There are probably many reasons for the loss in Massachusetts, but what is so striking was the arrogance of the Coakley campaign taking a victory for granted in the first place.

Yet the more important matter, at least for me, is that the anger that so many people feel in the USA is precisely the anger that the Obama administration should be tapping into in order to move change.  Instead, the Administration recoils and their instincts--as many of us knew prior to the election--are to go to the "middle" and seek compromise with the political Right.  Their behavior is also marked by surrounding themselves with elements of the ruling elite, as in too many faces from Wall Street.

Immediately after hearing the results of the election i started thinking about President Franklin Roosevelt.  His first year in office--1933--was not especially a shining moment for him.  In fact, Roosevelt's instincts were not very different from those of Obama's.  So, what changed?  Two things actually.  The first is that Roosevelt faced very stiff opposition to his anti-Depression efforts by forces to his Right.  This surprised Roosevelt who, himself, was a child of the elite.  But the resistance was very stiff.  The second factor was pressure from his political left.  In fact, by 1934 there was an energized unemployment movement AND union movement at work.  In 1934 there were several general strikes and people were in motion.  In 1935, African Americans, disappointed that the New Deal programs were not sufficiently addressing the situation facing African Americans, began organizing, part of which culminated in the formation of the National Negro Congress, a coalition that played a major role in supporting union organizing in the 1930s, as well as pressuring the Roosevelt administration regarding racial policy.

So, the question is whether Obama will feel the Roosevelt-tug, or whether he will continue to dive into the middle--or worse--in response to voter anger.  I would suggest that the answer depends less on Obama and more on us.  Will we be in the streets around war, or will we be sending emails reflecting our despair?  Will the unemployed be organized through groups like ACORN, National People's Action, and labor unions, or will they simply be a statistic that is referenced in speeches?  Will workers move to organize despite every obstacle that corporate America puts before them, or will they cringe awaiting the next pink slip?  These are the sorts of questions that progressives need to be asking and, more importantly, acting upon.

I am tired of the complaints; it is time to get moving.

BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum and co-author of, Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice (University of California Press), which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.