Progressives Rising

The last installment in my week's engagement at the Los Angeles Times' "dust up" feature. This is what they wanted to know: "A few years ago, conservatives were beginning to think the Republican ascendancy would be indefinite. Are we entering a period of Democratic ascendancy, and if so, how long will it last?"

Now here's a question I can sink my teeth into!

The answer is: as long as Democrats do their work and continue to earn the trust of the people. If not, I myself want them as good as gone. But the conditions are propitious.

The notion of a conservative ascendancy has always been a bit of a confidence game. In 1980, 38% of Reagan voters said they were voting for him mainly because "it is time for a change." Only 11% did so because "he's a real conservative" -- yet the right claimed that election as a mandate for conservatism. Likewise, in 1994, Newt Gingrich's revolutionaries ran on a poll-tested, focus-grouped marketing strategy to convince disaffected Ross Perot voters that the Republicans were all about Perot-style reform -- and then, after they won, once more called that a mandate for conservatism.

So it went with Karl Rove. He loudly barked that President Bush's anemic three-point victory in 2004 with a fading, jerry-built coalition heralded all-but-permanent realignment and prayed political reporters wouldn't call his bluff. They never did -- even though Rove's plans for a permanent Republican majority relied on two strategies that were already unraveling: attracting Latinos into his coalition (his base proved unwilling to buy it) and building up a "client-based" national machine to reward friendly Republican constituencies and punish unfriendly ones. But that didn't lead to an unceasing majority. It led to unceasing congressional and judicial probes of plainly illegal activity.

Now a progressive congressional majority faces the challenge of keeping its promise to push a plainly popular progressive agenda. Here are some approval ratings for the Democratic majority versus the Republican minority's legislative positions (click here for sources): stem cell research, 64% to 31%; troop withdrawal from Iraq, 59% to 36%; Medicare drug-price negotiation, 79% to 17%; and renewable energy, 70% to 7%. None of these things have passed into law, of course, and that's largely because of a rather monstrous strategy on the part of the Republican minority: They've intentionally abused the minority's power to obstruct in order to get the media to label this a "do-nothing" Congress.

It's stunning: The most cloture votes -- filibusters, in other words -- in any previous modern Congress was 61. Each Congress, of course, lasts two years. But in just the first year of this Congress, Republicans had already filibustered 62 times -- yes, they're on track to double the obstructionism of any previous Congress, and so far the political press hasn't even noticed. "The strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail ... and so far it's working for us," Sen. Trent Lott told Roll Call last year.

Give progressives a fair fight on an even playing field, and this progressive movement will last a very long time indeed.

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