And the term socialist has been applied to everyone from anarchists, To ML/MLM, etc. As much as any single term is meaningful, I’d say yes, progressive has meaning(especially in terms of a primary were the expectation that a third way centrist will win or a progressive will win).
Cool, we should stop this too!
I think this is part of the issue, though, because the platform of the Bull Moose party (and the later two different Progressive Parties) became part of the Democratic platform later on when the parties realigned around the New Deal. So I think the term used to connote an actual platform that became associated with the Democrats, and that talking point hasn’t entirely left the discourse so now things are muddy.
And we definitely see politicians reaching back to our “golden age” to try to leverage historical success - like “Green New Deal” and such - so it wouldn’t be unheard of for someone to try to keep older terms in use.
Semantic debates and citing dictionary definitions, getting real 2006 in here.
6 Likes
Judean People’s Front
2 Likes
Missouri always votes for the “progressive” (or pick your term) policies. Fixing gerrymandering. Marijuana legalization. Medicare expansion. Voting against “right to work”. But they also always vote for the guy with an ® next to their name. I live here, it just seems to go that way. Then the people with an ® next to their name try to tell us we didn’t know what we were voting for. It goes a long way back. If we actually elected to congress people that represented our values instead of the cronies the political parties think we want we could actually have some at least interesting politicians as the perspective here doesn’t line up perfectly with either party.
I’m hoping Galloway can pull off a win for governor. She has a good record and does something that ® voters value (auditing corrupt spending by the government). That fits in line with what missouri ® voters say they want (and what they actually vote for, like clean missouri incuded provisions limiting political donations) and I agree with them on that being a good thing. I wish we were pushing up national politicians like that, rather than skeevy snake creatures with shifting skins like Josh Hawley.
2 Likes
Biden has officially picked Kamala Harris as his VP.
3 Likes
The US left is extraordinarily narrow and homogenous, ideologically speaking — and yet consider all of the words we use to describe it. Within its dominant overtly capitalist wing we have terms like corporate Democrat, centrist, liberal, moderate, social democrat, and so on. What do all of these distinctions really mean, and why are we making them?
And then there is progressive , whose meaning is even more mysterious. The term has a historical meaning which situates it as a kind of counter-movement to the politics of the Gilded Age, but in the modern era it seemed to re-emerge among Bush-era Democrats as a euphemism for liberal, which the right had successfully turned into a slur. Today, however, I think that its meaning has shifted yet again, since self-identified progressives seem to be using the term to distinguish themselves from other liberals.
What political and ideological work is this term doing now? To unpack this, I think it’s helpful to look at a passage from a new essay by Max Berger and Leah Hunt-Hendrix: Beyond Trump: A Theory of Political Transition. At length, the post spells out a perspective on contemporary left politics that dominates the distinct complex of NGOs and donors that produced it (Berger most recently worked for Elizabeth Warren’s campaign and circulated from nonprofit to nonprofit before that; Hunt-Hendrix is the granddaughter of oil magnate H.L. Hunt and founder of various Democratic donor groups, and has become increasingly involved with Sean McElwee’s Data for Progress as of late). Here’s what the authors have to say about the 2020 Democratic primaries:
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both put up strong fights and together had almost 50% of the electorate. And yet… clashes between economic worldviews (a form of democratic capitalism vs. socialism) made it challenging for a progressive faction to align under one candidate enough to win in key primary states, including South Carolina.
In this passage alone I think we can detect three key premises.
- First, the “progressive faction” is defined as a coalition between socialists and capitalists. The role of “progressive” here is to stipulate that these two groups have shared objectives.
- Second, it is suggested that these factions must set aside “clashes between [their] economic worldviews” for the greater good.
- Third, despite the posture of analytic neutrality, we are told that there is such a thing as “democratic capitalism.”
This strikes me as an extremely typical use of progressive , and it makes the role this term plays in our discourse quite clear. Powerful voices who are closely aligned with the Democratic party are using this term to call for a coalition that, for a supposed greater good, abandons political struggle between socialists and capitalists. And in the course of doing this, they often happen to downplay the problems of capitalism — here, by suggesting that it can be democratic.
It is one thing to insist that there are particular situations where it may make sense for socialists to cooperate with capitalists, for example amid efforts to extend unemployment benefits during the coronavirus pandemic or when an anti-war vote is on the floor in Congress. But socialists can do this as socialists , keeping our distinct politics in view and reserving the right, at any moment, to break with and even ferociously oppose the partisans of capitalism. Progressives can’t do this. That’s the point.
3 Likes
Well at least the memes have been spicy.
Choosing a former prosecutor during massive civil unrest over policing is so tone-deaf bold that I have to respect it.
Gee, it’s like they’re going to accuse any Democrat of being a far left radical no matter who it is
6 Likes
Not entirely sure how legit it is, but there’s an organisation recruiting and paying technology people to work on congressional staffs.
I heard about about it on the rational security podcast, which is from Brookings and pretty centrist, but maybe someone here would be interested and could do some good.
1 Like
If this existed when I had immediately graduated from college I would have gone for it.
DNC 2020 or RNC 1996? Hard to tell
It’s a great point as to how far the Republican party has drifted right, that three of it’s notable personalities would go to the Dem Convention to speak out against Trump.
2 Likes
No contention there! The Democrats have just moved right to vacuum up the empty space (and politicians).
1 Like
Man, the Democrat twitter account is lit!
1 Like