A Populist Moment Needs a Long Term Strategy
Progressive movements are simmering and bubbling across the nation, but so far none have been able to link movement enthusiasm and demands to the political power necessary to achieve significant political and economic change. So the Nation forum, (July 7/14) Progressive Strategies in a Populist Moment, offered the prospect of a spot-on discussion about goals and possible strategies for building that progressive political power.
When I finished reading, however, I felt confused particularly about what the forum contributors think should be the relationship between progressive movements and the Democratic Party. They seemed reluctant to take on that key issue directly.
Many forum contributors agreed that to be successful, movements must have a strategy for building the political power they need to create real change. Yet, how can we talk about political power without discussing our relationship to the dominant political party that has carried our progressive hopes for the past 70 years?
I hoped that some of the forum contributors would address key questions such as:
- Should we work inside the Democratic Party as a kind of loyal opposition to build up the Party’s progressive wing so they will gain some influence or a “seat at the table” alla Progressive Democrats of America?
- Or should we try to throw out the current Party leadership and replace them with flaming progressives who would transform the Party, similar to what the Tea Party is doing in the Republicans?
- Maybe we should focus on building an independent political structure by urging progressive Democratic office holders to split-off from the Wall Street wing and declare themselves the real Democrats.
- Finally can progressives just decamp entirely and form a new party from scratch?
A discussion of these questions would certainly help progressive activists focus goals and long term strategy. Unfortunately only a few of the contributors address these issues.
In his article, A Prophetic Moral Vision, Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, architect of the Moral Monday movement, talked about building a fusion vision and movement to challenge conservative control throughout the South. But he dismissed party politics. He urged readers to go deeper than just thinking in terms of left or right, Democrat ors Republican. By that I think he means, asking people to fight for principles rather for Party.
Okay, I get that both political parties are so corrupt that honest people today no longer trust them. However, as several other forum contributors pointed out, no matter how big and inspired by deep principles a movement may be, it still needs to build political capacity that can win elections, gain political power and pass the laws that will transform movement vision and actions into social and economic justice.
In the past fives years we’ve seen any number of movements--Occupy, Madison, Egypt--unable to transform their principles and demands into political reality. How will the Moral Monday movement gain the political capacity it needs to make its vision a reality? Barber’s article doesn’t address that question, but I’m sure that he’s thinking about it all the time, and I hope he will discuss that issue in future articles.
In A New Organizing Playbook, Sarita Gupta, of Jobs with Justice, advocates empowering workers with new organizing models so they can demand the public policies and corporate practices that allow their families and communities to prosper, what she calls a new organizing playbook. No doubt building broad worker organizations whether new or traditional is fundamental to building political power. Progressive political power will depend in large part on an organized and progressive-mined working class.
Gupta does not address the political channel that newly organized workers can use to bring about worker friendly political and economic legislation so desperately needed in this country. Current union leadership seems far too wedded to the Wall Street controlled Democratic Party and often squander millions of hard earned dues dollars on corporate Democrats who have little or no interest in improving the lives of workers.
In fact many Democratic leaders seem to buy into Reagan’s trickle down theory. They vote to fund tax reductions and subsidies for small and large businesses and falsely call that 'job creation' legislation.
If Gupta and other writers of the new organizing playbook could lay out even a bare outline of strategy for gaining political power, progressive activists will eagerly line up behind them.
Several contributors did underscored the need for some kind of independent politics that can gain leverage with the Democratic Party, or at least share in power. George Goehl of National People’s Action Campaign comes the closest to laying out an actual political strategy when he calls for the focus of political/electoral action to move away from the current political parties.
To achieve important ground changing economic reforms, Goehl says the progressive community needs to combine "street heat" with electoral power. That combination can only be accomplished he says by an “independent movement accountable to a constituency and a set of principles not simply to a political party.” That sounds like he might be talking about building the base for a new political party built on progressive principles.
It’s not clear, however, whether Goehl sees the independent movement working outside the Democratic Party to put up their own candidates or whether he sees it just focusing on getting current Democrats to behave better? Let’s hope that Goehl elaborates further and soon because these issues will likely come to a head in the 2016 election.
Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Max Berger, in Organizing After Occupy also called for building “ an independent political formation (party?) with a lasting base that can take power and win reforms”. Taking power and winning sounds great, but the model Hendrix and Berger cite for this is the Working Family Party. As I point out in the next section, it’s unclear whether WFP leaders want to be an independent entity or the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
With a title like A New Progressive Party, you’d think that Daniel Cantor of the Working Families Party (WFP) was going to explain how the WFP is working to separate itself from the corporate controlled Democratic Party and move to elect only progressive champions who support the interests of working families. Unfortunately Cantor quickly backed away from that formulation.
Cantor framed the challenge facing WFP as having to walk that tightrope between “independence and relevance,” finding our way to the “left wing of the possible.” That formulation allows WFP to endorse prominent progressive Democrats, challenge incumbent conservative Democrats who are “firmly in the pocket of the Democrats big money crowd”, or to work with any Democrat to beat a truly ugly Republicans. Sounds like a fancy way of saying that the WFP shouldn’t stray far from the left edge of the Democratic Party.
But even within that narrow frame, Cantor is disingenuous. If ever there was a conservative Democrat in the pocket of big money, it's New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. After the November 2012 elections, Democrat Cuomo faced what should have been the happy prospect of working with a Democratic majority in both houses of the New York legislature (first time in 70 years). He could reasonably expect that important progressive legislation would come to his desk.
