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With 'One Nation,' Liberal Groups Aim to Match Tea Party's Energy, Influence
If imitation is the highest form of flattery, the "tea party" movement must be honored.
In an effort to replicate the tea party's success, 170 liberal and civil rights groups are forming a coalition that they hope will match the movement's political energy and influence. They promise to "counter the tea party narrative" and help the progressive movement find its voice again after 18 months of floundering.
The large-scale attempt at liberal unity, dubbed "One Nation," will try to revive themes that energized the progressive grassroots two years ago. In a repurposing of Barack Obama's old campaign slogan, organizers are demanding "all the change" they voted for -- a poke at the White House.
But the liberal groups have long had a kind of sibling rivalry, jostling over competing agendas and seeking to influence some of the same lawmakers. In forming the coalition, the groups struggled to settle on a name. Even now, two of the major players disagree about who came up with the idea of holding a march this fall.
In this respect, at least, the liberal effort already resembles the fractious tea party movement. In February, some tea party groups skipped a long-planned gathering in Nashville in protest of alleged profiteering by convention organizers. Tea partiers have also argued about which candidates represent the movement.
Despite the friction among liberal groups, the effort behind "One Nation" was born of a certain necessity: At one of the first meetings, Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change, said, "Raise your hand if you can push your part of the agenda all by yourself."
No hands shot up.
Indeed, a promised overhaul of immigration law is virtually dead this year. Legislation that labor unions say would make it easier for them to grow their membership are stalled in Congress. The jobless rate is 15.4 percent for blacks and 12.4 percent for Hispanics, compared with 8.6 percent for whites.
"Having been confronted with the specter of the tea party . . . we felt it urgent to organize the majority of this country, which voted in 2008 and has gone back to the couch," said Benjamin Jealous, president of the NAACP. "We've been split off in different directions."
The groups involved represent the core of the first-time voters who backed President Obama -- including the National Council of La Raza, NAACP, AFL-CIO, SEIU and the United States Student Association. (The effort is separate from the Democratic Party's plan to spend $50 million trying to reach those same voters.)
Their aha moment happened after the health-care overhaul passed this spring. Liberal groups, who focused their collective strength to push the bill against heavy resistance, felt relevant and effective for the first time in a long while. That health-care coalition -- composed of civil rights groups, student activists and labor leaders -- liked the winning feeling.
"In many ways, the bitter fight for health-care reform has painfully highlighted that we must go back to the grassroots organizing that won us the election in the first place," said George Gresham, president of 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East. "We must reassert our strength as the social movement that ushered Obama into office."
Liberal leaders see "much of the progressive agenda at risk in this election," said Paul Starr, a professor of public affairs at Princeton University and co-editor of the American Prospect, a liberal magazine. "There is no choice but for these groups to get together. The historical pattern is that voter turnout falls disproportionately among minorities and young people at these midterm elections, so they are fighting a historical trend."
Leaders of the groups have been meeting for about three months in a planning process that some participants called arduous, debating everything from the name of the coalition to what the branding and logo should look like.
The coalition's first goal is to plan a march to "demonstrate to Congress that these agenda items have support across multiple demographics," Jealous said. The demonstration, to be held Oct. 2, will center on pressing for more government spending on job creation.
"This is a way to create some intensity," said Eric Rodriguez, vice president of NCLR. "Month after month, we spend time pointing to these employment figures, and we're still not breaking through on the disparities in a way that we think is important."
This week at their national conventions both NAACP and NCLR leaders will begin talking to their members about "One Nation," and they are seeking money from foundations for the effort. They hope it will be a show of force that will remind both Congress and the White House that they are out there.
Obama, who some activists say has not lived up to their expectations, could also be pushed harder, said Michael McGerr, a professor of history at Indiana University who has studied political campaigns.
The effort has a historical parallel in a story that Obama has told on the campaign trail. According to the story, when labor organizer and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph met with President Franklin Roosevelt to press his issues, Roosevelt told Randolph he agreed with him but that Randolph should "go out and make me do it."
