Yesterday, Ohio voters overwhelmingly rejected the effort to revoke basic worker rights, delivering a stunning rebuke to conservative Governor John Kasich. That spark was lit in Madison, Wisconsin last winter when workers took over the state capitol and launched unprecedented recall elections that sobered right-wing Governor Scott Walker and the Republican state legislature. The Occupy Wall Street movement turned the spark into a conflagration, transforming the political horizon.
Now, a range of progressive groups, led by Progressive Majority, are calling on citizen activists to Run for America, announcing a plan to recruit 2012 progressive candidates in 2012 to run for public office at every level -- from school board to state legislatures to Congress.
Two years ago, the Tea Party turned protest into political power, fielding right-wing challengers to office holders of both parties. Public dismay with the failed economy enabled Republicans to capture the House of Representatives, and state houses and legislatures across the country. They captured 675 state legislative seats, the largest sweep since 1938. Shock doctrine conservatives then used the crisis to cut taxes on corporations while savaging public services. They moved to roll back worker rights to weaken unions, their most organized opposition. Realizing they represented a minority position, they passed a range of laws seeking to constrict voting rights, requiring photo IDs, limiting early voting, etc., Then they went after women's rights, environmental protections, and the poor while doing most of what the business lobby asked of them.
Now from Madison to Wall Street and across the country, the new populist uprising is challenging the failed conservative ideas and corporate interests that have dominated our politics to devastating effect. The question now is whether that uprising will generate progressive challengers to conservative office holders in both parties. That will take not just inspiration but organization as well.
To supply that, Progressive Majority has joined with Moveon.org, US Action, the Center for Community Change, Rebuild the Dream, the New Organizing Institute and other partners in the emerging American Dream Movement to set the goal of recruiting and supporting 2012 candidates in 2012.
Progressive Majority, led by Gloria Totten, marks its tenth anniversary this year. (Full disclosure: I helped found PM and serve as its board chair.) It is the only national progressive organization dedicated to electing progressive champions at the state and local levels. Prior to 2010, it helped elect more than 400 progressives, serving to flip six state legislative chambers, and 40 local governments. PM has 500 candidates in its "farm team," preparing to run in 2012 and beyond. It provides citizen candidates with the support they need to run serious campaigns.
And now it has launched an unprecedented effort to enlist thousands of progressives to enter the electoral lists and run for office. With characteristic clarity, PM President Gloria Totten summarizes the effort:
Here's our plan for taking on the right. Defeat them. Get them out of office at every single level -- the school board, city council, the mayor, state legislatures, U.S. Congress. Get them out. These are dangerous times which require ambitious measures.
This isn't a partisan effort. Progressives are well aware that corporate interests and conservative ideas compromise many Democrats as well as Republicans. When Illinois Senator Dick Durbin described Wall Street's hold over the Congress -- "they own the place"--he wasn't referring just to their purchase of Republicans.
As Totten puts it, "Putting hundreds of people in office isn't enough. If we keep electing the same old kind of Democrat, we are not going to get the kind of change that we need." So Progressive Majority will recruit progressive champions -- citizen activists who are prepared to make the personal sacrifice to run for office, and help turn this country around.
To achieve this, Run for America has to overcome widespread cynicism about electoral politics. We just witnessed entrenched interests dilute, delay and defeat needed reforms in Washington, even with a Democratic president, a mandate for change, and Democratic majorities in both Houses. Then Republicans, fueled by Tea Party protests, took the majority in the House, and immediately pursued the agenda of their big money contributors -- voting to cut taxes on the rich, roll back financial and environmental protections, dismantle Medicare and Medicaid, and slash vital investment in everything from education to public health.
As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich put it, urging activists to run at the Take Back the American Dream Conference in Washington, conservatives count on "demoralization and cynicism. Their number one weapon is to discredit government, discredit the capacity of us working together through the institutions of government given to us by the Constitution and the Founding Fathers.... because if people really believe nothing can change, and they can have no part in changing it, then that is a self-fulfilling prophecy."
