Given the realities of the American electorate — outlined in last Friday’s column — will our progressive vision ever take hold amongst the majority of the citizens of this country? I say, yes it can; and, if progressives get their act together, it absolutely will.
What we need to do is exactly the opposite of what the Democrats are currently doing. In the wake of their humiliating defeat, the blue party is mapping out a strategy for 2006 that would make them more appealing to the red state “values voters” (read: “Christians”). This means the DNC platform will move even further away from our progressive ideals, much as it did after Walter Mondale’s defeat in the ’80s.
If this strikes you as an asinine strategy, given that the number one criticism of the Democratic Party is that they don’t stand for anything, then congratulations — you just might be an ex-Democrat.
Before they destroy what little integrity the party has left, the Democratic leadership would be wise to look at the “values voters” already under their tent. White Protestants might vote overwhelmingly Republican, but black Protestants vote overwhelmingly Democratic. It is one of the more interesting partisan divides in the country: Same basic religion, same problems with homophobia and sexism, same evangelical tendencies and yet vastly different politics.
Sure, historical eccentricities play a large role in this, but there is a progressive streak underlying black religiosity, speaking in general terms, that the Democrats and progressives have all but ignored. The black community proves that
Christianity doesn’t have to be distilled down to little more than a list of behaviors that we should or should not do (as the right-wingers have done). Christianity can also trumpet our progressive values of serving the poor, spreading equality and fighting repressive institutions in order to maximize individual freedoms; after all, these are the same progressive values expressed in the story of Jesus.
We needn’t start bashing gays, banning abortion, ridiculing
the separation of church and state,
legislating school prayer and hanging the Ten Commandments
in public areas in order to connect with religious-minded voters. Ours is already a values message;
we just need to start talking about it as such.
The second bloc of voters that should be receptive to our progressive message are Libertarians and libertarian-leaning secular Republicans who are not happy with the Biblical agenda of those now in control of the Republican Party. These two groups, more than anything, fear the influence of big government in their lives, and rightfully so, as we have witnessed during the last four years.
Some progressives forget that a healthy capitalist system is an important and necessary counterforce to the government’s tendency to over-regulate our lives. In turn, some libertarians forget that the opposite is also true: Big business, like big government, can limit our freedoms in the marketplace when it seizes too much power. The one institution protects us from the other and vice versa. When in balance, the system works. Sometimes regulation is the answer and sometimes deregulation is the answer. We might not always agree on the specifics, but at the heart of the matter, libertarians and progressives share a common goal: to maximize our individual freedoms, including the freedom to “sin.”
The Democratic Party will be distancing itself even further from its base in the next few years, so now is the perfect time for the Democratic base to distance itself from the Party. We can build a strong progressive movement if we work to bring secular libertarians and liberal religionists into our fold. In addition, we should continue to work to solidify the youth vote, not by relentlessly selling the ridiculous belief that voting will change the world, but by giving young people a candidate worth voting for and believing in.
If we take these steps, not only will we force the momentum of the Democratic Party back to the left, but we will begin to force the public conversation back to the issues that matter most to us: taking Big Brother out of both big government and big business, fostering fiscal responsibility, adhering to a less haphazard foreign policy and maximizing our individual freedoms.

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