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Obama loses his reelection bid?

The title explains the question, and it is one that I have been thinking about for a while now. I understand that a simple election lose is not going to suddenly change most of our minds about how we view the world, but so often it seems events within the political sphere take on a life of their own.

As such, if President Obama loses will progressive ideas and viewpoints so heralded and clearly shown in the Obama campaign be discredited from the political world? Even Obama is talking about restructuring Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid ect. If the Republicans gain a tri-cameral supramajority and fiscal conservatives continue to really drive the debate in Washington, programs such as this will surely be eying the chopping block pretty hard.

So, to reiterate, if this election is won by the Republicans, will the trend of Progressivism started by Woodrow Wilson in 1913 come to end?

Note: Please don't let this devolve into a flame war. This is meant to be a discuss about trends in political philosophy and not a "A" line of thought is better than "B" line of thought.

Politically, I sure hope so, but I doubt that it's likely.

Progressivism is a 'safe' political system that wealthy countries can afford. With the current growing fear (justified or not) of serious threats to fiscal stability and sustainability, progressivism is looking less and less viable.

Eventually, the US (or Europe, or some other region/country) will rebound economically and progressivism will once again rear its ugly head become popular.

TL;DR : when people are economically content, they favor progressivism. When they're not, they don't.

If Jimmy Carter didn't put progressivism in its coffin permanently, no one will.

I would say Teddy Roosevelt was our first Progressive president. Either way, Obama losing wouldn't be the end of the idea. Harding won because Wilson got so out of control with his policies, then Coolidge took over after Harding died. Those are two of the four presidents we have had since Wilson that weren't Progressives in many respects. After Coolidge we had massive progressives in Hoover and FDR.

It's not going away anytime soon.

Well progressivism has been a trend in western though more or less continuosly since the Enlightenment. Various schools of thought within that framework have come and gone, of course, but the overall trend of people thinking that human life has value and should be valued will probably stay on course.

As the current Great Awakening loses steam, and secularism continues, it seems likely that some of the religiously conservative checks on progressivism in this country will fade away.

In the long term, no, no single election will have that great an impact. In the short term, well, if the GOP controls the White House and the lower chamber, than of course the government will veer in a different direction.


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Stormrider wrote:I would say Teddy Roosevelt was our first Progressive president. Either way, Obama losing wouldn't be the end of the idea. Harding won because Wilson got so out of control with his policies, then Coolidge took over after Harding died. Those are two of the four presidents we have had since Wilson that weren't Progressives in many respects. After Coolidge we had massive progressives in Hoover and FDR.

It's not going away anytime soon.

Don't write off the progressivism of Andrew Jackson either. It's not what we'd think of, but he was a great populist.

I would say Obama isn't really THAT much of a "progressive", its such a broad term as well.

He is much more of a pragmatist and looks for consensus/compromise on most issues, not matter how much I rather he wouldn't(on some things). Haven't you heard "compromiser-in-chief"/"capitulator-in-chief" yet?

What has he done that is tremendously progressive so far? The new HCR that doesn't really control costs and lines providers pockets even more?

Polonius wrote:Well progressivism has been a trend in western though more or less continuosly since the Enlightenment. Various schools of thought within that framework have come and gone, of course, but the overall trend of people thinking that human life has value and should be valued will probably stay on course.

As the current Great Awakening loses steam, and secularism continues, it seems likely that some of the religiously conservative checks on progressivism in this country will fade away.

In the long term, no, no single election will have that great an impact. In the short term, well, if the GOP controls the White House and the lower chamber, than of course the government will veer in a different direction.


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Stormrider wrote:I would say Teddy Roosevelt was our first Progressive president. Either way, Obama losing wouldn't be the end of the idea. Harding won because Wilson got so out of control with his policies, then Coolidge took over after Harding died. Those are two of the four presidents we have had since Wilson that weren't Progressives in many respects. After Coolidge we had massive progressives in Hoover and FDR.

It's not going away anytime soon.

Don't write off the progressivism of Andrew Jackson either. It's not what we'd think of, but he was a great populist.

I did forget Jackson, and some of the element's of Polk's presidency too.

Polonius wrote:Don't write off the progressivism of Andrew Jackson either. It's not what we'd think of, but he was a great populist.

Assuming you weren't a Native American of course. Then your life wasn't worth a wooden nickel.

Or British

Progressivism in the US has survived the humiliation of being led by the Democrats for decades, it'll survive losing a presidential election.

