Rich Man, Poor Man-- No Room For One In American Politics... Even On The So-Called Left

Yesterday I was a guest on Nicole Sandler's program, and one of the topics we discussed was why the DCCC and DSCC back such dreadful candidates, who are such unconvincing champions of working families. Nicole asked how much ideology went into their decisions to get behind reactionary wretches like Ed Case (HI) and Marty Chavez (NM). "Not as much as I once feared," I answered. "All they care about is the ability of the candidates to raise large amounts of cash." That's why we have so few non-millionaires in the Senate and fewer and fewer in the House.

When Blue America endorsed Ed Potosnak (D-NJ) the other day, I sent out a notice to a listserv of gay activists. One responded by asking how I expected a schoolteacher to raise the $2-3 million that would be needed to dislodge career politician and corporate hack Leonard Lance. Since Ed is a brilliant, committed progressive-- and an out gay man-- one might expect gay activists to rally around his campaign instead of whining about how only millionaires in blue T-shirts can raise enough money to fight millionaires in red T-shirts. (Plug: You can donate to Ed's campaign here.)

Paulette Garin comes from a proud union background and has been a stalwart opponent of Wall Street golden boy Paul Ryan in southeast Wisconsin. Yesterday she sent me this post by Alyssa Battistoni at Alternet that asks the question Are Well-Off Progressives Standing in the Way of a Real Movement for Economic Justice? She wants to know why it took so long for the American "left" to notice that income and wealth disparity has been growing gigantically in this country for decades-- to a point where it is, once again, threatening democracy itself. "Surely," she writes, "the trends of decreasing social mobility and increasing social stratification in the supposed 'land of opportunity' call for serious resistance-- where has it been? As thoroughly reprehensible as the Right’s slavishness to wealth and power is, the fact that it took a financial meltdown for economic justice to even begin to replace welfare reform on the political agenda suggests progressives need to do a bit of navel-gazing."

By now it should come as no surprise that most Democratic politicians are more responsive to the interests of more affluent voters than to the working class, even if they’re nominally better than Republicans with regard to middle-class interests. But the fact of the matter is that it’s not just Democratic politicians who are operating from a position of privilege, but the broader progressive leadership. Perhaps this isn’t surprising either, but for a party purporting to defend the economic interests of the working and middle class-- to say nothing of the poor (as per usual)-- it’s a fatal weakness. By and large, the people who work at progressive think tanks, media outlets and policy centers are well-compensated -- some extravagantly so-- and staggeringly well-educated; they have solid health-care benefits and 401(k)s. As genuinely as they may care about social justice, their caring is largely based on principle rather than self-interest.

That has a great deal to do with why Republicans-- and other right-wing parties all through history-- always seem willing to fight so much harder than bourgeois social democratic parties that may be labeled "left" by the corporately owned mass media but are at best centrist, like most of the Democratic Party. Motivated by greed and avarice, Republican politicians are fighting for wealth and privilege; Democratic politicians, for ideals.

[A]ny attempt to truly tackle the injustice of our current economic system will require movement building and organizing. The political power of the wealthy is immense, and the waning of union power has left little in the way of institutions that can defend the interests of the nonrich. But advocacy from the comfortable position of the liberal establishment on behalf of the working class isn’t going to get the job done; the push needs to come from the people whose lives are directly affected. Indeed, the reason things like career pressures, blogosphere culture, and pet policies of the progressive middle class matter at all is that the Democrats no longer have a working-class base with the power to push for economic justice.

...Yet thus far, progressives by and large haven’t done the serious work of building new organizations and institutions to replace unions in protecting the interests of poor and working-class Americans in their stead, nor to support groups that can challenge the status quo.

But it’s not too late to build a real movement against neoliberal cuts and in favor of a more just and equitable economy. Recent events offer a vision of a possible new direction: the most exciting activism the Left has seen in decades didn’t take place on the Mall or Capitol Hill, but rather, in places-- Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio-- where drastic anti-union proposals spurred thousands of citizens to come together over issues of mutual concern.  

The recession is making people from different backgrounds and walks of life realize that the challenges they face are structurally similar; that not only blue- but white-collar jobs have been degraded and outsourced, and in fields from administration to academia the jobs that remain are increasingly insecure, contingent, and contractual. The looseness and spontaneity of these reactions speaks to a growing energy without an effective outlet, suggesting that progressives need to think about how to better support grassroots organizing, encourage experimentation with new forms of organizing, and create a connected but independent network of diverse organizations and campaigns chipping away at the powers that be. 

I sometimes suspect that some progressives see President Obama’s decision to leave community organizing for Harvard Law as validation of policy and legal approaches to tackling injustice over movement-building. But Obama’s career trajectory is actually a case in point for why the Left can’t be led primarily by progressives with middle-class backgrounds and elite educations, even if they’re genuinely concerned with social justice. Organizing is hard work, and it takes a long time. It can’t be done by people who have the option of leaving for greener pastures; it has to be done by people who are embedded within and committed to the communities they’re organizing for the long run.  

Because one thing is for sure: a movement consisting of middle-class supporters with a vague commitment to social justice will not succeed in addressing the root causes of its decline on its own, and it will certainly not succeed in addressing-- or perhaps even in identifying-- the issues that plague the poor and working class. As Vivien Labaton and Gara Lamarche of the Atlantic Philanthropies argue in the American Prospect, "Too often, debates unfold without the voices of those most affected informing them. To win the message wars and, more important, to make the strongest case possible for change, we need to put those voices front and center.”

Figuring out how to do this-- how to expand leadership and build a new type of movement that can not only lend power to progressive politics but help form and shape it-- is perhaps the most important challenge facing the American Left today.

It's why Blue America supports people like Nick Ruiz, Ed Potosnak, Eric Griego and Raúl Grijalva and Bernie Sanders and why we always ask candidates we interview if they're a union member. It means a lot more to us than it does to the DCCC, let alone the DSCC.