Many authors have chosen to cast their post-election analyses as lists: lists of things to do, lists of things that happened, lists of things about to happen, etc. Here are some lists I found particularly valuable; I'll amend my, uh, list as I find more:
- Juan Cole offers a "Top Ten Wish List Progressives should Press on President Obama"; Cole notes before his list that
Progressives will have to push Obama to the left if we are to get what we want. This situation is nothing new– FDR’s New Deal would not have amounted to much if workers hadn’t engaged in widespread wildcat strikes and if people had not resorted to civil disobedience.
Indeed. It's going to take the same sort of outcry and probable civil disobedience on the part of liberals to nudge Mr. Obama off his typical reluctance to, you know, disagree with Republicans, coupled with his propensity to give away the store.
- Glenn Greenwald at The Guardian, among many useful observations, gives a list of six steps that Mr. Obama and Congress (including Democrats) will follow in their "Grand Bargain" to diminish or even dismantle the major New Deal social programs and their descendants which liberals hold so dear:
In other words, the political leader in whose triumph liberals are today ecstatically basking is likely to target their most cherished government policies within a matter of weeks, even days. With their newly minted power, will they have any ability, or even will, to stop him? If history is any indication, this is how this "fight" will proceed:
[list of six steps]
Greenwald's list of steps incisively reminds us that liberals have grown too accustomed to having no hand on the levers of power, and that we had better get good at it again very quickly. (As I've said before... where is LBJ when we need him?)
- What a Paul Craig Roberts Administration Would Look Like: Roberts's hypothetical cabinet appointments, if he were to be taking office as president right now. Many names I don't know, but those that I do, I like. Sampling:
Willie Nelson for Secretary of Agriculture, Cynthia McKinney at State, FBI chief Sibel Edmonds, Glenn Greenwald for deputy AG, Bradley Manning in charge of shutting down the torture prisons, Andrew Bacevich as National Security Advisor, Noam Chomsky... NOAM CHOMSKY! ... as US ambassador to the UN, Julian Assange and John Pilger to head PBS, ... and when you're done laughing at all that, consider that "Elizabeth Warren would have whatever post she wants."
Righteous! There's more; this one is worth reading. (H/T karmanot in comments.)
I'll expand the list as things emerge.
