The Future of Progressive Politics in Pennsylvania, Part 1
This has been a good week for progressives in the state. Governor Rendell has announced that he will veto HB 1318, a bill that would have been most aptly named the Voter Suppression Act of 2006. I was very proud to work with wonderful Protect Our Vote Coalition in opposing the bill and was pleased that Neighborhood Networks officially joined the coalition as well. Jeanine Miller in Philadelphia and Celeste Taylor in Pittsburgh did a great job leading the coalition and Larry Frankel of the ACLU in Harrisburg was immensely important to our efforts as he tracked every twist and turn of the legislative process and gave us strategic advice about what to do at each moment.
Any victory by the left is a good one and stopping this awful bill is an important accomplishment. However, before we get too pleased with our success, we should recognize that the nature of our victory actually points to the weakness, not the strength, of Pennsylvania progressives.
The Shaky Grounds of Our Victory
This victory rests, after all, on shaky grounds. We won because Governor Rendell could hand us a victory with a stroke of his pen. It would be nice to think that the Governor supported our position because we convinced him that this bill was a threat to our civil rights and liberties. But if civil liberties and rights were always the highest priority of our Governor he would not have announced his support of Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court.
The truth is that the Governor had a more self-interested reason than anyone else in the state to veto HB 1318, his own prospects for reelection. The bill, after all, was aimed at suppressing the vote of those who are likely to support the Governor in November. What our coalition did was to provide the ideological cover the Governor needed to justify his veto. This was important for us to do, and to keep on doing, not just because it helps the Governor who is our ally on this issue. More importantly, we have to pull the drapes from this legislation and show people that it would have had the effect, and was intended to have the effect of suppressing the votes of seniors, the poor, African Americans and city dwellers. By helping make the public events on Monday so successful, and by writing letters and op-ed pieces, we were instrumental in getting this message heard in many parts of the state.
If we had any effect beyond providing the justification for the Governor’s actions it was to encourage the Senate to enact a much more moderate bill than the one initially passed by the House. The Senate bill was bad, but not as bad as the House bill, which prohibited felons on probation or parole from voting and required that everyone present not just any form of identification but government issued identification cards before voting. I don’t actually know the details of Senate consideration of this bill. But I suspect that our efforts were helpful there.
Where We Did Not Succeed
However, with all this success in mind, we should remember keep in mind what we did not achieve. We did not stop the Senate from enacting a bad bill. And, more importantly, our lobbying efforts could not keep the House from enacting an even worse bill. What does it say about the strength of progressives in Pennsylvania when our legislature enacts a bill that so threatens a fundamental right of so many people, the right to vote? What does it say about our strength, when we can’t stop a bill that would disenfranchise so many people who are likely to stand with us in elections?
And this is not the first time we progressives have lost in the General Assembly after forming an impressive coalition and carrying on an intense lobbying effort.
–So far we have not succeeded in raising the minimum wage. The Republicans leaders of the House or the Senate promised to bring a minimum wage bill to the floor. But the minimum wage bill has been subject to procedural tricks in the House and has not reached the floor in the Senate.
–So far we have not succeeded in securing dedicated funding for public transit, despite bringing 4000 people from around the state to Harrisburg. That lobbying effort was successful in that we made it politically impossible for Governor Rendell to allow massive transit service cutbacks and fare increases. But, as in the HB 1318 effort, we should not let our success with the Governor mask our failure in the legislature.
–And, while the Governor, with the support of the Good Schools PA coalition, was able to increase state funding for education, he (and we) got far less than we wanted. Pennsylvania still stands very low in the ranking of state support for public education.
If this litany of, shall we say, incomplete success included left-wing proposals that pushed the envelope of progressive public policy, we might not have reason to worry. But, in each case, we have been seeking support for centrist policies that, ten years ago, would have received broad bi-partisan approval. In each case our goals are broadly endorsed by the public. For example, over eighty percent of the public supports an increase in the minimum wage. Even public transit is supported by a majority of Pennsylvanians.
That we have lost should show us something important: Our state government is now controlled by a Republican majority that has been captured by radical right-wing forces. Speaker John Perzel and Senate President pro tem Robert Jubelirer may still put a moderate face on that Republican majority. But the real power is in the hands of House majority leader Sam Smith and his extremist allies.
The moderate Pennsylvanian Republican, a man of flexible principles willing to bow to the centrist majority in the state, is rapidly being replaced by men of the hard right. The party of Specter is disappearing and the party of Santorum has emerged in Harrisburg.
A Preview
The questions for progressives, then, are when are we going to recognize what we are up against and what are we going to do about? My view, which I am going to set out in a series of posts over the next few days, is that we are not doing what we should be doing. I will argue that:
1. We have not recognized what we are up against. If we want to enact even moderately progressive public polices in Harrisburg, we have to focus not just on one public policy at a time but on the whole direction of politics in Harrisburg. And we have to give much more attention to gaining control of the General Assembly, starting with the House.
2. We have not forged a political agenda or message that can gain support not just for one cause or another but for moderately progressive public policy in general and for the election of Democrats who can enact legislation that embodies our policy ideas.
3. A good part of the reason we have been so slow in reacting to the emergence of the radical right in Pennsylvania is structural. Leading progressive and Democratic activists are based in labor unions, social service agencies, and interest groups that are reluctant to directly challenge the radical right Republican majority in Harrisburg. The official leaders of our party also have their own reasons for challenging the right wing tilt in Harrisburg.
4. As a result, we have not effectively organized ourselves throughout the state to push for the public policies and electoral candidates we support.
Stay tuned.