A Message for Disgruntled Progressives
For the past few weeks, I have been blogging about the significant progressive change that President Obama and the Democratic Congress have brought to our country and why progressives should be enthusiastic about getting involved in helping to protect our Congressional majorities in November. While many progressives have responded with shared enthusiasm, others have said that they are staying home because they are upset that President Obama has so far failed to achieve or fight enough for some specific progressive goal or because they feel that certain legislation is too moderate or corporate.
I share some of this frustration. I too would have preferred to see things like a public option in the health insurance reform plan, a larger stimulus bill, and climate legislation, and wish that President Obama had fought more for all of those things. However, to sit on our hands six weeks before an election because we as progressives have not gotten everything we want out of this Administration is self-defeating.
Now, the typical response to folks who are planning to sit on their hands is to point out that the Republicans would be immensely worse. This is undoubtedly true. Conservatives today are largely beholden to ideologies that benefit only the wealthiest of Americans at the expense of the rest of us, and the Republican party has been taken over by unqualified radicals who have absolutely no interest in or ability to effectively govern our country.
But this response only goes so far because mere opposition to Republicans does not grow or motivate the progressive movement. In keeping myself motivated to fight for progressive, I try insteadto focus on three basic points:
• Progressive change is a long, ongoing struggle: Many of us were euphoric when Obama won the 2008 election. But it was on one victory in a much longer, harder battle to achieve fundamental economic, social, and political reform. True progressive change rarely comes in a moment or two; instead, it is almost always the culmination of a long, hard battle that builds on previous victories and fights through setbacks. For example, the legal strategy that led to the official illegalization of segregation with the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 was created and launched by Charles Hamilton Houston in 1929, and involved a series of cases over 25 years that slowly chipped away at legal segregation. Similarly, the battles for the right of workers to unionize, equal treatment for women, and basic rights for gays and lesbians took decades of struggle that continue to this day. The key to such struggle, however, is that people continue to fight and build on victories, rather than expecting immediate change and throwing their hands up in disgust when it does not occur. It can be frustrating at times, but if we abandon folks who are fighting for our side whenever there is a loss, setback, or compromise, as some seem to be doing with President Obama and the Democrats in Congress, progressive change will never come.
• Progressive Change Requires Us All To Be Involved: Whenever I am disappointed by some progressive compromise or setback, I ask myself what I did to fight for the progressive position. Did I contact my elected officials? Write a letter to the editor? Organize rallies? Talk to my family, friends, and neighbors and urge them to get involved? Progressive change is often opposed by a well-funded and well-connected opposition that can only be overcome if we are all involved. If I am not doing my part, then I am not in much of a position to cast aspersions on our President for failing to go to the mat over some particular policy.
• Progressive Change Requires That We Celebrate and Reward Progress: We progressives are very good at criticizing our elected officials when they let us down, but not at praising them when they do good things. This is problematic for two reasons. First, it makes us feel like we are always losing, which is no way to motivate or grow the progressive movement. Second, it makes elected officials less likely to take tough votes for us, as the resulting praise for such a vote that the politician deserves often never comes. While we should always be pushing our elected officials to do better, we could also use more celebrating of victories and less focus on every perceived defeat.
I believe that President Obama and Congressional Democrats have achieved significant progressive victories over the past two years that provide real, positive benefits to the American people. If you or a loved one has an illness, the health insurance reform bill will help you afford insurance and ensure that health insurance companies can no longer deny you coverage. If you are a student struggling to pay for college, student loan reform has nearly doubled the amount of federal aid available and reduced the burden of paying student loans back. If you are working to get out of debt, credit card industry reform and the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will prevent your credit card company from jacking up your interest rates and limit the ability of payday lenders or credit counseling companies from taking advantage of you.
None of these reforms were perfect, and there is still much more work to do. But the progress that we have achieved so far, and our need to achieve even more in the future, is exactly why we should all be working to protect and expand our progressive majorities in the November elections, instead of sitting on our hands and letting it all slip away. I hope you’ll join me in the fight.
