MoveOn’s Decline
Kristin Rawls has an interesting piece at Global Comment on participating in MoveOn.org actions and the lack of vision from that organization. In part:
On their own, they’re not terribly complicated, but even our highly educated group, which included university professors and others with advanced degrees, found it hard to parse all 40 of our choices and decide upon priorities within the allotted two hours. After the meeting, Moveon.org promised to tally the national votes to determine the issues that we found most galvanizing—this way, they would determine the focus of the movement just in time for a nation-wide protest scheduled for August 10. Organizer Myra Schwartz of North Carolina says, “I do agree that [message-creation is] a challenge, since we do not have our own news network or deep pockets of corporate sponsorship… One challenge will be to present a unified message…because simple is often better, and yet we know as progressives that real concerns are hard to pin down to a bumper sticker.”
But the debt ceiling agreement angered liberals and progressives throughout the country and ultimately put an end to this nonsense. Progressive Americans went reeling in response to this legislation, which includes massive spending cuts but no catalyst for new job creation. “Jobs not cuts” provided a straightforward, understandable rallying cry, and we were all spared the burden of creating slogans based on things like imposing slight taxes on Wall Street trades or taxing hedge fund managers.
So, Moveon.org dodged the message problem, but judging from news reports, it still failed to present a unified, nation-wide cause to the media. Reports of modest local rallies abound, but they mostly fail to communicate that these local gatherings were part of a nation-wide day of protest.
These news reporters are certainly guilty of simplistic, under-researched reporting, but Moveon.org surely shares some of the blame. Better attention to press release distribution and a better-publicized call for nation-wide action would have gone a long way to fix this problem. Instead, small protests are framed by the media as local gatherings that are operating on their own—and completely outside of any kind of national campaign. Yes, Moveon.org is said to be involved, but these are just local affiliates doing local actions. This was careless and negligent planning. Progressives should have learned this from the Tea Party—that is, while various actions happen in local contexts, movements gain political influence by casting themselves as a unified, nation-wide political force.
While most of us probably still receive MoveOn e-mails, it hasn’t seemed very relevant since not long after the Dean campaign. One would like to think they developed a potentially workable model, with a decentralized structure around local groups and then a central organization coordinating the whole thing. But that sort of thing is also awfully hard to get right and Rawls’ experiences are about what I would expect–centralized or decentralized in all the wrong places.
Her ultimate point is whether MoveOn has the potential to become a left-leaning Tea Party, but that’s not going to happen. And I’m not sure any progressive movement has that potential outside of a fighting mad and aggressively activist labor movement. Liberals don’t act like conservatives and while we might certainly engage in our share of group-think, the standards of evidence are much higher on our side.
Like you said at the end of the post, the nature of liberals makes it much more difficult to organize and unite than it is for conservatives. Part of that is because conservatives, being conservatives, naturally get a lot more support from the ruling class. But another part of it is that liberals are just less likely to agree on fundamentals. There are only so many ways to support the wealthy and powerful and the status quo that sustains them; their are lots of ways to oppose it.
So I’m tired of more centrist-leaning liberals scolding their brothers and sisters, and insisting that we need to water down our viewpoints in order to be electable. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not the job of liberals to win elections; it’s our job to push the discourse leftward and keep the Overton window framed around sensible policy options.
Which is also something we’re failing at at the moment, but early labor rights history demonstrates that it’s not impossible.
No, we’re not. ;-)
There should be liberals doing both. Do you really want to cede electoral politics entirely to non-liberals?
