Continuing from my prior post and Fenway’s excellent thread , I believe that it is important for the future of our movement and our party to focus on how we consolidate the great gains made by the two recent presidential elections into a longer and more sustainable progressive majority that achieves the progressive policy goals that have continued to elude us in spite of those triumphs. One way to do this is to define our tent in a way that allows it to be large enough to attract a majority of voters (55-60%) while also keeping core principles intact.
This metaphor is called the three legged stool. It first derived from Anglicanism-which strove to keep Catholics and Reformers united in a single state church that was flexible on doctrine but united in faith. It’s stool consisted of tradition (the Catholic heritage), scripture (the Reformed heritage) and reason (flexibility for a broad church) The conservatives adopted this for their movement, starting with Buckley and culminating in Reagan. This stool, also known as fusionism, brought disparate and once feuding groups within the movement united behind the common principles of social conservativism, economic libertarianism, and national security. Similarly, liberals should adopt a similar set of principles that will appeal to a broad electorate (in this regional map).
1) Social and Civil Libertarianism
Much as social conservatism kept the old right, neocons, and hawks happy-social and civil libertarianism can keep the wings of our party together. Even centrist Democrats like Grimes and Nunn are running in favor of marriage equality and choice-even in red states. There is growing consensus on those two social issues in particular-that we will protect a women’s right to choose and defend full marriage equality for all Americans.
Additionally, there is an area of convergence on civil liberties issues between the left and libertarians. We want to reverse the Bush administrations drastic curtailing of civil liberties, particularly in passing the Patriot Act and the extra judicial actions in Gitmo and with drone strikes. Curtailing and even shrinking the power of the security state is essential to regaining the trust of a war weary public and bringing our party together on this issue. We should also support an end to the drug war and full support for state based experiments in medical marijuana, decriminalization, and even legalization. Large majorities of Americans favor this approach and want the government to stay away from their bodies, out of their bedrooms, out of their inboxes and phone records too, and to give them and our potential enemies full due process of law. This are issues that most Democrats already agree on, and large majorities of Americans agree on-including swing voters and independents. Time to put these commitments in the platform.
Soundbite version: Government off your back, free to be you
2)Economic Fairness
While most Americans want Big Government out of their bedroom and away from their bodies, they also trust government to help level the playing field and make things fairer for the average hard working person. Liz Warren’s rhetorical shifts against big banks and for the middle class, ending predatory lending and credit report checks, expanding social security, are great starting points. But we need to do more.
-Raising the minimum wage
-Public option medicare buy in
-Universal pre-k and universal college
-Return to fair trade and ensuring foreign goods are safe and fairly made
-Environmental protection as a family value (your tap water should be safe)
-Pro-labor and making it easier to organize, national party visibly standing with striking workers, fast food workers, and political labor movements
-Prosecuting bad guys in banks, rich folk getting same justice as regular folk
Soundbite version: Government in your corner, fighting for you
3) Political Reform
People are worried that our very system and our institutions are broken. Time to fix them. Even when we may face electoral consequences. Basic reforms.
-Public finance of campaigns, setting legal limits to corporate contributions and individual contributions, repealing Citizens
-Federalized non partisan redistricting-will hurt us in IL and CA but lead to net gain and help with independents overall-stop gaming the system
-Expand house size-easy reform to give urban areas their voice back
-Big money out of politics-even if it “hurts” labor
-Universal right to vote-we always stand for voting rights-always
There may be some I am leaving out here, but having the progressive movement stand for political reforms that make it easier for citizens to participate, easier to vote, and that ensure the system is fair for everyone is the way to go. Even in situations where it may temporarily hurt the party.Embrace the reform mantle.
Soundbite version: Reforming the system so it works for you
This should be an open thread and conversation. Happy to improve these ideas and flesh them out, rename where feasible, get better soundbites, and craft better policy proposals. But this is about reclaiming a political language and asserting it for ourselves. Time to get it done.
…but could probably tolerate for the sake of coalition building.
Just wondering which and if you’d think they’d hurt the coalition?
…were marijuana legalization and drone strikes.
I don’t favor legalization of marijuana, but am open to liberalizing federal laws to allow state experimentation with decriminalization. I do also favor re-examining the war on drugs. Addicts need treatment rather than punishment, but I still want to throw the book at the pushers and the cartels.
Drone strike policy needs to be debated in the open and the consequences examined, but in a war zone I am generally OK with their usage, in fact prefer it over less discriminating ways of targeting.
Finally, I think the information sharing aspects of the Patriot Act among agencies is fine, but we need to remember what the Constitution says about searches and fully apply the restrictions to modern electronic communications.
I get that I’m probably in the minority among liberals on these points so it won’t hurt the coalition, but they may be soft targets for opposition attacks.
