Every year when the Conservative Political Action Conference meets I wonder, where is the liberal/progressive equivalent. I vaguely remember DailyKos hosting some type of convention, but it doesn’t seem to be quite on the same level. Certainly there are plenty of people and groups with the resources to have a big annual liberalfest in DC featuring elected officials and media personalities from our side. Is there a way to do this, maybe even the same weekend as CPAC and compete for media attention, or is there already such an event that has completely slipped my mind?
Please share widely!
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p>True dat.
…that WOULD be an interesting exercise – any takers?
Rather than pointing fingers, assigning blame, and excluding folks who fail litmus tests, how about a counter-event with an agreed list of problems that need solving that welcomes problem solvers?
1) Same-sex marriage
2) Repeal DADT
3) LGBT Rights
4) Trans surgery coverage
5) Same-sex adoption rights
6) Anti-bullying laws
7) Employee Non-Discrimination Act (including Trans)
8) Expanding Hate Crime laws to cover LGBT
9) Repealing DOMA
10) Nominal support for old causes like labor, health care, etc
is not required on his planet.
…sounds like ONE point with many of your specifics above being details thereof. Others I would include as stand alone points:
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p>Universal health coverage with controlled costs
Sustainable environment
Right to union organization
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p>I really don’t like your attitude sometimes, you know that?
best to just give him a 3 or a 0 and move on…
Everything you’ve been assuming is wrong. You have been leading the world into an environmental and economic crisis that will result in agonizing suffering unless you realize that I am right and you have been wrong. Please, your pride is not worth more than the future.
with those Loyalty Points. Universal health coverage is impossible with those Loyalty points. Which are you going to choose?
Since you’ve decided to make your argument indirectly, let me help you out. I’ll accept donations.
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p>You believe that advocacy of equal rights for lesbians, gays, and transgendered people will sink other aspects of the progressive agenda, i.e., slowing CO2 emissions, universal health care, the stimulus bill, etc.
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p>What you’re saying would be true if there were, say, a significant number of social conservatives who were economic liberals. There aren’t.
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p>It would be true if muddying liberal commitments tended to make liberal positions more palatable. The Democratic Party has tried that a lot. Think 2004. It fails.
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p>It might also be true if you supplied some freaking justification for your fantasy political analysis.
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p>You didn’t.
Democrats who have been opposed to same-sex marriage have won, in NY-23, and the Presidency in 2008. When they win, it is usually good for environmental issues and economic justice issues and health care issues (not that I agree with how the party deals with those issues). I think there are tons of social conservatives who are economic liberals, especially here in heavily Catholic Massachusetts, like Tom Finneran, Ray Flynn, Steve Lynch, and prior to 2004 lots of state reps. I think a lot of them just voted for Scott Brown.
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p>But my point wasn’t just about politics, it was literally that equal rights for LGBT, and feminism too, is not green, it is not sustainable, it is a terrible priority for anyone to put ahead of the urgent issues facing us in a post-oil future.
was able to lead the way on marriage equality and environmental reform bills in the past few years. I mean, the almost-half-dozen green bills we’ve passed in the last few years, making our state lead the way on addressing climate change, is diddly squat, right?
the only one who is obscuring the situation is you. I just demonstrated to you that democrats who are pro-equality have been pro-environmental and neither issue gets in the way of the other.
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p>Things at the federal level are all fucked up, but that has nothing to do with glbt issues or environmental issues, both of which have received little to no love by congress or the President. Why? Well, 41 Republican Senators don’t help, nor do the Ben Nelsons and Evan Bayhs of the world (good riddens on the latter). The progressive caucus in the House, which is numerically the largest caucus, fights for both the environment and civil rights.
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p>At base, only the mentally deranged and/or completely bigoted think the environment has come at the cost of civil rights, or that the democrats nationally (or locally, for that matter) have been obsessed with teh gay, as your list of ten above attempts (and utterly fails) to demonstrate.
