Pursuing the Progressive Case

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.