The vaunted left-libertarian alliance never came to fruition for two key reasons. The first is Obamacare, and it’s likely a public option or single payer reform would exacerbate that divide. It’s an ideological bridge we cannot cross. The second is the fact that Obama won a lot of libertarian votes and endorsements coming into 2008 that he failed to get in 2012, partly because he has continued the GWOT civil liberty abuses of his predecessor and the surgical strikes have continued. Ron Paul and Gary Johnson won over youth voters I knew personally that were Obama voters in 2008 on those issues, and the issue of drug reform.
I think it’s a great way for us to, if you look at the regional map, become competitive in the Southwest, Mountain states, and some of the plains states while consolidating control in the Left Coast. Making it a states rights issue frees up a ton of federal money to be spent on addiction treatment and prevention while gradually seeing if legalization is a viable alternative. It can also peel off independents and soft libertarians while also keeping the youth vote higher.
I think a lot of people are becoming disengaged with politics and policy and these stools can help create a coalition that keeps the left and progressives united while also peeling off voters where we an get them. Social and civil libertarianism can keep the younger soft libertarians, Rockefeller Republicans, and Silicon Valley Democrats in the fold while Fairness is the more traditional Democratic approach and Reform embodies a forward and future leaning focus on societal and political progress.
A more alliterative way to frame this is Freedom, Fairness, Forward.
Freedom means freedom for everybody, broad social and civil libertarianism.
Fairness-we want to protect the middle class and reward work more fairly.
Forward-we will protect the right to vote, we will have immigration reform, we will have a political system free of big money that is more democratic and competitive, and we will also reform our institutions like big banks to make sure they play by the rules (ties into fairness as well).
I’d like to see the second item in “Political Reform” be “Cumulative Voting for the House”.
Each resident of a state should get as many votes as seats in the House for that state. Each voter then allocates his or her votes among the candidates as that voter chooses. A voter who REALLY wants a particular candidate to be elected can devote all of his or her votes for that candidate. Eliminate “Congressional Districts” (and gerrymandering) altogether. This system makes it possible for VOTERS do decide the “slate” they support.
Regarding public financing, I don’t know how we go about “repealing” Citizens United without introducing a passel of unintended consequences. I don’t agree with the decision, at all, and I also view it as a somewhat logical consequence of problems that were actually introduced to our legal system 150 years ago by the 14th amendment. Whether correct or not, the problem is corporate “personhood”, and that has been around for MUCH longer than CU. I see no easy fix.
“Public financing” has been proposed for as long as I can remember, going all the way back to the 1970s. I have not yet seen any sort of workable proposal.
“Free” (as in beer) speech
I suggest that the major expense of modern campaigning is mass media — perhaps we might consider something draconian such as insisting that ALL political speech be free, as in beer. Make it illegal to charge anybody anything for “political” speech — make it so that “advertising” must be for a product, service, or brand. No politics, no “issues”. When I say “no”, in this context, I don’t mean to prohibit them, I mean to prohibit media from charging or receiving MONEY for them.
The first consequence might that we see a LOT less political speech on broadcast media — that’s a good thing. After about 15 minutes, a lawsuit would be filed challenging the very existence of Fox news. That’s another good thing. I suspect virtually all political exchange would shift to the web — that’s a third good thing. Just a thought.
Cumulative voting was once used in Illinois legislative races but was eliminated when the constitution switched to single member districts. It might make sense to bring it back. I think expanding the House size is an easier reform since it would not require a constitutional change.
Also to David-thanks for putting the rest if the post under “there’s more”-how do I do that on my own to save you the trouble next time?
When creating a post, you can use the Visual editor or the Text editor. In the Visual editor, the third icon from the right on the top row says “Insert More Tag”, in the Text editor the third button from the right says “more”. Position your cursor where you want the break to occur, then click the appropriate button.
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…from the BMG hive mind! 😉
Great post jconway! I don’t have much to add, except for a strategy: we need to turn Texas blue and regain as many state legislatures as we can by 2020. That will allow us to regain control over the house and keep the presidency out of GOP hands for the next 50 years, which is how long it will take to fix most of the mess they’ve made.
The problem with Fox has never been their paid advertising. It has been the slant they give the news, which given that they are cable rather than public airwaves, they have every right to do under the first amendment.
I’m thinking along the lines of not being allowed to collect advertising revenue from broadcasts that are deemed “political”. If they were unable to sell advertising spots on such programs, I think the programs would disappear.
Note that I in no way suggest that such broadcasts be restricted. Instead, I think the regulation could say that the broadcaster simply cannot collect (or keep) revenue from them.
It may be half-baked, I’m just offering it for discussion.
