Obama Marginalizes the Left, Necessarily

by on May 2, 2008 21
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Rowan Berkeley has posted the Rev. Wright speech at the Detroit NAACP last weekend and challenged people to listen to what the man is saying. I imagine I will some day, and probably agree with a lot of what Wright is saying, but of course Wright is radioactive in the discourse now, and it is interesting to consider the process of political marginalization that is now taking place with Obama and the left. As I say again and again, Obama is a man of the left, it’s what he comes out of, it’s the subtext of his first book, and the text of his mother’s life and of his wife’s Princeton thesis. Now he is for political reasons cutting off portions of the left, tossing them under the bus. He has been doing so for years; and we stick with him because of course we have nowhere else to go.  The question is, Should I be sore about this, or care? And I find that I’m indifferent. It seems to me a necessary process, even if I am part of the world that is being publicly distanced. I am like Wright in that respect: I wink and say, Obama has to say this, I know his heart. What I count on Obama to do, and what Brzezinski and Obama’s army also count on him to do, is move the discourse left. I imagine Reagan committed the same sort of ideological murders when he was trying to capture the center. Only purists howl.

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics

{ 21 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. Charles Keating says:
    May 2, 2008 at 1:34 pm

    Interesting to compare the three candidates on the federal gas tax suspension issue. Tell me who's on the left. Who's pandering, as if to a child?

  2. LeaNder says:
    May 2, 2008 at 2:06 pm

    Second relapse, last I hope.

    I absolutely agree, Phil.

    And somehow I'm optimistic: Is it not better to have this now than later? So maybe Jeremiah Wright is not such a stupid man after all?

    He forced Obama to completely disassociate from him. That's fine, concerning the vultures at the media. ;) Besides the church must have gone through rreal hard times.

    But given the scenario "Clash of Cultures" race is not such an unimportant issue. I think there are some interesting topics beneath the public surface: Race is one of them.

    http://addictomatic.com/topic/Jeremiah+Wright

  3. Richard Witty says:
    May 2, 2008 at 3:02 pm

    I think all of this is a comment on Wright, and that Obama is NOT lying or posturing for the polls on it.

    I think he is appalled by the elements of the Wright presentation that is conspiratorial and that almost seek to marginalize the black community.

    I do think that Obama is facing similar identity issues to what you describe that you engage, Phil. That, he is trying to be president of the United States, not president of the coalition of alienated factions.

    I don't think he is of the alienated left, but of the residual left (as assimilated ethnic Jews are residually Jewish). Skin color is a different issue from ethnicity.

    I had an accounting client who was about 1/8 black, married to a Jewish acupuncturist. In conversation, he identified himself as a black man. My father had darker complexion. I knew him as a art teacher at a prominent prep school near where I live.

    He both identified as, and was identified as a black man.

    I think Wright is afraid frankly, and is unconsciously, or consciously, sabotaging Obama's campaign. I think that he might have the attitude that he doesn't want a black president, with the assumptions of assimilation as an expectation, that that role would entail.

    I know that is a speculation, and not all that kind.

  4. Charles Keating says:
    May 2, 2008 at 3:36 pm

    So, nobody notices that the dog under the table begging for scraps has changed appearance?

    The more things change, the more they remain the same.
    It really is a Hobbes world. Sort of.

    The absence of clearly defined parameters (as Ron Paul shows)
    for just war, preemptive war based on the special guy who fabricated the Axis Of Evil out of pure air, The DUI preppy president who beat it as bible, I'm sure without ever thinking that unilateral gunboat diplomacy tore down the very strength
    of nation state's to be sovereign… Regime change. What's good for the goose, is good for the gander.

    The world is waking up.

    This is no longer the world where most people only had a radio if the government gave it to them to receive orders.

    Geez, how many here have children, and grandchildren?

    God and Guns?

    Do we need a new movie, Fiddler On The Indiana Roof?

  5. Richard Witty says:
    May 2, 2008 at 5:24 pm

    Charles,
    No comments on the article about how Ron Paul supporters are stacking the decks at Amazon, posting glowing reviews of his book, and giving it five stars, as a campaign?

    How can you accept that but contest CAMERA's actions?

  6. Richard Witty says:
    May 2, 2008 at 5:25 pm

    Is the book and the arguments that unconvincing on their own merits that they need a campaign?

  7. Charles Keating says:
    May 2, 2008 at 7:14 pm

    Read it, judge for yourself.
    Ron Paul is one of the very few last Americans in Congress.

  8. Michael Blaine says:
    May 2, 2008 at 7:31 pm

    "of course Wright is radioactive in the discourse now"

    Not among me and my friends! We have watched some of his recent remarks, and come away impressed: The man is charming, smart, incisive and – most important – truthful.

    That he is now at the center of a polemic is due exclusively to two factors:

    1. He has challenged America's complacent ignorance;

    2. Racism.

    Rev. J. Wright for President in '08!

  9. Charles Keating says:
    May 2, 2008 at 7:57 pm

    In a nutshell, blowback. Or as he put it, the chickens…HAVE COME HOME, TO ROOST!

