There has been much navel-gazing of sorts about what Democrats and Progressives need to do going forward, in the aftermath of the 2010 Midterms. While I am not an expert, I have some thoughts about the way forward. In light of a recent story about liberal donors talking about setting up a counter to the groups who funded GOP candidates this past election, I argue that it is time to get serious about building a lasting progressive infrastructure, including messaging and media; not just build a simple countermand to the flow of mystery money on the Right.
We start with the excerpt of the quote from George Soros:
According to multiple sources with knowledge of his remarks, Soros told those in attendance that he is "used to fighting losing battles but doesn't like to lose without fighting." "We have just lost this election, we need to draw a line," he said, according to several Democratic sources. "And if this president can't do what we need, it is time to start looking somewhere else.” (Sam Stein, George Soros Tells Progressive Donors Obama Might Not Be The Best Investment, huffingtonpost.com, 11/17/2010.)
I disagree with Mr. Soros. His qualms with President Obama being what they will; it is not time to start looking “somewhere else”, and throw more money at another individual to get them to "do what we want." Rather, it is time for you, the donors, and progressives to start looking square in the mirror, and be honest. The real problem, Mr. Soros, is not this president or this congress; the problem is that there is no perceptible infrastructure in which progressives can push policy, or gain consistent message control, in order to get politicians to do what we want. Moreover, a great deal of that responsibility lies with the very same donors who you claim need to start looking “somewhere else.”
Ever since the early days of Rush Limbaugh, liberals/progressives have been playing a defensive game in the media. They ceded the AM radio dial, while corporate conservatives bought up companies and radio stations by the plentiful, allowing for a multitude of conservative hosts to dominate the airwaves. Meanwhile, the liberals argued that the only way to combat such was to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine; they did not buy radio clusters, or even cultivate hosts, until the early-to-mid-2000s, and by then, conservatives had a hierarchy of voices. Even by the time MSNBC—a network that started operations at around the same time as Fox News Channel in 1996—truly began pushing a more liberal viewpoint in late 2007, Fox News had cornered the conservative market—and by extension, the political media narrative—for 11 years.
Meanwhile, several progressive publications and radio networks went underfunded, or had a less-than-ideal business plan, and folded in the same period. Nevertheless, while all this was going on, where were all these donors, who Mr. Soros claims are all disaffected, and tired of politicians not fighting “losing battles”? Wherever they were, it was not helping to build a counterbalance to a Fox News, or a Wall Street Journal, while Rupert Murdoch took control of that paper; lending a hand, or even a couple hundred million dollars, to create a venue for the progressive message. They were doing little of anything and remaining silent, as the conservatives pilloried and did their dirt right out in the open.
Yet it is now, in the face of the Citizens United ruling in the Supreme Court of the United States; in the face of the hundreds of millions that conservative interest groups and corporations spent on electing Republicans to office in 2010—with a practical degree of success, at that—it is now that they want to get involved? All of a sudden, after years of sitting out the dance, why it is now they finally want to drop the gloves and fight? Ironic, since Mr. Soros claims he does not like to lose without fighting. Take the example of just this past decade, in which conservative influence in media tripled, and the Right continued to build on an already expansive grip there; this, while dozens of progressive efforts failed due to the lack of funding that the right had easy access to. Therefore, it is hard to argue that Soros—or much of anyone else, for that matter—put up much of a fight in that arena. Consequently, we lost and continue to lose that battle.
“There is an urgent need to develop funding for progressive media to partially counterbalance the huge investments that various conservative and authoritarian billionaires have made in recent decades. There are numerous under-funded progressive blogs, magazines, radio, and video programs etc. on the left that with additional funding could immediately broaden their audience.” (Danny Goldberg, The Nation, 11/17/2010.)
Danny Goldberg also points out in his piece for The Nation magazine, “Mad Men vs. Math Men”, that the left defers to “a rigid political culture that invests so much money and credibility in election season short-term tactics… that there are very few resources left for devising and implementing long-term narratives.” (Goldberg, 11/17/2010)
As I see it, this is a large part of the problem as well. We spend more time on instant petition drives and money bombs for candidates, than we do trying to make long-term, solid progressive policy actually work beyond the next election. Meanwhile, conservatives have not only mastered the long game, they have mastered the medium and short ones, too. Yet all we can manage to do with what little media we have, is point at the jesters of the Tea Party half the time, and the other half, find ways to dissect our own agenda into finite pieces, and throw it out if it does not match our ideals.
This leads me to an extrapolation about the election season of 2012. With the speculation that 2008 vice presidential candidate and former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, is to announce her entry in the 2012 Republican primary; it is apparent that season is already in progress. Many may say publicly that they are delighted at the prospect of Palin entering, and perhaps even winning, that primary. I see it a little differently; I see it as overconfidence, veiled in an underlying and genuine trepidation of what might come that election year.
The truth is that, while we do not know yet who will be the GOP's nominee, it is improbable that nominee will actually be Sarah H. Palin. However, there is also this notion emanating from some disaffected liberals about a challenge to President Obama. In my opinion, this would be a momentous gaffe for progressives. Even the failure of such sets up for a Republican victory, as the same group of liberals could seek a 3rd-or-minor party challenger. Yet, a successful challenge of this president would unquestionably alienate core minority support, and it is my belief that the challenger, if successful, would not be able to pull enough support back to the Democrats, and thus win the presidency.
To those who would dismiss that last point, I feel obligated to demand an explanation as to how you would persuade the cluster of African-American voters to vote for that presumptive challenger, without the archetypal and patronizing attitude that says, “People who take their votes seriously would…” As if African-Americans, who had no truly free right to vote without poll taxes or Jim Crow laws before the Voting Rights Act was passed, don’t take their votes seriously? I posit that the opposite is true, and has been for decades now; that the Black vote has been taken for granted by progressives for years, and our influence stifled when the “Big Issues” come to the foreground, unless and until there’s someone that needs to be elected for other people. Then, when the issue is brought up in any progressive forum, people tend to go out of their way to deflect or discredit it.