Tags: change, frustrati, President Obama, progressives
September 17th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
You’re kidding, right? The reason why companies are so scared to hire and expand right now is because of Washington’s healthcare, banking, energy, taxation and other “reforms”.
September 17th, 2010 at 2:35 pm
Joe – you keep saying that, but don’t offer any proof to back it up. In fact surveys of small businesses about what they view as their “single most important problem” shows that concerns about “poor sales” has skyrocketed recently, while concerns about thing like taxes and regulation are no higher today than they have been for the past 24 years.
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/09/businesses-need-more-customers-elites-are-failing/
So, the solution is more stimulus and tax relief for the working class, rather than Republican efforts to give the wealthiest 2% more money, which they will largely just save
September 17th, 2010 at 2:46 pm
What more proof do you need than all of the cash that businesses are sitting on? Companies are sitting on records amounts of cash. Banks are sitting on tons of reserves. Yet Obama continues to bash the private sector. If you’re a bank you’re still scared to lend because politicians bash you for historically poor lending decisions, raise your capital requirements and ALSO yell at you for not lending today. Same thing if you’re a business – why would you hire if your taxes are likely to go up, your healthcare costs are going up, your energy costs are going up, etc. etc.
Republicans want to extend the Bush tax cuts for everybody, while the Dems only want to do it for the “non-rich” which will hurt any potential rebound in the economy that we sorely need. Those top tax brackets that Obama wants to raise will hurt any job recovery. How could it not?
The solution is NOT more stimulus. The first stimulus didn’t work and a bigger one would just be a bigger disaster.
Mr. Obama has failed in his promise to bring people together. I was struck by the contrast in Mr. Obama’s own rhetoric and what he enjoined other world leaders to do in his press conference Sept. 9. Regarding the proposed Middle East peace negotiations, he wisely counseled Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas to focus on how they can help each other succeed. He said they each need to try to see things from the other’s point of view. Clearly, our country would benefit greatly if he would follow this advice in his domestic policies, including looking for ways to help businesses of all sizes to succeed.
In like manner, the approach he articulated later in the press conference regarding American Muslims fighting in our armed services should apply to people of all socioeconomic levels in our nation: “. . . making sure that they understand that we don’t differentiate between them and us. It’s just us.” At all times, and especially in difficult seasons, we need leaders who seek to unite us in helping each other succeed.
September 17th, 2010 at 3:08 pm
Banks are scared? Of what, of not being able to grab more tax payer funds for themselves? As part of the 98% non-rich, (as you say) I can take or leave the extended tax cuts, but I do care about handing out more corporate welfare to the uber-rich of the country. “Trickle down” economics was a failure, it never worked under Reagan, Bush or W.
As for having leaders that unite us, unless you’re living in some alternate universe, the Republican party has for years, gone out of its way to divide us, by race, gender, class, sexual orientation and religion. Division is the only way the Republicans can win an election.
September 17th, 2010 at 3:59 pm
I will assume who ever supports these ideas never owned a business or worked in the business world…look if you want everyone to work through staffing companies and not be direct employees. keep on doing what you have been doing for 2 yrs now, while you at lets unionize all workers in the states….i can promise you if your agenda is put into place all the job will move overseas and companies will move HQ’s and most of the white collar job overseas as well…keep fighting the good fight, it is not 1870, we do not need unions or these types of ideas since they will just sink our whole economy….wise up and wake up…brain washed group with good intentions,but no reality of a globally competitive world
Obama is a great man to have a beer with…but clueless to what motivates growth in business, the economy and the realities of being in a global economy that the democratic party desired back in the 1990….It is way cheaper for and safer for my company to hire temps then bring someone on full time
September 17th, 2010 at 4:01 pm
Hi. I followed your link from BJ, and I just wanted to co-sign to what you have written here. I am very progressive as to my policies, but I am discovering that I am pretty pragmatic in implementation. I see the steps we’ve taken as just that–steps. There is a long road ahead of us, so we have to keep pushing forward. If we take a step back and see where we are now in comparison to where we were two years ago, we would see that we are in a more progressive position now.
