The San Francisco Chronicle reports today that the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which consists of 58 liberal House Democrats along with Independent congressman Bernie Sanders, is alive and inching toward wellness in Washington. The Chronicle says the group have hired their first-ever full-time staffer, Bill Goold, who works out of Caucus chair Lynn Woolsey’s Washington office, in an attempt to increase their profile and effectiveness in Washington.
The Caucus have enumerated their principles in the “Progressive Promise,” which is detailed in this press release on Caucus co-chair Barbara Lee’s web site.
Goold, a former aide to Congressman Sanders, who inaugurated the Caucus in 1990, told the Chronicle that he’s been swamped with phone calls and emails since he began work three weeks ago. One of his first priorities is ”to address basic communication functions,” among which he counts an upgrade to the group’s ancient web site.
Progressive Democrats and other liberals should be salivating at the prospect of a functional progressive Congressional organization, and one hopes that eagerness will translate into the support the organization will require if they hope to articulate, popularize and enact a progressive agenda.
Among the group’s priorities are:
- To uphold the right to universal access to affordable, high quality healthcare for all.
- To preserve guaranteed Social Security benefits for all Americans, protect private pensions, and require corporate accountability.
- To invest in America and create new jobs in the U.S. by building more affordable housing, re-building America’s schools and physical infrastructure, cleaning up our environment, and improving homeland security.
- To export more American products and not more American jobs and demand fair trade.
- To reaffirm freedom of association and enforce the right to organize.
- To ensure working families can live above the poverty line and with dignity by raising and indexing the minimum wage.
One of the strengths of the radical Republicans who at present control the public policy debate is their ability to create easily understood explanations of their policy positions. They have over a period of decades created an infrastructure for developing those positions and disseminating both the talking points that support them (and the attacks against anyone who opposes them).
Progressive Democrats and other liberals enjoy only fledgling versions of that infrastructure, and will likely never enjoy, or suffer from, the unanimity and party discipline that Republicans do. Democrats who remain willing to espouse core Democratic party principles have had increasing difficulty both getting themselves heard and couching those principles in language that is both concise and anchored in the political realities of the age. It isn’t safe to assume that everyone — or indeed, anyone — understands why universal health care and the other social policy signature issues of progressive Democrats are important not only from a social justice or economic perspective but from a national security one as well.
So it isn’t enough to say that Americans deserve universal access to health care and a top-quality public education system; we have to explain, in a few words, why America needs universal health care and superb public schools. (In one word: jobs. Companies in countries with government-sponsored universal health care enjoy a huge cost advantage over US companies who offer insurance, and training costs are much lower in countries with good public school systems.)
The same applies to environmental issues and even labor issues. There are national economic and security components to those issues that are every bit as compelling as the individual economic and security components, and we need to articulate those.
National security has long been the issue perceived to be the Achille’s heel of progressives. That’s why White House mouth Karl Rove felt infamously free to accuse Democrats and liberals of deliberately endangering the lives of American troops when he spoke to New York’s Conservative party. That’s why he felt free to condemn Democrats and liberals for wanting to understand the genesis of the 911 attacks and the antipathy with which the US is widely viewed.
We need to explain that national security is much more than a matter of bombs and testosterone, and we need to explain it in simple terms that anyone can understand. We need to explain that understanding your enemy is a strength, as is understanding how your enemy became your enemy. We need to respond to the Roves by saying things such as (in all immodesty) this:
It wasn’t a meek man who said, “If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat;” it was the Chinese general SunTzu, and he could scarcely have been proved more emphatically correct than the Bush administration have done in Iraq.
Saying these things and getting them heard aren’t one and the same — many people do say them, often and at length — but the Progressive Caucus, living as they do in the heart of the jungle, are in a great position to serve as a megaphone for the individual voices and organizations that believe that progressive ideals aren’t just nice, friendly notions but are essential to the nation’s survival and growth.
So go make Bill Goold’s job a bit more difficult: call him in Washington and ask how you can help.
Progressive Democrats spotted in the wild
The San Francisco Chronicle reports today that the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which consists of 58 liberal House Democrats along with Independent congressman Bernie Sanders, is alive and inching toward wellness in Washington. The Chronicle says the group have hired their first-ever full-time staffer, Bill Goold, who works out of Caucus chair Lynn Woolsey’s Washington office, in an attempt to increase their profile and effectiveness in Washington.
The Caucus have enumerated their principles in the “Progressive Promise,” which is detailed in this press release on Caucus co-chair Barbara Lee’s web site.
Goold, a former aide to Congressman Sanders, who inaugurated the Caucus in 1990, told the Chronicle that he’s been swamped with phone calls and emails since he began work three weeks ago. One of his first priorities is ”to address basic communication functions,” among which he counts an upgrade to the group’s ancient web site.
Progressive Democrats and other liberals should be salivating at the prospect of a functional progressive Congressional organization, and one hopes that eagerness will translate into the support the organization will require if they hope to articulate, popularize and enact a progressive agenda.
Among the group’s priorities are:
One of the strengths of the radical Republicans who at present control the public policy debate is their ability to create easily understood explanations of their policy positions. They have over a period of decades created an infrastructure for developing those positions and disseminating both the talking points that support them (and the attacks against anyone who opposes them).
Progressive Democrats and other liberals enjoy only fledgling versions of that infrastructure, and will likely never enjoy, or suffer from, the unanimity and party discipline that Republicans do. Democrats who remain willing to espouse core Democratic party principles have had increasing difficulty both getting themselves heard and couching those principles in language that is both concise and anchored in the political realities of the age. It isn’t safe to assume that everyone — or indeed, anyone — understands why universal health care and the other social policy signature issues of progressive Democrats are important not only from a social justice or economic perspective but from a national security one as well.
So it isn’t enough to say that Americans deserve universal access to health care and a top-quality public education system; we have to explain, in a few words, why America needs universal health care and superb public schools. (In one word: jobs. Companies in countries with government-sponsored universal health care enjoy a huge cost advantage over US companies who offer insurance, and training costs are much lower in countries with good public school systems.)
The same applies to environmental issues and even labor issues. There are national economic and security components to those issues that are every bit as compelling as the individual economic and security components, and we need to articulate those.
National security has long been the issue perceived to be the Achille’s heel of progressives. That’s why White House mouth Karl Rove felt infamously free to accuse Democrats and liberals of deliberately endangering the lives of American troops when he spoke to New York’s Conservative party. That’s why he felt free to condemn Democrats and liberals for wanting to understand the genesis of the 911 attacks and the antipathy with which the US is widely viewed.
We need to explain that national security is much more than a matter of bombs and testosterone, and we need to explain it in simple terms that anyone can understand. We need to explain that understanding your enemy is a strength, as is understanding how your enemy became your enemy. We need to respond to the Roves by saying things such as (in all immodesty) this:
Saying these things and getting them heard aren’t one and the same — many people do say them, often and at length — but the Progressive Caucus, living as they do in the heart of the jungle, are in a great position to serve as a megaphone for the individual voices and organizations that believe that progressive ideals aren’t just nice, friendly notions but are essential to the nation’s survival and growth.
So go make Bill Goold’s job a bit more difficult: call him in Washington and ask how you can help.