When the congressional Democrats joined the Republicans in attacking ACORN and cutting off its funding--without even the pretense of an investigation to establish a rational basis for their actions--they clearly demonstrated the almost utter meaninglessness of electing a Democratic majority over the past two wave elections. The elections were clearly important in terms of removing the GOP from direct power, so that it's worst abuses were either ended or toned down.
But clearly nothing remotely resembling actual Democratic governance has emerged to take it's place. And this vote was a stark, harrowing reminder of how politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum: if you don't have a positive agenda, you will end up voting for any sort of stupid, evil shit that comes down the line, if the stampede factor is high enough. Or, to put it more bluntly: If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything. So here's a quick run-down on what I see as six of the principle evils involved in this heinous act. I invite everyone to add to my list in comments.
(1) Screw The Poor, Part 1: The defunding directly takes money away fromthe leading organization involved in helping low and moderate income keep their homes. ACORN's been getting around $3 million a year to do this kind of work--counseling low- and moderate-income families and individuals.
As Zach Roth reported for TPMMuckraker:
Whatever you think about ACORN, poor people and minorities may end up being hurt the most by Congress's sudden vendetta against the group....
According to Brian Kettenring, ACORN's deputy director of national operations, the group's voter-registration work is funded entirely through private sources -- primarily membership dues and foundation grants. So that work would be unaffected.
The same goes for ACORN's core operations -- the rent on its offices, for instance.
In recent years, ACORN has been getting around $2-3 million in federal funds annually, said Kettenring, stressing that this was a rough estimate. That's about 10 percent of its total budget for the year.
That money goes mostly to housing work: primarily fair housing programs, which fight housing discrimination; and foreclosure-prevention programs, which help low-income people obtain loan modifications so they don't lose their homes, and which educate people about preventing foreclosure.
Important work these days, you might say. Losing federal funds, said Kettenring, "would impact our ability to help people save their home."
In other words, ACORN itself, said Kettenring, won't be hurt much by Congress's action. It's the people who ACORN works with -- who tend to be among the neediest -- who will lose out.
To be sure, it's fair to question how effective those programs ultimately are....
But it's not as if the federal money will now go to a different group that does this work more effectively. So the ultimate result, of course, is less help for struggling Americans, in very difficult economic times. As members of both parties compete to express their outrage, that's worth keeping in mind.
In contrast, the top-tier financial firms have received more than $10 trillion in various forms of financial assistance from the government--a sum that's over 3 million times the annual $3 million that ACORN has received. Any quetions?
(2) Screw The Poor, Part 2: Cutting back on voter registration for minority and low-income voters. The federal funds have nothing to do with this, but as Roth also notes:
Late Update: A different ACORN spokesman tells the Wall Street Journal that the group is considering cutting its voter-registration work. That's not because of any funding issue. Rather, it's a desire to avoid "political attacks."
Of course, the GOP has been fighting to suppress minority voters for more than half a century. So, way to go, congressional Democrats! Of course, since they don't really care very much about passing legislation, it's really not a very big deal to them. That's why they are the enemy every bit as much as the Republicans are.
(3) Empower Demonization: The post-New Deal GOP is entirely built on demonization, from McCarthyism to Nixon's "Southern Strategy" to Reagtan's "welfare queens" to Willie Horton and beyond. The stupidest thing that Democrats can do is cave in to rightwing demonization, and thereby empower it. So, naturally, that's what the Versailles Dems do.
(4) VALIDATE Demonization: But the Versailles Democrats didn't just empower conservative demonization by allowing it to succeed. They joined in on it--essentially saying that conservatives were right to demonize ACRORN.
(5) Invalidate the reason for voting for Democrats in the first place. This would not necessarily be a bad thing if we lived in an alternative universe were (a) national third party politics was a viable possibility, with a substantial history behind it, and (b) low-income voters were not also largely low-information voters, who desperately need sharp party divisions in order to participate in electoral politics relatively effectively. Because we do not live in that alternative universe, this action clearly demoralizes and outrages progressives, and intensifies divisions within progressive ranks between those who advocate national third party politics and those who--however reluctantly--do not.
(6) A general "fuck you" to all grassroots activists. Seriously, if I have to explain this one to you, I'm afraid that I can't possibly explain it to you.
In a couple of recent diaries (here and here), David's written about a troubling phenomenon: a progressive media outlet warning against progressives seeking to mobilize political power. I hope to have more to say about this incident later, as there are a number of different sources of confusion layered together in the argument being made against progressive power. But here I want to focus on what I regard as the big one: the false equivalence between the left and the right, which often depends on elevating form and ignoring substance.
In the second diary, David highlighted this comment from Wendy Norris of the Colorado Independent:
"Calling for party purges and demanding litmus tests has gotten the conservatives into the out-of-power pickle they find themselves in these days. Do progressives really want to follow that losing strategy?"
