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Sunday, November 07, 2004
Progressives' post-election dilemma: Where do we go from here?
Neal Peirce
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Progressives are being hard put to find an iota of silver lining in the election returns. The "most important election of our lifetimes" has handed an enlarged mandate to an aggressively conservative president. Voters consolidated right-leaning Republican majorities in Congress. Social conservatives were energized as 11 states voted to ban gay marriages.
More younger voters did turn out, and did give John Kerry a majority of their votes. But there's some disappointment in the left's efforts to register more low-income and minority voters and actually get them to the polls. Despite significant increases over 2000, the turnout among have-nots in such key states as Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania still lagged far behind voting participation of affluent voters and, it appears, the evangelicals mobilized through their churches.
None of this means that Internet-based fund-raising and organization, popularized by the Howard Dean campaign and embraced by a range of the left's "527" and related political action groups - MoveOn, ACORN, the NAACP, the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters and ACT (Americans Coming Together) - didn't do a lot to level the playing field with a Republican campaign awash in cash.
But for now the progressives have to face bitter domestic prospects: what they expect to be more tax and regulatory favors for the affluent and big corporations, a renewed wave of conservative appointees to the courts (and almost surely the Supreme Court), watered down worker and environmental protections, and - to reduce the monstrous deficits triggered by tax cuts and the Iraq War - a potentially historic wave of cuts in housing and other social benefits for the poor.
Is any or all of that changed by President Bush's pledge, in his acceptance speech, to seize his second term as an opportunity to "earn" the trust of those who voted against him? Progressives are sure to be skeptical, bracing themselves for a repeat of the first Bush term formula of aggressively conservative economic and social agendas, the now-familiar Bush strategy to vanquish opponents rather than seek common ground.
For the left, the big message of the 2004 election has to be one virtually unthinkable in the last century: that the best opportunities for progressive policy breakthroughs exist not at the federal but at the state and local level.
And Election Day 2004 actually produced a model: despite determined opposition by Gov. Jeb Bush and major business interests, Floridians by an overwhelming vote - 72 percent - raised their state's minimum wage to $6.15 an hour, $1 over the federal level. By one estimate, that means a $434 million a year increase for Florida workers. A similar measure won in Nevada.
Peter Dreier, professor of urban policy at Occidental College and a lead analyst-advocate of progressive causes, says increases in the country's long-lagging minimum wage levels are precisely the types of issues able to attract massive middle-class support even while drawing more low-income, working class, African-American and Latino voters to the polls.
"We're the richest country in the world but we have more inequality and poverty, less job security, less health insurance, fewer guaranteed paid yearly vacations than any other industrialized nation," Dreier notes. These are issues, he suggests, that political organizations and unions can raise, appealing widely to the middle class as well as low-income people.
Kristina Wilfore, executive director the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center in Washington, echoes the point: "The progressive movement has failed to understand the states. But with the presidency, Senate, and House becoming more conservative, progressive planks will only succeed through state ballot initiatives or actions of the state legislatures. Tuesday's initiative results showed how effective activists at the local level can be, even overcoming huge odds by knowing how to appeal to voters in their own communities."
Last Tuesday's voting produced some cases in point. To pay for mental health services, for example, California voters approved a tax on people with annual incomes of $1 million or more - about as pure a "Robin Hood" measure as one can imagine. Colorado and Oklahoma approved measures to expand health care through tobacco taxes. In Maine and Washington, tax cut measures were defeated (for a change!). Colorado approved setting goals for public utilities to adapt more wind, solar and biomass power.
Not all states, of course, allow ballot initiatives. And when proposals helping the disadvantaged but costing the affluent reach legislatures, they're often easy prey for lobbyists.
Still, the progressives who saw their hopes dashed in this week's presidential and congressional elections don't need to be totally depressed. Voter-driven economic populism, a new and serious focus on state-level action, and starting early and seriously to register the toughest-to-mobilize new voters: The keys to a more promising political future are at least in sight.
Neal Peirce's e-mail address is nrp@citistates.com.
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