I'll be blunt: this glib talk of a primary is an example, and may well become a self-defeating divination, of that attitude. Yet, if Democrats cannot sell seniors even on the concept of improving their health care, how are they going to sell the candidate that upended the first African-American president to Black voters? To get the president—the same president that they will have just then rejected—to convince them to do it? How ironic would that scenario be?
As I see it; such a primary effort, if successful, would ultimately damage whoever the winning challenger was with that voting bloc; and the possibility exists that those voters would withdraw from the process altogether, hurting down ticket races, widening a GOP majority in Congress, and destroying a fragile Democratic majority in the Senate. To sum up: you might scoff at the notion of a Sarah Palin presidency today, yet by October 2012, should they nominate her, and you then primary this president; the notion will be ever closer to reality than you might have even dared, and much worse.
What happens, then?
Perhaps, at that point, progressives would have no choice but to rebuild the infrastructure from pure scratch, and all without the aid of a cynical core section of their electorate, for years. The Right will not cry any tears for you; they will gladly run you over for more power, more rights over redistricting, more of their appointed judges, and their legislative agenda. Moreover, even the idea of a primary—as empowering as it sounds to disaffected liberals—is futile as a method for building the sorely needed progressive infrastructure. Even that path depends on building behind yet another politician; another appointed superman to carry forth the ideals we hold, then go and repeat the same ineffective tactics with the same senators and representatives as before. Essentially, we would be repeating the same process we are decrying today.
What happens, then?
Do we simply keep primarying presidents with other candidates, until we find “The One?” And even if we do; are we going to have a better support system by then, in which we give that One the power to succeed, not just merely maintain order?
The point being that politicians, whose primary function is to legislate and govern, cannot build the necessary infrastructure that progressives need. Without capital, or at least a fundamental change to campaign finance law to begin with, we are not going to win those “battles”, either in the long or short term. This is not a football game, and simply changing quarterbacks is not going make any difference at all, when you are going up against major corporations funneling money, and a 24-hour television channel purporting to be news, yet operating as a self-funded PAC and farm system for potential candidates of the opposition party. Not to mention the self-interests of other assorted media, such as The Politico, or aggregators like The Huffington Post.
This is where the focus progressive donors should be right now. Planning for the long-term battles; preparing to fight those battles and win. These donors have the resources and capital to assist in building out these venues in which the progressive voice can be heard. Nevertheless, for years, they have sat out the dance, repeatedly, and left the fight to people who had the will, but not the cash, to try to build something that helped move the progressive message forward. That lack of effort, that lack of will to fight, assisted in several failures across the board.
What happened to Air America Radio and other progressive media ventures that folded in the last 10 years is endemic of the failure of these investors in helping to do just that. The dependency on appealing to Americans with academics, rather than simple message marketing—a learned skill of the conservative movement—is endemic of the failure of overall long-term Democratic strategy. Finally, the fickle nature of the progressive movement, aided by muddled, vague, and ineffective emotion, is endemic of a failure of leadership in activism, as is the failure to expand outreach beyond a certain clique or demographic.
Simply put, it is past time for these progressive, liberal donors—and activists, for that matter—to start living up to the ideals that they expect their elected leaders to follow. It is exceptionally painless to sit in a posh, cozy loft, in the most fashionable neighborhood in a city, and dictate whether you will donate cash to candidates; it is a little different to actually put your ass on the line, and construct your ideals into a straightforward and effective model. Either these donors can start helping to manufacture that infrastructure in assisting underfunded media, helping to simplify and sell messages to voters, and making sure that lasts for more than just the next election; or Mr. Soros and company can simply sign their checks, eat their dinners, continue the cycle of failure, and shut the hell up.
It is time to put the boots and gloves on, make ready with shovels and hammers, start building a real infrastructure, and fund it. Politicians cannot and will not do it for us, while we sit back, watch him or her work, and give them instructions; and we do not need them to do this for us. This is something we must do ourselves; we have to start developing spines of our own, rather than lament the lack of them from our elected officials. Additionally, any effort must include outreach into the minority communities, as well as the rural areas, the South, and the Midwest. That means learning how to sell and market your ideas. Depending solely on the high-minded astuteness of the urban centers in the Northeast and the Pacific coast is not going to expand the base any further; it is not going to win any more votes, and not going to convince people to vote for progressive ideas, rather than against them, and against the candidates who promote them.
It’s time for progressives, from bottom to top, to start building for the long-term, instead of worrying about the next election cycle, and gearing every single battle toward hoping that cycle goes in their favor. On the other hand, you could continue holding out for a hero, and hoping that hero will arrive, cape in hand, ready to fight your battles for you and win them all. However, if you do, you will be right back in this spot all over again, wondering why.
By then, however, we will have run out of time.
If we do not start putting this together now, the only thing that is certain is that time will run out; and years from now, it will be too late. You say you want a revolution? Then show some heart; stop waiting on singular heroes to fight the battles, and gather yourselves some armies. Because the way things are going now, we are all about to have a long, hard fight ahead of us. This is not about winning one election, or two; this is about putting up a real, sustainable fight against the lies and the money that the Right has thrown at the people of this nation for more than four decades.
Moreover, if the donors are serious, and are not going to take this lying down anymore; to this, I say, “Thank you, Rip Van Winkle, for finally waking the hell up! It’s been 42 years; let’s get to work.”>
And let’s hope that they do. Finally.