Mediaboss Marketing

Yves here. This post gives a historical account of how progressives have become a shadow of their former selves. It overlaps with a 2013 post, Why Progressives Are Lame.

By Ed Walker, who writes as masaccio at Firedoglake. You can follow him at Twitter at @MasaccioFDL, and heres his author page at Firedoglake.

The Economist says Eric Holder is the most liberal US Attorney General in recent memory, and explains with a quote from one of those liberals at MSNBC:

[He] has shown amazing leadership on the issue ofLGBT rights. Hes challenged Republican restrictions onvoting rights. Hes fought forsentencing reforms. Hes condemned Stand Your Ground laws and showed effective leadership during the crisisin Ferguson. He cleared the way for Colorado and the state of Washington to pursuemarijuana legalization. Hes worked toreverse the disenfranchisementof the formerly incarcerated.

Buzzfeed sent a couple of reporters out to interview nominally progressive groups about a replacement for Holder, and they all confirmed that they think Holder is with them on their issues, except, of course, national security and spying on US citizens. They interviewed the ACLU, sentencing reform groups, LGBT groups, and vote protection groups.

Thats a lot of liberal box ticking, but whats missing? Thats right, not a single word about the real power of the office, the right and duty to enforce securities and anti-trust laws against white collar criminals. On those issues, Eric Holder stands further to the right than most Republican AGs. And whats really sickening is that not a single one of these groups thought to mention these crucial economic law enforcement in their list of demands for a replacement for Holder. Its just one more indication of the absence of progressives from all discussion of the economy.

Before we see how this happened, I want to point out that progressives are doing a lot of good work on financial matters, including the SEIU and others on the minimum wage, and those working on health care like National Nurses Unitedand Physicians for a National Health Program. I am especially impressed with the work done by the FACT Coalitionwhich is working effectively towards tax reform. This group is a good example of different organizations putting staff and efforts behind a coordinated push for economic fairness.

There are a number of powerful writers on these issues as well, including Bill Black on control fraud, Dave Dayen on the housing disaster, and blogs like this one which keep a sharp focus on the FIRE sector and its predatory tactics. Still, neither the Economist nor Buzzfeed thinks these individuals are worthy of consultation on the priorities of a new AG.

It wasnt always like this. Heres a short refresher on economic issues and politics. Beginning in the late 1800s, there was a powerful wave of economic liberalism, fiercely and sometimes violently opposed to the rampant capitalism of the times. Outbreaks of violence include the Ludlow Massacre, the Pullman Strike, and the Homestead Strike, where states and the federal government and armed thugs attacked striking working people and their families. Sometimes there were electoral fights such as the campaigns of William Jennings Bryan as a Democrat demanding Free Silver and trust-busting (along with his support for prohibition and against Darwinism). Journalism in the form of the muckrakers like Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair was a vital and vibrant part of the US political scene. I read The Pit and The Octopus by Frank Norris in high school, and they showed in melodrama both the extent of the crimes of the rich of that era, and the damage they did to hard-working people.

The progressives and their labor class supporters had some successes, but many of them were stolen by the Supreme Court in cases like the 1905 decision in Lochner v. New York, which struck down New Yorks 60-hour work week for bakers over a vigorous dissent by Oliver Wendell Holmes. That process of victories in the legislature destroyed by the Supreme Court was a constant in the early 1900s. As legislative victories turned to dust, economic progressives became more aggressive. Leftist intellectuals and labor leaders turned toSocialism and Marxism as alternatives to bloody capitalism. Workers continued to strike and there was violence in the streets. The economic elites continued to use their control of state and national government to put down those strikes with more intense violence. The few public figures who espoused Socialism were subject to bad-faith prosecutions and jailed, among them Eugene Debs, jailed on specious charges on the watch of the Democrat Woodrow Wilson, and his horrid Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. This was an early example of Democrats running from the shadows of non-capitalist economic theory.

Here is the original post:
Masaccio: The Sorry State of Progressives on Economic Issues