The Progressive Challenge

This list can go on. Progressives should be emboldened, while New Dems and Blue Dogs should be engaged in an agonizing reappraisal of where they went wrong.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC is releasing a poll that demonstrates widespread support for a broad range of progressive reforms. Polls show that virtually every one of the 11 points in the Pledge to Fight for America's Future that over 9,000 progressives signed in a matter of days enjoys majority support. Americans in large numbers favor Medicare for all, Raise the Minimum Wage, Rebuild America, a Green New Deal, balanced trade, tax the rich and corporations, strengthen consumer, environmental and worker protections, tuition free college and more.

This is remarkable given that these reforms seldom get a fair or extensive hearing in our media or our politics. Surely one of the central reasons Bernie Sanders improbable campaign took off what that finally fundamental reforms found a fierce and unbending champion. As Hillary Clinton admitted in her book on the campaign:

Resistance to Trump is necessary, but not sufficient. Getting it right is reassuring but not enough. Progressives must organize not simply to fight but to win the battle over America's future.

This won't be easy. The establishment in both parties resists change. Big money corrupts our politics. Partisan posturing too often distracts from the debate that we need.

Progressive movements -- Fight for $15, Black Lives Matter, #metoo, the Dreamers, the March for our Lives and more -- are rousing citizens and energy. Progressive organizations -- Our Revolution, Moveon.org, DFA, PCCC, Working Families Party, People's Action, JusticeDemocrats and more -- have begun to build the capacity to recruit and support candidates. The Congressional Progressive Caucus has strengthened its ability to frame reforms, and drive them onto the national agenda.

The resistance to Trump rouses Democrats, and the threat posed by Trump and the radical right-wing Congress will unite them. At the same time, however, progressives must push to define what the Democratic Party is -- the fundamental reform agenda that is needed, the coalitions that need to be forged, the transformations of how we do politics that are required.

The argument can't be ducked. The operatives of the established order will scorn and strafe insurgents, as the DCCC's attack on Laurie Moser in the Texas congressional primary demonstrated. Progressives will be told to lower their voices or curb their ambitions in order to unify against the right. The party's establishment will continue to back candidates wedded to the failed ideas and big money politics of the past years.

This will be messy, fierce, tumultuous, disruptive and utterly unavoidable. People are demanding change. Movements are driving it. Progressive leaders are championing it. And if we are lucky, the agonies will help give birth to a revived progressive majority for fundamental reform.

The CPCC summit is small part of this struggle, offering progressives a place to share ideas and strategies. But the stakes grow ever larger. This is our time; people are looking for change.

We are called on to be the makers of this history, not its victims. Let's get to it.

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