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.

1. 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.  

2. 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.

3. 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.  

4. 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.  

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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?

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A few years ago, there was a blackout in New York City, and it was an incredibly docile and cooperative city.  In 1977, there was a blackout in New York City, and there was widespread looting and damage, with over 1000 fires and 1616 damaged stores, and every poor neighborhood in the city suffering looting.  

You don't really get a sense of the structural integrity of a system until it falls under pressure.  In 1977, New York was a lot sicker than it was in 2004, and this became obvious when the lights went out and Lord of the Flies, as opposed to Sesame Street, began.

If the Republicans go down this year, the entire right-wing system will be put under new pressure.  Not a lot of pressure, mind you, but a marginally larger amount of pressure than the wingnuts are used to.  So we have to start asking ourselves how their system will respond.  Will they regroup quickly and counterattack in 2008, or will they fall to backbiting and infighting as they try to distance themselves from Bush, who isn't of course a real conservative.

There's a fair amount of evidence both ways.  Grover Norquist's Wednesday morning group was created to stop Clinton's health care plan in the early 1990s.  Finding their backs against the wall, the right-wing began to collaborate and innovate, taking Congress just two years later.  And yet, the opposite happened for the Democrats in 1994, where a crushing defeat saw an eight year period where Democrats ate more of their seed corn every year.

Which will happen?  Who knows?  We haven't seen them respond to pressure yet, and we won't know until the pressure is applied.  But it's still worth thinking through, and also sort of fun.

Sesame Street on the Right

Ok, so first let's put out the evidence for the Sesame Street response, where the right suddenly finds common purpose again and begins to realize why they were put on the earth in the first place, to hate liberals and gays.  

1) A New Blame Game: If the Repubicans lose the House, they will no longer have sole governing responsibility, and so they will be able to credibly claim that mistakes are not their sole fault.  Recession?  It's the liberals.  War losses?  It's the liberals.  Gridlock?  See, that's what happens if you elect Charlie Rangel-types as Committee Chairs.  

2) 2008: It's amazing how a Presidential election can refocus a party and wipe the slate clean.  The Republicans are going to want to forget about Bush, and all candidates are going to distance themselves aggressively from Bush, allowing new Congressional candidates to point out that they are genuine conservatives and not Bushniks since they are following new standard-bearer McCain/Romney/Huckabee.

3) Lots of competitive seats: Democrats will have picked up a lot of new seats, which means they will have a lot of seats to defend.  The field will be open, and Republicans will have candidates without voting records that match up to Bush 97% of the time.

4) Lots of money:  The right-wing money machine - Cato, Heritage, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, developers, etc - that's not going away, though K-Street will be somewhat crippled and the loss of Congress will hurt.

5) New hunger:  The right-wing, like any successful political movement, operates through the passionate embrace of its principles by its grassroots.  This is withering on the vine right now because Bush is so dispiriting a leader, but it's possible that having someone to fight against could spark new passion among right-wing grassroots leaders desperate to hold to some sort of power.

6) Formidable church/database infrastructure:  The basis of wingnuttia is the megachurch, which is a pagan temple dedicated to the worship of power, along with daycare, ice cream parlors, knitting clubs, and sexaholics anonymous.  These aren't going away, and they form the base of the Republican party.  In addition, the Republicans have a trained cadre of effective pollsters, operatives, field people, media buyers, and data experts who are competent and learn from their mistakes.  While this advantage is somewhat blunted in an election where targeting past behavior doesn't always work, they will learn more than we will this cycle, and they will take that going forward.

7) K-Street Finds Its Sea Legs:  With fewer relationships to the party in power than it had since maybe the 1930s, the business lobby could become desperate to see the right retake power.  I'm not sure what form this would take, but there is a lot of money in corporate America, and some well-placed threats from credible Republicans could keep K-Street part and parcel of the Republican Party.  If Democrats are really smart and effective, they will enact serious lobbying reform to change the rules of engagement so that the business lobby no longer has to play the partisan game.  Democrats probably can't get that done.

8) Rightwing Media/Netroots:  Will the right be able to turn its netroots into something formidable?  I don't think so, but it's not unreasonable to suspect otherwise.  The right-wing media has functioned effectively in opposition to Clinton - can it work effectively against a Democratically led Congress?

I'm sure I'm missing some advantages the Republicans will have.  My sense is that the biggest danger for progressives is that all the nice new Congresscritters will immediately have to start raising reelection money, and we won't be able to supply it.  That means turning to K-Street, which will then turn the party towards conservatives once again, who will then turn over the country to wingnuts in 2008.

This is all highly, highly speculative.  But it's fun, isn't it?

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