Movement Strategery
by digby
Contemplating Chris Bowers’ interesting discussion of the progressive bloc(k) strategy, Matt Yglesias points out what should be evident to anyone who’s ever done a negotiation: whoever can walk away always has more power. It’s just the way things work. That doesn’t mean that you can’t win if you want something more than the person with whom you’re negotiating. There are lots of strategies. You can ask for far more than you’re willing to settle for, you can play others against each other, you can try for a “win-win.” But in the final analysis, it’s always going to be much tougher to walk away from something everyone knows you really want and much easier if it doesn’t matter much to you. That’s life.
In the case of health care, as I wrote way back when, the congressional liberals were always going to be jammed at the end because the Medicaid expansion alone is something they desperately wanted for decades and couldn’t ever get (which doesn’t excuse why they negotiated with themselves the whole way along.) There was just no way that a progressive bloc strategy was ever going to hang tough with health care reform, although it was useful for them to work together to improve the bill and shape the negotiations with various threats and admonitions. (After all, there was no guarantee that it would end up with even the subsidies or Medicaid expansion at all.) Still, everyone knew from the beginning that as long as this bill covers many millions of the working poor they were not likely to vote against it in the end. Lifting up the poor is the holy grail for liberals.
But as Yglesias says, there are plenty of issues where it can work. In fact we saw it with Grayson’s audit the fed initiative and earlier in the year they gave Pelosi and Emmanuel big, big headaches over the first war supplemental. There’s power in legislators working together across party lines and being willing to play hardball.
These “bloc” strategies are more complicated for movement progressives, however. Obviously lobbyists for special interests cut deals all the time and politicians are always prioritizing their various constituencies (especially those with $$$) against their agenda. Party functionaries care about being in power, period. But movement politics is different than legislative process and it requires a clear, values based consistency to last over time and create solidarity amongst its members. Votes come and go and the legislative process requires messy compromise and strange bedfellows by its nature. Movement politics are for the long haul and they must be built on broad principles not specific policies or they won’t outlast the ugly political process that gets us from A to B. Getting deeply entrenched in the legislative weeds by making by making common cause with adversaries for momentary advantage creates ideological chaos and compromises fundamental values. That’s special interest politics, not movement politics. (I’m not casting aspersions on special interests particularly, just pointing out that they are different animals. Some special interests are our friends.)
The health care debate has been a very instructive process for everyone and I’ll be interested in reading more from our movement thinkers about what it’s taught us. I’m glad to see it coming to an close, sorry that it isn’t more of what I would have liked or what’s necessary, but I’m satisfied that this isn’t the end because we have an ongoing progressive movement that will ensure that it isn’t. That’s why movements are necessary.
Grayson has the right idea. That guy never quits and that’s one of the main reasons why movement progressives look up to him.
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