No, I am not a troll. I am a dedicated progressive who is most focused on creating a government designed to help people. yesterday, I put up a posting talking about the need for progressives to focus on the millions of people who have been helped under Obama, rather than just focus on their own personal bugaboos or emotions or sense of being dissed. (I have seen way too many people on here say things like, you said things in a way against me that were mean, so why should i vote?)
I believe our policies put people first, while conservatives put the top 2 percent first. I believe, truthfully, that our policies are the good and the conservatives policies are evil.
And I believe that progressives can be the dullest knives in the drawer sometimes.
Why? When things don't go well for us, some of us bitch and stomp our feet and say we won't vote. When things don't go well for conservatives, they organize. And become a powerful, unified block. And vote.
The progressive transformation of America (in history, not from last week or something) is rich with success. But people need to understand it. And only then can its greatness be rekindled.
Political power comes at the ballot box, not from the couch. People who don't vote simply because they do not get absolute perfection are totally unreliable as voters. They live in a world where they believe either in symbolic -- yet unsuccessful -- battles, or just in a fantasy land where they think the political system is not rife with opposition that can upend the progressive approach.
So some of us, rather than looking at our step-by-step success (which is exactly what happened throughout the history of the progressive movement) instead start attacking when things aren't perfect.
I have seen more than a few people say "when I don't vote, they will know to pay attention to me next time."
Someone, please, tell me any time in history that has happened? That unorganized complainers sitting out has caused anything to happen? If you are unreliable, then the politics turns towards the more reliable -- the independents. And appealing to them goes the other way.
Progressivism has become too much a series of ideas rather than a political movement. I could write about this on and on, but someone else has done so, and in far more eloquent a way than I could. please read this.
Who has one political power by forming into a collective movement and then voting?
Unions (yes, they still have power)
Christian right
Supply siders
Anti-abortionists (f they quit voting when they didn't get everything they wanted, they would be a joke now)
The Tea Party (dumb as they are, the rethugs now listen to them)
Do you see a trend here? Most of these groups are conservative, with almost undisputed power. All of them have a place at the political table.
We need a progressive movement! A truly organized effort, that unifies in power, and is not undermined by the pouting of a few vocal complainers. Here is a very sad fact -- when you google the words "progressive movement'' everything that comes back is about the events from 1890-1920. (read here and here) That movement, each history says, ended in 1920. Ninety years later, it is still dead, because it has not reorganized itself.
The progressives of that era recognized that politics is a ceaseless battle, not a system where one group gets everything they want, all at once. They focused on a step -- an achievable goal -- one that transformed the direction of politics, and then could be expanded on. The steps began:
- Removing corruption from poltics. Not child labor, not trustbusting, but fixing the system. And that was done by voting and making a unified voice heard.
The muckrakers began to focus attention on the plight of the poor, with the results:
- Focusing on children and women with the establishment of settlement houses, an effort led by Jane Addams.
Other items --
- child labor was a twenty year battle, moving forward bit by bit and only really taking root in after 1915 -- 35 years after the movement started.
- Trustbusting -- took 15 years to begin.
- Workmen's comp -- 30 years
- Financial aid to farmers -- 30 years
- Establishment of 8-hour day and overtime pay -- 31 years
I am NOT saying we need to wait decades for success. I am saying, we are having success and we keep moving the boat forward as a movement, not as a bunch of people who drop out of the system.
Given that they ignore the millions of people who have been helped by Obama, I don't understand those who say they will drop out of the process by not votings. If they truly wanted to have an impact, they would organize groups, meetings, goals, lobbying, publicity and so on. They wouldn't sit on a couch eating cheetos on election day, smiling about the impact they are having on the system.
Kos has done a lot to start forming a movement, but it is not a political force yet, not like in the late 19th and early 20th century.
So, are the conservatives smarter than us? Politically, yes.
Can we beat them? If we want to, yes, Our ideas are better. We just aren't a movement.
We need to rekindle the progressive movement. We can do it. But not by bitching. By work.