Senators represent us statewide, but I think the House should allow for localized nuances, though that’s obviously moot in states that only have one representative. I’m afraid the large cities will end up supplying the bulk of the delegation and while they will have to rely on votes from all over their minds will naturally trend toward where they are most familiar. In MA that could easily mean an entire delegation from inside 128 and the Berkshires left to feel like nobody in DC really knows them. We should, however, come up with some rules to prohibit the more obnoxious abuses of gerrymandering, like keeping divided communities to an absolute minimum.
Voters who live in outlying areas can use their multiple votes to put local representatives into congress. Candidates who wanted to sweep the state would have more, rather than less, incentive to campaign in western MA. The resulting exposure would almost surely help local candidates more than hurt them.
Massachusetts currently has nine congressional districts. That means each voter would have nine votes. My intuition (all of us are operating from intuition here) is that we’d actually see MORE representatives from outlying areas. At a 9-1 ratio, I think we’d see three or four representatives elected from what is now CD1 and CD2, and I think the remaining seats would reflect actual rather than gerrymandered constituencies (map follows).
Geographic districts have some advantages. I could easily see Western Mass. or the Cape being completely without representation in that kind of system, and the pattern likely would repeat in other states, as population centers flood the voting for candidates of their preference and drown out other areas. There’d be a Baker v. Carr issue at some point. I don’t agree it would lead to more represenation in sparsely-populated areas. Those areas have fewer people to vote, and politicians from them often don’t penetrate the consciousness of people living in big media markets.
Agree that public financing has proven difficult to implement. Big money out of politics, even if “hurts” labor, sound great, but you have to pass a bill. The concern always has been an incomplete formulation that kills labor’s role in funding campaigns but is circumvented easily by the wealthiest individuals.
Jconway: great piece. I notably see nothing at all about guns. There would be an obvious tension with some of the libertarian crowd on that. Are you suggesting a full retreat on the issue to hold this coaltion together?
This may be semantics, but I’d put the economic justice plank first. That strikes me as the heart of the party’s future. And I think there will be a growing appreciation of how necessary it is, as precarity becomes the norm.
Although I think there’s room to appeal to “social libertarians,” (marriage, reproductive issues, drug war), I also have a hard time imagining anyone whose libertarianism goes beyond that buying into a party that stresses economic interventionalism. So many “libertarians” live in a fantasy world, thinking “economic liberty” in a largely unregulated capitalism would apply beyond those with the most capital. We tried that model. It was called the 1880s, and I’m in no hurry to go back.
I didn’t discuss foreign policy or specific issue sets since I think they can fall under those rubrics. Also my ordering of them didn’t necessarily reflect a prioritization but rather the order they came into my head when I posted.
So if we broadly say “Freedom” and define that as social and civil libertarianism we can also suggest they are limits. I mainly meant it as a staunch defense of the right to privacy from religious fundamentalists and security hawks. That encompasses choice, marriage equality, and rolling back the post-9/11 machine. It would not extend to guns or economics. Economics exist within a community and are not individual issues. And I would argue guns fall outside the purviews of Mills harm principle (maximize personal liberty so long as it does not harm anyone else).
And for sure “Fairness” should be at the center of the agenda. The legs appeal to different blocs of voters but converge as a call for defending personal freedom, a fair market, and clean government.
Personal freedom keeps the rainbow coalition of feminists, minorities, and social activists with some libertarians as well-the fairness is the bread and butter of working families-and the clean government appeals to Naderites, Perotists, McCain 2000 backers, and centrists and technocrats as well as the occupy crowd. These are the areas where our philosophy can converge and intersect and they shouldn’t be considered separately from one another. I know I flow between all three impulses.
🙂
I’ll spare you the sketch but an umbrella-legged stool looks pretty funny..
I realized that came across as even more implausible than a lock box.
My wider point is that a libertarian distrust of big institutions can be harnessed alongside populist anger at big business and paradoxically in favor of a stronger government to have ‘these guys watch those guys’. Regulating big banks is one area where we have a clear convergence of the legs of the stool (I’m putting the umbrella back in it’s stand and pretending it didn’t happen).
A fairly decent TNR article about that convergence today
a stool with converging legs. My engineering staff says it won’t hold up. Metaphors are hard.
…is quite good, I agree — was wondering when someone was going to mention it in one of these big picture liberalism threads. Anyway, highly rec folks read it, it definitely got me thinking.
Oh and fenway, this cracked me up bc it’s spot on and I don’t want to go back there either!
