Pressure from the left

I'm going to attempt an objective post here, one which both Obots and anti-Obots might read without too much grimacing. In a recent piece, we took a look at Glenn Greenwald's excellent observations concerning the left's rather too close embrace of all things Obama. To recapitulate:

During the 2008 election, Obama co-opted huge portions of the Left and its infrastructure so that their allegiance became devoted to him and not to any ideas.

The major problem now is that these entities -- the ones that ought to be applying pressure on Obama from the Left and opposing him when he moves too far Right -- are now completely boxed in. They've lost -- or, more accurately, voluntarily relinquished -- their independence.

The lack of any independent political pressure from the Left ensures that Obama will be either content to ignore their views or will be forced to do so even when he doesn't want to.

Greenwald then quotes Matt Yglesias:

If you succeed in muting all your critics to the left, all you do is create a situation where your program is defined in the press and the congress and the public imagination as the most-leftwing-possible proposal. And the furthest-left proposal can’t possibly win.

Greenwald adds:

I wouldn't quite put it this way, because I don't believe that anyone should be advocating for positions to the Left of Obama simply as a tactic to make Obama's policies seem more centrist and therefore more likely to be accepted. But his general point is still true: criticizing Obama from the Left (as, say, Paul Krugman has been doing in the stimulus debate) expands the scope of the debate in a very important way that can only advance the Left's political goals and, incidentally, enable/force Obama to avoid the Center and Right.

Sorry for the lengthy quotations, but now we should all be up to speed.

While re-reading Greenwald's observations, one bit of history flashed into my noggin: 1993-1994. The Clinton health care initiative.

His health care plan received plenty of criticism from left-wing writers, many of whom spread myths and lies with all the careless vigor of a Rush Limbaugh. (See here and here -- and thanks for the links, Sergei.)

In previous posts, we have discussed the great (and largely unrecognized) harm done to this country by progressive purists who, in 1993-94, cried "Nationalized health or nothing!" Nothing was what they got. Nothing may, in fact, have been what they unconsciously wanted. Purists don't like the messy, compromised business of governance nearly as much as they like bitching and whining. At any rate, anyone with any intelligence back in 1993 understood that the country was still very conservative and still very much enthralled by the Reagan mystique. Even Clinton's formidable political skill could not wrest control of the national debate from the radio right. Single payer simply was not going to happen.

So: Pressure from the left proved to be quite destructive during that debate. In fact, pressure from the left did little good and much harm throughout the Clinton administration. The lefty journals -- The Nation, The New Republic, Z Magazine and so forth -- were almost as toxic as The American Spectator and the Wall Street Journal's editorial page. Alexander Cockburn's column in The Nation often injected right-wing anti-Clinton conspiracy memes into the left.

I don't want that history to repeat itself.

Make no mistake: I don't like Obama, and I don't wish him well. I think he's crooked. I would love to see him impeached and replaced by Joe Biden. My feelings about the man have not softened and never will soften.

But right now, he's the president -- the only one we have -- and times are perilous.

We were in a similar position back in September of 2001: Lots of people who knew that George W. Bush was a crook and a fool nevertheless rallied around him during a time of national crisis. Like it or not (and I hated it), he was the only president we had.

We now face another crisis. A worse one.

Such times force the president -- any president -- to consider politically risky measures. These measures include nationalizing some banks, letting others fail, replacing free trade with fair trade, creating massive public works projects, insuring that nothing like the derivatives racket ever appears again, printing more money, allowing inflation to rise, raising taxes on the wealthy, and imposing tarrifs on products created by outsourced labor.

Such things cannot be done by a Democratic president if the party is at war with itself.

On the other hand, such things will not be done unless the left forces Obama to do them.

Paradox.

Is Greenwald right? If the left regains the ability to criticize the president, will the president be prodded to do the right thing? Or will bickering lead to simple inertia, as occurred in 1993-94? How do we resolve the paradox?