populism

Win or Lose, Perriello Reveals Progressive Power

Zach Carter — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 12:41:49 -0400

Tom Perriello always knew it would be hard to hold his seat in Congress. The progressive Democrat from Albemarle County, Va. represents a district designed to nullify liberal votes with a wide swath of conservative countryside. He was elected in 2008, riding President Obama’s coattails to victory by just 727 votes. He does not represent a swing district--he is a committed progressive in a solidly Republican district. But unlike his Blue Dog contemporaries, Perriello has voted like a progressive for the past two years. And unlike many Blue Dogs, he might actually pull out a victory tomorrow night, even in the face of a Republican wave fueled by double-digit unemployment. The mere fact that he’s in the running is a stunning accomplishment.

I lived in Perriello’s district for eight years before moving to Washington, D.C. this summer. For mountains, majesty, and rock ‘n roll, it simply can’t be beat. But there were problems, namely persistent racial tensions, a lousy economy and politicians who perpetuated these two troubles. For all but the last two years we were represented by Virgil Goode, a conservative Republican and unabashed bigot. Years before Fox News made Islamophobia a mainstream political view, Goode was openly attacking Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., on the grounds that he was – gasp!—a Muslim. Goode cruised to re-election every cycle, easily surviving the 2006 Democratic wave, despite being a Bush-backing war-monger in a year when voters were rejecting both Bush and his war in Iraq.

I lived in Charlottesville, a tiny outcropping of progressive politics at the northern tip of the Fifth District. From Charlottesville, the district fans out directly to the rural south, extending all the way to the North Carolina border. It’s a two-and-a-half hour drive straight south from Charlottesville to Danville, three hours southwest to Collinsville or southeast to Brunswick. All four towns are in the same district. Just 40,000 people live in Charlottesville—120,000 if you include Albemarle County (which is not as progressive as “the city”). But the district as a whole includes nearly 650,000 people, most of it tiny towns and farmland, and most of its inhabitants Republicans. Jerry Falwell’s right-wing conservative Christian enclave Liberty University is smack in the middle of Perriello country.

Conventional wisdom dictates that Democratic politicians in such districts vote like Republicans. Otherwise, a Republican runs against you, points out that you’re not a Republican, and beats you.

But Perriello decided to take a different tack when he was elected. Instead of capitulating to policies and votes he didn’t believe in, he would do what he thought was right, and make an aggressive case to voters that he was, in fact, right.

On every major vote in the past two years, Perriello voted with progressives, at times even voting against President Obama on the grounds that his policies were not progressive enough. He voted for healthcare reform and the stimulus package, but he voted against Wall Street reform because it didn’t hit the big banks hard enough, and he voted against disbursing the second round of bailout money to the banks (he wasn’t in office when the bank bailout was approved).

He never apologized for these votes or caved to right-wing rhetorical frames, and he hit the road to campaign on his record, explaining his positions directly to voters. This was old-school campaigning, and it wasn’t glamorous—trekking from Danville to Martinsville to Charlottesville every week, making speeches, shaking hands and answering questions in town-hall meetings. But Perriello is not your standard politician waiting for a cushy lobbyist job. He has a deep background in social justice work—he’s in Congress because he wants to make a difference, not to score a sweet paycheck.

All of that campaigning has paid off. Voters are pissed off this year. They’ve watched Wall Street profits soar on the back of a taxpayer-financed bailout, even as ordinary Americans have been laid off by the millions. Whether Republicans take control of the House tomorrow night or not, they will certainly make big gains as voters reject policymakers who cater to big banks while failing to tackle the jobs problem—either out of political cowardice or ideological blindness.

But Perriello is holding even with Republican challenger Robert Hurt. The fact that Perriello even has a chance in this election ought to be viewed as something of a miracle. Or maybe it’s just good governing, combined with good politics.

