Blog

Congressional Republicans are still trying to persuade Americans that they are focused on job creation, but each time they propose another piece of legislation, it is exposed as a gimmick that will do little, if anything, to create jobs. Such was the case with their anti-regulatory policies, their attempts to repeal health care reform, and virtually every other policy proposal they have brought forth.

Next up in that line, unfortunately, is a rehashed form of a radical Balanced Budget Amendment, a plan that according to recent analyses would actually cost America 15 million jobs. But thanks to the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, the Republicans won’t be alone in their chase for a radical budget amendment that could help push the country back into the throes of recession.

Despite the fact that House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said yesterday he would encourage his party to vote against the radical plan, Blue Dog Democrats endorsed the amendment on a press call today, Politico’s Marin Cogan reported on Twitter. ThinkProgress confirmed that endorsement with a spokesperson for Rep. Mike Ross (D-AR), the Blue Dog Coalition’s co-chair for communications. According to the Hill, Ross said on the call that Blue Dogs favored such an amendment “before balanced budget amendments were cool”:

“We were advancing a balanced budget amendment when balanced budget amendments weren’t cool,” a co-chairman of the coalition, Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.), told reporters on a conference call. [...]

“If any Blue Dog does not vote for it, I’d have to question how much they’re a Blue Dog,” [Blue Dog Rep. Jim] Matheson [D-UT] said.

It’s hard to overestimate the negative effects such an amendment would have on the country’s economy. In addition to destroying millions of jobs, it would force such massive spending cuts that House Republicans’ own budget would be unconstitutional. According to a recent study by Macroeconomic Advisers, enacting a BBA now would double the nation’s unemployment rate and cause the economy to shrink by 17 percent — a far cry from the 2 percent projected growth that would occur with no such amendment.

Unfortunately, according to another analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the consequences get worse. The draconian budget cuts caused by a Balanced Budget Amendment would forice lawmakers to gut Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), among other programs, the analysis found:

“The constitutional balanced budget amendment that the House is expected to consider this week could force Congress to cut all programs by an average of 17.3 percent by 2018.

“If revenues are not raised (the House-passed budget resolution assumes no increase above current-policy levels) and all programs are cut by the same percentage, Social Security would be cut $184 billion in 2018 alone and almost $1.2 trillion through 2021; Medicare would be cut $117 billion in 2018 and about $750 billion through 2021; and Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) would be cut $80 billion in 2018 and about $500 billion through 2021.”

In order to preserve those programs, Congress would have to cut ridiculously deep into every other program. Yesterday, economists around the country warned Congress that enacting widespread budget cuts and other austerity measures now would have perilous consequences for the American economy, pushing the country to the brink of a second deep recession. Today, unfortunately, Blue Dog Democrats decided not only to ignore those warnings, but to endorse an even bigger, deeper austerity plan.

***

This material [article] was created by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. This entry originally appeared at thinkprogress.org.

***

Travis Waldron is a reporter/blogger for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Travis grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and holds a BA in journalism and political science from the University of Kentucky. Before joining ThinkProgress, he worked as a press aide at the Health Information Center and as a staffer on Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway’s 2010 Senate campaign.

By Isaiah J. Poole
Executive editor of the blog site OurFuture.org

The conservative Blue Dog House Democrats, who borrowed heavily from Republican and Tea Party themes in an effort to save their jobs, floundered badly Tuesday. Meanwhile, Progressive Caucus members in contested races had much better success at getting re-elected in spite of some strong right-wing assaults.

Of the 54 seats occupied by members of the Blue Dog coalition, 27 of them were lost to Republicans. (That includes five held by incumbents who either retired or ran for the Senate.) On the other hand, all but three of the much larger group of Progressive Caucus members up for re-election won their seats, including six out of nine caucus members whose races were rated as competitive.

The three Progressive caucus members who lost their seats to Republicans are Reps. Alan Grayson, Fla., Phil Hare, Ill., and John Hall, N.Y. A fourth Progressive Caucus member, Carolyn Cheeks Kirkpatrick of Michigan, was defeated in a primary; her successor, Democrat Hansen Clarke, won 79 percent of the vote Tuesday. (more…)

 

I am a retired railroad worker of 32 years. I have been a union worker all my life. I put four years in the U.S. Navy. I can say that life was never easy, and it was always a struggle economically. Now that I am retired a little over two years I am starting to feel the economic pinch more and more, especially with higher prices on everything and a two-year freeze in the Cost of Living Adjustment. There are many, many others who have it worse off than me though! Jobs are tough to come by, and unemployment is way too high.