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p>Know what won’t help the environment? Fighting within the party to get less equality, instead of fighting the bigots in the Republican Party who think Cap and Trade is the devil. As my old basketball coach would say after a bad half, “stop thinking so much and play the game.”
Being too terse: On a political level, LGBT rights and feminism are progressive, hence green. On a policy level, they’re orthogonal.
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p>And Steve Lynch is not reliable on economic issues particularly either.
it takes tons of energy to pursue a progressive future. The Amish are green, anti-modernists are green, but techno-progressives aren’t green, even if they are working on alternative energy sources. Progressives reject conservation and downscaling and localizing as impossible or distasteful in favor of technological solutions to keep up our standard of living.
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p>And LGBT and feminism aren’t at all orthogonal to energy consumption, rather, they are made possible by cheap oil, perhaps even inventions of cheap oil. One of the goals of feminism is to get women driving to work, sitting in air-conditioned offices, offshoring all the distasteful labor and importing goods instead of making them. And the energy spent by all the GLAAD and GLAD and HRC lawyers driving to work in their comfy offices, and all the millions of dollars donated to both sides because of LGBT rights, is wasted energy and distracting people from the need to move to sustainable living. And Trans surgery and same-sex family creation is not green. It’s hard to think of any way in which feminism and LGBT rights is green, and hard to take seriously the commitment to preserving our resources of anyone who is afraid to reject them.
nor what the progressive movement fights for.
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p>If you’re going to keep blabbing on, back it up with links. Show me core members of the progressive movement who don’t care about the environment.
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p>False. The goal is to get equal pay for equal work, as well as equal opportunity. How they get to work is neither here nor there — public transportation and more efficient traveling is a different fight, one many feminists would probably love to be engaged in, because it’s one that effects women, too. As for the air conditioning, I don’t think that’s a “goal” of the feminist movement either. Wow, what a clown.
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p>You mean the cubicles? And, let’s get this straight: HRC is not a “progressive movement” organization, it’s a liberal advocacy group. Volunteer/staff hours and donations spent to get equal rights is not “wasted energy.” In most states in this country, it’s still legal to fire someone for being gay. Or to deny a gay person housing. 30,000 people (and counting) have been discharged from the military for being gay.
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p>And in every single state in this country, it’s illegal for the widow/widower of a spouse to get federal survivor’s benefits if that couple was a gay couple. So, for those who think fighting that prejudice is a “waste” — the kind of prejudice which ruins tens of thousands of lives across the country — I label those people bigots.
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p>Neither is heterosexual marriage or learning how to read. Or working, period. I vote we ban all marriage, close all schools (just think of all the carbon emissions we’d save then!) and fire every single worker who’s not building a wind turbine.
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p>You, sir, are so offensive you deserve to be banned.
Just so you have no excuses for not reading it: http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/s…
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p>I seriously, seriously recommend therapy. If you think gay people and women are the ones blocking environmental problems, you have serious issues. Your arguments are not only bigoted, but highly unproductive — you’re fighting the wrong damn people.
I believe in civil rights for all, everyone does. The question is, what should they be? I don’t think they should include a right to marry someone of the same sex, or to free reproductive services for same-sex couples or trans people.
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p>The point of having a loyalty checklist for a PAC is to make sure that people giving to the PAC know their money is going to candidates that believe certain things, emphasis on “certain”. It does no good for the points to be vague, it doesn’t guarantee you won’t be giving your money to someone opposed to gay marriage, like Obama, for example.
Remember the PAC in CPAC stands for Political Action Conference, not Political Action Committee. They probably raise money to fund their events, but I don’t believe CPAC as an entity gives to candidates and parties.
And have for years. The question is: will we keep treating them like dirt?
…though I’d certainly expect that to be a component.
… to address and moderate the class bigotry endemic within Massachusetts Democratic political culture.