"They are calling the Democratic party back to what has been the pattern of successful liberalism in the 20th century," McGerr said.
49 Comments so far
Show AllThe Tea Party is a distraction.
The Tea Party/Teabaggers is not really a movement, but rather a relatively small number of right-wing extremists who have been used by the Democrats as a scapegoat for their own hypocrisies.
It's an Astroturf movement by such figures like Dick Armey and other Republican and conservative lobbyists who are manufacturing right-wing dissent to distract from the real left-wing dissent that is ignored by the media.
Think about it; what better way of getting the right-wing fascist message out there than giving it media exposure? And indeed, that is what we have.
If you follow the media narrative in America, there is no left-wing dissent. There is only right-wing dissent. This simultaneously legitimatizes the right-wing narrative and gives justification for the Obama administration to crack down on ANY dissent-because a handful of right-wing fanatics are given media exposure.
The point is to get liberals to react, and it keeps working again and again.
No tea bagger or Limbaugh or Fox news nonsense can stand up to a strong left wing narrative for even a minute. How any of us could ever lose a debate with those talking points, or be frustrated or worry about it is a mystery to me.
The worry is the potential for violence from the right wing media, it is not the "ideas" they present that are the worry. Those ideas only have traction because so many are chicken shit scared to be real leftists, for fear of being too radical or something, because they are too weak and confused and cowardly.
Teabaggers et al, are moving into the vacuum created by this timidity and confusion and playing on liberal/progressive identification with the Democrats.
The reason people like Fox news, Glen Beck etc. is because it is entertaining and because they can pick up talking points that will drive liberals crazy. For the ruling class agenda to be advanced, it requires BOTH the right wing media AND the predictable liberal reaction.
That said, it is dangerous. We contribute to the danger by taking it so seriously (the "opinions," not the pandering to bigotry and hatred - that needs to be taken very seriously) and reacting so predictably.
What better way to "legitimize" the center-right policies of the Obama administration than to contrast them to the full-blown, ultra-right insanity of Sarah Palin-like Teabaggery.
Democrats are using the tea baggers' antics as a tool to stifle dissent from the Left. How dare we criticize Obama when doing so is to be on the same side as the tea baggers? Obama apologists won't even listen to any argument from the Left against Obama's policies, they automatically categorize it in the same category as the crap being spewed by tea baggers.
The tea bagger thing serves the purpose of making sure the intellectual liberals get all worked up about Palin et al and are therefore estranged from and irrelevant to the general public. It works like a charm, every time, to decapitate the working class.
"The reason people like Fox news, Glen Beck etc. is because it is entertaining and because they can pick up talking points that will drive liberals crazy."
People like those media elements because those elements present a very simple-minded view of the world. Even if they were willing to be open minded, too many Americans lack the focus and energy to understand the complexity of the major issues of the day.
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"People like those media elements because those elements present a very simple-minded view of the world. Even if they were willing to be open minded, too many Americans lack the focus and energy to understand the complexity of the major issues of the day."
So are you open minded enough to understand their views of the issues of the world? Or can you only be opened minded if you have the ability to understand the complexity of the world?
I still suggest that considering the majority of people wrong simply because they disagree with us or that Americans are simple minded is not helpful. Nor are the real issues for our country that complex.
And as far as the wishful thinking that the Tea Party folks are republican operatives bused about the country to do their thinking, the evidence is quite clear by now that it is exactly that, wishful thinking.
They represent the most important voting blocks opinins in any case.
As to the Tea Party and the people they reflect and their effectiveness, as the King said in " A Man For All Seasons"..."to these tired old eyes, thats what winning looks like"
So far we are getting our asses kicked.
Your intellectual elitism is the opposite of what is needed to organize working Americans into a force for progressive change.
It seems that the left is chock full of superior intellects and their arrogance is antithetical to populism.
All this agonized intellectualism is seriously over-rated.
