Jerome a Paris posed an excellent question with his Recommended diary. It's a question that hasn't been answered, in my mind, even by those of us who agree avidly:
But where is the "fucking nuts" left that scares the right to death and makes them want to compromise with Pelosi at all costs?
The operative word there being "scares". I want to scare Republicans silly and make them weak-kneed.
- Are there "progressive" opportunists in Congress who sap the vital energy of a budding movement? 2) Or is there a budding "fucking nuts" left that could potentially scare the Republicans into negotiating?
Jerome a Paris' diary is exactly in tone with what take-away there was from my diary on 20th century progressive legislation, and a follow-up diary on pressuring politicians. The second in particular points out that the politician Huey Long used a socialist income redistribution program called "Share Our Wealth". It was proving so popular that FDR had to create a moderate New Deal to slow SOW's momentum. In other words, FDR sold a 90% tax rate to Wall Street as their alternative to pitch-forked mobs. It worked. That's exactly the gist of Jerome a Paris here:
Where are the people arguing for 90% marginal tax rates on the rich, and cancelling the banking licences of banks that charge usurious rates on credit cards, and closing down the insurance licenses of companies that deny care to anyone, and setting minimum wages at levels that allow for decent living standards, and putting taxes on imports from countries that let kids work or have no environmental rules (all things that get very real public support if you actually ask people rather than pundits and lobbyists)?
This scares the living daylights out of Republicans: great! Unfortunately, this is not the leadership you see in Congress and if there are any individuals in Congress who argue such things, they either do it in a piecemeal way, taking one idea but leaving the rest, creating a bunch of compromised "progressives"; or they do not have a working coalition, one that won't cave precipitously.
Some on this site who seem to be farther left of me on issues conflate the meaning of what "progressive" means. We're probably wasting our time if progressive is just a nice alternative to "liberal" because liberals are scared of their own identity. Arguing that "progressive" ideas are just what the public wants creates insufficient pressure in conservative institutions. They in Congress don't care what exactly the public wants.
If the public supports marijuana decriminalization (and it does, according to polling) you don't create a Progressive Caucus who argue that. Your caucus should argue for the legalization and taxation of all drugs, and get, say 45% of the needed vote organized. That scares Republicans pale. Whatever the end result, you'll reach a point where medical marijuana become a non-issue, and children and 90-year old grandmothers are no longer shot dead in paramilitary marijuana raids. No more dead due to drug war "accidents" is a liberal victory and really a liberal value at work. But full drug legalization is the progressive stance.
The question is, do you be selfish and demand what you want, or do you take the long view? Do you set up what is needed most for inevitability?
And where are the progressives? I saw a blustery Congressman Massa video. If he's the best we have to offer, is it any surprise there's no movement on gay rights, drugs, high-speed rail? Ah, but Massa's from a swing district, you say. How about the people who aren't?
I'd posit that progressives stand for marriage equality and lesser protections for LGBT are merely liberal. Congresswoman Pelosi is from, perhaps, the most pro-gay district in the country. If she, Jane Harman, Henry Waxman, the NYC congressional delegation, Earl Blumenauer and the RI delegation can't introduce marraige-equality legislation that gets somewhere, what's the good of all the "progressives" blowing smoke up our asses about being pro-LGBT? Getting somewhere means it could, say, result in at least a panicked compromise for federal civil union rights. Liberal bare bones like anti-discrimination laws we can get from even more swing-district Dems. But we need more than anti-discrimination; we need to shift that Overton Window.
Obviously the big part of that is more and better Dems. But as long as "progressive" is just anyone from Eric Massa to Larry Kissell, as they like to brand themselves, we aren't going to get anywhere on pushing that window except very incrementally.
Dennis Kucinich, for example, could be part of such a coalition. Yet again this is not about individuals... it's about a movement infiltrating Congress. As long as he' anything more than an unexceptional soldier in its army we're in trouble. Kucinich scares no one.
And don't be satisfied by a Congress-critter who can go on the air and make a good soundbyte. Alan Grayson and Al Franken are political heroes of mine, but if they're the best pressure we can put on Obama from the left, the next decade won't be enough to make much of anyone I've known on here happy.