For me, I’m no longer interested 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. Those debates in my view are largely beside the point, for reasons I’ll talk about in a second. 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 less so in Massachusetts thank god. In my mind, the question is, so, what do we do about it (and by “we,” I mean progressives and the left)? What’s our “Phase 2”?
Phase 2.0: The Punchline – We Create a Grassroots, Precinct-based Working Families Caucus
Here’s my idea. Consistent with my general inability to tell jokes well, I’ll start with the punch line and then talk about why I think this strategy makes sense – we start a mass membership Working Families Caucus of the Democratic Party that acts, for all intents and purposes, like a party within the 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, the wing of the Democrats that brought us the Works Progress Administration, and Social Security, and the National Labor Relations Act all while fighting and winning a World War, who rebuilt Europe, and brought us Medicare, and Social Security, and the Veterans Administration, and VA loans for housing and education, and the Fair Housing Act, and the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act. 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the Patriot Act, who don’t have the spine to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, who sold us out on the Public Option, who repealed the Clean Elections Law here in Massachusetts.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 the corporations, Big Brother, and all the forces of society that see us as a cost to be eliminated or a consumer or sucker they can rip off to funnel them some more cash for their bonuses and capital gain. It’s time we brought that Democratic party back, don’t you think? And stop waiting around for someone else to do it for us?
So when I say whether or not Obama or the Wall Street Democrats are the devil is beside the point, this is what I mean. I’m tired of lurching from campaign to campaign, getting excited and working my keister off for this or that candidate, only to see them disappear into the soup of Beltway or Beacon Hill politics. I’d like to be part of something that, for once, sets the terms of debate, and sets its own agenda. And the only way that happens is if the people are in the driver’s seat. So, what might this look like in practice?
Phase 2.1: We Need a Story and a Vision – the Working Families Caucus Could Provide It
Phase 2.1(a): The Whining
First, we need a story to tell. Progressives generally don’t have one. As Amitai Etzioni says in the linked piece, we need a shared narrative that links all of us together and easily explains what we’re about. The elements include a narrative about a former state of grace, the subsequent fall from grace, what we have to do to regain our state of grace, and a vision of the promised land.
In the old days, back before Communism and Socialism had been thoroughly discredited by the perversions of the Soviets and Communist Chinese and sundry other vile dictatorships, if someone walked up to a Communist and asked “what’s your utopia?” they could easily reel off: “a society where the workers own the means of production and everyone contributed to the best of their ability and received what they needed to survive.” Walk up to a Republican today, and in answer to the same question, they’ll reel off: “a world without taxes, where government stays out of the way of free enterprise, which can be left to create the greatest good for the greatest amount of people.” Walk up to a progressive, and they’ll say: “better schools! Protect social security! Public option! Stop global warming!” – all admirable, but not a vision of the promised land. That’s got to change, because without a vision, we can’t sell the brand. If we can’t sell the brand, we can’t grow our political support. And most importantly, if we have no vision, we can’t tell how what we’re doing gets us closer – how does this campaign, this legislation, this candidate move the ball down the field – and we can’t tell when we’re being sold out.
Because we lack vision and a story, we lack a concept of the long game. There is no analysis of how this particular reform, this campaign, gets us closer to the promised land because we don’t know what the promised land is. So we lurch from issue campaign to issue campaign, candidate to candidate (for example, dare I say it, Obama), with no real sense of how our actions, or the campaigns, or the candidates, move the ball down the field, if at all. As a consequence we’re always reacting, never driving. Marxist: “let’s have a revolution!” Republican: “let’s have a Tea Party, cut all the taxes, shoot the gays!” Progressive: “Nader! Fight Bush! Obama! Obama sold us out! Nader!” I say enough! I want to stop reacting, fighting for the evil of two lessers, flitting from campaign to campaign, only to watch the ones we help elect sell us down the river. It’s time for us to start setting our own agenda! We should call the shots! We should know why we’re calling the shots we’re calling!