I remember in the mid 1960s I thought things would get better and better. We had the civil rights marches and Martin Luther King, and we had John F. Kennedy. Unions were coming on strong, and there was more wealth for workers. Unfortunately things changed and we lost John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Things started to change when we got Ronald Reagan and he broke the Air Traffic Controllers union! That put out the signal that the unions were fair game!

The Democrats we have had after Kennedy have been Corporate Presidents. Kennedy was the last president who truly was in favor of workers and the middle class. All the Democrats after that have been weak and have not had any backbone. That is because there are too many (Blue Dogs) which I call Dirty Dogs!!

Michael Cmero Sr.
Carmel,  N.Y.
Retired Railroad Worker

***

To submit a blog to Free Speech Zone, e-mail it to bstack@usw.org. Keep it to 250 words or fewer. You MUST include your full name, hometown, and state. You may attach a photograph of yourself. Please include a phone number. This WILL NOT be published. Posting any given blog is within the discretion of the USW.  No blog using foul language (this is a family site), false information (we don’t want to get sued), or unnecessary personal attacks (again, we don’t want to get sued) will be used. Wait a reasonable period of time, then blog again! This is a Free Speech Zone. 

 By Mike Elk
Of Campaign for America’s Future

In 1986, I was born in Rep. John Murtha’s district in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. Two years later, card-carrying ACLU member Michael Dukakis carried the county by an 11-point margin in a year in which he won only nine states nationally. Despite being a rural, basically all-white county, it stuck by Dukakis due to the concentration of union manufacturing jobs in the district.

Yet in 2008 my home county voted for Republican Sen. John McCain by a 17-point margin. What happened between those years? Democrats sold out on NAFTA, the North American Free-Trade Agreement, and thousands of manufacturing jobs disappeared. Voters in Murtha’s district started voting Republican because they felt betrayed by the Democrats. In 2008, Murtha’s district was the only district in the country that voted for Sen. John Kerry in 2004 and then voted McCain in 2008.

While Democrats were voted out at the national level in Murtha’s district, Murtha was re-elected repeatedly because he brought home defense manufacturing jobs and fought against unfair trade deals. When Murtha died, many political analysts said that no other Democrat would be able to hold onto his district. What they should have said is that no Democrat running on the national Democratic jobs platform could have won.

Instead, Democrat Mark Critz ran on a much more progressive platform of job creation through trade reform. He blasted his Republican candidate for being in favor of tax loopholes that favor companies that outsource jobs, even as the Obama Administration just this week used a lobbyist memo to claim that outsourcing created jobs. On a side note, Critz also blasted his opponent for supporting a value-added tax, something the Obama administration is also considering.

The lesson should be clear: Trade reform is a hugely popular issue on both the left and right. Many conservative Democrats, such as Heath Shuler of North Carolina, used trade issues to propel themselves into office in 2006. In 2008, President Obama pledged to renegotiate NAFTA, something McCain was against, in order to win Ohio. (However, renegotiating trade deals is considered laughable within the Administration now.)

Trade is also an area where the so called “populist” Tea Party is weak. There is absolutely no mention of trade reform in the Tea Party’s official “Contract From America.” (See Roger Bybee’s great piece on this problem for the Tea Party Movement.) Democrats could easily then seize the high ground on trade.

Trade is an issue that candidates can win on in 2010. Start by passing the Promoting American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010, which would extend unemployment benefits, COBRA subsidies, and provide money for jobs programs. In addition, the bill would close tax loopholes that make it profitable for companies to outsource jobs. Blue Dog Democrats have been wary to pass this bill up to this point, but as Blue Dog Mark Critz’s experience shows, getting tough on trade is good election politics.

However, if President Obama really wanted to win over voters he could do it by fulfilling his campaign pledge to renegotiate NAFTA (a pledge now considered “laughable” within the Administration). Then Obama could fulfill another campaign promise by slapping tariffs on illegal Chinese currency manipulation which make Chinese goods 25-40% cheaper than American goods.

