This progressive populist message that I have been writing about in recent weeks that seriously moves the dial for Democrats in Stan Greenberg's polling is being used by more and more candidates. Here's three exciting examples:
1. A growing group of members of Congress are going to be on the Hill tomorrow afternoon at 1:00 PM EST doing a press conference to push a strong reform agenda on behalf of the middle class. They will be endorsing the 3-point platform- strong lobbying reform, public financing of elections, and overturning Citizens United- that MoveOn members overwhelmingly supported in their voting, that 506,832 have already endorsed with their signatures, that 14 groups have signed on to, and that 201 members of Congress and candidates have already signed up for. Confirmed speakers at the press conference include the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Raul Grijalva, the head of the Populist Caucus Bruce Braley, Rep. Chris Murphy, Rep. Paul Hodes, Rep. Paul Tonko, and Rep. Keith Ellison, and more are adding their names as we get closer to the event.
2. Check out this ad from Joe Sestak, attacking all the big corporate money being dumped in his race, and the motives of those spending the money.
3. Finally, check out this great new ad from Tommy Sowers. This is my favorite ad in the campaign so far. It definitely smells of country populism.
The great thing about these ads is that they go directly to the heart of what is going on this campaign cycle: because of the Citizens United decision, and because they don't like being challenged in any way by even modest reform measures like the Wall Street reform bill, Wall Street, Big Oil, the big health insurers, and the Chamber of Commerce have been on the rampage, dumping tens of millions of dollars like it was going out of style into these campaigns, trying to buy the elections. The only way Democrats have a chance is to stand tall and call them out, to fight directly against them and the economic sins that have destroyed this country's economy.
Current polling from NYTimes, Democracy Corps, and several other public and private sources show a really strange paradox in this year's election cycle. On the one hand as the media is broadcasting endlessly, it is clear that people are unhappy with Congress, wanting to throw incumbents out on their ear, wanting to change course- all of which leads the punditry to declare that the Democrats are dead meat. And of course, it is impossible to forget the scary poll numbers in a lot of individual races.
On the other hand, there is a lot of other data seeming quite favorable to Democrats, and the internals in the polling make it clear there are real opportunities for gains on where we are today. Our approval numbers are better than the Republicans, although neither party is exactly thrilling people. We lead on the tax cut fight, which is the big pre-election issue; people think Democrats are more likely than Republicans to create jobs, which is the most important issue in the election; by a big margin, people think Democrats will do more to help the middle class; people even say Democrats are more likely to help small business. Apparently, even the Democratic message tying George W. Bush to current Republicans also seems to be sinking in, frankly better than I thought it would.
If it weren't for the polls showing Democrats in deep trouble, these other polls would make you think we're going to have to have a great year. What is going on?
I have two theories on this confusing mixture of polling data, neither of which is new to my writing, so please forgive the repetition if you recognize the themes from earlier posts:
1. Much of the confusion and seeming contradiction in these various data points is explained by the simple idea that I have been suggesting for about 18 months now: neither party is liked or trusted right now. You can also throw in all the tea party Republican primary victories into this explanation: voters, whether left, right, or uncertain middle don't feel like the establishment of either party is doing well by them. Voters keep sending the same message over and over again, and the Village establishment keeps missing, or ignoring, the point:
Voters didn't like the Republican establishment in 2006, so they voted in a new Congress
Democratic primary voters didn't like the establishment, so they rejected the Clintons for someone brand new
Voters didn't like the Bush team, so in 2008, they voted for someone as different from George W. Bush as you could imagine
Voters didn't feel the new guy was that much different from the old guy, and sent a message in the big New Jersey, Virginia, and Massachusetts races so far this cycle
Republican primary voters don't like what the Republican establishment has been serving up, so they started to vote for whoever was the most anti-establishment.
This is not ideological. This is not party identity driven. This is all about the middle class seeing the American dream slip away from them, being as squeezed economically as they have been in three generations, and desperately trying to tell all politicians from every party and ideology that they want change: big change, right now.
