A Time To Pressure Allies More Than Opponents

While movement progressives have watched this year's events unfold, I'm sure many of us have had a Hightower moment:

As a fellow once said to me, "I don't mind losing when we lose, but I hate losing when we win."

As I see it, the defining test of the progressive coalition is the need to cross over from struggling against avowed opponents to holding putative allies to promises made when they were climbing to power with our help. Further, it may be the defining test of whether there even is such a coalition.

So it is that we will lose our way if all we can do is rail against people who depend on us for very little. It's the businesses that depend on us as employees and customers, the political parties and candidates we've worked for and donated to, and ultimately the government that has failed to protect our jobs in spite of all those taxes we paid them, whose actions we are best suited to affect. It's their actions, through our mutual interdependence, that we are most responsible to change.

So it is that we will lose our way if our imagination and compassion ends at the borders of our personal interests. As Senate candidate Barack Obama told an electrified crowd at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, "It's that fundamental belief - I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper - that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. "E pluribus unum." Out of many, one."

Will we all hang together, or will we all hang separately? As they say.

It's satisfying to rage at enemies. It's painful to address someone you thought of as a friend, and who was evidently not as good a friend as you believed, to tell them that they have disappointed or betrayed you. No one finds joy in reducing their mental tally of fellow travellers, so let's hope it doesn't come to that for movement progressives. So let's take this time when some of our friends are in power to remind them of promises and obligations, and help them to find their way.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future