By Eric Shapiro for the Flatiron Hot! News
Despite his call for political revolution, it is for good reason that Bernie Sanders goes out of his way to emphasize that his agenda is not all that radical. It is for good reason that in his recent speech on a “21st Century Bill of Rights,” he invoked the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, not his democratic socialist hero, Eugene Debs. The fact is that despite adapting the iconography and language of revolution for disillusioned millennials, Bernie Sanders’ political project is not, fundamentally, a radical one. It is not based on a rigid commitment to predetermined principles, but rather a dynamic approach to politics rooted in a term that Hillary Clinton ruined forever: pragmatic progressivism.
Centrists have attempted, with some success, to make the term “ideology” into a dirty word, feigning objective detachment and glorifying meritocratic achievement. By contrast, according to centrist dogma, the left is composed of impractical dreamers. In reality, centrists subscribe to a myopic ideology of their own based on the delusional premise of compromising with a Republican Party that has gradually degenerated into an unholy alliance of libertarian fundamentalists and ethnonationalists. Progressives, circa 2019 and perhaps all along, have always been the true “pragmatists.” Even in an alternate reality in which the GOP was not an authoritarian personality cult, but a normal conservative political party with the capacity to negotiate in good faith, centrism would be indefensible. Centrists’ dogmatic commitment to neoliberalism – means testing, privatization and hopelessly convoluted market-based solutions – is not “pragmatic.” It is dogmatic. It reflects a conscious decision to subordinate the interests of the working class to those of the donor class, regardless of human cost and environmental impact.
Teddy Roosevelt – the ultimate Progressive – and he got things done!
Perhaps, in the wake of the Reagan revolution (a far more radical break from historical precedent than what Bernie Sanders proposes), Clinton Democrats truly believed that it was necessary to embrace the ideological premises of movement conservatism. Perhaps, in the 1980s and 1990s, they were correct (although Ryan Grim makes a strong case to the contrary in his must-read book, We Have the People). But in the wake of the Iraq War and the Great Recession, the technocratic, incrementalist neoliberalism embodied by 2020 Democratic candidates like Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, is not only ineffective–it is dangerous. Setting aside dubious arguments that centrism equals electability (if this was true, why did a substantial portion of the U.S. prefer a self-professed democratic socialist and/or a ridiculous game show host to Hillary Clinton in 2016?), it is clear that centrism is woefully unequipped to address the multiple crises confronting the country and the world.
Progressives like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, on the other hand, offer a theory of change and solutions commensurate to the daunting challenges we face. It is true that, superficially, their policy proposals appear radical. They are, indeed, expensive and will require the government to intervene in the economy in ways that violate the sacred tenets of neoliberalism. But the cost of doing too little too late to address the crises we face dwarfs the cost of bold, progressive solutions. Embracing these solutions is not about “purity,” as centrists insist; it is about common sense. If climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that we must decarbonize by 2030, it is not pragmatic to continue to oppose a Green New Deal and continue to extract and rely on natural gas, as Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden and others propose. If universal healthcare is a priority, as Bernie Sanders consistently asserts and his centrist opponents claim to agree, it is not pragmatic to treat it like a commodity, subject to being rolled back and sabotaged by the next Republican administration. Similar arguments apply to the housing crisis, the student debt crisis, institutional racism and other urgent priorities. Only progressive policies, implemented by unbought politicians backed by a diverse, working class movement, adequately address the intractable problems we face. Progressivism is pragmatism.
NYC Theater News
Flatiron Hot! Pundit: Answer to the Centrists: Progressivism is Pragmatism
By Eric Shapiro for the Flatiron Hot! News
Despite his call for political revolution, it is for good reason that Bernie Sanders goes out of his way to emphasize that his agenda is not all that radical. It is for good reason that in his recent speech on a “21st Century Bill of Rights,” he invoked the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, not his democratic socialist hero, Eugene Debs. The fact is that despite adapting the iconography and language of revolution for disillusioned millennials, Bernie Sanders’ political project is not, fundamentally, a radical one. It is not based on a rigid commitment to predetermined principles, but rather a dynamic approach to politics rooted in a term that Hillary Clinton ruined forever: pragmatic progressivism.
Centrists have attempted, with some success, to make the term “ideology” into a dirty word, feigning objective detachment and glorifying meritocratic achievement. By contrast, according to centrist dogma, the left is composed of impractical dreamers. In reality, centrists subscribe to a myopic ideology of their own based on the delusional premise of compromising with a Republican Party that has gradually degenerated into an unholy alliance of libertarian fundamentalists and ethnonationalists. Progressives, circa 2019 and perhaps all along, have always been the true “pragmatists.” Even in an alternate reality in which the GOP was not an authoritarian personality cult, but a normal conservative political party with the capacity to negotiate in good faith, centrism would be indefensible. Centrists’ dogmatic commitment to neoliberalism – means testing, privatization and hopelessly convoluted market-based solutions – is not “pragmatic.” It is dogmatic. It reflects a conscious decision to subordinate the interests of the working class to those of the donor class, regardless of human cost and environmental impact.
Teddy Roosevelt – the ultimate Progressive – and he got things done!
Perhaps, in the wake of the Reagan revolution (a far more radical break from historical precedent than what Bernie Sanders proposes), Clinton Democrats truly believed that it was necessary to embrace the ideological premises of movement conservatism. Perhaps, in the 1980s and 1990s, they were correct (although Ryan Grim makes a strong case to the contrary in his must-read book, We Have the People). But in the wake of the Iraq War and the Great Recession, the technocratic, incrementalist neoliberalism embodied by 2020 Democratic candidates like Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, is not only ineffective–it is dangerous. Setting aside dubious arguments that centrism equals electability (if this was true, why did a substantial portion of the U.S. prefer a self-professed democratic socialist and/or a ridiculous game show host to Hillary Clinton in 2016?), it is clear that centrism is woefully unequipped to address the multiple crises confronting the country and the world.
Progressives like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, on the other hand, offer a theory of change and solutions commensurate to the daunting challenges we face. It is true that, superficially, their policy proposals appear radical. They are, indeed, expensive and will require the government to intervene in the economy in ways that violate the sacred tenets of neoliberalism. But the cost of doing too little too late to address the crises we face dwarfs the cost of bold, progressive solutions. Embracing these solutions is not about “purity,” as centrists insist; it is about common sense. If climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that we must decarbonize by 2030, it is not pragmatic to continue to oppose a Green New Deal and continue to extract and rely on natural gas, as Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden and others propose. If universal healthcare is a priority, as Bernie Sanders consistently asserts and his centrist opponents claim to agree, it is not pragmatic to treat it like a commodity, subject to being rolled back and sabotaged by the next Republican administration. Similar arguments apply to the housing crisis, the student debt crisis, institutional racism and other urgent priorities. Only progressive policies, implemented by unbought politicians backed by a diverse, working class movement, adequately address the intractable problems we face. Progressivism is pragmatism.