2. The populist/reformist message that progressives have been pushing now for several months is starting to get some traction. The reason some of these poll numbers are showing signs of life and potential opportunities for Democrats in this tough as nails political environment is because Democrats are starting to finally focus in on a message that sells the idea that Democrats are on the same side as the beleaguered middle class. MoveOn's The Other 98% campaign, ads and speeches by candidates and the White House, Elizabeth Warren's appointment: the Democrats are finally starting to seem like they get it. Check out Obama's radio address and a clip of a recent speech. Check out these ads from Barbara Boxer and Robin Carnahan. Check out Elizabeth Warren's interview with Rachel Maddow. Check out this clip from Kendrick Meek. Democrats are finally- finally, finally, finally- starting to sound like the kind of progressive populists who might actually be capable of appealing to voters outside the DC Village.
Maybe it's not in time, and maybe it's not enough. Maybe voters just won't believe it at the end of the day: the skepticism is deep and wide. The President has spent far too much time sounding like Tim Geithner and not nearly enough sounding like Elizabeth Warren. But at least it is finally starting to feel like we are putting up a fight.
Barack Obama has never been easy to characterize or categorize: the nation's first African-American President raised in Hawaii by his white mother and white grandparents from Kansas; the community organizer who headed the Harvard Law Review; the Chicago pol who may be our most intellectual President ever; the President who finally passed a bill to provide health coverage for nearly all our citizens and yet managed to tick off progressives while he did it.
Add in the whole populist thing to this list of contradictory things. Obama has not been a populist President in either style or policy substance. But now at his moment of greatest political peril (so far, at least- we'll see where things are in the fall of 2012), he turns to a populist tone and rhetoric that is heartening for an old Midwestern populist like me to see. Starting with the little-noticed radio address in August taking on big corporate special interests and the Citizens United decision, then continuing this week with the Milwaukee Labor Day speech, the Cleveland economic speech on Wednesday, and the press conference this morning, Obama is aggressively taking on the bad actor big business special interests, taking on tax cuts for millionaires, taking on trickle-down economics.
Welcome to the barricades, Mr. President. I know that you and us old school populists still don't agree on some specific economic policies or appointees, but it is good to see that you get what the polls have been showing for a long time now: voters are frustrated with corporate s special interests running things, and are tired of the wealthy and powerful getting inside deals even while the economy is hurting.
This is the only path for Democrats to have a chance at surviving the fall elections. Take on the Wall Street marauders who took down our economy, and who are giving themselves bonuses while refusing to help homeowners save their homes or small businesses invest in new jobs. Take on the health insurers who are still jacking up rates and trying to deny people coverage. Take on the big oil companies who are working to stop any efforts to create more green jobs. These are the guys who have been running Washington for too long, and who, truth be told, are still way too powerful.
It is ironic that groups like Third Way and pundits like Matt Bai still deride populism when every Democratic pollster and committee staffer and campaign manager I talk to agree that economic populism like the President has been displaying this week are the only hope us Democrats desperately trying to win races in the real America have left. I loved Third Way leader Jim Kessler's quote in the Sunday WaPo: "[Democrats] must resist the temptation to succumb to a populism that portrays members of the middle class as weak, powerless victims." Hard to disagree with that- I have never found that whole weak, powerless victim thing very helpful in my political messaging. Fortunately, the kind of populism the President and other Democrats are finally rallying around has nothing to do with weak, powerful victimhood. Quite the opposite, in fact: what we are arguing for is the other 98% of us taking on the powerful so that we can restore our democracy and rebuild our economy from the bottom-up.
This message strategy can work if we stick to it and make it believable by proposing policies that really do help the middle class.
This has been a pretty weird political cycle, and I'm starting to wonder whether it is the strangest ever. There have certainly been cycles that have been more dramatic- such as the 1968 cycle of assassinations and a powerful incumbent being taken out by a quirky intellectual troubadour- but in terms of pure weirdness, this could be the tops. And I'm not even talking about Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck.
