Making Them Do It

by digby

I have written a short wrap-up of “the progressive moment” at the Denver convention over at The Big Con:

In casual conversation and formal addresses, from health care to foreign policy to media reform and beyond, the progressive agenda dominated the discourse far more than I expected. I knew there would be solidarity in opposition to conservative rule, but it no longer stems from that alone. There is a sense of opportunity and engagement with issues that I haven’t seen in progressive circles for some time.

I was quite surprised at how … well, progressive everyone was. The Democratic party is beginning to unapologetically identify itself as ideological again, tempered with a new pragmatism about Obama and what we can expect him to accomplish on his own. There wasn’t much disagreement at all on issues or the fact that the party establishment is not going to do what needs to be done without strong outside pressure.

The task before us, as a progressive movement, is to figure out how to make them do it. It’s not going to be easy, but there are a lot of ideas out there and we’d be well advised to start thinking about the next steps if we find ourselves in the incredible position of having a government that isn’t run by Karl Rove and Dick Cheney (or their clones.)

It’s a nice problem to have, isn’t it?

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