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Pre-emptive caving

Submitted by James on Wed, 04/07/2010 - 1:51pm

Any close watcher of the sausage-making in Washington and Raleigh has witnessed first-hand the general impotence of progressive voices. From where I sit, they are largely irrelevant, having not much impact on agenda-setting, and even less on actual public policy.

Someone wrote a while back that progressives in both the North Carolina and US Senate would have much more clout if the two chambers were more evenly divided. A big Democratic majority, the writer argued, means that small factions have no influence. If the margin were cut to one or two seats, progressive votes would be much more valuable. Then again, so would the votes of our Blue Dog equivalents.

I'm not holding my breath for a strong progressive front in Raleigh, or in Washington. Because even when they have votes, it's not clear they know how to use them.

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Comments

Lines in the sand

Submitted by James on Wed, 04/07/2010 - 1:53pm.

Caves. Mud holes. Rock slides. Lines in the sand. Whatever geographic feature you like, the story's still the same.

"Progressives drawing a line in the sand for the public option was not the problem. Being weak and not sticking by their line in the sand was the problem," said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. "Their credibility will be less than the Blue Dogs’ in every future policy battle until progressives draw a line in the sand and refuse to cave. If the climate bill is co-opted by oil companies, coal companies and other polluters, that may be a good place to start."

It's the Senate

Submitted by Green Mom on Thu, 04/08/2010 - 12:25am.

We need more progressive Senators, willing to use reconciliation more, and not willing to cave. We need a more aggressive Senate majority leader. The House progressives cannot do it on their own. The Senate trumps them.

Beholden

Submitted by Bruce.Clark on Thu, 04/08/2010 - 9:47am.

I would also add that many people who are progressive or claim to be, are beholden to interests that got them elected or have kept them in power for years. At the core of being progressive would seem to be the idea of something new and fresh - that is hard for career politicians or aspiring career politicians to manage as they are focused on keeping power.

We need new fresh faces willing to put it on the line.

That's what I like most about Ken Lewis

Submitted by James on Thu, 04/08/2010 - 9:57am.

He does a good job articulating the need for a new political paradigm, similar in many ways to how Obama once talked about it. What I don't know is whether the attention span of most voters is sufficient for them to grasp the need for that kind shift.

When we have a dumb bell like Cheri Berry elected as commissioner of labor, simply because people like how her name sounds, there's something fundamentally flawed with the system.