Victor Bremson's Reflections

I recently attended a lecture by Rob Stein of a newly formed Progressive organization called Democracy Alliance. Rob worked in the Clinton Administration and in Democratic Politics. He recently has written a well-researched article on the Conservative movement for the New York Times. I would like to share a few bullets from that presentation as a way to encourage you to read some of Rob’s work more deeply and get involved in helping to create this new thinking in Progressive Politics. I think the audience felt like they had been kicked in the stomach by what they learned.

There is a collection of Conservative think tanks and advocacy organizations in the country that spend about $400,000,000 a year to consolidate an agreed message about certain policies. They don’t agree on everything but are good at putting aside differences in order to win elections.

The main players in this group include organizations like the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, Cato and fundamentalist church political organizations.
They come from several different wings of the Conservative movement. The Neo-Conservatives are only interested in foreign policy and military spending, the Wall Street Republicans are only interested in tax and economic policy and the fundamentalists are only interested in cultural issues.

What they all have in common is their agreement that POWER is the goal. They want the votes.

They began their coordinated effort back in the 1970’s in response to the war protests on college campuses and they have strongly succeeded in taking over Congress, governships, state legislatures and courts. They have built a powerful message machine that includes the think tanks that produce scripts for its friendly media such as Fox, WSJ Editorial and talk radio.

There is a Progressive movement as well but it is much smaller and not coordinated. Many people are more interested in the environment, poverty or family planning issues than they are POWER. These are all important issues but our message is not coordinated and we are splintered. POWER doesn’t even feel like something a Progressive should be seeking. The Progressives fight over what is important instead of how to win elections. We end up blaming the candidates instead of the fact that we are being outsmarted and outworked by a well-oiled machine.

The good news is that that began to change in this election. We found out that we wanted to win and had time and resources to fight for our candidates. Our losses really disappointed us because we came up against their highly efficient machine and got beat. We thought our hard work would pay off and everything would be good again. Unfortunately, the fight has just begun.

It is time to organize a Progressive Movement where winning elections is more important that winning our individual issues. I think supporting people like Howard Dean for Chairman of the Democratic Party maybe one way to signal our support for this idea because Howard understands this material. However the movement is not dependent on any one politician. The movement needs to become more important than the politicians. The Republicans didn’t care that their candidate was the mediocre George Bush.

I realize that this will cause some of you to argue principle over power. The Conservatives have learned how to do this in order to win elections. We may need to give up some principle in order to hold unto the country that we all want .

Victor Bremson
January 11, 2005