What does it mean to be a progressive today? Or, I should say, what doesn’t it mean? "Progressive Politics" has become one of those slightly nebulous, catch-all terms under whose banner exists a wide, even contradictory, mishmash of political ideas, social agendas, and interest groups.
Take the last presidential election, for example. Some progressive-minded folks voted for Democrat Al Gore, others for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, and a good many, possibly even a majority, didn’t vote at all. Today, national progressive hopes remain largely rudderless and on the defensive, in search of the kind of galvanizing leadership or movement that could light a torch through the washed out, gray fog of what passes for vision in this post-9/11, George W. Bush stolen-election world.
Some progressive hopes are coalescing now around Rep. Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat and rising star of the party’s progressive caucus. Kucinich draws attention because he boldly goes where most other Democrats only tip-toe, sharply rebuking President Bush’s bellicose foreign policy and post-9/11 encroachments on civil liberties. He has introduced legislation to create a cabinet-level Department of Peace. Yet as a possible Presidential contender, Kucinich is not without his problems. He’s decidedly opposed to abortion rights, a stance not likely to endear him to the large bloc of just as decidedly pro-choice women and men.
Then there are progressive voices that hope former Vice-President Gore will run again. David Corn, an editor at The Nation, for example, recently reversed his earlier opinion that Gore should not run. "Now, I hope Gore re-ups," wrote Corn in August. "The reason? Three words: Stop Joe Lieberman." Corn is reacting not only to Sen. Lieberman’s (D-Connecticut) stated reluctance to run against his former running mate, but also to Gore’s superficially populist, "us-versus them" stance, in increasing contrast in recent months to Lieberman’s staunch pro-business Democratic centrism.
It’s always interesting to watch progressives juggle their support for various candidates based on the latest twists and turns of party politics.
It’s more often than not an exercise in historical amnesia, as concern over past records gives way to the expediency of the moment. What’s notable in Gore’s case actually is even the assumption that he should be considered "progressive," an assertion whose validity seems to be based squarely, and indeed only, on the notion that there is an identifiable worse alternative — George W. Bush. Or Joseph Lieberman.
This is where the amnesia sets in. When the focus shifts to what’s worse — and there is always somebody worse! — the tendency is to forget, or at least look the other way, at the substance of what’s missing from the actual choices before us. This is the addictive logic of "lesser-evil" politics, and as assuredly as the sun sets in the west it rears its familiar reasoning in domestic politics every two or four years now, as it has done for decades.
But unlike the sun or the orbit of the planets, the idea that all progressive hopes begin and end in the Democratic Party is hardly beyond debatable. Our political economy functions now more like a holding company of corporate power, dominated by career politicians, stale rhetoric, and big money, than a healthy, democratic expression of the people’s will. A lot of people would like to see this change and they’re increasingly open to new ideas about how to do it. Indeed, one consequence of Ralph Nader’s impressive 2000 presidential campaign on the Green Party ticket (he garnered some three million votes) has been to wrench open some of what’s been hiding in the box of public doubts about the legitimacy of our two-party system. As Richard Gephardt, the Democratic House minority leader, had to admit, referring to the Nader campaign’s mega-rallies, "Nobody is paying to hear us talk about policy."
The Way We Were, The Way We Are
If there’s a preface to this discussion it has to do with where we were and where we have come. If you step back and consider the social policy of "New Democrats" like Clinton and Gore, it’s apparent that objectively their social policies would have occupied the conservative edge of their own party thirty years ago. That’s how much of a seismic shift rightward has occurred along the fault lines of power in American politics.
In truth, the tenure of the Clinton Administration was defined by erosion of much old New Deal social policy, gutting welfare and other safety net programs, deregulating industries, weakening unions and environmental protections, and generally cozying up to the interests of silver spoon investors and corporate executives, the principal beneficiaries of the era’s market prosperity. The campaign slogan of 1992, "Putting People First," came to mean putting the bond market people first, as Edward S. Herman, Wharton School professor of finance, remarked last year in a Z magazine round-up on the Clinton legacy.
