Is There Such A Thing As a Sustainable Progressive Movement? The Working Families Party Thinks So

Its all a matter of relativity-- and how you define "progressive"

When I was growing up in New York, a sometimes viable alternative to the corrupt Democratic Party Machine was the Liberal Party, which was supposed to be more liberal than the Democrats and less socialist and "Commie" than the American Labor Party-- the original home for leftists who wanted to support FDR and the New Deal without stooping to voting for the Democrats. The American Labor Party was red-baited and several unions founded the Liberal Party in the 1940s. The Liberal Party was more conservative than the ALP and had delusions of going national. But they stayed a New York state party and played an almost identical role to what the Working Families Party does in NY politics today. The cross-endorse "good" Democrats and pressure "bad" Democrats. The Liberals occasionally-- but only a handful of times in its history-- backed Republicans who were "better" than Democratic nominees, examples being John Lindsay, Jacob Javits and-- hold on-- Rudy Giuliani. It gradually faded out of existence in the eighties, was supplanted by the Working Families Party and its zombie-like worthless corpse closed up shop entirely in 2002.

The Working Families Party is essentially a New York State replacement for the Liberal Party but has sister parties in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Connecticut, Vermont, Oregon and South Carolina. This week's Amerircan Prospect features a Harold Meyerson opus on what the party is and where its going, Dan Cantor's Machine. I no longer live in New York and haven't followed the Working Families Party closely. I noticed that last year they endorsed-- with the exception of New Dem Gregory Meeks-- every corrupt Democratic incumbents, including conservatives and nightmares like Queens County boss Joe Crowley (the most corrupt Democrat in Congress) and "ex"-Blue Dog Steve Israel. The top of the elections page of their website today:

Working Families Party endorses Sean Patrick Maloney in 18th Congressional District

The Working Families Party officially endorsed Sean Patrick Maloney for the 18th Congressional District seat on Tuesday afternoon. Maloney will face off against Tea Party-backed freshman Congresswoman Nan Hayworth in November.

Sean Patrick Maloney is a New Dem. He's good on LGBT issues, but he's gay. Other than that, he tends to vote with the Republicans. He does his call time from a hedge fund office and is competing with Jim Himes to be the most go-to whore for Wall Street inside the House Democratic Caucus. His Progressive Punch crucial vote score always has him as #1, #2 or #3 worst among the Democratic freshmen. Today, with a score of 31.11, he's #2, just a tad better than Blue Dog Pete Gallego (31.06) and slightly "better" than Blue Dog Kyrsten Sinema at 33.07.

Meyerson's article, a paean to party boss Dan Cantor, is prefaced with a statement and a question: "New York’s Working Families Party has built the most effective political operation the American left has seen in decades. Can it duplicate its success in other states?" He doesn't ask if it deserves that kind of accolade or if progressives should want to see it become a national party. It's perfect for people who think Bill de Blasio invented-- or even just re-invented-- progressive politics. At de Blasio's victory party on election might, Cantor's "casual manner," writes Meyerson, "conceals an idealism, strategic acumen, and a record of political success that puts the dealmakers and operators to shame." When he started the party, the Dems were "moving in a more conservative direction, particularly on economic issues. Center-right groups, like the Democratic Leadership Council, urged Democrats to cast a cold eye on the welfare state and steer clear of the tax increases that could make that welfare state more secure. Some on the left, on the labor left particularly, demanded that liberals break with the Democrats and start something new. Because the only vehicle for defeating an invigorated Republican Party shifting rightward under the influence of Ronald Reagan, however, was the Democratic Party, that break never came. Trapped within a Democratic Party that was also shifting rightward, the left stewed in discontent." The WFP was meant to "revive the left while uniting both its in-the-party and out-of-the-party camps. They co-authored and circulated a paper titled Party Time, which laid out their strategic vision. Beginning by noting that there were “an almost bewildering number of progressive groups of one stripe or another out there doing things,” they observed that those efforts had amounted to little. 'We propose,' they wrote, 'a cross between the party within the party strategy favored by some Democratic Party activists and the plague on both your houses stance adopted by some critics of both major parties.' What was needed was a new party, but one that didn’t take votes away from Democrats and thereby elect Republicans. Fusion, Cantor and Rogers argued, permitted just such an inside-outside hybrid. By winning explicitly progressive votes for Democrats on their new party’s ballot line, they could pressure Democratic elected officials to move left. The problem was only six states in addition to New York permitted fusion voting, so Cantor and Rogers urged their fellow progressives to expand the number of states where it was legal."

Cantor is the national director of the Working Families Party (WFP), a social democratic political machine that in recent years has elected numerous progressives in New York and Connecticut. It has translated those victories into legislation that established paid sick days in New York City and Connecticut and abolished discriminatory drug laws and police “stop and frisk” practices in New York. Founded 15 years ago by Cantor and a handful of like-minded union leaders and community organizers, the WFP has grown from a third party taking advantage of New York state’s “fusion” laws (which permit a candidate to run as the nominee of more than one party) into a full-service political operation, the likes of which are to be found nowhere else in progressive America-- indeed, nowhere else in any wing of American politics.

