A fundraising e-mail blasted to a list of 1.2 million progressive activists a few days ago gets straight to the point: "Insider Democrats scored another epic fail."
The e-mail came from Democracy for America, the progressive group that emerged from Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign; it was triggered by Congress' failure to pass legislation to provide health-care benefits to people injured in the 9/11 attacks. Arshad Hasan, DFA's executive director, blamed Democrats for the bill's fate: "Democrats brought up the bill under special rules requiring two-thirds support to pass. So even though the bill had clear majority support, it still failed. … This isn't the sort of bold progressive leadership I fought for in 2006 and 2008."
But Hasan's missive doesn't mention that it was Republicans' threat to attach a poison-pill amendment that forced Democrats to bring up the legislation under rules that led to its defeat. Frustrated Democrats on the Hill weren't pleased with the defeat of a bill they saw as uncontroversial, or with Hasan's telling of the story. It's but one example of the current conflict on the left: Will progressive disappointment help or hurt the Democrats in this fall's crucial midterm elections?
Democratic leadership needs the support of stalwart left voters this fall, and they know it: Voter enthusiasm among Democrats is low, half that of Republicans, according to Gallup surveys. Republican voter excitement outweighed that among Democrats in 1994, helping sweep in a GOP majority. Strategists for the current incumbents fear that the same thing might be happening now. Even worse, some fear that progressive activists are fueling the fire.
"We don't create anger," Hasan told me when I asked him about this concern. "This is anger that exists, so when we express it, the best thing we can do is listen to what's happening and try to focus this in a constructive direction. No one wins if we lose the House."
Hasan says his broader point was expressing a series of frustrations -- and to tout candidates supported by the DFA as real progressives who would behave differently than the folks in office. Asked for specifics on what, exactly, the Democrats should have done to overcome Republican opposition in this specific case, he emphasized that people are looking for action.
What about health-care reform? "We got our butts handed to us," Hasan said. While the fight over the bill wasn't pretty by any means, and Democrats conceded the public option (a progressive priority), I seem to recall the passage of universal health care -- a multi-decade progressive project -- as something of a victory. Don't get me wrong: It's not that the left hasn't seen plenty of disappointing compromises in the last year. It's that the majority's actual achievements don't seem to be recognized at all.
On the Hill, Democrats taking political hits after voting for health-care reform, financial reform, and the stimulus feel they aren't getting support for their votes. Hasan's e-mail is a reminder that progressive activists haven't fully confronted the mechanics of policy-making. But it is also a reminder that the Democratic establishment has eschewed the symbolic gestures that progressives routinely beg for: An actual fight over principle that would prove to the oft-burned left that the establishment shares their priorities. Progressives would rather see a bill fail after Republicans drive away key votes with a poison-pill amendment. Hill Democrats reply that they have a responsibility to get something done.
Ironically, both Hasan and House staffers I spoke with lauded Rep. Anthony Weiner's tirade against the failure of one New York Republican, and Republicans in general, to get behind the 9/11 bill. "People like to see that kind of passion; too often, they don't see that," a leadership aide told me. "Take a look at Anthony Weiner's speech on the floor, that kind of stuff really resonates with people," Hasan said. "He's not talking about procedural maneuvers."
Weiner was talking -- shouting -- about procedure, and Republicans using procedure to obstruct even routine legislation. Predictably, mainstream media coverage of the incident focused less on health-care policy, or even procedural reform, than on scolding the congressman or speculating about his future political ambitions. "Whatever his motives, Weiner turned into the poster child for congressional distemper," tut-tutted Dan Balz in The Washington Post, who suggests that this image -- and not the slow pace of actual work -- has stoked public disgust with Congress.
Hasan argues it is better to harness this energy to support progressive candidates at the expense of the Democratic Party than to see base voters sit at home. While emphasizing the quality as well as quantity of Democratic candidates is key to progressives' policy agenda, the price is too high if moderate Democrats become alienated from their progressive coalition partners.
Getting that balance right can be a challenge for progressives. When DFA supported Donna Edwards in her first challenge to moderate Democrat Al Wynn, she lost, and Wynn's votes moved left, but that didn't satisfy progressives -- "Nobody really felt like they could trust him anyway," Hasan says -- and Edward's second challenge was successful. She has become a rising star among the Democrats.
On the other hand, the DFA supported a failed primary challenge against Blanche Lincoln. While the race was never the ideological battle that the netroots and the mainstream media portrayed it as, the fight did influence Lincoln to significantly strengthen the financial-reform law. While the primary challenge certainly stung, there's been no reward for her change -- Hasan and many progressives view the financial reforms with unfortunate scorn. Lincoln is expected to lose her seat to a Republican this fall.
Hasan wants to teach moderates that progressives win and that the money and energy they provide are key to electoral success. This is no doubt true in some races -- Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania and Elaine Marshall in North Carolina, both DFA candidates, are polling well. But the missing half of that message is teaching moderates that working with progressives isn't career suicide. High unemployment will be the major determining factor in this year's elections, and the lesson that surviving Democrats shouldn't learn is that sticking your neck out for progressive causes is a losers' bet.
For progressives, that would be terrible news. Like it or not, they depend on their coalition partners in the Democratic Party to put them in a position to legislate, just as moderates depend on progressives for fundraising and activism. Whether Republicans win in the fall, their party is fatally flawed due to an obsession with ideological purity; the GOP will not succeed much in crafting policy but will focus on a more advantaged obstruction.
Progressives, by design, must do more than obstruct; they need to construct. Democrats came to power in 2006 and 2008 in part by aping Republican institutions and confidence in their base's values, and in part by crafting a coalition that, like the great Democratic coalition of the past, combined liberals and moderates. Contemporary progressive leaders like AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and green-jobs guru Van Jones, who aren't afraid to push the Democratic establishment, argue today that progressive activists should do what they can to support Democrats during the midterm election for exactly this reason.
If the exciting of progressives makes other members of the Democratic coalition skittish of future legislating, progressives will look back on this Congress with an increasingly rosy view -- Obama's health-care compromises will represent to the left what Reagan's tax-reform compromises do to the right. But if the two dynamics balance out, patient progressives will have a chance to build on the half-successes of the last year in the next Congress.
