NEW YORK PROGRESSIVE HERO, STATE SENATOR ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN HAS A FEW WORDS ABOUT ENERGIZING A NATIONAL PROGRESSIVE COALITION

Eric Schneiderman is not a "checklist liberal." He's a New York State Senator who represents the 31st district (parts of the Upper West Side, Washington Heights, West Harlem, Morningside Heights, Inwood, Marble Hill and Riverdale). He was elected to chair the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee in 1998 after only two months in office. In 2000 he shocked conservatives by aggressively and successfully going after long-unchallenged Republican senators who turned out to be far more vulnerable than anyone ever thought. The conservative leadership started moderating their previously crazy positions. Conservative insider machine Democrats are no more enamoured of him than are the Republicans. Eric has been extremely successful in pushing progressive legislation and in decimating the Republican Senate majority.

Eric wrote a fascinating piece in the March 10 issue of The Nation. Anyone serious about transforming America back into a progressive country needs to consider Eric's well thought out points about
transactional politics and transformational politics.

Transactional politics is pretty straightforward. What's the best deal I can get on a gun-control or immigration-reform bill during this year's legislative session? What do I have to do to elect a good progressive ally in November? Transactional politics requires us to be pragmatic about current realities and the state of public opinion. It's all about getting the best result possible given the circumstances here and now.

Transformational politics is the work we do today to ensure that the deal we can get on gun control or immigration reform in a year--or five years, or twenty years--will be better than the deal we can get today. Transformational politics requires us to challenge the way people think about issues, opening their minds to better possibilities. It requires us to root out the assumptions about politics or economics or human nature that prevent us from embracing policies that will make our lives better. Transformational politics has been a critical element of American political life since Lincoln was advocating his "oft expressed belief that a leader should endeavor to transform, yet heed, public opinion."

...In 1977 most Americans didn't think government was the problem. Neoclassical economics was not our national faith. A serious presidential candidate couldn't denounce the theory of evolution. The profound changes in public opinion on these and other issues were brought about by the conservatives' excellent work at transformational politics. And they didn't just do it. They honored it. They celebrated it. And an entire generation of Democratic consultants made millions by advising their clients to stay away from it.

Think about the transformation of America's ideas about taxes over the past thirty years. There has never been any credible evidence that "supply side" policies promote growth, but the relentless advocacy of this peculiar theory has radically shifted most Americans' basic view of taxes. The history of Grover Norquist's antitax crusade is well-known. It features all the essential elements of transformational politics: identify a set of assumptions that control the public's understanding of an issue; develop a language and message to shift those assumptions; maintain a sustained, disciplined effort to bring about that change over a period of years. From the Laffer curve to the Americans for Tax Reform's Taxpayer Protection Pledge, which all candidates were asked to sign--regardless of whether they would actually have to vote on tax reform anytime soon--Norquist mobilized a bipartisan phalanx of elected officials to preach the gospel of tax cuts. And lo and behold, what had once been considered "politically impossible" became inevitable.

Now let's compare the honors and "access" heaped on Norquist and his colleagues with the way most Democrats have treated transformational work. In 1980 a young Senator Al Gore held the first Congressional hearings on global warming. He challenged the fundamental framework for debates about environmental policy, which too often went something like "clean air and water versus faster economic growth." He offered a new way to think about the relationship between progressive economic policies and the environment. Virtually every Democratic official backed away.

Eric proposes that committed progressives hold Democratic politicians' feet to the fire and prove their claims to being committed to our values, principles and issues. "All politicians who seek your support should produce articles, videos, transcripts--anything that demonstrates that they are challenging the conservative assumptions that frame virtually all discussions of public policy among America's elected officials. How do we talk about abortion? As a duel between "prochoice" and "prolife" extremists--or as an issue of basic human freedom for women denied the power to control their own bodies? What do we say about health insurance? That it requires a delicate balance between the free market and socialism--or that it is an essential investment in our most important national resource and a basic right, without which our commitment to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is meaningless?"

I sent Eric's article out to a few candidates running for Congress. One got back to me with enthusiastic agreement and some ideas of his own: "I've experimented with a 'transformational' speech on guaranteeing every employee not just health coverage, but paid vacations, sick leave, a pension and even a December bonus. I said that if the Democratic Party did this for people, then people would vote Democrat for 100 years to come. I thought that the speech would be considered 'out there,' but in fact, it's been very well-received. People find it a lot more interesting than the poll-driven drivel they normally hear."