Progressives have no shared story, no strong brand. So every constituent group -- enviros, unions, immigration reformers, education reformers, financial reformers, social justice advocates, feminists -- fights its battles more or less alone, clamoring for attention, implicitly competing with the others. Each constituency can muster facts and policies, but as a coalition they are strangely reticent to evoke a larger story about values and purpose. (This is of course what message dudes like George Lakoff and Sean Wilentz have been telling the left for years.)Since the days of communists supporting all sorts of regressive politics in order to "heighten the contradictions", and bring on the coming glorious proletarian revolution, left-wing factions have figured that if they can't get what they want in the exact way they want it, they would rather screw the pooch for everyone as an object lesson in what happens when others don't listen to them. Whether it is environmentalists or feminists or gay activists or civil libertarians or what have you, there is a belief that each constituency actually lies at the heart of some grand scheme of national restoration, if only others would listen. When arguments ensue, it becomes to each group that the others are not just failing to learn; they are actually betraying the entire society by focusing on something thought to be tangential to the real problems we all face. Thus, feminists whose struggle for equal rights for women lose sight of the necessity of working for environmental quality; civil libertarians believe that any failure on matters of constitutional freedoms is a betrayal of fundamental Constitutional governance, a direct path to tyranny. Socialists and social democrats see a failure to bring about greater power and numbers to organized labor as being a sell-out to corporate America.
Only in a political jungle where each interest group fights solely for itself could it make sense for greens to try to take out a president fighting a flawed battle for progressive values to put in place one that will mean suffering for virtually every progressive constituency. Only in a jungle could greens feel justified putting the gains of those who will have better access to health insurance or student loans at risk because they didn't get what they wanted.
Rather than flipping a bird to other progressive constituencies, I'm more keen to figure out how to bridge the strange distance between them. For my part, I think of climate/energy policy as deeply enmeshed in and of a piece with progressivism. I favor action on climate change and clean energy because I'm a progressive. It puzzles me that lots of enviros and lots of progressives seem to think (or at least act) otherwise.
There is, in the new-fangled medium of the internet, the ego-factor. Four years ago, in the run-up to the mid-terms, when it was clear the American public was quite tired of Republican governance, several individuals became important players in (loosely) organizing disparate constituencies in the anti-Republican coalition. Then, heading to the '08 Presidential elections, these same individuals started lining up behind various candidates (Edwards! Hillary! Obama!) and held off (for the most part) criticizing one another because the stakes in the election were far too high.
For some reason, rather than seeing Obama's victory as the beginning of a larger project for progressives to solidify their gains, they celebrated the multi-level historic win, then returned to their various corners. Rather than deal with the messy reality of coalition building, pushing back against Republican obstructionism and talking about how to push a fundamentally centrist Democratic Administration toward more progressive policies, they started to accuse one another of failure to support this or that most vital issue. The left-wing feeding frenzy was small at first, but has since turned in to a blood bath.
The results are manifold failures. The President's shortcomings, clear enough to anyone even in the midst of celebrating his victory, became reason enough to doubt that he would pursue a serious progressive agenda. He became a sellout on any number of levels, from selling out to big money contributors to the Democratic Party to selling out to those within the Executive Branch who wish to hold on to various gains in the exertion of Executive authority that seem to violate traditional notions of limits on federal power. His spokesman, Robert Gibbs, made disparaging comments on "the professional left" that, while irritating, rang true enough. Rather than work with the Obama Administration, they would rather take Glenn Greenwald's "principled critic" stand and piss on pretty much any- and everything it does. As if it earns one points to name the obvious, viz., that neither Obama nor the major players in his Administration are progressives of any stripe.
While the Democrats are facing serious losses this fall across the board, much of the blame can be laid directly at the feet of those ideologues who, as usual, place principle above people, faction above fact, and their own massive egos over and against the very real needs of the people of this country. While there is certainly a great deal of responsibility on the shoulders of Obama and the members of his Administration, liberal and progressive activists also share a large portion of the blame as well for the impending disasters (first the electoral disaster for the Democrats; then the disaster for the country).
I hope they all sleep well amidst the rubble.
