Matt Damon's leftier-than-thou rant against Obama

By Richard K. Barry and Michael J.W. Stickings

RKB:

Yeah, well, I like Matt Damon. I think he's a smart guy. I usually like his movies. I generally like his politics. But I don't think much of his "leftier-than-thou" rant about Obama's performance in the White House.

In an interview with Elle magazine, Damon had this to say:

"I've talked to a lot of people who worked for Obama at the grassroots level. One of them said to me, 'Never again. I will never be fooled again by a politician.'" He then added, "You know, a one-term president with some balls who actually got stuff done would have been, in the long run of the country, much better."

Referencing the Occupy protests, Damon said the Democrats have received a mandate from people who are "just wandering out into the streets to yell right now because they are so pissed off." He wondered aloud, "Imagine if they had a leader."

Here's a little piece of important information for you, Mr. Damon. Social movements are not the same thing as electoral politics. They can work well together to achieve spectacular results, but they are not the same thing. Movements can often send a clear and important message about what needs to happen. Politics is the art of compromise that sometimes gets some of that done. 

I understand that a lot of people don't like politics because you are always in the process of finding the votes to make good on your promises. It requires compromise and it's easy to get shut down when your opponents are able to use or even abuse the rules of the game to make your life difficult.

So, you say that Democrats have received their marching orders from Occupy protesters and all they need to do now is do it, whatever the "it" is.

Mr. Damon, you have no idea what political leadership is, how hard it is. I'll bet making movies is a lot easier. You get to write down how things come out and that's exactly what happens. Not so much in real life. But thanks for coming out.

I liked what Obama had to say about an earlier instance in which Damon criticized the president:

"I've even let down my key core constituency: Movie stars," he said. "Just the other day, Matt Damon — I love Matt Damon, love the guy — Matt Damon said he was disappointed in my performance."

Obama then threw in a zinger of his own, saying "Well, Matt, I just saw 'The Adjustment Bureau,' so... right back atcha, buddy." 

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

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MJWS:

I like Damon a lot as well, including, for the most part, his politics. And I understand progressive frustration with President Obama as well. But come on. If you paid any attention at all during the 2008 campaign, you knew that he was something of a non-ideological centrist. Yes, there was all that talk about change, but the demands of a campaign call for exaggeration.

Now, has there been change? Well, first, he himself is change. Think about what he means, what it means to have him as president. There's a reason so many Republicans have been so virulent in their attacks on him. You think it all has to do with his policies? Not, it has more to do with him, with what he represents, namely, something other than a privileged white man occupying the highest office in the land.

And, second, what about health-care reform? Even if it wasn't as much as many of us wanted, it was a hell of a lot. Democrats had been trying for decades to reform a corrupt, unjust, and simply cruel system. Obama actually did it. Or how about the stimulus package? Is there more he could have done? Maybe. But it's hard to do a lot when you've got a Republican opposition that absolutely refuses to work with you, a conservative movement that has taken it upon itself to try to destroy you.

If you want to criticize him, go after his continuation of some of the worst elements of the Bush-Cheney national security state. Fine. I'm right with you. But to abandon him because he hasn't lived up to your inanely high and totally unreasonable expectations? That's just ridiculous.

Could he have been more ballsy? Sure. Am I disappointed with him so far? Yes, of course. But not to the point where I'll refuse to support him ever again, and not to the point where I'll never trust any politician ever again. If that's what you think, or if that's what your gut tells you, you really don't understand politics at all.

And Matt Damon, a really smart guy, should know better.

It makes me think he should stick to making generally entertaining movies (i.e., not The Adjustment Bureau) and doing his fantastic impersonation of Matthew McConaughey on Letterman.

Your moment of when

By Carl 

It was time for a correction anyway. What we have learned is that winning elections isn’t on its own enough to produce change. What’s needed is a clear policy agenda and a strong external movement that can help progressives in power implement that agenda – and stop others in power from implementing a bad one. That requires a movement in which electoral organizing is just one piece. In other words, the progressive movement needs to grow not only in numbers but in the diversity of what it does.

