The Left Responds to the Tea Party

A couple thousand people — considerably less than the tea party brought together in the same place a month ago — gathered in Washington yesterday in an attempt to get the left out of the state of depression it’s in less than a month before the legislative elections. It’s not going to be an easy task. From yesterday, it can be seen that getting people out into the streets and generating public enthusiasm are currently just characteristics of the right.

The rally yesterday was an opportunity to measure support. Even though its organizers claim that planning for this rally was started before the tea party’s, it’s indisputable that this march served as a response to the one the conservatives had among the same monuments in August to listen to their favorite agitator, Fox News commentator Glenn Beck.

They had assembled the unions, the main African-American organization in the country and a conglomerate of human rights organizations associated with the left. Barack Obama was not in Washington yesterday; he is resting this weekend at Camp David. But in the days before, his collaborators circulated messages of his support for this gathering.

The motto of the rally was “One Nation Working Together,” and its goal was both to encourage the groups who support the government and to condemn the spread of racist and divisive messages circulating since the tea party has dominated the political sphere. At least it served to demonstrate that there are still Democratic activists and followers of Obama who are willing to take to the streets, that the movement of millions of people that got this president to the White House has not disappeared into thin air.

But beyond that, it proved that today, the left is lacking the necessary energy to recover the initiative, much less to reverse the poll forecasts and avoid a solid Republican victory on November 2.

There are many complex reasons for this downfall. They include historical justifications about the intrinsic weakness of North American progressiveness, as well as specific mistakes made by the Obama administration. They will try to correct some of these mistakes after the elections, but in the 28 days left before those elections, the goal is to take advantage of opportunities like yesterday to recuperate even a little of the lost enthusiasm. There will be more occasions, especially another rally set for the end of this month organized by the two trendiest comedians, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

Although the majority of the participants in yesterday’s march blame Republican obstructionism in Congress for not being able to achieve more results during Obama’s first two years, some also expressed their disappointment with the president for not having governed more decidedly from the left. The Democratic Party runs the risk of this debate gaining strength after November.

In any case, Obama cannot be accused of not being completely involved in his party’s resurrection. The president’s schedule during the next few weeks is full of election events, meetings in support of Democratic candidates and fundraising dinners for the campaign.

The Democratic Party just needs to hold up their end of the bargain, but that is much less likely. The Democrats, who still have a wide majority in the House of Representatives and in the Senate — even though it seems as though they don’t know it — suspended the legislative year last week without even daring to vote on the extension of economic benefits to the middle class, so as not to have to bring up the tax increase for the rich as well. However, it’s the Democrats themselves who run from the health care debate because they don’t believe in it.