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Hundreds of activists stage a peaceful protest at Trump International Hotel and Tower in New York City to fight against the radical changes to the American health care system proposed by the Trump administration and Republicans. (Photo by Erik McGregor/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

This post originally appeared at In These Times.

Something remarkable has happened over the past few years: A new silent majority has emerged, decades after Richard Nixon made that phrase famous. Nixon meant the people whose values were, he said, dominant in American culture, but underrepresented in American politics. Calling them the silent majority was a way of channeling the white backlash against the civil rights movement.

The new silent majority is defined by the broad consensus that has emerged in the United States around progressive policies. This consensus isnt widely reported. In fact, its obscured by the oft-repeated idea that the nation is deeply polarized, as if Americans are torn between support for conservative and progressive policies. They arent. On the battlefield of ideology, conservatives have been routed.

For Democrats looking for a path back to power, lifting up the grievances of the forgotten, silent majority and focusing on the economic and electoral structures that stifle and suppress its voice and vote would be a good place to start.

The progressive consensus cuts across economic and social issues and includes even traditional culture-war flashpoints. On most policy questions, polling shows that about three-fifths or more of the public prefers progressive positions.

Consider some examples.

Health care reform: In a Gallup survey last year, roughly half of respondents favored repealing Obamacare, while half favored keeping it. But 58 percent supported a third option: replacing it with a federally funded health care system providing insurance for all Americans. The wording is vague, but that sounds a lot like the single-payer, Medicare for All system that progressives have lobbied for.

Unions: Fifty-eight percent of respondents to a 2015 Gallup survey said they approve of labor unions and 72 percent said unions should have either more influence than they now have, or at least the same amount. Historically, the approval rate was in the 70s through the mid-1960s. It declined to roughly 60 percent in the early 1970s and dipped to the high 40s in the wake of the financial meltdown of 2008, but has steadily recovered since then.

Campaign finance reform: Seventy-sevenpercent of the public supports limits on campaign spending, according to a 2015 Pew poll. Voters in the deep-red state of South Dakota made that clear last November by approving a sweeping campaign-finance reform initiative. The measure passed despite strong opposition from the state chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a PAC funded by the Koch brothers.

Climate change and renewable energy: There was a sharp spike in people who reported they are at least a fair amount worried about climate change last year from 55 to 64 percent according to Gallup. The share of people who believe that the effects have already begun also rose, from 55 to 59 percent. Its true that opinions about climate change fluctuate significantly based on current events, the wording of the question and other factors. A recent Pew poll, for example, found that only 48 percent of respondents believed human activity causes climate change, versus 65 percent in the Gallup poll. But whatever they believe about the causes, Americans overwhelming agree about solutions. In the Pew poll, support for solar panel and wind turbine farms was more than 80 percent. A majority opposed every other potential energy source: offshore drilling, nuclear power plants, fracking and coal. And a post-election poll found that even people who voted for Donald Trump are on board with taking some action against climate change. Sixty-one percent said companies should be required to reduce carbon emissions, and 78 percent support air-pollution regulations.

Reproductive rights: Fifty-six percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

LGBT rights: In 1996, 27 percent of Americans thought same-sex marriages should be legal. Last year, 61 percent did. And, by a narrow majority, most Americans believe transgender people should be able to use the public bathroom of the gender they identify with.

The list of issues on which roughly 60 percent of Americans agree with progressives could go on at length. It would include, for example, a higher minimum wage, legalized marijuana and free child care. The trend holds true even on Trumps signature issue of immigration. Last summer, Gallup found that 84 percent of Americans supported a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, while only 33 percent supported building a wall along the US-Mexico border. Among Republicans, 62 percent supported building the wall but 76 percent also supported a path to citizenship.

An uneven playing field

Americans prefer progressive policies nearly across the board, yetthe federal government and a majority of state governments are controlled by a party that aims to undermine, overturn and resist those policies.

How did this happen?

Democracy plays a minor role. White, elderly people vote at higher levels than any other demographic bloc, and they vote Republican, especially if they identify as Christian.

That advantage would make the GOP a competitive but distinctly minority party if the playing field were level. But the playing field isnt level. Increasingly, the GOP uses anti-democratic tools to tilt the field to its advantage. Those tools include radical gerrymandering of congressional districts, voter suppression in competitive states and flooding the political process with dark money from corporations and wealthy donors. These are in addition to the strong bias toward small, predominantly white Republican states built into the Senate and the Electoral College, and the use of pre-emption laws by state legislatures to block progressive policy in urban centers.

