{"id":765,"date":"2005-04-07T23:44:03","date_gmt":"2005-04-07T23:44:03","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:09:06","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:09:06","slug":"pyramiding_prog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=765","title":{"rendered":"Pyramiding Progressive Paralysis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Much of what I decide to blog about blog comes from patterns I see when odd things catch my attention. Sometimes they come from two things juxtaposed. In this case, I’ve got two things and the glimmer of a pattern, but I haven’t yet been able to capture it and set it down. It does talk about one of the two issues closest to my heart – how to remake an effective Democratic Party that’s worth supporting. <\/p>\n

First, Mickey Kaus’ scathing commentary<\/a> on Bill Bradley’s “pyramid” op-ed.<\/p>\n

It’s a small pyramid, but perfectly formed: Bill Bradley’s recent NYT op-ed was so well-constructed my immediate thought, like The Note’s, was that he couldn’t possibly have written it himself. But his prescription was all too familiar and, yes, a recipe for disaster! Bradley wants the Democrats to emulate Republicans and generate ideas from a stable, pyramid-like institutional base–with “Democratic policy organizations” engaged in the “patient, long term development of new ideas or of new ways to sell old ideas.” Just plug in a candidate at the top of this institutional pyramid and … victory!<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The problem, of course, is that the Democratic party’s most stable institutional elements are also its most problematic elements: 1) unions; 2) the civil rights and Latino lobbies; 3) the senior lobby (AARP); 4) institutional feminists (NOW); 5) trial lawyers; 6) Iowa-caucus style “progressives;” and 7) Hollywood emoters. If a national problem could be solved without trampling on the interests of this institutional base, Democrats would have solved it in the decades when they were in power. What’s left are the problems that can’t be solved–even solved in accordance with liberal principles–without trampling on these liberal interest groups: competitiveness, for example, or public education, or entitlement reform. If the Dems’ permanent institutional base is what gets to “develop” and “hone” the ideas to be adopted by the party’s presidential nominee, then the Democrats will in perpetuity be the party of union work rules, lousy teachers, mediocre schools, protectionism, racial preferences, unaffordable entitlements, amnesty for illegals and offensive rap lyrics! That winning collection gets you, what, 35%?<\/p>\n

\nCurrently, the Democrats’ only hope is that once every four years a maverick candidate will come along who tells the party’s permanent institutional base to shove it and actually fashion an appealing platform. The party’s post-Vietnam presidential winners–Carter and Clinton–both fit this pattern. Bradley seems to regard Clinton’s success as a failure because it wasn’t replicated. But it wasn’t replicated because people like Bradley sneered at it, and played instead to the party’s reliable, pyramid-like base. …Over the long run, of course, the Democrats’ institutional problem may at least partly solve itself as the role of unions in the private economy asymptotically approaches zero. … P.S.: Bush’s problems selling his Social Security plan suggest that not everything generated by a mighty idea-honing institutional GOP pyramid succeeds. Crazy thought: Maybe the substance of ideas, and not the mechanism that produces them, is what counts. <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then I read Robert Greene’s article<\/a> in this week’s LA Weekly and an article on the current – highly progressive – City Council’s failure to get very much done.<\/p>\n

Now, after two years of the supposedly progressive Los Angeles City Council, there is \u2014 what? Community-impact studies, a cornerstone of a social-justice movement to give labor and neighbors a say in major development, failed first in the Community Redevelopment Agency, then in the City Council. A proposed ban on grocery-selling big-box superstores turned into an ordinance that simply requires the Wal-Marts of the world to jump through a few extra hoops \u2014 but only in certain parts of town. Inclusionary zoning \u2014 a mandate that builders include affordable units \u2014 has been debated forever but seems perpetually a day, or maybe a week or a month, away from a vote. Housing is still beyond the reach of average wage earners, while many apartments remain unsafe and substandard. Schools are a failed warehouse system for the city\u2019s youth. Cops in a reformed, enlightened Los Angeles Police Department still beat and shoot to death black men and boys in South L.A., and innocent children still are murdered in the crossfire of gang warfare.<\/p>\n

\nSo what happened? Where is the progressive legislation? Why is there no motion to second? Why are progressives split on the city\u2019s leadership? Why is this City Council, far from being the most charismatic in years, so downright \u2014 well \u2014 boring?<\/p>\n

\n\u201cOh, so you’ve noticed,\u201d said an aide from an earlier council who now works for a labor union. \u201cNot much going on there, is there? A lot of talk. Not much walk.\u201d <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something there…what do you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Much of what I decide to blog about blog comes from patterns I see when odd things catch my attention. Sometimes they come from two things juxtaposed. In this case, I’ve got two things and the glimmer of a pattern, but I haven’t yet been able to capture it and set it down. It does […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}