How many people on this list, for example, many of them aging professionals - myself included - have an immediate need for government support for pre-school education, children's health care, a ban on compulsory overtime, leave to recover from household violence, unsafe day labour, union lockout rights and wage rates, etc. Some do, but most don't.
It's easy to understand why politically-conscious working people would turn to pro-capitalist liberal parties which promise these reforms as the only means of improving their condition. But these issues don't resonate for the great majority of left intellectuals or their neighbours, which is why they are more easily able to take their distance from the Democrats. Supporting the Democrats becomes purely an ideological issue for them - mostly turning on the degree to which the Democrats differ from the Republicans with respect to the social and foreign policy causes which interest them most. They are often inclined to trivialize DP economic reforms, even pretending that these no longer exist and that the Democrats are as culpable as the Republicans in their assault on working class standards. These can appear less than trivial, however, to working people, who have deeper material interests at stake, where even the modest reforms proposed by the Democrats can make a significant difference in their everyday working and living conditions.
I think we have be more conscious of the changed class composition of the socialist left when we hear voices within it so confidently counselling the working class that it is wholly irrelevant whether they are governed by Tweedledum or Tweedledee. This would not be the case if there were, as there once was, a party like the one headed by Eugene Debs which workers could identify with, but meanwhile workers need more than dreams and exhortations from well-intentioned intellectuals outside their communities to sustain themselves. I don't think this is true of most on the left, but it is true of a large enough part of it that it needs to be bluntly addressed in this fashion. -------------------------------------------- Nathan Newman wrote:
In Praise of Illinois: Progressive Agenda in in the States
Yesterday, Illinois's governor Rod Blagojevich proposed a new initiative to extend pre-kindegarten education to all three and four-year olds in the state, a proposal that would help middle class families struggling with early education expenses on their own. This is just an examples of how Illinois has been quietly emerging as a national font of progressive ideas and legislation. Folks wonder what the progressive agenda should look like, but what's been enacted in Illinois in recent years should give you pretty good guidance. From labor rights to health care, the state has been chartering out new innovations. To give just a few other examples: A new health care program for children was enacted that extended coverage for 250,000 previously uninsured children of working and middle class parents.
To protect patient care and ease the burden on overworked nurses, the state banned mandatory overtime for nurses in the state.
The state raised the minimum wage to $6.50 per hour a few years ago.
Victims of sexual or domestic violence were guaranteed 12 weeks of unpaid leave to recover.
"Sexual orientation" was added to the state civil rights law, protecting gays and lesbians from employment discrimination.
Corporate accountability was increased through a whisteblower law that protects employees from firing or other retaliation if they disclose information to law enforcement agencies about potentially illegal activity by the company..
Limited english speakers were protected in their rights to talk in Spanish or other languages to fellow workers under an amendment to the Illinois Human Rights Act to combat abusive "English-only" rules in the workplace.
Illinois passed legislation to crack down on abusive and unsafe working conditions in the day labor industry, improving the lives of 300,000 day laborers in the state.
The state also passed legislation to bring all state workers under federal anti-discrimination laws, voluntarily waiving the state's "sovereign immunity" to counteract bad Supreme Court "states rights" decisions.
The state protected union rights by providing unemployment insurance benefits when companies unilaterally lock out workers during a contract dispute.
Blagojevich signed an executive order helping day care workers unionize, leading to unionization and better working conditions for 49,000 child care workers in the state.
The state strengthened its bill protecting prevailing wages for public works. States like Illinois are pioneering ahead with broad agendas to expand benefits for families and defend human rights for all. Blagojevich's administration (like much of Illinois politics recently) has been under pressure from investigations, but if he pulls off reelection, it will be largely due to a strong focus on bread and butter legislation to improve the lives of residents of his state.
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