The Fierce Urgency of Now

Presidential politics continues it’s onward march towards November, with the Obamacare ruling now in the rear view mirror. The affirmation was another big political win for the President, who has faced down the “Democrats always lose” cliché and come up a winner on a few big issues:

• Immigration reform: Swing states overwhelmingly support the President’s move to halt deportations.
• Same-sex marriage: the President’s endorsement of same sex marriage appears to have pushed public opinion over the hump and into the favorable column – including in the African-American community.
• Health Care Reform: after the Supreme Court’s affirmation of Obamacare, polls have found support on the rise for the legislation across the board, with support now nearing 50%.

The icing on the cake is that coupled with these political wins, the Obama campaign has, without question, has dropped the centrist triangulation that we are used to from Democratic campaigns such as Clinton and Kerry, using issues such as same-sex marriage, income inequality, and fairness as issues to draw a very clear line of distinction between the President and Mitt Romney. It’s pretty clear that President Obama has, for the most part, delivered the goods as promised in 2008 to his progressive base – with many of those legislative wins coming in the face of a Tea Party controlled house. A glance at some big progressive wins during the first four years of Obama’s term:

• Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
• Passage of first major healthcare legislation in over 40 years
• Equal pay for women (Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act)
• Ending the war in Iraq
• Saving the American auto industry
• Made sexual orientation a protected federal class for hate crimes
• First sitting President to endorse same-sex marriage
• Halting deportations of DREAM-act eligible immigrants

We could go on and on, but I think it’s fair to say that most did not expect even half of this list to happen before the end of the President’s first term.

The constant refrain from the left after another Democratic campaign loss was “Just run to the left – be a REAL Democrat!”. Barack Obama has offered liberals the chance to finally prove that statement right. While the idea that the Obama administration is “liberal” in the grand scheme of things is questionable, in terms of the American scale, Barack Obama is the most liberal President we’ve had in over 30 years, and his recent moves to the left have now left progressives with no excuses – this is the guy, now is the time, and this is the moment. Miles Mogulescu explains the importance of November’s election:

Such a victory for a Republicans -- the most virulently reactionary American political party in historical memory -- would likely result in British/European-style austerity that would plunge a country already experiencing an unnecessarily slow recovery from the deepest recession since the 1930's into a full-blown depression. It would likely lead to tax cuts for the wealthy that would only increase the economic inequality between the top 1% (and top 0.01%) and the 99% that has been widening since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. It would likely lead to the unraveling of the economic reforms of the Progressive era, the New Deal, and the Great Society including Medicare and Social Security, which have done so much to turn America into the first largely middle class society in history. It would unravel even the relatively mild regulation of Too Big To Fail Banks of the Obama administration and make another financial crisis more likely. It would restore the neocons to leadership of American foreign policy which could lead to further unnecessary wars. It would lead to the appointment of up to three new Supreme Court Justices in the mold of Scalia/Alito/Thomas who would block progressive reforms for a generation to come.

In addition to the non-political ramifications of a Romney victory, it would also serve as a sign to both parties that liberals were wrong – that if someone campaigned to the left, it would just result in a loss. It would provide validation and a mandate to the neo-conservative right to move our country’s Overton window to the right at an even faster rate – destroying civil rights gains for minorities, LGBT’s, women, and even religious minorities. The America of Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann could very well become a reality – threatening to halt the liberalization of the next generation of Americans.

So when you think about this November, keep in mind that this could be our last chance to put up a major fight against the continued shifting of our country’s political spectrum to the right – our last opportunity to take back the real America from the far right, Christian fundamentalists who want to rule our country as the American Taliban.