The weirdness I am referring to is this odd sense I have that both parties are trying so hard to lose. Obama started out the cycle by appointing one of the main architects of the incredibly unpopular Bush bailout plans- Tim Geithner- to be his chief economic policymaker and spokesman, and followed that by re-appointing Bush's Fed chief Ben Bernanke. Now that we're into campaign season, the message group closest to the Democratic establishment (Third Way) is solemnly advising us to avoid being too populist in a year when anger at the banks and other corporate CEOs is as high as it has been since the 1930s, and the aforementioned Geithner writes columns bragging about economy recovery when the official unemployment rates remains stalled at close to 10%, and the true unemployment rate is several points higher. While all this goes on policy-wise, the White House political strategy in a year when their base is disheartened seems mainly to be to make their base even more upset.
In the meantime, the Republican Party- faced with an incredible opportunity- nominates one candidate after another that are beyond-the-pale extremists. Senators with lifetime scores of 95% from the American Conservative Union and protégés of Mitch McConnell and James Watt are not conservative enough for the Republicans: they nominate people who want to repeal civil rights laws, phase out Social Security and Medicare (or declare them unconstitutional), abolish the minimum wage, and secede from the union. On top of that, with the critically important Hispanic community disheartened by no progress on immigration reform and the weak economy, Republicans have seized on a way to help Democrats turn them out in huge numbers with a big Democratic vote by supporting a fundamental blow to their civil rights in Arizona, a powerful symbol that has the Hispanic voting bloc nationwide suddenly more energized.
As a result of all this silliness, both parties' approval ratings are in the toilet. This is a pretty unusual dynamic. In 1994, Republicans' popularity was going up as Dems were going down, and in both 2006 and 2008, Dems' numbers were going up while Bush and Republicans' numbers in general were tanking. Today, two months out from the big election, voters are ticked off at both parties, and that's before the fall attack ad season.
What's a Democratic candidate to do in this weird and awful political environment?
Each race is different, but here's my advice going into the last couple of months:
1. Get out every last Democratic base voter you can. There's a tendency when you get in trouble in a campaign and have trouble moving voters to throw more and more money into TV. And of course, a lot of consultants who make their money off TV ads will feed that tendency: hey, if 1,000 points a week worth of ads isn't moving voters, maybe 1,500 will; if 1,500 isn't doing it, maybe if we throw 2,000 at them it will do the trick. But in a year like this, it is going to be very hard to move swing voters in a bad mood. Yes, you have to stay on TV to stay competitive, but every spare dime you have should go into bringing extra base voters to the polling places. Based on everything I am seeing in the polls and focus groups, convincing African-Americans, Latinos, unmarried women and youth who like Democrats to come vote will be challenging, but easier than switching the votes of angry white working-class swing voters.
2. Show independence from Obama, but not in a way that undermines the Democratic brand and turns off base voters. The instinct for a lot of candidates will be to show they are independent from Obama by denouncing the health care bill or the climate change bill or other core aspects of the Democratic Party's identity, but it's a dangerous game because it weakens the party and depresses the base vote in a year when the last thing you want to do is either of those. A better strategy in terms of showing your independence is to be more populist than Obama: go after Tim Geithner, like Tom Perriello just did; talk about how the health insurance bill wasn't tough enough on drug or insurance companies; talk about how the financial reform bill's problem was that it didn't break up the banks. Working-class swing voters and base Democrats will both respond to these ways of showing you aren't in Obama's pocket.
3. Show your anger at the special interests, but also have a substitute plan for improving things. MoveOn's polling showed that 89% of voters said it was very important that a candidate for Congress commits to reducing the influence of lobbyists, and 62% said they were more likely to support a candidate that commits to limiting the influence of large corporations in how the government runs. Those are incredibly high numbers, and the anger people show in focus groups at the big banks and insurance companies and oil companies show that those feelings are close to the surface. But angry populism alone won't get it done, because people want to know what your plan is for creating jobs and rebuilding the economy. A plan to take government back from corporate special interests, combined with a plan to invest in manufacturing jobs and small business entrepreneurialism, is critical to surviving politically this year.
4. Be specific in going after waste in government. Voters are convinced there is a lot of waste in government, and in fact there is. Democratic candidates should not reflexively defend all government spending, or talk about waste generically because that feeds the Republican attack machine. Show voters you understand that there is waste in government, and that you are going to do something about it: take on the no-bid and sloppy contracting, big agribusiness subsidies, oil company subsidies, tax breaks for creating jobs overseas, and other forms of abuse and waste that costs hundreds of billions of dollars a year. When government isn't working right, Democrats don't need to automatically defend it: our goal isn't bigger government; it is a government on the side of the American people.
