At Netroots Nation’s New Media Summit last night, my staff and I ran into a couple of folks who seemed to have formed impressions of my platform based on my discussion of the April 15 tea party events. These erroneous assumptions about my platform and my campaign highlight a problem in the modern progressive movement – especially online – that I believe has stopped us from succeeding on issues such as the Patriot Act, FISA and big bank bailouts. To succeed, the progressive movement must be willing to coalition build and to act magnanimously in power.
I am a well-known government reform advocate (under the auspices of Government 2.0 – a move to increase transparency and collaboration between officials and the governed) and a far-left progressive with a track record of advocating for neighborhood-focused politics and progressive candidates. My platform is public, my cell phone number is public, my home phone number is public, my blog is public, my radio show is public, my tax returns are public.
I know how to coalition build to make positive change in our communities and in the federal government. When people are angry about taxes, bailouts and a government disconnected with the lives of everyday folks, you don’t mock them with sexual innuendo and other name-calling. You reach out to them and convince them that your ideas and policies are better. You work with them if your interests align, and you make clear just where you stand on issues you don’t agree on. That’s what I’m doing every day in my run for Congress, advocating progressive economic reform, equal rights for all citizens, an end to the drug war, and a responsive and responsible government.
If you’d like to help, or if you’ve got a question about something I’m doing or that’s been written about me, just give me a call. The cell is 925-895-3744.
Thanks. To change.
One thought on “Winning Means Issue-Based Coalitions”
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You write this as if we have no real clue about what the teabaggers think about the economy or what they stand for, that we prefer to mock them because we can’t or won’t engage them intellectually. As you put it:
And that’s the issue here. What you choose to read as a blithe dismissal is in fact a realistic recognition that those protestors have a fundamentally different concept of political economy than we do.
They do not want progressive economic reform. Several of the teabaggers I talked to here in Monterey said that they opposed any new tax, including that on the wealthy. When I asked how they planned to get the US out of recession without increasing government spending they repeated the usual canards about government spending limiting private sector growth. Several called for an end to Social Security and Medicare.
A lot of the protestors do not actually want equal rights for all citizens – several of the protestors’ cars still had “Yes on 8” stickers. I don’t know if they all want an end to the drug war, but it seemed pretty clear to me they had no use for a responsive and responsible government – instead they prefer less or no government at all.
What you’re assuming, quite incorrectly, is that the teabaggers are a bunch of libertarians who we can do business with. Whether progressives and libertarians can find meaningful political agreement is an open question at best. But if you think the teabaggers are a bunch of harmless libertarians and that the Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity crowd wasn’t a substantial part of the movement, then I have to question your political acumen.
So I’m not quite sure what you think the common ground is. Instead of getting on your high horse to criticize the rest of us, perhaps you could actually show us where the points of convergence are between progressives and anti-government anti-tax pro-corporate teabaggers, and explain how that can be translated into meaningful political action.