Progressives Converge

The radical right learned the lesson that solidarity translates into real political power. This election season, progressives are faced with a similar challenge. If we remain splintered, we will have little impact. Unified, we become a powerful force.

Right now, many progressives feel disappointed. The candidates who carried the progressive torch have fallen away, except Dennis Kucinich, who soldiers on, and Ralph Nader, who inspires fierce critiques as a spoiler. Most progressives are a bit unsure where to situate themselves on this terrain since current enthusiasm for John Kerry is lukewarm at best. One option is to turn to outrage at George Bush and bond around that. However, anger has limited value in the long haul of an election. Those already outraged will bond with our anger. People on the fence tend to be turned off. Those who actually like Bush turn away altogether. While the anger might keep us motivated for a time, it tends to fester.

So I believe that the central task for progressives this year is to figure out a positive way to come together into a powerful enough block to exert pressure in a way that delivers maximum progressive change while sending Bush back to the ranch.

Most of the flagships of the progressive fleet have erred on the side of playing conservative. MoveOn.org, for example, has rallied lock-step behind Kerry, with no hint of exerting pressure on him to shift his platform. Their strategy is to use fear of a Bush second term to galvanize their considerable base. This is typical of most progressive political organizations, which are using the greater-evil argument to focus attention on beating Bush.

At the other progressive extreme are folks who have decided the game is rigged, the two-party system is actually a single corporate party and that the only way to win is to take our chips off the table and play a different game. Risking social banishment, they’ve rallied around Ralph Nader in fairly surprising numbers.

There are very real problems with both these strategies. In the first case, lock-step allegiance leads to discouragement and lackluster campaigning in the absence of more tangible benefits for progressives. In the other case, third-party rebellion may result in a split progressive vote and handing the White House to Bush again, a less progressive outcome.

When we look only at black or white possibilities, we may overlook a realm in which a better solution can be found. To create maximum progressive change this year AND defeat Bush, what is needed is a delicate walk between the two extremes. This translates into conditional support of Kerry and, just as importantly, an organized effort across the country to put politicians in office that champion progressive issues.

Conditional support means that we are willing to support Kerry with money, time, and votes because he is championing what WE want to see in the world, at least to some extent. He becomes our candidate to the extent that he is listening to us, responding to us, and taking positions that result in progressive change. In other words, he makes concessions to broaden the tent until we feel like he is OUR candidate and we can legitimately support him because he is helping to advance OUR vision of the world. Our task is therefore to influence Kerry to become more of what we want. It is also part of his job as a candidate to really listen to what his constituents want and balance competing interests. The broader the coalition we can mobilize for progressive positions, the more he must listen.

To some extent, Dennis Kucinch has taken on the required role, acting as the “inside guy” pulling the Democratic Party and the Kerry platform in a progressive direction. I wrote an article about him entitled A Risk-Free Nader in 2004 a few months back focused on just that. Kucinich champions many of the same platform planks as Nader and has pledged to push the party in a progressive direction. He deserves a lot of respect and I hope that we one day grow enough as a country to elect a man of his calibre. There is only one problem with him influencing Kerry at this point: he has almost no leverage.

As any negotiator knows, if we negotiate without leverage, we may end up with virtually nothing. A good negotiator must be willing to leave the table and forget the deal before obtaining a decent result. Kucinich is a man of his word and his word is that he will fully support the nominee. He thus cannot be as strong a negotiator for the people as a proxy who is merely representing the progressive block’s priorities and willing to take a stand for each point, even to the point of not supporting Kerry.

From Kerry’s perspective, Kucinich can’t offer much, except help in rallying the progressive vote, which is already unconditionally offered. So, in my opinion, if we primarily throw our weight behind Kucinich’s remaining campaign infrastructure, we are not going to get the maximum influence on Kerry. I’m very happy that Kucinich’s campaign has advanced as far as it has -- I’ve been an outspoken champion of it -- but in terms of negotiating power beyond the primaries, Kucinich has a compromised position. Nonetheless, he is a crucial voice for progressive change, so he will remain an essential part of the change equation this year.

