Building The Progressive Road

One of progressive politics' greatest challenges is to continue to evolve and expand even as its allies in government are in power. All the incentives change and motives and direction get complicated. It's a nice problem to have, but it's a problem nonetheless.

This AFN conference is a study in how that's developing and it's looking pretty good. People are starting to adjust to being out of purely oppositional mode and beginning to create institutions and mechanisms to push the progressive agenda from the outside in. Yesterday, I attended a fascinating discussion featuring Adam Green, Progressive Change Campaign Committee,Mike Lux, author, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be and Progressive Strategies, LLC, Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA), Stephanie Taylor, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Darcy Burner, Progressive Change Campaign Committee. This talk was basically about how new groups like the PCCC are going to go about making the Democratic party more responsive to progressives.

Periello and Burner, both having run tough campaigns as progressives in red districts shared their experiences and had a lot of excellent pointers for candidates. Burner, who lost her race and is now working in DC on creating some new progressive networking capabilities, said that progressive candidates need to have their own ecosystem and work together and also create feedback with the movement itself for a multiplier effect. Periello said that you have to make the progressive case during the campaign, and Lux said you have to be willing to wage a fight.

These things all seem fairly obvious when you see them written down, but what was interesting was their stories about how difficult it was to actually do those obvious things. Progressivism has been so marginalized in mainstream politics that there has literally been no road to run on.

Luckily that seems to be changing. With the work of institutions like CAF, which provides an important issue forum for progressives to draw upon and new groups like Adam Green's PCCC, which seeks to give practical guidance on the ground to progressive candidates so they can do all those things that Periello and Burner found to be valuable in their campaigns, the progressive movement is entering a new phase. It's going to be an interesting and rewarding time if it all comes together.