Erica, Welcome to the Lake.

Jane, Thank you for Hosting today’s Book Salon.

Thanks – I’m happy to be here!

Welcome Erica, thanks so much for being here today.

I must say, it’s fascinating to look at the interconnected webs that run through the various organizations. Is there an effort to put the information online?

Jane – most of the book is online at http://www.practicalprogress.org

Hmmm, never heard about Joseph Coors, guess my beer choice just changed. Remember they make alot more beer than just Coors! No more Killian’s for me.

Nice post, but this also shows how fragile a “movement” can be if they do not deliver. Lets create jobs first!

I have been thinking through how to build forward from the book though. I think its an important resource – and certainly helpful to people who really want to understand the way politics really works. But it really just scratches the surface. As you point out in your article, there is a lot of important work being done that isn’t in the book.

I would think carefully before you decide that the conservative movement is really as fragile as current media coverage would have you believe. Certainly they have been dealt a political blow but they aren’t going anywhere.

That is intereresting. I’ll add it to the post.

I’m curious about the selection process for the groups. Could you explain a bit about how these ones came to be chosen?

Is there progressive potential in the electoral apparatus assembled by Obama?

Should he be deploying it to press the lame ducks to pass economic stimulus before January 20?

Sure – At the front of the book you will see a page of pictures. These are the experts I talked to about which groups to include. I asked each of these people “if you had to choose five or 10 groups you thought were absolutely essential to progressive’s long term success, which ones would you choose?” The groups in the book were the ones these people named. Obviously if I chose different experts, I would have some different responses – but I think they came close to giving a decent overview of many important groups – but like I said before, they definitely missed some.

AEI seems well entrenched in policy.

I think there is currently a pretty headed discussion going on about what to do with his list, if that’s what you mean. It will no doubt be independent form the White House, but the question remains as to whether it will exist to support Obama’s priorities or whether it will have a life of its own (think of the FISA group in MyBO.com).

Erica, thank you for being here this afternoon.

I have not had an opportunity to read your book but have followed (with a lot of dismay) the VRWC in operation.

I was not however aware that Coors was the original funder of Heritage.

It does amaze me sometimes that those who are so adamantly against welfare practice welfare so frequently.

And George Soros is W-A-Y behind on getting me my checks! :})

Agreed Erica – I just moved from MO to DE partially to escape the oppressive right wing there, so believe me I know about the religious right, and the right in general. That said, Obama needs to solidify the middle and keep the hispanic and black vote (Hispanics are still a major growth population going forward) he built this election. I think he knows this, and winning the middle and the growing population segments means winning the war.

The youth still did not turn out in higher numbers this cycle, do we just give up on them or continue to cultivate them so we have them when they do get around to voting?

Obama created a really powerful tool and he should (and appears very likely to) use that tool to further his agenda. Whether or not he should use it specifically for an economic stimulus push prior to taking office is a complicated question. As with any tool, you need to think carefully about how you use it, when, etc – he will need that community to carry a heavy load for him over the next four year so asking them to do that might or might not serve his longer term purpose.

I’m curious why the ACLU wasn’t included. I assume it’s because they don’t identify themselves as “progressive,” and are willing to make cause with Bruce Fein or Bob Barr when it comes to civil liberties. But by that definition, the HRC or LCV wouldn’t be “progressive,” either.

As an online activist I think we’ve probably been able to work with the ACLU more successfully than almost any organization, and they’ve certainly been willing to challenge the Democratic establishment.

In business school, we talked a lot about the lifetime value of the customer – and about customer aquisition cost as it relates to the LVC – that’s the issue for the youth vote. It’s not so much “did they turn out enough this time” it’s rather – “how many times in their life will they turn out and for whom?” there’s some study that shows that if people vote for the same party 3 or 4 times, they typically stick with it from that point on. So I think getting people to “buy their first car” from the democrats is a pretty important long term exercise.

The ACLU has a very particular agenda. it is progressive, but it is also limited and does not go far beyond the legal aspects of the movement.

