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This past July, Bernie Sanders said Joe Biden will be the most progressive president since FDR. Democrats agree that theirs is the party of progressivism, while few people challenge that brand and what it represents.

Yet progressivism is the problem in America today. If progressives achieve their ultimate goals, the United States can no longer exist as a self-governing, constitutional republic. Its long overdue that we call progressivism what it is: the greatest present threat to a free America.

Thats not to say every progressive is a bad person with bad intentions. Many progressives genuinely believe theyre helping others, unaware of how much suffering results from the politicians and programs they support. Their lack of self-knowledge, however, is no excuse for the rest of us to ignore the ideology that fuels divisive and destructive politics.

Progressivism is not new. It began as an intellectual movement 150 years old, stretching back to the 1870s. Early progressives tended to be academics, university professors, and administrators who created the first Ph.D. graduate programs in the late 19th century. Americas first progressive president, Teddy Roosevelt, creaked the door open to the vastly more damaging presidency of Woodrow Wilson, arguably the most archetypal and memorable early progressive who made the transition from academics to politics, winning the White House in 1912.

Many early German-trained American progressives went on to fuel the socialism embedded in Adolf Hitlers Third Reich as well as the communism of Lenins Soviet Union and Mao Zedongs China. In the United States, progressivism took a different path mainly because the Constitution thankfully made it difficult to conduct the kind of social engineering experiments they ran in Germany, Russia, China, and other nations.

Following the devastation of the Civil War, American progressives were convinced America had been ill-founded. They set out to establish a better, more scientific, more progressive foundation for American politics, policies, government, and culture. In place of the self-governing constitutional republic of the Founding Fathers, progressives started planning for a new kind of republic (as the title of Herbert Crolys progressive magazine suggested).

Their dream was a regime of total central planning, free from constitutional constraints, where unelected government bureaucrats and other experts divide subjects (not citizens) into tribes and decide which ones are allowed to do what, as well as how, when, where, and why.

For progressives, the solution to any problem is a government plan. Unlike the Founders Constitution, the purpose of progressive government is to subsidize, regulate, license, supervise, and otherwise plan every aspect of our lives. Nothing can be left to the private realm of unprogressive, self-interested citizens making their own choices, especially not those in business seeking profit.

Bernie is right about Joe Biden hes a model progressive. When asked what hell do in various situations, Bidens answer is typically some version of: Ill do whatever the experts say.

As progressives see it, even elected members of the government should be controlled by unelected experts. This, of course, raises a valid question: Why then, do we need elected members of government at all? Perhaps unelected bureaucrats are the progressive version of the philosopher-kings Plato wished for?

As progressive government becomes involved in everything, everything becomes politicized. In modern progressive America, as virtually every subject now involves some degree of government regulation, funding, or oversight, its become nearly impossible to have a discussion that doesnt become political.

Its also nearly impossible for citizens to form friendships with those who hold different political opinions. Questioning progressive government programs often gets one instantly accused of being hateful, stupid, or both.Yet the hallmark of progressive programs, now spanning more than a century, is repeated failure, often on grand scales.

During the Great Depression, for example, while promising to provide jobs and resources to those in need, progressive central planners regulated entire industries, dictating wages, prices, and production schedules. Progressives politicians confiscated enormous amounts of private capital, paid farmers not to farm, slaughtered millions of livestock, dumped millions of gallons of milk into rivers, and burned thousands of acres of crops, while hungry, struggling Americans went without food, saw their taxes increase, and remained unemployed.

A generation later, in 1964, progressives declared a War on Poverty. Since then, progressives have spent more than $22 trillion, far more than all U.S. military wars from the American Revolution to today, combined. More than half a century later, after creating hundreds of government programs and hiring millions of bureaucrats, progressive programs have failed to reduce significantly U.S. poverty rates.

In recent decades, progressive politicians have thrown mountains of other peoples money at education, while student achievement measures have stagnatedor even declinedwhile many public schools have become little more than institutions of progressive indoctrination that line the pockets of union bosses.

Today, we live in the most progressive era of American history, with a government that regulates and controls more areas of our lives than ever before. Never in American history has it been more difficult and expensive for ordinary citizens to start a business, own a home, or provide for a family.