But is this assumed equivalence really real? If one looks at the details involved, it surely is not. The point David was pressing, which apparently got Norris so vexed, concerned lack of support for the Employee Free Choice Act--a popular position across party lines, amongst ordinary people. And this is entirely typical, as can be seen by recalling an incident earlier this month, in which David Frum emerged as the "voice of reason" smacking down Rush Limbaugh by comparing him to Jesse Jackson. Arianna Huffington, much to her credit, came to Jackson's defense on Countdown, saying she had re-read his 1988 speech at the Democratic National Convention, and praising it for its empathy and foresight.
It's worth looking back at Jackson's speech, because it truly does represent the sort of progressive vision that timid "progressives" like Norris are so afraid of--including a defense of the working poor that's a powerful reminder of why supporting EFCA should be a no-brainer for Democrats of all stripes. What Frum said, what Huffington said, and what Jackson said all on the flip.
A lot actually, Howard Dean represents the most serious threat to elite politics since at least the 1960s.
During Governor Dean's tenure as DNC chair, the Democrats won two back-to-back "wave elections" --- which has never happened before in American history --- and America's first multi-racial President was elected in a landslide. Yet, for the last five years Governor Dean has been a lightening rod for criticism among both the "serious" people in the media and the "serious" people in his own party.
So why doesn't the establishment like Howard Dean? It's simple really; Howard Dean represents a significant threat to 21st century elite politics.
It's not that Democrats are dumb, it's that they're chickensh*t. Or as Glenn Hurowitz might put it in Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party, and he's ever so much more polite about it than I am, they lack courage.
While I'm not entirely convinced away from the suspicion that many Democratic politicians aren't just doing exactly what they really want to, (as corporate frontpeople basically running a vote scam,) Hurowitz makes a convincing case in this book that bold, progressive stands are also good-to-neutral electoral politics. Which is to say that, should Democrats actually believe in liberal political aims, they in no way jeopardize relations with voters. As he says:
... [C]andidates' positions on all issues combined account for only six percent of the election outcome, ... economic conditions account for 15 percent of a voter's decision; a voter's perception of a candidate's personal qualities (particularly whether or not the candidate is considered a "strong leader"), 16 percent; and a candidate's party a whopping 38 percent ... [People even] traditionally take out latent frustration about the weather on incumbents.
... During the 1994 "tidal Wave" that was widely blamed on excessive Democratic liberalism, [Professors Neil Wollman and Leonard Williams] found that even in the most "marginal" districts - those where the incumbent had won with less than 55 percent of the vote in 1992, 85 percent of Democratic liberals won re-election, while only 43 percent of moderates did. Their analysis of the 2006 election, however, found that ideology - right or left - had no discernible impact on the outcome of different races. ...
Hurowitz certainly doesn't argue here that issues don't matter. A recurring theme is the way a strong stand for issues that are important to people on your team, or who are genuinely approachable, builds coalitions that can fight on your behalf and overcome public apathy and disinterest, as well as powerfully funded opposition.
Citing Wellstone's surges in popularity when he combined taking stands that reinforced a "strong leader" image with bread-and-butter constituent service, Hurowitz points a way towards overcoming the challenge of getting progressive policies past the low-information voter. You need a loyal coalition that trusts you; that stands by you because you've stood by them.
The contrast between Hurowitz' description of one of Camp Wellstone's central lessons, that "campaigning for political office, while extremely important in its own right, is largely a vehicle for getting people involved in political movements," and what he described as Bill Clinton's brand of "gutless wonder" politics, could hardly be more stark. In describing Clinton's disastrous early term, he could be writing about any number of elected Democrats who seem to have drawn entirely the wrong lessons from our last Democratic president's time in office:
... Capitulation after capitulation was gradually forming a clear image in the heads of the public, Clinton's friends, and especially his enemies. He became the man who would always blink first, who would abandon his fgriends in vain attemmpts to appease those who hated him. With his personal and ideological friends worrying that Clinton would push them overboard to avoid even the smallest fight, they became more and more reluctant to rally to his cause or even work closely with him. And his enemies learned that no matter how far you pushed, it was almost impossible to find a bottom line. ...
Senate Democrats, as we all know, went on to exceed even Clinton's standards for abandoning allies, rushing to censure the grassroots group MoveOn with the excuse of an ad they found distasteful. Hurowitz profiles MoveOn's rise to prominence through a sense of personal connection with their membership that created a citizens' lobby that Congress finds, by all accounts, deeply annoying.
Is there really hope for putting some spine back in this donkey?
Since there is a lot of discussion of progressive strategy on Open Left, we wanted to let people know about a new resource: The Progressive Strategy Brain (PSB), a dynamic map that connects some 4000 entries to show the complexity of progressive strategy and politics:
http://comw.org/pssp/PSB/index...
Needless to say, Open Left figures prominently in PSB: http://comw.org/pssp/PSB/index...
We hope progressives will find PSB useful to discover new connections and information, that they hadn't considered before, or at least not in that context.
Clearly, just like progressive strategy itself, PSB is very much a work in progress, and in many ways necessarily so. This is why it will be updated every Monday, so as to make it more accurate, relevant and comprehensive.
Since the somewhat unusual format might take some getting used to, here is a short introduction:
http://progressive-strategy.bl...
Please let us know what you think! We are very much looking forward to your suggestions and constructive criticism.
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