Principles for Progressives

[The Straight Story]

Principles for Progressives: By MICHAEL KATZ
COMMENTARY (11-30-04)

Progressives and Democrats (not always the same thing) are still licking our wounds from Nov. 2. But we’ve begun a vigorous discussion about how to rebuild our capacity to win elections and influence people. Some of us debated this with a few thousand of our closest friends on Sunday, Nov. 21, courtesy of MoveOn.org’s national house party and online discussion board. Here’s my contribution to the fray:

The Revolution Might Not Be Strategized: While rebuilding a real strategy is essential and long overdue, we need to fight and win immediate battles, using improvised tactics. Bush has clearly laid out the battlefield: privatizing Social Security, destroying what’s left of progressive taxation, and denying consumers access to the courts.

If progressives still can’t articulate a positive message about why these things should be saved, let’s at least put out a ruthlessly disciplined negative message about why not to mess with them: Private pensions are disappearing or going bankrupt, making Social Security more important than ever. A national sales tax means taxes on postage stamps, movie tickets, and coffins—a real “death tax.” Capping medical liability means that when incompetent hospital employees lethally botch Harry’s operation, his widow Louise will be left with next to nothing.

The Campaign for America’s Future already has a form where you can send your legislators a great letter against Social Security privatization. Sign it now at http://ourfuture.org.

Hijack The Agenda—Pre-Empt Bush’s State of the Union Address: Better still is to pre-empt the right’s negative agenda with a clear positive agenda. Let’s write our own “State of Union” report, or “Covenant with America,” and overshadow Bush’s official State of Union (SOU) address by releasing it first.


http://berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?issue=11-30-04&storyID=20201