As progressivism spreads across the United States, we see increased rates of child abuse, spousal abuse, partner abuse of all kinds, fatherlessness, substance abuse, neglect, depression, random mass murders, teenage suicides, and other pathologies fueled by idleness, dependency, and lack of responsibility. Coincidence? Unlikely.

And what do progressives offer as solutions? More of the same failed regulations, subsidies, central planning. More progressivism just the opposite of what we need.

To be progressive today is to feel morally superior because the progressive politicians, programs, and policies one supports are marketed as helping others. Yet slapping charitable-sounding labels on wasteful, counterproductive, unconstitutional, and often corrupt government programs doesnt help the people who need it most.

So, who does benefit from progressivism? Unelected government bureaucrats, elected politicians who dish out progressive favors in exchange for expanding power, and politically connected corporate cronies who use progressive regulations, subsidies, and special perks to crush their politically unconnected competitors.

After 150 years of American experiments in progressive central planning, the verdict is in: Its bad. No more. Its time progressivism becomes the term of condemnation it so richly deserves to be. To call oneself progressive is no reason to be smug. And he who would be the most progressive president since FDR is precisely the one who never should be president.

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Calling Joe Biden 'Progressive' Is The Same As Calling Him A Failure - The Federalist

A coalition of progressive attorneys is forming a new nonprofit law firm in Wisconsin on the eve of the next election and months ahead of the next round of redistricting.

The group, called Law Forward, will be run by attorneys who've fought Republicans in court on issues ranging from redistricting to Wisconsin's 2018 lame-duck legislative session. It will be advised by a council that includes former Democratic U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold and former Democratic Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton.

Broadly speaking, it could serve as a counterweight to the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), a nonprofit law firm that's been a powerful ally of Republicans in the state's courtrooms for the past decade.

"I think that's an inevitable shorthand, but I think that we're more than just a reaction to WILL," said Jeff Mandell, the founder, president and lead counsel for Law Forward. "We are a reaction to a much broader conservative campaign that has been concerted over the last 10 or 15 years in Wisconsin to distort Wisconsin governance and to test out radical theories."

Mandell said Law Forward is designed to defend "ongoing attacks on the state's progressive tradition" and on the way government works in Wisconsin. He said the group will be funded by "organizations, individuals and foundations which share our goals," but declined to offer more specifics.

Mandell was the lead attorney in the first case that challenged laws Republicans passed during the waning days of Gov. Scott Walker's administration that limited the power of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul. He also served as special counsel to Evers ahead of Wisconsin's April election, and more recently, successfully fought efforts by Kanye West and the Green Party to get on Wisconsin's presidential ballot.

Law Forward's litigation director will be Doug Poland, who has represented Democrats in multiple redistricting lawsuits, including one that made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2017. He was also involved in a lawsuit that successfully extended deadlines for absentee ballots in the April election and another that sought to do the same in November.

Poland said he worked with national groups during the last redistricting challenge.

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"They can provide some very good depth of knowledge in specific areas, but they don't know Wisconsin particularly well," Poland said. "We already have our finger on the pulse of what's going on here."

In addition to Mandell, Law Forward's board of directors includes Christine Bremer Muggli, former president of the Wisconsin Association for Justice, the state's trial lawyers' association.

The group's advisory council, which is chaired by Feingold and Lawton, also includes Marquette University Law professor Ed Fallone, who has run twice for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Ian Bassin, co-chair and founder of the national group Protect Democracy, and Dean Strang, a longtime Wisconsin defense lawyer.

When it comes to legal fights over issues like voting, redistricting or government power, Democrats and Republicans have typically relied on a shortlist of lawyers with expertise in their fields and partisan leans.

While both parties still rely on those lawyers, WILL has given conservatives a different avenue to the court system, using private donations and grant funding to advance an ideology of "the promotion of free markets, limited government, individual liberty, and a robust civil society." That's let the group file briefs in a wide range of high-profile cases and sometimes file lawsuits on behalf of individual plaintiffs.

Without a similar model on the left, Mandell said Wisconsin progressive have been more reactive.

"There can be people who want to bring those cases as plaintiffs, but they have to figure out how to fund them," Mandell said. "They either have to recruit private law firms that are willing to do those cases on a pro bono basis, which can be very difficult, or they have to figure out where the money's coming from for those cases. And one of the things that Law Forward is going to be able to do is raise money around a set of values."