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p>To refine the point further: I’m referering specifically to private sector unions and their culturally blue-collar public sector allies. Public sector professional union culture – the MTA in particular – is hardly exempt from class and racial condescension. On the public side that leads to organizational dissonance.
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p>For example, the single most powerful independent political force in the Commonwealth consists of the collective police unions. Given the relationship between the head of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association and the Obama Administration (through the former’s friendship with Biden), the cops are also the best connected folks to Washington – much better connected, by the way, than the Governor.
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p>It’s called coalition-building, and it can’t be done top-down.
…but class bigotry in the DEMOCRATIC PARTY of all places? I’m going to need some evidence, or at least elaboration, on that point. I’m not sure I want any interest to be primary in our coalition.
As a national problem, just look at the 1952 and 1956 Stevenson campaigns; the 1968 McCarthy insurgency, the 1972 McGovern campaign; the public careers of Michael Dukakis and Paul Tsongas; the public face of the 1980 Kennedy insurgency… the full list would overload the site’s server.
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p>The Stevenson and McCarthy examples were also characterized by overt racism, leading in the former case to Adam Clayton Powell endorsing Eisenhower in 1956. In the case of McCarthy, one can discount the special pleading and follow the footnotes in Arthur Schlenger’s history of Robert Kennedy.
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p>Good liberal and social Democratic analyses of this problem were done decades ago by E. J. Dionne and William Grieder, respectively.
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p>Republican campaigns, since Kevin Phillips invented and refined the approach for Nixon in 1968, are characterized, not by conservatism, but (to use Grieder’s term) rancid populism, using Democratic opponents as outreach mechanisms.
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p>All the Brown campaign did was to use the social environment implicit in the Depression level of blue-collar joblessness in Massachusetts to his best advantage, knowing that Coakley, et al, would not admit, much less address, the problem.
“Arthur Schlesinger”
I’m not old enough to remember most of the campaigns you’ve mentioned. I’ve always accepted since the New Deal at least that the Democrats were the party most likely to lookout for the workers and others who do not otherwise have it made. I understand that back in the day there was a racist wing of our party, but we’re (I thought) talking about class bigotry. What I do remember about Dukakis is “good jobs, good wages” which sounds like a pitch to workers and I can’t imagine Ted Kennedy being guilty what you suggest either. What did these candidates do or say, specifically, that leads you to make these charges? Please do put examples right in your response because I’m not likely to read whole books or reports this time.
… at the Massachusetts border in 1980, when Carter took the black vote in the rest of the country, and there’s been no change since. This is consistent with the traditional distrust the black community has for white progressives (however defined). The dynamic, however, plays out politically almost entirely within the Democratic Party.
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p>When your time permits, I would suggest you check black turnout and voting patterns from 1972 on.
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p>There is an ethnocentric variant of culturally conservative economic liberalism that’s developed as a reaction to the white left of the Sixties. (And the cultural conservatism refers to civic values, not the Religious Right. In many ways it’s not different from socioeconomically similar white populations. It just tends to manifest itself by not voting, as opposed to voting Republican.)
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p>Call it populist neo-nationalism.
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p>Historical manifestations include:
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p>The tension between both the campaigns and supporters of Jessie Jackson, and the Dukakis Campaign. Donna Brazile diplomatically alludes to this in her autobiography.
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p>The flip in black public opinion (among black women in particular) during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings after (and because of) the Anita Hill allegations, which rescued Thomas’ appointment.
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p>The role of the Nation of Islam as the conservator of civic values, and the qualified respect (distinct from support) it gets across ideological, gender, and class boundaries. As an aside, the Nation was the only organized religious group involved in the “Boston Miracle” of the 1990’s; the Christian clergy was conspicuous by its absence – photo ops excepted.
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p>The enthusiastic black support given John Silber in 1990.
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p>Bill Clintons community support (because, not in spite of his positions and policies on welfare and capital punishment).