We should just make the division of labor more explicit, so we don’t get people insisting that state senate campaigns include giant, anti-capitalist puppets, and we don’t get people insisting that consciousness-raising protests limit themselves to messages that could be adopted through a voice vote in the state senate.
well we did what they said, we Moved On
Well, I agree MoveOn has become feckless. I think you’re missing the big picture though. MoveOn helped move the electorate toward the national Dems and Obama. Then the national Dems and Obama forcefully thwarted MoveOn’s effectiveness and even its reason for being by ordering it to either shut up or fall in line with Obama’s centrist overcompromising. The national Dems and Obama abandoned Move On, leaving it fairly purposeless and rudderless. The national Dems and Obama also undermined Dean’s effective 50-state grassroots strategic organization (weirdo Blue Dog Kaine was incompetent and even stupid) and neutralized OFA by changing its mission and turning it into an apologist lapdog. The national Dems and Obama wanted to be the sole voice of the Dems – with totalitarian control of the message and policy – and, therefore, ended any real cohesion among the party faithful which discouraged independents from wanting to even lean in the Dems’ direction. The national Dems and Obama removed all the glue from Party unity and trashed the loose-knit ideology that undergird it. So, don’t blame MoveOn for still trying to help. MoveOn was sabotaged by its own Party apparatus. And that I think touches on and maybe even represents why the country has allowed itself to be brainwashed by rightwing ideology the past 30 years: because the Dems no longer clearly or actively stood for anything, not even loyalty.
Well, luckily for America, there’s a chance the GOP is going this way. The Tea Party has definitely destroyed intra-party discipline (as seen in the debt ceiling debacle), so either the GOP old guard is going to drive them out, which will seriously weaken the GOP, or the Tea Party will take over, which would be pretty awful, obviously.
News Nag just wants unity and respect among the coalition.
Joe from Lowell – respectfully in response to your sarcastic response, you create a transparent straw joke, which is easy but empty. I certainly hope “our” side has better to offer than that. Nowhere did I say lack of unity among the coalition is the problem. I want a Dem leadership that is as activated for liberal policies as its constituencies are, and I am very willing to overthrow the centrist Dem leadership, as well as the Blue Dogs and other DLC Dixiecrats of any region, to achieve party cohesion of policy goals – goals that are the historic and ideologic hallmark of the Democratic Party. The grass root Dems know what the party stands for. The only thing standing in the way is the corporate leadership and useless straw sniping such as yours. Surely you have better things to say and do. If not, then……
And the loyalty I talk about is loyalty to the important historic Democratic issues, not to just any old Dem, such as yourself, who would rather snipe misleadingly than find something at least possibly constructive to say.
You wrote a lengthy post trashing other Democrats, and when I pointed out that you did that, you accused me of making it all up and bitched at me.
And I’m “sniping?” And being “misleading” by quoting you?
Sorry, next time I’ll be “constructive” by accusing people of betrayal and abandonment.
Here’s a thought: how about, instead of writing a reply about how awful it is that I quoted the language you used back to you, and insisting that you couldn’t possibly have done anything wrong, you actually look at your comment and try to figure out why someone who actually does value party unity might find it objectionable?
I quoted you. You actually did say all of those things, and I didn’t change you meaning the slightest bit.
That actually is how you chose to describe the “wrong sort” of Democrats.
No straw, direct quotes, wholly accurate representation of your statement.
Is this a joke?
That looks an awful like a complaint about abandoning party unity to me.
Barack Obama’s approval rating among Democrats is about 80%, roughly 6-8 times the number of Democrats who say they disapprove.
And yet, it’s that little minority who are “the grassroots,” and the large majority of Democrats are “the corporate leadership” who don’t know what the party stands for?
So, like Tom Delay, you’re want to achieve unity by replacing everyone who doesn’t agree with you with those who do, even though it would mean replacing a large majority with a minority, without any indication that you would be willing to move or broaden any of your own stances, or even avoid using insulting and divisive language when discussing most of the Democratic Party.
Unity!
Joe,
There’s a new Washington Post poll over on Americablog with the President’s support among liberals considerably to the south of that 70%-80% number.
My comment is about Democrats.
I didn’t use the word “liberals” once.
The Democratic Party is a big tent.
Joe, you are missing the point. If all the direction for the Democratic party comes from the top down, the party will slowly shift to the right over time because that is what is most convenient to the politicians at the top. We have certainly seen this on economic issues. If activists within the party have greater voice, this can make things more difficult for the politicians at times but can help move the party and the country to the left.
