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Rock the boat,
David

To riff off an earlier post I did today, here’s an honest question: does the progressive blogosphere - or, really, the national progressive movement as a whole - actually care about the state and local arenas? I have been wondering this for a while now. The list of "major" blogs I read (save for Dailykos) rarely - if ever - discuss anything going on in the states. I mean, just take a look around the progressive blogosphere today - if you aren’t reading polls about Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, you are reading speculation about which D.C. staffers the presidential campaigns are going to hire - as if anyone outside of the Washington Beltway actually cares or is even marginally affected by this. I mean, here we are at the start of 50 separate state legislative sessions. We have an infinite number of opportunities to affect hugely major policies at the state level - the level that often affects ordinary people the most. And, beyond hyperventilating about the overpoweringly cautious 100 Hours Agenda, all our side seems to be able to talk about at the national level beyond is who is going to be on the presidential ballot 22 months from now.

None of this is altogether surprising. “National” politics has, unfortunately, been defined for a long time as “only what happens in Washington, D.C.” Additionally, when you are writing for a multi-state audience, the easiest thing to do is cover federal politics. But that doesn’t mean that what’s going on in the states doesn’t have major national implications - it just means it takes more effort (and less celebrity obsession) to report/write on the states.

The lack of attention that the national progressive movement pays to the states has for years allowed the conservative movement to effectively govern the country from state capitals. It’s a pretty nifty technique, when you think about it. As progressive scream from the mountaintop about this Washington operative getting that job, or this committee holding that hearing inside the U.S. Capitol, the Right is ramming through bill after bill after bill in statehouses across America on policies that often affect ordinary people’s lives in far greater ways than federal law.

This isn’t to say that covering federal politics is totally silly - it’s not, which is why I devote significant energy to it myself. It is also not to say that there are no great progressive blogospheric outposts covering the states nor great progressive organizations working within the states - there are. I read many state-based blogs everyday such as, among others, Left In the West, the Bluegrass Report, MyLeftNutmeg, SquareState.net and Colorado Confidential. Similarly, through the Progressive States Network, I have been honored to work with scores of state-based progressive groups doing truly wonderful work.

But the disconnection between these entities and the national progressive movement is real, and it is troubling. There truly does seem to be an aversion in national progressive circles (beyond obligatory though hollow pledges that "sure we believe it is important") to seriously focus on the arenas where we actually could have the most impact. I’ve felt this acutely as I have spent the last year literally begging national donors, activists and organizations to get serious about focusing on the states, whether through the Progressive States Network or other vehicles. To say this has been a hard pitch is as understated as saying Shaquille O’Neal is merely a decent basketball player.

Maybe the resistance has to do with celebrity obsession and getting to work with state legislators/local officials just doesn’t seem as cool to most people as getting their picture with a U.S. Senator. Maybe it’s because many new progressive movement leaders just don’t know how important the state and local arenas are. Maybe its a form of laziness because it’s just easier to watch one city - Washington, D.C. - than it is to check out the 50 capitals. Or, maybe its vanity, in that so many of the voices who speak for the progressive movement are primarily located in or around Washington, D.C. and thus feel that the only possible important activity could be what’s happening inside the Beltway.

I’m not really sure. But I am sure of one thing: while there is a lot of talk lately about “bottom up” politics and “grassroots” energy, it’s sometimes hard to see how that rhetoric, which is triumphantly championed by the new national progressive movement leaders, is being turned into a focus on actual organizing and action in the local and state arenas - that is, organizing in the places that actual, real people live and work and taking actions in the arenas where progressives don’t have to beg for crumbs. The whole D.C. tunnel vision phenomenon among progressives reeks of historical ignorance. It’s as if we think the civil rights movement or the labor movement or the suffrage movement (aka. the most profound social movements in American history) started, flourished and succeeded inside an office on Constitution Avenue, and that all we have to do to replicate those movements’ impact is to keep our eyes focused solely on what happens within the confines of I-495.

But, then, maybe this isn’t only ignorance. It remains an open question whether the national progressive movement actually WANTS to make an impact in the state and local arenas. I say that’s more troubling because while it’s easy to want changes at the federal level, which are often (though not always) extremely symbolic or marginal, it often takes a much more strong sense of ideology and principle to want changes at the state and local level, where policymaking is very concrete and has very immediate, real-world impact on citizens. And whether the progressive movement is ready to advocate for real, substantive change - rather than just partisan control or made-for-cable-TV storylines - remains to be seen.

NOTE: This post is not meant to pick on any particular blogger or progressive activist, or even as a diss on the progressive movement, which I (obviously) believe is full of huge potential. It is meant as constructive food for thought. The whole concept of “think globally, act locally,” I believe, is under assault right now, mostly because corporate media consolidation has, by virtue of sheer cost cutting, made news coverage almost totally dominated by Washington, D.C. It’s much cheaper for a news organization to have one office inside the Beltway rather than spending money to have correspondents throughout the rest of the country - and the susequent D.C.-centric coverage we get naturally leads us to (inaccurately) believe that the only place in the world that is important is Washington, D.C. But the media is not a movement, and a movement, frankly, is not a movement unless it is organizing, taking action, and building from the ground up - that is, from the state and local level. Progressives ignore that truism at our peril.