by Van Jones
It goes without saying that clear thinking and imaginative problem solving are easier in hindsight, away from the battlefield. I was in the White House for six months of 2009, and I was outside of it afterward. I had some of the above insights at the time, but many did not come to me in the middle of the drama and action. Most are the product of deeper reflection, which I was able to do only from a distance.
Nonetheless, the exercise of trying to sort out what might have been and trying to understand why nobody was able to make those things happen in real time has informed this book and shaped my arguments going forward.
Let me speak personally: looking back, I do not think those of us who believed in the agenda of change had to get beaten as badly as we were, after Obama was sworn in. We did not have to leave millions of once-inspired people feeling lost, deceived, and abandoned. We did not have to let our movement die down to the level that it did.
The simple truth is this: we overestimated our achievement in 2008, and we underestimated our opponents in 2009.
We did not lose because the backlashers got so loud. We lost because the rest of us got so quiet. Too many of us treated Obama’s inauguration as some kind of finish line, when we should have seen it as just the starting line. Too many of us sat down at the very moment when we should have stood up.
We overestimated our achievement in 2008, and we underestimated our opponents in 2009.
Among those who stayed active, too many of us (myself included) were in the suites when we should have been in the streets. Many “repositioned” our grassroots organizations to be “at the table” in order to “work with the administration.” Some of us (like me) took roles in the government. For a while at least, many were so enthralled with the idea of being a part of history that we forgot the courage, sacrifices, and risks that are sometimes required to make history.
That is hard, scary, and thankless work. It requires a willingness to walk with a White House when possible—and to walk boldly ahead of that same White House, when necessary. A few leaders were willing to play that role from the very beginning, but many more were not. Too many activists reverted to acting like either die-hard or disappointed fans of the president, not fighters for the people.
We did not lose because the backlashers got so loud. We lost because the rest of us got so quiet.
The conventional wisdom is that Obama went too far to the left to accommodate his liberal base. In my view, the liberal base went too far to the center to accommodate Obama. The conventional wisdom says that Obama relied on Congress too much. I say Obama relied on the people too little, and we tried to rely on him too much. Once it became obvious that he was committed to bipartisanship at all costs, even if it meant chasing an opposition party that was moving further to the right every day, progressives needed to reassess our strategies, defend our own interests, and go our own way. It took us way too long to internalize this lesson—and act upon it.
The independent movement for hope and change, which had been growing since 2003, was a goose that was laying golden eggs. But the bird could not be bossed. Caging it killed it. It died around conference tables in Washington, DC, long before the Tea Party got big enough to kick its carcass down the street.
The administration was naïve and hubristic enough to try to absorb and even direct the popular movement that had helped to elect the president. That was part of the problem. But the main problem was that the movement itself was naïve and enamored enough that it wanted to be absorbed and directed. Instead of marching on Washington, many of us longed to get marching orders from Washington. We so much wanted to be a part of something beautiful that we forgot how ugly and difficult political change can be. Somewhere along the line, a bottom-up, largely decentralized phenomenon found itself trying to function as a subcomponent of a national party apparatus. Despite the best intentions of practically everyone involved, the whole process wound up sucking the soul out of the movement.
As a result, when the backlash came, the hope-and-changers had no independent ground on which to stand and fight back. Grassroots activists had little independent ability to challenge the White House when it was wrong and, therefore, a dwindling capacity to defend it when it was right.
The Obama administration had the wrong theory of the movement, and the movement had the wrong theory of the presidency. In America, change comes when we have two kinds of leaders, not just one. We need a president who is willing to be pushed into doing the right thing, and we need independent leaders and movements that are willing to do the pushing. For a few years, Obama’s supporters expected the president to act like a movement leader, rather than a head of state.
We have our head of state who is willing to be pushed. We do not yet have a strong enough independent movement to do the pushing.
The confusion was understandable: As a candidate, Obama performed many of the functions of a movement leader. He gave inspiring speeches, held massive rallies, and stirred our hearts. But when he became president, he could no longer play that role.
The expectation that he would or could arose from a fundamental misreading of U.S. history. After all, as head of state, President Lyndon Johnson did not lead the civil rights movement. That was the job of independent movement leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer. There were moments of conflict and cooperation between Johnson and leaders in the freedom struggle, but the alchemy of political power and people power is what resulted in the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
As head of state, Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not lead the labor movement. That was the job of independent union leaders. Again, the alchemy of political power and people power resulted in the New Deal. As head of state, Woodrow Wilson did not lead the fight to enfranchise women. That was the role of independent movement leaders, such as suffragettes Susan B. Anthony and Ida B. Wells. The alchemy of political power and people power resulted in women’s right to vote. As head of state, Abraham Lincoln did not lead the abolitionists. That was the job of independent movement leaders Frederick Douglass, John Brown, and Harriet Tubman. The alchemy of political power and people power resulted in the emancipation of enslaved Africans. As head of state, Richard Nixon did not lead the environmental movement. That was the job of various environmental organizations, such as the Sierra Club, and other leaders, like those whom writer Rachel Carson inspired. Once again it was the alchemy of political power and people power that resulted in the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
The biggest reason for our frustrations and failures is that we have not yet understood that both of these are necessary—and they are distinct. We already have our head of state who arguably is willing to be pushed. We do not yet have a strong enough independent movement to do the pushing. The bulk of this book makes the case for how and why we should build one.