Just consider the difference in the national media representation of pressure from the Republican’s party structure on Republican politicians versus for the Democrats.
I don’t disagree.
Then the national Dems and Obama forcefully thwarted MoveOn’s effectiveness and even its reason for being by ordering it to either shut up or fall in line with Obama’s centrist overcompromising.
“Ordering it”? Really? What form did that take, and why did MoveOn obey the order?
This has been true since the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, and the Viet Nam War.
Both national parties were shattered by the transformations of the 1960s. By 1980, however, the Republicans had a nucleus of a party ideology and a workable coalition: the rich, as always, the racists, fundamentalist Christians, and the suburban whites who did not want to share their Democratic/New Deal prosperity with black people. While this coalition is getting smaller, I see no signs that it is coming apart.
Yes, exactly. Such as the AFL-CIO crossing the PATCO picket lines, exacerbating the undermining of unions in this country, therefore, undermining the long-time governing Democratic coalition and undermining the economic underpinnings of the great middle class. The Reagan Dems such as the AFL-CIO of the time really screwed things up in this way. Of course, they’d say the liberal Dems screwed things up first, and even if they’re right they’d be wrong.
There were just fault lines that finally came apart, with help from Ford, Reagan, and the eviler plutocrats, of course, and we have to rebuild from and with a strong nucleus of the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party and attract reasonable people everywhere, including less liberal Democrats.
The Republican coalition is *both* getting smaller *and* coming apart.
(1) The fundamentalist end-timers are getting more demanding, and their new demands are harmful to the profits of the rich.
(2) The rich are getting greedier, and eventually the fundamentalist end-timers can’t help but notice that they’re out of work and bankrupt thanks to the rich…
(3) The racists, including suburban white racists, are dying off; meanwhile, the overreach of both the rich and the end-timers are beginning to scare some of them.
It’s a damned slow process though. The Republican Party is currently propped up by the fecklessness of the national Democratic leadership, who have been making a point of not distinguishing themselves from the rich or the end-timers.
It’s not a question of engaging in group-think, it’s willingness to obey authority.
And while we might believe that’s not really a trait worth cultivating in general, there are certain situations where it comes in handy…such as working successfully within the confines of a giant, tightly-controlled organization, as pretty much all large-scale political movements are.
“..but even our highly educated group..”
Simple truth is never a conceit.
The end of this post doesn’t make a whole lot of sense unless you assume that ‘Tea-party’ = ‘saying stupid shit’, when most people mean the comparison to mean ‘anti-establishment’.
I often wonder, are these mistakes purposeful or are they designed to prevent any kind of anti-establishment feelings among the population? I mean, nobody can really honestly think someone is suggesting we cultivate a bunch of morons to run around screaming crazy shit instead of saying that we need more populism. That just doesn’t seem feasible.
Can you explain a little more clearly?
I’m not quite grasping what you are saying. What doesn’t make sense about the last part?
Well, maybe most TEA PARTIERS think that Tea-Party = anti-establishment, but then again Tea partiers are also known for such deep philosophical insights as “keep the government away from my Medicare”, smacking unemployed disabled veterans in the face with dollar bills, and, last but not least, becoming the public face, voice, and agenda (such as it is) of today’s Republican party.
So…yeah.
Progressives will never be able to form their own “Tea Party” because the easy to understand populist message: “government is working to screw the working class for the weatlhy” is conceptually at odds with their more technocratic prescription: “we need to annoint elite, wealthy officials to protect the working class”.
Briefly, its hard to drum up anti-establishment fervor around solutions that are establishment driven.
People who are mad about the current state of affairs in this country generally don’t trust lawyers, economists, and academics, and those are the groups that are in the lead of the progressive movement.
Labor would be where its at, but big unions have spent the last century negotiating away most of its flexibility and ability to build an easily accessible grassroots movement.