Brother, and presumably fellow Wob, dreamjoehill,
So, when your next door neighbor calls Obama a "aocialist", and criticises him for not "finishing the job" in Afghanistan, "which attacked us on September 11", calls AGW "just a plot by Al Gore to tax us" and claims that the jublessness is due to Big Government and its taxes and its socialistic environmental regulations, what do you tell him?
All these preposterous views are held by a majority or near majority of middle-class USAns (but thankfully less so among the poorest USAns who actually have a clearer view of the world). What do you propose doing about it?
I didn't think that was what dreamjoehill was talking about at all.
Aside from that, where are you getting your information on the Middle Class, Fox? That isn't what the middle class and small business class I know is thinking.
The "middle class" will always contain a reactionary element and arguing with them is not worth the wasted breath, unless its in a public forum and you have the opportunity to demonstrate the foolishness of the middle class right wing belief system.
Time and energy are much better spent organizing among the workers and the poor. Liberalism is too often an educated, middle class affair. The workers are absent. IMO the lack of mass working class led activist is the central weakness of the American left. No working class political party and weak unions equals a slide into right wing domination of politics.
Obsessing on the absurdity of the tea party platform is a favored form of mental mastrubation among pro-Obama liberals. It makes them feel good but accomplishes nothing.
Since the author makes a brief comparison with FDR's era, please note that the fact that many Americans supported socialist and communist parties during the 30's gave FDR and Congress ammunition to push through the New Deal as a means of keeping the ever feared commies from taking over.
Until a significant number of the American left stops voting for ever more rightward leaning Dems and starts voting socialist there will be no incentive for the Dems to shift leftward.
"This group of lobbyists for the Democratic Party is a stillborn birth for any real opposition to the Far Right."
Sad but true.
Dick Cheney/Sarah Palin 2012!!!
I have been predicting that ticket for the past year!
I think heads would explode in the lib community if that ticket won,
Judging by the way things are going, I think they did win.
exactly, they were taught to share the seat of power growing up. although its musical chairs, and every year a corporation is knocked out of their sick game as they consolidate and monopolize all power. Eventually it will be a Mom and a Dad, and they will play the people of the world the same as parents play their children. Good cop, Bad cop. Mom said I could have it, but Dad always lets me stay up late.
The DNC loves the Tea Party: it provides them with cover from their own failures by using the right of center Obamabots to attack those of us to the left of the Dem party and Obama by characterizing our attacks as coming from the right. The real joke is the Dems and Tea Party neo conservatives are closer to each other in ideology, then they are to the authentic left who lambasts them.
TRUE!
"Liberal groups... focused their.. strength to push the [healthcare] bill against heavy resistance, felt relevant and effective [and]... liked the winning feeling."
Anyone who thinks liberals won anything with the healthcare bill is guilty of serious mission creep. Throw a starving dog a bone, he'll like that 'winning feeling' too.
"Anyone who thinks liberals won anything with the healthcare bill is guilty of serious mission creep."
Too right.
Besides, the GOP fears the tea partiers, even as it uses them.
The Democrats have nothing to fear from these established groups. Until these groups stop giving in to the White House, supporting even bad legislation in the end, the corporate Democrats will feel free to continue on with business as usual.
This One Nation thing is DOA. Unlike the conservative Tea Party morons, it is not in the nature of progressives to line up like sheep for silly movements. And, as another comment already indicated, the health care bill was not a victory for progressives, not even close.
The tea party is obviously funded and backed by major corporate interests. It began as a result of the masses of protestors that were bussed into town hall meetings during the healthcare discussions last year. And we all knew who was behind that. And then suddenly this became a 'movement' promoted by Fox news as well.
My observation.
True, but these Tea Party people weren't paid to show up. They actually believe their propaganda.
Also, they were correct to oppose Obamacare, even if for the wrong reasons.
The tea party is a sideshow, not a serious threat. If anything, it is weakening the Republican Party.
