The Overton Window is a commonly-cited political strategy here at DailyKos. Sadly, its application often leads to bitter arguments between so-called "purists" and "pragmatists." Some may be "sport fighting" between people who like to argue. Some may be trolling by provocateurs who want to divide Democrats. I think most is sincere disagreement rooted in a misunderstanding - both by some "purists" and by some "pragmatists" - of what the Overton Window is and how that strategy works. And it does work.
We need both "purists" and "pragmatists" in the Democratic Party, and in the progressive movement. We also accomplish more when we work together, and we can do that better if we understand what each other is about.
More below the fold....
Window Washing, Part I - What Window?
This week Morning Feature will take another look at the Overton Window. (We discussed this topic last November, but from a different perspective.) Today we'll discuss why our party needs both "purists" and "pragmatists" to be effective. Tomorrow we'll consider the Overton Window in terms of two other concepts: the legislative axiom of More Change = More Resistance, and the 40/60 Rule of Effective Governance. Saturday, as we did in November, we'll conclude by offering some Unthinkably Progressive ideas, this time focusing on state and local issues.
Indeed I'll try to focus on state and local issues throughout the week, because too often we progressives are so focused on national and global issues that we overlook what's happening nearer to home. Many of the most important government actions happen in local or state government, as we saw Monday with the Florida legislature's passage of Senate Bill 6. As of yesterday, Governor Charlie Crist has not announced whether he will sign or veto the bill. If he does neither by Saturday, the bill becomes law without his signature. I doubt he will do that, as that would give him the worst of both political worlds: the blowback of the very unpopular bill, without the praise of the bill's few supporters. Calls opposing the bill reportedly outnumber calls supporting it by over 20:1.
Action Link: Please contact Governor Crist's office and ask him to veto this bill.
Senate Bill 6 and the Overton Window.
Were Governor Crist to sign this bill, it would be the near-culmination of an idea that began percolating in conservative think tanks back in the early 1980s. For reasons discussed in Monday's comments, conservatives oppose public schools as the core of our nation's primary and secondary education system. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy has been one of the seedbeds for this idea, and their position paper on private school tuition tax credits offers yet another strategy for closing public schools by starving their funding. Florida Senate Bill 6 includes vouchers for private schools - called "scholarships" - although the bill exempts private schools from the teacher certification and standardized student testing it would require of public schools.
I mention the Mackinac Center because that's where Joe Overton developed the strategy now known as the Overton Window and they often mention privatized education as an example of the strategy in action. But that action has happened over decades, because the Overton Window is a very long-term, slow-acting strategy. As Nathan Russell writes in the linked essay:
What does a think tank do? Does it educate? Advocate policy? Should a think tank focus on short-term or long-term goals?
Among Joe Overton’s many contributions, he was instrumental in defining the role of the Mackinac Center in particular and think tanks in general. He understood that, regardless of how persuasive the think tank, lawmakers are constrained by the political climate. Therefore, Overton concluded, to be truly successful, the Mackinac Center should not focus on direct policy advocacy, but instead should focus on educating lawmakers and the public in an attempt to change the political climate.
Conservatives were very successful in changing the political climate. I suggested in February that the Bush administration marked, I hope, the solstice of a Conservative Winter whose Autumn began in the late 1960s. If we have begun moving toward a Progressive Spring, it's still very early and the political climate is still very cold. While Democrats control both houses of Congress and President Obama is in the White House, other powerful institutions - the federal judiciary and agencies, many state and local governments, the media, and even parts of academia - are still dominated by conservative actors or, more important, by conservative ideas.
The importance of "pragmatists" and "purists."
The opening paragraph quoted above might as easily be asked of DailyKos. What do we do? Do we educate? Advocate policy and/or candidates? Should we focus on short-term or long-term goals? Founder Markos Moulitsas' oft-quoted statement from the FAQ doesn't precisely answer those questions:
This is a Democratic blog, a partisan blog. One that recognizes that Democrats run from left to right on the ideological spectrum, and yet we're all still in this fight together. We happily embrace centrists like NDN's Simon Rosenberg and Howard Dean, conservatives like Martin Frost and Brad Carson, and liberals like John Kerry and Barack Obama. Liberal? Yeah, we're around here and we're proud. But it's not a liberal blog. It's a Democratic blog with one goal in mind: electoral victory. And since we haven't gotten any of that from the current crew, we're one more thing: a reform blog. The battle for the party is not an ideological battle. It's one between establishment and anti-establishment factions. And as I've said a million times, the status quo is untenable.
Because our goals include both "electoral victory" and also "reform," our site has both short-term and long-term goals. We want and should work for short-term victories on legislation and in upcoming elections, and for long-term reform of our party and our nation's political dialogue, to warm the political climate and bring on a Progressive Spring and Summer.
The short-term electoral and legislative victories will feature "pragmatists," as the scope of those battles is limited by what is politically possible today. Demanding nothing less than the impossible is an excellent strategy for getting nothing at all, and getting nothing at all is not a "victory." As we'll discuss tomorrow, the more change we seek the more resistance we encounter, and any legislative progress we make can be undone by an electoral defeat that allows conservatives to gut the implementation and enforcement of progressive legislation.
But long-term reform requires "purists" who are willing to advocate today for Radically or even Unthinkably Progressive ideas. If we advocate only what is possible today, we accept today's Overton Window as if it were an immutable fact. While we can't win long-term victories through short-term defeats, neither can we "expand the window of the politically possible" without pushing beyond its present edges. That means passionate advocacy - today! - for more progressive solutions we know are Radical or even Unthinkable in today's political climate.
We need both "pragmatists" and "purists" - both short-term electoral and legislative victories, and long-term reform of our party and our national political dialogue - to effect a Progressive Spring and Summer. Pitting each against the other is neither helpful nor reasonable. We need both.
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Happy Thursday!