In spite of the Republican extremists being nominated, this is going to be an incredibly tough year to be a Democrat on the ballot. We are going to lose a lot of seats in both houses of Congress and downballot as well. But if Democrats turn out their base voters, take on the big banks and insurers and oil companies, and show they are focused on fighting for the middle class, they can hold their losses to a minimum.
With voters angry at the establishment and incumbents in general, and deals in particular, Democrats who are defenders of the established order are working overtime to beat down the idea of winning elections by using scary populism. Using faulty historical analogies, polls with carefully designed questions in order to elicit certain answers, and the specter of far-right anti-intellectualism as reasons not to be populist, they fear what might happen if Democrats actually start listening to real voters and make the changes people were promised in 2008.
The good news is that if the Democrats running for office in this tough, tough year will respond to the anti-establishment anger that is out there and ride it, they can do better than anyone is currently predicting. Of course, if that happened, it would be a very bad thing for corporate Democrats who don't want anything to change, because it would prove the lie that the only way for Democrats to win is to kow-tow to special interest power and conventional wisdom.
We've had pundits like Matt Bai take on populism in this way, and groups like Third Way do it as well. The latest article I have seen comes from a self-described liberal named Kevin Mattson writing in The American Prospect. Mattson's idea of a modern day populism is Sarah Palin, and if you accept that premise it's easy to see why he dislikes a populist message. He makes arguments unsupported by any polling numbers or actual knowledge of political dynamics such as "since the 1960s, populism has succeeded n the right and produced few if any left-wing counterparts... There is no way to steer that boat back to left-wing shores." He dismisses "Recent attempts to paint Harry Truman as a raging populist" (apparently forgetting Truman's 1948 stump speech: "These Republican gluttons of privilege... want a return of the Wall Street economic dictatorship..."). He talks about Gore's fatal mistake of populism, conveniently forgetting that after Gore's People vs. The Powerful convention speech, he shot ahead in the polls in that race (only losing his lead after he performed badly in the debates). He ignores the fact that Clinton's winning 1992 election message was even more populist than Gore's in 2000.
However, my point here is not to argue the history of populism's political success or promise- I have done that here and here in case you want to check those arguments out. What I want to focus on today is a progressive populist platform that wins politically in our currently political environment.
Mattson's most irritating tendency is to throw out sentences like "Populism -- because it glorifies the 'common sense' of the people -- is prone to the sloppy, slapdash thinking of figures like Palin" and "too often the advice to adopt populist rhetoric becomes advice to pander" and "Populism's simplicity is its central fault". The disdain of Bai, Mattson and Third Way for progressive populism is evident in these kinds of sentences and strained historical argument. But a platform and message that does actually take on big corporate elites and an entrenched establishment does not have to wallow in simplicity, pandering and proud stupidity the way Palin-style right-wing populism does.
Anger alone does not win elections for progressives, but righteous anger combined with accurate analysis and policies that take on the corruption of wealthy elites certainly can. The way populism wins is to be angry at what the elites have done to this country and smart about how to fix it all at the same time. Here is a winning progressive populist platform for the 21st century.
Yesterday, in Quick Hits, Mark Matson linked to an article at the American Prospect, "Forget Populism", which is, essentially, a direct attack on one of the Prospect's founders, Robert Kuttner [who is singled out by name], and which would be far more at home in the New Republic. The article, by one Kevin Mattson, reads like your typical, standard-issue anti-populist screed: populists are angry; anger is bad; angry people can get elected, but they can't govern; the people are stupid, and I'm smart; so go back to sleep; nothing to see hear; move along.
Such screeds are invariably deeply dishonest. For one thing, they are everything bad that they accuse populists of being, except that they use a different linguistic mode. But if one looks beyond the style to the substance, one finds all the demonization commonly attributed to populists, and virtually none of the sober-minded, responsible rationalism claimed as a birthright by their critics. They invariably refuse to take populism seriously, resorting to sneering just when they ought to be thinking [emphasis added]:
Populism's simplicity is its central fault. Its philosophical premise -- if there is such a thing -- is that "the people" are the embodiment of virtue, uncorrupted by power and wealth the way elites are.
