Political progressives become their own worst enemies when they allow election setbacks to destroy their belief in the power of good people working together to create positive social change.
That’s why, no matter how bad things get politically, I’ve always been able to find hopeful signs. It’s not because I’m an idiot or some kind of Pollyanna who doesn’t know what’s going on.
Sure, the coming year looks pretty dismal nationally with Republicans ready to take over both houses of Congress to escalate their virulent hatred for President Barack Obama, and, closer to home, Gov. Scott Walker and legislative Republicans in total control to continue repealing rights and protections that once made Wisconsin an enlightened state.
But how can everything be so bad when President Obama has suddenly become a highly effective, successful president and Gov. Walker keeps trying to distance himself from the embarrassingly extreme legislation his mean-spirited Legislature is frothing at the mouth to pass?
Of course, one explanation for the dramatic turn around for the president is that all those media reports about Obama’s ineffectiveness prior to the November election were nothing more than dishonest, fear-mongering propaganda.
Remember the ridiculous issues that were juxtaposed to create a fraudulent image of Obama as the incompetent president who couldn’t shoot straight?
Obama, by relying on the medical expertise of the Centers for Disease Control, had put the entire population of the United States in imminent danger of being wiped out by a deadly plague of Ebola from, you guessed it, Africa.
Just a few weeks later, after all those inflammatory, unfounded scare stories have totally disappeared from the airwaves, it’s hard to believe such a transparent attempt to create panic around a national election was ever taken seriously.
At the same time, Republican governors who are being talked up as potential presidential candidates—including Walker and New Jersey bully Chris Christie—look like callous opportunists for treating travelers from Africa, including selfless health care workers, like unwanted lepers.
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Other complaints about Obama’s failed presidency ranged from the way he allowed crazed hooligans to jump the fence and run through the White House to how ineffectual he looked when trying to stand up to Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Republicans on Fox News praised as a strong national leader for his totalitarian takeover of Crimea.
Now, just weeks after Obama couldn’t do anything right, the president can do no wrong. He’s finishing the year with the U.S. economy kicking into high gear with growth last quarter soaring to an annualized rate of 5%, the highest since 2003.
The federal deficit, which Republican Congressman Paul Ryan still erroneously thinks is destroying the U.S. economy, has been cut in more than half since Obama took office, from almost 10% of the economy to 3.7%.
Obama’s economic achievements are all the more impressive since they were accomplished over the determined opposition of Republicans who made a political decision from the first day America’s first black president took office to fight every single action he proposed, no matter how beneficial it might be to the country.
Add to the economic success a whole series of historic actions Obama has taken that are widely supported but were prevented by Republican congressional sabotage.
They include decisions to stop deporting as many as 5 million undocumented immigrants who have been prevented from gaining a pathway to citizenship, scrapping more than half a century of unsuccessful U.S. hostility toward the tiny neighboring island of Cuba and joining with China, the other major world foot dragger, in leading the fight to reduce global warming, instead of resisting efforts to save the planet we all share.
And, oh yeah, Putin’s Russia is on the ropes economically as a result of U.S.-backed sanctions and falling oil prices aided by Obama’s success at expanding U.S. oil production and improving automobile fuel economy standards without resorting to the crazed “Drill, baby, drill” destruction of wildlife sanctuaries and national parks preferred by Republicans.
Signs of Hope in Wisconsin
Admittedly, we may have to look harder to find good things happening politically in Wisconsin as Walker’s Republicans become even more emboldened to do their worst. But I swear they exist.
Because heroin is now recognized as a problem in white communities, including the addiction of the daughter of a Republican legislator, the Legislature is suddenly open to expanding drug treatment in the state.
Addiction has always been a public health problem, but politicians had no qualms about criminalizing it when only blacks were going to prison. Now, who knows, they may have to reconsider their entire policy of mass incarceration, which Michelle Alexander has called “the New Jim Crow.”
Even the recent public protests over the shooting of an unarmed mentally ill black man in Milwaukee’s Red Arrow Park provides some hopeful signs.
Repeating the long history of such events, the white police officer hasn’t been charged, but he was fired. And the mayor and police chief are instituting widespread training of officers to deal with the mentally ill and even experimenting with body cameras on police officers, which in other cities have reduced “shoot first” incidents between officers and black citizens.
