Challenges to progressive "resistance" energy -- and some bits that work

Micah Sifry and Lara Putnam have written a powerful indictment of how progressives have wasted the enormous surge of resistance energy let loose by the Trump occupation of the White House.

They are unquestionably correct in some respects. But I think the picture is also more complex. I'm sharing some of their points here and will offer some commentary. They write:

National Democratic and progressive groups together burned through the surge of liberal organizing under Mr. Trump, treating impassioned newcomers like cash cows, gig workers and stamp machines to be exploited, not a grass-roots base to be tended. ... 

Recent studies show that the effectiveness of such approaches varies from small to nil to negative. People who volunteer on campaigns are often nothing like other Americans in their politics. The gulf is particularly wide on the Democratic side, where infrequent and swing voters of all ethnicities, ages and life experiences tend to encounter highly educated, liberal and white volunteers. ...

There are places where resistance energy has successfully built potent local efforts, starting with electing local officials. Lara Putnam reports on studying one such area, outside Pittsburgh. But overall, Democrats have not been able to harness the new energy in a way that wins elections and gains power for progressive policies.

A political party that has few, if any, year-round structures in place to reach voters through trusted interlocutors — and learn from how they respond — can do no more than lurch from crisis to crisis, raising money off increasingly apocalyptic emails, with dire warnings “sounding the alarm” about a democracy in “immediate danger of falling.”  

Republicans, of course, also treat the news as an endless series of crises. But their calls to oppose socialism or critical race theory or transgender-inclusive bathrooms generate energy that flows into local groups that have a lasting, visible presence in their communities, such as anti-abortion networks, Christian home-schoolers, and gun clubs. ... When not connected to such networks, Democrats receiving apocalyptic messages can feel more battered than activated, leading to demoralization and despair. 

... If democracy is indeed on fire, the thing to do is to stop asking people to buy water bottles and organize them into fire brigades instead. Neither the national Democratic Party nor progressive leaders seem to have learned that lesson. They aren’t wrong to call the next election the most important in our lifetimes. And abortion bans and the Jan. 6 committee hearings may well recharge their base. But it’s what the base manages to build with that energy that will matter.

This indictment seems to me to miss some real forces whose modes of organization seem invisible to these analysts.

The "resistance" in the 2020 election included (and still usually includes) a lot more forces than just middle class white progressives. In particular, most of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter eruption in the summer of 2020 lent themselves generously to the wide coalition effort to elect Joe Biden -- certainly not their candidate of choice. And though this is largely outside the radar of white progressives, there is some real organization and base building that lives under the label BLM.

Likewise, the Sunrise Movement, a very diverse assemblage of young climate activists with a plan, is a real force doing its darnedest to create a sustainable society they can hope to live in. These are not pie-in-the-sky college students; they believe they are fighting the extinction of their future. And because they know viscerally that survival requires power, many quite pragmatically threw themselves into replacing Trump.

Of course the labor movement also kept fighting through the Trump years, more and less efficaciously. The force of organized working people also disappears in this analysis. In most areas that have effective on the ground Democratic-supporting campaign programs, labor remains the key coalition component.

Progressive institutional forms may look weak or too new to matter to a broad coalition. They don't had the history of evangelical churches or gun enthusiast clubs. But the future is going to have to be different and new organizational forms are struggling to emerge.

I need to add that I have some sympathy for liberal progressives who find that their supporters are simply clustered in the wrong locations, living where it's hard to put their energy to good use. I live in such a place. Big cities can be prone to producing loud progressive noise and infighting over not much. No wonder it's attractive to aspiring resistance organizations to use people on tasks of dubious electoral effect, such as mass texting or mailing postcards.

Some of the best of emerging forces in very blue cities have organized themselves to send their members to work where organized local forces can use them well. For example, Seed the Vote in the San Francisco Bay Area does this.

This is what I've been able to do with myself for several election cycles. I am right now working in Nevada with UniteHERE/the Culinary Workers to keep this knife-edge state blue. There are paid canvasser positions still available.

And short term volunteers are also welcome. Let's get out and knock those door and talk with voters.