Has it been agonizing slow? Yes. Has it been two steps forward and one step back? Yes. Has there been a lot of compromises that I wish the Democrats wouldn’t have made/had to made? Yes. But, that’s reality. I would rather have something to show for our struggles than to hold out for everything and get nothing in return.
In short, hold our leaders accountable. Call them out when they mess up. Praise them when they get something right.
September 17th, 2010 at 5:17 pm
can someone reply to my post, it will help me understand how this agenda can help grow our economy…and maybe educate me,
September 17th, 2010 at 7:13 pm
An excellent posting, and one that states what should have been obvious, if they were interested in looking at past struggles. My own experience has been that they assume that everything was quick and easy – evidence to the contrary.
Wow – I do support this, and I am a progressive. Amazingly enough, not only have I worked in the business world, I’ve even owned one. You know something? Taxes were not the issue. Paying taxes meant that I was doing well. Access to credit, affordable healthcare, and other things like that meant a hell of a lot more to me than what the tax rate was.
September 18th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
Access to credit? You still can’t get any because the banks are faced with unknown regulatory changes. And they still get pillored for having caused the last crisis by making too many bad loans to people with bad credit. Affordable healthcare? Healthcare costs are still rising. Wake up.
September 19th, 2010 at 12:40 am
Joe, frankly that’s crap. They aren’t faced with “unknown regulatory changes.” They know damn well what the changes are. Just because you (and the banks) don’t like them – because they’re being told that they can’t do the things that crashed the economy – doesn’t mean that they’re “unknown.” I can also point out that no one has said healthcare costs were going to drop drastically. What they said was that they wouldn’t rise as fast – and may even level off as a function of costs – because of health reform. I already know from just looking at that inconvenient stuff called “data” that the Republican idea of letting the insurance industry have a free hand just caused the costs to skyrocket. That’s besides creating two different bureaucracies – one to deny or delay payments, the other to argue for payments. Neither one of them government.
September 19th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Norbrook – how can you say that the changes are “known” when Basel 3 was just outlined a week ago and as we all know the devil is in the detail for how regulatory changes actually get implemented and enforced. Same for Dodd-Frank.
To quote Steve Hoffman, EVP of Banking Supervision and Regulation at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, “Over the next 18 months, in this environment of uncertainty, the Federal Reserve and other regulatory agencies will focus attention on drafting the required rules and studies called for in the Dodd-Frank Act. There will continue to be extensive debate before these rules are finalized and then implemented”
You see? Rules still need to be drafted and studies need to be started. I guess you already know how the rules will work before they get drafted?
And one big part of Dodd-Frank – the new Consumer Protection agency that Elizabeth Warren is heading. You can’t honestly say that we have certainty with respect to the scope of this new agency either.
So there still is a lot of uncertainty around regulatory reform and its impact on banks and other businesses.
September 20th, 2010 at 2:10 am
Joe – quite simply, “uncertainty” refers to the economy, not the regulations. They already know the basic outline of the regulations, and they knew them well before Basel 3. The only “uncertainty” is whether they’ll be able to weaken them to their benefit or not.
It’s also specious to use that as the reason that banks are unwilling to loan money. It’s why there had to be legislation to enable funding for small banks to start funding small businesses -which were credit-worthy, but not getting loans because banks weren’t interested. Banks have been doing quite well recently, if you haven’t noticed – but they’re holding on to capital that they should have been moving around.
September 20th, 2010 at 3:25 am
There’s plenty of uncertainty around the details of the regulations and how they will be implemented and enforced. Saying that because they know the “basic outline” and therefore there’s no uncertainty in how the regulations will unfold is pretty specious, to borrow your phrase. Do you know the scope of what the new Consumer Protection agency will take? I certainly don’t. And when will the new Basel rules go into effect? 5 years from now? 10? We don’t know.
If banks are going to be forced to hold more capital, then they are going to be raise the bar for their lending standards. Yes, banks are doing quite well and just sitting on tons of excess reserves. Maybe banks don’t want to lend because they believe some prospective clients AREN’T credit worthy enough. Maybe they’re trying to prevent another lending bubble so they don’t have to go back to the well for another round of TARP? Why do you think banks aren’t lending?