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Wisconsin Progressives Forming Nonprofit Law Firm With Election, Redistricting On Horizon - Wisconsin Public Radio News

Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersBiden defends his health plan from Trump attacks Progressives blast Biden plan to form panel on Supreme Court reform Sanders: Progressives will work to 'rally the American people' if Biden wins MORE (I-Vt.)predicted that progressives would look to move Democratic presidential nominee Joe BidenJoe BidenMore than 300 military family members endorse Biden Five takeaways from the final Trump-Biden debate Biden: 'I would transition from the oil industry' MORE toward theirpriorities if he wins the White House this November and Democrats sweep Congress.

If you want a progressive agenda to come out of the United States Congress, were going to have to rally the American people by the tens of millions to demand that we have a government that represents all of us and not just wealthy campaign contributors. Were going to have to correct and deal with a very corrupt election system where massive voter suppression that exists every single day right now, he said on Hill.TVs Rising Thursday.

Sanders said Democrats should tackle legislation he plans to introduce to begin the process of moving toward Medicare for All, raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, and a massive infrastructure plan.

We have got to lay out an agenda that speaks to the struggles and the desperation of working-class Americans, he said.

Sanders recognized that Biden, a well-known centrist steeped in old traditions of bipartisanship in Congress, does not share many of his progressive policies but argued his plans would still move the country forward.

[I]f you look at Bidens economic proposals, theyre not Bernie Sanderss proposals. Dont want to suggest they are. But they will raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, equal pay for equal work, making it easier for workers to join unions, $2 trillion investment in combatting climate change and creating millions of good paying jobs in energy efficiency and sustainable energy, paid family and medical leave. No small things, he said.

Sanders and other progressives have been on a campaign to persuade liberals who may be skeptical of Bidens centrist brand of politics to back the former vice president, with the Vermont lawmaker maintaining that the first step to moving the country in a more progressive direction is defeating President TrumpDonald John TrumpMore than 300 military family members endorse Biden Five takeaways from the final Trump-Biden debate Biden: 'I would transition from the oil industry' MORE this November.

You know what, if Trump is reelected, all that were going to be on for the next four years is defensive, defensive, defensive procedures. I want to get on the offensive, he said. And that is why, in my view, every progressive, every person in this country who thinks for two minutes about whats at stake, should be voting for Joe Biden.

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Sanders: Progressives will work to 'rally the American people' if Biden wins | TheHill - The Hill

Democratic presidential nominee former vice president Joe Biden embarks on a train campaign tour at the Cleveland Amtrak Station on September 30, 2020. (Alex Wong / Getty Images)

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On October 8, the Working Families Party released the Peoples Charter, a progressive road map out of our current state of crisis, endorsed by several leading progressive legislators and insurgent congressional candidates, including Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and other members of the Squad, as well as organizations including the Movement for Black Lives Electoral Justice Project,the Service Employees International Union, and MoveOn. Earlier, the Green New Deal Network, an even broader coalition anchored by Indivisible, released the Thrive Agenda endorsed by 85 sitting legislators and legions of unions, environmental, civil rights, and citizen action groups. These serve not only as policy statements but as political markers as well: If Biden wins next month as expected, progressives will not give him a pass but will seek to drive bold reforms from the get-go.Ad Policy

The contrast with 2012 and the early days of the Obama administration is stark. Obama, swept into office in large part by the energy of citizen movements, was wildly popular among progressive activists. National organizations, with leaders jockeying for positions in the administration, united to support his agenda. The Obama White House organized an outside roundtable to coordinate grassroots support. Progressives largely stood by as Obama dithered away his filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, diluting his agenda in a fruitless pursuit of support from mythical Senate Republican moderates. When Obama prematurely embraced austerity with unemployment still in double digits, outcries from progressive economists had little support.

Biden wont get that pass. He has signed off on the boldest progressive agenda of any Democratic candidate in recent history, but hes focused his campaign more on pursuit of more moderate suburban voters and the ever-elusive disaffected Republicans than on mobilizing his own base. His closing argument features moving beyond red-state and blue-state divides to revive the spirit of bipartisanship in the country, promising to work across the aisle, pledging that cooperation is the choice Ill back as president. This can be written off as routine electoral posturing, but it also reflects Bidens history as a Senate centrist proud of his ability to work with Republicans. And that bodes particularly ill as Republicans rediscover their horror of deficits and start braying about the need for austerity. While progressivesled by Bernie Sandershave generally gone all in in the effort to eject Trump, most harbor serious doubts about Bidens willingness to champion fundamental reforms.