Tim Fernholz almost gets it right in his profile of Perriello for The American Prospect. But he misses the mark with this comment, which is going to be echoed by the Beltway establishment on Wednesday morning, however the race turns out:

“If Perriello can beat the odds tomorrow, it is not only his reputation, and the president's, that will be burnished . . . . Should he lose, the voices who call for a more timid Democratic Party will have a point in their favor.”

This is wrong. Perriello won in 2008 by just 727 votes. Any Democrat who entered office by so slim a margin is almost certain to lose this year. By any conventional political analysis, Perriello should be getting trounced He faces a massive voter registration disadvantage, representing a district that is designed to crush progressive voices during what is expected to be a wave election for Republicans, amid strong anti-incumbent attitudes sparked by high unemployment. But he’s holding even. That’s incredible. Even if things go well for Democrats tomorrow, and they hold the House, candidates in much safer districts than Perreillo’s are going to lose.

The Perriello lesson, in other words, is already clear. Whether he wins or loses on November 2, having the courage to govern by his convictions and do real work to sell those policies has paid off. It might not get him re-elected. But in an all-but-impossible district, losing close sends a clear signal to actual swing districts. Governing like a pretend-Republican only reinforces the Republican world-view and aligns voters against you. If you want to have a chance, you have to stand for something. Tom Perriello stood for something these past two years, and even if it can’t overcome a terrible economy to win him two more years, the political establishment should take heart.

Netroots Nation Panel: The 2010 Elections: Channeling the Power of Jobs, Populism and the Angry Voter

Dave Johnson — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:27:20 -0400

Will you be at Netroots Nation in Las Vegas later this week? I will be on a panel, The 2010 Elections: Channeling the Power of Jobs, Populism and the Angry Voter, Thursday at 10:30am. Come on by and attend the panel!

Here is the complete description:
The 2010 Elections: Channeling the Power of Jobs, Populism and the Angry Voter
THURSDAY, JULY 22ND 10:30 AM - 11:45 AM, PANEL, BRASILIA 6

"The rising tide of populist anger in the face of Wall Street bailouts and continued high unemployment threatens to take an ugly reactionary turn unless it is channeled to more progressive policies of job growth. This panel will address current public attitudes and ideas for steering opinion and action more progressively."

Also on the panel will be:

Scott Paul, founding Executive Director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM).
Annabel Park, documentary filmmaker, political activist and community volunteer. Founder, Coffee Party USA.
Mark Mellman, one of the nation’s leading public opinion researchers and communication strategists. He is CEO of The Mellman Group and recently named "Pollster of the Year" by the American Association of Political Consultants.

The Real Deficit Is Jobs!

Dave Johnson — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:07:36 -0400

The real deficit is jobs. That is one more of those things that everyone can see in front of their faces, but we're told it isn't what it is. There aren't enough jobs, and we're being told this is our fault because we wanted pensions and good wages and vacations and respect and dignity and please, sir, just a little slice of the pie.

In case you haven't noticed, the world's economy is suddenly undergoing a classic "Shock Doctrine"-style, coordinated propaganda attack. The wealthy and powerful, having insisted that countries cut their taxes and run up debt, now insist that the middle class and poor must work harder, have their pensions reduced, sell off (to them) their publicly-held resources, and take other "austerity" steps to pay off the debt that these lazy, parasitic peasants dared to run up.

The excuse is that "the markets" will “lose confidence” in us. Apparently we aren't working the salt mines hard enough. "The markets" -- that's the crowd who got in trouble and insisted that the world would end unless we immediately handed over to them all the rest of the money in the world -- will "lose confidence" in our ability to work the mines hard enough, and will cut us off, unless we cut our pensions, sell off (to them) our resources, and promise never to be lazy and make demands for better wages, pensions, workplace safety, and do it now.

The real deficit is jobs.

History teaches that the way out of an economic slowdown is to invest in infrastructure, education and modernizing manufacturing.

Slactivist said it best the other day,

This calls to mind an old story:

But knowing their hypocrisy, he said unto them, "Why are you putting me to the test? Bring me a dime and let me see it."