The great thing about renegotiating NAFTA and slapping tariffs on China is that by law Obama doesn’t need congressional approval to do it. He could do it unilaterally and send a huge signal to voters that he, along with those who support this policy, on the side of American workers. The president could use these steps to lay out a bold vision for an industrial policy to rebuild America.

Part of the America’s Future Now conference in Washington D.C. from June 7-9 will be devoted to strategy on how the progressive movement can move the president to do this. Speakers such as Van Jones, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, AFL CIO President Richard Trumka, Arianna Huffington will offer a build vision for how the progressive movement can rebuild America’s economy and put people back to work. Click here to attend.

 ***

Follow Mike Elk on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MikeElk

***

This piece was re-posted from The Campaign for America’s Future Blog for OurFuture

By Robert Borasage
Co-Director of the Campaign for America’s Future

The editors of the Wall Street Journal say that the public option in health care reform has been “sent to the death panel.” Obama “concedes” the public option, reports the Financial Times. Even liberals seem to agree. The public option is “all but gone,” writes Bob Herbert of the New York Times. The American Prospect’s Mark Schmitt mourns its “likely death.”

Nonsense. There is no reason to exaggerate the strength of the small tong of conservative Democrats and claque of obstructionist Republicans standing in the way of reform. Here’s the reality:

Offering a public plan as a choice to compete with the private insurance companies has continued strong support in polling. President Obama favors it. The Democratic leadership in both the House and the Senate support it. More importantly, a majority of legislators in the House and a broad majority of Democrats in the Senate will vote for it. Needless to say, the activist base of the party thinks it vital.

The only question is whether a small minority of Democrats in the Senate will dig themselves into such a rabid fever that they would sabotage health care reform itself to stop the public option. Whether their animus derives from ideology or insurance company contributions, it is inconceivable that a handful of Blue Dogs in the House or conservative Dems in the Senate would block the president’s key reform to make their point. It would also be suicidal, for if 1994 is any indication, Democrats particularly those from more conservative districts will pay a harsh price at the polls in 2010 if they fail to pass reform.

Citizens can help concentrate their minds. Legislators have heard from the screamers in the town meetings. They’ve been besieged by legions of insurance company lobbyists. They’ve comforted seniors terrified by the lies being peddled. Now it is time for them to hear from the majority of citizens, and the vast majority of Democratic voters who want health care reform that works, one that includes both a public plan as an option to compete with the insurance companies, and the lower drug prices that will result from enabling Medicare to use its buying power to gain discounts for patients.

There are a lot of talking heads out arguing that the “left” shouldn’t be so extreme as to risk health care reform by insisting on the public option or the lifting of the absurd ban on negotiating lower drug prices. The reality is exactly the reverse. It is the handful of Blue Dogs and conservative Democrats in the House and Senate that are standing in the way of the majority in favor of a comprehensive plan. The question isn’t whether the progressive majority is unreasonably resisting reform to save the public option. The question is whether a small minority of conservative Democrats will sabotage reform simply to stop the public option.

Substantively, passing health care reform without a public plan to compete with the insurance companies makes no sense. As Jonathan Walker details, it would be an insurance company bonanza, as the government requires the uninsured to get health insurance – supplying the companies with millions of young and healthy customers – while eliminating the option of a competing government run plan that, in Obama’s words, can “keep the insurance companies honest.” For a country that must get health care costs under control, reform without the government plan as an option is irresponsible.

Similarly, President Obama and virtually every Democrat in Congress were right to campaign against the obscene provision in the prescription drug plan, the iconic symbol of the corrupt Republican Congress, that actually prohibits Medicare from negotiating lower prices for drugs. Democrats cannot pass reform without erasing that folly, and gaining lower drug prices for seniors on Medicare and for taxpayers paying much of the tab.

Politically, comprehensive reform can pass only if Democrats unite. The effort to gain bipartisan support was torpedoed by the leading Republican negotiator, Senator Charles Grassley, when he revealed his is true colors by embracing the vicious inanity about “death panels.” He aligned himself with the wingnuts, and there is simply no reason or way to negotiate with lunacy. The only thing Senator Max Baucus has achieved with his supposed negotiations is endless delay. The only thing he promises is more delay. Conservative Dems now are trotting out an ill-defined national co-op as an alternative to the public option. Most experts dismiss this as unworkable. More to the point, the Republican National Committee scorns it as a “government take over of health care.” Negotiations and concessions have produced zero Republican commitments to join reform.