This election night marks a high point for the Working Families Party. Not only is the mayor-elect a longtime ally-- the party managed his successful 2009 campaign for the post of public advocate-- but both victorious candidates for the two other citywide offices, Letitia James and Scott Stringer, are WFP stalwarts as well. Ken Thompson, with the party’s backing, has ousted longtime Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes; his campaign focused on raising the age for incarceration in general-population prisons from 16 to 18. More impressive still, 12 of the 13 candidates the WFP ran for city council have also swept to victory. In January, when the new council convenes, 20 of the city’s 51 councilmen and –women will be dues-paying members of the Progressive Caucus, which functions, roughly, as the party’s legislative bloc.

The night’s victories are not confined to New York City. Around the state, dozens of local candidates whom the party recruited, groomed, and ran for office are winning races for city council and county legislatures from Syracuse to Rosendale. In Connecticut, a slate of candidates in Bridgeport has won a hotly contested election to the school board. Across the Hudson River, a brigade of the party’s canvassers has helped turn out voters in support of a ballot measure that raised New Jersey’s minimum wage.

“We have a cornucopia of good ideas-- debt-free college, paid sick days,” Cantor told me earlier that afternoon. “But nobody cares about your good ideas if you don’t have power.”

Starting from the most marginal position in American politics-- that of a third party-- the WFP has amassed the power to turn those ideas into law in New York and Connecticut. Recently, it persuaded the Oregon Legislature to enact a proposal that would drastically reduce student debt. Last month, the WFP began operations in the District of Columbia. In the next few months, it will move into Pennsylvania and Maryland and has plans for Wisconsin later in 2014. With the national Democratic Party focusing more of its energy and attention on combating economic inequality, which has been the Working Families Party’s chief purpose since its formation, it’s a propitious time for the WFP to expand. The question is whether the model Cantor and company have created can succeed in other states.

“Is the de Blasio moment, the Elizabeth Warren moment, a real transition to a new period?” Cantor asks a couple of weeks after de Blasio’s election. “Not unless we make them that. This is not a short-term project. It’s taken the left a long time to get as weak as it is.”

By conviction, I’m of the left,” Cantor says. “By personality, I’m a moderate. I don’t like crowds or mobs… We’re garden varieties of social democrats, trying to use the state to make people’s lives a little less hard,” Cantor says. “The crisis of social democracy is real. If the 20th century was the century of the working class, it’s not clear yet what the 21st century will be. We are all Keynesians, but we need to be more than Keynesians. Our answer is to win massive investment in public goods, so you don’t have to be rich to have a decent life. Add in the climate crisis, and this grows still more complex.”

…“Experts will tell you this district is winnable, and that one isn’t,” Boland tells me after the meeting. “But facts on the ground change. So instead of recruiting a candidate for where the action is this year, we find progressive activists everywhere and start running them for local office. We see if they’re willing to work hard and build a good record in office. We can see if the person has real political potential.”

That strategy appeals to me-- as it does to MoveOn and other progressive grassroots operations-- but how does all this jive with backing reactionaries like Sean Patrick Maloney, Steve Israel, Joe Crowley, Bill Owens and other Democratic stooges for Big Business? It makes me wary, very wary.

If the essence of the Working Families Party project is to put together a coalition that supports an ongoing campaign operation that elects liberals to office and promotes liberal causes, the party should be able to have success in other states—but by no means all of them. In red states, and most purple ones, unions are too weak, if not altogether absent, to support the creation of such a force. In a blue state, however, where progressive unions still have resources, a Working Families Party could become a social democratic force.

The WFP’s growth could also forge new opportunities for working-class advances at a time when traditional collective bargaining has all but disappeared from the economic landscape. The paid sick days that the party has won and the minimum-wage hikes that are being enacted point to a shift in the way workers are seeking to promote their interests. The new arena for collective bargaining, imperfect though it be, is legislative. “Now more than ever, politics is in command, because we can no longer solve our problems one workplace or one company at a time,” Cantor says. In this new world, the WFP becomes a bargaining agent for the vast majority of workers who do not have and are not likely to get union representation.

Still, how much an organization like the WFP can do ultimately depends on conditions beyond its control. “You don’t organize movements,” Cantor says. “You build organizations, and if movements emerge, you may catch their energy and grow. Occupy Wall Street moved the ball farther in three months than a lot of us did in three decades. But the Tea Party understood that you disrupt and then you electoralize. We will fail if there aren’t strong community and environmental and youth movements in America. But they will fail if they can’t figure out how their values and issues become part of the legislative and electoral process. That’s where a group like the Working Families Party has a role to play.”