And they brought one. Then he said to them, "Whose head is this -- FDR's or Herbert Hoover's?"

They answered, "Roosevelt's."

And he said unto them, "Right. So shut up. Have you morons already forgotten the 20th Century? When the choice is between imitating what worked and what really, really didn't work, why are you pretending it's terribly complicated?"

And after that, no one dared to ask him any question.

I'm not an economist, but we've got five applicants for every single job opening. If you tell me that the best response to that situation is to lay off hundreds of thousands of teachers, I will not accept that this means that you're smarter and more expert than I am. I will instead conclude -- regardless of your prestige or position or years of study -- that you're a moral imbecile.

According to the Labor Department,

By the end of 2009, the jobless rate stood at 10.0 percent and the number of unemployed persons at 15.3 million. Among the unemployed, 4 in 10 (6.1 million) had been jobless for 27 weeks or more, by far the highest proportion of long-term unemployment on record, with data back to 1948.

That's right, it was the policies of austerity that created a depression, and the policies of job-creation, infrastructure investment and taxing the wealthy to pay for it that got us out. But that was back when We, the People were still in charge.

In other news:

Number Of Millionaires Grew Amid Recession.

The rich grew richer last year, even as the world endured the worst recession in decades.

Top 1 Percent of Americans Reaped Two-Thirds of Income Gains in Last Economic Expansion, Income Concentration in 2007 Was at Highest Level Since 1928, New Analysis Shows,

Two-thirds of the nation’s total income gains from 2002 to 2007 flowed to the top 1 percent of U.S. households, and that top 1 percent held a larger share of income in 2007 than at any time since 1928, according to an analysis of newly released IRS data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez.

During those years, the Piketty-Saez data also show, the inflation-adjusted income of the top 1 percent of households grew more than ten times faster than the income of the bottom 90 percent of households.

Top 1% Increased Their Share of Wealth in Financial Crisis,

According to his analysis, the top 1% held 34.6% of all national wealth in 2007. By Dec. 31, 2009, they held 35.6%.

Meanwhile, share of national wealth held by the bottom 90% fell to 25% from 27%.

Corporate Wealth Share Rises for Top-Income Americans

In 2003 the top 1 percent of households owned 57.5 percent of corporate wealth, up from 53.4 percent the year before, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the latest income tax data.

. . . For every group below the top 1 percent, shares of corporate wealth have declined since 1991.

. . . Long-term capital gains were taxed at 28 percent until 1997, and at 20 percent until 2003, when rates were cut to 15 percent. The top rate on dividends was cut to 15 percent from 35 percent that year.

See if you can make the connection. They want us to cut back our pensions, cut our wages, sell off our resources and work harder, to pay back the money that was borrowed and handed to them.

Watch Out for GOP Populism

Isaiah J. Poole — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 05:46:46 -0500

Sally Kohn

Sally Kohn — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:23:54 -0500

The Movement Vision Lab explores bold ideas that make the world a better place for all of us. It is the online home of Sally Kohn, who posts here on topics of radical ideas, grassroots movement building and how to change America and our globe for the better.

Sally is also blogger with the Huffington Post and her writing regularly appears in AlterNet, Common Dreams and other news sources online and off. Her op-eds have been published by the Christian Science Monitor, the American Prospect, the Orange County Register and the Tucson Citizen, and Sally is a regular guest on talk radio shows nationwide and the online video series GritTV. Sally is a frequent speaker at progressive conferences and gatherings on topics of movement building and the need for big picture vision.