Together, these measures radically inflate the power of the GOPs comparatively small base of white religious conservatives, transforming it into an electoral juggernaut. At the same time, they pull the Democratic Party to the right, making it ever-more reliant on corporations and wealthy donors in an attempt to remain competitive in a rigged system.

A path back to power?

The worst example of the process to date is North Carolina, where the GOP-dominated legislature is so corrupt that the state is only slightly ahead of the failed democracies that constitute much of the developing world, as Andrew Reynolds, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina, recently wrote.

Reynolds noted that the states gerrymandering is especially obscene. Its not only the worst case of unfair districting in the United States; its the worst case ever analyzed by the Electoral Integrity Project, which has measured 213 elections in 153 countries and is widely agreed to be the most accurate method for evaluating how free and fair and democratic elections are across time and place.

The rigging works as intended, giving the GOP a hammerlock on the North Carolina legislature: One party wins just half the votes but 100 percent of the power, Reynolds wrote. The other party wins just a handful of votes less and 0 percent of the legislative power.

Its the same story across the nation. Trumps victory is the anti-democratic system in microcosm: The GOP wins with a minority of votes and claims a mandate to push through policies that a majority of the nation opposes. Voters feel, rightly, that their voices dont count. They become more cynical and disengage, while the Republican minority feels ever-more empowered. There is nothing in their way and no authority that can derail their power grab. Our polarization is more like a hostage-taking.

Weve heard a lot since the election about white working class voters who feel disenfranchised and put Trump over the top. That story is certainly worth telling. But it pales by comparison with a much bigger, largely untold story: the 60 percent of Americans who support progressive policies and have little voice in the nations politics.

The problem has been decades in the making. There is no easy answer. But for Democrats looking for a path back to power, lifting up the grievances of the forgotten, silent majority and focusing on the economic and electoral structures that stifle and suppress its voice and vote would be a good place to start.

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Progressives Are the New Silent Majority - BillMoyers.com

In the two months since the election, there has been an energetic, oftentimes vitriolic, effort on the part of Hillary Clinton surrogates (and the large contingent of neoconservative Republicans who supported her) to blame her defeat at the hands of Donald J. Trump on Democrats like myself who could not in good conscience vote for her on Nov. 8.

Their argument goes something like this: America would have been spared the horrors of a Trump presidency if only the Bernie holdouts and other recalcitrants had been able to put aside their bitterness and come around to voting for Clinton.

Because Bernie Bros and other critics of Mrs. Clinton along with, unknowingly or not, Russian cyber saboteurs undermined her candidacy, were now stuck with a dangerous and irresponsible man steering the ship of state for the next four years.

This thesis has become even more popular as news of Russias interference in the U.S. election has spread. Conveniently, this line of thinking generally absolves the Clinton campaign for tactical mistakes like ignoring key Midwestern battleground states in favor of campaigning in Republican states like Texas and Arizona. It also shrugs off polling data that suggests Trumps economic policies swung thousands of voters who had previously cast their ballot for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.

It further allows supporters of Clintons foreign policy to dismiss uncomfortable questions about whether Trumps rejection of our current interventionist foreign policy orthodoxy added to his appeal.

Instead of pointing the finger at Bernie Brosfor Clintons defeat, mainstream Democrats might ask themselves if supporting arguably the most pro-war candidate in the partys history was what actually midwifed the Trump presidency.Was nominating Clinton, a supporter of the Iraq war and a politician whounreservedly played the race cardagainst candidate Barack Obama in 2008 therightthing to do?

Was it a wise decision to nominate someone who pushed for an expansion of the war in Afghanistan, for a needless and reckless war in Libya, and for wider war in Syria?

Were the Clinton campaigns deep financial ties to billionaire Haim Saban, who only a month ago smeared Congressman Keith Ellision by calling him an anti-Semite, not worrying?

Were the Clinton Foundations lucrative links to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and the Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk something to be shrugged off?

But questions such as these seem to be out of bounds these days.

Instead, progressives and anti-war Democrats have been the target of baseless accusations of unpatriotic disloyalty, some of which would be funny, if the stakes weren't so high.