There’s a lot I agree with here (though I would modify the critique of unions at the end; one of the great values of unionism is that its core strength and power–solidarity–constitutes a practice that almost by definition radically challenges the prevailing ethos of contemporary political culture). I don’t have a whole lot of sympathy for explanations that emphasize the idea that liberals are “anti-authoritarian” or have more diverse opinions than conservatives and this is why we can’t organize. That strikes me as either just so much self-congratulation or excuse-making.
To my mind one of the bigger problems is just a basic lack of vision: a great deal of contemporary progressivism/liberalism is effectively committed to a more competently run technocracy and a kind of defensive rear-guard action to protect what’s left of middle class entitlement programs. Frankly, that’s just not much of a galvanizing program. Indeed, I’m inclined to go back to some of Erik’s posts from several weeks ago and say that one of the core problems is the lack of a radical movement. I do not think, however, that there are many leftist elements capable of that right now: many of the radical movements on the left that I’m aware of seem to revel in their irrelevancy. They seem to take it as a sign of their fundamental correctness (everyone else is duped by corporate media, so if an idea is popular, it must be wrong/corrupt). To be effective, a radical movement actually has to at least have the potential of addressing people’s concrete concerns; thus, say, an environmental movement that says that we have to give up agriculture doesn’t seem to me to fit the bill.
I agree with this. My point was more that big unions have spent a century working their way into the “prevailing ethos of contemporary political culture”, and have therefore lost a good bit of their power and flexibility. It seems that for every concession unions have been able to get, they have wilfully allowed themselves to be legalized and standardized into certain methods of negotiating and organizing. While that may provide greater short-term results and power, it is also ossifying.
Of course, most of my understanding of labor movements have come through more radical outlets associated with anti-state and free market(!) viewpoints, so that is open to be corrected.
As for the rest of your comment, you are spot on. The Bush Jr. to Obama transition is very indicative of the problem: “Look at how those in power are ruining the country and destroying your lives! Elect us and we will do slightly better!” just doesn’t do it.
Albeit the idea of a radical wing of the progressive movement kinda scares me. How much would be about worker self-management and empowerment within a market-style economy and how much would just be radical authoritarianism in pursuit of those goals. Radical, populist, political change doesn’t exactly have the best track record.
To GMack. I think you’re right, a radical constituency of the Democratic Party is truly necessary (where else do the energy and ideas come from), one that can translate its message into populist speak as well as organize effectively. And I think we actually had that to some degree in the “Democratic Wing” led by Howard Dean, whom the party actually allowed to organize and recruit the broader constituency, which, along with the appeal of Obama’s faux progressivism, grew into a winning national coalition. I know Dean is not a true radical, but within the DLC-Blue Dog-Centrist Democratic party of the late 20th and early 21st century, he really does seem radical. By intentionally undoing what Dean built, as Obama has done, was to securely reinstate DLC-Blue Dog-Centrist supremacy, which may win in 2012 after all, but not without greatly risking the well-being of this country to an extent not seen since the Great Depression – and we don’t seem to have an FDR. All we have is increased and enhanced unlimited corporate funding, which is sort of an anti-FDR. We need help. Heck, maybe we should pray to something or other.
Few things are as self-defeating as determining where a radical movement “belongs”, “is needed”, or “should be”.
It seems that for every concession unions have been able to get, they have wilfully allowed themselves to be legalized and standardized into certain methods of negotiating and organizing.
Can you give some specific examples of this?
The Wagner Act is the big example, as it basically created union bureaucracy as a large negotiating unit in the mold of the government and the corporation.
Kevin Carson describes it in military terms, noting how it outlawed the “assymetric warfare” that had served as a far greater source of union power than general strikes before the Act.
Ever since then, unions have tended to be more of a business unit for dividing up a share of profits, rather than a true advocate of worker rights.
Karl Hess, Goldwater speechwriter and preeminent libertarian, compared FDR to Hitler in what may be a surprising way, considering the source:
So unions had more power before the Wagner Act than after?
I would imagine that certain unions became more powerful, at least in the short run, but workers lost a lot of the ability to react according to their situation, and so it is certainly no sure thing that the workers were net beneficiaries, especially in the long run.
