Progressive Movement

Hi John,

This is not one of those letters. I've met Elizabeth and know that even though she is shorter than me, she'd easily kick my butt. Although, in truth, it's not one of those letters because I honestly am a total fan girl of your wife and there's nothing more than I would love than to see her face plastered everywhere as First Lady.

This is a letter that I've been mulling for some time because you've truly exceeded my expectations.

When I was ready to throw my support to you, the blogger fiasco happened and I was taken aback by the way it was all handled. I know, I know. There are no perfect candidates. Yet at that time I wasn't clear as to what you were bringing at the table as a presidential candidate.

Then you started talking about poverty and the state of the "real people's" economy. You evangelized about the two Americas. You demonstrated how there is a tremendous economic and political disconnect in this country. How what you've seen and talked with people in all your travels seems not to affect the people who are supposed to represent them in Washington. You talked about the evil of corporate handouts and the shadow rule by lobbyist.

You are talking about everything that nobody wants to talk about in Washington.

Howard Dean in many ways brought the Democratic Party back to life. Although others share in the 2005 and 2006 success stories, Howard Dean in 2004 recreated the Democratic grassroots and since then has forged an alliance between progressives and moderates that has been winning big. He did this not by creating a rival force to the Democratic Party the way Nader did. He created a force WITHIN the party that led him to the head of the DNC. And under him the Democratic Party, with help from Rahm, Pelosi and Schumer, among others, has prospered.

Democracy for America was one piece of Howard Dean's revitalization of the Democratic Party. It brought back into the party thousands of activists who had lost faith with the system. It has focused people not only on national issues, but on LOCAl issues, events and campaigns, revitalizing the grassroots from bottom to top. DFA, along with groups like Progressive Majority and MoveOn.org, has given progressives ways of becoming a part of the political process without having to compromise their independence and ideals.

Three Presidential candidates have recognized the importance of Democracy for America and the new direction it represents. These three candidates are John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson. These three candidates recognize the importance of the grassroots and of more independent, more progressive movements within the Democratic Party. Even Bill Richardson, a moderate on many issues, recognizes the importance of the progressive, more independent grassroots.

There's a thread downstream featuring one of the oldest, and to me most tedious, tropes of American discourse: the fashionably cynical argument that there's no real difference between the two major parties where average folks are concerned. In normal times, this could be dismissed as a modish affectation, the kind that produces the pleasing feeling of being somehow smarter, more in tune with the Zeitgeist, so desired by those who'd like to keep at bay the tedium of making public choices; but these are not normal times. You're just not paying attention, and your argument is akin to doubting the existence of sharks because you haven't been eaten by one yet.

To put it in very stark terms: the foundations of the Republic are under attack. Simply put, while we may have seen precedents for this or that action taken by the former ruling party, we have never, in two hundred and thirty years, seen a systemic assault, on so many fronts at once, on the basic principles of American governance and the civilizational bedrock that underlies them. Once again: among people paying attention, in the academy, legislatures, the bar, business, even the church, this is not a controversial assessment; you, my friend, just haven't been paying attention. And I get impatient with it, because yours is fundamentally a lazy, solipsistic argument.

Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech remains one of the great monuments of our civilization. Historians consider it one of the Republic's seminal documents, along with the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address.

Unfortunately, Jefferson and Lincoln lived before the age of video. Luckily for us, King had cameras trained on him when he gave this speech; here it is, freshly youTubed in September of last year.

Daily Gotham has the full text of the speech, here.

I suppose this was to be expected; being unused to defeat and enmeshed in their discredited ideology to the detriment of common sense, conservatives are claiming that the thrashing received by their party and their candidates on Tuesday was actually, somehow, a victory. Karol over at Alarming News opines:

We have work to do but we're already ahead of the curve because we've seen the American people embrace conservative principles. Democrats had to run to the right to win. That's a success for conservatism, even if its a loss for Republicans.

The snarky response would be that America needs more conservative successes like the one we just saw – many more. But even in terms of actual results, this narrative doesn't withstand scrutiny. I recall that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, seventeen years ago today, some communists in the Soviet bloc rejoiced, claiming this was a welcome development that would allow real communism to flourish; it stands to reason that the ideological cousin of communism, authoritarian conservatism, would make similar claims.

However, this election was a victory for a new coalition of centrists and Progressives. Consider, via Media Matters and DailyKos: