When I played and coached basketball and soccer, "maintaining balance" was a common teaching point. It was both an individual and a team concept. Individually, it referred to fundamentals of body posture and movement. As a team, it dealt with where players 'floated' to when there was no clear play to make. Often those 'floating' moves pass without notice. The player may not seem to be part of the action, but by 'floating' to the correct area he/she maintains the team's balance ... and that balance often enables a teammate's good play.
The same can happen in political coalitions.
More below the fold....
Maintaining Balance (Non-Cynical Saturday)
This week Morning Feature has explored progressive Democrats as a coalition rather than a single ideological bloc. On Thursday we looked at six progressive issues, illustrated in the diagram below, and that progressives may reasonably differ on priorities.
Yesterday we discussed how those different priorities manifest in how we analyze specific policy questions and evaluate proposed solutions. Each of us is more likely to see his/her higher-priority issues as an ends in themselves, and his/her lower-priority issues as means toward other ends. These differences seemed less important when we were the minority party, as we could unite around the red text in the center of the diagram: "Republicans' Policies Are Bad." And we will likely do that again as the 2010 midterms approach.
But in governing, as opposed to campaigning, different priorities and which issues one sees as ends vs. means can seem irreconcilable ... depending on whether and to where we 'float' to maintain our balance.
"Float and recover."
In basketball and soccer defense, "float to the center" is usually a good default move. If you have no specific defensive assignment and the play at the moment requires no specific response, or you've made a mistake or been outplayed, it's rarely a bad idea to 'float' toward the center of the foul lane in basketball or toward the penalty spot in soccer. The details change with each team's formation and strategies, but the idea is to 'float' to where the action would most likely flow. You may find yourself in position to break up a pass or help cut off a dribbler. More often, simply being there - absent any other specific play to make - helps to maintain your team's balance. Your presence forces opponents to adjust their moves, and the split-seconds they spend deciding how to do that give your teammates more time to make a play. To a casual observer it may not seem you had any role in that play, but you did.
This is especially true in recovering after a mistake or having been outplayed. A young player's instinctive response is try to "unmake the mistake," rushing to the action hoping to make a play from behind. That will often result in a foul, but even if it doesn't it usually upsets the team's defensive balance. Rushing to "unmake the mistake" creates other openings that alert opponents will seize. Indeed many common basketball plays - the give-and-go and pick-and-roll, for example - look to take advantage of openings left when a defender rushes to "unmake a mistake." If you watch well-coached basketball teams, you may see defenders who get caught on a pick take a step or two toward the center of the foul lane before returning their assignment. If their coaches use the same words mine did, the phrase "float and recover" likely flashed in their minds.
Our progressive center.
Similarly, as progressives in a coalition, we need to learn to "float to the center" when no other specific response is at hand. But that means our progressive center, and not the "center" of the mainstream political dialogue. The "center" of the American mainstream dialogue is actually quite far to the right of where progressives want to be. When we "float" toward that area, we affirm it as the correct default position.
Where is our progressive center? I suggest it's the area at the center of the diagram, where our progressive issues overlap. Yes, that includes criticizing Republicans' policies, but it's not limited to that. It's also offering policy arguments that affirm and reach out to as many progressive issues as possible: Privilege, Education, Civil Liberties, War, Corporatism, and the Environment.
For me, it means not being so fixed on my own top-priority issue - Privilege - that I do nothing unless I can find a privilege-based reason for doing something. If there's no privilege policy question on the table, or I've made the privilege arguments on a given question already and got nowhere, I should "float to the center" and advocate on that policy question or some other in terms that resonate for as many other progressive issues as possible. It may be that the only useful role I can play at a given moment is to help fill the progressive center, but my doing that may help someone else in the thick of the action.
Ultimately, as several readers have noted this week, all of these issues are both ideologically and structurally interrelated. Progress on any one will usually include at least some progress on some others. If we can't get the progress we'd like on our own top-priority issues right at that moment, we rarely make a bad mistake by helping to fill the progressive center and enable progress elsewhere. If I accomplish nothing else, I've staked out the progressive center as the default position ... rather than the "center" of the mainstream political dialogue.
Coalitions require teamwork, and a lot of teamwork is knowing what default action to take when there's nothing else you can do. For me, the default action is to "float to the progressive center" and help maintain our coalition's balance. What is your default action?
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Happy Saturday!