I wish I could get an online version of this article, but I will type out the introduction. Perhaps the people in the article were a little optimistic about the unpopularity of the religious right, but perhaps not. I'm sure Harper's will have an after-the-election analysis as well.
QUOTE
America's progressives - those who believe, as did Abraham Lincoln, that "government should go for the people what they cannot do for themselves" - no longer enjoy much of a presence in the national political debate. Their program of social reform was once thought to define enlightened government, but in the years since the election of Ronald Reagan the idea tha the public good is superior to the private interest has been run out of Washington by the Republicans and denied asylum even by the formerly hospitable Democrats. Although sometimes propped up for photo ops with Bill Clinton, the progressive agenda never regained the force imparted to it by FDR's New Deal and sustained by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
The Democratic Party at the moment presents no message that can be heard as even a mild objection to the Republican program of privatization, extravagant military spending, tax cuts for the rich, welfare cuts for the poor. Yet the increasingly negative response to the Bush Administration's disastrous war in Iraq, to its shortsighted economic policy and its curtailment of civil liberties, is evidence that much of the citizenry is still firmly progressive. In the hope of discovering if and how their collective voice might return to the nation's political arena, Harper's Magazine invited five notable progressive thinkers to sit down together and consider the problem.
The Democratic Party at the moment presents no message that can be heard as even a mild objection to the Republican program of privatization, extravagant military spending, tax cuts for the rich, welfare cuts for the poor. Yet the increasingly negative response to the Bush Administration's disastrous war in Iraq, to its shortsighted economic policy and its curtailment of civil liberties, is evidence that much of the citizenry is still firmly progressive. In the hope of discovering if and how their collective voice might return to the nation's political arena, Harper's Magazine invited five notable progressive thinkers to sit down together and consider the problem.
Here is another quote, one by Kevin Phillips, that I think is key to building this progressive majority:
QUOTE
Phillips: There are four or five progressive stands today that actually speak very well to a lot of dissident Republicans. Remember that since 1992 it has been the Republicans, as well as the Democrats, who have produced presidential candidates running on various progressive lines: Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, and John McCain. You had opposition to imperialism overseas, particuarly from Perot and Buchanan. You had concern about globalization - from Perot and Buchanan - and you also had concern about the deficit, from McCain and Perot. All three urged campaign-finance reform. McCain and Perot ran against the religious right far more articulately and courageously than Democrats ever have. It would be alien to the Democrats to think that they should be courting a whole lot of people from the Republican side. But if you're going to form a national progressive majority, you've got to attract members of the GOP who have favored progressive presidential candidates and themes.
I would also like to talk about the value of the Reagan Democrats. What are they?