What’s progressive? Single payer health care? A larger day care deduction? In my view progressive capitalism is an oxymoron.

I think the ACLU is a very important institution – it would make sense to include them. I don’t know why none of the experts named them

The is an interesting thought in relation to building progressive infrastructure.

I’ve tended to think of progressives as those engaged, involved and a part of politics as opposed to political consumers.

I disagree, I think Capitalism is simply a way of creating wealth, what wealth you value and how you value it has alot to do with government interaction. For example, a change in the SEC creates long term changes in investor behavior – see Chris Cox and his screwed up SEC that led to this crisis. How government interacts with the market – and it always does – determines how the value is created.

I’m not sure I’d go that far, but it does bring up an interesting point — what is a progressive?

I think there’s also an interesting conversation to be had about groups that trade in progressive language as a way to sell anti-progressive agendas.

You make an interesting point – certainly unchecked capitalism can create gross income disparities that threaten any concept of true “democracy” – that was, I believe, one of the main reasons people started to wake up after 2004 – they felt their philosophical architecture being attacked. I think you can make a decent case that $5,000 bought George Bush the White House. The Right Wing machine paid David Brock $5,000 to write an article discrediting Anita Hill – the article turned into a book that turned into a national conversation about a coke can and a pubic hair – and discredited the one person who stood between Clarence Thomas and the Supreme Court – fast forward years later and a 5/4 vote sent Bush to the White House. Of course that five grand was funneled into a multimillion dollar communications infrastructure – but you get my point – money can fundamentally challenge democracy.

Really? I don’t mean to pick apart the selection process, I’m sure I’d come up with a list that was specific to my perspective and didn’t necessarily include many organizations that were really important and I just didn’t happen to intersect with. Many groups in the book were new to me because I don’t happen to work in that particular area, or I knew of the name and didn’t really know what they did. I really enjoyed it and found it exceptionally informative on that level.

But I have to ask — the Progressive Book Club, and not the ACLU? Nobody?

You were also I believe one of the founders of the Democracy Alliance, with Rob Stein, which continues to be one of the most strategic organizations created on the left over the past few years. Can you talk about that?

Is the ACLU truly a progressive organization? I am not so sure, they will defend anyone – and that is a prgressive value – but it might be harder sell if the person’s right to free speech they are defending happens to be a member of the KKK (which the ACLU does).

I think the ACLU is more focused on protecting civil liberties than advocating issues. For instance, St Pete For Peace early on held discussions with the local chapter of the ACLU about our direct actions. The ACLU informed us that until the authorities attempted to abridge our Constitutional rights there was nothing that they could do for us but would remain informed of our activities. When the barricades went up at BayWalk to curtail our activities they got directly involved, representing those individuals who were arrested. At that point the ACLU informed us that they would be the attorneys of record for SPFP. Their actions have been to maintain the integrity of our rights while at the same time not advocating any of our issues or positions.

I think you can argue that a lot of “customers” are deeply engaged with the products they buy – they sleep outside to be the first to get the new iPhone, etc. I don’t say customer in a derogatory way – its just a different orientation. Part of my obsession with infrastructure came about because I was forced to look at politics like a business when I was in B School. Every other student in marketing class talked about selling Gain or Pepsi – I had to talk about selling political ideas and politicians because my background was all politics before I went to grad school. That’s where the idea of the Value Chain comes in – I talked about the Value Chain in my book as the central thesis of why we need an infrastructure – because politics has a value chain just like any other business has a value chain – and your “competitive advantage” according to Michael Porter the business theorist comes about when each link in the chain – and the ties between the links – are stronger than your competition’s.

yep – that’s the downside of using that as the selection process – some obvious ones will be left out. I did an early version similar to this a couple of years ago and called it Next Left: The unofficial, incomplete and utterly biased guide to the new progressive infrastructure. Maybe I should have reused the title for this one

Purely speculation on my part but I’d guess that the ACLU was missed precisely because they have been around for so long.

A perception that their view is toward an actually conservative view of the encompassing nature of the constitution, hence the support from folks like Fein and Barr.

