In order to get a new progressive movement going you really need to ask yourself ‘what happened to the old progressive movement?’
Even people who mostly vote a liberal view still tend to see themselves as moderate, and this skews the percentage who view themselves as conservative even higher.
Self identified ‘Progressives’ are such a small portion of the voting public as to be influential only on the fringe.
We don’t need a new progressive movement. Pretty much every idea in the OP is the progressive movement’s list. We just need a shitload of more people to support the one there is.
What we need is a much smarter general public, presumably arrived at by creating a much better education system. One problem with that is that primary and secondary education is almost exclusively in the domain of local government, and lots of places have absolutely no interest in producing highly educated, and highly questioning and skeptical, citizens.
Political obstacles are the hardest to overcome.
Why? What’s wrong with the old one? Are you advocating a new Progressive PARTY, or a revitalization of the old one…or something else? Or are you wanting a new progressive movement that will shift the Democratic party towards progressive ideals (which, to be honest, don’t seem all that different than the OLD progressive movement to me)?
How do you envision this working, in practical terms? Or do you worry about little things like practicality? Do you envision this ‘new’ progressive movement in the US replacing the current progressive movement, or do you envision them as sort of like the Tea Party…i.e. working for change and attention within the system and as part of one of the two big tent parties? Or do you envision this ‘movement’ as replacing one of the parties (presumably the Democrats) to become a new dominant player in the two party system? Or are you advocating something that transcends the current system, replacing it with…what?
-XT
I certainly agree that the OP is a bit pie-in-the-sky and rather lacking in details. That said, I think responding to any pie-in-the-sky proposal with a dismissive sneer of “but who decides X, who gets to sort Y, who gets to analyze Z” as if that just defeats the original proposal all by itself is a little facile. I mean, you can do that to just about anything:
Person 1: I think we should have laws that make sure food and drinking water is safe
Person 2: But who would decide what qualifies as safe? Who would decide what qualifies as food?
Person 1: I think that if you killed someone in self defense, that should be legal defense against a charge of murder
Person 2: But who decides when it is or is not self defense? Once you open this loophole then everyone will always claim it’s self defense and we’ll never get to convict anyone!!!
etc etc etc.
For instance, in this thread, the OP (presumably) would like a law which makes it hard or impossible for big corporations and super PACs to give millions of dollars to politicians’ campaigns without making it impossible for joe citizen to give a hundred dollars to a politician’s campaign. Now, we could argue about whether that’s good public policy or not, and it’s also not necessarily trivially easy to write a law that properly distinguishes between those two cases… but it’s also not necessarily impossible to write such a law, either; and responding to his proposal simply by pointing out that a finished law would need way more complicated language than his initial proposal is rather silly. Of course it would! (Granted, in that particular example there’s also the question of constitutionality, but my point stands…)
The alternative is to stick with what we know isn’t working, or try something that might work better.
If we can get that to 49%, then it will fly.
Read the news.
I gave specific proposals that are already quite well known and accepted by many.
Look, if you’re serious about this, I suggest you get active in an existing progressive organization, no need to re-invent the wheel. The most promising one going right now is the Working Families Party. (Or the Vermont Progressive Party if you happen to live there.) If you want to go further left even than progressive, try the Democratic Socialists of America or the Socialist Party USA. If you want to go further left than that . . . well, you can’t, really, not in this country, even the Communist Party USA is really democratic-socialist these days.
I take the lack of response to mean “none”.
You don’t need a new movement. You need to get enough people interested in the existing one. Good luck.
Assumptions are not too accurate, are they?
Anyone who has heard Boehner and his cohorts rattle on about “job creaters” knows what I’m talking about. This ideology is intended to deceive the people with libertarian slogans into supporting policies that have and will benefit only the wealthy.
Representatives can think too, if we voters decide to vote for people who can think instead of the idiot Tea Partiers who can’t.
Why don’t you give your proposal, instead of constant requests for evidence and specifics? You are doing nothing but saying nothing can be done. My proposals would be better than having politicians spend half their time asking for money and the other half doing the bidding of those who pay for them. Public financing works in other countries.
Major candidates would get a set amount, and people could contribute a set amount that allows each citizen to contribute instead of a few people with the most money.
Money is not speech. We should have Obama campaign on behalf of Obama, not YOU. Restrict money for campaigns so no-one’s money is more important than someone else’s. Demanding exact figures is just stalling. Legislators and courts can work the best workable amounts out over time.
For someone as uninformed as you, you sure are stubborn and proud of your opinions and quick to knock others.
YOu are exaggerating my claims again. Most of what we need to do is reinstate the laws that you Republicans, “New” Democrats, and Libertarians took away.
The voters (I hope; maybe a vain hope in the USA I know)
Almost anything would be better than our Tea Party congress. They are extremely authoritarian and downright stupid.
You must have been around supporting the Vietnam adventure. Your argument is such old hat as to be really tiring. The Munich Doctrine again? Next you’ll be trotting out the Dominoe Theory. Gimme a break.
I doubt I would agree with your choice of who is “greatest.” Democratic presidents have not been perfect, but their foreign policy is on the right track. They kept us out of major wars, while Republicans deliberately started them for no reason. They certainly didn’t keep them home; what planet are you living on dude?
Maybe later. I don’t have time now to prove the obvious to you.
I think so 
I can give you a few starting points, which I’m sure you will sneer and snicker at.
Again, what planet have you been living on? Mars?
All the obstacles are political. Your questions are intended to obfuscate and block action.
Not a bad summary there. The people have indeed voted incorrectly, in my opinion. There is a remedy for that though. The people can vote correctly instead. And there’s some hope that demographic changes will favor the correct side in the long run.
