With the announcement of the addition of marriage equality to the Democratic Party platform, I began wondering why is it that the Democratic Party in the US and the Liberal Party in Canada (my only two experiences with center-left parties) seem so schizophrenic on progressive policies.
Often we progressives get so caught up with our own ideals and vision of a progressive future for our country(ies) that we miss the forest for the trees. What may seem obvious to us is often times not a consideration to “centrists”—let alone the radical right.
Case in point: I recently had a discussion with a good friend of mine about the role of unions in the marketplace. We’re both professionals, working in the same industry, but I’m politically engaged and working for someone else, and she’s not generally political and owns her own business. Both of us believe that there needs to be more fairness in taxation and more investment in our social and physical infrastructure.
Where we differed intensely is the idea that unions drive industry and business to become more cost effective by outsourcing. She saw the unions demand for wages and benefits as hurting a company’s ability to compete against companies who’s employees aren’t unionized. I hold that until management salaries are considered as part of the same competitive equation, you can’t demand only half of the business’s workforce to hew to austerity to save their jobs.
I expect that most DK posters support the latter view more than the former—but we can’t win an argument based on the assumption that what is obviously fair to us, is as obvious to others.
In a similar manner, our left-leaning parties are a collection of people with different perspectives on the whole gamut of progressive policies. This is why the Democratic Party can be pro-marriage equality, but still anti-privacy, without needing to believe that corruption and cronyism drives the latter policies.
Many left-leaning individuals complain that there are two “corporate” parties in the US, and that politics is owned by the 1%--all of which is true to a greater or lesser extent. Yet, my friend isn’t near the 1% (although both of us reside in the 2-5% range fairly comfortably I would expect) but her view of business impacts her view of unions. Is she right? Am I right? The answers depend on your own perspective.
Sometimes it’s good to remember that fair and right are often in the eye of the beholder a wider, greyer line than moral and ethical.
Remembering this helps us understand why we should be part of a big tent. More and better Democrats, yes; what defines better needs to be an ongoing conversation.