Or I might be an idiot.

I think this is really the crux of it – most of the organizations in the book do have some political orientation even though they operate in the non-profit sector largely. Is freedom of speech a progressive value – I certainly think so. But that doesn’t mean that the ACLU is neccessarily part of the progressive infrastructure in attempting to influence the country’s political conversation.

i have what’s probably a really stupid question – or at least one that reveals my own ignorance…. but what do you mean by progressive politics?

i used to think there was some kind of consensus about it – that it referred to process as well as policy goals. but the past year i’ve become convinced that there are some fault lines. the two big ones i see are:

1) progressive ideology (whatever that means) vs alignment with the Democratic party. so, for example, i see moveon as aligned with the Democratic party even if that means stepping all over organized progressive activists (single payer health care is a big example of this).

2) does progressive politics mean anti-authoritarian? by this i mean not only pro- bill of right, equal rights, etc, but also do we value transparency in decision making? do we try to foster distributed power structures or top-down hierarchies? does it mean open the gates or change the gate keepers? do we share information freely or use access/knowledge as power?

or am i just asking all the wrong questions?

speaking of time lines – it was a really facinating exercise to go through and group the groups into founding date. It was amazing how much entrepreneurial activity has happened in the last 4 years – and also amazing how much we relied on older organizations before that. Not that older organizations can’t reimagine themselves and reinvent themselves – the ones in the book largely have. But I think there is some advantage in being born in the political and communications era that you are fighting it. Certainly many of the newer organizations have the web at the center of their work not just as an ad on. Even the Heritage Foundation has noted the advantage CAP had with its online work

thanks. i feel i little less stupid now.

Erica-

Is it possible that the Rovian politics of hate actually motivated the people on the left more than the right? Is Karl Rove really the person we need to thank for the liberal grass-roots movement that Obama took advantage of?

you are asking all of the right questions. And that is part of what has been missed in this election – yes, we have had a political shift (how permanent we can make it remains to be seen) but is the country more “progressive” – is a progressive philosophy on the rise? that is a more complicated answer. I think we are missing some fundamental work at very beginning of the Value Chain. For example, I don’t believe we can be a progressive country while still in the grip of the Chicago School. And while some (and I emphasize some) work is being done to refute it and while we certainly have seen the problems brought about by so little regulation, we do not have the counter theory – free market fundamentalism is alive and well

Thank you to Erica and Jane both for their time and efforts.
I have not read your book Erica but I am going to.
I do believe you have touched on one of the biggest issues in politics.
The Right has, for a long time, funded so called “Wingnut Welfare” and as such we find ourselves fighting an invisible army.
For an example, where did Scooter Libby go after he resigned?

The Heritage Foundation.
He is not listed on their website, I have looked and looked.
No one knows what he does there or what he gets paid to do.
That is one tiny example of the war machine the Right has assembled that we are just now trying to address with the resources available to us.

With that, I would like to remark on this comment from Jane;

…the $84 million that ActBlue has raised for Democratic candidates since 2004 — and all that money is hard money.

Damn right it is. ActBlue was genius in action and has paid benefits not yet realized.It is also real Americans contributing cash money to try and support candidates that reflect their values.
People like me.

well, i guess you have product to sell ;)

Thank you for your thoughtful answer.

Great questions. To pick up on that, I suppose we could ask what the book’s selected groups have in common that identifies them as “progressive.” Is is a set of goals with similiar/related human values? A set of procedures or methods of communication/persuasion that are deemed “progressive”?

I think a number of things happened in a row that woke people up. In no particular order – the disaster of the 2000 election, the war, the lack of wmds, the gross politization of the justice department, the re-election of George Bush, the utter incompetence of his administration, Katrina, etc – all of that forced a lot of people to wake up to what was happening. And several of them started to act, and as they did, they brought along others. I also think it really helped that in 2006 people were able to see the results of their labor. I personally believe that much of the 2006 victory is owed to the work of many of the organizations in the book that did not exist before. Great example is CREW – Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. CREW brought down Tom Delay, uncovered White House visits by Abramoff and I think created the entire “culture of corruption” narrative that was so powerful

Erica-

I went to University of Chicago, and I think the Chicago school can do well in an progressive society. My post earlier was meant to point to that, that the government can create value in new ways, and even new markets, and then you can use the Chicago school to drive a progressive agenda.