But, of course, this sneered-at premise is almost self-evidently true in the sense that populists express it. The original populists of the 1880s and 1890s did not cause the severe and systemic economic distress that afflicted them, and so much more of the nation: The elites did, even though they did it mostly unwittingly, babbling along about the wonders of they system even as it impoverished millions of the most hardworking people it was supposed to benefit. Not all members of the elite were responsible, of course, but the elites of business, politics and civic affairs all collectively failed as a class to ensure that the Constitution's mandate was fulfilled: to promote the general welfare.
However much self-congratulatory anti-populists prattle on about their own superiority, they never seem to get around to grappling with the objective failures that give rise to populism in the first place. Nor do they even use a consistent standard when they argue that populism is a failure. Typically, Mattson argues that populism didn't work, because Populists failed to gain political power. Following some quotes of Populist rhetoric, he writes:
Good stuff. Yet it didn't work, not even back then. The Populist Party won slim margins in 1892 and suffered the fate of most third parties in America (in this case fusing with the Democrats before crumbling); Bryan lost the 1896 election.
He then pretends to go beyond this crass dismissal:
While some establishment pundits and think tanks don't think populism is a good idea, check out what some candidates out in the field are doing:
1. This Andrew Romanoff ad kicks ass. People tell me he wasn't exactly a raving populist as a legislator, but he sure is a candidate.
2. Senate candidates like Roxanne Conlin and Robin Carnahan are banging away at their corporate backed opponents on the TARP issue.
3. Alexi Giannoulias just came out with this great campaign document which echoes the Moveon campaign's themes and message.
4. Look at what Tom Perriello is doing in a conservative district in Virginia.
5. More and more candidates are signing up for Moveon's anti-Washington corruption campaign, including Chris Murphy, Donna Edwards, Romanoff, Conlin, Perriello, Gian..., Mac D'allesandro, Raul Grijalva, and many more.
I could actually go on and on, but you get the idea. Progressive populism is spreading like wild fire because candidates are figuring out that it is the only message that can save them.
The lengths to which pundits, analysts, and establishment political leaders have always gone to avoid using dreaded populism in their political strategies for Democrats has always been remarkable to me. From Republicans since Richard Nixon, appeals to a moralist and angry middle class are all politically brilliant, but Democrats, so it is said, should avoid it as a political tactic because it doesn't work. When Lee Atwater observes that "the swing vote in every Presidential election is populist in nature", he is a genius. When Democrats start sounding like populists, we are told it just doesn't work.
From the DLC to the New Democrats to the folks at Third Way to columnists like David Broder and David Brooks to authors and analysts like Matt Bai, the advice is to be careful about seeming too angry and too anti-business. Some argue that a democratic, progressive populism has never worked in American politics, that it was at its highest point under William Jennings Bryan and he was still a loser. Some will deign to admit that FDR showed a populist streak, but then say that no one else with a similar message has won a Presidential election. The more thoughtful of these analysts, such as Bai, point to demographic and economic changes as the reason. Bai believes that "the only potent grass-roots movement to emerge from this moment of dissatisfaction with America's economic elite exists not in support of the president or his party, but far to the right instead, in the form of the so-called Tea Party rebellions that are injecting new energy into the Republican cause." He goes on to argue:
But there is something more fundamental going on here, too, an underlying shift in the meaning of American populism. Most Democrats, after all, persist in embracing populism as it existed in the early part of the last century - that is, strictly as a function of economic inequality. In this worldview, the oppressed are the poor, and the oppressors are the corporate interests who exploit them.
That made sense 75 years ago, when a relatively small number of corporations - oil and coal companies, steel producers, car makers - controlled a vast segment of the work force and when government was a comparatively anemic enterprise. In recent decades, however, as technology has reshaped the economy, more and more Americans have gone to work for smaller or more decentralized employers, or even for themselves, while government has exploded in size and influence. (It's not incidental that the old manufacturing unions, like the autoworkers and steelworkers, have been eclipsed in membership and political influence by those that represent large numbers of government workers.)