The bigger question, really, is where progressivism has been since the 1970s in the US. Decreasing social mobility, widening gap between rich and poor, stagnant median real wage. Progressive elements of society have been steadily whittled away for a few decades now.

It's what makes the bizarreness of the current reactionary movement in the US so weird. They're reacting against a thing that isn't there.

biccat wrote:Politically, I sure hope so, but I doubt that it's likely.

Progressivism is a 'safe' political system that wealthy countries can afford. With the current growing fear (justified or not) of serious threats to fiscal stability and sustainability, progressivism is looking less and less viable.

Eventually, the US (or Europe, or some other region/country) will rebound economically and progressivism will once again rear its ugly head become popular.

TL;DR : when people are economically content, they favor progressivism. When they're not, they don't.

This is, of course, the opposite of true. Social justice is more in demand when times are bad. The depression led to the New Deal. Social collapse led to the downfall of the Tsarist regime, failure to improve things led to the Bolshevik coup.

When times are good people don't mind injustices (perceived or actual) because their own lot is getting better. When times are tough, economically, they begin to notice those injustices (perceived or actual). Look at Tunisia and Egypt just recently.

sebster wrote:It's what makes the bizarreness of the current reactionary movement in the US so weird. They're reacting against a thing that isn't there.

They're led by people who subscribe to the same "push the goal posts every time your opponent compromises, just to get them to start fighting back again, so as to personally benefit from an appearance of conflict" playbook that Newt Gingrich so successfully employed. They're fighting tooth and nail just to get people who initially agreed, or were willing to compromise with them, to start fighting back, because a violent divide is more politically profitable. Compound that with the fact that by the seventies, the most egregious social problems American Liberalism had set out to solve had been mitigated to the point of no longer being quite so glaring, even if they still existed in some form or another, and the active advancement of their causes slowed down (they'd hit the big milestones they wanted, all that was left was for the culture to catch up to it).

Now, both sides are economically right wing, mostly due to the lingering politics and propaganda from the cold war, and those who stand to benefit from rightist policies being wealthy enough to bribe congressmen one way or another, but culturally there's conflict between the secular, modern society that's largely reflected in our laws, and victorian era mores that are still held by a frightening, if shrinking, portion of the population. Which does make the conflict seem quite bizarre: the cultural left isn't fighting because its most important legal battles were won decades ago, and its basic mores have become effectively default positions for the culture as a whole. The cultural right is fighting tooth and nail against the modern culture, but isn't gaining ground overall, even if they have minor, temporary victories here and there.

Nope. And it's for the better this way.

Without progressivism as a concept, America would be far, far worse off.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:They're led by people who subscribe to the same "push the goal posts every time your opponent compromises, just to get them to start fighting back again, so as to personally benefit from an appearance of conflict" playbook that Newt Gingrich so successfully employed.

Definitely. It isn't weird that those people exist, what's weird is that people keep falling for it. I'll see some line concocted by some rightwing pundit that's nothing but pretend outrage and silliness and I'll think 'of course you'd say that, it's your job to say nonsense like that'. Then a day later I'll see it repeated here on Dakka.

They're fighting tooth and nail just to get people who initially agreed, or were willing to compromise with them, to start fighting back, because a violent divide is more politically profitable.

To some extent. I think the divide was started by cynical politicians, but I think there's actually been a significant inflow of genuine true believers who actaully believed all that stuff and have actually come to Washington to go to war with evil liberals that exist only in the rhetoric of talk radio and FOX news.

Now, both sides are economically right wing, mostly due to the lingering politics and propaganda from the cold war

Not just the cold war, the collapse of communism humiliated a lot of far left academics, and basically removed any impact they had on policy debate. While they were an absurd group, they did have the positive impact of nullifying the equally absurd far right. Now the Cato Institute still has an impact on policy debate, without any countering effect coming from the far right.

Oh, and also the dollars in US politics has a significant impact, and those dollars come mostly from the wealthy. Also US politics is more exclusionary than most, you really need a significant starting pool of wealth to even think about campaigning. Which means almost all your political candidates are drawn from the wealthy elite, who can't help but see things in terms of their own class.

Which does make the conflict seem quite bizarre: the cultural left isn't fighting because its most important legal battles were won decades ago, and its basic mores have become effectively default positions for the culture as a whole. The cultural right is fighting tooth and nail against the modern culture, but isn't gaining ground overall, even if they have minor, temporary victories here and there.