Cap and trade is a great example of this, as is environmental regulation. The Chicago school does understand that the government is always involved in regulatory infrastructure, and the issue the last four years has been the government abdicating it proper role.

Obama and Reich get this. It is about incentive, and boy can the government create incentive.

Thanks Erica,

I was unaware of the work of CREW.

Each time we talk to someone who doesn’t adhere to the same political value system we do we’re selling our “product” to them. It’s an exchange of ideas which strives to convince others that their lives will be enhanced by supporting single payer health care rather than the current health care system, for example.

I think ACTBlue is great! Such a powerful tool. But what the book tried to capture mainly was the groups that are not directly involved in politics. For example we didn’t include any of the party committees but they certainly are important. I am thinking about doing another study – maybe not a whole book but something – about the work at the state party and national party level and also looking more at the candidate work specifically. That is obviously where the rubber meets the road – you do have to translate ideas into political power. But the purpose of this book was to widen people’s idea about what affects the political conversation – politicians are in many ways the least important parts.

It was interesting to watch the nascent efforts of groups like Americans Coming Together and how they scrambled in 2004, and seeing the more mature version in Catalist and what a difference they made this election cycle.

The Chicago school does understand that the government is always involved in regulatory infrastructure

Milton Friedman would disagree with you, I think. The economists from the Chicago School were very influential in removing government regulation in order that the “free market” would control the economy without restraints. The results of their ideas on government regulation can be seen in Chile, Argentina, Poland and Russia.

The Chicago School of Law and Economics – Milton Friedman, etc holds that government intervention is always bad – see here from Wiki – The Chicago school is associated with neoclassical price theory and libertarianism, and with the view that regulation and other government intervention is always inefficient compared to a free market. The school rejected Keynesianism in favor of monetarism until the 1980s, when it turned to rational expectations. It has impacted the field of finance by the development of the efficient market hypothesis. In terms of methodology the stress is on “positive economics” – that is, empirically based studies using statistics to prove theory.

I think Scooter went to Hudson, Busted.

I am going to read your book because it sounds fascinating.
Thank you for your thoughts.

I suspect Dr. Deans Fifty State Strategy and how it actually came to fruition would be a fascinating read after what we saw in 2006 and just earlier this month.

As well as the United States since 2000, with the repeal of Glass-Steagall.

Catalist is the bomb. I am trying to convince Laura Quinn (the President) to make the slogan “because second prize is a set of steak knives” – its from Glenngarry Glenn Ross – the ultimate list movie

Thanks Jane, I wasn’t sure exactly where he went but I have not forgotten about him

I just wanted to use him as an example of how serious they are.

There’s a great study about the 50 state strategy by a Harvard professor – you should look it up. It really tracks how effective it was.

BTW, I wholly approve of leaving out most of the googoo groups. Democracy 21, like Arlen Specter, can always count on to be there when you don’t need ‘em.

Not progressive.

I think the study is by Elaine Kamarck

Hey Pups Digg is open!! Please Digg this fine Book Salon with Erica Payne!

SouthernDragon-

True, but the regulatory infrastructure was MUCH more constraining in Friedman’s time. I think you would be hard pressed to find an economist who isn’t screaming for greater regulation right now. Robert Rubin pushed hard for a lack of regulation of derivatives, as did the Fed, but boy are they pushing through more power for the Fed and Treasury now!

It is about balance, and most economists do get that, at least the one’s I know. My grad degree (one of them) is in genetics (immunological genetics thus the tag) and their is a real economic movement to understanding human nature and how it effects markets and the economy. It is pretty well understood that the math model is not all there is.

I think it is all tribal – but that is way too long a story for a post here.

