I have spent the last couple days pondering the announcement that NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to release a "Progressive Agenda to Combat Income Inequality" . . . and he plans to do it on the steps of the US Capitol. While I'm very interesting in what his Progressive Agenda is going to contain, I am also a little afraid.
Is he going to try and go too far, too soon?
Now, I’m not normally a big fan of political pledges. Gods know, I have railed against them in the past. But, I have to admit, this has gotten my attention.
I don’t normally read Politico, but I saw a story yesterday that got picked up by the Huffington Post. It said that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has been working with a group of national progressives to take a page from Newt Gingrich’s playbook and draft a “Progressive Agenda to Combat Income Inequality.” And he’s going to present it this coming Tuesday . . . on the steps of U.S. Capitol.
I will, of course, withhold judgement the Agenda until I actually see what’s in it. The fact that Joseph Stiglitz and John Del Cecato (who helped get de Blasio elected) were involved bodes well, however. As does that fact that, according to the Politico article, the following people (all of whom I respect) have signed on: “Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.); Reps. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), and Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.); Marian Wright Edelman and Howard Dean; national labor leaders; and actors Susan Sarandon and Steve Buscemi.”
All of this is very encouraging. This could be an opportunity to really push the Democratic Party toward a more progressive and populist stance. It also has the potential to really energize a lot people on the Left (regardless of what political party they may or may not belong to). This might serve as a central, organizing philosophy which could help change the political arena for years to come; it could give the Left a unified ideology, instead of the coalition of ideologies we have now. And I very strongly believe that such as change is not only desirable, but is necessary.
However . . .
My wife and I were talking about this last night, and we both agreed that this also has the great potential to be really bad move (at least right now). After both of us reading the bio piece on Mayor de Blasio in Rolling Stone (online here and in the May 21st print issue), we’re a little afraid that he might make the mistake of trying to go too far, too fast.
While there are a number of people in the country right now who identify as “Progressives,” we are by no means a majority. That means that we have to be wary of doing things that will cause a majority of people (and especially voters) to view Progressives in the same way we view the “Right-Wing Nut Jobs” (RWNJs) – you know, the ones who are convinced that the up-coming, routine military training exercise is actually a secret plot by the “Guvmnt” to seize control of Texas and impose martial law, using tunnels under empty Wal-Marts as bases (and they really do believe this crap).
If de Blasio’s “Progressive Agenda” goes too far, that’s the kind of reaction many could have not just the Agenda but to Progressives in general. And that would mean that it could well lose support from mainstream Democrats, centrists, and a number of independents.
I have heard a great deal of talk in the last few years about how “more people are becoming independents” and how “independents tend to lean more to the Left.” Statistically, this is true; however, it seems that some people are reading too much into that. The implication that some draw from this is that the growing number of independents helps to strengthen the Democrats. While the number of people who identify as “independent” has been steadily increasing since about 2004, the percentage of those independents who lean either Democratic or Republican pretty much mirrors the Dem/Rep split overall. About 48% of independents lean Democratic and 39% lean Republican, while the remaining 13% don’t have a leaning one way or the other. (Here are the numbers from the Pew Research Center from just last month.) In other words, just because more people are identifying as independents does not mean that the Democratic party is getting stronger. In fact, in the last 20 years, the percentage of people who identify as Democrat has remained almost the same!
Now, that’s not to say that I think de Blasio is wrong to be pushing for a Progressive Agenda, or that I’m likely to disagree with what the plan will probably be calling for – just the opposite. I AM one of those Progressives who occasionally makes other people look at them askance. But I’m also a very observant and rather (happily) cynical person, with at least a somewhat sophisticated understanding of people and historical systems.
My concern is the timing of this.
