Obama's "Team of Rivals"? Erm, where are the rivals on the Left?
Left Out
The Nation
by Christopher Hayes
Fri Nov 21, 3:26 pm ET
[...]
I know everyone is obsessed with [Obama's idea of a] "team of rivals" right now, but I feel incredibly frustrated. Even after two landslide elections in a row, are our only governing options as a nation either all right-wing Republicans, or a centrist mixture of Democrats and Republicans? Isn't there ever a point when we can get an actual Democratic administration? Also, why isn't there a single member of Obama's cabinet who will be advising him from the left? It seems to me as though there is a team of rivals, except for the left, which is left off the team entirely.
Not a single, solitary, actual dyed-in-the-wool progressive has, as far as I can tell, even been mentioned for a position in the new administration. Not one. Remember this [that is, the Left] is the movement that was right about Iraq, right about wage stagnation and inequality, right about financial deregulation, right about global warming and right about health care.
And I don't just mean in that in a sectarian way. I mean to say that the emerging establishment consensus on all of these issues came from the left. There's tons of things the left is right about that aren't even close to mainstream (taking a hatchet to the national security state and ending the prison industrial complex to name just two), but hopefully we're moving there.
And yet, no one who comes from the part of American political and intellectual life that has given birth to all of these ideas is anywhere to be found within miles of the Obama cabinet thus far. WTF?
SOURCE.
And from Politico: "Honeymoon: Left cuts Obama slack":
"Members of Obama's loyal liberal base - from the Netroots to campus liberals to Hill Democrats - are watching closely as the candidate's vague incantations of hope coalesce into cold, concrete presidential decision making. It's not a seamless transition, but so far the left seems to be cutting Obama some favorite-son slack. [...] And for some, that “here we go again” feeling came rushing back recently when Obama urged his soon-to-be-former Democratic Senate colleagues not to hold “grudges” against Lieberman, who infuriated liberals with his support for Iraq then picked at the scab by supporting John McCain - and opposing Obama - during the presidential race."