I happen to personally like good government groups – they just aren’t the same thing as a progressive infrastructure necessarily

Thank you Erica.
This is a perfect example of why I consider Firedoglake Home.
I have learned so much here it is scary, and I am one of the slower learners here.

Erica, thanks for joining us. I attended the book launch party downtown in DC and it was quite impressive.

That said, the rationale for excluding ActBlue escapes me. It’s not analogous to a party committee. And if the attempt is to describe groups affecting the political conversation, as Stein cataloged from the right, how can there be no mention of it, and no mention of the blogosphere except in passing of DailyKos and HuffingtonPost?

I have to admit, the selection bias in the book seems pretty determinative to me, though it does cover the organizations that get the most attention from big lefty donors, who starve the blogs as well. The blogs, though, shape the conversation on a day to day basis more than anyone on the left does, its not even close. Colbert and MSNBC have all their writers coming the blogs daily.

For all that, I more than applaud the effort to pull something like this together, as a movement and institution building activist myself. I hope there will be many future editions and updates!

Good point. The field of behavioral economics is facinating to me and I wonder how any of that knowledge will leak into whatever regulatory framework they build in response to this current disaster. Because you have to figure there will always be people motivated to work around the rules – and they will likely find a way to do it. I wonder if they could try to anticipate the ways in which people will try to work around, and work around that (if you get what I mean).

Here you go – the modern Chicago school is more nuanced, but they also think they still have the most Nobel’s of any department.

http://www.becker-posner-blog……se_th.html

Friedman did say no regulation, but not even his followers seem to hold that position now.

In Volume 1 of Capital, Marx discusses the need for state regulation of the political economy in order to prevent what we’ve witnessed here since regulation of securities was relaxed. He understood human nature enough 140 years ago to realize the need for regulation.

Behavioral economics is not just about avoiding regulation, it is correctly incentivizing people within the regulatory framework so they do what you want. It is also about protecting people from true cannibals in the system, so everyone is appropriately incentivized.

Balance, turning on huge regulation right now might tip us to depression, but not practicing liberal FDR values like investing in banks also might create a depression.

Thank god we have Obama in charge, instead of a non-thinking dope like Bush.

Erica — looking at the institutions you’ve covered, were there any suprises from what you might have expected a few years back? How is the nature of the essential institution’s changing?

And what’s missing? What would you like to see?

So Did Teddy Roosevelt, he sure pissed off the fat cats back then when he imposed new regulations to curb their greed.

Just FYI, I am in the process of ordering this book from the link at the top of the powst and it is ridiculously cheap.

Get one two.

I didn’t mean to offer it as a rationale for the correctness of excluding it – just more of an explanation of maybe why the “experts” didn’t think of it. I may have asked them the question in a way that oriented them in a particular way – more towards the institutions like the ones in the book and less towards the blogs, ACTBlue and others. The blogs are the information hub of the left – I wish there were more in the book. I’m thinking through what an online presence for the book and the idea behind it might be – any and all suggestions are most welcome.

I’m kind of confused. What are Public Campaign and CREW then?

I haven’t read your book, but I will now. We often chat here about the ossified nature of Washington-based progressive institutions — the HRC, NARAL, and the Sierra Club among them — who feel a need to straddle the partisan divide, diluting their progressive message and betraying local members who seek to change out a “moderate” GOP for a progressive Democrat. Do you think these DC-based enterprises can be reformed to be more responsive to their members and the grassroots, or will others grow up next to them, either to supplant or co-exist?

Well, if you go several years back – say 8 – to the 2000 election, I think you see almost nothing on our side that approaches what we have now. I think if we had this infrastructure eight years ago Al Gore would have been president – and what a different world that would be

I think that’s an excellent question. Are there parts of the progressive infrastructure you think are missing?

We don’t seem to do the kind of leadership training that the right does, nor do we do the intense media training (and I think it shows).