Needless to say, any progressive candidate faces a hard road. Opponents will be well funded. Money has to be countered with mobilization. Discouraged voters have to be inspired to trust again. It isn't easy.
But it is utterly essential. Over the next years, at every level of government, this country will face brutal choices. The conservative era that began with Reagan has resulted in unprecedented inequality, a declining middle class, a weakened labor movement, good jobs shipped abroad, and poverty spreading. Then Wall Street excesses blew up the economy, dramatically increasing the national debt, and devastating public budgets at every level. We now are faced with the bill for the mess, even as we have to build a new foundation for the economy.
Conservatives are utterly clear about their priorities. They want to continue the course we are on. They want the most vulnerable to pay the bill for Wall Street's mess, even as they champion more top end and corporate tax cuts.
To counter this will take more than protest. We need progressives in office willing to challenge this agenda, and to forge vital reforms. We've seen the Congressional Progressive Caucus lead the demand for jobs. We've seen Senator Bernie Sanders challenge the big banks. We've witnessed how effective advocates like Sen. Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren can actually make things happen. Now we need to elect not a handful of progressive champions, but a critical mass, able to take on the powerful interests opposed to change. What Progressive Majority and its partners offer is vital support for those willing to step up.
As voters in Ohio have shown, politics is not a spectator sport. Democracy depends on citizens exercising the power of the vote to counter the power of money. With Run for America, Progressive Majority is looking for a few good men and women to take the field. If you will Run for America, go here.
Follow Robert L. Borosage on Twitter: www.twitter.com/borosage
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 |
|
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
Check on the "progressive values" which are listed for the organization and see if you agree with all of them. I do, so I began to wonder why I have not been particularly enthusiastic about this progressive movement over the last 10 years. It seems to be for economic justice, for preserving the environment, for human equality, for public education, for democracy, etc., but it makes no mention of the real problem in reforming our culture-- the religious patriarchy.
The religious patriarchy is discriminatory, anti-science, authoritarian, and unrealistic.
Until we get rid of the hold that the religious patriarchy has on the citizens of the United States, we can forget about achieving any of the progressive values that this "Progressive Majority" or the Green Party or any other reform party promotes. They are just trying to swim up a swift-running stream.
The House and Senate could still be elected offices that write legislation, but for EACH bill, a "jury", selected as our court system does, but only from registered voters, could be convened in specially-equipped chambers in each district, where the cases and voting could be done remotely via video feeds, etc. from all over the country, to approve or throw out legislation passed by the elected law-writers. Service should be compulsory if called, and expert witnesses could be called by the opposing sides, but in the end, the FINAL, BINDING decisions would be made by the unelected "jury". They would have been screened (as in a jury pool) to eliminate potential conflicts of interest, and "lobbying" would be on par with jury tampering.
On election day, incumbents would have to answer to their constituents if they had supported legislation the people rejected. Maybe the day would come when the influence of lobbyists is negated, and corporations stop interfering with democracy.
Of course, we're unlikely to see such a system take shape, but if you don't have dreams, you'll never have a dream come true.
Progressives, by definition, are folks who earnestly believe in the infallibility of government and there has not been a single initiative, from any state/county/city government that has demonstrated that the general public shares that same sentiment.
Trashing the TEApots, only to turn around, wishing that the Democratic Party was driven by their own TEApots, is utterly foolish and needs to be called so.
There is a deep thirst and hunger for a defiantly liberal majority in our government, and it's about time that progressives and "progressives" got on board.
The country is far more in line with a vision of America as presented by President Obama then they are with the America presented by Senator Sanders, and folks need to finally acknowledge that.
An America where the "rules of the the road" and the opportunity to succeed are as fair, for as many people as possible, rather than an America where one's success is solely predicated on what the government has set aside for you.
