WASHINGTON – Michael Kazin, a history professor at Georgetown University, has studied political activism for decades. But two years ago, he thought he was participating in a unique political movement, one not organized against an idea or a war – like most he has seen or been involved with – but in support of a specific candidate: Barack Obama.
Kazin volunteered for the Obama campaign during the primaries, canvassing voters in Indiana. In an essay soon after the election, in the liberal-leaning Dissent magazine, which he edits, Kazin wrote enthusiastically of a new political force he felt would endure after the election.
“There is, of course, a danger that, having achieved their immediate goal, these activists will now take a break from politics, cheering or finding fault with the new president and his congressional majority but doing so from the sidelines,” he wrote. “I think this is unlikely.”
But Kazin, like many other liberal activists who once shared that view, says he may have been too optimistic. As conservatives, led by talk show host Glenn Beck, prepare for a rally in Washington on Saturday - another sign of the increased activism on the right since Obama’s election – some liberals say the energy of the campaign on their side has dissipated and is not matching the energy and passion tea party activists have captured on the right.
In an interview, Kazin said, “I was a bit optimistic in the glow of victory,” adding that “the campaign had the aura of a movement, but in the light of day it was not a movement.”
The lack of organized energy on the left, many liberals say, has helped lead to such defeats as the failure to secure a government insurance option in the health-care bill. And it has meant liberals have been unable to push Obama and a Democratic Congress to the left the way civil rights organizers did President Lyndon B. Johnson and Democratic majorities in the 1960s, they say.
“You make change by going out there and persuading people to look at the world differently,” said Marshall Ganz, a liberal activist who advised Obama aides on organizing during the campaign. “Obama did that during the campaign.” But since the election, Ganz said, “the tea party has been far more effective.”
Some liberals dispute this idea. They cite a variety of examples of an organized, engaged left: the support of the health-care bill from labor unions and groups such as Organizing for America and MoveOn.org, and large rallies across the country for immigration reform. They argue that the media, particularly Fox News, have inflated the influence of the tea party force.
