My opinion, expressed over many posts, has been this: Staying power, persistence and perseverance is as important to political movements as the strength of our beliefs.
It's foolish to make this one fight an all or nothing fight. There is no all or nothing fight in politics. There's always a tomorrow. Many political movements have flamed out and crashed on account of their unwillingness to be patient, to depend on more than just the sentiment of the moment.
The Conservative movement didn't become the default it has been in the past by winning every fight. Only the most recent GOP strategists have tried that in their hubris. No, Republicans accepted small victories until they could build them up into larger ones.
Did you fight for Obama so he could win all your fights overnight, so that the pure presence of sixty Democrats would somehow make us impervious to Republican obstruction? Then you fought in a manner that meant that it was inevitable for you to be disappointed.
We are having to turn around a party that was just a few years ago lapdogs to the Republicans. We are having to turn around a country that's been going down the Republican road in one way or another for three decades, and where effect, liberal Democrats have been the exception in the White House, not the rule. We are having to turn the momentum of thirty years worth of government favoritism for corporate America, and the increasing conservatism of the Courts.
There are some who see the mixed results of the last year, and on the healthcare bill, and wonder whether there is really any turning around the situation. Folks, unfortunately, have missed an important turning point in their own political sensibilities: where they stop thinking like a minority party.
I would say that much of the obstruction and contrarianism of the past year has been about sapping our morale, encouraging our despair. We are meant to feel powerless, disenfranchised. We are meant to turn inwards on ourselves, and start a civil war in our party.
I'm not saying people should be pleased with this year's results. Frankly, that would be moronic. No, instead, what I'm saying is that we should see this as the bottom of a curve that had long been going downhill, and the start of what, by nature, will be an uphill battle, but a worthy battle to engage in. This is an inflection point, for you mathematically inclined Kossacks.
We cannot turn the tide of American political history with just one election, with just one years worth of political battling. We cannot simply put Democrats in Washington, and expect the default result to be the advance of Progressive policy.
This is a country of diverse political interests. If we are to advance, we either advance with others' deference, or by successfully outcompeting other's political coalition. We were never going to advance without compromise, and the compromises we start winning with are going to be the toughest because they are going to be the most unfair.
But let's look at history. The last time progressives were on the rise, they had to fight for all the things that even now we take for granted for the first time, back when opposing child labor was a new and radical thing to do, back when the Forty hour work week, minimum wage, and union representation were not the fond memories of the current generation, but the liberal ideas of the new one.
There were liberals who were called communists for their beliefs back in a time where the existence of the Soviet Union and the cold war gave sinister heft to such charges.
Progressives in times past help built the just society we live in, with its civil rights, its religious liberty, it's economic justice, and faced down far harsher opposition than we ever did.
So take a moment to think about that when you complain that Obama and the Democrats in Washington haven't saved the world from Conservatism in one year. Take a moment to consider that nearly every movement in the right direction started with what was often a toothless gimmee to those who wanted real reform. But those gimmees set precedent for the laws that would expand into the rights and regulations that would bring better order and justice to this country.
Those who suggest FDR had it perfect forget that even with overwhelming majorities, he often found his own party resistant to the reforms he enacted. Those who point to LBJ's example with the great society reforms forget just how brutal his politics would and could be, and just how much horse-trading and watering down he had to do.
But we honor FDR and LBJ because they got these reforms rolling. They started us down the path to more equitable societies. They didn't get there instantly, or even necessarily share our beliefs we hold them, but they got our foot in that door.
The Republican, too, didn't start flat out with everything they wanted. They started their ball rolling first Reagan's top tax rate was fifty percent, down from an even highter number. It was even higher than the largest tax increase Obama proposes. But he had to start his anti-tax crusade from somewhere. Only after years of tax cuts being SOP are we seeing the Republicans capable of the kind of excessive cuts they are now. They had to start somewhere.
Reagan and others had to start somewhere in their Union busting, in their perversion of campaign finance reform, in their dismantling of consumer and environmental protections.
They built to where things are now. That we expect that we can wave a magic wand an expect things to turn out properly is unrealistic. The America we are in wasn't made this way in the space of a year, and it won't be unmade that quickly, either.
We need to take the long view. If forced to make compromises, our goal should be to make a less problematic compromise each time, to push better and better bills, and elect better and better Democrats, while keeping our numbers up. Sometimes we'll need to set up camp on the road to our next fight, and keep our position relatively moderated, but ultimately, we will only win what we want to win with a long-term, committed campaign of political persuasion and legislative change.
Rather than ask for a self-destructive backlash, our idea should be to carefully, selectively push better candidates, popularize better positions. We do this until the balance of the conflict between left and right is much better in our direction. We don't quite, or let despair cut our efforts short.