Since this transformation took place, a succession of liberal politicians - Jesse Jackson, Jerry Brown, John Edwards - have tried to run for president on a traditionally populist, anti-corporate platform, with little success. That is because today's only viable brand of populism, the same strain that Ross Perot expertly tapped as an independent presidential candidate in 1992, is not principally about the struggling worker versus his corporate master. It is about the individual versus the institution - not only business, but also government and large media and elite universities, too.
And yet, and yet...
We just saw a financial reform bill get steadily better over a two-week debate on the floor of the Senate, because politicians lived in mortal fear of appearing to kow-tow to the big banks. We just saw a health care debate where the only time Democrats got any message traction at all was in a frontal assault on the insurance industry. We've seen a massive outpouring of anger at BP over the oil spill, with Republicans scurrying for cover when their ranking member on the Energy and Commerce Committee apologized to BP over Obama's mistreatment of them. We've seen a spring of big rallies all over the country against the big banks- in Chicago, in San Francisco, in Denver, in Kansas City, in North Carolina, on Wall Street itself and on K Street in Washington, DC.
Is the "only potent grassroots" populist movement on the right? Is populism for Democrats a dead strategy?
(This is a work in progress. As it stands, the argument here is a little sketchy, especially at the end, because some of it depends on my reading of Hofstadter, Daniel Bell, and the pluralists, and I haven't discussed them yet.)
The word "progressive" is used to indicate various reformist intellectual, cultural and political tendencies in the United States during the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.The term is notoriously vague, and some have suggested that it covers so much territory that it is more or less useless. The progressives I have in mind here are those in Congress between about 1915 and 1948 -- I pretty much ignore the Bull Moose Progressives of 1912, and cultural and intellectual progressivism generally. The three main points I want to cover here are the relationship between these progressives and the two national parties, the role of the progressives in the New Deal, and the differences between progressives and liberals.
Republicans, Democrats, and Progressives
Most of the Congressional progressives were Midwesterners or Westerners, and this partly accounts for their nickname "sons of a wild jackass", but mostly that name refers to their stubbornness and unwillingness to cooperate either with their party leaders or with each other. Some progressives ran as independents or for third parties, but most were Republicans or (less often) Democrats. Those within the two major parties were usually at odds with their national party leaders, and during the 20th century up until WWII, they formed a significant (though loose) faction in Congress. The progressives' rejection of Republican and Democratic party lines inclined them toward extreme individualism, which mean that they never formed a reliable voting bloc. Their strength was in raising issues and keeping them in the public eye, and when they were able to gain enough popular support, mainline Democrats and Republicans had to follow along. ("Mr. Smith goes to Washington" is a sort of parable of this kind of progressivism, though as I understand it strips most of the political content from what they did).
Being back home in the Midwest is always grounding. The most classic moment was a conversation in a restaurant with someone who was expressing anger at all incumbents and both parties who said to me "nobody is on our side."
That was the theme of yesterday's big day of political news. Three more establishment candidates in both parties were either beaten outright or forced into a runoff. More incumbents going down. Insurgents on the rise everywhere.
And speaking of being everywhere, the irony patrol must be utterly exhausted. While incumbents and establishment politicians are being slaughtered in every region and both parties, in conventions and primaries, politicians continue to make fools of themselves. What was Richard Blumenthal thinking? What was Mark Souder thinking? Oh, wait, thinking wasn't involved. Having an affair with a staffer who works with you on promoting abstinence-only videos is like something out of an Elmore Leonard novel, except funnier. But the irony award for the day doesn't even go to Souder, as tempting as that is: it goes to Mitch McConnell. As his hand-picked protégé was going down in flames to anti-establishment, anti-TARP bailout tea partier Rand Paul, McConnell was leading the Republicans in a desperate attempt to keep the financial reform bill from doing anything worse to his poor pathetic friends on Wall Street, all the while crying a river about how Elena Kagan wanted to hurt the free speech rights of big corporations. Politics doesn't get any better than this.