Phase 2.1(b): The Story
I think the Working Families Caucus’s story could be that, however halting and episodic, our nation used to be all about progress, and opportunity, hard work, shared sacrifice and responsibility. But now it’s been captured by forces whose only interest is in power and wealth who want to take us back to before the Revolution. Even the Democratic Party has been has been captured by members of the Money Party in David Sirota’s formulation, including by the Wall Street Democrats and all their friends. 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.
Phase 2.1(c): The Promised Land
We have to be able to say what would happen if we, in fact, took our party and country back – as Etzioni says, we need a vision of the Promised Land.
While what a progressive’s vision of the promised land could and has brought hours of discussion, I don’t actually think it’s that hard to deduce. We believe in dignity, equity and opportunity grown and protected by all of us working together through families, community and government. the inherent worth and dignity of every human, that the worth and dignity of every human should have every opportunity for full expression, and that people should be protected from the cruelties of fate, chance and intentional oppression so that they can exercise their free will to pursue their opportunities for expression. Translated into politics, that means that we believe in a world where people are free from the tyranny of forces over which they have no c
ontrol – hunger, being born into poverty, ill health, crappy or overpriced housing, bad schools, work that pays poverty wages, corporate downsizing, corporate greed, and so on. For us, we believe that government is a necessary, but not sufficient, institution for protecting us from the forces of oppression, be those forces greedy corporations or floods or cancer. Government is all about those people in the Midwest who get together to fill sandbags to hold back the flood. 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 or at least well paying work, regardless of how much money their parents happened to have, or the bad luck they happen to encounter in life. Poverty becomes irrelevant, work, not wealth, is rewarded, everyone lives in a warm house, goes to a good school, goes to college, breathes clean air at the appropriate temperature, works in a job that pays well, and can have the time, and the money, and the health to pursue their dreams while being assured that their kids will have the same or better opportunities than they did. Government, and community, and self-help, is all a part of that. 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 I’ve failed utterly to do.
Phase 2.2: We Need Organization – The Working Families Caucus Could Provide That Too!
Phase 2.2(a): Power
We need an organization that can articulate the progressive vision on the public stage and fight for it. Third parties at this point, unless you live in a fusion voting state, http://www.workingfamiliespart… don’t work. Period. If you’re serious about power, then you have to pursue it through the existing party structure. So that organization has to be, and should be, situated within the Democratic Party. But, it has to be more than just a like minded bunch of party or other activists who end up talking mostly to eachother. It has to be an organization that takes power seriously, that understands that to make change, you have to have power, that power has to be contested and fought for, and that power in a democracy, for people who aren’t members of the Money Party anyway, comes from numbers. Getting power takes discipline, hard work, unity, solidarity and accountability.
Phase 2.2(b): The People, Yes
So what would this look like? Well, first, we would go out into our wards and precincts and we would sign up members, targeting likely voters first perhaps. The price of membership would be a pledge to support the WFC’s priorities and candidates by agreeing to vote for them first, and by agreeing to work a couple of hours during election season on a phone bank or canvass for our campaigns. Organizational members can join too, but if they join, it’s in for a penny, in for a pound. They agree to support all of the candidates, priorities and other organizational members of the WFC – no one and no issue gets thrown under the bus. Solidarity is key. They also agree that they will educate their members, they’ll support 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 2.2(c): The Program
Why would anyone want to join? Because doing so will give you the assurance that if you’re into making progressive change, you’ll know you’re working together with a lot of other people, all pulling in the same direction, 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 for health care or single payer to give you the chance to remove health insurance companies from the picture. Can’t find affordable daycare? The WFC will fight for publicly funded early education for all. Can’t find a place to live that you can afford? The WFC will fight for affordable housing and rent control. Worried about the cost of higher education? 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 see and feel how success would affect them in a positive way. And it has to get us closer to the promised land in some way.
Part 2.2(d): Elections
The WFC will 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. The WFC would demand absolute solidarity from its endorsees, and insist on absolute accountability.
Part 3: Progressive Victory!!
So. There’s my two cents. We have nothing to lose but our ineffectiveness! I’d love to hear what other people think.
