News that a group of progressive activists (and some bloggers) from Neighborhood Networks, Philly for Change, the African American Heritage Coalition, the Latino community and Philadelphians Against Santorum, met with Congressman Bob Brady on Friday is beginning to appear on some blogs. I considered the meeting off the record, so I’m not going to report on it in detail. But I do think I can give my general impressions of the meeting without violating any confidences, on either side.
The first thing to be said is that, in a different kind of setting, Congressman Brady’s performance would have received a standing ovation. Over the last few years I have met most of the leading politicians in the city. There are politicians in this city who can give a better speech, politicians who are better organizers of issue movements, and politicians who have more visionary ideas about public policy. But there is no one I have met, in Philadelphia or anywhere else for that matter, who is better in this kind of close in, hand to hand, small group debate. Congressman Brady was charming, articulate, incredibly quick on his feet, and well prepared. He told us funny stories that helped us understand politics as he sees it. He is simply impossible not to like.
That’s not to say we were overawed to be in his presence. We did not hold back in our criticisms of how the Democratic Party functions. And he did not hold back in responding to our criticisms and challenging us in turn. It was a combative few hours that got a little heated at one or two moments. But it was also a basically friendly meeting and we all laughed a lot.Congressman Brady made it clear that what occasioned the meeting which I should add he initiated when he called me to set it up a week or so ago though he was undoubtedly responding to our criticism of the special election process and Ray Murphy’s post at YPP–was that he wants to keep the progressive movement working in the Democratic Party. He was quick to acknowledge that the incredible Democratic majorities we run up in this city are not the work of the party alone, but are created in no small part by activists who run independent operations on behalf of Democratic candidate.
By the same token, while Congressman Brady heard our complaints about the Democratic Party, he made it clear that he won’t be leading the charge to change it—except with regard to supporting merit selection of judges (which some of us oppose, by the way.)
We complained that the party is not open to progressive candidates. We expressed our disappointment with the special election process in which only ward leaders have a chance to be nominated and in which the party selects candidates whose views on public policy are basically unknown to anyone. We complained about ward meetings that are closed to certain candidates and about the undemocratic way in which most wards are run, with the exception of the 9th ward and a few others. We complained about the efforts of City Committee lawyers to knock unendorsed candidates off the ballot. We complained that the party system gives us too many Democratic politicians in the city are either devoid of policy ideas or commitments or too sluggish to pursue them vigorously. And we complained that the party is not aggressive enough in challenging the four Republican State Representatives in the Northeast.
Congressman Brady explained to us why structural change in how the party operates is not going to come about easily. He reminded us that he is elected by the ward leaders and has to be responsive to their concerns. He kept pointing out that the Party is organized in a loose manner. He does not have control over what each ward leader does and endorsement decisions are not made by him but by the ward leaders in particular council and state legislative districts or by City Committee as a whole. While some of us may have had some suspicions about just how limited Congressman Brady’s influence is, it was hard not to acknowledge the general point that the party is a confederation not a monarchy and that ward leaders have interests of their own that he has to respect.
When it came to our complaints about the party’s lack of support for, or opposition to particular progressive candidates, Congressman Brady responded in two ways. He pointed out that in some cases, he and other leaders of the party had either given progressives some support or, at the very least, had not done everything he might have to stand in their way. And, in other cases, he said that he was ready to do more if the candidates in question had come to him at the right time. The Congressman was, in fact, giving us some lessons on how the party works and how we might gain some inside support in the future. (He also pointed out that when some of us progressives are incumbents we might appreciate what the party does to support its own.)
This wasn’t really a negotiation but a discussion. But towards the end we saw Congressman Brady’s famous skills as a negotiator. For most of the meeting he told us, in a manner that ranged from feisty to friendly, why the issues we raised were either unfair or impossible for him to resolve. But as our breakfast was drawing to a close, he suggested some ways in which he might be able to help, both him and us.
One suggestion was that some of our activists ask ward leaders to appoint us to vacant committee person slots or become associate committee people. Ward leaders tend to be suspicious of new people in general and progressive activists in particular. Congressman Brady offered to help overcome that barrier.
Of course, in some ways, this is a suggestion that could help the party more than progressives in the short run. If we are not careful, becoming associated with the ward machinery could undermine the efforts of Neighborhood Networks to create an alternative organization that is working to challenge party endorsed candidates. But the very loose structure of the party has enabled those of us who are already committee people to support progressive candidates even when our ward leaders do not. And, over the long term, we all know that the real structural change we progressives want will only come about people who share our views about how the party should be run become the majority of committee members in a majority of wards. So Congressman Brady’s offer to smooth our entry into the party can be an important contribution to creating the Democratic Party of the future we envision.
It is also an acknowledgment that the party clearly needs new blood. The average age of Committee People is pretty high. (It is roughly comparable to the average age of people who regularly attend the Philadelphia Orchestra. In both places, I tend to be on the young side.) Many committee member positions are unfilled, lots of committee members are not terribly active, and some do not even vote. Moreover, the city is changing, and the kinds of incentives that get people to do the hard work of grass roots politics are changing as well. Fewer people are willing to do this work for patronage jobs and the ability to help their neighbors deal with city agencies. More Philadelphians, whether they associate with the progressive movement or not, are motivated by an idealistic concern about public policy in the city, state, and nation. (And that’s not to say that getting snow removed and trash picked up and trees planted and gas turned on for a poor person late on her payments is not idealistic as well. It very much is. I hope progressive activists never lose sight of the importance of those individual concerns.)
Congressman Brady also suggested, openly in some cases, and by implication in others, that he could and would do more to help particular progressive candidates from time to time.
That was, again, an acknowledgment that progressive activists play important role in the party—and that while we will work with the party in November, we are going to challenge it in May. And it is also an acknowledgment that, as a confederation not a monarchy, factions in the party will always be in conflict with one another in May. I think Congressman Brady was recognizing that the work we do in November gives some us grounds for consideration in May. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that the organizational effort we put forward in November will give us the strength on the ground to gain power—and thus demand consideration—in May. For one thing I think we all acknowledge is that no one gets political power just because they think their hearts are pure and their ideas are right. We progressives are going to have to organize and then organize some more if we want to change the Democratic Party and the city.
As I have said before—and Congressman Brady used the same metaphor yesterday—the Chairman of the Democratic Party has to juggle a lot of balls. We progressives are one of them. As we become a bigger and bigger ball, he is going to have to pay more attention to keeping us in the air. And he will want to do that so that our party, which has had serious factional squabbles long before we came on the scene, comes together in November to defeat Republicans. Making this happen has always been the central role of Bob Brady in our party.
If there was one thing unsaid but implicit in our meeting yesterday, it is that we progressives actually do appreciate the work the party does. Living in a city run by one of the last great Democratic machines does have certain advantages, after all. Without a strong organization, many people in Philadelphia might have become Republicans which would have hurt our efforts to elect Democrats in Washington and Harrisburg. And we all explicitly agreed that getting people out to vote is something critical to our efforts as Democrats. The party machine does do some of this work, although it needs our help.
The party machine does do some of this work, although it needs our help. And Congressman Brady was very interested in some of our ideas—which I’ve written about before–for non-partisan ways of encouraging people to vote.
Finally, I have to come back to Congressman Brady himself. We did not agree with everything he said. And what we hope is an ongoing relationship with him is not going to deter progressives from continuing to work to change the party and the city–not that Congressman Brady ever suggesed such a thing. But I think it is fair to say that most of us thought that we had met a master of the art of political juggling.