Most of what I know about union history and the effects of certain laws comes from libertarian sources, and there is no better on the topic than Kevin Carson. This is a 60 page paper he put together for c4ss.org, and anything I say going forward would just be a less intelligent and less informed version of something you would like read in it:
http://c4ss.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/C4SS-Labor.pdf
Kevin Carson is a gem.
Even when I don’t agree with what he’s saying, I’m always better off for having read his take.
This is based on a skim, and I’d be happy to get deeper into the weeds on this another time, but for now:
I think Carson is: overestimating the durable accomplishments made under the pre-Wagner system; underestimating the range of tactics available under the Wagner system, even after Taft-Hartley (and I would also point out that the Wagner system may make some tactics illegal, but it doesn’t make them physically impossible*); and in his conclusion comparing the Wagner system to a state where both labor and management agree to give up legal recourse for dispute resolution, which ain’t going to happen in my lifetime, and not because unions would oppose it.
* – Thomas Geoghegan tells a story about sitting in a bar with a local union executive board planning stuff that made his hair stand on end. He pointed out that everything they were planning was clearly illegal. They laughed and told him, “You job isn’t to *keep* us out of trouble. Your job is to *get* us out of trouble.”
Absolutely.
He doesn’t just map out an idea, but the idea’s history. His writings always seem to be less advocacy and more history lesson.
Hogan,
Are you suggesting that a fringe libertarian may have taken an idea with some merit way, way too far?
Are you suggesting that a fringe libertarian may have taken an idea with some merit way, way too far?
There’s a first time for everything.
This is a very interesting argument, but I’m not sure I can agree with it 100%. In my view, the ideal end goal for labor is to get representation in corporate governance. There is really no good reason that the government facilitates the creation of public LLCs that are theoretically chartered to maximize shareholder value but in practice tend to maximize executive income. It would be just as reasonable to say that labor interests should have an explicit stake in the matter and in some European countries it is actually mandated that the union have a representative on the board. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with labor peacefully dividing up the profits with management and shareholders in this kind of environment.
But really my goal is to make capitalism work for labor so of course I’m not interested in the more radical possibilities of organized labor.
In my view, the ultimate goal for workers is self-management, or in some way getting rid of the rents on their labor.
Adequate representation on a corporate board would mean precisely this. There is no other reasonable model for labor ownership of the firm. Other attempts involve intractable (so far) problems with hiring new employees and how to manage employee departures (voluntary or not).
Mpowell, one problem is that what you want is unachievable in the current US political environment because the Republicans — and there are still far too many of them — are intent on destroying all forms of workers’ rights.
Therefore the *only* possible result is for workers to start organizing traditional, pre-Wagner Act unions in response to the pre-Wagner Act behavior of corporate execs and their paid government lackeys. It’s already happening.
I think it’s the basic Samuel Gompers strategy: in effect, workers get a variety of goods (8 hour work days, weekends, benefits, etc) in exchange for giving up their radicalism; that is, they get legal rights to organize and various benefits, but they also become “part of the system,” as it were, subject to a variety of legal restrictions and regulations about how they are allowed to organize, negotiate, and strike (e.g., the abolition of sympathy strikes, etc.). Now, I’m not opposed to this. The victories won are essential. However, to some extent, these sorts of deals de-politicize unions and rob them of some of their more radical potentials.
Or what Brad said above (he posted as I was writing).
Wow. I guess today is the agree with Brad Potts day.
NLRB unions are indeed “neutered”.
The overreach of the Republicans is causing the creation of old-fashioned wildcat unions, however.
Radical, populist political change is becoming the only option, thanks to the damned Republicans and their damned Democratic enablers stifling needed incremental reforms. It scares me too, but it’s the only option, so I’ll do my best to make it more socialist and less Nazi Coup (which was also marketed as radical and “populist”).
Progressives will never be able to form their own “Tea Party” because the easy to understand populist message: “government is working to screw the working class for the weatlhy” is conceptually at odds with their more technocratic prescription: “we need to annoint elite, wealthy officials to protect the working class”.
