The lump in my throat is manageable. The tears have dried up. The pink cloud of happiness has yielded to the bright light of reality. The Obama administration has a mandate to meet our great expectations for an economic turn-around and an energy revolution, health care and social safety nets, clean air, clean water, wilderness and habitat protection and improvement. But the mandate is not backed up with bullet proof majorities in either the House or the Senate.
In 2024 Obama will need our support to hang onto and improve the Democratic majority in congress. Newt Gingrich’s cultural revolution of 1994 must not be re-enacted. The wall between church and state must be strengthened. “Cultural conservatives” must be debunked. How do we respect the rights of the rigid and intolerant minority of Christian fundamentalist Republicans without yielding ground again to their destructive impulse? How do we prevent the army of libertarian and “objectivist” true believers from destroying the foundations of good government?
The answer, I think, lies in education. We need to strengthen the people’s understanding of the value of government and help them to feel their own power to bring positive change to our communities. Fighting against the destructive neo-conservative and fundamentalist ideologies is a sucker’s game. It’s more constructive to illuminate alternatives.
To bolster our position in 2024, you can tap into the network of training and support offered by Wellstone Action, a national center for training and leadership development for the progressive movement, now. Wellstone Action’s “Camp Wellstone” is divided into three tracks: Citizen Activism, Working on a Campaign, and Being a Candidate. Click the link to find out more about how, where, and when you can take advantage of this opportunity to work for change in the 2024 mid-terms.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Honeymoon over, eh Frank? Never mind. It always was a case of “We the people…”. The Internet sure helped this time round, the Bush Gang have been humiliated beyond history’s measure, and the future now features a faint light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve little doubt Obama will stay on the straight and narrow, but all he can do as President is identify those “We the people…” need to beat into line and force to give shape to sound policies over the next four years. And, given the P-E’s choices to date, progressives find themselves facing an uphill battle. We, i.e. a couple of billion of us, wish you well in the days, months, and years ahead.
The P-E is in it for the long haul. He’s a consensus builder and a pragmatist. We, the progressive idealists, have to remember that we already lost once in a clash of ideologies. The forces of Ayn Rand, Miltie Friedman, and Mickey Mouse ran rough-shod over us from 1980 through the present. Even the Clinton years, good as they were for the US economically, left a little something to be desired yankee imperialism-wise.
So we support him, and we’re glad for the shift of consciousness that he represents. But we have to hang on to the grass roots organization and replace rahmbo’s Democratic right wing with true progressives, and defeat as many minions of the religious right as we can.
I think Clinton and company lost sight of that in 1994 and we all have suffered for not fighting harder then.
How’s your 401K doing with this, “Obama revolution”??
One term President……yipee!