Instead it is time for Democrats to unite and move. Pass a bill out of the House and put it before the Senate with the president behind it. Push the minority of Democrats standing in the way to join the majority. Then let Republicans try to filibuster it. Even if against parts of the bill, no Democrat with a working frontal lobe will vote for the filibuster and join Republicans to deny the president a majority vote on this critical reform. If Kennedy and Byrd are unable to vote, then we’ll need two Republicans. The few that haven’t gone over to pure obstruction will have to decide if they are prepared to stop a vote on reform. If the filibuster is defeated, then we just need 50 votes to pass the bill – and there is no reason why a bill with a robust public option and lower prescription drug prices can’t gain 50 votes from Democrats in the Senate.

Admittedly this is still a heavy lift. But the reality is that a plan without a public option cannot and should not get through the Congress. Over 60 House Progressives have made it clear that they won’t vote for a plan without a robust public option. That isn’t not a minority standing against reform; it is a minority expressing the majority opinion in the House, the party, and the country. (To support the progressive legislators that are leading this go here.)

Why would a handful of Blue Dogs get in the way of a unified position? A government plan as an option isn’t a difficult political vote. The hard choice is voting for any comprehensive reform and they will pay a much higher political price for failing to produce than for voting for a public option. The only reason to block a plan is either ideological rigidity, or the corrupting influence of insurance company contributions. In this circumstance, citizen mobilization can help educate the recalcitrant on the need to join the president and the majority of the party.

Less than a Full Loaf

Some reporters suggest that Obama is signaling that he’s ready to abandon the public plan. In fact, Obama has been consistent. He has argued for the public option, while stating that he’s prepared to negotiate any part of the deal to get majority support for something that works. He’s for a public option, but it isn’t a deal breaker for him.

Former President Bill Clinton came to the Netroots Nation convention last week. He was in his full glory – smart, funny, wounded, a repository of policy and politics. His core message was that it is “imperative for the Democrats to pass a health care bill now,” telling bloggers that “the president needs your help and the cause needs your help.” Since we need reform to pass, he argued, we can’t let the perfect be enemy of the good. So Clinton urged the liberal activists to keep fighting for what they want, but be ready to accept “less than a full loaf.” This is a message better delivered by the former president to his old Blue Dog and New Dem gang – to the handful of conservative Dems standing in the way, not to folks supporting the broad majority in agreement with the president.

And Clinton inadvertently sent the bloggers a very different message. Lane Hudson interrupted his speech to challenge him on the unconscionable “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays in the military. Clinton’s famed temper flared as he defended himself:

“You wanna talk about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” I’ll tell you exactly what happened. You couldn’t deliver me any support in the Congress and they voted by a veto-proof majority in both houses against my attempt to let gays serve in the military, and the media supported them. They raised all kinds of devilment. And all most of you did was to attack me instead of getting some support in the congress. Now, that’s the truth.”

Well, not quite, since many of the bloggers in the audience were teenagers or younger when this debate took place. But the former president provided clear strategic insight for the current moment. We don’t want a former President Obama to say, a decade from now, that the reason we didn’t get a public option was that we “couldn’t deliver” any support for him in the Congress. It’s time to deliver that support.

So no surrender; no retreat. Don’t start embracing “half a loaf,” or thumb-sucking about the reasons for the demise of the public option. Real reform has the support in the country, the Democratic Party, the House of Representatives and the White House. It has support of a majority of Democrats in the Senate. Now it is time to deliver the president the votes he needs for the public option he favors. Full court press on the handful of Democrats that are standing in the way, and then real pressure on the two or three Republicans who have yet to surrender to the obstructionist extremes of their party.

Pull out the stops. Do whatever you can think about doing to weigh in at this time – and then enlist your friends to join you. We are very close. We don’t have to overcome a presidential veto, or the opposition of the congressional leadership. All we need to do is to get Democrats and a couple Republicans to commit to giving the president a majority vote on this critical reform, and then get 50 members of the Senate to join the majority of the House in supporting it. Forget the naysayers. This is in reach. Let’s make it happen.< >< >< >< ><–>

By David Sirota
Political journalist, best-selling author and syndicated newspaper columnist

The health care debate has reminded us that there really are three separate but coordinated armies that defend the status quo in Washington — and will defend that status quo, whether on health care or any other economic issue. In my newspaper column today, I look at who these factions are, and what their motives are. You can read the column here.