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p>The overwhelming support given to Steve Lynch in the 2001 Special Senate Primary in every majority-black precinct in the Ninth District.
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p>Etc., etc.
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p>Causes include:
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p>Massachusetts’ documented national reputation for racism; for example, the fact that this State was number one for intentional job discrimination throughout the Nineties according to a 2002 Rutgers Law School Study. Based on conversations with black delegates, this point was reinforced by their experiences during the 2004 Convention.
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p>The overt racism of the feminist, gay rights, and environmental movements of the Sixties through Oughts. There was somewhat of a cottage industry in the Seventies, with black leftist writers, in particular bell hooks and Alice Walker, writing cries du coeur on the subject.
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p>The displacement of community-accountable residential politics by foundation-funded “advocacy” groups.
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p>Dianne Wilkerson’s role (as Vice-Chair of the Senate Redistricting Committee) in balkanizing Boston’s black political neighborhoods during the last redistricting, by drawing district lines through those neighborhoods. In the House, the original Finneran version (based on helping incumbents) was actually more equitable than the current district map. Given her access to the Census Voter Tabulation District information and redistricting software, Wilkerson was complicit in both redistricting plans. (Damage at the City Council level was largely limited, thanks to the work of Councillors Yancey and Turner.) Full disclosure: I was following the numbers and tried unsuccessfully to lobby against the Legislative plan.
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p>Here’s where nuance comes in: There is a difference between the racialized class bigotry of Boston and the Left/Right racist convergence typical of Cambridge.
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p>Nuance number two: there is a structural difference, based solely on accountability rather than ideology that determines black voter support for nonblack candidates. The classic example of such support was Mickey Roache during his tenure on the City Council, where the black vote allowed him to consistently top the ticket, despite chronically underfunded campaigns.
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p>The converse was Sam Yoon’s 2009 mayoral race, who lost fifty-three of Boston’s fifty-six majority black precincts (as well as Chinatown, Fields Corner, and the Latino communities) in the preliminary, and whose alliance with Flaherty in the general election created a firewall, allowing the Menino campaign to suspend active black community operations, and concentrate political resources on white Dorchester precincts and West Roxbury.
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p>Nuance number three: there is a great deal of hostility at the community level against the Boston Globe, where racial cluelessness is traditionally but wrongly perceived to be malice aforethought.
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p>To go in greater detail would require a monograph; suffice it to say that racism within the Democratic Party and many of its candidates is taken for granted, within the black grassroots, and has been throughout my adult life.
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p>In fairness, it hard to track the overlap between class and racial bias, against the equal-opportunity arrogance and institutionalized bigotry that permeates the Dermocratic consultancy.
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p>It’s the latter that loses elections.
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p>Sufficient enough for you?
…but it still doesn’t explain the generally 90%+ support among the black population for Democratic candidates, at least at the presidential, and I thought other levels, since the 1960s, especially once the Dixiecrats started to drift toward the GOP. Massachusetts also currently has only the second black Governor, and previously elected the first elected black US Senator (Brooke) who before that was the first black statewide elected official in the country. Methinks thou still protest just a bit too much. I have not seen racism currently in feminist, environmental, and gay rights groups, which would seem counter-productive anyway given that we want them plus the civil rights groups in our coalition. The only relevant thing I can think of there is that many black churches are not big fans of marriage equality. I know Boston exploded over busing back in the 1970s, which was before my time so maybe it’s a question of perspective, but it feels like ancient history to me.
…and it adversely affects your argument.
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p>And remember that in this particular comment I’m just addressing the racial component of conflated cultural, race and class bigotry in activist and campaign cultures.
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p>The black church is insignificant as a proactive force in black politics; its power derives more from outside perception (and the resultant access to outside funding) than from broad-based support.
