Sigh. Here we go again.
I remember when I was hiking the Glacier Peak Wilderness with a friend when we ran into a roaming Ranger who shared his stories of the dumb questions he used to get asked by tourists. My favorite was “at what altitude do the deer turn into elk?”
In Vermont we had – and now seem to have again – our own political version: how liberal do you have to go for the Dems to become Progs?
As we’ve shown time and time and time again over the years, it’s not that simple. There are Dems who are every bit as lefty as Progs – what distinguishes them is their view of the two-party system… whether they believe third parties are viable, or whether they believe they cause more problems.
But it’s so much easier just to say all Dems are kinda lefty and all Progs are more lefty. All that nuance is just too hard. Case in point, the latest from Bromage (who’s usually excellent, BTW) at 7 Days:
When state Democrats rejected a labor-friendly resolution at its state organizational meeting this fall, Progressives reaffirmed their union support with an identical measure weeks later – and started hinting about a challenge to Shumlin in 2012.
I dunno. Bromage is relatively new to the state, but I don’t think that gets him off the hook here. This is a pretty clear misrepresentation of what happened (as in, kinda-technically true but not actually the “truth”… you know those things), which leads me to believe he’s only half-looking at what happened, and even then through the lens of a preconceived narrative.
The fact is that “Democrats” did not reject the VSEA-supporting resolution. It was passed by two separate Democratic county committees – Lamoille and Washington. I don’t think anyone has suggested that state Democrats wouldn’t have passed it either – the problem was the state Democratic Chair used a questionable rationale to refuse to allow it to come to a vote (presumably not to embarrass the Governor). Then he further (this time using questionable parliamentary procedure) prevented the body from voting to suspend the rules to bring it to the floor anyway. Heck, several Democrats walked out of the meeting.
But Bromage has his deer-elk spectrum, and he’s sticking to it, I guess. He continues:
When the governor is challenged from the left next year – on politics or policy – look for it to come from Pearson and the Progs.
Except for when it comes from progressive Democrats. Gosh darn that reality! It’s just so complicated!
And it’s interesting that David Zuckerman’s question on the “Pollina Warns Shumlin” comments thread has so far not elicited any real response.
It’s a legitimate question, however affiliated or unaffiliated you feel yourself to be; and it certainly merits discussion.
I twitched and pondered over whether to write Bromage, but after having called Sue to task here over similar language and chimed in on another comments thread (and having been one of the Democrats who walked out), I decided to let someone else take this one.
NanuqFC
I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic party. – Paul Wellstone, 2000 presidential exploratory campaign
I think it is important to remember that individual Democrats and their organizations find it possible to be supportive of labor and still not support the adoption of the Lamoille resolution by the state committee. If you start painting anyone who doesn’t support one particular resolution as anti-labor there won’t be too many in the Democratic Party who escape the brush.
Actually the thing that struck me about the Bromage piece was that in this day and age, in a “progressive” column,in a progressive state, Bromage could only find 2 women to highlight. What about Sue Minter? Alex MacLean? just to name two that come immediately to mind. Vermont has one of the highest (if not the highest) percentage of women in the Legislature and there are many women in the Shumlin Adminsitration but still men predominate in lists like this.