It has become increasingly clear to me that we, as a country, are moving toward the next major political party realignment. This has been building for a number of years now, but I think we’re finally within less than two generations. And we’re probably pass-due for one; the last real realignment was back in 1932 with the election of FDR, when it had become clear that the world had dramatically changed and the Republican party of the time simply could not adapt while the Democrats could. That realignment was triggered by an extended period of economic hardship the majority of the population, a number of divisive cultural issues, and a wide-spread dissatisfaction with the political status quo – any of this sounding familiar?#
I think that the bulk of the Republican party (as we know it today) is going to continue to decline in numbers as their older voters die. These are the people who really make the middle of the Republican bell-curve. As they die, the remaining parts of the party are going to be (1) the extremists (the aforementioned Right-Wing Nut Jobs) and (2) the centrist/moderate Republicans, and most of these are going to be the social moderate/fiscally conservative Republicans. And unless/until something is done about Citizens United, a lot of those arch-conservative campaign donors are going to continue to pump money into the RWNJ candidates in the primaries (and I don’t think anything will or can be done until after the coming realignment for exactly that reason). Which means that we will very likely see more of those RWNJ candidates make it to the general elections. I see this causing more of those centrist and/or moderate Republicans to move more to the center, creating a schism the “Republican party.” Just think of the prominent politicians who have already left the Republican party, specifically because it has been hijacked and is no longer the party they originally joined – Charlie Crist, Arlen Specter, and Lincoln Chafee.
At the same time, I think we’re going to see a similar divergence in the Democratic Party. The “Clinton-Democrats” (I mean the BILL Clinton ones from the ’90s), who are socially liberal but financially moderate, will start to pull back from the more progressive Democrats – the Bill de Blasios of the party specifically and the Bernie Sanderses of the country in general.
Before too long, I think the centrist/moderates of both the Left and Right will coalesce into a new “establishment” on the Right. I suspect that at that point, the Republican “brand” will be too damaged for them to want to keep using that name, and they’ll likely call themselves “the Democratic-Republicans” or “Moderate Party.” There’s a possibility that they’ll just stick “Democrats” as well. Meanwhile, the RWNJs will become the Right’s Green Party, a 3rd party that keeps hanging around causing political problems for the Right, but who do not typically pose a serious challenge to the new “establishment” in big races, the way the Green Party has been for Democrats in the past. Over time, they will like be absorbed into the Libertarian Party. Finally, the more progressive Democrats will evolve into the Progressive Party, which will be socially liberal and at least a little bit socialist economically. (Speaking of the Green Party, I think they’ll mostly merge into the new Progressive Party.)
So what does all of this have to do with de Blasio’s agenda? Well, while I see this grand party realignment happening, I think it’s going to take us another 15 to 20 years to get there. And, from what I can tell from that Rolling Stone bio on him, de Blasio definitely falls in that yet-to-be-established Progressive Party. Which means that there is a real risk that he may be jumping the gun, and trying to do too much, too soon, and that might scare enough people off that nothing comes of his “Progressive Agenda” any time soon.##
On the other hand, however, given that he brought in a pretty good group of very intelligent and politically savvy people to help craft this, it is also very possible that this could be exactly the nuanced but idealistic push that is needed to really get the Democrats back in control (and give them the ideological framework they need to actually get things done) – much in the way that Newt’s “Contract for America” did for the Republican party no so long ago.###
Of course, a lot of this is pure speculation at this point. He’s not going to be actually presenting this until this coming Tuesday. Will it be too aggressive and drive people away, or will it be that nuanced stance that draws people to it? Either way, it’s likely to be interesting!
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# Although I agree that we are now in the Sixth Party system, I view that as more of a slow “party shuffle” or “party bleed,” rather than a true realignment. I don’t think we’ve really had a party realignment since FDR.
## As a side note, I’m a little surprised de Blasio’s making such an aggressive move for more national prominence this soon after being elected Mayor of NYC. Yes, that job can be a major stepping stone for someone who wants to be a player on the national stage, but he only came into office in 2014. If he had waited four year and then made this move, it wouldn’t have surprised me in the least. Because the only place for him to move up to is the national level. Let’s face it, he’s too far to the Left to ever get elected as NY’s governor; the vast majority of Upstate NY is way too conservative to ever vote for him.
### While I really don’t care for the results, even I have to admit that Newt’s “Contract” was really effective. It did exactly what he wanted to do, and we’re still feeling the effects of it today.