Yeah, which is why the self-described conservatives are not very well named, they're actually a reactionary movement, mostly reacting against social achievements that were made 40 or more years ago.

It does make it funny though, when you look at the champions of the right of times gone by. There's no doubt Nixon and his plans for universal healthcare would have been too much of a liberal for the current Republicans, and I kind of suspect they wouldn't have tolerated Regan either.

sebster wrote:When times are good people don't mind injustices (perceived or actual) because their own lot is getting better. When times are tough, economically, they begin to notice those injustices (perceived or actual). Look at Tunisia and Egypt just recently.

You appear to be confusing classical Liberalism with Progressivism.

Liberalism is the pursuit of rights (at least, classical Liberalism, before the socialist movement corrupted up the term, jerks) and freedom. Progressivism is the pursuit of "social justice" or "social equality." They are completely separate terms.

When times are bad, people will see their rights being violated, and will seek more freedoms, on that I agree. But it's only when economic times are good that democratic societies impose huge financial burdens on themselves in the pursuit of "social justice."

I don't think you'll see the Egyptian or Tunisian protesters fighting for welfare benefits or retirement at age 55. They're fighting for far more basic issues.

The facts dont' completely fit that theory though. The new deal was ennacted during the depression, while the 90's yeilded massive welfare reform. Johnson's Great Society reforms were enacted in the mid-60's, which weren't exactly the best of economic times.

Progressivism is simply the idea that government should attempt to better the condition of its constituents through reform and change.

In a sense, right now both American parties are progressive... they just disagree on the means and the goal, not that reform and change is necessary.

biccat wrote:Progressivism is the pursuit of "social justice" or "social equality." They are completely separate terms.

Historically progressivism has entailed far more than that. For example, Louis Brandeis argued for progressivism through efficiency in government agencies, and William U'Ren was a significant supporter of direct, or at least more direct, democracy. In fact you could even make the argument that the revolutionaries in Egypt and Tunisia aren't really chasing anything so specific as liberalism, but rather general social equality. Of course, even if that's what they want it isn't what they'll get because it would require the total reorganization of the Egyptian economic model, and the Tunisian legal one (Egypt already has a state legal system that stays almost entirely out of social matters).

yeah, I thought that a lack of jobs and economic security was the biggest problem in Egypt?

Polonius wrote:yeah, I thought that a lack of jobs and economic security was the biggest problem in Egypt?

Yep, and in Tunisia it was a corrupt legal system.

Not surprisingly the majority of Western media outlets have latched onto whatever explicit calls for Democracy they've been able to find, and then gone on to interpret calls for reform as being effectively the same thing. Really the only place where democracy has been openly discussed en masse has been Tunisia, and that's because they were already somewhat more liberal than the rest of North Africa to begin with.

not to derail a thread, but I'm really starting to come around to the idea that democracy as a form of government might be more cultural than we think. Few countries outside of the Western tradition really have functioning democracies, and those that do operate very differently than we're used to.

I think there are a lot of reasons, but when you look at the US, we had no serious threats, internal or external, to frustrate our development as a working democracy. We also had a centuries old tradition of self government.

I read somewhere that a Afghani tribal peoples are shocked by the idea of western style rights. The idea that a government can't just deal with a person that's a threat worries them more than the fear of governmental abuse.

Democracy IS cultural. Oppression begets oppression, and that can build into a culture as time goes on.

What did obama actually do for you guys?

All I got from him was; He's semi-black and got a peace prize for being a recent US president not to start a war.

Polonius wrote:not to derail a thread, but I'm really starting to come around to the idea that democracy as a form of government might be more cultural than we think. Few countries outside of the Western tradition really have functioning democracies, and those that do operate very differently than we're used to.

That's often been argued, and I generally agree, particularly given that "democracy" itself is either a rather broad concept or a very specific one that doesn't contradict a whole lot of other political ideas. One good example within the West itself is Scandinavia and how much better they are at being democratic than just about everyone else in the world.

Polonius wrote:
I read somewhere that a Afghani tribal peoples are shocked by the idea of western style rights. The idea that a government can't just deal with a person that's a threat worries them more than the fear of governmental abuse.

I've heard that as well. The rule of law tends to be a really difficult concept for cultural groups that have spent almost their entire history ruled by tradition. I mean, even the concept of Sharia in Afghanistan is a far cry from the legalistic tradition that exists in the Arab world.


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Phototoxin wrote:What did obama actually do for you guys?

