The passage of the health care bill was not an embodiment of the vision of universal health care that many of us aspire to, but it was a major turn-around in American politics, a moment in which Barack Obama was able to regain some of the moral authority that inspired his landslide election only a year and a half ago and gave many of us reason to hope a space was opening up for the creation of a more progressive, more social connected, more loving and caring society. But Obama will not succeed in fending off the Sarah Palin-led Tea Party revolt against this progressive vision without the decisive emergence of a different kind of progressive voice into public space, a voice on the spiritual left of Obama which strengthens his own resolve and shows him how a new spiritual progressive vision can be both morally compelling and realistic in political terms.
Yet, this is very complicated, because Obama’s programs actually erode the support for progressive politics.
