Pursuing the Progressive Case
Pursuing the Progressive Case

Author: David Coates

Publisher:

Published: 2016-11-19

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781618460233

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Written when the Obama presidency was in its infancy, Pursing the Progressive Case pondered the strengths and weaknesses of the president's first term, and pointed the way forward for those wanting to see a twenty-first century version of FDR's New Deal. The essays, many initially posted on The Huffington Post, provide a detailed commentary on the key political developments of Obama's first four years in the White House, each written as those developments were happening. Covering a wide range of issues - from financial reform and health care, through poverty and unemployment to the foreclosure crisis and the deployment of US troops abroad - the essays gathered here drew heavily on research and scholarship published simultaneously as Answering Back: Liberal Responses to Conservative Arguments and Making the Progressive Case. Republishing these essays now helps remind us of the hopes and aspirations built into the Obama presidency from its inception, and contains vital clues to the pattern of political success and failure which then followed. Written without the wisdom of hindsight, drafted indeed in the thick of the political fights themselves, the essays gathered here provide a vital contemporary record of a presidency that will be long remembered for the quality of the intellect and oratory that were its defining hallmarks. Pursuing the Progressive Case offers new and vital arguments for engaging in progressive politics, arguments that might yet make a future progressive president more successful still.

Pursuing the Progressive Case?: Observing Obama in Real Time
Pursuing the Progressive Case?: Observing Obama in Real Time

Author: Worrell Professor of Anglo-American Studies David Coates

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2012-12

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781475966060

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What lessons for a Barack Obama second term can be taken from the politics of his first term? How progressive, if at all, will the second term be? In "Pursuing the Progressive Case?" author David Coates presents a collection of commentaries pondering the strengths and weaknesses of the president's first term, offering clear answers to those questions, and pointing the way forward for those who wish to see a twenty-first century equivalent of FDR's New Deal. The essays, initially posted on Coates's blog, provide a detailed commentary on the key political developments of the last four years, covering topics such as financial reform, health care, stimulus and deficits, poverty and unemployment, the foreclosure crisis, immigration, welfare, and troop distribution. Informed by research and scholarship, "Pursuing the Progressive Case?" builds on Coates's earlier works "Answering Back and Making the Progressive Case. It offers new and vital arguments for engaging "in progressive politics.

Observing Obama in Real Time
Observing Obama in Real Time

Author: David Coates

Publisher:

Published: 2017-01-25

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781618460318

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Commenting on political events in real time used to be the preserve of the well-placed political journalist and of no one else. But no longer: with the emergence of the blogosphere, commentary on contemporary events has become a privilege available to each one of us. Doing it and doing it well, however, remains a time-consuming and ultimately a highly-skilled job. If commentary is to be worth reading, it needs to be more than opinion. It needs to be opinion informed by research and scholarship. What follows here is, hopefully, opinion of that kind.

The Progressive Case Stalled
The Progressive Case Stalled

Author: David Coates

Publisher:

Published: 2016-11-19

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781618460240

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Picking up from the point at which Pursuing the Progressive Case ended, this second volume of essays observing the Obama presidency in real time charts the increasingly difficult conditions under which progressives within and beyond his administration struggled for leverage and impact during the President's second term. Foreign policy concerns play a bigger part in this second collection than in the first, reflecting the re-immersion of the US military in the Middle East conflict in spite of the run-down of the Iraqi occupation. But domestic issues surface here too, though in this volume less around presidential initiatives than around the defense of the achievements of Obama's first four years in office. Readers will find in The Progressive Case Stalled? critical reflections on economic and housing policy, on policy on poverty-alleviation and the easing of student debt, and on the contentious issue of trade deals and employment out-sourcing. Together, the essays gathered in this volume constitute an important contemporary evaluation of the blockages on progressive politics that were such a feature of Obama's second term: blockages coming from unexpected foreign developments, from unique levels of Republican Party opposition and intransigence, and from limitations in the President's own vision and leverage. Taken together with volume 1, the running commentary that is Observing Obama in Real Time will be an invaluable source of guidance both to future historians in years and to contemporary progressives attempting to build on the Obama legacy and to move beyond its shortcomings.

America in the Shadow of Empires
America in the Shadow of Empires

Author: D. Coates

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-12-10

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1137482605

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The focus of the book is the cost of empire, particularly the cost in the American case – the internal burden of American global leadership. The book builds an argument about the propensity of external responsibilities to undermine the internal strength, raising the question of the link between weakening and the global spread of American power.

A Promised Land
A Promised Land

Author: Barack Obama

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2024-08-13

Total Pages: 801

ISBN-13: 1524763179

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A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making—from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAACP IMAGE AWARD NOMINEE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND PEOPLE NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times • NPR • The Guardian • Slate • Vox • The Economist • Marie Claire In the stirring first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil. Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation’s highest office. Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune’s Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden. A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective—the story of one man’s bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of “hope and change,” and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible. This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama’s conviction that democracy is not a gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together, day by day.

