If you want to start the process of finding common ground with the Tea Party, a good place to start would be to stop calling them racist homophobic ‘tea baggers’.
I think the big sticking point is going to be the size of government. You’re never going to get people in the Tea Party to agree to more government and more regulations as the solution to the problem.
I think the biggest problem today is that the left has been hijacked by special interests - the right too, but the left is really incoherent.
Let me ask you - what does someone on the left really stand for? Is it protection of the weak and the poor? Or is it more comfort and security for the middle class? Or is it the maintenance of unions even if Union people are in the upper income strata and their support comes at the expense of the poor and the rest of the middle class?
The thing is, you can’t have it all. If you want to throw benefits at the middle class and lower their taxes, you’re very soon going to run out of other people’s money. In fact, you already have, which is why the deficit is out of control. If you want to support $100,000 union jobs with taxpayer money, you’re going to have to eventually raise taxes on the middle class and the poor to pay for it.
Is that really what progressives want? Are you shooting for a more equal society, or are you just happy if the wealthy gatekeepers are union bosses instead of company bosses?
If you would recognize the danger that big government, big public unions, and universal entitlements pose to the poor and lower middle classes, you could find a lot of common ground with the tea party movement. And they’re receptive - they just endorsed a Democrat over a Republican in Idaho.
The Tea Party people aren’t looking for lower taxes for themselves. They’re looking to reign in the excesses of big government. That invariably leads to entitlement reform. And the only meaningful entitlement reform will involve real cuts in benefits. The easiest and most progressive way to do that is to start means-testing them, and to move the retirement age up.
The tea parties are also upset at the outrageous growth in size and pay for public sector unions. And progressives should be too. Public sector unions now pay significantly more in salary and benefits than their private sector equivalents. Given that they are paid with taxpayer money, that means they are enjoying a wealth transfer from the poor to them (or they will be once taxes are raised to close the deficit). How is it progressive to tax someone who makes $40,000 per year, in order to pay more benefits to someone making $70,000 per year?
The key to changing your thinking is to realize that you can’t just go to ‘the rich’ and get it all from them. They just don’t have enough money. You could tax the top 10% of society 100% of all their income, and you couldn’t close the budget deficit. And entitlement spending is growing every year now.
Just for the sake of argument, let’s say there’s no more revenue to be had from the rich. How does that change your thinking about the kinds of benefits government should be providing? If the money to run government comes from the poor and middle class, how does that change your thinking about paying $100,000 per year to a bus driver and allowing him to retire at 55 with higher pay than what he enjoyed for most of his working life, while private sector people have to work until 67 and retire on less than half the benefits the public union guy gets? How does someone who purports to care for the poor possibly justify that?
(And it makes at least as much sense as when RWs call liberals “Communists” or “socialists” or “looters” or “unpatriotic.”)