In a nutshell, you have the Land Rover Liberals, many coming from the 14 out of 25 wealthiest congressional districts that Democrats now represent. Right now, their opposition to health care and tax reform is being led by Boulder, Colorado Rep. Jared Polis (D).

You also have the Corrupt Cowboys — those lawmakers from very poor, mostly Southern and Western parts of the country. These people give themselves Americana sounding nicknames like “Blue Dog Democrats” or “Main Street Republicans” so as to pretend their opposition to health care comes from their being down home guys “representin’ the folks back home.” Of course, these same lawmakers are among the most rapacious corporate fundraisers and lobbyist-connected insiders in Congress. And as I pointed out yesterday, there’s no evidence that the districts and states the Corrupt Cowboys represent despise health reform by virtue of the fact that they are culturally conservative bastions. In fact, Nate Silver says there’s exactly the opposite evidence:

There’s not really any evidence that health care reform is unpopular in the Blue Dog districts. Although there are exceptions, most of the Blue Dog districts are fairly poor. A Quinnipiac poll released earlier this month suggested that while 53 percent of voters overall think “think it’s the government’s responsibility to make sure that everyone in the United States has adequate health care,” 61 percent of voters making under $50,000 do. Also, while Quinnipaic did not break out the results for moderate and conservative Democrats, which are plentiful in these Districts, one can reasonably infer them. In this poll, 79 percent of liberals agreed with the statement as did 77 percent of Democrats — not a very big difference. Since almost all liberals are Democrats and about half of all Democrats are liberals, that suggests that support for health care reform among non-liberal Democrats is something like 75 percent.

Thus, the story about the honest, god-fearing, good ol’ boy cowboys opposing health care reform out of representational obligation has only been able to become conventional wisdom through the Millionaire Media — the elite national press corps, chock full of very wealthy people, that disseminates the most pernicious kind of anti-reform propaganda. These are the same people who insisted we should immediately rush $12 trillion in bailout cash out to Wall Street speculators, and who now insist that 64 years of debates over a $1 trillion health care proposal is inappropriately “rushing” health care reform. They are also the voices who are actually deriding health care reform as an inhumane proposal to legislatively waterboard the poor, persecuted richest one percent.

In the column, I look at the motives of all these groups, and give President Obama huge props for taking them on. As a sometime critic of Obama, I really think he’s doing a fantastic job right now, and the news this morning from the New York Times that “the president planning trips across the country” to campaign for health care reform is just fantastic. He’s going to have to take on the three groups I discuss in my column — and if he can beat them, we’re going to get universal health care.

Read the whole column here.

The column relies on grassroots support — and because of that support, it is getting wider and wider circulation (a big thank you to all who have helped with that). So if you’d like to see my column regularly in your local paper, use this directory to find the contact info for your local editorial page editors. Get get in touch with them and point them to my Creators Syndicate site. Thanks, as always, for your ongoing readership and help contacting local editors. This column couldn’t be what it is without your help.

***

David Sirota is the bestselling author of “Hostile Takeover” (2006) and “The Uprising” (2008). Contact him at ds@davidsirota.com.

 

Robert Borosage

Robert L. Borosage

Co-Director Campaign for America’s Future

Conservatives hail the Obama appointments; progressives express misgivings. Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill celebrates Obama as “pragmatic,” which she says may dismay some “on the left.” David Corn says this isn’t the change progressives voted for. The media wallows in the “disappointment of the left.”

Welcome to the new “post-partisan” world, in the silly season on political punditry. Turns out the center has triumphed once again. But that, of course, depends on what you mean by center.

Last weekend, pragmatic centrist Barack Obama called for a bold recovery plan, grounded on strategic public investment rather than tax cuts to “help save or create” 2.5 million jobs, “while rebuilding our infrastructure, improving our schools, reducing our dependence on oil and saving billions of dollars.” Elements that would include a “massive effort” to make federal buildings energy efficient, the “largest investment in roads and bridges since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s, “the most sweeping” program to upgrade and repair the nation’s schools; and a new push to extend broadband to every corner of the country. While refusing to talk numbers, Obama pledged to “do what’s required to jolt this economy back into shape,” with anonymous advisors suggesting $500-700 billion as a possible price tag.