Me too, but I can only read 1 copy at a time. I’m easily confused. *g*

Wow – here is Posner (the King) on the future of the conservative movement, with some interesting insights into the current crisis:

http://www.becker-posner-blog……s/2008/11/

Even the King admits that the problem was a lack of regulation, not over-regulation:

“The financial crisis has hit economic libertarians in the solar plexus, because the crisis is largely a consequence of innate weaknesses in free markets and of excessive deregulation of banking and finance, rather than of government interference in the market.”

I’ll tell you some things that are missing (I mention some of these in the book when I talk about next steps)- first and foremost we have got to build some kind of effective HR capacity. Scooter Libby is probably pulling in a serious paycheck at Heritage while our out of work progressives have to go into the private sector to get re-employed. Of course nothing is wrong with the private sector, but I would rather have our big thinkers and doers thinking and doing things for the movement and getting a paycheck that way instead of having to squeeze their political work into the hours after 9-5 because there is nowhere to hire them when the cycles are done. So HR function to distribute the talent more effectively and more institutions with more money to hire, train, recruit, retain people. We lose a tremendous amount of talent when people hit their early 30s because they realize they actually have to make a living and you can’t do it being a progressive.

Media training is another big hole, you are absolutely right. There was an article in the Times the other day about the Leadership Institute that referenced their pundit school that just put out 450 graduates (up from 300ish the year before). We do not have a pundit school, a central booking capacity, etc. We need all of that. Go look at http://www.policyexperts.org its the Heritage Foundation’s resource for tv bookers, etc to help them figure out who to book on their shows. We have nothing like that on our side.

Interesting – thanks for passing that on

We don’t have the think tank written white papers that the right uses. The top-down structure makes it easy to provide coherent leadership and media training so that everybody is on the same page at the same time. They also brook no dissent from the established agenda.

Erica: One of the themes we hit here is the constant echoing we hear of the conservative (or anti-progressive) framework by far too much of our media. It’s convinced many that we’ll constantly run into limits because our message either never gets aired or is constantly dismissed by the selection of talking heads, guests, panelists, etc. Some believe you can’t change that without recapturing a significant portion of the media.

Where do you see that effort heading, and are there essential strategies you see developing that will help?

Becker is Nobel Prize winner and Posner is judge (used to a U of Chicago prof) who changed the way damages are calculated, and how law and economics are calculated.

Not too shabby a blog.

they are both good government groups but CREW is in the book because while they have gone after some democrats, they have largely focused on the right and their use of media has taken the big things they find and blown them up in the public conversation much more effectively than those other groups. Melanie Sloan (president of CREW)wrote the ethics complaint against Tom Delay and then recruited a congressperson to file it.

Good question.

That’s great, and as I said, this is an important effort and I’m delighted you’ve come to join us to join the conversation.

I spend pretty much all my time trying to help organizations like the ones on the book figure out how to connect themselves more functionally and effectively to blogs, getting their message out, through advertising and other means, and based on the reception I get when I take people to lunch and coffee, there’s a lot of thirst out there for help in making those kinds of institutional connections.

Thanks again!

Its an anemic part of the effort at this point. Part of the problem is that to book people, you have to first credentialize them and with fewer spots at magazines, etc we by definition have fewer people “credentialized” so that the media will book them. I also think some of our “intellectuals” don’t really understand how important the media is – or how to use it effectively so they give it less time in their personal schedules than they should. I personally would like to see Katrina vanden Huevel on tv every day but she has a magazine to run and work to do – we need 50 of her and then 50 more people to do her job so she can be on tv all the time!

Where do you work? Do you do that as your job? I think we should put together a course of some sort in DC and have all the org people attend – I think response for that kind of thing would be tremendous. I would certainly come.

Today’s host seems to have managed to build some pretty good credentials and does a real good job at de-bunking her right wing counterparts when she is given some time on the Talking Head shows.

But she’s just a blogger. /s

Jane – you should check out the book A Conflict of Vision: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. Its by Thomas Sowell – a right winger at the Hoover institute. It’s a really facinating book about two different “gut feelings” that people have that help shape their political orientation. I read an article about a couple of psychologists who studied children at play and predicted which political persuasion they would have as adults. The top down, comfort with authority, etc characteristics of people is in that same vein.