Progressives are in a far stronger position to drive the debate than they were at the beginning of the Obama administration. There is widespread agreement on elements of a bold reform agenda, in significant part drawn from the Sanders campaigns. Both the Thrive Agenda and the Peoples Charter call for large-scale public investment to modernize our infrastructure, move to clean energy, and create millions of jobs. Both would target public investment to low-income Black and brown communities. Both embrace universal health care and basic worker provisions like universal child care, paid family and medical leave, and paid sick days. Both emphasize the need to empower workers to organize and bargain collectively. Both call for strengthening public institutions from the postal service to public education. Both detail bold responses to help workers displaced in the pandemic. MORE FROM Robert L. Borosage

Each has distinctive features. The Peoples Charter calls for creating public banks, establishing public ownership stakes in corporations that are bailed out, and buying out oil and gas companies. Its first priority is moving funds from policing, jails, and endless wars into schools, public housing, and other services. The Thrive Agenda makes fair treatment of sovereign native nations one of its eight pillars. Neither includes an alternative trade agenda, reflecting the relative weakness of industrial unions in the coalitions.

Progressives also have greater strength in both the House and the Senate than they did at the beginning of the Obama era. The Thrive Agenda is endorsed by 85 legislators, and 10 senators including not only progressives like Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Jeff Merkley but also Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. In the House, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, under the leadership of Representatives Mark Pocan and Pramila Jayapal, has begun to act with greater cohesion and to exercise more power within the Democratic caucus. It will be bolstered by the election of several exciting new members who will add new energy to the push for a bolder agenda. The victories of Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, and Marie Newman over long-serving Democratic incumbents send a message to powerful older Democrats in safe Democratic seats that they have to lead, not resist, the new agenda.

Driving all of this are the citizens in motion across the country. The Black Lives Matter demonstrations, the growing climate movement, womens protests are in the streets. Importantly, independent worker strikesfrom the teachers in red states to the Fight for $15 by fast food and other workers to the workers protesting unsafe conditions in the pandemicpresage a new period of worker activism that could dramatically expand the demand for change.Current Issue

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The battle will be joined immediately after the election if Biden is elected and ifa big ifDemocrats take back the Senate. The first fight will be with the Senate Democratic caucus over whether to get rid of the filibuster to curb Republican obstruction. Biden, an institutionalist, has expressed doubts about the change. Sanders, Our Revolution, and much of the left will mobilize to pressure Democrats to move.

Bidens early agenda will feature reversing many of Trumps follies, ending his immigration abuses, reentering the Paris Accord, rolling back the assault on environmental protections. A first big skirmish is likely to be over the scope of the tragically delayed next Covid-19 rescue package. The next test is likely to be how Biden responds to what will be a growing Republican and establishment call of austerity in the face of large deficits.

Whats clear is that progressives wont wait for Biden to set the course. They will be pushing for bold reforms immediately. In the Great Depression, when the early Roosevelt agenda failed, growing populist movements and liberals in the Congress forced Roosevelt to embrace what became the second New DealSocial Security, the Works Progress Administration, the National Labor Relations Act, rural electrification, and more. Under Biden, the pressure will begin from day one. After claiming that he plans to be the most progressive president since FDR, Biden would be well-advised to lead the push, not resist it.

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Progressives Wont Wait for Biden to Set the Course - The Nation

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Election Day is still two weeks away, but progressives are already ramping up theirefforts to influence who gets to serve in a potential Biden administration. In a new letter sent to the Biden transition team, a coalition of lefty organizations are demanding that the new administration be free of corporate influence and that it commit to a minimum diversity goal for its appointees.

The letter, spearheaded by the American Economic Liberties Project, a group that fights against monopolies and corporate power, urges the Biden transition co-chairs to appoint women, people of color, and members of underrepresented communities to least half of all positions. It also calls for all appointees to be free of corporate or lobbying ties.