For more, visit http://movementvision.org/about

The More Americans Demand Change, The More The State Of The Union Address S

Andrea Batista Schlesinger — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:30:05 -0500

DMI’s Rapid Response to the 2008 State of the Union

Click here to read the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy’s full analysis of the President’s domestic policy prescriptions – complete with statistics and talking points -- online at www.drummajorinstitute.org/sotu2008

The American people want change. Every Presidential candidate, Democrat and Republican, has made this a mantra. But the State of the Union Address reveals no alteration from President George W. Bush. This year the President labored to keep breathing life into the same worn out ideology that has repeatedly failed America’s current and aspiring middle class.
The President continues to proclaim the foundation of our economy sound when so many current and aspiring middle-class Americans are losing their spot in the American Dream. He prioritizes ideology over proven methods of stimulating the economy and providing health care. He uses the language of consumer choice to dress up what really amounts to unbridled corporate power and profiteering. He continues to assert that the market will right itself, if only people understand it more and restrict it less, despite all of the evidence to the contrary.

Despite the praise-worthy components of President Bush’s address tonight – his signing of the Energy Independence and Security Act, his cooperation with Congress to pass a stimulus reform that would include millions of low-income Americans he initially intended to exclude, his newfound interest in supporting military families – his approach reflected a commitment to ideology, as opposed to willingness to see how that ideology has actually impacted current and aspiring middle-class Americans.

After years of insisting that the economy was doing great as middle-class families were squeezed by stagnant wages and a rising cost of living, it takes weak corporate profits to make the President recognize that times are tough.

* Because the President’s ideology insists that tax cuts are always preferable to government spending, the stimulus proposal includes costly and ineffective incentives for business rather than a fast and efficient expansion of unemployment benefits that would both boost the economy and help the middle-class households hardest hit by the downturn.

* Looking at the corporate recklessness and lack of government oversight that created the subprime mortgage crisis, President Bush avoids regulating the industries at fault. Rather he touts a plan that allows banks to decide on a purely voluntary basis whether they care to work out a payment plan with beleaguered homeowners. We don’t imagine that’s the kind of volunteerism he heralded elsewhere in his address.

* A middle-class standard of living is defined by things like access to education, health coverage and the opportunity to hold down a stable, well-paid job, yet from education to health care to tax policy, the President preferred to experiment with market-based solutions that won’t help aspiring Americans work their way into the middle class. It was particularly shocking that the President urges Congress to make his failed tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, despite their failure to help the nation recover from the last economic downturn.

The President tells us that he trusts the American people. The more important question is whether the American people have any reason to trust the White House. The President’s support of choice in this State of the Union address reveals that he is choosing not to heed the call of the American people for common-sense solutions to the challenges they face.

Yet, what is most important this address, is not the President delivering it, but the ideas represented. This State of the Union can either serve as a blueprint for continuing to move backwards, or a line of demarcation away from a policy outlook that has caused irreparable harm to America’s middle class. While the President’s years of imposing dangerously flawed policies on the nation are drawing to a close, future leaders, in Congress and the White House, will determine whether his distorted worldview lives on, and continues to afflict the middle class and the nation.

* * * * * *
You will find DMI’s full analysis of the President’s domestic policy prescriptions online at www.drummajorinstitute.org/sotu2008

Click here to read DMI’s analysis of what Bush’s State of the Union address means for:

Economy (including the foreclosure crisis)
Budget
Energy and Environment
Healthcare
Education
Veterans
Immigration
FISA Immunity

The Uprising - Coming Soon

David Sirota — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:36:12 -0500

As you may know, I just completed my new book, entitled The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington. Many of you have been asking me when my new book is officially scheduled for release, so I wanted to let you know we have set a formal launch date of May 27, 2008. We are also releasing the book's cover this week, which you see above. The book is now available for pre-order at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders, Powell's, or through your local independent bookstore. For a high-resolution media-ready photo of the book's cover, click here.

The book takes a look at the populist movement building on both the Right and Left. It is much different from my last book in that it is investigative, firsthand narrative journalism - all brand new material, rather than analysis/synthesis of information already available. I tried to write a book that is engaging both for political junkies and non-political junkies - and that's why this book is much more novel-like than a typical political book.

