http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081104_morning_in_america/
Morning Again in America By Robert Scheer Truthdig: November 5, 2008 It's time to gush! Later for the analysis of all the hard choices faced by our next president, Barack Obama, but for now, let's just thrill, unabashedly, to the sound of those words. Heck, both he and we deserve a honeymoon, at least for a few paragraphs of this column. It is "Morning Again in America," to reclaim and revise the slogan from the 1984 campaign of President Ronald Reagan, only this time the promise of an American renewal is in the hands of a moderate post-Cold War leader who embraces, rather than denies, the diversity and complexity of the modern world. It is difficult to imagine Obama ever asserting the arrogant jingoism that has come to mark Republican stewardship of this nation in the eyes of the world. How refreshing for Americans to have elected a leader who was among the first to reject the imperial hubris that led this nation to invade Iraq over the objection of most of our allies. A leader who had the courage in the midst of a hotly contested primary election campaign to refuse to play the inveterate hawk in order to qualify as commander in chief, and instead had the audacity to advocate efforts at dialogue even with those we despise. The dead hand of Joe Lieberman has been lifted from the party that he betrayed. It is hoped it is also the end of the road for the neoconservatives who had rallied around John McCain as their last best hope for establishing a Pax Americana. On the all-important domestic front, with our economy crumbling, it is reassuring that the man whom what's-her-name from Alaska derided as a "community organizer" does indeed have that background. It is not a guarantee that he will be mindful of those suffering most in this economic downturn as he turns to deal with the banking mess, but it is a start. The Reagan Revolution of rampant deregulation of the economy in the interest of big business is over. Not because Obama has anything to do with the "socialist" label that the Republicans attempted to stick on him, but rather because a decisive role for the federal government is at the heart of the Bush bailout and the vastly expanded military economy a President Obama will inherit. Big government is now officially a partial owner of big banks, and although we might bemoan that state of affairs, our collective credit card has already been swiped. The pressing issue is: What do we taxpayers get in return for bailing out Wall Street? Will the goal be to make the financial swindlers whole at the expense of ordinary homeowners? Or will it be the reverse of what the Bush administration has been doing? What is not in doubt, after the banking meltdown, is that the state will play a decisive role in the economy; what must be decided is: Whose interests will it serve? If Obama turns to the Wall Street Democrats like Robert Rubin, the Clinton-era treasury secretary who led the crusade for deregulation, then he will betray his own fervently expressed concern for the fate of ordinary folks. The change we need is a divorce from the financial moguls who have dominated both parties. That's what progressive politics is all about. We have a chance to move in that direction, thanks to the election of Obama. Not because the man himself is the second coming-he, like all politicians, will have to be watched-but because of the movement he created around his candidacy, which I believe will hold him accountable. The word of his victory came as I was making a brave effort to try to teach my large class at the University of Southern California, and from the cheering of students throughout our building as Obama reached the Electoral College delegate number needed to become president, you would have thought USC was just picked No. 1 in the BCS poll. Make no mistake about it, this is a victory of these students' generation-a generation that is no longer mired in the divisiveness and arrogance that had come to dominate the lives of their elders. Politics will never be the same. The fat cats and back-office politicos are out, and grass roots-youthful and Internet-connected-will dominate in the future, as they did on Tuesday. President-elect Obama knows that, and, at least on this night, I fully expect him to be true to those who took him on this journey. It is a night also to remember the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the man who did so much to make that journey possible, along with the other heroes of the civil rights movement like John Lewis and Jesse Jackson, who did so much to keep hope alive. *** http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-l-borosage/amazing-grace-hallelujah_b_141054.html Amazing Grace: Hallelujah and Get to Work By Robert Borosge Huffingtonpost: November 5, 2008 Americans wake today to a new dawn, a new possibility. You don't have to drink the kool aid to appreciate how extraordinary this is. We will look at one another with new eyes. We are a better, bigger, more generous, more optimistic people than many -- particularly the Rove's acolytes in the McCain campaign -- assumed. And the world will look at America with new eyes. For a shining moment, we will be once more that city on the hill, the example of a free people choosing a remarkable new leader. A similar choice -- the son of a native born woman and an African -- could not happen in Europe, in Japan, in China or much of Asia. Amazing grace. It wasn't easy. It took a candidate of remarkable intelligence, discipline and ease, organizing a truly exemplary campaign. It took the worst financial catastrophe since the Great Depression; the worst foreign policy debacle in Iraq since Vietnam. It took the self-immolation of John McCain. It took Americans deciding not to fall for the old politics of division -- not this time. But this victory is grounded in far more than the campaign or the candidate. This is a country disfigured by slavery from the start. The Constitution even dictated that slaves would count as three-fifths of a person for apportionment (even though they couldn't vote). 150 years of slavery; 100 years of legal apartheid, known as segregation; a slow and hard struggle to overcome. Yet this same country was founded on an idea -- that all men (and now women) are created equal, endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That same Constitution that counted slaves as less than human guaranteed the right to speech and assembly, freedom of and freedom from religion. Each generation has been given the opportunity and the mandate to struggle to extend freedom and to make America better. Many sacrificed; many died to get to this day. Obama, as he knows, stands on the shoulders of giants. So this is a time to celebrate ourselves and to honor those who came before. Hallelujah And now the work begins. Obama inherits the desert -- with the situation far more dire than many, even now, understand. Manufacturing is at levels not seen since the deep recession in 1980. Consumers are cutting back spending. The banking system is still reeling from losses and shocks. The recession now has gone global. Homeowners have lost $5 trillion in housing values. So forget about the routine chattering class babble about how America is a "center right" nation and Obama must "govern from the center." With independents and moderates looking more Democratic and liberal on issue after issue, the claim that this is a center-right nation was misleading even before this election. Americans are voting for a northern, liberal, Ivy League educated, African American, former college professor to be president who campaigned on raising taxes on the wealthy, affordable health care for all, investing in new energy, getting out of Iraq and against trickle down economics. Conservative nation? Govern from the center? Americans voted overwhelmingly for change. And to be successful, Obama will have to be bold. In reality, the center has moved. Bob Rubin now is for a large, deficit financed fiscal stimulus. Conservative SEC Chair Chris Cox now tells us "self-regulation" doesn't work, and calls for re-regulating the banks. Alan Greenspan admits his ideology blinded him to reality -- or at least that he got it wrong. "We're all populists now," says Will Marshall, a leader of the Democratic Leadership Council, the Wall Street wing of the party. Mandates are not given; they are claimed. Majorities do not form; they are forged. The center is not frozen; it is molded by events, moved by leaders and movements. But this beltway clamor about the center serves as a warning to progressives. The entrenched forces of the status quo are already in motion. Obama takes office as the Reagan era comes to a close, bankrupted by its own failures. But change, as Obama says, isn't easy. Even the best presidents need to be pushed to act. Even the most calcified Congresses can be driven to move. The best of the New Deal -- Social Security, the Wagner Act that gave workers the right to organize, Fair Labor Standards that gave us the weekend -- came not from Roosevelt's first 100 days, but two years later, in what became known as the Second New Deal. And that was driven in large part by an active and mobilized labor movement, and by the growing political threat posed by a populist left -- Huey Long, Father Coughlin, Francis Townsend -- that gave Roosevelt both reason and excuse to move. "I agree with you," Roosevelt reportedly told labor's Sidney Hillman, "now go out, and make me to do it." Obama will need that same kind of pressure. We will need to build an independent progressive movement to push for reform, to challenge those who stand in the way. So celebrate tonight. And then get ready to work. ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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