The Obama Administration and the Economic Crisis: Can the Left Go Beyond Conventional Criticism to Relevance?

From Political Affairs:

I have been trying to respond recently to criticisms on the Obama administration and Obama himself from various sources that I would call the independent left among both scholars and activists on a variety of issues.


These are not ultras, members of various sectarian groups, but people with long histories of defending peoples struggles. Their general argument, if I can simplify it, is that Obama, those in his administration, and their advisers, are not really different than previous administrations in their cold shoulder to labor and their defense of capital, and that the experience of the New Deal or of the Great Society for that matter have little relevance to what is happening today because we are in a new situation in terms of political economy(even though few say what we can do in that new situation, except engage in criticism).


I have tried to respond to these criticisms in a variety of ways.