Progressive Blind Spots And The Muddying of Long-Term ThinkingSHORT TAKES: Perez For Governor Has To Be A Joke; Striking At China's Child Labor
LONG TAKE[CONTRIBUTE YOUR THOUGHTS IN THE COMMENTS SECTION! SHARE WITH OTHERS! SUBSCRIBE! Sorry about a day late this week…I know, you felt lost with this] The municipal elections that took place this week in New York City and Buffalo, along with the machinations in Washington over infrastructure spending and voting rights, offer up a great opportunity to make some points about some persistent glaring weaknesses in the progressive “movement”. Here are our topics of the day:
How about them apples? I had this to say to the The Hill earlier this week in the context of a piece about whether the (poorly-defined) “center” was striking back at (equally poorly-defined) progressives (I’ve highlighted in bold a few passages):
Context: I’ve considered myself part of the progressive movement—broadly defined—for my entire adult life. I take no back seat to anyone when it comes to vigorous critique of the Democratic Party (I can give you references to plenty of Democrats who, um, would prefer I die) and the general entrenched leadership in politics, including in many parts of the labor movement of which I have been a dues-paying member approaching forty years (yes, that means I’m ancient). But, I also believe in dealing, as often as possible, with the real world—meaning, understanding what actual voters want to see in their daily lives, which sometimes means taking our progressive collective heads-out-of-our-asses when it comes to convincing people to join our ranks. So, first: it is undeniable that progressives have more influence within government than back in the 1990s—influence measured both by what the policy agenda is within the Democratic Party AND positions held in elected office. That’s what drives the so-called “center”, and its corporate donors, bat-shit crazy. I mentioned Bowman and Bush in my discussion with The Hill—both of whom defeated long-time Democratic incumbents in primaries—but you could also go across the country and find plenty of lower-visibility races (district attorney races, for example) where progressives won. At a policy level, for example, that means really bad corporate-driven trade deals, which hurt workers around the globe, can be defeated—witness the demise of the Trans Pacific Partnership, which was promoted by Barack Obama. So, progressives can celebrate those victories which came out of lots of hard work by a lot of people who don’t seek the limelight with superficial cult-pleasing speeches. And, yet…the victories come with important caveats: progressives don’t rule the roost throughout the policy agenda at state and federal levels if one judges the agenda, at least in part, on the ideas and specific proposals Bernie Sanders ran on—which, to my mind, is the best fully-developed framework off of which you can judge “progressive” versus not. Victories have given progressives some leverage but not full power—and some of that leverage was fleeting, handed out in the shadow of an impending election when a candidate needed progressives to turn out the vote. That’s life and simple math. So, here’s the challenge: how do progressives find the path between strong advocacy and continuing to build power by winning elections and building movements AND, at the same time, be smart about winning things today that make a difference to people. At least part of that challenge means really understanding why things are happening The Ocasio-Cortez/Bernie Sanders conundrum—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders have created two different bad precedents, almost entirely through no fault of their own: So, as you draw in your gasps, I’ll be clear—those two are the best of the best in office. I was a national surrogate for Bernie Sanders in 2016 and I’ve thought the world of him for many years long before he was an icon who could become an Internet sensation just for donning a pair of mittens...though I hasten to add, Bernie is no god, he has his flaws like any human being, some of which were evident in his two presidential campaigns (nah, for another day…). Before Ocasio-Cortez was even a national figure, when she first ran for office and no one gave her a shot in her challenge of a high-ranking Democratic Party old white dude, I did an event with her in a small, packed room at a Queens bar—at which I wrote her a check and urged others to donate (below—a semi-funny story: I had to have them re-post an altered version of the pic because the original one showed my bank account number on the check and I had visions of the Nigerian prince just rubbing his hands in glee…by the way, Mr. Prince, the bank account no longer exists if you are trying!).
