“One thing Obama has not done: tell the truth. Tell us what’s going on!” Complaints like this have become commonplace at Tea Party rallies and Republican Party meetings in recent months. They aren’t, however, often heard at meetings of liberals, which is where this particular complaint was aired. Speaking at a conference of his organization the Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP), Rabbi Michael Lerner gave voice to the discontent that has been slowly but steadily growing on the left.
Lerner heads Tikkun magazine and is famous for authoring The Politics of Meaning, which influenced the Clintons prior to their rise to national prominence.
NSP convened over the weekend for its Washington, DC Conference entitled “Strategies for Liberals and Progressives in the Obama Years. The meeting was subtitled “Creating ‘The Caring Society’: A Progressive Alternative to Tea Party Extremism and Corporate Domination of American Politics and Culture.” The purpose of the DC Conference was “to explore strategies appropriate for the complexities of a period in which the failures of the Democrats to present a coherent progressive vision and program has created the space for the rise of a quasi-fascist and racist movement on the Right that threatens to move all of American political discourse in violent and destructive ways, and simultaneously to strengthen corporate dominance.”
Convened at the Lutheran Church of the Reformation on Capitol Hill, the conference was comprised of large and small group sessions, workshops, and a protest in front of the White House calling for the President “To Be the Obama Americans Thought They Were Voting For.” Among the off-site locations used for workshops was the United Methodist Building, home to the Methodist General Board of Church and Society (GBCS). Jim Winkler, General Secretary of GBCS, attended the conference.
Arguably the most prominent speaker of the weekend was Brian McClaren, the controversial church leader and author of A New Kind of Christianity. In his presentation, McClaren criticized certain unnamed religious groups for their “visions for social suicide.” He argued that on pressing social issues these groups are “as often a part of the problem as part of the solution.” Drawing on his education in English, McClaren said, “Religious communities, among the many contributions they make, they can infuse narratives into communities. By narratives I mean…big stories that frame our lives.” McClaren went on to say that these narratives are important because they mobilize people to take action on issues like global climate change and other environmental concerns.
While perfunctory nods toward tolerance were made, the disdain for conservatives was clear throughout the weekend. At one point Peter Gabel, associate editor Tikkun, referred to conservatives as an “angry vigilante group.” Another conference speaker, radical Catholic Sister Joan Chittister, charged that small government, a fundamental tenet of conservatism, only leads to “big bombs and big profits for a few.”
Even in its conference program NSP couldn’t avoid condescension and criticism, defining as a “central notion” the “desire to find the rational kernel within the irrational shell of people with whom we disagree.” The stated mission of the organization makes crystal clear its view of people who do not buy into the progressive political worldview: “Our mission as Spiritual Progressives is to help those people separate the decent and legitimate needs that they have from the illegitimate racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, pro-militarist politics in which these needs find inappropriate expression.”
Though the animosity toward non-progressives certainly ran deep, the conference attendees were none too happy about President Obama’s first year and a half in office. In his opening remarks, Rabbi Lerner rattled off a litany of grievances for which progressives were angry. According to him, progressive discontent started with Obama’s appointment of Rahm Emanuel and Lawrence Summers and continued with the bank bailouts, the escalation of the Afghanistan war, the embrace of the “non-solution of cap-and-trade,” and the “retreat” from the public option in the health care debate.
Before becoming too harsh with his criticism of President Obama, Lerner shifted his fire to Emanuel, arguing that many of the administration’s failures have been caused by opposition from moderate Democrats whom Emanuel backed when he chaired the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “These people were chosen by Rahm Emanuel. These are the people that Rahm Emanuel recruited in 2006 to run when there were more liberal and anti-corporation people,” he said. In this way, President Obama was portrayed as the victim of Democrat weakness, unable to bring about the change that he truly desires.
Against Emanuel’s vision of Democrat legislative majorities, Lerner proposed a new vision. “What a progressive needs to do,” he said, “is set a worldview and a coherent vision and put forward ideas.” Once this is done, he believes that legislative majorities and policy changes will follow. In the meantime, it is up to progressives, spiritual or not, “to articulate for the president and for the Democrats a clear vision.”
In large part this progressive vision is economic, which David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World, defined as, “A global system of human-scale, interconnected Local Living Economies that functions in harmony with local ecosystems, meet the basic needs of all people, support just and democratic societies, and fosters joyful community life.” Integral to such a system and central to NSP’s mission is the Global Marshal Plan, an ambitious proposal to overhaul the global economic system that aims to establish “an improved and binding global framework for the world economy, that brings economy into harmony with society, culture, and environment.” While the chances of the Global Marshal Plan getting anywhere in Congress are slim, it is precisely this unlikelihood that allows its proponents to be so extreme in their proposals and vocal in their support.
NSP’s likely political influence, having deflated since the Clintons’ disavowed it in the early 90’s, may not seem large. But apparently President Obama has been fond of the group. Recalling a conversation he had with then-Senator Obama, Rabbi Lerner said that Obama said was “connected very deeply to spiritual progressive things. He told me when I met with him in 2006 that he was regularly reading Tikkun magazine…that he had come to meetings of Tikkun in Chicago…[and] that he had come to a conference in 1996 and asked to speak.”
So is the President a left-wing ideologue unable to muster the legislative support for his preferred progressive policies or just another politician who has “gone Washington” and surrounded himself with unprincipled advisors? For the “spiritual progressives” gathered over the weekend, the answer is less important than the fact that their hope in Obama has, as Lerner put it, been “shattered.”
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