All I got from him was; He's semi-black and got a peace prize for being a recent US president not to start a war.

He'll get credit for health care, and the draw down in Iraq, plus the steady increase in troops to Afghanistan.

Most of the things that Presidents do tend to be fairly obscure until campaign season because the aren't usually about influencing legislators, but executing policy (hence, executive branch).

dogma wrote:He'll get credit for health care, and the draw down in Iraq, plus the steady increase in troops to Afghanistan.

In the short term, yeah. In the long term, who knows.

Nixon is remembered for Vietnam and Watergate, not for creating the DoE or ending the conflict in Vietnam. Kennedy is remembered for being a suave and likeable guy and for his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. He's not remembered for the Bay of Pigs or starting US involvement in Vietnam. Everyone thinks FDR was a great guy that everyone loved, but very few people realize the 22nd Amendment was passed immediately after his term, although maybe a few more might recall his court packing plan.

Long term, I think Obamacare is dead (there doesn't seem to be electoral support for it, although the 2012 Senate and Congressional elections may prove me wrong), and Obama will be remembered as either heralding the tail end of Republican dominance of the White House, or one of several Democrats who managed to snag the office due to weak Republican candidates.

There's still the possibility of him being the next Carter, but 2012 will be a test of that. 1 term Presidents tend to get the short end of the stick, historically speaking.

dogma wrote:Most of the things that Presidents do tend to be fairly obscure until campaign season because the aren't usually about influencing legislators, but executing policy (hence, executive branch).

Here I thought the executive branch was charged with running the bureaucracy and executing the law.

Oddly enough I think it's Obama's military efforts which will be most remembered...

Is there a huge difference between executing policy and "running the bureaucracy and executing the law?"

You seem to have a few interesting ideas, but being needlessly argumentive tends to draw attention away from them.

Polonius wrote:Is there a huge difference between executing policy and "running the bureaucracy and executing the law?"

You seem to have a few interesting ideas, but being needlessly argumentive tends to draw attention away from them.

I would think that there's not just a huge difference, but a broad sweeping difference between executing policy and executing the law.

Do you think it would be a good thing if the Executive were to execute its own policy without regard to laws passed by a legislative branch?

edit: Not that there's anything inherently wrong with the Executive communicating it's proposals for laws based on its policy, or the Executive vetoing laws, or even for members of the same party as the Executive from passing laws based on the Executive's preferences. It's when the Executive acts without legislative consent (or even contrary to legislative acts) where problems arise.

Phototoxin wrote:What did obama actually do for you guys?

All I got from him was; He's semi-black and got a peace prize for being a recent US president not to start a war prior to getting the award.

Corrected your typo

Phototoxin wrote:What did obama actually do for you guys?

All I got from him was; He's semi-black and got a peace prize for being a recent US president not to start a war.

He'll shut down Guantanamo! Or, well, not.

He'll see that the Bush flunkies in charge of torturing people get brought to justice! Or protect them instead, maybe that.

He'll roll back the Bush assault on civil liberties! Or keep up all the same 'warrants? we don't need no steenkin warrents' fun.

He'll pass a national healthcare law! That ends up being written primarily to protect insurance executive salaries.

He'll get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan! On basically the same timetable Bush had set up.

OK, at least he won't get us into any more wars in the middle east until those are done. Well, except for Libya.


I don't really see that he's been much of a change from Bush, aside from the fact that comedians make fun of him less since he's a democrat.

biccat wrote:

Polonius wrote:Is there a huge difference between executing policy and "running the bureaucracy and executing the law?"

You seem to have a few interesting ideas, but being needlessly argumentive tends to draw attention away from them.

I would think that there's not just a huge difference, but a broad sweeping difference between executing policy and executing the law.

Do you think it would be a good thing if the Executive were to execute its own policy without regard to laws passed by a legislative branch?

edit: Not that there's anything inherently wrong with the Executive communicating it's proposals for laws based on its policy, or the Executive vetoing laws, or even for members of the same party as the Executive from passing laws based on the Executive's preferences. It's when the Executive acts without legislative consent (or even contrary to legislative acts) where problems arise.

I think when you're looking for reasons to be upset, you see them. I just didn't read dogma's post to read "executing policy contrary to the law," rather as e"xecuting policy, but of the administration and as defined by the laws of the land."

I'm not trying to call you out, but you might benefit from being a little less ready to argue and announce ideology. It's a rare exectutive that doesnt' execute the law according to his own policy. Executive discretion is why the branch exists.