What is a progressive?:

Robin L. West, Constitutional Scepticism, 72 B.U.L. REV. 765, 774 (1992):
What distinguishes progressives from liberals is that while liberals tend to view the dangers of an over-oppressive state as the most serious obstacle to the attainment of such a world, progressives, while agreeing that some obstacles emanate from the state, argue that for the most part the most serious impediments emanate from unjust concentrations of private power – the social power of whites over blacks, the intimate power of men over women, the economic power of the materially privileged over the materially deprived.

Says a lot, imo.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 21 2005 23:43 utc | 4

A little arcane here, but the constellation of corn laws, Torries, Whigs, tells us much about how bourgeois political representation (Whigs) only tangentially helped the working class:

For this class [bourgeoisie] it is of the greatest importance to have a system which, as it believes at least, ensures it for all time a world monopoly of trade and industry by enabling it to pay just as low wages as its competitors and to exploit all the advantages that England possesses as a result of its 80 years’ start in the development of modern industry. From this point of view the middle class alone, and not the people, benefits from. the abolition of the Corn Laws.

So, I’d say your analogy using this history very definitely explains what the Dems are up to: protecting economic interests of the (rapidly disappearing entrepreneurial) middleclass, not workers. And as more and more of the American middleclass becomes just another assett-less worker, your Whig analogy is valid in a quite unintended way.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 22 2005 0:09 utc | 6

Get ready for yet another government mandated bailout at YOUR expense.
S&L redux? Who should be responsible for honouring the promises that companies make to their workers?

Posted by: cdr | Jun 22 2005 0:35 utc | 8

They finally nailed Delay:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050621/ap_on_go_co/delay_tribal_donations_1

Posted by: Lash Marks | Jun 22 2005 0:44 utc | 10

also flash,
There are so many examples of the impediment of worker representation by the bourgeoisie. What I want to point out as clearly as possible is the historical conflation of bourgeois/proletarian political struggle militated against workers, because workers are not petit-entrepreneurial capitalists!
Read Blanqui…wish I could find it online, but his stirring account of the 1848 conflicts confirm how the proleteriat, waving the red flag and not the tricolor, were tragically aware the monarch asskissing bourgeoisie would never represent the interests of workers.
many examples.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 22 2005 1:03 utc | 12

flash,
sorry…am aware, as historian, you already know this stuff. didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 22 2005 1:10 utc | 14

@slothrop:
Bernhard ought to open a “revolutionary tread”.
I don’t disagee with much you say here today.
I’ll check out Blanqui.Hope he don’t turn out to be Pelosi.

Posted by: FlashHarry | Jun 22 2005 1:39 utc | 16

The most recent instance That I’m aware of where the arrogance of a party that could stay in power knew no bounds, because of unfair electoral boundaries, was the Queensland State Government in Australia. These guys hung on in spite of huge swings against them from the late 1940’s until the mid 80’s.
They were unashamed in their ‘gerrymander’ (a term derived from electorate rigging in pre independant Ireland). As far as this bunch of crooks were concerned people in rural areas were entitled to have their vote count more than those in urban electorates because “they were the backbone of the nation”.
It took a long time to bring them undone and there are some salutary lessons for any other group wishing to achieve an electoral ‘level playing field’ elsewhere. Firstly their total control meant that main chancers from all facets of the community gravitated towards them. Not just the obvious ones like the media and business, but also the police and the rest of the bureaucracy.
These guys peddled a horrible line in Christian superstition which enabled them to claim the moral high ground when caught out in incredibly venal machinations. They hung on for a couple of terms more than they should have because when the going got really tough for them ‘plants’ in the opposition parties surfaced that ‘crossed the floor’ and supported their government.
Whilst common in the US this is relatively unheard of in British style parliamentary democracies where “whips” keep recalcitrants in line.
Under normal circumstances that should have sealed their fate but because 90% of mainchancers gravitated towards them and politicians are just about all main chancers, that even when the world could see the electorate would take no more, there was still a shortage of capable politicians prepared to take them on.
Even when they got thrown out in a finale of lies, voterigging and arrests the new government wasn’t prepared to actually believe they had done it and didn’t fully address the boundary rigging for several terms.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jun 22 2005 2:26 utc | 18

because the southern areas are to stupid
jdp, brother, c’mon.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 22 2005 3:00 utc | 20