I was talking about American foreign policy. Democratic presidents have enacted a more-peaceful policy than Republicans over the last 35 years. That’s a good starting point.
Why wasn’t that obvious to you from my statement? We actually DO not start unnecessary wars like the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan. You tell me, why were those wars so necessary? Give your opinions for once instead of just knocking others. Are you sure you libertarians are not all the same person? I’ve heard this all “since 1965” too; nothing new, very old hat.
Your labels have nothing to do with my ideas.
No, we need to vote correctly to elect people who can think to begin with.
We should not be afraid of what extremist libertarians like you CALL “totalitarian.” We should embrace it indeed!
Stagnation IS horrible. It will lead to much worse if not corrected. Problems cannot be left to fester. On what basis do you think they can be? Try leaving your house to rot and fall down, and see if that works. It won’t work in politics either. We need to take action, and we’ve been stalled for over 30 years while other nations advance and leave us in the dust.
Sorry, the forum would not allow me to post yesterday.
I guess by “new movement” I mean to reenergize the old one, or get it to actually exist and be effective, instead of only being somewhat existing; something like that. It ought to be at least as strong as the lunatic right wing, which it isn’t.
Points well taken.
I’m not against such things as inspecting people boarding planes, and investigating terror plots. I’m against making unnecessary violations of civil liberties on the excuse of fighting terrorists.
Well…why isn’t it? How would you make it different and relevant enough to be as strong as the lunatic right wing? How would you appeal to enough Americans to make it so? And do you envision this as a direct challenge to the existing dominant Democratic party, or working through existing channels (as the ‘lunatic right wing’ has done a la the Republican Party), or supplanting them?
-XT
You know what’s absurd about this thread? I’m a fiscally conservative, socially liberal republican, and I agree with almost every one of your statements!
Yeah, human rights, environmental protection, fair tax system, debt reduction, efficient social programs, cheaper healthcare, all of those are great! Let’s go!
We need all the government we need! Sure, I can get behind that!
Protect the environment! Hell yeah, I love the environment! Fuck the polluters!
Where we likely disagree is in the best way to actually accomplish these goals, and balance them when they conflict.
In my opinion, we need to let all the Bush tax cuts expire, enact a millionaire’s tax on top of that, and just refuse to do all the other things people are suggesting-- like lower rates, and flat taxes which would NOT be progressive. Corporate taxes are another thing; it might be possible to lower rates if more loopholes are closed. But we already closed enough personal loopholes in 1986.
Well, you have to be willing to pay for them, and that means paying some taxes. “Fiscal conservatives” don’t always like that prospect!
These are good questions and I probably don’t have time now to answer. It may be hard to distinguish corporate welfare from a good investment. But I think investing in infrastructure and research that benefits more than particular companies, may work. For past examples, consider land for railroads, the space program, centers for disease control, support for science, etc.
Financial regulations are an easy call. The trickle-downers got hold of the country and deceived people into repealing laws like Glass-Steagall. Result? The great recession of 2008-2011. We need to put back those laws; that would be a great start. Not much “expertise” needed there, is there?
What I said was free market policies are driving up prices. We are not allowed to regulate commodity markets who drive up prices without any connection to the actual buyers and sellers. Why do we need to allow this? Why do we have the most expensive and least effective health care system in the world? We are allowing people to charge too much, and it is too privatized. Colleges are unaffordable. These high tuitions should be discouraged. Obama has made a good start on that; we need to do more. Just what I admit I’m not too sure at this very moment. BUt certainly the public could bring down the cost of public higher education if we acted to do so.
So…are you willing to let ALL of the Bush Tax Cuts™ expire…or merely some of them? I’m all for letting them all expire, and I think that’s what should have happened. It didn’t though because regardless of the rhetoric, those cuts effected more than just ‘the rich’…and having them expire would effect a hell of a lot of folks. Probably most of the people participating in this thread.
I’m all for higher taxes…but I’m for higher taxes on pretty much everyone (excluding the really, really poor). My issue with those who call for more taxes is that they generally mean more taxes for someone else.
And liberals don’t always like the prospect of cutting government programs or budgets. It’s going to take a lot of folks doing a lot of things they don’t always like to fix our fiscal problems. Silver bullet solutions like The Buffet Rule(aar) SOUND good, to the masses, but they are mainly window dressing and fodder for the faithful. Same with your ‘millionaire’s tax’…anything that you could, practically, get enacted is going to be a drop in the bucket when it comes to our fiscal issues without other measures, including the dreaded budget and program cuts. You might get billions…hell, you might get a hundred billion, or even two (I doubt it, but for the sake of argument let’s say you could) but while that sounds like a lot it really isn’t when put up against the size of the deficit, let alone the debt. IIRC, it’s several tens of billions a year just paying on the current ‘debt’, and you simply aren’t going to be able to squeeze The Rich for trillions…at some point they will simply take their marbles and go play somewhere else. An option that THEY have, but We, The People generally don’t have.
The trouble with idealistic screeds is that in general the problems are more complex and resistant to easy, quick silver bullet changes, and the solutions even more so…and require compromise while working with the actual system we have, as opposed to the one some of us WISH we had. You aren’t going to be elected God Emperor of The Americas, able to arbitrarily make changes with the sweep of your hand.
-XT
I think progressives are demoralized and don’t think they can challenge the dominant trickle-down ideology. The ideology needs to be debunked and we all can do our part. I know we NEED a new or revived progressive movement, and we need to realize that we need it and that it can happen.
As far as which channel, I don’t care at this point; whatever works.