That isn’t what drives most Occupiers, however. Occupy is also a rebuke of organized politics. They’re in the streets because they believe it’s the only way change can be produced. What it has revealed is that distrust of government is now rampant on the left as well as the right. To most Occupiers, government is the enemy. And their confrontations with local governments showed this. Even though the vast majority of local electeds in the big cities are sympathetic to the Occupy movement and are no friend to the 1% (with Bloomberg being a notable exception), Occupy’s choice of tactics reflected their belief that anyone in government was either incapable of helping or was determined to break the protest. And Occupy has brought a new group of people into political activism. New voices are popping up online, new leaders are emerging, and they are much less interested in the more incremental changes that the progressive movement had unfortunately become accustomed to accepting.

Occupiers are openly advocating revolutionary change from the streets. But here is where I think the progressive movement’s love affair with OWS should find its limits. Occupy alone won’t produce the changes we need in this country. By focusing on physical occupation of public space, they’ve muddled their early message and have alienated potential allies. On the other hand, they have succeeded in kicking a door open. The public wants action on inequality and wants to go after the 1%. Progressives should walk through the door that Occupy opened – and they should be willing to work with anyone, Occupiers or not, who are interested in providing the leadership that is needed to make lasting change happen. 

Shorter Cruickshank: Those Occupy folks ought to get out of the way. 

I say that because Cruickshank expects perfection from the first crocus to peek thru the winter snow. Let Occupy be Occupy. They seem to be learning from their mistakes as they go.

That said, I've made a harsh assessment of Cruickshank's column to invite you to go read it and think for yourself. Here are my thoughts on his post:

I agree the left is voluminous enough to support two groups and they don't necessarily have to be in sync: an activist group that goes beyond MoveOn to legitimize street protest and a political arm that can actually try to drag the rest of the nation into the direction of the ideas espoused by the activist arm.

Ideas. That's the key: right now, the "left" in this country (as defined by the moderately left-centrist Democratic party, with exceptions in both directions. I'll get back to that in a moment) acts as a damper on bad centrist and right-wing ideas: privatizing Social Security, eliminating the minimum wage, and so on.

What the left needs is a shot in the arm of vitamin Good Ideas, ideas that show there are alternatives to "this tax cut versus that tax cut." Like providing services. Like enriching the lives of everyone. Like lifting all boats in the harbor by raising everyone's water levels, not just the yachts.

The activist arm can do that, but unfortunately, it has been mocked and derided and minimized.

Until OWS pointed out the inherent inequity now found in the system. We've reached a breaking point in this nation. The only way we can drag the country kicking and screaming into the 21st Century is to drag the damned left kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. 

So here's what I'd like to see: Let Occupy by Occupy. Let them take radical stances and openly defy the mainstream media noise machine AND the political establishment. It's what drove the anti-war movement. It's what drove the civil rights movement.

The left fed off those ideas (and if you recall with the civil rights movement, the left was distinctly Republican) and incorporated them into legislation because it was the will of the people. The movements got big enough, and eventually enough Americans agreed with the aims of those movements.

(hat tip: LGM)

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

"The Protester" is Time's Person of the Year

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It's a bit goofy, but, then, Time often goes goofy with this award. Remember when you -- yes, you -- were Time's Person of the Year? Maybe that made some sense, but it seemed pretty stupid at the time.

Well, 2011 was indeed a year of protests, particularly in the Middle East but also Occupy Wall Street. And whatever the outcomes of those protests (regime change here but not there, OWS protests forcibly shut down and the movement fading), there is no denying that they achieved a great deal (e.g., in Egypt and Libya) and effectively challenged a corrupt and unjust status quo (e.g., in Greece, as well as OWS generally), changing the content of political discourse and bringing much-needed attention not just to issues like income inequality but to those suffering under the weight of that status quo.

The question now is whether 2012 will see any sort of follow-through from these protests or whether the protesters and that for which they protested will be relegated to the dustbin of history. We can hope that it's the former, but we will all need to play our part in not letting the status quo prevail.