The significance of progressive narratives and organization in US politics

Joe Biden has been President for just over a month now. And for the most part, even those impatient for constructive changes are relieved at the "normalcy" of having a President who actually respects the basic institutions of the government and knows that the federal government does have responsibilities to its citizens, e.g., in responding to a deadly pandemic.

Progressives are very aware that we have to press Biden to actually enact even the program he put forward in his primary candidacy, and even more so to enact the unity program agreed on with the Sanders campaign.

Naomi Klein has been pointing out that a significant difference between 2021 and 2009 is that the progressive left has a more clear organized presence in politics, in contrast to the relative weakness of the left at the beginning of the Obama-Biden Administration. In a recent editorial (Why Texas Republicans Fear the Green New Deal New York Times 02/21/2021), she analyzes the bizarre position the Republicans and their media networks have taken on the disastrous failure of radical free-market energy policies in Texas right now, that the Green New Deal that hasn't even been enacted yet is responsible for the disaster!

She goes back to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to illustrate her point:

When Hurricane Katrina broke through New Orleans’s long-neglected levees in 2005, there was, briefly, some hope that the catastrophe might serve as a kind of wake-up call. Witnessing the abandonment of thousands of residents on their rooftops and in the Superdome, small-government fetishists suddenly lost their religion. “When a city is sinking into the sea and rioting runs rampant, government probably should saddle-up,” Jonah Goldberg, a prominent right-wing commentator, wrote at the time. In environmental circles, there was also discussion that the disaster could spur climate action. Some dared to predict that the collapsed levees would be for the small-government, free-market legacy of Reaganism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was for Soviet Communism.

None of it happened. Instead, New Orleans became a laboratory for the shock doctrine. Public schools were shut down en masse, replaced by charter schools. Public housing was demolished, and costly townhouses sprang up, preventing thousands of the city’s poorest residents, the majority of them Black, from ever returning. The reconstruction of the city became a feeding ground for private contractors. Republicans used the cover of crisis to call for expanded oil and gas exploration and new refinery capacity, much as Mr. Perry is doing right now in Texas with his calls for doubling down on gas. [my emphasis]

There were efforts to block that approach and implement more constructive responses.

But there were no readily available, alternate ideas lying around for how New Orleans could be rebuilt to make it both greener and fairer for all of its residents.

Even if there had been, there was no political muscle to turn such ideas into reality. Though the environmental justice movement has deep roots in Louisiana’s “cancer alley,” the climate justice movement was only just emerging at the time Katrina struck. There was no Sunrise Movement, the youth-led organization that occupied Nancy Pelosi’s office after the 2018 midterms to demand “good jobs, and a livable planet.” There was no “squad,” the ad hoc alliance of congressional progressives whose most visible member, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, sent shock waves through Washington by joining the Sunrisers in their occupation. There had not yet been two Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns to show Americans how popular these ideas really are. And there was certainly no national movement for a Green New Deal.

The difference between then and now goes a very long way toward explaining why Mr. Abbott is railing against a policy plan that, as of now, exists primarily on paper. In a crisis, ideas matter — he knows this. He also knows that the Green New Deal, which promises to create millions of union jobs building out shock-resilient green energy infrastructure, transit and affordable housing, is extremely appealing. This is especially true now, as so many Texans suffer under the overlapping crises of unemployment, houselessness, racial injustice, crumbling public services and extreme weather. [my emphasis]

She appeared on Sam Seder's Majority Report Monday to discuss her perspective, beginning just after 17:30 in the video, Why Texas GOP Fears the Green New Deal w/ Naomi Klein 02/22/21:

But the President is career centrist Joe Biden, not Bernie Sanders. The best scenario for the next four years is that he will bicker and complain about progressives pushing him and progressives will complain about how much he falls short, and in January 2025, the left will praise him for being surprisingly more progressive than anyone really expected.

Looking at it from the perspective of the start of the second month of the Biden-Harris Presidency, two factors are likely to weigh very heavily in the public reception of this government. If the vaccination and other public health are successfully rolled out and we see a resumption of more normal economic activity in the fall, that in itself will be perceived as a huge relief. The Democrats are surprisingly inept at messaging their own successes, of course. But even with klutzy messaging, results do matter.

As Paul Krugman has been actively pointing out, the lifting of most lockdown restriction in itself will produce a notable surge in economic activity, which he compares to the "morning in America" effect from which benefitted the first Reagan-Bush Administration so much. (He doesn't suggest that Reagan's voodooo economics was the magic it was claimed to be.) If Biden actually does enact his own proposed version of the "New Green Deal," as he prefers to call it, that will also provide a much-needed economic stimulus. (Krugman explains the distinction he makes between economic relief and economic stimulus, which has relevance for the wonkier discussions among economists about economic policy, in Cooling it on overheating Substack 02/21/2021.)

I don't think the filibuster issue is going away. Things that actually need legislation will be blocked by the Republicans in the Senate using the filibuster if they are anything actually significant and important that could befit Democrats at the polls in 2022 or 2024. Comprehensive immigration reform is one. Anything like the $15 minimum wage that isn't included in a bill that can be passed with a Senate majority through the "reconciliation" procedure will also be shot down with the filibuster.

Biden is an experienced legislator and an institutionalist, so he of course knows all this as well as anybody. If the Democrats offer up something like comprehensive immigration reform in a bill that can be filibuster, they will doing so fully knowing it will be defeated. There's no need for anyone to kid themselves about that. It's not a bad thing to fight for something like loses, depending on how important it is and the kind of message the fight itself sends about what Democrats stand for.

But a bill that wins a majority in the Senate but is defeated because the Democrats would not set aside the filibuster, it's safe to assume that it's a bill that the Biden-Harris Administration wasn't serious about getting passed.

The American Prospect is a good source to keep track of Biden's progress, or lack thereof, in his Presidency, particularly on domestic affairs. This piece by executive editor David Dayen, for example: First 100: The Biden Vaccine Rollout Is Working 02/22/2021. The "first 100" refers to the decades-old convention of putting special emphasis on a Presidential administration's accomplishments during its first 100 days in office.