Obama Won! What's Next? - Part 2: A provisional government (X.) by X.

The Obama administration will be the first government led by new economy capital representatives (think Obama) in a power-sharing arrangement with some of the less backward old economy capital representatives (think the Clintons) and, to a much lesser extent, representatives of various sections of the 21st century progressive class alliance that makes up the Obama Movement. To a much lesser extent because the classes and groups that made Obama’s victory possible through their organizing prowess (students, creative class workers, the Afro-American & Latino communities, expanding unions, etc.) have yet to consolidate our movement and develop capable, independent leadership. In other words: we (students and workers) don’t have a seat at the table in the Obama government because we don’t have the independent power to lift someone into one of those seats. And even if we did have such power, we don’t have anyone ready to sit there yet! Consider: the progressive and revolutionary US Left still can’t win a single election on its own; it still can’t run one local government administration that empowers people to transform a single major city in the US. Since the power-sharing arrangement shaping up in the Obama administration is brand new and follows the overthrow of an opposite power-sharing arrangement, the Obama White House is best understood as a provisional government: untested, subject to change, conflicted over ambitious goals and tentative approaches. From what we learned during the Obama campaign however, we can expect deliberative and effective leadership at the top in terms of achieving the goals of the various players in the power-sharing arrangement. We would do well to get quite clear on exactly what financial and political factions dominate the Obama government and what we can expect and not expect from them (in terms of support for a new New Deal, withdrawing troops from Iraq, national healthcare, etc.).