How Far Left is Obama?

What the progressive scene in America thinks of the Democratic presidential candidate

Barack Obama’s public appearance in Berlin has become a mega-event, thanks mostly to Angela Merkel, and all the bickering about the location for the holy deed. Now the entire world is watching, even though it’s not easy to explain to America’s dialogue partners the delicate symbolic difference Merkel draws between the Brandenburg Gate and the Victory Column. Oh, well.

At any rate, those in Germany who opposed the Iraq War, a group to which Angela Merkel is a latecomer, have high hopes for the visit of the charismatic bringer of hope from Chicago. This includes those who, after eight years of Bush-Cheney, still believe in the goodness of Americans. And finally, it also includes the European leftists, above all the Social Democrats, who in many countries are already on their last legs. They also yearn to say, “Yes we can!”

Befitting the visit of this prophet of a better, more decent America, the Green Party’s Heinrich Böll Foundation asks the no longer new question, what is considered “left” these days? “What’s Left: With Whom do the New Times Fit?” There, they follow current variations of this theme, such as asking whether the “future American President” tends left. It’s a justifiable question in view of the hopes pinned on the Illinois Senator’s candidacy by liberals, and also in view of the fear being stoked all over the country by America’s right wing.

One may therefore ask, how far left is Obama? How complicated the answer to that question is may be seen in discussions with Liberals, as they’re called in American political jargon, concerning the progressive setting in the United States. They all connect Obama, and the chance of a large Democratic majority in Congress, with the hope of significant political and social change. But they have no illusions.

Change, which Obama advocates in sweeping terms, has many facets: health care reform, educational opportunities, investment in the infrastructure, fair taxation, the rights of labor unions, corrections in economic policy, climate protection, and, last but not least, an end to U.S. involvement in Iraq. It’s a big battlefield full of obstacles and hard times. The American left sees it, however, with an almost joyous realism, because it means the end of Bush. Only after that will come the real-world necessity: a victorious Obama will have to accept compromises.

Desire and reality – the Obama dilemma. That’s the point made by Todd Gitlin in New York, among many others. The well-known media critic and professor at Columbia University, remembered not least as a spokesman for the student “68er” movement, sees Obama caught between conflicting priorities of the expectations he awakens in his campaign, and the limited possibilities of making those expectations reality if he wins. “In principle, he’s a man of the left, but as President, he won’t be able to govern as a Social Democrat,” Gitlin says.

Peter Dreier, of Occidental College in Los Angeles, Obama’s first academic stopping point on the mainland after he left Hawaii, sees in Obama a “pragmatic liberal” committed to battling for change, but also ready to see political realities. Obama won’t beat his head against the wall. “If he has a majority in both houses of Congress, he’ll govern as a Social Democrat; if not, he’ll remain a centrist – like Clinton.” That would certainly be a force toward humility that would require much self-discipline among his supporters.

Madeline Janis, executive director of the influential non-profit organization, Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (L.A.A.N.E.), which fights for the rights of labor unions and for socially responsible urban development, also argues realistically. Her activist organization has the power to block attempts by government officials, real estate brokers, architects and building contractors, to ignore rules such as inclusion of low-cost housing in urban housing projects, living wages, and the inclusion of union labor on construction sites. The result of her years of activism has made Los Angeles into a progressive center for the nation, with a labor force that boasts 18 percent unionization, compared to the national average of 12 percent. She defines her concept of liberal pragmatism without hesitation: “We’re pro-capitalist, but social democratic – we use the dynamics of capitalism and the markets, but feel that capital has obligations as well as rights, and that government has an important role to play in that.” In her view, the American President is not just a spectator in the economic process, but an important participant – like the Mayor of Los Angeles, a Latino, who has styled himself a moderate progressive and who may run against Governor Schwarzenegger.

Finally, Emma Jordan, African-American law professor at Georgetown University and advisor to the Obama campaign, warns against unrealistic expectations: “The candidates’ election platforms are nothing more than a wish-list under the motto ‘When I’m king of the world . . .’” She notes that, “After the election, they all notice that they’re not king of the world, they’re only President of the United States.” Still, according to Jordan, Obama would nudge the country toward the left. “After eight years of George Bush, that means we’re returning to the middle,” she adds.

America’s progressives unanimously believe that an electoral victory for Obama the populist would also have effects in Europe, with its pessimism and crumbling institutions. One of the most knowledgeable experts on the left, their social movements, and the political landscape on both sides of the Atlantic, is Georgetown sociologist, Norman Birnbaum.

He puts his hopes precisely on these tectonic long-distance effects: “An Obama electoral victory, after he has broken through all the political and psychological structures, would be a serious political message to Europe, and a massive challenge to the structural rigidity of European politics.”

What more could we want from America just now?