The Progressive Era in the United States was a period of social activism and political reform that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s. One main goal of the Progressive movement was purification of government, as Progressives tried to eliminate corruption by exposing and undercutting political machines and bosses. Many (but not all) Progressives supported prohibition in order to destroy the political power of local bosses based in saloons. At the same time, women's suffrage was promoted to bring a "purer" female vote into the arena. A second theme was achieving efficiency in every sector by identifying old ways that needed modernizing, and emphasizing scientific, medical and engineering solutions.
Many people led efforts to reform local government, education, medicine, finance, insurance, industry, railroads, churches, and many other areas. Progressives transformed, professionalized and made "scientific" the social sciences, especially history, economics, and political science. In academic fields the day of the amateur author gave way to the research professor who published in the new scholarly journals and presses. The national political leaders included Theodore Roosevelt, Robert M. La Follette, Sr., Charles Evans Hughes and Herbert Hoover on the Republican side, and William Jennings Bryan, Woodrow Wilson and Al Smith on the Democratic side.
Progressives, to their core, seem to believe that government is the answer to all problems. Progressives oppose the argument that government is, inherently, the problem and they even oppose the argument that government is merely a tool, through which the citizenry can solve problems.
The reforms that "flourished from the 1890s through the 1920s" were not driven by some progressive infatuation with government; they were driven by the underlying liberal belief that a government, where as many people as possible had a say in governing and the process was made as open and as fair as possible, was the only way that we, as a citizenry, would have any chance at pursuing 'the American Dream'. Liberalism drove the "period of social activism and political reform", and that needs to be made absolutely clear.
To argue the nuance in personalities is a discussion for another time.
That said, people support Progressive policies when they are stated without any of the words America has been brainwashed into rejecting.
Still, my original point still hold strong; if given the choice of living in Barack Obama's America and living in Bernie Sander's America, the general public breaks, in lopsided fashion, for Pres. Obama.
You take the 5-7 major issues of the day, and you compare how Pres. Obama has talked about dealing with those issues and how Sen. Sanders has talked about dealing with those issues, and it's not even close.
To wrap yourself around the notion that, if only the general public hadn't already been 'brainwashed', they'd be in the streets, calling for single payer, 'end of all fighting', etc, but that's not reality.
"Yesterday, Ohio voters overwhelmingly rejected the effort of feds to take over health care, delivering a stunning rebuke to liberal president Barack Obama. That spark was lit in Washington DC last year when the Tea Party took over the political debate and launched unprecedented shifts in voter turnout that sobered left-wing president Barack Obama and the democrat legislature. The Tea Party movement turned the spark into a conflagration, transforming the political horizon."
I work in a non-union (we have been forbidden to talk (threat to fire) to them by the administration) school. The administration has fired 6 teacher ( very small school k-12 with under 250 students) since the first of the year for items such as not going to a non-paid Halloween festival because of religious convictions. It is wrong but the teachers here have no recourse but to sue witch is difficult on a Native American reservation.
Most big corporations don't even provide pension plans these days. They recommend that employees invest in 401K plans and with the state of the economy and the volatility of the stock market, even 401K's aren't a safe bet anymore.
i succumbed to my eternal and unrelenting desire to get my country back when i voted for obama, only to be rewarded with a president who has taken the national security state well beyond the excesses of george bush, who sanctions the remotely-controlled, targeted killing not only of foreign innocents but also of american civilians, who has populated the closest ranks of his advisers with wall street elites, and who is now taking a populist tack to try to win me back...
please don't try to crank up my enthusiasm and co-opt my energy and money for getting 2012 progressive candidates to run in 2012... ain't gonna happen...
http://takeitpersonally.blogspot.com/
So, more and better conservatives is what America needs? Seems you've been asleep for the past 35 years. It was, no doubt, conservative ideas that has destroyed the American Dream for millions now unemployed. I hardly think more of those "good conservative values" is likely to make amends for the destruction visited on us by their 19th century ideology.
But, it's your vote, and how you use it is your choice. But, why come here and express your foolish feelings for those you despise? Be an adult and refrain from further foolishness.