As for voting for Obama, let’s walk through in our minds what might happen if Perry or Romney or some other Republican becomes president. Think USC nominations for example.
I encounter more than a few dissatisfied progressives who say they won’t vote for Obama, and who even say that voting is useless.
What comes to mind is that MLK Jr voted during the presidential elections because he preferred Kennedy over Nixon in ’60 and Johnson over Goldwater in ’64. But that didn’t mean–as some progressives I’ve met seem to imply–that King naively thought voting was all that mattered.
In addition to voting for Kennedy and Johnson, King fought for policy that was well beyond what either president would support openly. I suggest progressives should do the same regarding Obama.
Our political situation likely would be better were it not for the influence of big money as well as the unconstitutional expansion of executive power. But even then, it would be unrealistic– not to mention counterproductive to our causes— for progressives to expect Obama to govern as community-organizer-in-chief.
Pushing and pulling ideas from the fringe into the mainstream is the job of activists, not presidents.
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