That would really send shockwaves. I’ve also been reading a lot of Thomas Frank, and I think he has a better sense of this dichotomy as well. But so many working people end up blaming the coastal elites for their troubles they forget to look in their backyards and see who is poisoning the water and who really runs their own state. The other telling quote from that article
BOOM. And that is why I would prefer a Warren or Schweitzer or Sherrod Brown make this case. I just don’t see how Clinton can escape the candidate of Wall Street label without a drastic reinvention, though I am willing to support her if she tries. It’s less about candidates than about harnessing the energy and ideas behind the good about the last 8 years-the crazy misfits that got together to elect and re-elect Obama, the Occupy movement, big labor finally attaining class consciousness and reaching out beyond the trades, Warren and de Blasio and Walsh getting elected-and moving towards a sustained period of true progress beyond the anemia and inertia of the present.
While I certainly share your desire to rid ourselves of ‘gerrymandering’, I think this would eliminate it in name only: I think this would lead to ‘de facto’ districts that are gerrymandered, more or less, on the fly and not by elected representatives but by people like Karl Rove and James Carville doing so at the behest of big money. Take any name from any House election anytime in the last decade along the length and breadth of the CommonWealth… and think about what it would mean if they had to campaign across the entire CommonWealth?
Also, that would require statewide elections every two years (which is different from district elections across the state every two years). That might not be wholly a bad thing, but what happens when, for example a Senator leaves, or dies in office, and Representative gets his/her step? That’s a whole other statewide election.
And what do House members then do about ‘constituent service’ ? Will it have to be cartographically determined? Well, then that’s a district, innit? What happens when this Rep-at-large gets a call from somebody in someplace where he/she did not, in the least, campaign or even so much as garner one vote. I’d be alright with tossing the whole concept of ‘constituent service’ out the window as I don’t necessarily think that’s a healthy part of a functioning republic and, as I’ve oft repeated, we’re not a direct democracy… but somehow I get the idea that a House Rep who is empowered to ignore constituents is not going to go over big… so what does this hybrid Representative/Senator do about constituent services?
I think, also, you invite big names statewide. if you take our most recent Senate race (and, yes, I know we’re talking abut the House, stay with me for a second…) as an example of attraction, under the rules you’ve proposed, instead of Markey defeating Gomez we’d end up with Ed Markey, Gabriel Gomez, Steve Lynch, Martha Coakley and maybe even Ben Affleck… all going to Washington. Or, put another way, had the rules you propose been adopted a decade ago, would we see any representation from Western Mass or would we have sent Nikki Tsongas and Jim Ogonowski and Jon Golnik. And sent both Barney Frank and Sean Bielat… Or any of a number of higher profile (read big city centric) races that might have eclipsed coverage and exposure in the western part of the ComonWealth? Now the counter to this might be that well, people in the western part of the CommonWealth would welcome Jim Ogonowski or Sean Bielat or whomever and would vote happly for them. Very well then, as far as that goes, what does Sean Bielat or Jim Ogonowski or any other big city pol know about the western part of the CommonWealth? Such a voter might feel a smug satisfaction at a chance to cancel out Barney Franks vote but Barney (or his replacement now) would still know how to address the problems of a big city and a denser population and nobody would be addressing the problems of the western part of the state… .so it’s really not Barney’s vote that they cancel….
And, finally, and to my mind, most important, I think this would have the effect of diluting the citizens vote by sending a passel of ten people from the CommonWealth, one or two of whom might have a majority, statewide… and the rest, not. That’s the ineluctable math: for example, if you have one hundred people, each with 10 votes apiece could end up with it apportioned fairly and you might get ten Reps each with a 100 votes apiece… but I doubt, very much, that outcome will be common. It’ll be more likely that we’ll send ten reps, one of whom has 900 votes and one of whom has 50 and the remainder 5 or 6 votes apiece. I think, then, the representation becomes skewed and the Rep with 900 votes will have an advantage over and a cudgel against the Reps without. This is probably an exaggerated example but not that exaggerated.
…we also need tax reform.
Make the income brackets more progressive, tax capital gains, inheritances, and investments at the same rates as wages and salaries. Close corporate loopholes and incentivize domestic job creation.
The legs should be viewed as guidelines, lots of policies can fit under them.
Amen.
I would work with almost anyone in American politics — except for someone fundamentally dishonest, like Huckabee — to rein in the NSA and the rest of the surveillance state.
leg, I would add that we need candidates to offer a plan to rescue and restore the middle class. There is a need for systematic programs to create jobs, particularly for hard-to-place groups like people over 50 and the long-term unemployed. This is still the Democrats’ turf, but no one is really out there exploiting it.
Under the political reform leg, we need candidates who offer a true populist approach, which involves listening to, and responding to people and groups that don’t have the usual political and financial connections on Beacon Hill and Capitol Hill. Even James Michael Curley understood the importance of that.
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