It’s Time for Us to Lead – With a Grassroots Working Families Caucus of the Democratic Party!

For me, I’ve lost interest in the debates about whether Obama is a corporatist or not, or whether the DC Democratic Party is a wholly owned or partly owned subsidiary of Goldman Sachs or whether the Beacon Hill Democrats are the slaves of the finance, insurance and real estate industries.  While those debates are important, I agree with many who’ve said it better than I could that they are largely beside the point, because as many are starting to realize, its time for us, the rank and file progressives, to start leading.  For now, I will take it as a given in this post-Citizens-United-election world that if it wasn’t before, our political system now is largely in the hands of the oligarchs, albeit substantially less so in Massachusetts thank god.  I think that the far more pressing question is, so, what do we do about it (and by “we,” I mean progressives and the left?), and more, by precisely what mechanism do we start “leading”?  What’s our “Phase 2”?

Phase 2.0: The Punchline – We Create a Grassroots, Precinct-based Working Families Caucus

So, here’s my idea.  Consistent with my general inability to tell jokes well, I’ll step on the punch line first.  I think what the times call for is a mass membership Working Families Caucus of the Democratic Party that acts, for all intents and purposes, like a Democratic Party within the Democratic Party.  Make no mistake, we’d still all be Democrats, we’d support the party’s nominee after the primary, but we would comprise, in the immortal words of Paul Wellstone and then Howard Dean, the Democratic wing of the Democratic party.  And by Democratic wing, I mean, that wing of the Democrats that brought us the Works Progress Administration, Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act all while fighting and winning a World War, that afterwards rebuilt Europe, the American Middle Class while bringing us Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans Administration, VA loans for housing and education, the Fair Housing Act, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act and on and on.  You know, those Democrats.  Not the Wall Street Democrats, the ones who brought us NAFTA, the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, who don’t have the spine to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, who sold us out on the Public Option, who repealed the Clean Elections Law here in Massachusetts.  Not the Democrats who can’t seem to find their spine to save themselves, who’ve forgotten how to fight and how to play to win.  I’m talking about the Democrats who were ferocious in their defense of the little guy and girl against big corporations, Big Brother, and all the forces of society that see us as a cost to be eliminated or a source of wealth for their bonuses and dividends.  The Working Families Caucus would be all about bringing that Democratic party back, with the added benefit of no longer waiting around for some self-appointed candidate(s) to do it for us.

Phase 2.1: We Need Organization – Getting Out of the Silos and Into The Working Families Caucus

Phase 2.1(a): Getting Serious About Power

Obviously, if you’re serious about progressive change, then you need to get the power to make it, and in order to get power, you need organization, since organizations can get people working together, articulate the progressive vision on the public stage and fight for it there. I’ve been around a while now, worked on lots of issue campaigns and electoral campaigns, and I just don’t see the old models of various single issue organizations or pressure groups working in discrete issue silos to press for change working any more, if they ever did.  Groups are divided, even among those working on the same issue, one set of issue groups work at cross purposes to groups working on a different issue, their agendas are more driven by what the funders will fund than what they really think they should be doing, and they don’t directly contest elections, which means that they’re always approaching those who do wield power – elected officials, corporate executives, public servants, as supplicants.  While such outside groups are essential, they are simply not capable of wielding the power necessary to make the wholesale change we desperately need.  Meanwhile third parties, unless you live in a fusion voting state, simply don’t work.  Period.  No offense to my third party friends, but if you’re serious about getting power, then you simply have to use the existing party structure to get it.  I believe that for progressives, the Democratic Party, not a new party, has been and still can be our home.  Finally, if power is to be successfully contested, in a democracy, power for those who aren’t members of the  Money Party in David Sirota’s formulation, comes from people.  Lots of People.  Oh, and also discipline, hard work, unity, solidarity and accountability.

Phase 2.1(b): The People, Yes!

So how would progressives working in the Democratic Party get people involved?  Well, first, we would go out into our wards and precincts, canvassing likely Democratic voters perhaps, but also canvassing our personal networks, neighborhoods and families, and we would look for people who have been active Democrats who are fed up with the state of things, feel like the country is spinning out of control, the party isn’t listening, and who would be willing to consider an alternative if anyone had one to offer.  Then we sign those people up.  We would ask them to pledge to support the WFC’s priorities and candidates by agreeing to vote for them of course, by participating in our internal process for legislative priorities, and by agreeing to work a couple of hours during election season on a phone bank or canvass for our campaigns. The incentive would be that we are presenting a new type of organization – one that is dedicated to getting the Democratic Party back on the side of the little guy and gal again, that has a plan, and that won’t be sold out.  Organizational members like unions could join too, but if they join, it’s in for a penny, in for a pound.  They’d agree to solidarity as a first principle of membership: they would agree to support the candidates, priorities and other organizational members of the WFC – no one and no issue gets thrown under the bus.  One member organization doesn’t support a candidate that another organization rejects.  Organizations would also agree as a price of membership that they would educate their members about the WFC’s issue campaigns and candidates, and they’ll recruit their members to work in the trenches alongside other WFC members, fully integrating with WFC campaign structures.

