[Peace-discuss] Fw: Must Read: WSJ's Lead Editorial On Obama & The Left - A Really Important Point

[unionyes]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Sirota" <ds at davidsirota.com>
To: <unionyes at ameritech.net>
Sent: Tuesday, September 08, 2009 10:50 AM
Subject: Must Read: WSJ's Lead Editorial On Obama & The Left - A Really 
Important Point


> FYI - I wanted to pass on today's lead editorial in the Wall Street
> Journal (it is attached at the end of this message). Oddly enough,
> myself and Van Jones are the editorial's two subject/targets (it's a
> little surreal to wake up and find yourself personally targeted by
> one of the most powerful conservative voice in America). Even more
> oddly enough, I think the piece makes a critical - and accurate -
> point (which I've highlighted below): It is now true that the Obama
> White House listens more to Glenn Beck and Fox News than it does to
> the progressive movement and the Democratic Party base. My take on
> this editorial is at:
>
> http://www.openleft.com/diary/14976/the-wall-street-journal-editorial-board-makes-a-critically-important-point
>
> David
>
> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574398924037940810.html
>
> Obama and the Left
>
> The lesson of the rise and fall of Van Jones.
>
> The abrupt resignation of White House aide Van Jones, deep in the
> news hiatus of Labor Day weekend, will probably be forgotten in a few
> days. But it's a story that still deserves elaboration for what it
> says about the political coalition that helped to elect President
> Obama and whose demands are leading him into a cul-de-sac.
>
> As a candidate, Barack Obama was at pains to offer himself as a man
> of moderate policies, and especially of moderate temperament. He said
> he would listen to both the right and left, choosing the best of each
> depending on "what works." He sold himself as a center-left
> pragmatist. When his radical associationsReverend Jeremiah Wright,
> William Ayerscame to light, Candidate Obama promptly disavowed them.
> Now comes Mr. Jones, with a long trail of extreme comments and
> left-wing organizing, who nonetheless became the White House adviser
> for "green jobs." This weekend he too was thrown under the bus.
>
> However, Mr. Jones wasn't some unknown crazy who insinuated himself
> with the Obama crowd under false pretenses. He has been a leading
> young light of the left-wing political movement for many years. His
> 2008 book"The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two
> Biggest Problems"includes a foreword from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and
> was praised across the liberal establishment.
>
> Mr. Jones was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress,
> which was established, funded and celebrated as the new intellectual
> vanguard of the Democratic Party. The center's president is John
> Podesta, who was co-chair of Mr. Obama's transition team and thus
> played a major role in recommending appointees throughout the
> Administration. The ascent of Mr. Jones within the liberal
> intelligentsia shows how much the Democratic Party has moved left
> since its "New Democrat" triangulation of the Clinton years.
>
> Mr. Jones's incendiary comments about Republicans and his now famous
> association with a statement blaming the U.S. for 9/11 had to have
> been known in some White House precincts. He was praised and
> sponsored by Valerie Jarrett, who is one of the two or three most
> powerful White House aides and is a long-time personal friend of the
> President.
>
> Our guess is that Mr. Jones landed in the White House precisely
> because his job didn't require Senate confirmation, which would have
> subjected him to more scrutiny. This is also no doubt a reason that
> Mr. Obama has consolidated so much of his Administration's governing
> authority inside the White House under various "czars." Mr. Jones was
> poised to play a prominent role in disbursing tens of billions of
> dollars of stimulus money. It was the ideal perch from which he could
> keep funding the left-wing networks from which he sprang, this time
> with taxpayer money.
>
> This helps explain why the political left is so upset about Mr.
> Jones's resignation. Listen to David Sirota, another left-wing
> think-tank denizen and activist, who wrote the following Sunday on
> the Huffington Post Web site:
>
> "Finally, the Jones announcement will inevitably create a chilling
> effect on the aspirations of other movement progressives. Van is a
> fantastic person who has done fantastic work. He's kept his advocacy
> real and didn't compromise his principles. And so when he was
> appointed to a high-level White House job, it seemed to validate that
> you could, in fact, keep it real and also advance in American politics
> and government. That is to say, his story seemed to prove that an
> outsider could also succeed on the insideand that outside advocacy
> doesn't automatically prohibit you from one day working on the
> inside."
>
> Mr. Sirota is speaking for many on the movement left who believe they
> helped to elect Mr. Obama and therefore deserve seats at the inner
> table of power. They are increasingly frustrated because they are
> discovering that Mr. Obama will happily employ "movement
> progressives," but only so long as their real views and motivations
> aren't widely known or understood. How bitter it must be to discover
> that the Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck, who drove the debate about
> Mr. Jones, counts for more at this White House than Mr. Sirota.
>
> No President is responsible for all of the views of his appointees,
> but the rise and fall of Mr. Jones is one more warning that Mr. Obama
> can't succeed on his current course of governing from the left. He is
> running into political trouble not because his own message is
> unclear, or because his opposition is better organized. Mr. Obama is
> falling in the polls because last year he didn't tell the American
> people that the "change" they were asked to believe in included
> trillions of dollars in new spending, deferring to the most liberal
> Members of Congress, a government takeover of health care, and
> appointees with the views of Van Jones.
>
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