Guest Blog: Thoughts On a 2012 Primary Challenge to President Obama

This is a guest blog by Ed Merta, a first year law student at the University of New Mexico with an interest in environmental and natural resources law.

Senator Bernie Sanders has called for a primary challenger against President Obama in 2012. Is this a good idea?

Answers to that question typically take clear, either/or stands, one way or the other. But in reality, there are complicated calculations on both sides. It's important to be clear and pragmatic in assessing both possible responses -- yes or no -- to Senator Sanders' call.

If someone were to run against Obama in the primaries, political strategists for such a person would try to calculate whether the outcome would be a strong showing -- i.e. win one or more primaries, rather than simply garner a sliver of protest votes in each contest. If someone is going to do something as drastic as mount a serious primary challenge to a sitting president, a hardened politico would say you might as well do it right.

Possible Challengers
Potential candidates with a realistic chance to make a strong primary showing against Obama might include:

• Former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold
• Current Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown
• AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka
• Current Oregon Representative Peter Defazio
• Current Minnesota Senator Al Franken

These are safe, conventional choices, with at least some national recognition and "I have paid my dues" cred. They might conceivably generate sympathy from at least some state and local Democratic party officials with crucial influence in the nominating process.

Unfortunately, the connections and credibility of the above candidates make them unlikely to run for president. Challenging the massive, entrenched power of the corporate-funded national party leadership could well mean career suicide for anyone daring the attempt.

That means the most likely recruits for a primary challenge to Obama would be outsiders, unknowns, or people otherwise having less to lose. Potential examples of such candidates include:

• Van Jones
• Bernie Sanders (not currently a registered Democrat)
• Mike Gravel
• Cynthia McKinney
• Dennis Kucinich

Such candidates face very long odds of actually winning. For us grass roots advocates, that means supporting such a candidate is potentially an immense waste of time and energy better spent elsewhere. 

Our Dilemma
Grass roots progressive Democrats face a truly horrifying dilemma, which can be summed up in two basic observations.

1) Any action that undermines Obama in 2012 -- including a primary challenge -- increases the odds of a Republican president and Congress taking power in January 2013. Such a government would be the most extremist and destructive in American history, with terrifying consequences for the entire world.

2) Barack Obama -- for whatever reason -- is willfully, systematically undermining progressive values and policies that Democrats have defended for decades. The national Democratic party, on the whole, faces steady pressure to support the President in that effort.

These two facts have critical implications. First, progressives disillusioned with Obama should not minimize the very real risks of challenging the President, because that action could bring the genuinely devastating outcome of GOP control in Washington. Second, die-hard supporters of President Obama should face the reality that his actions show him to be fundamentally hostile to progressive social and economic reform as understood by the grass roots Democratic base. That's the simplest and  most logical conclusion when facing a Democratic president so anxious to slash Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. 

So we have a dilemma -- two conflicting considerations, not easily reconciled, pulling us in seemingly opposite directions. Both answers seem fundamentally flawed. We can withdraw support for Obama or give him that support and hope, against all available evidence, for the best. What should we do? 

If two options seem unworkable, the answer most likely lies in a third option. Not a third party, clearly. At least not yet. The political game in America is currently rigged against such efforts, making them futile. We don't need another Ralph Nader.

Third Option: A Reform Movement
But we need something, and we have compelling models for a third option in the experience of the United States and other countries. These models show how advocates for social justice have dealt with indifferent or hostile political institutions (like the Obama-led national Democratic party and the extremist GOP). In multiple instances, reform movements facing such obstacles have arisen to lobby for effective change. They did so not by emphasizing elections alone but by providing some other sort of immediate benefit in the everyday lives of ordinary people. The resulting grass roots action effectively pressured dysfunctional political systems to change, over the long term.

Here are some examples of this process at work.

1) The U.S. civil rights movement, 1954-1965. It offered African-Americans an immediate action they could take in their everyday lives to provide dignity and hope, albeit at great risk: participating in non-violent civil disobedience against unjust laws. The subsequent mass movement produced, in the end, a more progressive national Democratic party.

2) The U.S. labor movement, 1877 to 1935. Workers suffering brutal exploitation by U.S. corporations responded with strikes and mutual self-help, such as community strike funds. These actions salvaged a measure of dignity and hope in daily life, and in the long run successfully moved the Democratic party to a pro-labor stance. 

3) Pro-democracy movements in Eastern Europe (1970s and 80s), South Africa (1960s to 1980s), and the Middle East (today, still in progress, results yet to be determined). Ordinary people learned to assert their rights and find emotional support in immediate, everyday protests, outside the dysfunctional political system. Such actions, whether taking to the street or hosting a neighborhood organizing meeting, collectively generated large-scale, long-term pressure for political change. 

All of these movements were risky, difficult, and slow to take full effect. But they might offer our best hope for a way forward in the United States of the 2010s and 2020s. They are compatible with pragmatic, partisan political action. We can support Barack Obama as the only realistic bulwark against an extremist Republican regime. But we can at the same time form local, grass roots initiatives to provide immediate benefits and hope, as labor and civil rights networks did in our past. Their twenty first century successors can work, in the long run, to place constructive pressure on the Democratic party establishment.

Our Prospects
This course is uncertain in its prospects for success. But our prospects without it are unacceptable no matter what happens. A loss for Obama in 2012 would bring on the nightmare of a Christian right, Social Darwinist, Tea Party federal government. A 2012 Obama victory, on the other hand, will bring more of what we're seeing now -- a Democratic president bent on destroying vital progressive achievements like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

The irony is that Obama's crusade to gut these programs will make a 2012 Republican victory far more likely. His brand of fiscal austerity will further cripple the daily living standards of average voters, by slashing social programs for millions already facing poverty and unemployment. History shows that such economic desperation leads voters to punish an incumbent President, rightly or not. 

Our country, then, is likely heading toward a crisis greater than any of us ever imagined. In facing it, progressives need to imagine options beyond the simple either-or choice of Obama or anti-Obama. There has to be another way. 

As Bob Dylan once said: let us not speak falsely now, for the hour is getting late.

This is a guest blog by Ed Merta. He can be reached at donatu_five@yahoo.com.

To submit a piece for consideration as a guest blog, contact me by clicking on the Email Me link at the upper left-hand corner of the page.