Self-proclaimed leaders of the Trump #Resistance on Twitter are growing increasingly fond of insinuating and in some cases accusing those of us who were not with Her of being with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

The irony of such accusations, coming as they are from Democrats, is rich. During his 8 years as president, Barack Obama repeatedly tried to work with the Russian president in some cases successfully. Indeed, many of the Obamas signal foreign policy achievements, like the Iranian nuclear accord, the successful effort to dismantle Syrias chemical weapons stockpiles, and, of course, the New START nuclear agreement, only could have come about with the cooperation of the Russians.

To point that out may be heresy these days, but it is not wrong.

In their rush to cast opponents of Clintonism as pawns of the Kremlin, some high profile Democrats are abandoning the partys proud tradition of opposing such polarizing rhetoric. Playing into anti-Russian hysteria and scapegoating and marginalizing the voices calling for a more prudent and pragmatic foreign policy is no substitute for finding solutions to the very real national security challenges facing the United States today.

James Carden is a contributing writer for The Nation.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook

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Stop blaming anti-war progressives and 'Bernie Bros' for President Trump - Los Angeles Times

Things are not looking good for American progressives.

President-elect Donald Trump is poised to put in place many regressive policies in his quest to make America great again that are fundamentally at odds with what are generally considered progressive values such as transparency, inclusiveness, equity, fairness and dignity for all. Examples include his plans to build a wall on the Mexican border, deport undocumented immigrants or at least immigrants with criminal records, ban or severely restrict Muslims, deny climate change and repeal the Affordable Care Act, as well as his conflicts of interest and possible nepotism.

This situation is a stark reversal from only a few years ago when it seemed progressives were winning the battle of ideas on such issues as marriage equality thanks to the Supreme Courts 2014 decision Wall Street reform and the passage of Obamacare, which extended affordable health insurance to millions of Americans.

Today, this progress appears to be in jeopardy, while other pressing issues such as widening income inequality and climate change desperately need addressing. With both houses of Congress and the White House now in the grip of conservatives and the Supreme Court about to be steered to the right for potentially many years to come where do progressives go from here?

My research on how to affect large system change offers some answers. It begins with realizing progressives have a story problem.

Framing a narrative

Heres the thing: Conservatives have been remarkably effective at framing the debate and articulating what they stand for, as linguist George Lakoff explains in The All New Dont Think of an Elephant.

For example, the notions of personal responsibility, limited government, free markets and free trade are all deeply embedded in our collective psyches. Along with the maximization of shareholder wealth as the primary purpose of the corporation, these are all key elements of the neoliberal economic agenda established in the ashes of World War II.

While Trump may not adhere to all of these ideas most notably free trade they remain core elements of the Republican vision and most of the voters who elected him.

In contrast, progressives have been entirely ineffective at crafting a narrative and cant seem to agree on a core set of issues, values and supporting memes (in the form of phrases, images, words and symbols). Progressives act like what ecologist L. Hunter Lovins calls a bucket of crabs. Crabs, placed in a bucket, are said to fight each other, pulling back down any crab that attempts to escape. Progressives, Lovins argues, do much the same in their otherwise laudable effort to be inclusive, democratic and accepting of multiple perspectives.

Lakoff, who directs the Center for Neural Mind and Society at the University of California at Berkeley, finds that progressives come in at least six different types, each with a different focus: socioeconomic themes, identity politics, environmentalism, civil liberties, spiritual renewal and anti-authoritarianism.

Each type thinks its ideas are most important. Thats the bucket of crabs.

The big battles ahead

Problematically for progressives, the battles they face are only getting bigger, more complex and more challenging. Besides protection of the hard-won rights of recent years, unprecedented levels of inequality, the looming threat of climate change and an impending employment crisis are all on the horizon.

Work Ive done with colleagues on large system change offers two considerations for progressives as they seek to find their footing in the current climate.

First, large system change takes place in a context of complex systems fraught with wicked problems, which involve intertwined issues with no obvious beginnings or ends and many stakeholders with different ideas about what the problem actually is, what should be done about it and what it would even mean to solve the problem. Climate change, inequality and the jobs crisis all fit this framework.

