Want to change America?

Talk about it, says George Lakoff

It says here, in an article in today's Washington Post, that what President Obama talks about tonight in his State of the Union address isn't likely to make much difference. I don't buy that. Not for this particular speech.

After all, Obama is coming off an inaugural address that received wide approval in public opinion polls. The speech may also have been Obama's most vigorous defense of social programs and action during his presidency.

"The commitments we make to each other--through Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security--these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great," he said.

Variations of statements like that received majority support in follow-up polls, in some cases polling over 60 percent. Some might argue that Obama is free to say such things because he won't have to run for reelection. I would argue that it was Obama's decisive victory over Mitt Romney that has allowed him to begin reasserting liberal values that have been in retreat since Ronald Reagan began the redefinition of the federal government as the enemy of democracy and free enterprise.

The Reagan-era initiated a steady right-wing agenda of "right-to-work" laws and assaults on public employee unions, opposition to taxation in general, government regulation and social programming, aggressive intervention into health-care and the private lives of women, new laws mandating the continuing closeting of lesbians and gay men, and more.

In a piece in the Post's Sunday Outlook section, UC Berkeley linguistics professor George Lakoff asserts that political speech is sometimes not so separate from political action. "When we hear political language, particular circuitry is activated in our brains," he wrote. "The more often we hear the words, the stronger that circuitry gets, until the frames become embedded in our thinking.

"The ascent of extreme conservativism and the gridlock so apparent in Washington have everything to do with divergent moralities, as reflected in language and its framing. The conservative call for 'tax relief' assumes that taxation is harmful and immoral," he continued.

"Tea party supporters framed Obama's health-care plan in moral terms as a violation of freedom ('government takeover!') and life ('death panels!')," Lakoff wrote. That is why more than 50 percent of Americans opposed the law, even though "many key provisions...had majority backing across the country." And continuing ideological opposition to the health-care law led directly to the Republican capture of the House of Representatives in the 2010 election.

But Obama's reelection victory may have changed all that in a way that did not happen when Bill Clinton was elected. Clinton's presidency was still decisively shaped by Republican framing. The mid-term elections in 1994, fueled by the Contract with America, resulted in the election of the first House Republican majority in 40 years. As the Republican propaganda machine relentlessly and effectively linked Clinton's sexual dalliances with the liberal agenda, an embattled Clinton pursued welfare reform and announced that the "era of big government is over" in his 1996 State of the Union address.

Given how dominant Republican tropes have been these last 30 years or so, Obama's 2008 victory was fortunate. Despite the mobilization of African Americans and others in support of an historic election outcome, it was almost certainly the collapse of the economy that prevented Republicans from destroying Obama's candidacy in much the way that they "swift-boated" John Kerry in 2004.

But Mitt Romney's defeat was different. A weak candidate who publicly and privately embraced his own eliteness--"my job is not to worry about [the 47 percent]," he said at a fundraiser--Romney helped to shape an election in which a stronger candidate with a superior election apparatus saw an opportunity to renew the elements of a liberal agenda.

It appears now that the Obama administration sees that the same opportunity continues to unfold. "You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time--not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals," Obama said in his inaugural speech.

In saying so, Obama made clear that it is no longer simply a matter of what a president has to say. Lakoff puts it this way:

"This means Obama can take the first step, framing public discourse, but all of us as citizens must do the heavy lifting. We can also do it by using words that have vital meaning--among our families, co-workers and communities.

"The more we repeat the language of equality, freedom and social responsibility, the more those ideas come to dominate the public conversation."

We do have a dog in the Michigan fight

The union movement built prosperity and solidarity

Membership in organized labor has been declining for years. The largest industrial unions have gone the way of rustbelt industries, declining and nearly disappearing. The public sector unions that held the line through the last part of the 20th century have suffered significant losses during the Great Recession and its aftermath, and teachers' unions in particular have suffered from right-wing attacks that have accompanied the education reform movement. The passage this week of a right-to-work law in Michigan may be part of the continuing decline, but ought to raise new alarms on the American left.

There are plenty of critiques of unions in the mainstream press, so none of those will be linked here. Readers can hunt them down easily enough. Yes, union leaders are sometimes too cozy with power, especially in states and cities. And, yes, union leaders sometimes get too comfortable with the perks of their own power.

But so do progressives who get elected to public office or settle into tenure track positions at major universities. But they do not stop being politically progressive simply because they compromise or, even, overindulge. Neither do unions. The point is that regardless of what unions and their leaderships sometimes do to deserve criticism, progressives need to recognize that to err in some of these familiar ways is both all too human and ought not be an obstacle to progressive solidarity with labor.

I've written before about the need for the left to completely embrace the union movement; twice when I was working for In These Times ("Labor's Future is Ours" and "When Mainstream Media Tells Labor Stories"), and several posts on this blog (many of which can be found here).

Now, Harold Meyerson, one of the few mainstream media columnists with a true appreciation of the value of organized labor, has written an instructive column in the Washington Post, "The Lansing-Beijing connection," on how right-to-work laws undermine prosperity and increase inequality. "[A]n exhaustive study by economist Lonnie K. Stevens of Hofstra University found states that have enacted such laws reported no increase in business start-ups or rates of employment. Wages and personal income are lower in those states...Stevens concluded, though proprietors' incomes are higher," Meyerson wrote.

Everyone who embraces the goals of reducing income and wealth inequality in the United States and globally ought to be embracing labor organizing, as well. Jobs with Justice, a national organization founded to be a bridge between non-union progressives and the labor movement, is one way to get moving on this. Also, check out labor writer David Moberg's interview with Larry Cohen, organizing director for the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and a founder of Jobs with Justice.