In the next chapter, I will detail the rise of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street—two movements that arose in the vacuum left by the hope bubble’s collapse.
3
PERFECT SWARMS
The Rise of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street
THE LIBERTARIAN POPULIST REVOLT OF 2OO9, also known as the Tea Party movement, seemed unlikely to derail Obama’s agenda when it first emerged. Where did it come from? What did it have going for it? And why did it succeed?
There are a few theories on the origins of the Tea Party. Some call the godfather of the movement Ron Paul, the congressman who ran for president in 2008 on an anti-tax and anti-war platform. Among the fund-raisers and stunts he organized to galvanize his supporters—who were primarily other unwavering libertarians, as well as young folks attracted by his anti-war and anti-war-on-drugs position—were reenactments of the original 1773 Boston Tea Party, when civilians protested action by American colonists against Britain’s planned tax on tea.
Others refer to an infamous, on-air rant by CNBC Business News editor Rick Santelli on February 19, 2009. Santel
li went off, allegedly incensed by the Obama administration’s Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan, a $75 billion program to refinance the mortgages of homeowners at risk of losing their homes. In fact, the program cost less than one-one hundredth of the cost of the total bank bailouts, but it somehow made for irresistible fodder for Santelli, who called it “subsidizing the losers’ mortgages.” Santelli, speaking from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, called for “tea parties” in protest.
The Santelli video went viral, and overnight a Facebook page, and websites such as ChicagoTeaParty.com and reTeaParty.com went live. These sites organized events in at least a dozen cities for February 27, to protest the stimulus bill Obama had just signed, and planned yet more events for “Tax Day,” or April 15. The Tea Party phenomenon, as we know it, had begun. Santelli called it the proudest moment of his life, saying, “I think that this tea party phenomenon is steeped in American culture and steeped in the American notion to get involved with what’s going on with our government.”
Yet the roots of the movement can be traced at least as far back as the Libertarian Party’s 1980 presidential campaign. It pitted a man named Ed Clark as the presidential candidate and David Koch as his vice presidential candidate in a hugely unsuccessful effort against Ronald Reagan as the Republican presidential candidate. The Clark-Koch platform called for an end to federal regulatory agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Energy, as well as an end to income taxes, Social Security, minimum-wage laws, and gun control.
THE RISE OF THE KOCH BROTHERS
Undeterred by this collosal, libertarian failure, the VP candidate, Koch, and his brother, Charles, decided on a longer, stealthier road to achieve that platform’s goals. They founded and funded, to the tune of billions of dollars, arch-conservative think tanks such as the Cato Institute and the Mercatus Center; they gave about $900,000 to the campaigns of George W. Bush and other Republicans; and they started the groups Citizens for a Sound Economy, Citizens for the Environment, Americans for Prosperity, and Patients United Now, to offer technical support and activist-training.
In return for their investments, the Koch brothers’ businesses have received handsome rewards. Koch Industries is a conglomerate that operates oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota. It also owns Georgia-Pacific lumber (which annually produces 2.2 billion pounds of the carcinogen formaldehyde), Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other environmentally nasty products. Their annual revenues are estimated at $100 billion.
Not only did the Koch brothers benefit from the subsidies and tax breaks of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, they also have reportedly received almost $100 million in government contracts since 2000. As one of the top-ten air polluters in the United States, Koch Industries has fought regulation at every turn; it even beat Exxon-Mobil in donations to fight climate change legislation (between 2005 and 2008). “Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus,” journalist Jane Mayer reported in the New Yorker.
The agenda of the Koch brothers over the past several decades sounds like the agenda of the Tea Party—because it is. The Kochsupported group Americans for Prosperity is one of the major support centers of the Tea Party movement; it helps educate activists on protest tactics and media, provides them with talking points, and gives them “next-step training” after the rallies, to shift the energy into electoral power. Dick Armey runs another major support group behind the movement, called Freedom-Works. It is supported by billionaire Steve Forbes and possibly enjoys Koch brothers largesse, as well.
The agenda of the Koch brothers over the past several decades sounds like the agenda of the Tea Party—because it is.
Many people have come out of the woodwork of their own volition to join the ranks of the movement. According to a 2010 New York Times/CBS poll, Tea Party supporters tend to be white, over the age of fifty, and more likely to be male than female. The majority is highly skeptical of climate change with only 14 percent believing global warming is a current problem (in comparison to 49 percent of the general public).