My favorite exurban whinesap was some silk shirt on TV, shrieking (in a civilized way) from his 40 acres of pristine waterfront paradise, that the new automatic weapons gunclub (Democratic owned, for police and security combat weapon training) right across the water, “absolutely must stop that shooting! My word! It is completely uncivilized!”
Tell that to the folks in Fallujah, Mort. Ha,ha.
As for Red vers Blue, it all comes down to taxes.
The American people are about to sweep Repubs into local and state primacy on a promise of no taxes,
which will consolidate the Repub vote, for 2008.
Wasn’t it Ho Chi Min who predicted the Americans would be defeated because they always fell back on voodoo and false hopes in times of severe stress?
“If the Tiger does not stop fighting the Elephant, the Elephant will surely die of total exhaustion.”
Maybe we should restart the New Progressive Party up again, and make the Tiger our political symbol?
All the Dems promise US plebs is confabulation and refutation and a more taxation bureaucracy. Study, really study hard, the last two elections, and how Gore/Lieberman and Kerry/Edwards flipflopped and bugged out with what was left of their election campaign chest. $13M to Kerry’s retirement fund!
What’s Johnny been doing lately? “Oh, not much.”
Ciao.

Posted by: tante aime | Jun 22 2005 3:49 utc | 22

@ Uncle $cam
Thanks for the link to the Kos diary on MEK.
They are a neocon heart-throb, and an index of just how out of contact with reality their American supporters are.
If I’m not mistaken the MEK (or at least some faction thereof) has at times also endorsed non-standard sexual morality. That ought to be the kiss of death as far as
support by U.S. Fundies are concerned.

Posted by: Anonymous | Jun 22 2005 6:09 utc | 24

This is a comment on “Rewarding Failure.”
Speaking of Lt. Calley, have a look at who was the PAO (“Public Affiars Officer”) for the Americal Division under Major General Samuel W. Koster when the cover-up of My Lai was underway:
(Then) Major Colin Powell. Major General Koster went from VN to being Superintendent of West Point. Major Powell soon turned up as a White House Fellow at the NSC under Richard Nixon, launching his Brilliant Career.

Posted by: Lucian Truscott | Jun 22 2005 6:40 utc | 26

la: (Not Hilary, please)
I had a two-step disillusionment with Hillary. The first was her visit here in Hungary a few years ago, when I could see her for the first time in situations not carefully stage-managed – and the fake smile she put up for the camera and the disconnect of her vague campaign-ish words from the reality of the social home behind were sickening. The second was her book – I read some longer excerpts, mainly dealing with Republican campaigns against her, and her husband during the Lewinski scandal. The feeling I got was of someone who is on one hand naive (too trusting of thoe on her side, and not expecting the nastiness of the opponents even after they already showed), on the other hand more hurt than willing to fight back. And kind of as consequence, someone always in retreat.
Her aim for gaining the record of a most bland ‘moderate’ candidate or her campaigning with unquestioning support for Israel supported these impressions. Unfortunately, she has a mountain-high lead in Democratic preferences for 2008 Presidential candidate – in the latest poll, her 44% is followed by Kerry’s 17%.

