Feb 10 2010
To win on jobs, we need to move beyond congress: progressive strategy on jobs part 2
(See my first post in this series here.)
Historically, our progressive coalitions and campaigns have focused primarily on policy and politics: that is, issues and elections. Health Care for America Now (HCAN) is a great example of an issue coalition. (USAction helped to found HCAN in 2007 with several other progressive organizations - see this from The Nation for a brief history.) Throughout 2008, we worked to advance health care reform as the top domestic priority of the next administration. We organized over 1000 organizations to join the coalition, representing over 30 million people in 46 states. We won the support of over 190 Members of Congress, President Obama, and Vice President Biden.
HCAN’s central focus is on passing legislation. So, its function is to win the support of Members of Congress for its legislative agenda. The entire field apparatus is geared toward one task: organizing people to speak out and put pressure on their Members of Congress through grassroots lobbying. The communications apparatus, including paid media and the Hill lobbying activities serve this one task.
On the electoral side, every two years progressive organizations put together coordinated efforts for the task of getting more members of Congress, or a President, who support progressive policies. The rapid growth of organizations such as America Votes and State Voices illustrate how we have focused our resources.
Our individual organizations have grown increasingly adept at linking issue advocacy and electoral activity. For the most part, the prevailing sense has been that the more effective we become at our issue advocacy and electoral activity, the more gains we will achieve. After all, wasn’t this proven by the election of Barack Obama and a Democratic Congress around much of our issue agenda?
There are two events that have upended this assessment.
First there was the economic crisis, which has presented us with policy challenges much greater than we have previously confronted. (See my earlier post.) In short, the long-term economic squeeze on the American middle and lower-class, which the financial and economic crises of the past two years exacerbated, has combined with a toxic perception that the Administration and Congress are more interested in serving Wall Street and corporations than the vast majority of Americans. For example, with the bank bailout, we saw the combination of “big corporate power” with “big government” in an unprecedented way that has enraged both progressive and conservative populists, who see whoever is in power as more interested in serving Wall Street and corporations than the vast majority of Americans.
Second, there has been the difficulty of moving our current issue agenda through Congress. The extent to which the health care fight has been stalled out and subject to corporate-driven backroom deals raises the question of how much progressives and other supporters of health care reform were ever “in power” in the way that many people suggested at the end of 2008.
This challenge is a stark reminder that without a mass movement changing the political dynamics, even a progressive President like Obama is limited in what he can achieve.
From the great optimism at the beginning of 2009, we are now facing a looming pessimism that the transformational moment may have passed us by and that we will suffer electoral loses in the 2010 elections, which will further diminish our chances of advancing our agenda of progressive reforms and job creation.
At this moment, to move forward we must do things differently. We have to move beyond the limits of specific issue campaigns and targeted electoral activities. Underlying specific policy changes and political choices – what issues we promote and whom we elect – is the question of power.
How do we enable and mobilize a mass movement for progressive reform and job creation? How do we shape and win the war of ideas so that a solid majority embraces both an activist government and the progressive policies necessary to create jobs and to build a new era of mass prosperity?
I will take up these questions in my next post.
Alan Charney is Strategy and Policy Director of USAction
[...] also must face the realities of the political landscape, as I argued in my second post, which has been deeply affected by the economic crisis, and are reflected in the difficulty of [...]
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