Other candidates that have folded their campaign infrastructure and pledged themselves to support Kerry have also compromised their negotiating power. Howard Dean, for example, has pledged his unqualified support of Kerry, putting him in the same situation as Kucinich. Democracy for America and other spinoffs from the Dean campaign have yet to gain sufficient traction to influence the party platform in a progressive direction, perhaps because the leadership has pledged unconditional support of Kerry.

At the other end of the spectrum, Nader appears to be wedded to remaining outside the two-party system and seems unconcerned about playing a spoiler role. So while he has excellent negotiating leverage (he’s shown his willingness to play hardball), few people want to sit down at the table with him. Also, his rhetoric and loyalties may keep him from endorsing Kerry under any condition. Backing Nader thus won’t create much of any progressive change this year, unless he shifts to a stance of conditional support and is willing to drop from the race if Kerry adopts key planks or programs.

So that leaves us with one other option: a NEW progressive umbrella network emerges and grows powerful enough to rally much of the progressive base behind a vision of conditional support for Kerry. This coalition of progressives must do a number of things effectively:

1. Provide some shared focus while still allowing for diversity of priorities and loyalties
2. Create a linked infrastructure for many organizations and alliances that share similar visions of the world we want to create.
3. Effectively identify the “price point” of progressives – what is the minimum number of changes to the Democratic platform to get their unqualified support? What are the most important planks? This needs to be very specific.
4. Have negotiating representatives at the Democratic National Convention with something real to offer in exchange for progressive shifts in the platform.
5. Develop long-term movement-building infrastructure (online resources, events, voter registration, roadshows, etc.)
6. Recruit progressive leaders to represent the movement – including people like Kucinich, Dean, and Nader – while also remaining independent of party loyalties.
7. Develop a more unified progressive platform, perhaps ratified by progressive summits.
8. Make support of Democratic, Republican, or third-party candidates running at any level proportionate to alignment with the network’s overall platform and values, or at least match support with appropriate subgroups.
9. Incorporate many wings of activities into the extended network – think tanks, media efforts, campaigns, protests, community groups, grassroots infrastructure, trainings, etc. which is precisely what the radical right did.
10. Empower people to organize by neighborhood, community, region, and state, linking issues at each level into national change efforts.

The challenges of creating an umbrella network are sizable, given the diversity of voices, concerns, and priorities. Plus, the time horizons are very short. However, without a single, leading force such as the far right had with the Christian Coalition, there is a dispersal of negotiating power and grassroots strength. Solidarity is the source of political power. However, that solidarity cannot come from imposition. It must be a coalition that honors and represents many voices in a balanced way. To do this, we need to create enough transparency around the will of the people such that those who bring forth our messages represent our needs and negotiate for our requirements.

It is said that necessity is the mother of invention. Necessity requires that if progressives want a significant say in this year’s election, an umbrella network must emerge and it can’t be strictly wedded to any of the existing parties. It must bring together many movements and do so with a good mix of entertainment, organizational savvy, and political finesse.

These are tall tasks on a short deadline, but they are achievable with the specter of a second Bush term looming and grumbles about Kerry increasing while the Iraq war worsens and 9-11 revelations continue. If we don’t create such a network this year, we may face a grim future with ongoing imperialistic wars, further erosion of civil rights, massive debt, rampant deception, and increasing consolidation of power and money in a cloistered elite. This is not the future America was founded to create.

I’ve been helping to create some organizations and efforts that can become important pieces of a unified progressive movement. We have used Convergence as the umbrella term since it describes the process of many movements coming together into a single force of positive change. Recently, this led to the formation of WeConverge.net, a way for those who share a similar dream to find allies and organize locally, as well as exert real leverage on the Democratic platform. We will be launching a campaign on Monday, May 3rd, to advance this work and are looking for others to help take it still further. I encourage you to register on the site today to help shape this network. The plan is for WeConverge.net to become a primary political advocacy and grassroots organizing arm of the larger network.

Personally, I believe it is possible to converge various progressive movements into a more unified force this year. If you share this vision and have specific talents, funding sources, or time to commit, let me know. We will be doing our best to weave the threads together into something strong enough to pull us towards a conscious, sustainable and just world. We can do better than simple regime change on November 2nd; we can take significant steps towards creating a new vision of America and a new vision of the world.