I smell it in the air. I feel it in my bones. I hear it in the voices of fellow activists. I see it in the hundreds of Progressive candidates running throughout the country, not as some middle-of-the-road Liberals, but as real Progressives supporting the type of policies Americans want, Some call it Left Wing policies. We call it policies for those who built this country.
The wins in Virginia, New Jersey, Washington, New York, and throughout the country were not just votes against the evil that Trump represents. It was a vote for what people expect to get from those politicians running not in opposition to Trump but to instantiate the policies articulated by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and every community, state, and national activist many of us work with day in and day out.
But why is it taking so long to launch after so many false starts? The tactics to indoctrinate Americans into voting against their interests and supporting plutocracy building policies defined in the Powell Manifesto were well funded and well executed. The Left became stagnant, stumbling with continued infighting and many Baby Boomer sellouts who conveniently bought into trickle-down economics when it was their time to pay it forward. Buying into those failed policies left many now fearing destitution with many in the subsequent generations left stranded.
Shared pain either can tear society apart or lead to coalition building. Trump attempted to rip society apart to mask the failures, and it worked for a few months. But the Progressive body of activists did not let up after the election. They did not lose hope in the masses. They ignored the false center. They decided not to play between the Left and Right rails the Plutocracy has been forcing on society.
Polls show most Americans want Progressive policies, Medicare for all, Guaranteed Basic Income, Labor Unions, Pay It Forward Tuition, a Social Security one can live on, and more. Progressives will be running on these issues and are unfearfully expressing them in digestible form for the masses.
Progressives are now unapologetically progressive. And it is even scaring many pseudo-Liberals who are threatening to take their balls and go home.
Reading through some international news today made my day. The Labour Government under Tony Blair was very Clintonesque and center. I won’t call it Center-Left because today’s Center-Left policies are yesteryears moderately Right policies. The rise of Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom is regularly criticized by the Tony Blairs, the Clinton, and Obama types, as wanting too much too soon, criticism from presumably Progressives. Well recently none other than Gordon Brown, the last Labour Leader, has come out in support of Jeremy Corbyn.
Gordon Brown has dramatically backed Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, saying his war on rising inequality and stagnant wages is “absolutely right”. The former Labour prime minister praised his left-wing successor’s policy priorities and growing popularity with the public, adding: “Jeremy is a phenomenon”.
Mr Corbyn was successfully tapping into rising public anger over the unfair effects of globalisation, after centrists appeared to show they had “no answers”, Mr Brown said. “People feel rightly or wrongly that the problems that they have – stagnant wages, inequality, polarisation between rich and poor, public service not being properly financed – they ascribe that to the failures of governments, centrist governments that have not been able to manage globalisation,” he said. On Mr Corbyn’s shock rise, Mr Brown said: “He has come through because he expresses people’s anger at what’s happened – the discontent.
Note how many Democrats are now supporting Medicare for All. Times are changing and if we keep the pressure on we will change the country and the world into a more meritorious society with policies that give everyone a living wage and access to success.