First, you should build upon President Obamas efforts to strengthen the diversity of the federal workforce, the letter says. Second, you should appoint only individuals who have a strong track record of standing up to corporate power and whose commitment to public service is unimpeachable.

The 37 cosigning organizations span the progressive movement; all of them have made targeting corporate power a key plank of their mission. They include racial justice-oriented organizations like the Center for Popular Democracy and the Working Families Party; anti-Wall Street groups like Americans for Financial Reform; and climate groups like the Sunrise Movement.

These demands, the letter states, are based on the stakes of this moment, in which a global pandemic and its economic consequences have demonstrated the financial insecurity faced by Americans, particularly those of color. Individuals in a future Biden administration must also have the ability to understand and overcome the traditional, pro-corporate and pro-Wall Street ideological constraints on many policymakers imaginations that are partly to blame for todays crisis of concentrated corporate power, it says.

Diversity among White House personnel increased sharply after the country elected its first Black president. As the letter notes, Obama presided over an executive branch that, for the first time in history, had appointed women and members of underrepresented groups to a majority of top posts. Hillary Clinton, had she won, had committed to a female-majority cabinet. But progressives have had less success in pushing the party to keep Wall Street allies out of Democratic administrations. They blame Obamas bank-friendly appointees to the administrations top economic posts for orchestrating a lackluster response to the 2008 financial crisis.

Specifically, the letter asks that the transition team not consider policymakers who have held senior roles in the industries they will be tasked with regulating; who have worked as corporate lobbyists, whether registered or not; who have used public service for personal gain; or who have otherwise, through their affiliations or sympathies with abusive or extractive institutions and corporations, promoted interests at odds with the well-being of workers, consumers, people of color, the environment, small businesses, and communities as a whole.

Individuals with experience leading small and independent businesses should be welcomed into any administration, the letter says, but those who have chosen to advance the interests of abusive or extractive firms like Amazon, Facebook, and Blackstone should not.

Though Democrats have made a strong show of unity in the final weeks of the presidential campaign, the letter addresses a long-simmering intraparty fight. Last week, a group of left-wing House members, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Katie Porter (D-Calif.), joined 39 progressive groups in a letter asking that no C-suite-level corporate executives or corporate lobbyists hold Senate-confirmed posts in a Biden administration. A coalition of youth-oriented progressive organizations composed an open memo to the Biden campaign in April that similarly demanded the former VP appoint zero current or former Wall Street executives or corporate lobbyists to his transition team, advisory positions, or cabinet.

Other factions within the partyincluding some Black Democrats in Congress and on K Streethave argued that thelefts demands could end up hurting diversity by excluding some experienced people of color from serving in the administration. Despite the diversity gains under Obama, just 10 Black political appointees have served in federal financial regulatory roles, according to a recent study from the Brookings Institution. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.)toldPolitico last month that a number of Black individuals who were considered for financial policy roles in a potential Clinton administration four years ago would have been disqualified under the standards progressives have laid out this time around. Critics of the lefts approach have said that its tone-deaf to the career paths often taken by those for whom a corporate or lobbying gig might make them the first in their family to hold a lucrative job and accrue wealth.

This new letter seeks to address this concern head-on. Its a notion we reject, says Morgan Harper, a senior adviser to the American Economic Liberties Project. There are people who represent the interests of this country who reflect its diversity and are independent from corporate interests. Corporate interests are already overrepresented at this very important point of rebuilding the economy.

To achieve their goals, the cosigners urge the Biden transition team to make a concerted effort to look outside the beltway for individuals whose experiences will bring unique perspectives and skills to federal service. They add: While all appointees must have experience that qualifies them for the positions they hold, non-traditional experience or credentials should be considered to expand the pool of possible candidates.

The Biden campaigns plan for racial equityincludes a promise to promote diverse leadership for all federal agencies. Ted Kaufman, a transition co-chair and longtime Biden aide, told Politico that the transitions task amounted to getting seasoned people that are really qualified to do the job, adding that the team would look for potential appointees who have experience, are smart as hell, and reflect America.

A lot of this isnt about ideology or anything else, he said. Its totally about what do you do with the incredible hollowing out that Trump has done.

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Progressives Tell Biden: Appointees Must Be Diverse and Free of Corporate Ties - Mother Jones