Harry Targ
A variety of polling
results over the last two years suggest that there exists a potential
progressive majority in the United States. Majorities or pluralities of
respondents to polls deplore economic inequality and the excessive power they
believe the wealthy have in government. Majorities support a more equitable tax
structure, some form of Medicare for All, free tuition for public universities,
and greater rights of workers to form unions. They also support some forms of
openness to immigrants and reforms in the criminal justice system to eliminate
racist applications of the law, particularly in reference to mass incarceration
of people of color. Majorities of those who have heard of a Green New Deal
support it.
Couple these attitudes
with demographic data suggesting a growing percentage of potential voters who
are millennials and Generation Zers and who are more educated than Baby-Boomers
but less economically secure. The percentage of the population who are
Latinx and African American, compared to whites, has grown. Also there has been
a decline of traditional marriages and less hostility to gay, lesbian, and
transgender people. These suggest shifting values, beliefs, and forms of
community. And all these changes are occurring while economic inequality in the
society at large has grown.
In sum
therefore, due to demographic changes, potential voters will be from younger
generations, people of color, and women. And with the changing character
of the economy data suggests that a “new working class” of gig workers and
growing numbers of workers who are economically insecure, sometimes called the
precariat, will constitute increasing proportions of the voting population.
Add to demographic and
attitudinal changes findings on the declining legitimacy of government.
The most damning statistic uncovered in polling data is the response to the
question asking whether “you trust your government.” According to these
findings trust in government is lower now than it has been for the last sixty
years. According to polls, respondents who trust their government in 2019 was
down to seventeen percent. This is even lower than the period of American
political turmoil in the 1970s after Watergate and the Vietnam War when
approximately forty percent of the population said they distrusted their
government.
These political
attitudes and demographic changes led candidates Sanders and Warren to generate
enthusiasm from sectors of the voting age population. However, the progressive
presidential candidates suffered major defeats in the spring, 2020 primary
races. Senator Warren was forced to drop out of the Democratic Party race for
party nomination as a result of poor showings in Super Tuesday primaries.
Senator Sanders, trailing centrist candidate former Vice President Joe Biden in
early April, suspended his campaign, and later endorsed his rival.
Is there a potential
progressive majority among the voting population in the country or is the data
or analysis incorrect? Or if the core conclusions of the argument, the need for
a progressive program and candidate remain true, why have the progressives
performed so poorly in the Democratic primaries?
In my view the core
data remains sound. But the centrist Democrats, the rightwing and white
supremacist supporters of President Trump, the corporate media, and finance
capital did everything they could to undermine the progressive political agenda
advocated by Sanders and Warren.
In addition, at the
state and local levels, many in the demographic groups who would support a
progressive agenda have been denied a vote, via the use of various techniques
designed to limit voter participation. Wisconsin’s holding of a presidential
primary and elections for state and local offices on April 7, in the midst of
an escalating pandemic, is an egregious example of voter suppression.
Finally, many of those
potential progressive voters, experiencing lives of economic inequality, the
prospect of a future of economic and environmental devastation, and increasing
racism and misogyny, have been discouraged and have not voted. Having said
this, I conclude that candidates and social movements with a progressive
agenda, at the national, state, and local levels, must struggle all the harder
to make their vision of a better future come to pass.
And quoting Senator Bernie Sanders before he
withdrew his candidacy: “It is not just the
ideological debate that our progressive movement is winning. We are winning the
generational debate.”…While Joe Biden continues to do very well with older
Americans, especially those people over 65, our campaign continues to win the
vast majority of the votes of younger people….Today, I say to the Democratic
establishment, in order to win in the future, you need to win the voters who
represent the future of our country, and you must speak to the issues of
concern to them.” (Democracy Now, March 12, 2020).
Also, he articulated many times that defeating
Donald Trump remains the top priority of this election season. And to do so,
progressives must pressure the presumptive Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden
to “win the votes of younger people…and speak to the issues of concern to
them.” Given the data, presumptive presidential candidate Biden, and his
valuable supporters such as former President Obama, should launch a two-pronged
campaign. First, candidate Biden must condemn in no uncertain terms the
horrific policies and programs of almost four-years of Trump rule. These
include environmental deregulation, militarism, and the initiation of economic
blockades that are starving whole populations. Also it should be noted that
Trump has packed the Supreme Court with racists and misogynists (a second term
will allow him to appoint more vial Supreme Court Justices and life-time
appointees to the federal courts). He has inspired hate groups to flourish
in the United States. And finally, in 2020, Trump has orchestrated policies
that have exacerbated the misery and crisis of the coronavirus pandemic.
Second, Biden and his key surrogates must articulate a progressive
agenda that speaks to the large sectors of the American people, particularly
youth, people of color, women, environmentalists, the people who coalesced
around the Sanders and Warren candidacy. This does not require embracing all of
the Sanders or Warren program but to embrace it as a vision, a guide for
future policy. In the end, and as Noam Chomsky suggested recently; “Letting
Trump win is like spitting in Bernie’s face.”