Obama's imperial capitalism, on the other hand, has already destroyed millions of lives, and shows every sign of continuing to do so..
They believe the propaganda because they are educated by fox news and Obama's imperial capitalism. They just don't know that its Obama's.
The Tea Party isn't reading the truth, they are fed on lies. Its easy to convince people to do something when they are pre-disposed to believe whatever you say.
Progressives won't join this coalition because they don't believe in "Change". They have seen how big of a lie it all is.
This coalition is another bullshit coffee party.
One Nation - yawn, yawn, just another version of "we must push Obama harder". How's that been working out for ya?
Look at the groups pushing it - that tells the story ....
Didn't the libs have the so-called Coffee Party?
See Chris Hedges' article today to see just how much of a "victory" the health care legislation was. If that's the kind of victory you want to celebrate and repeat, I don't want to be part of your organization.
Thank you. And this crew of professional reformers also happily takes credit for putting Obama in the White House. This is not something that I would be bragging about.
This group will never be more than a paper tiger. The millions it claims to represent will not be energized by One Nation.
The left needs to rebel against Obama, his imperial wars, his penchant for authoritarian secrecy, his abuse of our privacy rights and his gifts to the bankers and wealthy corporatists.
Many argue that Obama is the best that we can do. If so, then the situation is truly hopeless and we need to foment revolution.
I don't see how this "One Nation" coalition really promises to be any better than what we have. The spiritual infighting between the liberals and progressives despite the fact that there are more that they have in common is unlikely to end. Money can only go so far so as to window dress the divisions but the rift keeps going on. So much time and money will be spent just trying to make "One Nation" look as "popular" as the Tea Party. At the same time, no good ideas will be shared and some of the good old progressive and liberal values and ideas such as collective thinking and action that helped people out of the Great Depression will be put on the back burner at best. The YOYO ideology will still be endorsed even by most liberals and progressives for fear of being put down for "not being independent enough" and the taboo on collective thinking and actions. As a result, it is getting more difficult to believe that our liberal and progressive causes will ever see the light of day.
Fair comment. Perhaps Progressives see Liberals as just not "pure" enough or more willing to compromise to get something done than they are?
I don't know at this point. I just wished they would come together at something good than nothing.
"Indeed, a promised overhaul of immigration law is virtually dead this year. Legislation that labor unions say would make it easier for them to grow their membership are stalled in Congress. The jobless rate is 15.4 percent for blacks and 12.4 percent for Hispanics, compared with 8.6 percent for whites."
And this is exactly why artificial organizations like this cannot match a popular protest. This is why the Tea Party has been so successful.
Pushing legislation that has been rejected by the vast majority and jobless rates that were promised wouldn't be if you'll only agree to.....is not a winning combination.
And if I were going to pick a group of people that were more likely to fail than this group, I'd be hard pressed. Pushing for their individual agendas failed, why would anyone expect them to win pushing for all of them together?
"hamster, Aquifer, ubrew12, European Historian"
Thanks for a breath of reality!
I think the problem we progressives have with getting our message out, is that when you have a sensible opinion that reality agrees with, it almost seems silly to state it. You know, "The sky is blue, we have proof!" seems a bit weird to have to say.
The problem is that you have the Tea Partiers insisting, "The blueness of the sky is illusory! It's purple, and I've got my bible to back it up!" (with the libertarians on the bandwagon for support of the first premise, but choosing black for the second premise, given that once you remove the refractory effects of the atmosphere, that's what color you get).
It's sad that we must state the apparently obvious - but it's apparent that our points are not nearly as obvious as we believe them to be.
Our points are not so obvious. Many of them are in conflict with each other, and in conflict with our own interests, just as we laugh about when we see "What's The Matter With Kansas" -type cranks doing the same. So we divide into segments that focus on the portions of the agenda that mean the most to us, which makes the contradictions more apparent, and then we fight with each other over whose segment of the agenda deserves to get the most attention from the full force of "progressives." This in turn makes it easy for us to be triangulated out of electoral impact.
