One explanation put forth for why President Obama and his aides are so upset with the liberal base of the Democratic Party is that they believe Obama has achieved legislative success rivaling that of President Lyndon Johnson, but the base does not appreciate this success. Even NPR’s Mara Liasson easily refuted the “success” aspect of the comparison, but the comparison to LBJ is an especially poor choice for a number of other reasons, as well.

Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” is one of history’s greatest orations, as well as one of its most beautiful arias.

To truly honor him and the heartfelt genius he brought us, we must do the one thing that most hurtfully blocked his Dream: we must end the imperial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, at long last, bring our troops home from all over the world.

Paul Abram’s thoughts on the “end the filibuster” movement.

Now, today, that he is dead, we see the tributes from supporters and opponents (many of whom were friends who loved him well) alike, and from the President and the Vice President. But beyond these tributes is the idea that the work of progressivism stretches before us as it always has. We, the progressives, have lost an enormous amount of ground over the past decades and, today, the problems of this nation stretch before us in an enormous chain that threatens to destroy all that we have gained in easing human ignorance, expanding individual freedom, creating a measure of equality, and at least some safety net for the needy among us, and strengthening the rule of law. Problems of globalization, the financial system, reinventing the American economy, health care reform, environmental degradation and climate change, a rapidly declining educational system, terrorism, war, militarism, and human rights, immigration reform, civil rights and civil liberties, and Governmental Accountability. All of these beset us now and hierarchy and illegitimate authority threaten to transform the Democracy we have done so much to create into a plutocracy.

When we look upon this work and on what we have to accomplish in the coming years, and when we feel discouraged, and believe that we can’t possibly prevail; it will help us to reflect on Teddy Kennedy’s life and the simple idea: “. . . the work goes on. The cause endures. The hope still lives. And the Dream shall never die.”

In 1964, President Johnson said of Vietnam that “I don’t think it’s worth fighting for, and I don’t think that we can get out. It’s just the biggest damn mess I ever saw.” Yet Johnson escalated the conflict and America became bogged down in Southeast Asia for more than a decade. Former Senator George McGovern recently sat down with ANP and said that President Obama runs the risk, like Johnson with his Great Society program, of hobbling his ambitious domestic goals if he continues to send troops into Afghanistan.