The members, writes Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, “include not only hardcore libertarians left over from the original Ron Paul ‘tea parties,’ but gun-rights advocates, fundamentalist Christians, pseudo militia types like the Oath Keepers [a group of law-enforcement and military professionals who have vowed to disobey ‘unconstitutional’ orders], and mainstream Republicans who have simply lost faith in their party.”
Taibbi summed them up: “A loose definition of the Tea Party might be millions of pissed-off white people sent chasing after Mexicans on Medicaid by the handful of banks and investment firms who advertise on Fox and CNBC.”
Above all, Tea Partiers are outraged, conservative, free-market populists who protested the stimulus bill, the budget, and the financial bailout. As we discussed in the last chapter, Tea Partiers organized noisy protests at town halls around healthcare reform; they also held at least eighty events targeting cap-and-trade legislation, falsely claiming that backyard barbeques and kitchen stoves would be taxed under the plan. The media took notice. Who were these people in these tricorne hats? Why were they so angry? Should they be taken seriously? In time, anything and everything the Tea Party did, the media broadcasted. They got especially loyal coverage from Fox News and the right-wing bloggers.
The Tea Party movement accomplished what at first seemed to be impossible. When the backlashers got rolling in 2009, the Democrats had Obama in the White House, sixty votes in the Senate, and Nancy Pelosi as the Speaker of the House. Republicans had been routed coast to coast and were a minority in both houses. The GOP had not exactly been dealt a winning hand.
Yet the people with the hats upended the national discourse, put Democrats on the defensive across the country, increased GOP seats in the U.S. Senate, and helped the Republicans take over the U.S. House of Representatives.
SOURCES OF SUCCESS
How did they do it? Why was the Tea Party movement so successful? There were a handful of features that were vital: there was no serious competition from any populist-left forces; Tea Partiers were media savvy and found support with the media; they focused on scaring the bejeebers out of elected officials; they had the ability to pivot from protest to electoral politics; they capitalized on the racial anxiety surrounding the election of the first African American president; and they had the ability to work horizontally and collaboratively.
No Competitors
A major reason the Tea Party movement was so successful was that it faced effectively zero competition from elsewhere along the political spectrum. In a period of economic agony, there was only one form of militant economic populism that was visible: the right-wing, libertarian variety that was on offer from the Tea Parties. Progressives also could have been demanding redress, marching for jobs, barking at the banks, and thereby attracting millions of supporters, but most were peaceably getting to know the new administration, muting their criticisms of Wall Street, and hoping the stimulus bill would work. For two years, progressives let angry right-wingers own the streets, unchallenged. If an American was “mad as hell” about the economy, there was only one place to go.
Smart Media Strategy
The Tea Party followed the old Hollywood maxim: show, don’t tell. People demonstrated and marched in public, which is something that right-wingers almost never do. They took to the streets to protest against a “big government takeover,” taxation, and more specifically, President Obama. They took unexpected action, wearing unusual garb. It was conspicuous, sticky, and designed to capture media attention.
The public thought, “Here’s some big, new force.” In fact, the Tea Partiers were not particularly big or new, but they were newly presented and newly branded. They punk’d the world, Ashton Kutcher-style. It was a genius strategy.
Pres
suring Officeholders
The Tea Party changed America by changing the Republican Party; it changed the Republican Party by scaring the pants off the GOP establishment. Initially, the Republican Party didn’t give the Tea Party any more credit than progressives did. The GOP was happy to ignore the Tea Partiers—until they focused populist anger on Republicans and proved themselves willing to take casualties in the short run for their long-term goals. Tea Party groups ran candidates against “soft” Republicans (so-called RINOs or Republicans In Name Only). They were willing to lose winnable Senate races, indeed perhaps the Senate majority, by supporting Tea Party candidates in primaries who couldn’t win the general elections. What they accomplished by such kamikaze attacks was to convince the Republican leadership that the GOP could not succeed without the Tea Party. To get the Tea Party on board, Republicans had to shift radically to the right to meet the Tea Party agenda.
To duplicate the Tea Party’s feat, left-wing activists would have to stop going easy on weak Democrats, stop buying into the “lesser of two evils” argument, and be willing to take short-term losses to obtain long-term gains. The payoff could be worth it. Elected officials paid close attention to the Tea Partiers and very quickly developed a fear of crossing them. For her New Yorker piece on the Tea Party, Jane Mayer interviewed Grover Norquist about the Tea Party’s impact on Congress. Protests, he said, “discouraged dealmakers”—Republicans who might otherwise have worked constructively with Obama. Moreover, the appearance of growing public opposition to Obama affected corporate donors on K Street. “K Street is a three-billion-dollar weathervane,” Norquist said. “When Obama was strong, the chamber of commerce said, ‘We can work with the Obama administration.’ But that changed when thousands of people went into the street and ‘terrorized’ congressmen. August [2009] is what changed it.”