Erica,

Are not local progressive organizations about to be swamped by big power players? For example, fight against Prop 8, while watching the power structure support a $7 trillion bailout.

I’ll email you. Thanks again.

Well it also probably doesn’t help that she’s a girl. Back to the question of what’s missing on the left and what I didn’t see when I was putting the book together – - we have a disturbing lack of diversity at the leadership level of these organizations.

A few good articles have been written by progressive heavy hitters (Greenwald and Sirota, for two) about the ideology of no ideology which mainstream democrats seem to be addicted to. I think the lack of progressive/liberal infrastructure forces democratic politicians to act “pragmatically” within the framework of the ieologcal space created by the right. Paul Krugman, for example, when he wanted to discuss just how wrong Bush’s economic plans were, had to single-handedly rehabilitate liberal economic ideas because the terms and concepts had fallen out of public consciousness from sheer disuse.

I don’t really know – I think it will depend on the organization. To a certain extent I think it might be appropriate for some local organizations to turn their attention to some of the big issues for a while simply because actually getting progress on them is going to take an all hands on deck approach. Health care is a great example – you may have heard of the Kristol memo in 1993 or so where Kristol basically warns conservatives that if democrats pass healthcare they will never get political power back again – so he instructs them to fight it at all cost. The same thing is true now – if democrats manage to get healthcare done, the republicans are going to be in political wilderness for a while so it stands to reason that they (with pharma, etc) will do everything they can to not pass it – we need serious firepower to beat that.

Prop 8 just made me sick. There is a theory though that when people feel safer and more secure, they are able to be more accepting of other people. So in a roundabout way maybe passing healthcare, fixing the economy, etc could pave the way for important progress on issues like gay marriage and others.

I will do that.

I agree with this – I use the seesaw analogy – put a marble in the middle of a seesaw (that’s the politician) if a big kid is sitting on the right hand side of the seesaw, the marble rolls right – we need a bigger kid sitting on the left so the marble will roll to the left – that’s the role of the infrastructure. I think people expect too much of their politicians – they are politicians – they have a particular part to play but they are only going to act within the structure we give them. It’s like asking an actor to be the director and the screen writer and the producer – are their some who can play all those roles? sure. But most can’t and asking all the actors in Hollywood to be responsible for screenwriting, etc would lead to some pretty crappy movies.

Jane Hamsher is a Category Five hurricane.
Woe be unto the Righttard who does not have facts to back up his/her talking points..

That is very true — they are politicians, and they cave easily to the money and influence that big corporations and wealthy donors can leverage. It’s impossible for individuals coming together on a case-by-case basis (as we tend to online) to consistently bring the pressure to bear everywhere it is needed to counterbalance that. That’s why institutional players become so important, and why I find this book so helpful.

This has been an excellent discussion, especially for a holiday weekend online, when things can get a little slow.

Thanks again Erica for joining us and taking the time. We have some time left, but if you have to run, I wanted to be sure to express our appreciation before you disappear.

Another little bit on ideology though – ideology trumping evidence is a problem of this administration and the conservative movement. I don’t want to see us do the same thing. A single payer health care system may or may not be the best way to provide health care to all citizens – what’s important is that we believe people have a fundamental right to healthcare (I actually do not think that conservatives believe this). Any opinion I have about the manner in which we realize that value will be advised by the evidence of cost, quality, equality of quality, etc – I don’t start with “we need single payer healthcare.” And while we’re on the topic of healthcare – we need to realize that we are not going to get healthcare until we start talking about it as an economic competitiveness issue – not as a poor people issue.

It’s hard to see how you win the battle of the see-saw when the other side thinks it’s okay to put most the media on the same side as the most powerful interests, and they capture the government to put its weight on the same side. And half of the players are literally crooks. They don’t play by the rules, they fix the rules, and excuse/pardon themselves.

