Let's fight back

I give you the final form of the New Deal logo. Well...maybe the final form. (See the previous two posts for a preview of this important upcoming project.) Many, many thanks to those who offered feedback on the earlier versions.

(Update: Now that I've been looking at this thing for half a day, I don't like it. Sometimes it takes me a few hours to "fall in hate" with a visual idea. Back to the drawing board!)

There has been some question as to whether the arrows denote "right versus left" or "past versus future." The former was my intention. Frankly, though, I'm not bothered if anyone sees the blue arrow as a pointer to the past -- because the Democratic past deserves admiration and emulation.

Maybe that's one reason why I came to dislike the term "progressive." Progress toward what?

The term "radical" also has unnerving connotations. The Nazis were pretty damned radical. So are the teabaggers and the libertarians. The tea party movement is funded by the Kochs, who ultimately hope to end the very idea of government. Somalia is their utopia.

The right no longer deserves the term "conservative." They don't want to conserve anything. Like Tyler Durden (a fictional character who demonstrates the way anti-establishment rebellion can morph into fascism), the libertarians want to destroy civilization and start afresh. That was the program in Iraq; that was the program in Yeltsin's Russia; that's what they want to do everywhere else.

When people ask for a quick definition of my political stance, I tell them that I am an Eisenhower Republican -- which means that, by modern definition, I am a Bolshie. That's a joke, but it's a joke with truth in it.

In Ike's day, both major political parties shared a basic understanding of how to maintain prosperity. I want a return to that economic consensus; so do many other people. (But I do not want a return to unjust, foolish and stultifying mid-century attitudes regarding race and sex.)

Look again at the blue arrow in the logo. Is it pointing left or is it pointing to the past? Either reading works for me.

Let's go back. Back to the future.

And let's start with a primary challenge to Obama. The idea gains momentum by the hour. Look at the compendium of opinion in this superb post over at Sky Dancing. Today, the only argument is whether Obama went rightward by intent or by incompetence. As longtime readers know, I came to the conclusion early on that he leans right by nature. But if we want to form a mass movement, we must forgive those who woke up late.

One thing is for sure: Fewer and fewer liberals count Obama among their number.

Will Democrats lose black voters if they field another candidate? The depressed black vote during the midterms indicates unhappiness with the way Barack Obama is doing business. Fewer black voters support him than ever before, and those who still do seem (in my view) much less enthusiastic. I suspect that many African Americans are no longer for Obama; they are against Palin, Huckabee, Gingrich or Romney.

I feel the same way. That's why we need a New Deal.

Black unemployment is now up to 16 percent -- and as we all know, the real unemployment figures are always substantially higher. Eventually, African American voters must ask themselves: Which is more important -- having a job or supporting Obama?

Barack Obama is hardly the only American politician who hails from a minority group. There are plenty of talented people in the African American, Latino and Asian communities, and most of those potential candidates have a genuine commitment to liberal principles.

Face it: We elected a Dem who ain't no Dem. Time for a New Deal.