Sounds like the bucket of crabs, no? In such systems, change can potentially come from many different quarters and numerous actors. By its nature, large system change cannot be controlled or planned as many people might like. Such change becomes particularly difficult when the people in charge, currently conservatives, disagree with the fundamental premises of would-be change agents.

How in this context could progressive change occur?

The second consideration provides an answer: Successful large system change is best guided by a powerful, coherent and compelling narrative or story based on resonant core values and readily transferable memes. Such narratives, values and memes shape attitudes, beliefs and, ultimately, actions and policies. People respond to stories and compelling ideas (memes), not just long-winded policies, because stories not only explain what is happening but also tap into emotions and values.

Of memes and men

In other words, to counteract the forces that would reverse President Barack Obamas policies to fight climate change or exacerbate income inequality by cutting taxes for the wealthy, progressives need to come together and find ways to clearly articulate what they stand for, while telling a simple and compelling story that shows how their ideas will help shape a better future.

Developing memes is an important part of that process. Memes are core units of culture and can be ideas like free markets or maximize shareholder wealth, phrases like Make America great again, symbols and images such as red baseball caps and pink pussyhats, pink hats with cat ears that symbolize resistance to misogyny. Such memes resonate broadly with people because they tap into and connect with their core values. They underpin and support a narrative and the way we relate to each other and the world around us. Their power and importance are frequently overlooked in system change.

Consider the resonance of Make America great again combined with the symbolism of red baseball caps. They created a collective identity and identifiable area of agreement among Trump supporters. Contrast that with the considerably less resonant and memorable Stronger together and Im with her slogans of the Hillary Clinton campaign.

While it certainly lacks specifics, Make America great again sounds meaningful, presumably connects with something identifiable in supporters lives and clearly offers a vision of a different future. The vaguer Im with her or Stronger together slogans, in contrast, seem to offer little guidance about what the vision is or how to create a meaningful collective identity.

For progressives to succeed, they need to identify the common values, ideas and goals that create common ground, the same way conservatives have used individual responsibility and free markets.

A narrative takes shape

Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont, 2008 Democratic presidential candidate and then chair of the Democratic National Committee, powerfully pointed out in 2007 that people respond to and make choices on the basis of values and resonant supporting memes, not policy papers and positions.

Dean identified fairness, fiscal responsibility and strength/toughness as core progressive values. A group called ThinkProgress adds to the list freedom (e.g., freedom of speech, association and religion, and freedom to have a fulfilling life), opportunity (e.g., preventing discrimination and embracing diversity), responsibility (individual and shared) and cooperation (recognizing our interconnectedness).

In such a progressive context, the story for companies might be that they operate in fair markets (not just free markets) with collective value (not just profitability or shareholder wealth) as a goal.

Or something like that. The Leading for Wellbeing coalition, for example, is an initiative set up by Lovins and others to develop an economy that provides well-being and dignity for all, where businesses work to enhance life in all respects. This kind of shared process of values identification and articulation is clearly needed right now.

Only by building such a powerful and unified vision can progressives continue to push their agenda in the era of Trump and conservative dominance in Washington.

Sandra Waddock, Galligan Chair of Strategy and Carroll School Scholar of Corporate Responsibility, Boston College

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Can progressives make changes in the Trump era? - Salon

Remember wedge issues? You still see the term from time to time, but its popularity has diminished since the 1980s and 90s. Thats probably just as well; Metaphorical expressions like this one usually confuse more than they clarify, although it seems to have been replaced by the equally figurative and probably more confusing dog whistle.

A wedge issue, if you dont go back that far, is a controversial topic used by one campaign to create dissension within an opposing campaign. If I sense that a significant number of my opponents voters disagree with him or her on some question, I will raise it in an attempt to get them to doubt their support.

The salient characteristic of a wedge issue, at least in the common usage by commentators and journalists a generation ago, is its substantive unimportance. The wedge issue was almost always a social or cultural issue: something about race, religion or sex. When a journalist referred to gay rights, say, as a wedge issue, the implication was usually that the candidate raising the issue didnt really care about it. The issue didnt affect voters lives in any direct or appreciable way, but the candidate forced it into the debate in a cynical attempt to disunite the other sides constituency.

This is more or less the way Thomas Frank uses the term in his 2004 book Whats the Matter with Kansas? Franks argument, if I could oversimplify, is that Kansas voters naturally tend to the left on subjects such as education, taxes and health care, but that Republicans have learned to use cultural issues school prayer, smut on the airwaves, abortion and so on to fool Kansans into abandoning their own interests and voting GOP.

