As an unabashed and high-profile liberal on President Barack Obama?s White House staff, former ?green energy? czar Van Jones was to Republicans what a red cape is to a snorting bull: an irresistible target.
So when he resigned in 2009 under withering fire from the right ? triggered by a video of him disparaging the GOP, followed by revelations of a tenuous connection to Sept. 11 conspiracy theorists ? few doubted Jones was finished in Washington. He acknowledged as much a year later, writing in The New York Times that politics has become ?a combination of speed chess and Mortal Kombat: one wrong move can mean political death.?
Continue ReadingWhat a difference two years can make.
While still a high-value target for conservatives, the charismatic Jones has rebounded from his messy departure to become a superstar of the resurgent left, founding ? with MoveOn.org ? the American Dream Movement, a grass-roots political force modeled after the tea party. His issue is no longer just green jobs, but to push back against the right?s domination of economic policy and social issues that he dates to the 2010 election.
?I thought progressives were too quick to go from hopey to mopey? during the past two years, Jones told POLITICO in a recent interview. ?They skipped the fight in the middle.?
The tea party, he said, impressed him by ?the way they were able to gather so many organizations and individuals under an open-source brand. There just wasn?t a voice on the economy for progressives and moderates that was coherent and passionate like them. I thought that was really fascinating, so I studied them.?
Jones helped organize a September summit, ?Take Back the American Dream,? drawing more than 200 progressive organizations, and worked with groups in Ohio to defeat a bill which would have tightly restricted unions? collective-bargaining power. And the themes of jobs and economic equality pushed by ?Rebuild the Dream? ? as the umbrella organization is known ? dovetail with the economic message of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
To his supporters, Jones?s combative stance personifies the uncompromising liberal they wish Obama would be. But Jones credits the vocal right and the relative inaction of liberals more than he blames Obama for the predicament in which the left finds itself.
?I?m not mad at the tea party for being so loud,? he said. ?I?m mad at the progressives for being so quiet the past couple of years and not having that fire and that intensity at the grass-roots level to give both parties something to respond to that?s not just cut, cut, cut.
?You hear people talking about a disappointment [in Obama] and this kind of thing. I?m still of the view it was never, ?Yes, he can.? It?s supposed to be, ?Yes, we can.? And the ?we? was not evident in a couple of those years.?
But with issues ranging from Code Pink?s end-the-war stance to Planned Parenthood?s fight to protect Roe v. Wade and labor?s battles for preservation of its rights, unifying the left is a tall order. And until recently, ?Rebuild the Dream? seemed to be gaining little traction. Jones? summit drew a few thousand participants and scant media attention, and only a few hundred of them attended a ?Jobs, Not Cuts? rally on Capitol Hill.
Allies, however, insist Jones?s message is resonating with frustrated liberals and that the Occupy Wall Street movement presents him with an opportunity to elevate his message.
?We?re tired of people rigging the game. That?s the message of this movement,? Jones said in an interview on MSNBC, commenting on OWS?s ?day of action? that it now ?it?s time to turn the anger into answers.?
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