The Obama Left
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/06/the_obama_left.html
By J.R. Dunn
June 24, 2008
The American left can be divided into three distinct strands, each
with its own characteristics, identifiers, and methods of operation:
the wimp left, the weird left, and the hard left.
The wimp left is the largest, most amorphous, and least impressive
faction. These are the people who are leftists because the neighbors
are. They're the NPR listeners, the PBS watchers, the slogan
repeaters. They view the left as a lifestyle choice, one that makes
you a better person (as they never cease telling you). Wimp leftists
usually confine their activities to bumper stickers and "trying to
live a politically-correct lifestyle", but often break into sporadic
bouts of activity involving recycling, marching, or posting on DU or
Kos. The New York Times recently featured a story about a craze for
purchasing mosquito nets for underprivileged Africans that captures
the wimp left in all its faddishness, self-righteousness, and
futility (the nets in question are supplied in lieu of DDT, the only
effective method of preventing malaria, which means that the U.S.
do-gooders are actually making things worse). Even the photo is
characteristic: precocious children, prematurely dowdy woman,
self-conscious emotionalism.
(Obama foreign policy advisor Richard Danzig's suggestion that we
turn to Winnie-the-Pooh for expertise on counterterrorism strategy is
all of a piece with this tendency. Misplaced whimsy is a major
indicator of wimp leftism. Many readers will recall the craze for
giving copies of Dr. Seuss to college grads a few years ago.)
We're all familiar with these types - they appear constantly in media
"person in the street" interviews, furrowing their brows and
pensively staring off into the distance before intoning that "arms
are for hugging", "global warming is about our grandchildren",
"change is about hope", or whatever the slogan of the moment happens
to be. Wimp lefties don't know much about politics, ideology, or
anything else. But they know what's right -- or they will, as soon as
the mass media tells them. They're very nice people. They really are.
That's what makes them dangerous.
To many conservatives, the weird left -- AKA the wacko left or the
loony left, is the left, the perfect representation of left-wing
thinking and behavior. The wacko left can be defined as leftism as
personality disorder, the contemporary expression of Orwell's
"nudists, fruit-juice drinkers, and sandal wearers". They tend to be
obsessive single-issue types, overwhelmed with paranoia and consumed
with conspiracy theories.
9/11 Truthers are the purest current example of the weird left, as
are "AIDS is a CIA plot" types, principally among blacks. These are
the people most often found romping on DU and Kos. Although we might
be tempted to view them as a pure liability, that in fact is not the
case. While their equivalent on the right -- Birchers, McCarthyites
and so on -- are usually isolated or ejected, weird lefties actually
serve quite a useful purpose, acting as a conduit for ideas -- gay
marriage, animal rights, Karl Rove as evil mastermind -- too
grotesque to be planted in any other way. Examples of the loony left
include such figures as Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan.
The hard left is the core left, the armature without which the other
factions would fall apart. They are directly descended from the
communist groups (the CPUSA, Trotsyites, and so forth) of the '30s
and '40s, through New Left organizations such as the SDS and the
Weathermen. The hard left consists of intelligentsia and activists,
people who spend their lives reading Alinsky and Gramsci and trying
their damndest to put those dicta into practice. They are usually
found in universities and surrounding communities, though they are
also present in left-wing think tanks and lobbying outfits. Most of
us will go through life without ever knowingly encountering one of
them. Through their intellectual control over the much larger wimp
left (who would be utterly lost without their direction), they
possess influence all out of proportion to their numbers. The
prototype of the American hard leftist is Tom Hayden.
Usually, a political candidate running on a left-wing platform will
be associated with one strand in particular. For hard leftists we
have Henry Wallace fronting for the communists in 1948, and George
McGovern acting as point man for the antiwar movement in 1972.
Representatives of the weird left are rarer, although we do have
Dennis Kucinich. As in anything else, there is no lack of wimp
leftists in presidential politics -- Kerry, Gore, Mondale... take
your pick. Michael Dukakis' unwillingness to use the death penalty
for a hypothetical convicted rapist/murderer of his wife is wimp
leftism in chemically pure form.
The extraordinary thing about Barack Obama is that he's intimately
connected to all these factions in a way that may never quite have
been the case before. The wacko left is represented by Jeremiah
Wright and James P. Meeks, with their AIDS conspiracies and related
yarns, and ACORN, the leftist fringe group for which Obama served as
attorney for many years. The hard left is represented by his Marxist
mentor Frank Marshall Davis, who introduced Obama to left-wing
politics at an early age, Fr. Michael Pfleger, an advocate of
"liberation theology", the application of Marxism to Christianity,
and former Weatherman Bill Ayers, who was contending that America
could be set right by a few bombs as late as September 11, 2001.
The wimp left is, obviously enough, the Obama voter.