Among other places, my travels took me to New York city for a behind-the-scenes look at Lou Dobbs Tonight; Redmond, Washington to accompany union organizers at Microsoft's headquarters; Dallas to join shareholder activists planning resolutions at the ExxonMobil stockholder meeting; Helena, Montana to witness a groundbreaking tax fight in the Montana legislature; Washington, D.C. to shadow three U.S. Senators (Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester); Las Vegas and Chicago to attend YearlyKos Conventions; Boulevard, California to camp out with the California Minutemen; Meriden, Connecticut to explore the Ned Lamont for Senate campaign; and Albany to study the most powerful third party in America.

At the same time all of this was going on, my wife and I moved from Montana to Denver, my nationally syndicated weekly newspaper column launched, I joined the Campaign for America's Future as a fellow, and I continued my long-running work with the Progressive States Network, Credo Action and In These Times. So, needless to say, it was an exhausting - and exhilarating - experience, and I am just now trying to reconstruct a semblance of a regular life and routine (and I apologize if I haven't been in better touch with many of you).

Already, I have received my first back-of-the-book blurb, from bestselling environmental author Bill McKibben. "This book engages in the nearly lost art of reporting to tell us what's going on in the many places that the elite media can't be bothered to look," he wrote. "It chronicles just how fed up Americans have become, and nominates a few heroes for them to turn to. It cheered me a good deal to read how many Americans are finally starting to fight back against the rule of greed that has been our lot for too many years."

I am busy planning the book launch and subsequent tour. My last book took me to about 40 cities, and I expect this to take me to as many, and probably more. If you have ideas or thoughts on specific events I should do or groups I should reach out to, please send those ideas my way at ds@davidsirota.com.

Obviously, I hope to see many of you on the tour this summer. My wife, Emily, will be traveling with me for much of it, and I expect so will Monty, our dog. It should be a great adventure - and it will be great to meet and catch up with as many of you as possible.

UPDATE: In response to a reader's question, the answer is no, Monty will not be traveling Mitt Romney-style.

Are We Ready to Rise Up Again?

David Sirota — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 13:23:47 -0500

I have spent much of the Martin Luther King holiday weekend in my car, traveling throughout southern and central Colorado to report on a working-class struggle that transcends the partisan divide (more on this in a few weeks). At one point during my journey, I stopped in Ludlow at the tiny memorial (pictured at right) for the massacre that occurred there at the beginning of the 20th century - the massacre when our government sent in troops to kill those striking for their basic rights.

Looking out at the snowy plain where the massacre happened, I had trouble believing that less than a hundred years ago, this nation's sense of struggle was so profound that people set up strike camp sites and braved the harsh Rocky Mountain winters all to secure the basic right of union recognition. And when I got back into my car, I turned on the book-on-tape version of Taylor Branch's riveting "At Canaan's Edge: America In the King Years, 1965-68." That same feeling of disbelief came over me. Just four decades ago, America was so full of uprising spirit, that a man like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was able to lead a movement to fight off the ugliest form of bigotry.

In traveling the country over the last year reporting for my upcoming book, "The Uprising," I really do believe that movement potential now exists in America once again - and that is saying a lot.

Since the 1960s, our country has been afflicted by a sense of hopelessness - a sense that movements are unable to be built in America, and therefore that seemingly insurmountable problems will never be able to be solved. But it must have been the same on the eve of the great successes of the labor and civil rights movements. In the early 20th century, workers were grasping for protections not yet created, and in the 1960s, African-Americans were reaching for rights never before granted them in our country's history. And they faced the same reactionary Establishment attack machine that we face today. As just one tiny example, Branch's book notes that it was Robert Novak (yes, the same Robert Novak) who back during a key moment of King's ascension, attacked the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee as "infiltrated by beatnik left-wing revolutionaries, and--worst of all--by Communists" - a slander that historian Garry Wills says Novak probably got "directly or indirectly from J. Edgar Hoover."