Frank is far too cavalier about what other people should regard as their own interests: His argument reflects the ideological tendency of Americas commentariat, for whom fears of cultural transformation are always unfounded. But he has a point. There is no good reason that a statehouse election, for example, should turn on the question of euthanasia or transgender bathrooms. The winner will have no power to affect policy on such a question; its function in the race is that of a wedge, a non-germane controversy designed to shake the loyalties of the other side.

Now consider Donald Trump.

Let me put this point as plainly as I can, and do forgive the overstatement, if there is any. American progressives are playing the role of Republican-voting would-be Democrats in Thomas Franks vision of Kansas too paranoid or too thick to realize that the things upsetting them arent all that important. Trump himself is the greatest of all wedge issues, but in reverse: He distracts the other side and causes them, without their even knowing it, to ignore their own interests.

Exactly what is it about Trump, after all, that embitters progressives so badly? They will have noticed, surely, that his candidacy was opposed by the great majority of conservative intellectuals for the excellent reason that he is not, in fact, a conservative. That alone should keep progressives from despair. If we confine the discussion to policies and actual decisions what Trump will sign or veto, what hell actually do with executive power its not clear that progressives have all that much to fear. President Trump will probably nominate a conservative judge to the Supreme Court, but so, one assumes, would any Republican president.

Trump is far from a progressive, and he will effect policies that progressives abominate. But that hardly explains the panicked, visceral hatred to which many progressives have yielded. Mitt Romney stands to Trumps right on most points, and progressive Boston Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham issued an apology to Romney on the grounds that she now saw how bad bad can be.

There were of course excellent reasons to oppose Trumps candidacy, and there are legitimate reasons to worry about what the president might do in office. But that doesnt explain the turgid expressions of detestation issuing from many of his leftward-most adversaries. These unhappy souls fear and abhor Trump less for what he might do than for how he might act and what he might say. What troubles them, if Im right, isnt so much political as aesthetic:

Trump is proudly, ostentatiously nouveau riche. He embosses his comical surname on buildings.

He gloats about his successes and doesnt bother with the faux humility of ordinary political parlance.

He boasts of political conquests, as in former times he boasted of sexual ones.

He speaks ineptly about race (the blacks) and cruelly about the physical appearance of women he doesnt like.

He cultivates a preposterous hairdo, which he seems in all sincerity to believe is a physical asset.

His political pronouncements are brash, sometimes brutal, and he feels no obligation to make them consistent with one another, so immensely does he enjoy confounding his adversaries.

I regret all these things in a man who will be president of the United States. I find Trump hard to take even if, like reruns of an 80s sitcom, he grows on me. But most of what bothers me and I suspect most of what progressives detest about the man has mainly to do with appearance, attitude, style and language.

American progressives should decide which they would prefer: a principled and winsome conservative from whom they could expect few concessions other than rhetorical ones; or an ostentatiously moneyed agitator who says dumb things but who might shift left or right depending on the circumstances and his mood. If they were smart, they would take the latter. But Im not sure theyre smart.

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Why progressives shouldn't despair over Trump - Washington Post

For eight years I had the indescribable honor of serving in President Obamas White House, most recently as Special Assistant to the President & Director of Rapid Response. I played a lot of different roles, but going back through the 2008 transition and even back to the DNC during that campaign, Ive served as a nexus between the White House and progressive advocates, bloggers, journalists, and pundits I thought it might be worth sharing some of my perspective publicly with any progressive that cares to read it.

First and foremost: I say in all honesty that very little would have gotten done without you, and its become even more clear to me in these final days that your constructive criticism/pushing/occasional outrage helped make this White House a better White House, and this president a better president.

Looking forward, as bleak a moment as this is in many ways, Im optimistic for the future of progressives and the Democratic Party. As contentious as things can sometimes seem within our side, I think theres remarkable consensus on the kind of progressive change we need, captured in great detail through the hard work of the unified Democratic platform. I think a lot of the goals we had coming into 2009 have seen immense measurable accomplishment, more so than virtually any pundit would have thought possible at the time. On so many issues, progressives and President Obama have helped move the Overton window in the right direction (take some time to reflect on political conventional wisdom in 2008 and I think youll agree).

