Progressive Opinion

nymag.com — What you are going to see over the next week is an overt effort by Democrats to politicize the issue of disaster response. They’re right to do it. Conservatives are already complaining about this, but the attempt to wall disaster response off from politics in the aftermath of a disaster is an attempt to insulate Republicans from the consequences of their policies. Funding for FEMA is something the parties wrangle over, with Republicans pushing to limit the agency’s budget, and Democrats pushing back. Romney’s budget promises require shrinking domestic non-entitlement spending as a share of the economy by about two-thirds. The Republican proposal to eviscerate this wide array of public functions is one of the underdiscussed questions of the election. Republicans have defended it using a very clever trick. They don’t explain how they would allocate the massive cuts to all these programs.

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slate.com — The biggest myth of the 2012 campaign is the idea that Barack Obama doesn’t have a second-term agenda. In defense of the misguided conventional wisdom, it’s largely the president’s own fault that he’s allowed this impression to exist. Obama’s second-term agenda is something we can specify in unusually precise detail because, unlike last time around, it doesn’t particularly hinge on Congress. It’s all about exploiting what’s already scheduled to happen thanks to the past four years worth of legislative activity. It’s true that if you pay close attention to the president’s speeches you’ll find scarce mention of any new ideas. But that’s okay, because Obama’s real second-term economic agenda has nothing to do with passing new laws and everything to do with taking advantage of laws Congress has already passed.

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thedailybeast.com — With Election Day just around the corner and the world awash in idle banter about “Obama’s broken dream,” his “vanished charm,” and even, while we’re at it, “the assassination of hope,” it is not idle to point out what should be obvious: that in four years the 44th president of the United States has pulled off no fewer than three revolutions. First came his reform of health care—an effort no less major for being incomplete. Next, Obama revolutionized an economic landscape in the midst of an unprecedented crisis. Last but not least, Obama profoundly altered the course of American diplomacy and, through it, his country’s image around the world. For the most part, then, Barack Obama has kept his promises. To allow him to keep them fully, Americans need only offer him a second term—the second term that, from the first, he said he would need to carry out his program.

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tomdispatch.com — Calling lies "lies" and theft "theft" and violence "violence," loudly, clearly, and consistently, until truth becomes more than a bump in the road, is a powerful aspect of political activism. Much of the work around human rights begins with accurately and aggressively reframing the status quo as an outrage, whether it’s misogyny or racism or poisoning the environment. What protects an outrage are disguises, circumlocutions, and euphemisms -- “enhanced interrogation techniques” for torture, “collateral damage” for killing civilians, “the war on terror” for the war against you and me and our Bill of Rights. Change the language and you’ve begun to change the reality or at least to open the status quo to question.

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truthdig.com — Corporations, in addition to spending unlimited amounts of money through super PACs, can now funnel money into not-for-profit business leagues like the Chamber of Commerce and skirt the public eye. The IRS doesn’t require nonprofit groups to reveal their funds, so they can collect money from corporations that don’t want to attract attention and spend it on their behalf. “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the poster child for Citizens United,” said Blair Bowie from U.S. PIRG.

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washingtonpost.com — This election is only tangentially a fight over policy. It is also a fight about meaning and identity — and that’s one reason voters are so polarized. It’s about who we are and who we aspire to be. President Obama enters the final days of the campaign with a substantial lead among women — about 11 points, according to the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll — and enormous leads among Latinos and African Americans, the nation’s two largest minority groups. Mitt Romney leads among white voters, with an incredible 2-to-1 advantage among white men. t is too simplistic to conclude that demography equals destiny. Both men are being sincere when they vow to serve the interests of all Americans. But it would be disingenuous to pretend not to notice the obvious cleavage between those who have long held power in this society and those who are beginning to attain it.

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duluthnewstribune.com — Sometimes politics can be pretty dehumanizing. But we’re lucky enough to have some people who can run for public office without losing their genuine selves, people who are remembered not only for what they do in public life but for who they are in private. Paul Wellstone was one of those people. This week, 10 years after his death, people across the country are remembering his passion, his political courage and the way he worked with Republicans like former Congressman Jim Ramstad when there was a chance to get something done for folks who needed help. But lots of Minnesotans have personal stories about Paul, stories about a man with a remarkable ability to touch other people’s lives and lift them up. Here’s mine.

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robertreich.org — This is for those of you who consider yourself to be progressive but have given up on politics because it seems rotten to the core. You may prefer Obama to Romney but don’t think there’s a huge difference between the two, so you may not even vote. Your cynicism is understandable. But cynicism is a self-fulfilling prophesy. If you succumb to it, the regressives who want to take this nation back to the 19th century win it all. The Koch brothers, Karl Rove, the rabid Republican right, CEOs and Wall Street titans who want to entrench their privileges and tax advantages – all of them would like nothing better than for every progressive in America to throw in the towel. Then America is entirely theirs. The alternative to cynicism is to become more involved in politics. Help create a progressive force in this nation that grows into a movement that can’t be stopped.

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slate.com — The Democratic Party contains much larger ideological fissures than the Republican Party, and one of those fissures is that the Obama administration favors cuts in Social Security and Medicare spending that liberal Democrats don't like. Part of Obama's strategy for maintaining Democratic Party unity as he pursues his fiscal policy agenda has been to take advantage of the fact that these same liberal Democrats generally believe that taxes—especially on the wealthy—are too low. So part of the hypothetical "grand bargain" is that Obama gives Congressional Republicans spending cuts that they want in exchange for giving him revenue increases that he wants. But another part of the hypothetical grand bargain is that liberals give Obama spending cuts that he wants as part of a package deal that includes tax hikes that liberals want.

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prospect.org — Someone once asked St. Francis of Assisi what it took to live a good life. He replied: “Preach the Gospel every day. If necessary, use words.” There are many ways to preach the Gospel. George McGovern practiced more of them that anyone I’ve ever known. He’s been a minister. Teacher. Peacemaker. Humanitarian. Champion of hungry children.  And if that’s not enough, he also pretty much single-handedly restored the two-party system of government in my state of South Dakota—and made my political career, among others, possible.

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