Dear Mr. President,
We’ve met briefly, at a fundraiser in Philadelphia and at a health care event I organized. But, as the year ends, I think it’s time we had a real chat.
I’m one of those “sanctimonious folks” who made health care reform possible
I’m one of those progressives disappointed by the deal you cut with the Republicans a few weeks ago on taxes. And, I’m not happy that called me and your other critics “sanctimonious” folks who want to “feel good about how pure we are” rather than get things done.
You will go down in history getting the credit you took for “passing legislation… where we finally get health care for all Americans.” But you had some help from people like me. I ran the Health Care For American (HCAN) campaign in Pennsylvania which mobilized 15,000 people over the course of two years in support of what became the Affordable Care Act. Some purist supporters of single payer criticized me for doing so. But as a district director for a Blue Dog member of Congress told me, the thousands of people who worked under our direction made it possible for that Congressman, and a few others in our state, to vote for your reform plan.
We were not happy that the public option was dropped. But we worked incredibly hard, week after week, to see that legislation through to the end.
Many of us were dismayed at the tax deal you made. It’s not that we don’t recognize that there were good things in it, especially a 13 month continuation of extended unemployment benefit. We brought unemployed people to Washington to lobby for the extension a few weeks ago.
And it’s not that you agreed to a compromise on the extension of the Bush tax cuts on the rich. We understand that some compromise was probably going to be necessary.
Why the tax deal bothered us so much
What really bothers us is that you compromised before you took the opportunity to use the impasse as a teachable moment, one that would clarify where we and the Republicans stand.
Why is this a problem?
First, because the vast majority of the country is on our side in opposing tax cuts for the rich. This was an opportunity for you to build the political support in the country and among Democrats in Congress against them.
Second, because a temporary impasse would have allowed us to mobilize, activate and expand our base which, need I remind you, is also the base Democrats, including you, need in 2012.
Third, because a tougher stand now would have made it harder for the Republican to use a compromise on tax cuts for the rich as a precedent in the debate we will have in 2012.
And, fourth, because a mobilized party and country might have given you the leverage you needed to cut a better deal, perhaps one that did not include the truly appalling reduction in the inheritance tax.
But, instead of trying to take a Democratic Party, backed by a huge majority of the country, with you into negotiations with the Republicans, you made your own deal, a deal, that looks too much like the kind of “triangulation” President Clinton practiced. That kind of politics might help you get reelected. But, given the partisan division in Washington and the animus against you on the right, that strategy not as likely to be effective as it was in 1996. More importantly, it is not a politics that will restore the Democratic majority in Congress you will need if you hope for substantial achievements in your second term.
Mr. President, we’re not asking you to move far to the left. The policies you have pursued have been a little left of center, which is the place where from which Democrats have successfully governed.
Instead, we’re asking you to use dramatic opportunities for leadership to occupy the broad center of American politics while making it clear that is the Republicans who have moved very far to the right.
Using key moments to educate America about inequality in economics and politics
Doing so will teach Americans the real choices before us. And we desperately need an education about that. For thirty years, the very rich—the top 1%—have gotten much richer, while the incomes of most professionals and managers have grown slowly, while the incomes of working people have actually declined.
These changes are not primarily the result of globalization or technological change. Inequality has not grown in Western European liberal democracies. They are the result of public policies that have been pushed in America by an aggressive and highly organized campaign sponsored by the very wealthiest individuals and major corporations. These forces have totally captured the Republican party, as we repeatedly saw in the last two years. And Democrats, partly due to the same pressure from the corporate interests and partly due the sheer difficulty of moving legislation in Washington when the other side only says no, have in response done very little to help working people and the middle class.
Public policies that are not radical but are just a little left of center can reverse this growing inequality and make lives better for working people and the middle class. But if we have learned anything in the last two years it is that we can’t adopt those policies over the opposition of the corporate right without a sustained campaign that explicitly tells the American people who is on our side and who is on the other side.
Find some concrete
I know you and your advisors are afraid that strong rhetoric about growing inequality in both income and political power will alienate the center. But taking a side is almost always good politics. President Reagan showed us that Americans will embrace a President who stands strong, even if they sometimes disagree with him, provided they know where he stands.
That doesn’t preclude compromise. You may remember that President Reagan said one week that “his feet were set in concrete” and a few weeks later that “the sound that you hear is the concrete cracking around my feet.”
Unfortunately, Mr. President, right now it seems to many of us, and not just progressives, that you are standing in a muddy place and that the compromises you have made have sullied our ideals.
You can’t build the kind of movement we need to overcome the corporate right by stanidn in the mud, Mr. President. You need to find a little concrete. You need to set your feet and your voice firmly a little left of center.
If you do that, you’ll win some and lose some in the next two years. But you’ll find that the movement you inspired in 2008 will be restored, stronger than ever. It will lead us not just to victory in 2012, but to a victory that gives us the vision and the strength to finally respond to the rightward movement that has gripped American politics for thirty years. And that will not just create hope but results that begin to restore the American dream for all of us.
Best wishes for 2011, for you and your family.
Marc
Marc Stier
Executive Director
Penn ACTION