The Audacity of Rallying: the role of the left during the presidential elections

It’s hard not to be awe-struck by this momentous occasion. A little over 50 years after segregation was dismantled, we have a black man who is 22 weeks from being President of the United States. It’s been 45 years since the Democratic Party had a presidential candidate this charismatic. It’s been 33 years since the United States had to pull out of a war. It’s been 5 years since the U.S. invaded Iraq.

Previously I had tried to articulate what the role of the left should be during the primaries. Here is a brief snippet:

Particularly during the presidential primaries when candidates are fashioning their platforms and more attentive to the electorate, we should be pushing issues, not pushing candidates…This is the time to push the candidates to the left. In my opinion, no candidate is on the left. It is just not possible. Between the two party system, the special interests, the electoral system, etc…., I just don’t see how it could happen. And so to back a candidate now is in some respects to make light of just how inept, corrupt, and dysfunctional our government has become, is becoming, and continues to become. This is the time, when the parties are still picking, when we on the left should be arguing over issues about what we need and what we want from our next president.

In other words, the democratic primary is the time to develop the party line. But if the primary is the time for a politics of idealism, then the presidential election is the time for a politics of pragmatism. The time to develop the party line is over; the time has now come to rally around the party line. Whereas the democratic primary is a time to try and push the center to the left; the presidential election is a time to push the left to the center. Yes, a two party system sucks, yes, the center in this country is fairly right-wing; yes, Obama’s stance on the economy, immigration and Afghanistan is unclear at best, dangerous at worst. That discussion has its time and place and its time and place ended when Obama got the 2,118 delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination.

Why the switch-in-time? There are three reasons:

1) The obvious one – McCain is scary. Even if Obama was simply the lesser of two evils, that could be the difference of one home being re-mortgaged, one detainee from Guantanamo being released, or one life being saved. Idealism has its place, but so should pragmatism.

2) It’s not enough to win – Winning by 50.7% is much different than winning by 50.1%. The former is considered a mandate; the latter is considered a lame duck. If Obama squeaks by, there is not much he can do, barring a terrorist attack. If Obama wins in a landslide, i.e. 50.7%, he has a much better chance of pushing forth his agenda. Without the mandate, Obama can blame the Republicans for his failures. With the mandate, Obama can be held accountable. It’s like 2004 when Bush got re-elected and the Republicans controlled both houses. If the war succeeded, he could take all the credit. If the war ends in a quagmire, he’d have to take all the blame. It’s make or break. That kind of clarity is what we need. It makes politics more transparent and more accountable. By winning so convincingly in 2004, Republicans had no one to blame but themselves for all the recent mess ups.

3) Accountability – If the Left continues criticizing Obama, the Democratic Party, and/or the electoral system, not only does that encourage the Democratic Party to ignore and forsake the Left, but it also gives the left no leverage. By no means am I advocating a complete capitulation. It’s more of a strategic alliance, like when Mao teamed up with Chiang Kai-Shek to defeat the Japanese. They didn’t like each other, but they both realized that they had bigger fish to fry.

So yes, my tirades against Obama will stop because I just don’t see how they could be productive now. This is not to say I do not maintain criticisms, but my strategic calculations suggest that it is no longer the time or the place. Pragmatism has its place as well. We should all thus rally around the Democratic Party, warts and all.