She is one of the smartest political people in office—she knows policy, she knows how to connect with people, she obviously is a social media wiz, and she knows how to work with her colleagues (“The Squad”, for example"), qualities lacking in some of the poser progressive frauds—hold that poser fraud point thought for a bit. Both her and Bernie have a similar skill and mindset: they don’t cede their basic progressive values and both of them regularly confront leaders of their own party when needed BUT they also look for places to notch wins TODAY—even if those are incremental. That’s to be lauded—and the certain strains within the progressive movement, who attack either of them for cutting a deal to make progress, are just off their rockers. I’ve heard people refer to Bernie as a “cuck” (!!!) for compromising (as an aside: those are often the very people who saw him as some messianic, God-like figure, who actually did not truly understand the man and failed to look at his history as a mayor or in Congress—the man really isn’t in politics to just blow shit up if he can move the needle). Isn’t the goal of the progressive movement to help folks? The Ocasio-Cortez problem: after she won, thousands of people said, “Oh, I can win, too” and a cry arose urging people “to run for something”. In one sense, it’s great to inspire people to run for office. If we don’t get into the arena, we can’t win. But, very few of those people took ten seconds to look at why Ocasio-Cortez won, and whether the conditions that powered her victory existed, or exist today, anywhere close to what any other progressive challenger might face. She ran in a very dense urban district in New York City, which allowed her and her supporters to build a street-by-street, door-by-door campaign, with minimal financial resources, against an incumbent who didn’t take her seriously and who also increasingly did not represent the demographics of the district. I would guess a similar dynamic will take place with the delightful win of India Walton in the mayoral race in Buffalo, who ran with the support of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the Working Families Party (WFP). Before scores of progressive people think the path to becoming mayor in a relatively large city, it’s worth truly looking at the complicated elements of the race which included an incumbent who had been mayor for 16 years and did not take the opposition seriously (shades of Ocasio-Cortez’s first race). Maybe the best lesson here: the DSA chapter was not immersed in pointless internal ideological squabbles and was able to work within a coalition with the WFP and others so Walton had a serious good organized campaign. Those conditions are almost impossible to replicate anywhere in the country. And this is where we fall down in ways that show the immaturity of the progressive movement:
The Bernie problem. Here’s what I mean. Bernie has, repeatedly (when I say “repeatedly” I mean thousands of times), said the public supports overwhelmingly progressive ideas—and he uses polling to make the point. He even got me, through his own repetition, to say that a lot of times, including on TeeVee. It’s a bad approach. Here’s why. First, anything can be proven with a poll, depending on how the question is framed (“Do you agree or disagree that because Jonathan Tasini exercises every day, never eats junk food, and doesn’t drink alcohol, he looks much, much younger than his age?” Ka-Ching!). Polls are not 100 percent useless—but not when they are used as a fundamental argument for arguing why a policy idea is a good one. Second, saying the public supports something doesn’t win campaigns. Good, smart campaigns, which do all the little things, win campaigns. And, alas, the “public supports my ideas” too often substitutes for the sometimes grey, maybe mundane, particulars of building a campaign. Third, and maybe most important: how do you think an undecided person feels when they are told that the majority of the people support, say, Medicare for All? Depending on the tone, that undecided person—and, guess what, the progressive movement doesn’t yet represent the majority of voters or people—might also hear, “Doofus, why don’t you get with the program already?” The idiocy of the mantra of “party sameism” and how it keeps progressives from winning: I can make a very long list of criticisms of the Democratic Party (off the top of my head: Chuck Schumer is the worst Senate leader party messenger in half a century; state parties are mostly run by party hacks, thus, the “let’s build state parties by giving those folks more money” rings hollow; and the party is still beholden to corporate donor cash which leads to more bad policy). That is not contradictory to recognizing some facts that REAL PEOPLE CARE ABOUT:
In other words, progressives could hold onto two seemingly contradictory ideas at the same time: the system is deeply rotten and the system must be changed from top-to-bottom and the Democratic Party needs a wholesale house-cleaning AND it’s also important to win some shit today that makes a real difference to people which might actually happen depending on who is in charge. Isn’t that what a part of the concept of “progressive” refers to…making “progress”? About the criticism of Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders for making deals. Social media is a great thing—partly because it allows progressives to get around the members of the lazy journalist cadre who don’t read and are obsessed with celebrity and being close to power (Yang, Trump, Clinton, and Giuliani come to mind—all of whom, to one extent or another, rose in prominence because of a media core that embraced, for uncritically for a long time, some vague celebrity…and the entire class of those folks are 100 percent defensive about their role such matters). There was a time, before the Internet, when Rush Limbaugh and his ilk dominated talk radio and fed the anger of a large audience with bile and misinformation. Progressives were distressed that there were not progressive voices out there on radio in equal numbers. Well, now, a segment of progressive