Two questions:
1) Your solution would be….?
2) Do you think the actual bumper sticker would be about government screwing the people? Why not simply “government protects those who screw you”? That’s a populist message that would allow for a portion of the movement to be from the intelligentsia.
Listen, the Teabaggers have no intelligensia and look at how stupid they appear. I’d rather have someone philosophizing a bit to make sure the message is viable.
I’m a libertarian (of the “bleeding heart” variety) that thinks progressivism has been going off the rails for decades. I can’t offer much by way of solutions.
I am not saying that having intelligensia within the movement is a bad thing, I’m saying that focusing on intelligensia as the solution is the problem. Like it or not, its always gonna be very hard to distinguish enough between the old “bad” intelligensia and the new “good” intelligensia to stir up a lot of grassroots fervor.
Plus, progressivism is not very heavy on citizen involvement either. There isn’t much of a “We can build a better America” message to progressivism. Its rather a “Support us and we will manage a better America for you” message.
Most people dream of not having a boss, and simply having a better boss isn’t really that inspiring.
I’m a libertarian (of the “bleeding heart” variety) that thinks progressivism has been going off the rails for decades.
If you mean since 1980, derailed certainly.
Oddly enough, so am I, but even I wouldn’t be so bold to criticize something that I had no alternatives to offer up for.
I think we can agree on this: the closest liberal movement that applies here is the civil rights movement, and while there was a boatload of intelligentsia there, ultimately the movement didn’t take off until the average American realized the basic unfairness of racism and bigotry.
Which, if you read between the lines, was orchestrated by an intelligentsia. Like King, and Abernathy. Even Malcolm X, to a degree.
There are issues that a progressive, grass-roots movement could raise. For example, one of the hottest spots for environmentalism is Montana, not exactly the most progressive place in the nation, but it boasts two Democratic Senators and a Democratic governor, in a region (the Mountain States) particularly unfriendly to a liberal agenda.
Yet, these Blue Dogs have moved that state leftward. Maybe we’ll never see them pass gay marriage, but they’ve started a dialogue about how progressivism, even the “lite” variety, has merit.
We need that type of ground game. It doesn’t matter that the entire country gets as blue as California or Massachussetts, just that it starts the pendulum swinging this way.
From Rawls:
That may have contributed to the problem, I think. Despite commonly derived conclusions from student-based protest movements, academic culture doesn’t lend itself well to activist leadership. Academics like technical details; measuring them, comparing them, arguing about them, etc. Building an activist movement needs simplicity as its foundation, as the group eventually discovered.
I’m reminded of the scene in the Abbie Hoffman biopic Steal This Movie! wherein Hoffman, played by Vincint D’Onofrio, tells a local anti-pollution group called something along the lines of Committee to Protect the Upper St. Lawrence From Coastal Development, or somesuch, that they should change their name to Save The River. Why? Because when you tell someone you’re from Save The River, it peaks their interest. “What river? What’s wrong with the river? Who’s hurting the river? Why should I care?” You have a hook to turn the potentially interested into an activist ally off the bat, without even telling them the technical details of what you seek to accomplish.
“Jobs, Not Cuts” might work for building an anti-austerity movement, but I think something even more simple than that, like “Jobs for America” or “Put America to Work,” would be better for a number of reasons: it’s deceptively apolitical, it emphasizes your goal, it doesn’t immediately complicate your message, etc. If Progressives want to build an anti-austerity movement for Progressives, “Jobs, Not Cuts” is fine. But I seriously doubt a self-limited movement will have the impact it desires.
We need the progressive equivalent of the DLC. We need an organization that is primarily political which has the mission of moving the Democratic party further left. It should exist within the party, not outside it.
Experienced, successful, progressive politicians and their close associates should be reaching down into the elections for state house representitives and doing what they can to help the more left leaning candidates win primaries and elections. Young politicians should see compelling examples of how embracing a progressive agenda leads to electoral success. This means steering fundraisers and volunteers to those candidates, and doing it under a single umbrella organization to enhance the clout. They should not just help specific progressives, they should also instill fear in moderate Democrats who tack too far to the right just to make themselves a little more secure.