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p>Simply put, nobody gives a damn about any given preacher except his congregation. In Boston neither the 10-Point Coalition or the Ministerial Alliance are anything more than organizations formed during the early Menino years to supplant the Nation of Islam (correctly recognized by Ray Flynn as the only organization with broad community respect) as the go-to organization for foundation funding and government support.
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p>This myth is not new; Carter G. Woodson (the founder of what became Black History Month) wrote the definative analysis of this in 1932.
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p>…and just for the record the Civil Rights Movement was not church-based. Woodson’s analysis was taken to heart by the early leaders: congregations were organized as a firewall against ministers, who were collectively the major forces supporting the pre-Civil Rights status quo. Martin Luther King, for example was not the leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott; he assumed the role of spokesman after his Board of Deacons gave him the option of doing so or losing his church. King grew into roles of leadership and accountability; ministers as a class did not and do not.
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p>Other “activist” organizations are essentially Astroturf, whose sole effect is to get the Boston Foundation moist about the groin: as a rule of thumb if it’s mentioned in the Globe, it has no constituency. In Boston, such organizations operate as political herbicide and undercut accountable sweat-equity activists, which makes the former useful as political suppression mechanisms and a source of in-house humor.
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p>This is a structural grassroots dynamic, not race or class-specific; but generically hostile to activists in general. Sam Yoon, for example was a punch line in search of a joke in the Mayoral cycle: just using the right inflection while pronouncing his name was enough to crack folks up laughing. I’m still milking “Floon”.
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p>Racism within the Sixties and post-Sixties Left and black responses thereto is pretty widely documented, as was the specific way that racism caused backlashes during the California gay marriage initiative. (To their credit gay activists in California are addressing this issue.)
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p>(As an aside, according to the exit polls, the Maine referendum was lost, not in rural areas, but due to a backlash by suburban women.)
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p>If you want to be in politics, you have to learn to read the case studies and exit polling data.
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p>Racism in the larger progressive movement – and within the funding community – is pretty much taken for granted at the grassroots level, as is the moral cowardice (at best) of many black progressives when it comes to addressing that racism. Insofar as Massachusetts is concerned, I would not consider a decade-long analysis completed in 2002 to be “ancient history”. Parallel dynamics apply in matters of class.
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p>On inter-Party dynamics – and I’ll forego an analysis of Paul Tsongas’ (IMHO racist) 1978 race against Brooke – the issue involves loathing the left, counterposed against fearing the Right; with not voting at all being the default position for all to many at the grassroots, who (accurately) feel abandoned.
It might make sense for you to put together a series of diaries or posts.
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p>I want to hear more — and also what you suggest.
…when you are responding via the comments page rather than in the main thread. I’d also be interested in more, but I really do hope that examples can be provided specificly of who said or did what. It’s fine to link those examples to reports or studies to verify their accuracy, but please don’t tell me to go read the report to find the examples to begin with. To be honest, in the context of a discussion blog, which this is, rather than a research project, I’m just plain too lazy to do that.
Yeah, a lot more work than blog reading usually demands, but these are also central issues for progressives.
…it makes sense to provide links to the full reports to assure readers that you’re quoting in context.
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p>As in Christopher’s case, I’ve been following the links, rather than concentrating on the One Big Post. I’m working on an analysis for private use, but the damn thing is too long to fit into a blog.
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p>(Plus I can’t think of a way to paste turnout spreadsheets, however edited, into the BMG post window)
I just want one or two specifics in the post itself to give an idea, from which you could say for more examples and information see this link.
is in July in Las Vegas. We hope to be there – we’ve submitted an awesome idea for a panel discussion and hope it will be approved.
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p>It’s different in many respects from CPAC, but it’s probably the closest analogue.
…in the context of my motive for writing this diary is equitable media attention. During CPAC weekend much of it was carried live on CPAN. I want Democratic rising stars and liberal media personalities there too. Maybe it will take a few years, but I’d like to see this become THE PLACE for liberals to gather in the way that CPAC is for the right.