When he was still a law student at Harvard University, long before he was in the White House, Barack Obama appeared to have co-authored the book with his friend, economics professor Robert Fisher. The reason for a poem of about 250 pages with the temporary title “Transformative Politics” (“The Politics of Transformation” in a free Greek translation).

Relatively recently, this extremely interesting manuscript fell into the hands of the American historian Timothy Schenk, the contents of which he sets out on the pages of the New York Times.

“When Tim started flipping through the pages, he realized that this was more than just a historical relic. Bold in its arguments and ruthless in its criticism, the text seemed to offer sharp advice that could help Democrats get out of their current political quagmire,” Laura Reston writes in the New York Times, presenting this opinion as a window that allows us to read. Barack Obama’s uncensored thoughts on American democracy early in his career.

Almost no one knew about the existence of this draft text until 2017, when a biography of Barack Obama called “Rising Star” was published. In that voluminous book written about the life of the former President of the United States by biographer-historian David Garrow, the forgotten student feeling mentioned is mentioned for the first time.

“When I contacted Mr. Garrow in the summer of 2019 and asked him to help me obtain a copy of this text, he told me that I was the first to become interested,” writes historian Timothy Schenk in the New York Times.

Messrs. Obama and Fischer attempted to use this text, written during Obama’s last semester at Harvard Law School in the early 1990s, to answer a number of questions, many of which, unfortunately, seem extremely relevant today, albeit decades later.

“Why did the American Left fail?”: This was one of the questions that Obama tried to answer at the time, giving a number of reasons: because they do not understand enough and cannot use the market (“failure to understand and use the market”) – because he refuses to articulate principles that can create strong coalitions (“refusal to articulate principles that can create strong coalitions”) because he expects the judiciary to function as a field for social change, etc.

In addition to the title “Transformative Politics”, the authors discussed the title “The Promise of Democracy: A Hopeful Critique of American Ideology” as an alternative.

Otherwise, Mr. Barack Obama and Robert Fisher drew a number of other interesting conclusions at the time, arguing, for example, that politics should not be left in the hands of “experts” and “technocrats” because it carries “dangers”—that American society remains racist. and it will not change overnight – that in order to defeat the right, the debate must return to the level of the economy – that America’s individualistic mythology works against all blue-collar workers), not just blacks, but also whites – that the Democratic Party must appeal to all workers in US, white and black, that a comprehensive strategy for economic reform should be at the center of the political agenda, that political calculations should be accompanied by a vision of moral values, etc. .

“What does all this mean for Democrats today?” asks historian Timothy Schenk, arguing that the US Democratic Party has been facing the same basic problem since the 1960s. “An electorate divided by culture won’t give Democrats the votes they need to build a strong majority.”

Prospects and opportunities for change exist even in these conditions, which is also evident from the polls. Only 27% of registered voters in the US consider themselves liberals (the term has a more progressive-left connotation in the US than in Europe). At the same time, however, 62% of Americans want higher taxes for millionaires, 71% are positive about unions, and 83% want a federal minimum wage increase.

Source: New York Times.