Just to start the thought process: Feminism is overwhelmingly a centrist and right-wing movement. So are labor most ethnocentric civil rights efforts, all of which are framed within the social and economic justice paradigms, which are inherently corporate and consumerist by definition, because that's what they're all demanding access to. Full achievement of the rights of all of these groups propel environmental devastation and imperial war. But can we just let them all go on suffering while we work this bugs out of the progressive advocacy system? Do we struggle to empower them all when we know that "empowerment" is defined by full access to consumer power and all the harm that power causes? When women, laborers, and minorities can afford as many SUV's and McMansions as men, will the world be better off?
When we succeed in getting as much funding for technology for poor school districts as exists in wealthy ones (you know, so the poor and minorities can access futures in the mainstream American economy instead of working at McDonald's or being persistently unemployed), didn't we succeed in funneling a trillion dollars' worth of corporate welfare to IBM, Microsoft, and Dell? Where are we going to dump the millions of tons of toxic waste from the crappy, antiquated electronics we'll be replacing with more up to date systems? Do we allow another generation of the poor, minority, and otherwise disenfranchised to become even more disenfranchised, despairing, and tending towards criminality and incarceration while we try to figure out how to solve these thorny questions?
Teabaggers don't have to struggle with these things. That's because they're openly driven by the desire to deny freedom and access to everyone against whom they're prejudiced. It's a simple program and whether or not the weight of the laws of unintended consequences comes upon them is of no concern. They're not looking out for themselves materialistically. They are a spiritual movement. They're happy when the people they hate are unhappy, not when they themselves have more money or better health plans.
But there are real reasons why progressives get stuck. We don't want the nasty unintended consequences -- many of us are advocates of ending the things that will be extended by the success of other things within our so-called agenda. We're aware of it. It forces us to argue among ourselves and to get anything we can for our pet projects from any entity willing to share their crumbs with us. It sucks, but we can't pretend it's not real, and the major component of our powerlessness.
The sky will always be whatever color the uninformed masses need it to be to calm their existential angst. Global warming must be a hoax because it interferes with their world view. Evolution is a liberal conspiracy against God because the bible says so. And so on... and on and on and on. Their ranting never ceases. It is fantasy though to think that rational discourse can change their minds about anything. Their views are not based on reason, not because they are incapable of reason, but because they are not inclined toward reason. Reason does not appeal to them. Facts do not appeal to them. They never progress beyond knee-jerk preconceived notions. And worse yet, they feel that it is weak and sissified to question anything too much.
"The People's Congress" sounds more effective than "One Nation".
So the "Coffee Parties" are already over?
The Washington Post? I should take seriously something written in WaPo?
What 170 groups? I google 'one nation' and all I come up with is this story and other unrelated groups (including a far-right Australian thing and something about native American 'indians', and Muslim group). Meeting for 3 months and there is no web page?
One story in WaPo does not a movement make.
Well, the Koch family is funding the Tea Party movement. Wonder what other elitist family is funding the opposing "liberal" movement?
Yawn.
These groups should be doing something different, but they arent. Leftist interest groups are still interest groups. Leftist fundraising appeals read just like rightist fundraising appeals. The tactics and maneuvers are much the same. The same sales techniques are used.
People are looking for something different, something less propagandistic, truth rather than truthiness. I doubt that we will ever get rid of interest groups and fundraising appeals, but we have to know that these are not all that there is.
Liberals will not be able to organize an enthusiastic following until they come up with a meaningful visceral agenda.
The system is too corrupt to permit the success of any meaningful legislation that will benefit the people. The only agenda that makes sense, is to attack the corruption itself.
People are angry and feel powerless. They are powerless. Until we can limit the power of corporations and lobbyists, we will not be able to accomplish anything.
MoveOn and its partners are running a campaign called the other 98%. The other 98% are Americans who don't have lobbyists to do their bidding.
