Why progressives should not vote for obama

Our September Winning the Issues survey asked people whether they believed inflation was increasing? Voters agreed that it was, 72 percent to 13 percent. Consumers can feel the effects of inflation when the price of bacon goes up 24 percent in the course of the last 9 months or eggs by 25 percent and a gallon of gas by 40 percent.

But instead of focusing on inflation or supply chain challenges or helping businesses find employees, the White House and Democrats on the Hill are intent on passing the Build Back Better bill, with its focus on social spending and climate, by Oct.

Before Biden and company head off en masse to Scotland, they may want to reflect on the price they may pay for their decision to put other issues and their base priorities ahead of the economy and, in doing so, put progressive demands ahead of what people want more — a robust economy.

David Winston is the president of The Winston Group and a longtime adviser to congressional Republicans. He previously served as the director of planning for Speaker Newt Gingrich. He advises Fortune companies, foundations, and nonprofit organizations on strategic planning and public policy issues, as well as an election analyst for CBS News.

Skip to Content. President Joe Biden has forgotten the lesson of , when President Barack Obama prioritized enacting the Affordable Care Act over repairing the economy and cost his party the House, Winston writes. It has also prompted some — especially on the left of the Democratic party — to make early comparisons between Biden and Obama that favor the current president as a more dynamic, determined and ruthless political force for progressive change than his old boss.

Delivering his first presidential address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, Biden signaled he was willing to take a similar approach to infrastructure if necessary. But the rest of the world is not waiting for us.

I just want to be clear: from my perspective, doing nothing is not an option. Even though he has much smaller majorities in Congress than Obama did in , Biden has decided to take a much more audacious approach.

The Biden strategy centers on acting boldly and quickly to advance his legislative agenda. And if he has to abandon bipartisanship along the way, so be it.

The size and scope of these policies have signaled that Democrats are intent on learning from the Obama-era stimulus bill talks, when Republicans successfully negotiated to get many provisions taken out of the final legislation. He expected progressives to support him no matter what he did, so he saw no reason to give progressives anything.

Thus, Obama and any other Democrat is free to disregard progressive opinion completely, and focus on repaying his wealthy campaign donors. Since your voters will support you regardless, you have nothing to lose. The Republicans keep moving to the right and the Democrats chase after them, knowing that as long as they stay one step to the left of the GOP, they can rely on all progressives to keep voting for them.

There is only one way to end this game. Progressives need to let the Democrats know that they will no longer play along, that they will no longer give them our votes for free. These are, in fact, moderate demands. You can find such policies in Canada or Japan.

There is no danger of helping the Republicans by voting for a third-party. This is Massachusetts. The Democratic candidate for president always wins by a landslide. In fact, unless you live in Florida, Ohio, Virginia, or one of the other handful of swing states, there is never a reason to vote Democrat or Republican. Better to make a statement by voting for someone you really support, than to throw your vote away on Obama, knowing that it will do nothing to affect the outcome.

So we should give our votes to progressive third parties and candidates instead. In Massachusetts, that currently means Jill Stein and the Green Party, but some other states have candidates running on socialist tickets as well. Voting for a third-party candidate is better than staying home on Election Day, because it sends a clear message — while staying home could be interpreted as apathy. Mike Tudoreanu is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].

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