Phase 2.1(c): The Program

Why would anyone want to join you ask?  Well, my theory is that if you’re already a progressive activist, you’ll have the comfort of knowing you’re working together with a lot of other like minded people to enact real, comprehensive progressive change, in an organization that provides some assurance that all of your hard work won’t be sold out at the first legislative battle.  If you’re less engaged, but still care about what’s going on in your country, you’ll know that your organization is fighting, actually fighting, for stuff that will bring you tangible improvements – being jerked around by your health insurance company? The WFC will fight for a public option that will give you a chance never to have to deal with an insurance company again.  Can’t find affordable daycare?  The WFC will fight for publicly funded early education for all.  Can’t find an affordable place to live? The WFC will fight for affordable housing and rent control.  Worried about the cost of college? The WFC
will fight to restore the state college/university system to the free or extremely low cost option it used to be.  Concerned about the education you’re kids are getting? The WFC will fight for maximum 18:1 student teacher ratios, good teacher training, health facilities, and paying teachers a salary that recognizes the value of their hard work, dedication and contributions.  Unemployed? The WFC will fight for a jobs program to put people back to work through a new Works Progress Administration. How will all this be funded?  A progressive income tax that raises taxes on the rich while everybody else’s taxes stay the same or go down.  And so on.  In the end, the change for which the WFC advocates would have to be big and fundamental enough that people will see and feel it, or at least be able to envision how success would positively affect them.  And it has to get us closer to the promised land in some way (see below).

Part 2.1(d): Elections

The WFC would recruit, run and support candidates for office, including in primaries where necessary.  The WFC would view primaries as a positive good: they’re good for the party, they’re good for the voters, and they’re even good for the winning candidates.  Then, of course, as a caucus of the Democratic Party, the WFC would support the primary winner against the Republican.  The price of the WFC’s endorsement? Candidates have to pledge to support its  legislative agenda, with an ironclad guarantee that if they fail to do so, or throw WFC members, any of them, under the bus, then the WFC will not endorse or support them the next time around, and the WFC will primary them with someone who supports the WFC agenda.  Again, the WFC would demand absolute solidarity from its endorsees, and insist on absolute accountability.

Phase 2.2: We Would Need a Story and a Vision

Phase 2.2(a): The Whining

I agree with many who’ve said recently that it’s not enough just to be a bunch of progressives trying to do random cool stuff anymore.  We need a coherent story to tell.  Progressives generally don’t have one.  Because we have no story and no vision, we lack a concept of the long game – we can’t tell how this campaign, this legislation, or this candidate fits into a unified whole and moves us closer to some ideal Promised Land.  In addition, without that narrative and vision, it becomes much more difficult to tell whether what we’re doing is authentically progressive or whether we’ve crossed a line.  In addition, it becomes harder to tell when we’re being sold out.  Moreover, without it, we can’t sell the brand and thus can’t grow our political support.  As Etzioni says in the linked piece, a shared narrative links all of us together and easily explains what we’re about and where we’re trying to go.  We should have one.

Phase 2.2(b): The Story and the Promised Land

Many people over the last several years have tried to distill the progressive world view into something as easily articulated as the Republican worldview.  Many have failed.  You’ll note that I have too.  But I do think we have a story to tell, and while I can’t distill it into a “no new taxes!” format either, put as succinctly as I can manage, I think progressives believe, and the Working Families Caucus could argue, that, however halting and episodic it has been, our nation’s history has been all about progress towards a society where everyone who works hard and plays by the rules has the opportunity to succeed.  But the country has been captured by forces whose only interest is in power and wealth – people who want to take us back to the Middle Ages or worse.  Even the Democratic Party has been has been captured by members of the Money Party.  This is why the Democratic Party, once our champion, isn’t fighting for us any more.  We want to bring that party back so we can take our country back.

While what a progressive’s vision of the promised land could be has also brought hours of discussion, I don’t actually think it’s that hard to deduce.  We believe in a society where dignity, equity and opportunity are the central organizing principles, and that we get there by working together.  The point of politics should be to insure that people are free from the tyranny of forces over which they have no control – whether it’s hunger, being born into poverty, disease, bad housing, bad schools, lousy pay, corporate downsizing, and so on.  Government is a necessary, but not sufficient, institution for protecting us from those forces of oppression.  So, the Promised Land is a society where everyone has access to the decent housing, good food, excellent education, good health care, warm clothes, clean water, welcoming (i.e. not overheated) earth, rewarding work at good wages, and so on regardless of how much money the family you were born into happened to have, or the bad luck you happen to encounter in life.  This or something like it could be the vision of the Working Families Caucus, reduced to an elevator pitch of course, which you’ll notice again I’ve failed utterly to articulate.

Part 3: Progressive Victory!!

So.  There’s my two cents.  Progressives organize at the grassroots into a Working Families Caucus of the Democratic Party that contests power in order to implement a coherent progressive program explicitly aimed at protecting the little gal and guy, growing the Middle Class, and creating a world where everybody has the same opportunities in life.  We have nothing to lose but our ineffectiveness!  I’d love to hear what other people think.