In scope and substance, Obama’s plan tracks the elements of the Main Street Recovery Program, released by the Campaign for America’s Future, and endorsed by over 100 unions, citizen action, women’s, environmental and other progressive groups, and some 120 progressive economists. (To see the program, endorse or improve it, go here)

Now Republicans are reinventing their Keynesian heritage. Emil Henry, an assistant Treasury Secretary under Bush, writes that “investment in key infrastructure is consistent with Reagan principles,” and that investment in “renewable energy will be key in our future.” William Kristol suggests “small government Republicans” are virtually extinct, and suggests that Republicans support a “huge public works stimulus plan,” only insist on directing the dollars to the “underfunded defense procurement rather than to fanciful green technologies.” (Now that’s a winning agenda: apparently spending about as much as the rest of the world combined on our military isn’t enough.)

Bill Sher in his invaluable “progressive breakfast; memo, writes that now rabidly anti-government conservative business lobbies like The Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers are climbing on the infrastructure bandwagon.

Welcome to the new center: post-partisan progressivism. “We’re all Keynesians now,” Richard Nixon once famously announced. And now the catastrophic failures of conservatism have set the stage for a new era of progressive reform. The election gave Obama a mandate and a majority for progressive reform: an end to the war in Iraq, health care for all, investment in new energy and education. He doesn’t seem to have backed off on any of his major commitments yet. And the economic crisis is forcing an ever bolder response, driving the entire “center” to the left.

So to all the newborn progressives — the DLC émigrés, the Third Way centrists, the Blue Dogs and abashed Cons — welcome to the new center. And get ready for the most intense period of progressive reform since the Great Society. Only one thing. As the economic crisis gets worse and goes global, don’t settle in. We’ve only begun to define the new economy which will come out of the collapse of the old.

By Robert L. Borosage

Co-Director Campaign for America’s Future

Today, in the New York Times, an Institute for America’s Future op ad calls on us to “remember who we are,” comparing the present crisis with that our parents and grandparents faced at dawn of the New Deal. To see the ad, go here.

If, as seems likely, Obama is elected and Democrats win greater majorities in both houses of Congress, will we witness a new era of bold progressive change – a 21st century Green New Deal? Certainly many of the elements are present:

.. “their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They only know the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.”

In his “closing” for the election, Obama is already issuing a similar moral indictment. He too is calling Americans to come together, to trust one another.

In one week, you can turn the page on policies that have put the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street….

I know these are difficult times for America. But I also know that we have faced difficult times before. The American story has never been about things coming easy – it’s been about rising to the moment when the moment was hard. It’s about seeing the highest mountaintop from the deepest of valleys. It’s about rejecting fear and division for unity of purpose. That’s how we’ve overcome war and depression. That’s how we’ve won great struggles for civil rights and women’s rights and worker’s rights. And that’s how we’ll emerge from this crisis stronger and more prosperous than we were before – as one nation; as one people.

Does all this add up to a new era of bold reform? Two more elements are vital.

Obama will face the same choice in the worst economic crisis since that Great Depression. Yet, today’s conditions are far less dire. Many voices will counsel caution. Many will tell him to limit his priorities. Many will warn of unsustainable debts and deficits. What he decides is needed will be telling.

The current progressive movement is neither as organized nor as grounded. Some good many are pure Obama fans. Some – including much of the best of the bloggers – grew up in opposition to the war in Iraq and the crimes and catastrophes of the Bush administration. They are scornful of compromised Democrats, suspicious of a leadership that didn’t end the war, cynical about the many corruptions of modern day politicians. Most of the organized progressive movement has spent the last years fighting to stop bad things from happening. Will a progressive movement come together that is independent enough to push Obama hard to go father than he might otherwise go, and responsible enough to help support reforms, and go after those in both parties that stand in the way? The Obama White House will clearly prefer the remarkable base that they have built during the campaign, ready to be mobilized in his support. Will they come to appreciate the benefits of an independent progressive movement demanding more than they think is possible?

Inheriting a country mired in two wars, headed into a deep and long recession, marked by Gilded Age inequality and growing insecurity, the next president will face stark challenges. If Obama is elected, he will have the moment, mandate, momentum, and moral armament to launch a new era of bold progressive reform. And in the coming months, if all goes well on Tuesday, we will learn if he has the audacity of hope to undertake it, and whether progressives can forge a force for change to propel it.