  10. MM says:
    May 2, 2008 at 9:11 pm

    Michael Blaine, I am with you, my man.

    With 6 years in the armed forces, a plethora of successful entrepreneurial and non-profit initiatives, an unassailable integrity and religious fervor for speaking the truth, and no history in Washington D.C., I'd have to say Rev. Jeremiah Wright is the most qualified of any of the candidates.

    (I know he must be a candidate for something because he is dominating the news cycle for over a week now, and being prosecuted for the political thought crimes of questioning zionism and imperialism.)

    Richard, oh poor Richard.

    I responded to your frail attempt to equate Ron Paul bots and CAMERA in another thread. Allow me to post it here:

    The two are different because the Ron Paul people are locked out of power, have 0 political influence; they are frozen out of our "democracy" because opposition to zionism or the Federal Reserve are political thought crimes, which make one unfit to govern in the United States at the federal level.

    CAMERA on the other hand is part of a network whose leadership boasts being able to have 75 senators' signatures on a napkin in 48 hours.

    Able to see any difference, Richard?

  11. Richard Witty says:
    May 3, 2008 at 7:03 am

    The issue is the common fraudulent means.

    Most frauds derive from lack of confidence in some way, as does most polemic.

    The truth must be told, not the embellishment of it.

  12. Charles Keating says:
    May 3, 2008 at 9:51 am

    The whole truth.

  13. MM says:
    May 3, 2008 at 11:24 am

    It's not fraudulent if a Ron Paul supporter really loves the book and posts his/her review to Amazon. Whether part of a campaign to do so or not.

    It is fraudulent that CAMERA organizes a strategy to remove inconvenient truths from the pages of Wikipedia.

    Amazing that you can't see the difference, but I really shouldn't be surprised anymore.

  14. Charles Keating says:
    May 3, 2008 at 1:56 pm

    When the simultaneous sin of both commission and omission are partnering so high and wide, and for so long, the sin of slow counter commission gains force by the very definition of the status quo situation, the boot of facts on the ground long ingnored.

    We need a new Fourth Estate.
    We need a Pentagon Papers and Lt. Calley for Israel and the chickenhawk neocons, that few dozen allowed a blank check by Christian charity and power. And by Bush/Chaney & their Ivy League DUI cases.

  15. Phil Weiss says:
    May 3, 2008 at 2:20 pm

    richard i agree with you re obama and me, identity wise. but he has navigated many turns in his blackness. he's navigating more now, in his whiteness. as he should. he wants to represent a mostly whit ecountry.
    i have the same concern re jewish nationalists leading american institutions; where's your loyalty. obama is being tested on his identificatin with black nationalists. i get that.
    i think we have no idea what he really is at some point, and at his level, his identity will evolve and individuate, past categories of black and white into Incredibly powerful and rich
    MM why would you justify a campaign of intellectual dishonesty, on amazon or anywhere else. dont you think we/you whoever will win the argumet in the end based on merits?

  16. MM says:
    May 3, 2008 at 3:49 pm

    phil, it's you and witty that are PRESUMING dishonesty on the part of the ron paul crowd. Witty didn't post a link and I don't like Amazon enough to go searching that out. Show me the proof that Ron Paul's book is getting bogus reviews, first.

    I'll still contend that we're talking apples and oranges. How many libertarians are there in Washington DC, Phil? Are you putting the Israel Lobby and the Ludwig von Mises Institute on a par? LOL!

  17. Charles Keating says:
    May 3, 2008 at 4:09 pm

    I notice nobody debates Ron Paul on the combined merits of his stance on all long term issues.

  18. Phil Weiss says:
    May 3, 2008 at 4:18 pm

    ok i made an assumption there. my bad….
    though i would say that all intellectual movements, all concerted ideological efforts, make me somewhat ill. which is why i dislike zionism so much. it's a boys choir. there is real thuggery and eunuch-making and recruitment and mercantile intllectualism. mixing ideas and causes quickly means that the ideas become tools and the individual's experience, which is primary for me, and guides my response to the israel thing– I wanted to vomit, from what I saw–, gets downgraded or swept aside.

  19. Charles Keating says:
    May 3, 2008 at 5:04 pm

    Experience as an individual human being.
    Nothing more or less.
    Ah, now that gives politics (group power grabbing) and ideology (comic book style justification) a bad reputation.
    It's not for nothing that Kafka wrote about waking up as an insect, and in Animal Farm some were just more equal than others.

    How does the individual, thinking of the self as at core a human being first, defend against this?

  20. MM says:
    May 3, 2008 at 5:28 pm

    Phil I find organized religion to fit the same pattern you attribute to intellectual movements and ideology, indeed to be one of the greatest examples of such.

    I more or less agree with you that using ideas as blunt force objects is one of intellectual man's more cruel and manipulative habits. I am sure I am guilty of it sometimes.

    But I take issue with the sentiment that all ideologies are bad, and equally so. I think some ideological movements are more righteous than others, effect positive realities even (e.g. the Amish way of life. Then again, I'm not Amish.)

  21. Rowan Berkeley says:
    May 5, 2008 at 7:29 am

    "Obama is a man of the left"?

    How would YOU know?

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