{"id":3071,"date":"2010-10-10T02:04:38","date_gmt":"2010-10-10T09:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=3071"},"modified":"2010-10-10T02:04:38","modified_gmt":"2010-10-10T09:04:38","slug":"sherrod-brown-on-progressives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/10\/10\/sherrod-brown-on-progressives\/","title":{"rendered":"Sherrod Brown on Progressives"},"content":{"rendered":"

I keep hearing progressives vent their disenchantment with Obama and the Democratic party.  I will not claim that their feelings have no merit.  I share their disappointment over several of Obama\u2019s policies and appointments.  But when they speak of abandoning the Democratic Party, instead of working to change it from within, I must respectfully disagree.  I have made the same mistake myself.  I was an Independent.  I almost voted for Ralph Nader in 2000.  I planned to do so.  I even donated to his campaign.  At the last minute, I changed my mind and voted for Gore, because I correctly foresaw the influence Cheney and Rove would have in a Bush Regime.  If only a few dozen Floridians had done so too, GW Bush would never have gotten close enough to steal the election.  The day after Bush v. Gore<\/em> was handed down, I changed my voter registration to Democrat.<\/font><\/p>\n

Sherrod Brown wrote this editorial:<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"10sherrod_brown\" Progressives are an impatient bunch. We fight for people who have waited too long already \u2014 for health care, for educational opportunity, for jobs to keep them in the middle class<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

But for generations, conservatives have appealed to fear to protect the privileged and preserve the status quo \u2014 fear of immigrants, fear of diversity, fear of big government. For conservatives in 2010, it’s easy:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

"Stop."<\/p>\n

"No."<\/p>\n

"Repeal."<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, for more than a century \u2014 in churches and temples, in union halls and neighborhood centers, in the streets and at the ballot box \u2014 progressives have moved the country forward. Progressives brought us minimum wage and Social Security in the 1930s, civil rights and Medicare in the 1960s, and health care and Wall Street reform in 2010<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Opponents of these accomplishments \u2014 some of society’s most privileged and well-entrenched interest groups \u2014 have not changed much. The John Birch Society of 1965 has bequeathed its fervor and extremism to the Tea Party of 2010.<\/p>\n

History tells us that rage on the right should not be confused with populism<\/strong>. The far right attacks government regulation as it feeds Wall Street and the insurance companies. It rails against government spending for the least privileged as it lavishes tax cuts favoring the most privileged<\/font><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

No one should be surprised over what has happened in the last 18 months:<\/p>\n

\u2022We passed health care reform, so the insurance companies are coming after us at election time.<\/p>\n

\u2022We enacted consumer protections for homeowners and credit card users, so Wall Street is spending millions to defeat us.<\/p>\n

\u2022We worked to end tax breaks for corporations that ship jobs overseas, and now large multinational corporations are doing everything possible to beat us.<\/p>\n

We already know the damage that comes from the right’s rage. During President Clinton’s eight years, our country added more than 22 million private sector jobs, incomes went up, and we enjoyed the largest budget surplus in U.S. history<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In the following eight years of the Bush administration, only 1 million jobs were added, incomes stagnated or plummeted for most Americans, and we were left with record budget deficits.<\/p>\n

Yet Republican candidates in 2010 are offering the same faux populism and "solutions" of the Bush years: more tax cuts for the rich, deregulation of special interests, and trade agreements that cost us millions of manufacturing jobs. And in places like my state of Ohio, they are even offering up as candidates the same people who got us into this mess.<\/p>\n

To fight back, progressives must talk about the historic accomplishments of the last 18 months in specific, understandable terms<\/strong>\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <USA Today<\/a>><\/p>\n

Brown continues to discuss some of those accomplishments, so I won\u2019t go into them here, except to state that they are progressive accomplishments, they are worth having, and there would be far more of them, were it not for unprecedented obstruction from Republicans.<\/font><\/p>\n

I\u2019m asking you to hang in there.  Hold your nose if you have to, but don\u2019t throw away your vote by not using it or wasting it on someone with zero chance to win.  Please stop and think about how much better things could have been under President Gore, avoiding eight tragic years of Crawford Caligula and his partners in crime.  Hasn\u2019t this nation suffered enough because a few well meaning folks did not consider that elections have consequences?<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I keep hearing progressives vent their disenchantment with Obama and the Democratic party.  I will not claim that their feelings have no merit.  I share their disappointment over several of Obama\u2019s policies and appointments.  But when they speak of abandoning the Democratic Party, instead of working to change it from within, I must respectfully disagree.  […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3071\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}