Eight Rules for Building a Progressive America
by Matt Stoller, Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 03:03:57 PM EST
When I think about creating a progressive America, there are several overlapping and occasionally contradictory goals. Chris put out his ruls for progressive realpolitick, so here are my, well I don't want to call them rules exactly, but guidelines on how to build out a progressive and sustainable governing state over the long-term. In thinking through these guidelines, there are a couple of basic realities of our environment we have to work with. One, we have to figure out a way to advance progressive policies when Republicans are in charge, because we will not always be in control of Congress and the Presidency. Our inability to do this during Bush's Presidency has been a disaster. Two, we have to think about long-term structural changes to make it easier for elected officials to enact progressive policies and harder for them to enact reactionary ones. Three, we have to reconnect government to the public in a fundamental way, so that citizens feel a sense of civic ownership.
Here are eight rules on what we should be trying to do, as progressives.
- Put Democrats in office: This is a basic threshold for relevance, as we must be able to win elections through one of the major parties in order to have any capacity to wield political power.
- Put progressives in charge of the Democratic party at all levels: In order to prevent corruption of the Democratic Party structures, we must ensure that progressives are in charge of the party at all levels. This means that our progressive political elites must be connected to grassroots progressives so that we don't lose touch with the ultimate source of legitimacy, the public.
- Increase the number of progressive voters through organizing and ideological education: We need more voters who are progressive. This can be achieved through one of two basic organizing strategies. One, we can convince existing voters to become progressive. An example of how this can be done is union drives (like Working America) to persuade working class voters to vote based on economic interests. Two, we can create new progressive voters. There are three large pools of new potential progressive voters: single women, hispanics, and youth. Registering and educating these voters is critical to a long-term progressive movement.
- Change the intellectual landscape of public discourse and policy-making to make it more favorable for progressive ideas: Introductory economics is a really good example of how the right has indoctrinated millions of influential college graduates with totally myopic misreadings of Adam Smith, the magic of free markets, and the role of the public sphere. A robust set of intellectual institutions that advocate for progressive economics, politics, health, and philosophy is a long-term gap we must fill. One strategy to make this happen is to endow lots of new think tanks. Another strategy is to create incentives for current progressive academics to engage in the public sphere.
- Govern efficiently and effectively: Progressives are asking the public to trust us with their money and faith, and we must govern efficiently and effectively to deserve and sustain that trust. Right-wingers don't need to govern efficiently, because their argument is that government doesn't work. We must make government work. Bill Clinton's technocratic excellence is a good model to follow in this regard, though of course he had flaws.
- Govern with an eye towards ensuring that progressive institutional structures grow and prosper: When Clinton left office, so did peace and prosperity. When Bush leaves office, he will leave behind massive debts and a fiscal imbalance that we will have to fix before we can do anything else. That's thinking ahead, reactionary-style. As progressives, we have to start building large scale public progressive institutional structures that have wide popular appeal and embedded progressive principles. The internet is the best example possible, but there are others we have to consider, like decentralized energy grids upon which innovation can flourish. We must also work on a smaller level towards bringing transparency into government at all levels, so that reactionary corrupt forces cannot operate in secret when they do inevitably win elections.
- Build up non-government progressive institutions: It's essential that we work to rebuild labor. With labor at 20% of the population, this is a progressive country. At 13%, it's 50/50. At 7%, it's Red America. The funding, memory, and institutional competence of labor is substantial and necessary for even the most cursory progressive victories. We must also build up other institutions of progressive power, like the netroots and universities, as well as further encouraging them to engage in politics, civic life, and governance. Corporations that flourish in a progressive economy, like Google, Yahoo, and alternative energy industries, need to step up and begin funding progressive ideas and media.
- Cripple the funding and media streams of reactionary forces that corrupt our democracy: This is the hardest one, by far. Right-wing corporate power is willing to dump billions into politics and lobbying every year, without even flinching. Right now United Steelworkers are striking against Goodyear Tires, and are going without basic needs, while CEO Robert Keegan can just borrow $1B from the capital markets to make it through the strike and pay himself a bonus. That's not sustainable for progressives. Major streams of media and money in this country - from broadcasters to telecom to oil to pharma - have a vested interest in building in more government-guaranteed revenue (free market ha!) for their industries, a percentage of which they can and will dedicate to crushing progressive policies and structures. We have to get very serious about working to undermine reactionary forces like the Keegan's and the Chamber of Commerce's of the world.
What do you think? What am I missing?
Tags: progressive movement, netroots, conservative movement, post-2006 (all tags)
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