It's All Right, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

God bless Lady Gaga, but if you're too young to have ever gotten into Bob Dylan, he had a good line or two in some old song from 1964: "...he not busy being born, is busy dying,"-- something that always stuck with me, even among verses like--

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the President of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.

An' though the rules of the road have been lodged
It's only people's games that you got to dodge
And it's alright, Ma, I can make it.

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you're the one
That can do what's never been done
That can win what's never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.

and

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despite their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platforms ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God Bless him.

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in.

You know, it's a swell song. Why not just listen to the whole thing, albeit a live performance, before YouTube deletes it:



So what brings me back over 4 decades... when I could be catching up with something more indicative of the times we live in from Justin Bieber? It was that line that stuck with me about busy being born or busy dying. And it popped into my head when I was trying to figure out what would happen with the progressive agenda now that the Republicans have seized the one progressivish piece of the government. Sure, Democrats still have the Executive branch and the Senate but, let's be real, both have been bastions of conservatism for the past two years. Don't get me wrong; conservatism is better than the destructive, incoherent reactionary claptrap that is today's Republican Party. But is that all there is? A choice between conservatism and reactionary claptrap? Neither bespeaks busy-ness of being born. That would be progressivism-- and there was a bit of that alive in the House. A bit. Gone now... at least as a positive force that could push an aggressive agenda.

The inherently conservative nature of the Senate-- it was, after all designed that way-- and the inherently conservative nature of the presidency (apparently Obama was designed that way too), has been, literally, frustrating for progressives in the past two years. And now we have to look to their conservatism to protect us from the radical reactionary nature of the mob that's taking over? Will Obama ally himself with conservatives among the reactionaries to move forward with the essentially conservative platform he's been eager to pass all along-- like "reforming" Social Security and more "free" trade? Will the new political power nexus see Obama working with an essentially conservative Senate and kindred spirits among the Wall Street-owned Republicans, while progressives in the Senate-- there are a few-- and in the House howl in the wind?

Raúl Grijalva was reelected in 2008 in a landslide-- 124,304 to 64,425. This year Grijalva squeaked to a hard fought victory 72,059 to 65,894. Looks like all the Republicans from 2008 turned up this year-- and some brought their friends-- while more than 40,000 of Grijalva's voters didn't bother to vote. Raúl is the chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He's all about fighting for ordinary working families against the encroachments of the powerful unbridled special interests. Let's keep in the back of our minds it's a tough row to hoe: the percentage of the national wealth held by the top 1% has gone from 9% in 1976 to 28.9% in 2007. That's a trend that cannot sustain... well, neither a middle class nor a democracy. Grijalva's fighting that tide, that very well-funded tide. Obama isn't. And neither is the Senate.

A couple days ago Ryan Grim looked at one way this is playing out policy-wise already: Grijalva Vows To Defend Public Education From White House-GOP Alliance. Expect a lot more reporting like that over the next couple of years.

A key element of President Obama's post-midterm agenda is already coming under fire from House progressives worried that the president will attempt to rehabilitate himself with a triangulation strategy modeled after President Clinton's gutting of welfare in 1996.

On Thursday morning, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, was asked on the radio/TV/Internet news hour Democracy Now! whether it was his sense that Obama hopes to make education his welfare reform.

"That's my sense and also my concern, to be quite honest," said Grijalva, who narrowly won reelection in his Tucson-based district. "We had an opportunity to reauthorize elementary and secondary education. We didn't do that. Now we go back to a session in which the Republicans are going to control the Education and Labor Committee, of which I'm a member."

Grijalva said that large parts of Education Secretary Arne Duncan's education efforts had already been rejected by Democrats. "Arne Duncan's four prescriptions for fixing public schools, which were essentially to privatize, close them... we rejected them as a caucus on that committee," Grijalva said.
Grijalva's opposition, however, could galvanize Obama if he decides that voters were telling him to oppose his base and work with Republicans to go after teachers unions, the element of organized labor that it is now acceptable for liberals to dismiss.

Grijalva, though, said that progressives would organize around a defense of public education. "When 80 to 90 percent of the kids going to school in this country are coming from urban and poor communities, this is a time we invest in public education. So yes, I see that as a place where people are going to look for a common agenda between Republicans and the White House, but I also see it, as it could be for public education, a very, very slippery slope. We have to be very cautious and very protective of public education as one of the agenda items."

My pal Roland works as a public school teacher in an inner city school system. Even before the election he told me the African-American women who make up the majority of the teachers in his school feel they made a terrible mistake by not backing Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. Too late!