Apparently Cuomo didn't relish that possibility, probably because signing progressive laws would anger his big business donors and not signing would anger his base. Cuomo’s solved his dilemma by having a handful of Democratic Senators caucus with the Republicans. That gave control of the New York Senate back to the Republicans and insured that unpleasant progressive legislation would not reach his desk. [1] [2]
Canton never mentions Cuomo's deception and instead brags that at their annual convention, WFP wrangled concessions from the Governor in exchange for their backing him over a primary challenger from Zachary Teachout, an honest progressive who followed WFP's platform. To show his gratitude, Cuomo promised the WFP heaven, earth and the deep blue sea.
Hint to Cantor: we're approaching election season, the time when corporate Democrats make nice with progressives and promise them whatever. Why do WFP leaders think that a double crossing politician like Cuomo will keep campaign promises after the next election?
The answer may be found in Cantor's view of what the WFP really is. Cantor says he wants to hear voters say, “I'm a Working Families Democrat”. That sounds like Cantor thinks the WFP should be the left wing of the Wall Street controlled Democratic Party and not the independent progressive party mentioned in the title. It’s unclear to me how rejecting a sincere progressive like Teachout in favor of a corporate Democrat like Cuomo will actually build power for progressives. We’ll see what happens after the November election.
While the forum includes a sample of progressive community and labor organizations, it curiously omits representatives of organizations that are involved in direct progressive political action such as Democracy for America, Move on, Progressive Democrats of America, Bold Progressives just to name a few. This is a serious omission considering that these groups reach millions and include many important progressive activists. Are they not part of the progressive movement?
What About Swant? Moreover none of the contributors make any mention of socialist Kshama Swant's stunning victory in Seattle. She ran as a socialist, campaigned on solid progressive issues and gained over 93,000 votes, enough to unseat a sitting incumbent Democratic councilman. That was followed up by spearheading a movement that got the Seattle City Council to approve a $15 minimum wage.
Swant accomplished what many progressive leaders say they want to do. Are there no lessons for progressives to be found in Swant’s incredible accomplishment? Or is she just not important because she’s outside the arena of the Democratic Party?
The Tea Party Model? Some contributors did hint that progressives should try to do to the Democrats what the Tea Party has been doing to the Republican Party. That view ignores that fact that Tea Party goals and strategy are quite different from those of progressives. The Tea Party—granted with help from billionaire funding--aims at nothing less than taking complete power. They’re long term goal, from which their strategy evolves, is to take over the Republican Party, purge it of any so called moderates or non-believers and put this country under the rule of a far right libertarian/authoritarian government.
None of the progressives in the Nation Forum talked about challenging the leaders of the Democratic Party for control. That might involve destroying and rebuilding the Party, and there doesn't seem to be much stomach for that kind of a bruising fight with Party leaders.
Instead progressives talk about demanding influence within the Party or gaining a “seat at the table”. Some did talk about building an independent base, but it’s unclear whether those theoretical bases should remain independent of the Democratic Party. Certainly the WFP leaders lean toward working within the Party, which is a legitimate strategy, but they should say that.
Listening to these ideas, I sometimes get the image of progressives as being like poor Oliver Twist in the work house, holding up his bowl to a brutal manager and saying, “Please sir, I want more.” I don't recall whether Oliver got more gruel, but he was definitely not working a long term strategy.
While the forum provided a lot of insight into what individual groups are doing and what their leaders think, it lacked a hard hitting discussion about long-term political strategy particularly in relation to the Democratic Party. How we can get out of the lesser-evil trap that holds the country hostage to the corporate and wealth controlled two party system? Is there a new way to organize politically that will make the two main parties obsolete?
To be clear, without the power of a movement behind them, political strategies alone are sterile. Real structural change to our economy and society requires a social-political movement with millions of people who share at least a few basic ideas about what the economy should look like and how we bring about change.
But to be successful, movements also need a long term goal and a political strategy for getting there. Moreover it will also take damn good leadership that is not afraid to contend for power, inside the party or outside in new political formations. It's time to recognize that the Democratic Party is not our family or our friend. It is a political structure that is standing in our way. We need to figure out how to reform it, take it over, go around it, or just knock it down. The first step in figuring that out is good open discussion.
Please progressive leaders, we want more.
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[1] Moulitsas, Markos, Renegade Democrats keep NY Senate in GOP hands, Cuomo complicit, Daily Kos, Dec. 12, 2012. at: http://www.dailykos.com/...
[2] Meyerson, Harold, The Working Families Party brings Andrew Cuomo back into the fold. The Washington Post, June 4. Meyerson says,
“Neither of these [progressive] initiatives could get through the [New York] state’s senate, because five Democratic senators had aligned themselves with the Republicans to effectively transfer control to the GOP.
The five Democrats’ defection plainly suited [Governor] Cuomo’s purposes, ensuring that legislation upsetting to New York’s business interests would never reach the governor’s desk. Those interests, particularly Wall Street, have been very good to Cuomo, helping him build a campaign treasury in excess of $30 million.” Rumor has it that Cuomo is building a campaign chest for a possible presidential run should Hillary not run or falter.
In California, the battle for Single Payer followed a similar pattern of Democrats maneuvering to stop progressive legislation reaching the desk of a newly elected Democratic governor.