A Battle is Won, but the War Continues
Ernest Partridge
January 6, 2009
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Regressives (i.e., self-described “conservatives”) have a nasty disinclination
to learn from history, as they routinely promote policies that have failed
spectacularly in the past. Today, with the advent of a Barack Obama
administration and a solidly Democratic Congress, this is no time for
progressives to imitate the regressives. For, as George Santayana famously
warned, those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
And what does history teach us?
When the progressives win the White House, as with both
Roosevelts, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson, their liberal supporters tend to
retire from politics to cultivate their own personal and vocational gardens,
while the regressives gather their resources, retrench, reorganize, and continue
their struggle.
Thus politics, to the liberals and progressives, is largely a biennial game,
like the Olympics, to be played during congressional and presidential elections.
To the regressives, it is a non-stop enterprise.
While this pattern persists, progressives will occasionally prevail in the
short-term, particularly after a spectacular regressive setback such as the
Republican Depression of the Thirties and the current collapse of Bushenomics.
But the long-term belongs to the regressives so long as they relentlessly pound
away at the temporarily ascendant liberal establishment until public support
erodes sufficiently for regressive opportunists to break through public
confusion and apathy to once again take political control.
History provides this lesson: Following the trouncing of Barry Goldwater by
Lyndon Johnson in the 1960 election, it was widely believed that conservatism
was a spent force, unlikely to be of any political significance in the
foreseeable future – believed, that is, by all but a few hard-core
conservatives.
There is some dispute as to the initial genesis of the conservative revival.
Some say that it was a 1971 memo by corporate attorney (and later Supreme Court
justice) Lewis Powell, while others point to William Simon’s 1978 book, A
Time for Truth. Whether or not they were the prime movers of that revival is
less important than the fact of that revival. Both Powell and Simon accurately
described the mechanism of that revival: investment in right-wing “think tanks,”
control of the mass media and the use thereof for propaganda, and attacks on
liberal establishments including universities and labor unions. Thus was the
stage set for the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and twenty-eight years of
regressive domination of American politics, not withstanding Bill Clinton’s
intervening eight years, six of which were severely compromised by the
harassment of GOP Congresses. (For more details, see my
“The Ascent of
the Right”).
At last, the Democrats have fought their way back into power, thanks to the
combination of a collapse of the national economy, a dawning public awareness of
the lies and incompetence of the Bush administration, an incredibly inept
campaign by the GOP candidates, John McCain and Sarah Palin, and by contrast a
brilliantly executed campaign by Barack Obama.
Once again, the regressives have been defeated. Karl Rove’s “permanent
Republican majority” and the neo-conservatives’ “New American Century” lasted
less than decade.
But despite this setback, the regressives most assuredly will not go away. Their
formidable resources – financial, organizational, political and media – remain
intact. A cadre of Bushevik loyalists have been “embedded” in Obama’s federal
bureaucracy. Private businesses loyal to the GOP still manufacture and write
secret software for voting machines that issue forth unverifiable election
returns. As before, the regressive establishment is, at this very moment,
feverishly plotting its restoration to power.
We can see evidence of the regressive counterattack today, even before Barack
Obama has taken his oath of office. Thus, for example, we hear on FOX News that
wild assertion that “historians pretty much agree” that FDR prolonged the great
depression. The corporate media incessantly repeat the GOP talking point that
the presidential election (“not a landslide”) indicated that the public has
endorsed “center-right” policies, a sentiment that President Obama will
disregard at his peril. And the Chairman of the Republican National Committee,
Robert Duncan, has warned
the public that the Democrats intended to “impose their radical leftist agenda
on America,” and thus that the Republicans “must work vigilantly to guard our
country’s freedoms from the inevitable assault [by the Democrats that] they will
face.” Never mind that there is not a single “radical leftist” in Obama’s
proposed cabinet, let alone the entire Congress.
The presidential election of 2008 was less a victory for progressives than it
was a defeat for regressivism. That victory is yet to be won. The previous
Congress demonstrated that American politics has moved so far to the right that
today’s Democrats are somewhat to the right of the “moderate Republicanism” of
Dwight Eisenhower, or even of Richard Nixon. As Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have
shown us to our sorrow, some of the more formidable obstacles to a progressive
renaissance put a capital “D” after their names.
What Must the Progressives Do?
The presidential election of 2008 has provided the progressives
not with a victory but with an opportunity to achieve a victory. But that
victory can only be achieved through unrelenting effort. This time, we must not
retire from the field of battle only to return shortly before the next election.
Here are a few essential strategies in that continuing struggle:
-
Capture the Democratic Party. This is a lesson to be
learned from the religious right. They worked up from the grass roots,
crowding the local GOP meetings, staying late and voting their members into
party offices. Advice to progressives: “Go thou and do likewise.”
-
Purge the Democratic Party of the “blue dogs.”
DINOs
(Democrats in Name Only) must be challenged and at least occasionally
defeated in primary elections. The mere threat of successful opposition
might bring a few DINOs back into line.
-
Reinvigorate the labor movement. The GOP correctly
figured that to achieve Karl Rove’s “permanent Republican majority,” they
must first immobilize the labor unions. Thus Reagan’s 1981 breaking of the
PATCO (air controllers) strike. Conversely, FDR’s New Deal would have been
impossible without the support of the unions. The road back for the unions
begins with the proposed Employee Free Choice Act, designed to increase union
membership without fear of management retaliation.
-
Sustain and expand alternative media. The print and
broadcast news media, once owned and controlled by hundreds of independent
local businesses, is now primarily owned by six mega-corporations. It is
past time to dust off and reactivate anti-trust legislation. In the
meantime, progressives must refine and expand their use of the internet.
-
Enact election and campaign finance reform. End the
privatization of elections, and outlaw any and all unverifiable voting
technologies. Overturn Buckley v. Valeo, which affirmed that “cash is
speech.” Treat corporate campaign contributions for what they
are: bribes.
-
Reinstate the Rule of Law. The crimes of the
Bush/Cheney administration must be publicized and prosecuted, and the
integrity of the Constitution restored.
And finally, Carpe Diem! Seize this moment. The
iron is hot. The opponent is groggy. Candidate Obama was speaking to the
progressives when he said, “this is our moment... We are the ones we have been
waiting for.” As Shakespeare’s Brutus observed:
“There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at
the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life is
bound in shallows and in miseries.
“On such a full sea are we now afloat; and we must take the current when
it serves, or lose our ventures.”
Copyright 2009 by Ernest Partridge
Ernest Partridge's Internet Publications
Conscience of a Progressive:
A book
in progress.
Partridge's Scholarly Publications. (The Online Gadfly)
Dr. Ernest Partridge is a consultant, writer and lecturer in the field
of Environmental Ethics and Public Policy. He has taught Philosophy at
the University of California, and in Utah, Colorado and Wisconsin. He
publishes the website, "The Online
Gadfly" and co-edits the progressive website,
"The Crisis Papers".