The tea partiers are wreaking their revenge at McConnell because he has deserted them in order to help Wall Street and other big corporations, just as Democratic primary voters are showing their disdain at incumbents at the same time. The bottom line is that voters are asking the age-old question "which side are you on" and finding that to their outrage, none of the politicians seem like they are on the side of angry voters. In order to have a prayer this fall, Democrats have to show the voters- both their base voters in the Rising American Electorate, and the swing voters in the working class who still don't have good jobs- that they are fighting for regular people, not the elite. When the Wall Street bailouts did not produce jobs as promised, voters' attitudes got set at the outrage level, and they still haven't been reset. It is time for Democrats to show which side they are on.
One friend of mine said to me this morning that "it's like most of our Democrats can't seem to read a poll." The New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections. The Massachusetts special election. The Utah Republican party conventions. The Mollohan party upset in West Virginia. Yesterday's results. How many wake-up calls do politicians need?
The series finale of Bill Moyers Journal last night (transcript here) fittingly opened with a segment on Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, a contemporary heartland organization carrying on not just the spirit, but a good deal of the organizing approach of the populist movement of the late 19th Century. Others have noted the loss of Bill Moyers Journal in Quick Hits, and of course it's perfectly reflective of the Obama era that we should lose such a distinctive and populist voice, and see it replaced with yet more corporate-friendly pablum.
But I want to focus on what Moyers himself focused on, and relate it back to an outstanding question from my diaries on regaining progressive focus that began with "Regaining focus: Growing a progressive majority-Part 1"--and that is the question of how we should proceed in our organizing strategy. The populist movement is an important model for this, because it was mass movement deeply rooted in local communities, which was also an intellectually sophisticated, morally grounded and historically informed movement. It was also centered outside the party system. At one point in the segment, an ICCI activist, Hugh Espey says:
The power of groups like CCI is its members. It's people that's going to give legs to our organization. People give legs to democracy. We're just everyday people, regular folks. Grandmas, grandpas, people you see in the grocery store. People you see in church. People you see at school. Just regular folks that don't want to be trampled on by big money.
These are, in fact, exactly the people that the Tea Party pretends to be, except they aren't overwhelmingly white, well-off, and conservative. Instead, they are who they say they are-and no hidden corporate sponsors!
There are a lot of angry people out there, and we have plenty of reasons to be mad. But that doesn't mean we have to be stupid.
The Tea Party movement claims to be a populist organization that spontaneously erupted from the grassroots to protest Barack Obama's usurpation of the White House and his "socialist" attempt to provide an economic stimulus and health insurance for the 44 million working poor who earn too much for Medicaid but are too young for Medicare.
But those "grassroots" were groomed by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey's FreedomWorks, political advocacy groups linked to oilman David Koch and other Republican operatives. Events were promoted by Rupert Murdoch's Fox "News" and the Wall Street Journal. Also, there are several Tea Party groups, but Tea Party Nation, a for-profit corporation, charged $549 for a convention in Nashville that drew about 600 teabaggers to hear such luminaries as former US Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), who longed for the good old days of literacy tests for voters, and former half-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), who thinks we should abandon hope for change.
Yesterday, the New Mexico House of Representatives unanimously decided to move the states' money into small banks and credit unions, becoming yet another example of the fact that progressive change will not come from the top down.
In the context of the larger movement against the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street, this is a dramatic repudiation of that behavior from a somewhat unexpected source.
The bill enables a possible switch of $2-5 billion of state funds into CUs and small banks.
If enacted, the municipal funds bill, in the works since last year and still subject to a Senate vote, would represent a setback to large national banks, like Bank of America and Wells Fargo, which have had a lock on such funds.
The altered view of New Mexico lawmakers in favoring local control of state funds, officials said, follows national mention of the New Mexico effort in the "Move Your Money" campaign of New York pundit Arianna Huffington in her online Huffington Post columns.
Several progressive thinkers have talked about how we might make common cause with populists on the right in order to make headway on issues of common interest. I am, generally speaking, pretty dubious about this, because though we populists of the left and right often find ourselves animated by the same problems, our solutions are often (to put it mildly) divergent. For example, I do not believe we could possibly work together on immigration issues, since progressives see it as a problem of enforcing employment law and protecting the weak, and the GOP base sees it as a border security problem and protecting themselves from immigrants. There's no piece of legislation that's likely to find support from both groups.
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