This isn’t just a matter of having more progressive think tanks and leadership training. At some point, you have to recapture the system of “justice” and start reestablishing a fair set of rules. People who committed crimes have to indicted. And people who were wrong most of the time need to be hounded from the adviser/pundit slots, every day.

To answer selise’ question, reestablishing the “rules” is an inherently progressive agenda. And using the government to redress the imbalance, when that imbalance has been used to force an anti-progressive agenda, is also profoundly progressive.

This is where we are at this moment.

isn’t that nice?! thank you. I have really enjoyed myself. Happy to stay for the rest of the time. This is fun – and its recharging my brain. I am thinking through the next couple of years, what we all need to accomplish and what role I can play in that and so all this conversation has been some good food for thought.

it is very hard to win the battle of the seesaw. But I definitely think we are making some progress. Think back to 5 years ago, we never thought we would be here – we have done a lot of good work. There’s so much more to do but I don’t think we should lose sight of how far we have come – and we’ve come that far because of the efforts of millions of people who saw a problem and decided to do something about it. We can take the next steps provided we make ourselves stick to it for the really hard part (which is the part coming up).

Just a rambling thought but I would like to hear your opinion,
Now that the “Southern Strategy” or whatever they call it has seemingly collapsed, do you possibly see regional politics having a use in Progressive politics?
The Left Coast seems to consistently reject the Republican agenda.

As we come to the end of this Book Salon,

Erica, Thank you for stopping by the Lake today and spending the afternoon with us discussing your new book and the progressive movement.

Jane, Thank you for Hosting this lively Book Salon.

Everyone, if you haven’t bought this book yet, there is a link above.

Thanks all.

Great Salon Bev. Thanks Erica and Jane!

Definitely – we certainly took advantage of the new west in this cycle and hope to do more of that -

Thank you everyone!!!

Oh, absotutely. I’m not saying dispense with pragmatism and become wholly ideology driven. Right now the democratic leadership has had their view reinforced, that the country would ultimately reject the heavy-handed conserative ideology and choose the more moderate alternative. However, having failed for so many years to articulate a positive (liberal)alternative it will remain very difficult to implement a progressive agenda, no matter how many senate seats they have.

However we need to frame it…makes p*nis size larger, whatever…do that. I hate that we have to frame it just right or it won’t get passed, but that’s true. We are losing jobs because of no universal health care. We’re losing lives, we’re losing brilliant minds who could invent or discover something or cure a disease, but they are being lost because we don’t have health care for all.

Gotta go do my evening animal chores. Thank you Erica for the book and this discussion. We have taken some big steps towards a more progressive country but we’ve got a very long way to go.

Thanks much, Erica. Hope you and Pachacutec follow up.

Thank you so much for your time Erica.

I love these book salons.
Thank you Jane, Bev and the moderators behind the curtains too.

And while we’re on the topic of healthcare – we need to realize that we are not going to get healthcare until we start talking about it as an economic competitiveness issue – not as a poor people issue.

I couldn’t agree with you more Erica! I just don’t understand why American business doesn’t scream for it. Health care is the largest single contributor to the reason that American companies are not as competitive as the rest of the world. We are the laughing stock in the world when it comes to Health Care for our citizens. Why should the most successful, richest country in the world not have comprehensive health care? As stated earlier it is the Republicans, their health care insurance companies and big Pharma that oppose it. I mean American Health Care is their Cash Cow! They sure don’t want it taken from them.

thanks erica, bev, jane and everyone.

Thanks Erica nad Jane for this fine thread(:>)) I know I enjoyed it very much!

Thanks for being here Erica, and to everyone else for participating. I hope everyone takes a look at the book — progressive infrastructure is something we’re tempted to forget getting swept up in the issue du jour. It’s a great resource.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1586487191?tag=firedoglake-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=1586487191&adid=0BSZPBFFHXVGVRCW0Y4Q&

it is the Republicans, their health care insurance companies and big Pharma that oppose it

This is the truism we’ve got to sell to the American public.

http://www.ourfuture.org/

hmm…a trifle late.