A new majority for the American left
Colin Greer
8 - 12 - 2005
Something vital, exciting and underreported is happening across the United States: marginalised groups in the poorest communities are joining forces to improve their condition and win local electoral victories. This is the America of Latinos, African-Americans, religious progressives, union members, young people, and single women. Combined, these mostly progressive groups of the left constitute an actual and significant national majority. If the Democratic Party taps into this energy, it could help create the next social and political momentum in the United States and even win presidential elections. But typically, Democratic leadership does not work closely with these groups, their natural constituencies. This relationship has yet to become a reality.
The right’s debt
Since the 2004 presidential election, the fashion on the American left has been to look at what the right did and try to do the same, as though the right have won a major victory in American consciousness. Even the second wave of progressive critics, who complain we obsess too much over Republican strategy, end up using the right’s supposed victory over hearts and minds as an axis from which to build their arguments. But George W Bush never won a public mandate. The plurality he earned was largely a result of the withdrawal of Democratic campaigns from most states, in a flawed strategy to focus on “swing states”.
My intention is not to deny the power of the Republican Party as an electoral machine, but to emphasise that that is all it is. Poll after poll has found American citizens largely in support of progressive solutions to public problems, even as Democratic Party support for these ideas has dwindled.
Every single American city with a population of over 500,000 voted for John Kerry in 2004. And more than half of all cities with over 50,000 inhabitants did the same. The American public rejected Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998, just as they rejected the vicious manipulation of the Terri Schiavo case in 2005.
In special elections in California in November 2005, voters rejected six right-wing legislative initiatives dealing with access to abortion, authority over union dues, and political lobbying. It was a failure for Republican superstar governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had personally endorsed four of the ballot initiatives. But it was a triumph for the coalitions of community-based groups that have been organizing aggressively around social values in recent years. These were the same groups who paved the way for former union leader and Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa to become mayor of Los Angeles in May 2005. We can learn from their success. (Just think, as late as 1980 Ronald Reagan launched a presidential campaign from the Red Republican stronghold of California!)
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