But part of progress is having to defend that progress, sooner or later, with your back against the wall. That time came sooner than expected, but it was always going to come. And reversing it is going to be a lot harder than Republicans advertised, because the benefits are just so damned real.

As we all continue to grapple with the elections aftermath, theres one critique that Ive heard from the media, from some supporters of the incoming administration, and from some folks on the left who I truly respect, that I want to take on namely that the Democratic Party and/or Obama didnt fight for working people.

When Obama passed the Recovery Act, a bigger stimulus than the New Deal, the infrastructure spending, the investments in clean energy manufacturing, and the Making Work Pay tax cuts were for working people.

When we passed the Affordable Care Act, that was aimed straight at working people white working people, black working people, Hispanic, Asian, and tribal and Republicans are now finally having to face up to that fact. Not just the 20+ million who got coverage, but the ~150 million with pre-existing conditions and the vast majority of Americans who get their coverage through work who were always at risk of getting screwed by some insurance company loophole. It was for people like my parents who are self-employed and could never afford real insurance for our family while I was growing up.

When we passed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, that was for working people who were getting screwed every which way by predatory financial industries.

When Obama executed the auto bailout, despite shudder-inducing unpopularity at the time, a million working people kept their livelihoods.

When Obama ended the Bush tax cuts for millionaires, even as he extended working class tax cuts like the Child Tax Credit, Earned Income Tax Credit, and the new American Opportunity Tax Credit, that was for working people.

When we repealed Dont Ask, Dont Tell, and helped make marriage equality a reality, that was for working people who wanted to live free of discrimination in a loving relationship or serving their country.

When we implemented Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), that was for working people who just wanted to come out of the shadows and contribute to this country in the light of day.

When Obama signed the law to reduce crack/cocaine sentencing discrepancies, and pushed the sentencing commission for reform, and made a cause out of his presidential commutation power, and pushed to ban the box on employment forms, that was for working people who wanted to make a living for themselves and their families, and not have their lives destroyed by some drug offense that a wealthy kid might have gotten a slap on the wrist for.

When the president brought more than 90 percent of our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan, stayed out of a full blown ground war quagmire in Syria despite constant criticism, and used diplomacy to block Irans nuclear program and avoid another war, that was for the working people who make up Americas military white working people, black working people, Hispanic, Asian, and tribal who want to serve their country and get an education they might not otherwise be able to afford, and who are treated like cannon fodder by Washingtons war hawks.

When Obama took on toxic pollution on things like mercury and countless other rules, that was for working people, who are the ones who bear the brunt of that toxicity, saving tens of thousands from sickness and death.

Setting aside the fact that climate change will destroy the planet that working people work on, he has also pushed against widespread skepticism, constant political criticism, and even mockery, to make clean energy a source of manufacturing jobs for working people for decades ahead, and there is now widespread agreement that the clean energy revolution has begun and cant be reversed.

When Obama took major executive actions and pushed to make fair pay and paid leave central to the political debate, to recognize them as economic issues and not solely gender equality issues, that was, obviously, about working people.

Executive actions on overtime pay, payday lenders, crooked retirement brokers: working people.

And when Obama pushed for the American Jobs Act, for immigration reform, for universal background checks, for universal pre-K and free community college and for minimum wage increases, and was blocked by Republicans, that was all for working people.

Obama wasnt perfect; with any president you can find shortcomings, and more people that could have or should have been helped; we owe it to those people to learn lessons and do better in the future. But I honestly believe he will be remembered as one of our greatest presidents, precisely because fighting for working people is literally what got him (and his staff) out of bed in the morning, what made him love and cherish the job up to the very last day. And the Democratic Party, which buckled down and sacrificed huge numbers of its members for the sake of insuring tens of millions of people, and which in vast majority stood strong to stop war in Iran, has been a party I can believe in as a vehicle for change, for all its warts.

All of that is to say that Im proud, and I hope youll be proud too of what youve been a part of and witnessed. Because it is now all under threat from the party thatactuallydisdains the working class. Take stock of what weve done together, because the time to defend it has already come. And the fight is not for Obamas legacy, nor would he want it to be. Its for working people, be they white, black, Hispanic, Asian, tribal even Trumps own voters.

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An Obama Staffer's Parting Note To Progressives - Huffington Post