Posted by: DoDo | Jun 22 2005 8:57 utc | 28

la: I am beginning to think that its time for a third party.
I agree with the need for a third party, but there have been third parties for some time. Under the electoral system that is currently in place (and criticized in this post), third parties have an even harder time than democrats in the rigged system. Democrats naively perpetuate the existing system in the belief that they will defeat the republicans and impose their own set of ‘reforms’ that will make it harder on republicans. Third parties are relegated to second class status. Democrats see third party candidates as a threat, but with IRV, the third parties could be used as an ally.
I support third party candidates, but changes still need to take place within the system to make third party candidates more effective, and making those changes means convincing democrats that it is in their best interest to make the changes. Until that happens, democrats will fall into the same traps that Billmon addresses.

Posted by: r.johnson | Jun 22 2005 14:04 utc | 30

Echoing some of what’s already been said, it’s worth pointing out that it is precisely third parties such as the Greens who have pushed the electoral reform issues that Billmon is talking about here. Our electoral system, though currently favoring the GOP, was very much a bipartisan creation, and in many of its details was designed in response to the threat (or perceived threat) from such third party movements as the Peoples Party (Populists), the Socialist Party (in the Debs era), the two Progressive Parties (LaFollette and Wallace), George Wallace’s independent presidential campaign, and more recently, Reform and the Greens.
Of course, Billmon (who I otherwise agree with much more than I disagree with…and about these electoral issues I very much agree with him) detests the Greens and other third parties. This is silly in any number of ways, but particularly in the area of electoral reform, in which, for reasons that Billmon inadvertantly suggests and others in this discussion have spelt out, the Greens (and other minor parties) and the Dems have a lot of potentially shared interests.
For pretty obvious reasons, the Greens and other minor parties have been very active in generating creative and valuable ideas for the kind of electoral reform that Billmon is talking about here. As you probably know, ever since the GOP became the last minor party to make the big leagues of American politics back in the 1860s, in many ways the most important role that minor parties have played is as the generators of reform ideas later adopted by the major parties. Many of the measures of the New Deal were first proposed by the Populists, Progressives, and Socialists years earlier. It’s high time that progressive Dems like Billmon started seeing the Greens as (at the very least) a potential source for such good ideas, rather than simply as a potential target for rants on slow news days.

Posted by: BenA | Jun 22 2005 16:29 utc | 32

@annie.
Infiltrate the dems. Why not? After all, the far right infiltrated the GOP. At first the GOP just threw them a few bones to keep them in the big tent. Now the bone-chewers eat RINOs.

Posted by: gylangirl | Jun 22 2005 18:29 utc | 34

The reform Anglo-saxon countries needs is pretty obvious, and simple. Just get rid of the winner-takes-all fake democracy. Get rid of the 1-seat district. Instead, let people statewide elect the whole bunch of their representatives, and gerrymandering will be past history; in fact, 3rd parties would quicjly become viable, and given the strong dissensions inside GOP and Dems, I’d bet we’d soon see at least 4 parties competing for power. There simply is NO reason left to have such a provincial fucked-up system where you can only vote for one idiot for one single seat, particularly in a country and a system where most people move not only between cities and districts, but even between states, several times during their life. People aren’t bound to their backwater dirty town anymore.

Posted by: CluelessJoe | Jun 22 2005 18:45 utc | 36

Pure speculation, but have we all been suckered by Cheney?
I understand Dick Cheney may run for president in 2008. And I note that Billmon has taken to openly and regularly refering to the current “Cheney Administration” in DC. I further note that Cheney was possibly THE driving force behind PNAC.
Not bad for a man with such medical problems – how many heart attacks? Or have we all been suckered into discounting his staying power?
A sixteen year presidency to realise PNAC?

Posted by: John | Jun 22 2005 19:21 utc | 38

Cheney is too mean to die, that sucker will probably be the last cockroach standing.

Posted by: dan of steele | Jun 22 2005 20:44 utc | 40

john said:
“A sixteen year presidency to realise PNAC?”.
And not to mention a pretty sneaky way of repealing the 22nd amendment.
__
and that was one pretty good anti-Catchian 22nd exchange between annie and gylan girl above re: infiltration of the bone-chewers.

Posted by: RossK | Jun 22 2005 21:11 utc | 42