Rahm Emanuel Is the Definition of Unprincipled
I was reading the cover story of the New York Times Sunday Magazinethe other day—the one about Obama’s team taking Capitol Hill—and I came upon the following quote from Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.
“The only nonnegotiable principle here,” he said, “is success. Everything else is negotiable.”
That’s the problem I have with Emanuel—and with Obama.
There’s no principle they’re willing to go to the mat for.
They didn’t fight for universal single-payer health care.
They didn’t fight for giving judges the authority to reduce the mortgages of people in bankruptcy.
They didn’t fight against the bank bailout.
They didn’t fight to keep GM from shutting down plants and laying off 21,000 people, even when they’re taking ownership of GM.
They didn’t fight for marriage equality or against don’t ask, don’t tell.
They didn’t fight against indefinite detention without trial; hell, they’ve embraced it.
They didn’t fight to dismantle Bush’s entire edifice of repression, including the NSA spying and the Military Commissions Act.
And they haven’t fought to bring the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to speedier close.
Emanuel’s comment is the very definition of being unprincipled. From a DLC-er like him, I’m not surprised.
But many expected better from Obama.
Success is not a principle. It’s an outcome.
And the outcome is going to be much less satisfactory if there’s no principle being fought for.
- Login or register to post comments
- Printer-friendly version
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Resist Censorship in Tucson
- Banned in Tucson
- An Interview with Carlos Muñoz on the Tucson Book Ban
| Banned Authors Respond | |
CURRENT ISSUE: FEBRUARY 2012
Inside the Occupy Movement
| We visited nearly thirty occupations in twenty states in two months.
What I got at Occupy Wall Street
I spent seven weeks in Zuccotti Park, and here is what I got.
Danny Glover
| The Progressive Interview | March 2012 issue
To Wed or Not to Wed
| March 2012 issue
Progressive Matt
The Koch Brothers Conspire to Buy the White House
Comments
MichaelPDA,
Do you have any idea how many MILLIONS of lefties have said exactly this over and over?
"It is about us, and unless we organize and mobilize a strong opposition fuelled by direct actions. . ."
All my political life (starting around 1960), I've heard it. Get over it. Direct action has not a thing to do with it. You live in a centrist society, thank God. It will not ever be anything but a centrist society. Obama has BEEN down the direct action route you advocate, for real. He is even now engaged in all kinds of anti-majoritarian maneuvering (which is all "direct action" ever means), where he can get away with it. Unlike you, he knows the limits a centrist democracy imposes on his own wishes. In any case, he comes from a deeply authoritarian strain of the left (Wright and Ayers both illustrate it, whereas NO ONE on the democratic left has ever played any part at all in shaping Obama's worldview). In fact, Obamaism is corporate statism, and it too will run up against America's centrist culture, and you ought to be glad it will.