Dreams from My Father
Dreams from My Father

Author: Barack Obama

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2007-01-09

Total Pages: 463

ISBN-13: 0307394123

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS In this iconic memoir of his early days, Barack Obama “guides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, class, and race” (The Washington Post Book World). “Quite extraordinary.”—Toni Morrison In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man—has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey—first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance. Praise for Dreams from My Father “Beautifully crafted . . . moving and candid . . . This book belongs on the shelf beside works like James McBride’s The Color of Water and Gregory Howard Williams’s Life on the Color Line as a tale of living astride America’s racial categories.”—Scott Turow “Provocative . . . Persuasively describes the phenomenon of belonging to two different worlds, and thus belonging to neither.”—The New York Times Book Review “Obama’s writing is incisive yet forgiving. This is a book worth savoring.”—Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here “One of the most powerful books of self-discovery I’ve ever read, all the more so for its illuminating insights into the problems not only of race, class, and color, but of culture and ethnicity. It is also beautifully written, skillfully layered, and paced like a good novel.”—Charlayne Hunter-Gault, author of In My Place “Dreams from My Father is an exquisite, sensitive study of this wonderful young author’s journey into adulthood, his search for community and his place in it, his quest for an understanding of his roots, and his discovery of the poetry of human life. Perceptive and wise, this book will tell you something about yourself whether you are black or white.”—Marian Wright Edelman

The Audacity of Hope
The Audacity of Hope

Author: Barack Obama

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2006-10-17

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 0307382095

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Barack Obama’s lucid vision of America’s place in the world and call for a new kind of politics that builds upon our shared understandings as Americans, based on his years in the Senate “In our lowdown, dispiriting era, Obama’s talent for proposing humane, sensible solutions with uplifting, elegant prose does fill one with hope.”—Michael Kazin, The Washington Post In July 2004, four years before his presidency, Barack Obama electrified the Democratic National Convention with an address that spoke to Americans across the political spectrum. One phrase in particular anchored itself in listeners’ minds, a reminder that for all the discord and struggle to be found in our history as a nation, we have always been guided by a dogged optimism in the future, or what Obama called “the audacity of hope.” The Audacity of Hope is Barack Obama’s call for a different brand of politics—a politics for those weary of bitter partisanship and alienated by the “endless clash of armies” we see in congress and on the campaign trail; a politics rooted in the faith, inclusiveness, and nobility of spirit at the heart of “our improbable experiment in democracy.” He explores those forces—from the fear of losing to the perpetual need to raise money to the power of the media—that can stifle even the best-intentioned politician. He also writes, with surprising intimacy and self-deprecating humor, about settling in as a senator, seeking to balance the demands of public service and family life, and his own deepening religious commitment. At the heart of this book is Barack Obama’s vision of how we can move beyond our divisions to tackle concrete problems. He examines the growing economic insecurity of American families, the racial and religious tensions within the body politic, and the transnational threats—from terrorism to pandemic—that gather beyond our shores. And he grapples with the role that faith plays in a democracy—where it is vital and where it must never intrude. Underlying his stories is a vigorous search for connection: the foundation for a radically hopeful political consensus. Only by returning to the principles that gave birth to our Constitution, Obama says, can Americans repair a political process that is broken, and restore to working order a government that has fallen dangerously out of touch with millions of ordinary Americans. Those Americans are out there, he writes—“waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.”

Obama's Challenge
Obama's Challenge

Author: Robert Kuttner

Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1603580794

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Invoking America's greatest leaders, Robert Kuttner explains how Obama must be a transformative president--or a failed one--a president who must succeed in fundamentally changing our economy, society, and democracy for the better.

The New New Deal
The New New Deal

Author: Michael Grunwald

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-08-14

Total Pages: 627

ISBN-13: 1451642342

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In a riveting account based on new documents and interviews with more than 400 sources on both sides of the aisle, award-winning reporter Michael Grunwald reveals the vivid story behind President Obama’s $800 billion stimulus bill, one of the most important and least understood pieces of legislation in the history of the country. Grunwald’s meticulous reporting shows how the stimulus, though reviled on the right and the left, helped prevent a depression while jump-starting the president’s agenda for lasting change. As ambitious and far-reaching as FDR’s New Deal, the Recovery Act is a down payment on the nation’s economic and environmental future, the purest distillation of change in the Obama era. The stimulus has launched a transition to a clean-energy economy, doubled our renewable power, and financed unprecedented investments in energy efficiency, a smarter grid, electric cars, advanced biofuels, and green manufacturing. It is computerizing America’s pen-and-paper medical system. Its Race to the Top is the boldest education reform in U.S. history. It has put in place the biggest middle-class tax cuts in a generation, the largest research investments ever, and the most extensive infrastructure investments since Eisenhower’s interstate highway system. It includes the largest expansion of antipoverty programs since the Great Society, lifting millions of Americans above the poverty line, reducing homelessness, and modernizing unemployment insurance. Like the first New Deal, Obama’s stimulus has created legacies that last: the world’s largest wind and solar projects, a new battery industry, a fledgling high-speed rail network, and the world’s highest-speed Internet network. Michael Grunwald goes behind the scenes—sitting in on cabinet meetings, as well as recounting the secret strategy sessions where Republicans devised their resistance to Obama—to show how the stimulus was born, how it fueled a resurgence on the right, and how it is changing America. The New New Deal shatters the conventional Washington narrative and it will redefine the way Obama’s first term is perceived.