Yesterday, I published an article entitled Expecting Too Much From Electoral Politics, partially lamenting the defeat of cramdown legislation. In response, Adam Green argued that cramdown might have passed if there had been a massive grassroots mobilization on behalf of the legislation. With all due respect to Adam, whose political skills are of the highest order, that wasn't really my point.
Instead, I was arguing that progressive change happens in many locations other than government. In fact, given the generally retrograde nature of our federal government (60-vote rule in the Senate, dominated by old wealthy white dudes, flooded with corporate lobbyists), progressive change within America will almost invariably grow to majority status within the culture at large before it is adopted by the federal government. If you want sweeping progressive change, you need to change the culture first, and target the Congress later.
LGBT rights have advanced primarily because people have come out to their friends and family, not because members of Congress, the vast majority of whom have done nothing whatsoever to support LGBT rights.
Support for legalizing marijuana is increasing because more people have tried marijuana, not because of pro-marijuana lobbyists on Capital Hill. There are almost no mainstream political figures arguing for progressive change on marijuana policy, and yet it grows nonetheless.
Latinos and Asians now compose 11% of the electorate, up from 3% in 1992. This has improved the Democratic margin in national elections by about 4%. However, it did not happen primarily because of voter registration drives. Mainly, it happened because millions of Asians and Latinos had the guts to move to the United States and become citizens.
According to a recent edition of Scientific American, 24% of the country now reports going out of their way to purchase local and green products, even if they cost more money. Even though the USDA is involved, this didn't happen primarily because of the Farm Bill. It happened because a tens of millions of Americans have decided to change their purchasing habits.
My point is that . there are lots of sources of change outside of Congress and the federal government. In fact, it is almost always necessary that change happens outside of Congress before it happens inside of Congress. Throughout the history of progressive change, we have usually needed to push an extremely unpopular idea to supermajority status before it was adopted by Congress. And this means changing the culture before we can even hope to change the Congress.
While political grassroots activism is important, such campaigns pretty much only succeed for progressives when they are supporting an idea that has long been adopted by the majority of the population. Usually, those ideas reached majority status not because of advocacy organizations, but through changes in the culture itself. And that is all I was talking about in my post. If you want sweeping progressive change of the sort that goes beyond the Democratic legislative agenda, then you first need to change the culture at large. Congress is simply never going to be the societal avant-garde. Deep progressive change needs to start well outside the realm of either professional or grassroots politics.
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