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Running to the Right: Barack Obama's DLC strategy
By Bruce Dixon
Back
in
2003, when Obama was a candidate for the US Senate
in the Illinois Democratic primary this reporter and
Glen Ford challenged him on the fact that the Democratic
Leadership Council, the right-wing, corporate-funded
Trojan Horse inside the Democratic party had fervently
embraced his political career, naming him one of its
“100 to Watch” for 2003.
DLC
endorsement is the gold standard of political
reliability for Wall Street, Big Energy, Big Pharma,
insurance, the airlines and more. Though candidates
normally undergo extensive questioning and interviews
before DLC endorsement, Obama insisted the blessing of
these corporate special interests had been bestowed on
him without these formalities and without his advance
knowledge, and formally disassociated himself from the
DLC. But like Hillary Clinton, and every front running
Democrat since Michale Dukakis in 1988, Barack Obama's
campaign has adopted the classic right wing DLC
strategy.
In the
DLC playbook, the road to winning elections is appealing
to Republican-leaning white voters – demographic groups
which pollsters and consultants in previous elections
called “suburban soccer moms”, NASCAR dads,” and before
that “Reagan Democrats.” Candidates do this by decrying
excessive partisanship, embracing “free trade” and
“conservative” values, and displays of public piety,
Though Obama has no formal ties with the DLC he has
assiduously followed this prescription. Till a month ago
Obama led every candidate among white men, an
unprecedented achievement for a Democrat.
But
after less than a month of sustained and often racist
attacks from the likes of Fox News, CNN, Republican
pundits and Hillary Clinton supporters, Obama's support
among Republican-leaning white voters has sharply
eroded. Dr. Adolph Reed, a black professor of Political
Science at the University of Pennsylvania explained why
in an April 30 Democracy Now
interview,
“...Obama opened himself to this by leaning to—on the
premise that he can appeal to Republicans and to
conservatives and by parading his personal faith around.
And frankly—this is, I guess, the crux of my argument in
The
Progressive
column—that this is precisely the tactic that has
been the undoing of every Democratic candidate since
Dukakis, and I would frankly even include (Bill) Clinton
in that, were it not for the fact that Ross Perot
siphoned votes away from the Republicans each time. I
mean, this is what happened with Gore in 2000, it’s what
happened with Kerry in 2004. You present yourself as
electable because you can appeal to conservative voters,
and then the Republicans attack you for not being a true
conservative and can characterize you as someone who’s
trying to put something over on the American people.
It
worked for a while. Barack Obama followed the DLC script
to the letter for the last two years, publicly
scolding Democrats for their insufficient piety,
liberally borrowing from Republican talking points. He
advertised himself as grounded by his personal
relationship with Jesus, and by the faith tradition of
the Black Church. But after Obama's Philadelphia speech
on race, in which he characterized his pastor as a crazy
old uncle stuck in the fifties and sixties, the Black
Church was compelled to speak for itself. Rev. Jeremiah
Wright, retiring pastor at Trinity UCC made a series of
speeches and appearances in which he likened US Marines
to Roman soldiers, described hundreds of US bases around
the world as “empire” before the National Press Club,
and refused to retreat from the contention that 9-11 was
a preventable consequence of US foreign policy.
To
preserve his support among whites which Obama won
without challenging any of their fundamental beliefs
about America, empire, Obama was forced to denounce his
pastor's words as “akin to hate speech” and disavow his
church, and with it the prophetic tradition of
Christianity and the Black Church in particular. But
this, and joining a prosperity-Gospel mega-church will
not be enough. From this point on, all Republicans have
to do is prove to their base that Obama is not as
conservative as he once appeared, which they will do by
pointing to his pastor and the prophetic tradition of
the Black Church in general. They can, in fact, point to
any stirrings of black or grassroots outrage or
militancy anywhere, which Obama will want to ignore
anyway, and demand a ringing denunciation from Barack
Obama. When Obama gets his way, he will be silent,
sticking to content-free appeals to “unity”. And when
Republicans prevail they will force him to denounce at
every turn the grassroots activists he should be
supporting.
By
contrast, the 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns of
Rev. Jesse Jackson won white support too, but embraced
the burden of challenging white American assumptions
about the essential goodness of America, about empire,
and race and class. If you were organizing against
police brutality or farm foreclosures, organizing a
union or protesting the illegal war in Central America,
the campaign in many cases came to you and augmented
your local efforts. The Obama must campaign avoid this
kind of activism like Dracula avoids crosses, because
its candidate's appeal is based on challenging none of
the fake history, none of the racism, injustice and
unearned privilege at the heart of American life.
The
Jackson campaign, at least, was honest about the
obstacles to a real politics of transformation in
America.
For
the 21st century's first black presidential
candidate, “change” is to be accomplished through a
content-free sort of “unity”. Again, Dr. Reed helps us
understand what is happening.
”...the contention that the candidate can bring us all
together despite our partisan differences is the same
thing that the Democrats have been claiming consistently
since at least, you know, Dukakis, to be post-partisan,
to be post-political. And frankly, I think it
appeals—it’s an appeal that gets greatest traction among
people who want to take politics out of politics...”
Taking
the politics out of politics, and out of black politics
in particular is what Barack Obama must do to carry out
his DLC strategy and retain his white base without
teaching them anything they don't want to know. When the
NYC police officers who pumped 51 bullets into an
unarmed man and a hail of bullets into adjacent homes
and a transit station were exonerated, Barack Obama
could not bring himself to suggest that black life ought
to be respected, that police officers should obey the
law, that an Obama Justice Department would look
carefully at this kind of thing, or even to feign
concern for the victims and their families. His only
comments were that we were “a nation of laws” and that
we should “respect the verdict”. When 25,000
longshoremen on the US West Coast staged a
one-day strike on May 1 against the war in Iraq, the
Obama campaign said nothing about the power of people
standing together to “bring change”. When US warplanes,
which fire missiles and drop bombs almost daily over
oil-rich Somalia killed 15 civilians last week, Obama
was silent, despite having traveled in the region as
recently as last year.
When
he does speak, it won't be good news. Republicans are
sure to escalate their demands, insisting that Barack
Obama denounce a list of black and progressive
organizations, activities, beliefs and individuals to
retain his share of their base. And as long as Obama is
wedded to the DLC strategy, he will eagerly comply.
If
there was an actual mass-based progressive movement in
the US, operating on the ground and independent of
political parties and campaigns, it might have a prayer
of holding Barack Obama accountable. But there isn't.
Bruce Dixon is Managing Editor at Black Agenda Report,
and can be reached at
bruce.dixon@blackagendareport.com
Source:
BlackAgendaReport
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posted 7 May 2008 |