I forgot to mention the part of individuals.
Identify progressive politicians you respect. Find out who their proteges are. If they don’t have any, pester them into getting one. Do what you can to support the up-and-comer. Chances are, if a politician is actively espousing progressive ideas right now, it is because they are secure enough not to worry about getting beat. They probably don’t need your help, but know someone who does.
A politician who you admire, that qualifies as progressive?
Or a politician that you admire for his progressivism?
Because a lot of the politicians progressives have showered the most admiration on, like Howard Dean and Al Gore, aren’t exactly doctrinaire progressives. Which says something that makes progressives more admirable than conservatives – they don’t base all their judgments on doctrinaire orthodoxy – but can make an explicitly ideological project like your describe more of a challenge.
As if those two haven’t made their name by being very visible proponents of liberal hobby horses who were ultimately set out to pasture.
Neither of them were doctrinaire progressives – both were deficit hawks, Gore was a DLCer, Dean belongs to the NRA – the “hobby horses” that endeared them to liberals notwithstanding.
If you can identify any “liberal hobby horse” that a figure holds, that makes him an orthodox, doctrinaire progressive?
Al Gore running in 2000 on running a surplus so SS would be safer in the future is not the same as insisting that in the midst of a deep recession we need to balance the budget by increasing SS retirement age. I don’t know what Al Gore would be doing today if he were still active in politics, but it may have been precisely this kind of scenario that motivated his views in 2000 to reduce the debt so that it would be easier to run deficits now.
…moves his deficit hawkery forward by about 15 years. Remember, he was on the opposite side of Reich on the fight about deficit reduction vs. increased spending in the early years of the Clinton administration.
I really don’t see why you think that the term “deficit hawk,” particularly when talking about someone who’s been out of politics for over a decade, is a reference to a contemporary political dispute. There was a deficit hawk/dove split in the Democratic Party before 2011.
Remember, he was on the opposite side of Reich on the fight about deficit reduction vs. increased spending in the early years of the Clinton administration.
Sort of makes him prescient, which I think was the point.
I think Al Gore was right back then, too.
The actual point, though, is that Robert Reich thought he was wrong, (just as Reich thinks deficit reduction is wrong now) and thought this in 1992-93.
Demonstrating that the deficit hawk/dove split among Democrats is not an outgrowth of the current economic situation, and that Gore was not, as Brad P. suggested, a torch-carrier for the progressives.
Was their really a self-identified progressive movement in the party at the time? All I can say is that, looking back, Al Gore is a pretty damn good example of a technocratic liberal. But I don’t know as much about the details of the politics of that era, so I could be wrong.
I think that there are few enough progressives that you can take a broad view of what “progressive politicians you respect” can mean.
We need the progressive equivalent of the DLC. We need an organization that is primarily political which has the mission of moving the Democratic party further left. It should exist within the party, not outside it.
I thought that’s what the Congressional Black Caucus was, de facto.
The CBC has been somewhat successfully under siege by corporatism for quite a while now, and has had a not-that-small number of its members peeled away from more progressive or radical stances. The CBC may be at or most near the heart of the Party but is only part of the base.
They exclude white people, though, don’t they? Isn’t that a huge problem?
You know what would help?
Not getting six emails from six different staffers on the same goddamn topic every fucking day!
I might pay more attention.
Liberals don’t act like conservatives and while we might certainly engage in our share of group-think, the standards of evidence are much higher on our side.
We’re too good for politics. We only care about Truth.
I don’t bother with MoveOn because their website is incredibly opaque, it’s very difficult to find information about what’s being organized, if anything. Back in March when the nationwide demonstrations happened, I spent days trying to find information about MoveOn’s alleged coordination, not finding what I was looking for until the Friday before the Saturday rally.
It has seemed to me for a long time now (relatively speaking, of course) that MoveOn is more interested in raising money than actually doing anything.