There are three goals. Pass the fair elections now act, overturn the SCOTUS citizens united verdict and keep government agenst from lobbying until 5 years after they leave government and have public records of all meeting between legislators, their staffs and lobbyists.
This is a cause that is visceral, easily understood, important with a vision that people can rally around.
Many commenters have already pointed out that this agenda apparently is being organized by the same centrist groups that think Obama is on our side and that the health care bill was a victory. But, suppose there were a genuine effort by real leftists to organize, to bring environmentalists and people of color and the poor and women and peaceniks together--would this important effort really be in opposition to the Tea Party, and would it have to "get its messaging right" in order to gain comparable influence? Such thinking ignores certain realities. First, the Left fails not primarily because it's divided (so is the Right) or because it isn't good at messaging (though that is often true). No, the critical difference is that the Right supports the agenda of the richest 1% of the population, which has 99% of the power. So the Tea Party will always be well-funded and will always get plenty of press. The more carefully the Left crafts its message, the more united its components are, the bigger its base grows, the LESS press it will get and the more savagely its leaders will be attacked.
True, the media seeks out the most racist and absurd signs at Tea Party events--because they want to discredit the whole idea of a mass uprising. Clearly, the elite plan to return to a pre-modern level of economic and social inequality, backed by 21st century technology of surveillance and control. Uprisings will soon be a problem.
With all due respect (since most of what you observe is true), when was the last time "the Left" has done anything newsworthy? If you do something newsworthy, they will come. Maybe not at first, but don't despair too soon (persisting is newsworthy in and of itself -- for at least 30 years we have a history of symbolic, one-time actions) because as soon as competitors start making money selling headlines about you, they'll jump in no matter what their editorial politics, because the real agenda of the for-profit media is to make profits. We have one advantage in getting started with persistent newsworthy action, because we can use the internet to keep ourselves from being totally ignored until the suits in the corporate media have done enough research and lost enough market share to start sending cameras.
And remember, like they say in show biz, you don't care what they say about you so long as they spell your name right. Nothing would be better press than to get on Fox News or the New York Post as being a threat to "America as we know it." If they DON'T say that, then you're not doing your job right.
But we have to get out of "world social forum" and lecture mode, and become newsworthy (and I don't mean dressing up in costumes or carrying huge puppets -- I mean actions that are newsworthy themselves). It's not that hard, but it may take some time before the publishers recognize the profit potential and give new orders to their editors.
Why does this look like another Democratic marketing tool?
Because this group look likes its goal is to get Democratic candidates, during the Fall campaign, to make more promises that they they don't have to keep. I don't see any indication this group will get results, just promises.
As others have stated, if they support the health care giveaway to insurance companies, they are blind supporters of Democrats at heart. Support third parties and independents.
When a President has a 20 seat majority in the Senate and can't get anything passed because he wants and needs support from the other party. When he insists on bi-partisanship at any cost, that man has no business being the President! And it is the duty of the people to remove him from office.
I agree with your assessment. Mister Obama's skills are definitely legislative not executive.
But if it couldn't be done to Bush who was lost the election but was appointed to office by the Supreme Court, or for lying about and illegally invading Iraq and lying about it (an actual crime) what makes you think it could be done with mere popular dissatisfaction based on political theater?
Impeachment, which is what I assume you are referring to, requires some basis for employing. Being unpopular is not such a basis. If it was, not one president would serve out a complete term.
Here's a peace festival. Do you wonder why the media doesn't show up? Do you really want the media covering this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3V98lnJX1k
http://www.michiganpeacefest.com/
The coalition platform already exists and it's the Green Party Platform. The only reason the left ignores this option is that they have the delusion that they can play ball with the corporate devil and get somewhere.
“The large-scale attempt at liberal unity, dubbed "One Nation," will try to revive themes that energized the progressive grassroots two years ago.”
“They promise to help the progressive movement find its voice again after 18 months of floundering.”
“ but the liberal groups have long had a kind of sibling rivalry…”
“I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!” said Will Rogers.