While the Progressive Caucus still has a long way to go to match the media and policy influence of the Blue Dogs, because of the Progressive Block campaign, for the first time in at least a decade they are relevant to the overall Congressional power structure.
At the Huffington Post, Ryan Grimm has a must-read feature story on how Progressives fought their way into relevance. Most of it won't be new to regular readers of Open Left, but it is a great read anyway and should help introduce the new progressive organizing on The Hill to a wider audience.
From the article, there were three keys to the rise of the caucus: be organized instead of just righteous; finding a legitimate way to threaten those in power; and developing better connections with natural allies in the progressive ecosystem. In my experience, those tend to be the three most common reasons progressives have failed to gain relevance in the past.
Just being righteous wasn't enough: One of the great frustrations I have had with some progressives is they seem to think that just being right is enough. Given the nature of our opposition, it's not:
"We're the group that speaks to the righteousness of an issue, [but] inevitably the decisions about how that issue's going to be addressed are conducted somewhere else," said Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), describing the traditional fecklessness of progressives in Congress.(...)
In March, Grijalva did something unusual for the progressive caucus: he began organizing. Caucus leadership sent a questionnaire asking members if they would be willing to oppose any health care bill that didn't include a public option. A majority said they would.
Attendance at caucus meetings - which had dipped to just a handful of members - began rising as the group hashed out what message to deliver to House leadership.
"I really felt that we needed to be righteous about the things that we believe in, but we also needed to practice the craft a little better," said Grijalva. "As a bloc we were getting beaten to the punch all the time."
Organizing isn't enough either: Further, just being right and just getting organized isn't enough, either. You have to be willing to make a power play, such as blocking Democratic legislation. This was not feasible when Bush was still President, but Progressives have been willing to seize the moment once it became available:
For Woolsey, it's the issue that allows the caucus to stand unified. "It's the issue. We agree on this," she said. "We have never had the luxury of saying, 'Either go with us, or we'll go with the Republicans. We don't believe what the Republicans stand for at all. So it's been more difficult when Bush ran the White House. Nor have we had the majority of the progressives drawing a line in the sand as they are now."(...)
Grijalva said he and others been eying the health care fight as a chance to establish the authority of caucus since the beginning of the year. "People have understood that this was not only a value statement that we had to stick to, but it was also, to put it in a really blunt sense, an opportunity to show that the caucus was going to be a real player in how policies get shaped and that's what we're trying to do," he said.
Without the threat to sink important Democratic legislation, the Progressive Caucus has no real power. This is, after all, how the Blue Dogs managed to amass so much power. Rather than just complaining about them, we needed to learn from them.
Working with outside groups: Realizing that there are many new progressive groups and leaders who would stand with the Progressive Caucus if they choose to pick a major fight was another key:
Ellison cited Rep. Alan Grayson's (D-Fla.) hiring of prominent blogger Matt Stoller. "He brings all of his perspective and his technical expertise with him," said Ellison.
The caucus also brought on Darcy Burner to help with outreach to progressive groups. Burner had twice run for Congress and is a hero of the Netroots community of bloggers and activists. She arranged for Jacob Hacker, the intellectual architect of the public option, and Diane Archer co-president of the Health Care for All Project, which is run by the Institute for America's Future, to brief the caucus.(...)
The caucus also reached out to MoveOn.org, which notified its members of the letter and encouraged folks to go to the press conference announcing it. "We let [our members] know there were people standing up for them," said MoveOn's Ilyse Hogue. "Looking from the outside in, I'm definitely seeing an increased understanding of the power progressives can wield on the inside working in coordination with outside progressive forces."
"There are certainly some of us who have come from those outside groups and have made a point in increasing communication with the outside groups," said Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.), a caucus vice-chair who previously worked for Public Citizen and The Arca Foundation, among others.
Much of the Progressive Caucus, including the leadership, really was oblivious to the potential support they could receive from new online groups. At the same time, much of the progressive netroots never trusted the Progressive Caucus to make a real play for power. Now that the netroots and the Progressive Caucus are blending, the strength of both is increasing.
The main reason Progressives are not taken seriously in the media, The White House or The Hill is because they have usually been more righteous than organized, either unwilling or unable to make a power play, and not working with their natural allies outside of D.C. As such, they were rightly perceived as irrelevant. The campaign for the public option, if successful, will change that. What I have termed The Progressive Block is the biggest play for real progressive power in D.C. in at least two decades, and possibly since Ted Kennedy's primary challenge to President Carter.
Over the weekend, Nate Silver has used a poker analogy described the strategy: "going on tilt." I don't think that is the right poker analogy. In addition to the huge importance of a public option, this is nothing short of a campaign for permanent Progressive relevance in D.C. for as long as Democrats control the White House and both chambers of Congress. As such, this is like going all in order to earn a seat at the final table.
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