activists are enthralled by loud mouth progressives who have never knocked on a voter’s door or certainly not worked day-to-day on a campaign with all its rigors and ups-and-downs and know zip about what it takes to win a campaign—but who, for very little investment, can create a YouTube show and simply tap into righteous anger (people are rightfully angry) and feed that anger with with endless bloviating and often half-truths (because they have no idea what they are talking about). They are often the very voices who tear down Ocasio-Cortez or Sanders. It is not useful, mainly because, along the lines of the point I made earlier—plenty of people don’t care about the battles in the Democratic Party. And when a check arrives for expanded unemployment benefits or a tax credit shows up because someone has a child and the people who get that money believe it’s because of Joe Biden, then, all the rest of the drama is just unimportant. It’s just worth considering how to be wise when laying a critique AND also acknowledging when good stuff happens that helps people in the short term. You know, emotional intelligence. A *transactional* versus *transformational* movement: the best way to describe this is to look at the NYC mayor’s race. To wit: why did so many progressive groups and progressive leaders initally support Scott Stringer, an aging white man, and not two women of color who had pretty strong progressive credentials, Maya Wiley and Dianne Morales? Long before the credible sexual harassment charges against him sunk his campaign, Stringer was a charlatan (and as an aside, when he doesn’t get his way, a petty, nasty person behind the dull public persona)—for decades, his entire political career (started by his mother who was an Upper West Side figure) was wholly a product of being part of, and supporting and defending, the worst Democratic Party political machines in the city which worked daily to suppress progressive ideas and progressive candidates, and, in a fair number of cases, Stringer was in league with corrupt politicians who stole money and eventually would go to jail—even if Stringer himself wasn’t pocketing money. To be sure, Stringer was “progressive” when it came to things like pro-choice positions and gay rights—but that is hardly a daring place to be in New York City politics. On economics, he kissed the ring of every bad sector of the economy, banking money from real estate, for example…the people who rob regular people every day with unconscionable rent levels. Stringer only changed his tune in the past couple of years, and tried to fashion support from elements of a progressive alliance, when it was clear to him that an uninspiring aging white guy would get nowhere in a city in which the energy was clearly behind younger people of color who represented far better the evolving demographics of the city. I really don’t care specifically about Stringer—whose career as a visible politician is pretty muc over—other than as a barometer to ask: why did progressives support him? It comes down to this: in New York City, and in other places, the progressive movement is still largely transactional, not transformational. Meaning, progressive organizations and individuals will get behind a political candidate who has “been there with us” or “carried the water for us on a bill”. Now, you’d say: of course, why not? You support your friends or allies. But, this gets to the nub of a problem: the progressive movement is not really a UNIFIED movement. Yes, in some instances, there is a lot of unity—say, in opposition to someone like Donald Trump. But, most of the time, it’s deeply fragmented—each organization looks out, first and foremost, for the interests of its people, and looks for the best deal for its members, to the exclusion, too often, of others. I can think of unions, for example, who I admire and respect who cut deals with governors or legislatures to get chunks of money for members, at the expense of sometimes funding for broader societal programs. To be clear, I can understand the impulse and it can be a more complicated picture—as I noted above when noting the Ocasio-Cortez/Sanders approach to supporting certain efforts that move the needle but aren’t, at the moment, leading to serious revolution in the country. But, that’s what defines TRANSACTIONAL politics—politics that, at the end of the day, do not TRANSFORM the underlying power in society. And that’s how you end up with progressive support for a woeful human being like Scott Stringer (who, had he won the mayor’s race, I absolutely guarantee would make deals with some of the worst powers in the city). Part of all of this goes to defining what is “progressive”—hell, there are people who join the Progressive Caucus in Congress who don’t qualify in my book as consistent progressives; take a look here for yourself and I guarantee you will say, “progressive? ha!”. I am looking at a picture of one individual, for example, who was a loud advocate and supporter of the Trans Pacific Partnership—a putrid deal that would have hurt millions of people and was torpedoed thankfully because of a strong grassroots uprising, despite the persistent advocacy of Barack Obama and the person whose picture I am looking at. The Frauds. We need to be honest. The progressive movement is not immune to frauds. But, we aren’t mature enough yet to have an open conversation about the frauds, especially frauds who use the progressive movement as a cult. Example: if a candidate was once a charter school supporter and tries to cover that up or not answer why s/he supported charter schools or at least show a path of true evolution to a new position, then, we are being lied to. And usually lurking behind one obfuscation is a whole web of bullshit that ends up undermining the movement as a whole. Maybe the end point is just this: it’s complicated. And we have to engage the complication, and contradictions, in the world as it if we want to win. By the way, this was the short, concise version. Aren’t you glad you didn’t get the book-sized version? SHORT TAKES
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