Tactics, Strategy, and Coalition Building: A PROGRESSIVE MANIFESTO

Many of us are drawn to the tactical clash of politics. It’s a sport: Blue Team bests Red Team; we win news cycle or legislative victory or message war. Opportunities are presented to heap scorn and ridicule for misstatements, errors, or rank hypocrisy. Since there are effectively only two parties, we struggle to make our party more like us and less like those other guys inside our tent. It’s a fun game to play and I will never give it up entirely.

However, the most successful and most persistent strategic thinkers are those powerful interests that devote considerable resources to finding new ways to bend the system in a manner that serves their interests. They are relentless in their search for weaknesses in the system and amoral in their efforts to exploit them. The corruption they engender has infected both major parties (Republicans more so, IMO, but I acknowledge that I am not without bias) and it twists and perverts the struggles we wage at the tactical level.

HCR, for example, was a huge tactical victory for Democrats but strategically it represents only an insignificant and possibly temporary reversal of the power equation. Still, even baby steps are to be celebrated.

Strategic thinkers recognize that many of the various systems that overlay our democracy have been developed to thwart the will of the majority and to frustrate the people’s desire to reach consensus. Playing a rigged game will always bring rigged results. Third party efforts are doomed not only to fail, but will advantage the Major Party whose objectives are least in alignment with supporters of the third party (e.g., Bush v Gore v Nader). The Dems and the GOPpers are the sole gatekeepers and democracy suffers another blow.

Tactically, the smart move for progressives is to reject the Green Party and rally behind the Democratic nominee. Strategically, however, this still leaves the wizards behind the curtain with their hands on the levers. Therefore, I hope that the American Progressive Party will explore very specific reforms that will make the USA more democratic and breaks the grip of the Demo-Repo duopoly.

Additionally, we need to appreciate that long-lasting, effective political movements are built on broad-based coalitions. Historically, many of the components of these alliances had seemed quite incompatible with one another. FDR’s supporters were workers & intellectuals, socialists & segregationists. Reagan’s very effective governing coalition included libertarians, social conservatives, militarists, and corporatist oligarchs (does my nomenclature reveal any biases here, guys?). These coalitions endured for a number of decades because the various members were able to subordinate their various differences in order to strive toward a higher principle. The moral imperative and fierce urgency of the moment really did drive them to unite.

I dream of a new progressive coalition of combinations that haven’t worked together, at least in many decades. I envision a big tent for liberals and libertarians, workers (from Black to Brown to White and with all hues in between) and environmentalists, and the regular folk who realize that the diet of resentment and revenge fantasy that they have been served in heaping portions for four decades has done them and their beloved country a world of harm. You can come to the tea party or you can come to our party but ours is more satisfying morally and better for your children’s and grandchildren’s futures.

p.s.: Corporatist enablers —Democratic or Republican— will not be welcome.