> No mass movements and we get conservative national policy, regardles of
> who is in Congress or the White House.
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Relatively speaking, of course. Big reforms require the pressure of mass
movements.
But the suggestion here is that in the absence of such movements, mass organizations (the product of past upsurges) have no interest in political action to protect and extend past gains.
It's not just coincidence that the trade unions and the representative organizations of women, blacks, gays, Hispanics, environmentalists, seniors, civil libertarians, antiwar activists, and others consistently support the Democrats against the Republicans. They count on the latter, who in turn rely on these groups for funding and to get out the vote, to defend their gains in the legislative, regulatory, and judicial arenas against Republican attempts to roll them back.
The Democrats do so imperfectly - that's a continuing tension between all mass organizations and the parties they support everwhere - but it doesn't obscure the essential difference between Democratic legislators, regulators, and judges and Republican ones.
The organizations above are able to distinguish between their friends and their enemies because their existence depends on it. In my experience, its often been leftish intellectuals who stand outside of them and have little personal stake in the outcome who are unable to grasp why this is so and why their own confident advice is always ignored.