1000% Right! However, this criticism is also often met with complaints that since Obama isn't "stepping up" why should they put forth any effort. Which is very disappointing because this isn't about making Obama look good, this is about (at least to me) getting legislation passed that will benefit the poor and the middle class. Why punish 300 million people to teach Obama a lesson?

Thanks for this post. I'm participating in a free health clinic in my city. If the tea-baggers can get their message out, Progressives should be as efficient in organizing.

Ripper,

The left was getting highly organized and focused and then along came Obama and all of it came to a screeching halt. Since about the time Moveon endorsed Obama, whatever nascent "movement" there was died as all energy was (and remains) devoted to furthering the Obama agenda. Unfortunately, the Obama agenda has almost nothing to do with the aims of the left. So what we have is a left that completely demobilized on behalf of Obama believing naively that he would pursue their agenda. It's quite clear he never had any intention of pursuing anything but the most diluted changes in our rotten system. In the foolish committment to Obama the left has essentially abandoned much of the agenda it developed during the Bush years since Obama has adopted most of the things the left objected to during the Bush years such as endless wars abroad, ultra secrecy in government, cover up of war crimes and protection of war criminals, etc...

That's why the left is impotent today. It bet the farm on Obama and it turns out Obama is more interested in protecting and maintaining the status quo than in changing anything in Washington.

This idea that the left is impotent because of "incompetent grassroots leaders" might be close the mark if intended in one sense, but with elaboration this poster reveals a lack of understanding.

More precisely, the leaders of grassroots movements like HCAN are not "incompetent." They're competent at furthering their own status as leaders, but not committed to the reforms this country needs, which include a non-profit insurance system. The whole purpose of their organizations is wrong: it's a bait and switch. And I see no reason why an event should be canceled because it has low turnout. That does not make sense.

If the bus trip to Washington was better organized, Ripper, do you think that would have given a real boost to single payer health care? I tend to doubt that very much.

A major reason that serious progressive health care reform is an uphill battle is that too many Americans still do not support serious progressive health care reform. And when they do support it, their support is often confused, ill-informed, vacillating and subject to easy manipulative exploitation by the forces of the status quo. The problem isn't mainly in Washington; it's among your neighbors. And I doubt these neighbors pay much attention to the latest "march on Washington".

The left spends too much time on old-fashioned public demonstrations and petitioning the government, and not nearly enough time figuring out how to get our beliefs inside the heads of other people. That's not surprising, since most progressives don't even seem to know anymore why they believe what they believe. Their attitudes are merely an expression of "identity" and untutored emotional disposition, and they have not the slightest idea how to change the mind of a person who doesn't already agree with them.

Vigils, marches, demonstrations? This isn't how social change occurs anymore. We need to get out of the 19th century.

I recommended this comment mainly because we need to be reminded that our leaders are a symptom, not a cause, of our politcal problems.

But not one mention of money in all this? Our opponents have, almost literally, ALL the money. Organization is fine, but organization without the funds to obtain, to use a random example, functioning transportation, is almost worthless. And the people who should be the natural grassroots suport for things like single-payer health care are usually too busy keeping a roof over their head and their children fed to devote unpaid hours to a cause that they have been conditioned to believe is futile.

When all you can offer is long hours with little or no pay in service of a Sisyphean struggle to overturn an entrenched, extremely well funded status quo, it's hard to get the best and brightest to sign on for the long haul.

The left is divided between progressive liberals, many of whom want pragmatic, real-world programs to address today's issues, and, dragging everything into irrelevance, the hard, Marxist left bent on making everything worse, to spark yet another faulty revolution that will upend the exploitative class stucture blahblahblah... No one listens to or resprects that hopefully diminishing side. Right now, there is the right and the soft-right, the moderate middle-of-the-road. There are no political alternatives, because the left has rendered itself irrelelvant. Until it sheds the ideological dinosaurs, it will remain so.

I think the problem is the collapse of labor unions and the manufacturing sector. They did the yeoman's work on activism. Where would Nader's consumer agenda have gotten without union support and testimony on the assembly lines?

The Reagan and elder Bush administration dealt several hard blows to labor unions, but the gutting occurred during the Clinton years. Our modern economic philosophy is built on financial parlor tricks. It's insular... a completely insular culture built on abstractions. The next big money-generating equation.

So, it is a combination. The formal power structure of the unions has been replaced by an informal power structure of grassroots organizations that lack the reputation and collectivism of the unions. Further, we don't have the manufacturing sector, so our old rust belt allies have become increasingly disaffected and prone to right wing tropes. This creates a lack of credible grassroots stewardship on one side and a media-fueled right wing populism on the other.

And Quinn, I think the slam on the 30-44 age demographic is misplaced. Most of us were either in College, just entering the workforce, or secure in a new labor environment built on technological innovation. Then came Bush and 9/11. I had to hold multiple temp jobs just to pay my student loans.

Mine is the first generation where retirement and job security became dirty words. The responsibility for building a nest egg became entirely ours and founded on shoving a portion of our earned income into Wall Street. I also know that I busted my ass on behalf of Al Gore. I volunteered hundreds of hours and donated money I couldn't afford because Bush terrified me and I respected Gore's ecological credentials. The 2000 election was a wound I have yet to heal from.

So it may make you feel a little better looking down on my generation. But Bush and 9/11 didn't land on your doorstep when you were stepping out into the workforce... a workforce that was milked by the Boomers for all it was worth.

If my generation is the most disappointed in Obama, it could be because he is in the best position to enact something like EFCA which could reinvigorate the labor movement. Instead, he seems to be co-opting what grassroots we have into his trademark.

(And to Wendy Davis, I am sorry if my writing is often too detached and abstract. I will try harder to be a little more anglic and a little less latin.)