That’s why it’s also somewhat bizarre to hear conservative ideologues like Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter rant on about the "radical liberals" of the Clinton crowd. But it’s telling. What used to be considered conservative is now called liberal and what is now called conservative used to be grounds for being carted off to rightwing loony land. Or, at least, considered not electable on the national scene, as was the GOP majority’s early assessment of Ronald Reagan during his first presidential bids in the 1970s.
Yet the questions remain: Why does the "conservative model" rack up best-sellers and dominate the radio and the cable talk show circuit? Why has political discussion veered so far rightward? Could a progressive vision achieve a similar rise to prominence? If so, could it do so by emulating aspects of this conservative model, such as it is?
Such questions actually beg the reality. The "conservative model" is based mostly on dollars and demagoguery and if it has had wind in its sails, it’s mostly because it supports and reflects the policy needs of powerful corporate sectors of the economy. Accordingly, the welcome mat has been out and the porch light on for the extreme conservative voices, courtesy of the handful of huge media conglomerates that now dominate broadcasting. There’s no great mystery there. Nor is there much to emulate.
But conservative, rightwing politics has also succeeded by default, because of the lack of a strong oppositional leadership. Conservative politics has succeeded because progressive social change is always built from the ground up, from grass-roots organizing and a willingness to take to the streets to affect change, and there hasn’t been enough of that. Frankly, conservative politics has succeeded because of the failure of the Democratic Party, which claims to be the party of the average American, to differentiate itself in any substantive way from the Republican Party, the party traditionally more closely associated with big business. Conservative politics has succeeded because the Democratic leadership is itself now largely only another variant of conservatism.
The Challenge of Our Times
Today, progressive politics is at a crossroads. A year ago terrorism came home in ways Americans of modern memory never before experienced. In the wake of 9/11, the long prosperity of the 1990s has also exploded, tanking in a series of corporate accounting scandals that has left confidence in business reeling. Last September, Congress, with the notable exception of Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), moved lock step to endorse President’s Bush’s declaration of a "War Without End." It gave carte blanche to an assault on Afghanistan that eventually killed thousands of civilians, declaring to the rest of the world, "You’re either with us or against us." Now, the White House desires to use that declaration as license to start a new war — an invasion of Iraq that will surely result in thousands of civilian deaths and a host of unintended consequences.
Yet, as Marc Cooper notes in the L.A. Weekly (Aug. 16-22), the leading Democratic contenders, from Gore to Gephardt to Daschle to Kerry, have spoken out in favor of the basics of the administration’s war plans. "At most," writes Cooper, "they whimper and whine about‘timing’ or‘consensus building’ or congressional‘consultation.’ But at the end of the day, they are all in the tank for Bush — quite literally."
Who will speak now for peace, for a progressive foreign policy based not on militarism and arrogance but real solutions to our own and the world’s needs, solutions that promote democracy, justice, and healing? Who will speak now for protecting our civil liberties? Or for more than cosmetic reform of a deregulated financial system now revealed to be built on much avarice and corruption? Who will speak now for the millions of citizens in cities like Chicago and elsewhere who deserve, but don’t have, a living wage, health benefits, or good schools for their children?
Who will speak now for all our progressive aspirations? The questions echo through our lives and a world whose future seems to hang in the balance. The answers will, as they have in the past, emerge from outside the corridors of established power. Social change that endures always originates and grows from the grass roots, from the cellar floor, challenging existing conventions and status quo wisdom about what is considered "reasonable" or "practical."
Change happens when the ferment and restlessness in the air gets organized. And getting organized has never depended upon White Knights, "lesser-evils," or benevolent elites.
Getting organized depends on us, on every one of us who desires peace, economic justice, and a revitalized democracy finding the strength of our own voice, and learning to speak for ourselves.