Behind the scenes moves and planning most in the DNC and America aren't aware of.
Working with Rudd in M.D.S. were his old Weatherman pals Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and Jeff Jones, as well as a whole bunch of marxists from Democratic Socialists of America, Communist Party USA and Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.
In 2008, three M.D.S. board members, Tom Hayden, Barbara Ehrenreich and Bill Fletcher, Jr. went to found a new organization Progressives for Obama - which Mark Rudd endorsed.
Rudd saw in Obama, as did his friends Ayers, Dohrn and Jones, a new vehicle for the revolution. A revolution that could do with stealth and sweet words what they had failed to accomplish with riots and bombs.
In a November 2008 letter to the radical Rag Blog, November 27, 2008 Rudd revealed the revolutionary end game - the consolidation of power, to the point that stealth socialists could begin to dismantle the number one block to world revolution - the U.S. military.
Obama is a very strategic thinker. He knew precisely what it would take to get elected and didn't blow it...But he also knew that what he said had to basically play to the center to not be run over by the press, the Republicans, scare centrist and cross-over voters away. He made it.
So he has a narrow mandate for change, without any direction specified. What he's doing now is moving on the most popular issues -- the environment, health care, and the economy. He'll be progressive on the environment because that has broad popular support; health care will be extended to children, then made universal, but the medical, pharmaceutical, and insurance corporations will stay in place...the economic agenda will stress stimulation from the bottom sometimes and handouts to the top at other times. It will be pragmatic...On foreign policy and the wars and the use of the military there will be no change at all. That's what keeping Gates at the Pentagon and Clinton at State and not prosecuting the torturers is saying.
And never, never threaten the military budget. That will unite a huge majority of congress against him.
And I agree with this strategy. Anything else will court sure defeat. Move on the stuff you can to a small but significant extent, gain support and confidence. Leave the military alone because they're way too powerful. For now, until enough momentum is raised. By the second or third year of this recession, when stimulus is needed at the bottom, people may begin to discuss cutting the military budget if security is being increased through diplomacy and application of nascent international law.
Obama plays basketball. I'm not much of an athlete, barely know the game, but one thing I do know is that you have to be able to look like you're doing one thing but do another. That's why all these conservative appointments are important: the strategy is feint to the right, move left. Any other strategy invites sure defeat. It would be stupid to do otherwise in this environment.
Our job now is to organize both inside and outside the Demo party. There's already a big battle in the Demo party at every level. Here in the New Mexico State Legislature, the progressives are challenging the conservative Dems for leadership; the same is true in Congress. If you can't stand to work in the party, work on putting mass pressure on issues such as healthcare and jobs and the war from outside.