There is a hunger out there today for economic justice - and that hunger is being intensified by the oncoming recession and in defiance of the modern-day hatemongers like J. Edgar Hoover. The transpartisan, populist uprising that I document is the result of that hunger - and the uprising may be ready to finally become a full-fledged movement. The question on this Martin Luther King Day is - are we ready to discard our pessimism and rise up to the challenge like generations past?

Thoughts About Iowa After A Vacation

David Sirota — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 01:05:10 -0500

I'm just back from a long vacation in which I tried to stay away from political news as much as possible. I find that stepping away from the day-to-day always helps ground me in reality - and realize just how idiotic much of American politics really is.

So, with my mind cleared, let me just offer these few thoughts as the voting in Iowa begins:

1. The media (and, to a lesser extent, the blogosphere's) obsessive focus on presidential politics to the exclusion of almost anything else is, to put it mildly, vomit-inducing. I reached my personal vomit point coming home from a trip into the mountains. As I scrolled through XM stations, I found a new one called "POTUS '08" - a station entirely devoted just to the presidential race, one that comes on top of all the other political stations which talk only about the presidential race. I'm not saying that the presidential race is unimportant - but it certainly isn't the only thing that's important - it's not even the only thing important in the realm of politics. Yet, it is as if the media would have us believe that local, state and even congressional politics is just not important at all, and that the only thing that matters is the televised game show that has become presidential elections. It's really quite a sad commentary on media laziness - in the American Idol era, it is far easier to report on a few celebrity presidential candidates than provide ongoing coverage of major issues like health care, economic inequality and debt facing Americans every day. And you better believe this focus only on presidential politics is making for a good laugh among the corporate lobbyists who manipulate local, state and congressional politics. The more heat and attention focused on the race for the White House, the less attention focused on the arenas where the rubber hits the domestic policy road the hardest.

2. Putting aside my nausea, let me just say that no matter who wins, it is absolutely great that economic populism has taken center stage so far in the presidential contest. Thanks to candidates like John Edwards and Mike Huckabee ignoring the Punditburo's attacks and trumpeting the populist line, Wall Street-backed candidates like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have had to resort to posing as populists as well - and that's a good thing. The more candidates channeling the public's righteous anger at corporate greed and economic inequality, the better.

3. No matter what happens in Iowa, you can bet this is just the beginning of the presidential race. Similarly, no matter who wins Iowa (or the entire nomination contest), none of the problems that face America are going to go away. This may be hard for the most devoted followers of presidential cults of personality to swallow, but almost none of these candidates seems truly serious about attacking the systemic problems our country faces (I say "almost" not accidentally - I do believe one or two candidates ARE serious about this). That's not to say that we aren't going to solve these problems - but nominating and then electing a president is but one small step in doing that. It is going to take the kind of full-on, sustained uprising that I have been reporting on for the better part of the last year for my upcoming book.

We are at a historic moment right now - and I say that not in the way the Monday Night Football-mimicking political media bills every single election as "the most important election in our lifetime." I say it because I believe America is, for the first time in many generations, starting to think in terms of economic class. Put another way, the battle between Democrats and Republicans is being superseded by the battle between The Money Party and The People Party. How this new class awareness manifests itself in one election cycle is far less important than the fact that awareness is rising at all.

This, beyond everything else, is the storyline that will never be written by the Beltway media - because class awareness among the masses is something that threatens the powers that be. The system in Washington is set up to crush class awareness and solidarity among the masses - to break us up along racial, ethnic, geographic and religious lines so that we do not unify in support of an economic agenda based on fairness and equality. This Washington system exists, ironically, to preserve a well-coordinated class war being waged by an economic class very aware of itself - a class war by the wealthy against the rest of us. This may sound like hyperbole, but polls show most Americans know this is the undeniable truth. And no matter whether your personal preference wins or loses tonight in Iowa, We The People have already won, because class awareness and class-based politics is on the rise.