CAF In The News

tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com — I'm convinced that progressives own the future. Not because Obama won (although that was pretty nice), but because the intellectual energy in America today is young and on the Left.

To make this case (and in light of the timeless practice of end-of-the-year list-making), I've put together a list of 10 young (under 40) intellectuals who I believe to be shaping a progressive future that is forward-looking, effortlessly intersectional, technologically sophisticated and engaged in not just the world of ideas but the world as it is lived. In other words, they're of the left, they're brilliant and they're helping to get shit done.

These are the ten young progressives who make me hopeful for the future. (I've included a video of each in case you're meeting them for the first time).

reuters.com — The U.S. economy needs a $900 billion government boost focused on Main Street over the next two years to pull it out of a deep recession, a new report from labor and public interest groups said on Tuesday.

"We need a substantial, strategic and sustained plan to get this economy going," said Robert Borosage, co-director of Institute for America's Future, a research group that helped craft the report and describes one of its core missions as challenging "failed conservative policies."

bloomberg.com — More than 150 economists and labor leaders urged President-elect Barack Obama to back a $900 billion stimulus plan including $225 billion in infrastructure spending and $125 billion in state aid over the next two years.

“Properly designed, the recovery program can not only help the economy get back on its feet, but also provide a down payment for a more productive and just society,” the group said in a statement released today.

nationaljournal.com — Although Barack Obama and the Democrats blew past John McCain and the Republicans on November 4 by turning red states to blue, winning 365 electoral votes, and sweeping to substantial new majorities in Congress, many pundits and journalists have declared that the United States remains a "center-right" country.

The Campaign for America's Future, the Washington-based policy shop that calls itself "the strategy center for the progressive movement," disagrees, contending that the election marked a political "sea change" among voters. "Conservatives have had their day," says Robert Borosage, co-director of the campaign. "This is a center-left, not a center-right, nation."

nytimes.com — Six weeks before taking office, President-elect Barack Obama can already boast one striking accomplishment: persuading partisan, ideological adversaries to see him in a less partisan, less ideological light.

The reappraisal runs deeper than Mr. Obama's photo-op pleasantries with Senator John McCain. Derided during the campaign as a purveyor of ''socialism'' who was guilty of ''palling around with terrorists,'' he has since won praise from conservatives for retaining Robert Gates as defense secretary, for naming Gen. James L. Jones as his national security adviser and for selecting the moderate Timothy F. Geithner, who helped draw up the Bush administration's Wall Street bailout plan, as his Treasury secretary.

nytimes.com — President-elect Barack Obama’s appointments have tilted so much to the political center that they have drawn praise from the likes of Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh. That alone would seem enough to set off a revolt in his liberal base. But a month into Mr. Obama’s transition, many on the political left are trying to hold their tongues.

In assembling his team to date, Mr. Obama has largely passed over progressives, opting to keep President Bush’s defense secretary, tapping a retired general close to Senator John McCain and recruiting economists from the traditionally corporate, free-trade, deficit-hawk wing of the party. The choices have deeply frustrated liberals who thought Mr. Obama’s election signaled the rise of a new progressive era.

prospect.org — The last time Democrats took the White House, they managed, in the immortal words of George W. Bush, a "heckuva job." During the Clinton administration's famously rocky transition, one White House alumna saw signs of trouble early. "The day after the election, we were getting calls from leaders all over the world," she says, but apparently Clinton's team hadn't realized the State Department now worked for them. Martha Kumar, founder of the bipartisan White House Transition Project, recalls the story of one Clinton flack who "walked into his office and saw there were six phone lines and all of the phones were ringing." Tellingly, only one question came to his mind: "If I answer them, what do I say?"

politico.com — Echoing Karl Rove's words from four years ago, Democratic pollsters on Friday touted the creation of a “permanent progressive majority.”

“This was not just a change election, but a sea-change election,” Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, said during remarks at the National Press Club. “This is the end of the conservative era.”

afp.google.com — US voters want the Republican Party, which took a beating in this week's general elections, to embrace progressiveness and work with Democratic president-elect Barack Obama to get America back on track, a poll showed Friday.

More than three-quarters of 2,000 people surveyed on Tuesday, the day of the historic election which saw Obama become the first African-American elected to the White House, and on Wednesday, said the US has gone "pretty seriously off on the wrong track" and needed change.

washingtonpost.com — When President-elect Barack Obama moves into the White House in January, he will inherit a stratospheric budget deficit, a collapsing financial system and the gloomiest economic outlook since the Great Depression. The silver lining? For a few months, at least, he may have a license to spend money.

Make that lots and lots of money. With the nation sliding into what is expected to be a severe recession, economists are calling on the federal government to pump at least $150 billion -- and as much as $500 billion -- into the economy to blunt the most painful effects of rising joblessness and stalled consumer spending.