, the Republicans, scare centrist and cross-over voters away. He made it.
So he has a narrow mandate for change, without any direction specified. What he's doing now is moving on the most popular issues -- the environment, health care, and the economy. He'll be progressive on the environment because that has broad popular support; health care will be extended to children, then made universal, but the medical, pharmaceutical, and insurance corporations will stay in place, perhaps yielding some power; the economic agenda will stress stimulation from the bottom sometimes and handouts to the top at other times. It will be pragmatic -- Summers is talking about the growth in income disparity as a significant problem. On foreign policy and the wars and the use of the military there will be no change at all. That's what keeping Gates at the Pentagon and Clinton at State and not prosecuting the torturers is saying.
And never, never threaten the military budget. That will unite a huge majority of congress against him.
And I agree with this strategy. Anything else will court sure defeat. Move on the stuff you can to a small but significant extent, gain support and confidence. Leave the military alone because they're way too powerful. For now, until enough momentum is raised. By the second or third year of this recession, when stimulus is needed at the bottom, people may begin to discuss cutting the military budget if security is being increased through diplomacy and application of nascent international law.
Rudd gives Lefties something to cling to.
In effect, he's saying not to worry. Obama is not at all as moderate as he is appearing to be at the moment.
* Obama plays basketball. I'm not much of an athlete, barely know the game, but one thing I do know is that you have to be able to look like you're doing one thing but do another. That's why all these conservative appointments are important: the strategy is feint to the right, move left. Any other strategy invites sure defeat. It would be stupid to do otherwise in this environment.
* Look to the second level appointments. There's a whole govt. in waiting that Podesta has at the Center for American Progress. They're mostly progressives, I'm told (except in military and foreign policy). Cheney was extremely effective at controlling policy by putting his people in at second-level positions.
* Read Obama's first book, "Dreams from My Father." The second section is the story of his three years doing community organizing in Chicago. It's some of the best writing on organizing I've ever seen. That's all it's about, the core of the book. Obama learned many lessons of strategy and patience. Then read the first section, on his family and growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia. No other president has ever had such intimate experience with class and race. The final section is about his trip to Kenya. No other president has ever had an understanding of not only race, but colonialism and neo-colonialism, even using the terms. It's the whole story he tells of his African family and especially his father, a victim of neo-colonialism. As was his step-father in Indonesia.
All these "conservative appointments"?
I guess "conservative" is a relative term.
This is no stupid guy. I haven't read The Audacity of Hope yet, but I plan to soon. I am ashamed that it took me so long to read Obama's books. Had any of the stupid Republicans read his books, they never could have said, "We don't know who this guy is." You know every thought he's ever had.
The Audacity of Hope contains "every thought [Obama's] ever had"?
Really? I guess that's possible.
Our job now is to organize both inside and outside the Demo party. There's already a big battle in the Demo party at every level. Here in the New Mexico State Legislature, the progressives are challenging the conservative Dems for leadership; the same is true in Congress. If you can't stand to work in the party, work on putting mass pressure on issues such as healthcare and jobs and the war from outside.
Here's my mantra: "Let's put this country on our shoulders and get to work."
What? No bombs? No domestic terrorism?
Rudd isn't the only member of the Weathermen writing on The Rag Blog. Jeff Jones also weighs in on Obama.
I agree with Mark Rudd's perceptive article Let's Get Smart About Obama in The Rag Blog.
The writing style of Audacity of Hope reveals how complex and perceptive Obama is: he is hyper-literate, almost Ciceronian, and unlike most of his speeches, amazingly precise. He expresses what he thinks and feels without resorting to binary thinking. He does not interpret reality in black and white terms: he is the nation's first post-modern president.
All of this leads me to the same conclusion reached by Mark Rudd: this guy is really SMART. He is setting Hillary Clinton up to be the public face of his effort to end the Iraq war. He is going to sucessfully extort green concessions from Detroit. He will convince Congress to pass a major stimulus package that will lay the foundation for the development of an alternative energy manufacturing industry. He will do something to help reduce housing foreclosures. He will let the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire.
These various initiatives, which will collectively set the nation on a path towards energy independence, ending the war and redistributing financial resources downward, are presented as unconnected pieces of legislation but actually they are interlocking components of Obama's coherent multi-layered agenda. His centrist appointments are a smokescreen; they co-opt the moderate center, but he's still the commander in chief. Even Lenin would be impressed!
Jones, too, is impressed with Obama. He thinks Obama is "really SMART." (Note Jones' use of all caps. When he says "SMART," he means it.)
Jones doesn't believe that those "centrist appointments" are a sign that Obama is moving to the center. To the contrary, they're a smokescreen. SMART!
Obama's cabinet appointments serve to "co-opt the moderate center," but he is still the big guy, the "commander in chief."
Jones thinks Obama's moves are so brilliant that "[e]ven Lenin would be impressed!"
There's a ringing endorsement.
Do you find that reassuring, that radical Leftists like Rudd and Jones, founding members of Weatherman (the Weather Underground), people who sought to violently overthrow the U.S. government, believe that Obama will deliver on an agenda that will please them?
I don't. I find it more than a bit unsettling.
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