by SAM SMITH

 

Many Americans think they know what the Republicans and  Democrats stand for. The trouble is that they learned it from the  Republicans.

This is because Democrats and progressives have been miserably incapable  of stating clearly what they are about.  This is not - as some have  suggested - a matter of better rhetoric or proper branding; it is a  matter of having something you believe in and explaining it well to  others.

The Vichy Democrats in control of the party aren't interested in this  because it destroys their flexibility to appear to be one thing to their  contributors and another thing to their constituents. But clever as this  may appear, it has left the left to be defined by the right as being interested primarily in gay marriages and abortions.

In the end, to many it appears the GOP stands for all the good things - patriotism, values, family, the economy, security et al - while the Democrats stand for nothing. Nominating Kerry, of course, merely played into the stereotype.

Liberals have also shown an astounding indifference to some of the assumptions that have grown up about them. Worthy as gay rights and conception choices are, it is helpful to remember, as a political matter, that  gays constitute something less than five percent of the electorate and only about 700,000 more women have abortions each year than when Roe v. Wade was handed down. If you want to win a national election, you need broader priorities than these.

But I can hardly remember the last time an average liberal expressed any concern to me over health care, pensions, or jobs. There are, of course, those like Dean Baker who continue to carry the load on classic Democratic issues, but sadly too many liberal activists seem to think they can win based on their collective nobility. Politics doesn't work that way.

There is a need for a progressive platform, preferably one that can be written on a single side of a sheet of paper.  Here's a sample:

- A foreign policy that makes America a model of and friend to the rest of the world rather than a bully and a threat.

- The restoration of democracy and constitutional government in the U.S.

- Single payer health care

- A safe and clean natural environment

- Fair working conditions for all including pay, workplace safety, labor rights, and pensions.

- An end to the corruption in the Democratic Party that has done it so much harm

- Electoral reform including instant runoff voting and public campaign financing.

If you don't like that list, then write your own.

But in the end, progressives need to come together and select a handful of issues such as the aforementioned to which they will dedicate their major energies and which will thus finally define them fairly.

Since the sixties there has been a tremendous splintering of progressives into groups specializing in a single issue or around a cluster of single issues. This has produced a high level of expertise on these issues, raised the national consciousness on many of them, and provided a cadre capable of writing and criticizing legislation. The
less happy side-effect has been that progressives have forgotten how to work in coalition with one another and seem incapable of providing a holistic vision of that for which they are striving. They have become specialists and technocrats of change rather than leaders and prophets. And far too many fit G. K. Chesterton's description of liberals: they can't lead; they won't follow, and they refuse to cooperate.

This has to change if there is to be any hope for progressive politics.