Never, I think, has any politician been so closely and equally
intertwined with all three aspects of American leftism. It's as if
Obama were out to corner the entire American left, leaving no room
for anyone else. If that was the case, then he's succeeded.
Of course, it may not have been intentional at all. It may simply be
the result of an entire life spent with the left since his early
encounters with Davis. But intentionally or not, Obama appears to be
adapting the methods of the left, the means by which sanitized,
acceptable versions of left-wing ideas are introduced into American
political discourse, as part of his campaign strategy.
The Gramscian tactics utilized by the American left were predicated
on the internal takeover of various institutions (media, the academy,
education) which could then be used to push a left-wing agenda. But
there were limitations to this technique: these institutions were
nowhere near as powerful in the U.S. as in Gramsci's Europe, where
government monopolies and elitism are common. This limited the
influence and reach of entrenched American leftists.
This is where the left's triune nature came in. The millions
comprising the wimp left served as a transmission belt for ideas and
practices developed by the hard leftists of the academy and the
activist organizations. By this means such ideas were "laundered",
appearing to emerge from sincere, befuddled "liberals", rather than
the career apparatchiks, which eased their acceptance by the public
at large. More bizarre concepts were presented by the wacko left (the
most effective way to make something seem harmless is to arrange to
have it said by a clown). If there was too much resistance, the
attempt was curtailed, and the wimps, or alternately the wackballs,
took the punishment. The hardcore lefties remained safely insulated.
This is an extraordinarily fruitful technique, allowing the
introduction and cultivation of ideas -- gay marriage, terrorist
nobility, contempt for the armed forces -- that could be introduced
in no other way.
Obama appears to be doing much the same thing in his political
strategy, selling himself -- or rather, his campaign persona -- in
similar fashion. Through his connection to ACORN, Pfleger, and Ayers,
Obama assures the hard left that he is one of them, an adherent of
their tactics and goals. His connections to Black Liberation Theology
imply at least some sympathy for the wacko left. But at the same
time, he presents himself to the broader audience of wimps as a
purely "liberal" figure, the second coming of JFK, if not the
Redeemer Himself.
Every now and then, Obama will come up with a proposal derived
directly from the hard-left playbook -- tax the rich, unilateral
retreat from Iraq, "war crimes trials" -- couched in terms acceptable
to wimp leftists. If a public backlash develops, he simply drops it
and returns to soothing Volvo-and-latte platitudes, using the wimps
in the same manner as the hard left -- as a shield for his actual agenda.
It's an interesting strategy. But can it work? It's based on several
assumptions - that the U.S. is at base a leftist country, open to a
leftist message; that the wimp left is a powerful influence; and that
a tactic designed for use over the long term can work in the
pressure-cooker atmosphere of a political campaign.
But the U.S. remains a center-right country. The wimp left is an
object of derision (even among themselves) as much as anything else.
And the disturbing results obtained by the hard leftists have come
only after lengthy effort, at times stretching to decades.
It's also extremely risky. Obama's worst moments have arisen from his
relationships with members of the more radical left-wing branches,
Jeremiah Wright representing the loony left, Pfleger and Ayers the
hard left. In no case did his elaborately contrived latte-left facade
protect him from the ensuing controversy.
Clearly, this strategy comprises a weakness. Obama is figuratively
leaping from stone to stone, from a hard-left position here to a
"liberal" one there, always keeping on the move, never allowing
himself to be cornered, never getting his feet wet. The trick is to
hit him in mid-leap and assure that he gets a good dunking. Obama has
gotten an easy ride in his previous campaign crises through the
assumption that the offenses were personal -- that the problem lay in
his relations with Wright, Pfleger and so on. But they were no such
thing -- it was the ideas that were the problem.
And Obama was never seriously questioned about those ideas. Did he
accept Pfleger's vision of Christ as a revolutionary? Did he share
Ayers' blazing contempt for American society? He must have expressed
belief in Black Liberation Theology, a doctrine of black supremacy,
when joining Jeremiah Wright's church. Did he truly believe it then?
Does he believe it now? If not, when did he stop believing it?
By this means, Obama can be cornered. He does not like being
cornered. As the last few months make clear, he does not take it
well. Corner him enough times, and his facade will crack, his image
as a genial Starbucks and Whole Foods lefty will lie in tatters, and
his adherence to the cold and crazed doctrines of the core left will
be exposed for what it is.
It's not a complete strategy, of course. But the customary electoral
strategy of GOP operatives and consultants (e.g. Tom Delay's recent
accusation of Marxism won't work. If didn't work during the Cold War
, so it certainly won't work today.)
Obama is a strange candidate -- how strange we have as yet no clear
idea. Revealing the depths of that strangeness calls for
unconventional political tactics, and the will to use them.
--
J.R. Dunn is consulting editor of American Thinker
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