Many years ago when I started this Blog, I thought about what to call it. At the time, I remember thinking about Paul Wellstone as he described what he believed politics should be about. He said, "A politics that is not sensitive to the concerns and circumstances of people's lives, a politics that does not speak to and include people, is an intellectually arrogant politics that deserves to fail." A failure I recognized in pure progressive politics is that it does not always account for the differences that wealth and values create for people. Populism, it seemed to me was the missing piece. Giving the people what they agreed they needed seemed to be inherently important to the success of a progressive movement.
As we know, the progressive left pushed a type of populism under Bernie Sander's leadership that came up a day late and many dollars short of capturing the Democratic Party's nomination. He spoke to the pain that poor and middle class Americans were experiencing, but was running against Hillary Clinton. Clinton, while not the most progressive Democrat was seen as the right woman for the job by many party faithful (particularly after Elizabeth Warren thought better of running against her). The "I'm with Her" bankrollers and supporters, with the success of Barack Obama breaking through the color barrier that served as the glass ceiling for African Americans, believed it was the time for women to do the same.
What Democrats failed to see was the clapback that had been fomenting in the Age of Obama. Sure people were aware that angry people were saying and doing despicable things to showcase their bigotry, but conventional wisdom held that this was a relatively small group of disaffected people and that they were living life in the rear view window, living in America of their imagined past. Progressives and others dismissed these voices as they might anything they assessed as politically incorrect, as fodder for late night talk show monologues or assuring themselves that now that we had, in their estimation by electing Obama twice, accepted that "Black Lives Matter" as the new reality.
What I and others did not count on was what would happen if populism came at us from the Conservative side of the yard. While we thought the Tea Party movement was "astroturf" as opposed to "grass roots" politics, it turns out that the righteous anger of unheard people could be turned into a type of populism/Nativism that found enough votes in the right places to elect Freedom Caucus members and eventually Donald Trump as our President.
Paul Wellstone's voice reminds me that "intellectually arrogant politics that is not sensitive to the concerns and circumstances of people's lives...deserves to fail" is what generally what happens after the election. No matter which party wins. Before the election, people have been surveyed and focus-grouped to learn what will move them to vote this way or that.Then the communications are formed and framed around winning the vote--from the top of the ticket to the volunteer calling you at home. You, dear voter, are a fish to be caught in a net. In fact, if you vote early, that's even better, you are still in the net if the candidate says or does something stupid, like say what he or she really thinks.
But after the election, you are a form-letter recipient when the person who you elected does something that he or she told you they wouldn't. Because now, they don't work for you or even try that hard to represent you. Now, they work for special interest groups or self-interested groups. The most self-interested groups are the political parties that are trying to grab and maintain power and pulling the strings behind them are the business and issue groups who want to make sure their interests are properly looked after. There is a country club made up solely of elites and you and I are not invited.
While those are politics Wellstone said "deserve to fail," the truth is that those politics fail us, not the practitioners of them. Hence a people-powered political base is the only possible solution to the poison in the well of politics. Not a small marginalized group of people, but a large, organized mob of people who realize they have been bamboozled by politics as usual and resort to politics that are unusual. They run for office independent of party bosses and win. Then they win some more. Until finally, the politics of the unusual become the usual politics when people see that their lives are improving by them.
To be sure, the elite will not go quietly, they will use their resources and knowledge seeking to drive wedges into such a movement. But history tells us that if we have resolve and trust that we will win, even the most corrupting of forces will fail to hold sway against such an army of every day women and men.
So, I hope you are finally getting a view of what I am seeing so clearly; politics where the "radicals" win is probably a better brand of politics for people when the only other options are supplication or bloody revolution. The radicals on the left and right share something very basic, these are people who want the power in the hands of the people versus the elite. Right or left, it is the same battle. Defeat the political elites and then a politics that is sensitive to the people is truly possible, both before and after the elections.
As we know, the progressive left pushed a type of populism under Bernie Sander's leadership that came up a day late and many dollars short of capturing the Democratic Party's nomination. He spoke to the pain that poor and middle class Americans were experiencing, but was running against Hillary Clinton. Clinton, while not the most progressive Democrat was seen as the right woman for the job by many party faithful (particularly after Elizabeth Warren thought better of running against her). The "I'm with Her" bankrollers and supporters, with the success of Barack Obama breaking through the color barrier that served as the glass ceiling for African Americans, believed it was the time for women to do the same.
What Democrats failed to see was the clapback that had been fomenting in the Age of Obama. Sure people were aware that angry people were saying and doing despicable things to showcase their bigotry, but conventional wisdom held that this was a relatively small group of disaffected people and that they were living life in the rear view window, living in America of their imagined past. Progressives and others dismissed these voices as they might anything they assessed as politically incorrect, as fodder for late night talk show monologues or assuring themselves that now that we had, in their estimation by electing Obama twice, accepted that "Black Lives Matter" as the new reality.
What I and others did not count on was what would happen if populism came at us from the Conservative side of the yard. While we thought the Tea Party movement was "astroturf" as opposed to "grass roots" politics, it turns out that the righteous anger of unheard people could be turned into a type of populism/Nativism that found enough votes in the right places to elect Freedom Caucus members and eventually Donald Trump as our President.
Paul Wellstone's voice reminds me that "intellectually arrogant politics that is not sensitive to the concerns and circumstances of people's lives...deserves to fail" is what generally what happens after the election. No matter which party wins. Before the election, people have been surveyed and focus-grouped to learn what will move them to vote this way or that.Then the communications are formed and framed around winning the vote--from the top of the ticket to the volunteer calling you at home. You, dear voter, are a fish to be caught in a net. In fact, if you vote early, that's even better, you are still in the net if the candidate says or does something stupid, like say what he or she really thinks.
But after the election, you are a form-letter recipient when the person who you elected does something that he or she told you they wouldn't. Because now, they don't work for you or even try that hard to represent you. Now, they work for special interest groups or self-interested groups. The most self-interested groups are the political parties that are trying to grab and maintain power and pulling the strings behind them are the business and issue groups who want to make sure their interests are properly looked after. There is a country club made up solely of elites and you and I are not invited.
While those are politics Wellstone said "deserve to fail," the truth is that those politics fail us, not the practitioners of them. Hence a people-powered political base is the only possible solution to the poison in the well of politics. Not a small marginalized group of people, but a large, organized mob of people who realize they have been bamboozled by politics as usual and resort to politics that are unusual. They run for office independent of party bosses and win. Then they win some more. Until finally, the politics of the unusual become the usual politics when people see that their lives are improving by them.
To be sure, the elite will not go quietly, they will use their resources and knowledge seeking to drive wedges into such a movement. But history tells us that if we have resolve and trust that we will win, even the most corrupting of forces will fail to hold sway against such an army of every day women and men.
So, I hope you are finally getting a view of what I am seeing so clearly; politics where the "radicals" win is probably a better brand of politics for people when the only other options are supplication or bloody revolution. The radicals on the left and right share something very basic, these are people who want the power in the hands of the people versus the elite. Right or left, it is the same battle. Defeat the political elites and then a politics that is sensitive to the people is truly possible, both before and after the elections.
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