So, on a forum I'm on, someone asked leftists this question: "what's your beef with pragmatic progressives". Now, most of the people answering this are full on leftists whose answers were basically akin to "but they're CAPITALISTS!" and I am a capitalist, and by these peoples' standards, a pragmatic progressive. I mean, I'm a progressive who is a fan of policy and being pragmatic in terms of accomplishing goals.
Yet, at the same time, the term "pragmatic progressive" makes me cringe and gives me PTSD of the 2016 election cycle, so I do want to, as someone who is middle of the road between the 'center left" and the far left, explain my disdain with the term.
The term really does go back to 2016 and Hillary Clinton, who called herself a "pragmatic progressive" or a "progressive who likes to get things done". Clinton and her supporters were massive gatekeepers of what was "practical" in reality, and often used the terms as a cudgel to attempt to discredit or dissuade people from seeking greater change than they wanted. Take healthcare. Bernie wanted single payer. There's no real reason we can't have single payer. Canada implemented single payer. The UK has the beverridge system which is full on nationalized healthcare. There's no reason the US could not take a system like that and implement it in the US if we wanted to. But yet, a "pragmatic" progressive will say America can't have such a system for...reasons. Bernie himself, had a bill pushing for his single payer system. I read his plan, I agree with his plan, I sign off on his plan, I built my plan in part based on his plan. It works. But a "pragmatic progressive" will say that we cant do that and we need to be "pragmatic" and be for "incremental change." These are clintonian buzzwords intended to limit the overton window. To limit what we can and should aspire to. To tell us that actual positive change is impossible and we have to settle for whatever watered down BS she wanted to give us.
The same applies to everything else. There's no reason we can't have free college. There's no reason we can't have UBI. Or a green new deal. Admittedly, when we talk about doing all of these things at once things get hairy and we gotta prioritize, and I admit my priorities are different than most progressives who put UBI in dead last rather than first, but we all want, generally speaking, similar things. We might debate within the progressive movement the exact programs we should get, but there is some general consensus among the actual progressive left that we need more than the democrats are willing to give us.
Often times, a "pragmatic progressive" or a centrist or liberal of "progressive who wants to get things done" is the fact that a lot of them don't want to. They're complacent with the status quo, and just want a few mild changes around the edges, not long lasting, meaningful change. So they put up these centrist candidates that won't rock the boat or piss off the donors or the growing suburbanite class within the democratic party with high taxes, while basically telling the left they have to accept what they get or else.
And that's why, a good portion of the time, I end up siding with the left over the center.
I admit, in 2024, the left is going a bit overboard. When you start pushing left of Bernie, or Yang, that IS a problem. Because at least those guys have policies. You might disagree with their policies, we can debate the policies, I love discussing actual POLICY on these issues, but they have policies. They have at least a general idea of how they wanna implement their ideas.
The far left doesn't. They literally do want unicorns. Their demands are unreasonable. They start screaming that people arent socialists and communists (see: how they treat andrew yang and elizabeth warren). They start screaming for demands that no president can reasonably reach on the israel-palestine situation. They start just....wanting the unattainable, and purity testing so hard they they're threatening to sink our entire coalition over demands that can't or shouldn't be met. That IS a problem. Because we do need SOME levels of pragmatism. Again, I'm in the middle here of the left wing spectrum. I'm left of most liberals (while arguing being one myself), but I'm not quite a leftist. And while I'm sure leftists have issues with me at this point, I also have issues with them.
But...yeah, I also tend to have a distaste for so called pragmatic progressives. here's the key thing. It isnt that i have anything against pragmatism. I dont think your ideas are worth anything if they can't be implemented, and I do admit, the socialist left has no clue wtf it's doing on that front. BUT....when people throw around "pragmatic", their idea of pragmatism isnt actually based on what's POSSIBLE. They're often using the term to enforce some idea of an overton window of what's possible to cover up their weaponized incompetence. And it is weaponized incompetence. It's not that often times the policies the more sane social democratic left a la bernie or yang wants its impossible. That stuff is well within the overton window for me, it's the fact that these guys don't want to do them. And that's why I tend to hate a distaste for this idea. Clinton popularized it in 2016, and let's face it, whenever they talk like this, they're basically talking down to you like a cable guy from south park. Like oh gee, that's too hard, guess you gotta settle for less. Uh, bullcrap. I want nice things, i'll push for nice things, and if you actually try to pull one over on me, I WILL protest vote you like I did in 2016. It's that simple. Only reason Im more complacent in 2024 is the political context of 2024, which I outlined in my previous article for why Im voting for Biden. Even then, I have to admit Biden partially met some of my standards.
I just wanted to give my opinion on this matter here.
No comments:
Post a Comment