Mar 27, 2008 3:49 PM
I have asked retiree Tom Murphy, the former UFT director of legislation/political action and a present member of our RTC Executive Board, to share his insights into the current national political scene in today’s column.
— Chapter Leader Tom Pappas
By TOM MURPHY
Are we on the eve of a new progressive era?
It’s a question I asked with doubts in 2000 and 2004, more hopefully in 2006 and with real optimism this year.
Historian Arthur Schlesinger wrote in “The Cycles in American History” that the children and political heirs of one progressive era would bring about another. The Progressive Era of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson in the early 20th century gave way to retrenchment in the 1920s, but led to the New Deal/Fair Deal advances under Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman that gave us Social Security and the Wagner Act recognizing the right of labor to bargain collectively.
That era ebbed in the 1950s during the Dwight Eisenhower holding years until John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson ushered in a renewed era of progressive legislation that included the Medicare Act and civil rights legislation.
With fits and starts over the last 40 years, labor and progressive political activists have worked to bring about another surge of enlightened reforms. Is it time for a new era?
I think there are reasons for renewed optimism. First there’s the fact that, despite a close loss in the 2004 presidential election, there was the highest turnout of labor and Democrats. By 2006 Americans were reacting to conservative Republican attempts to privatize Social Security, to the failure of the war in Iraq, tax inequities and anti-labor policies. The issues were there and the voters responded by giving the Democrats a majority: 233 to 202 in the House and 51 to 49 in the Senate. This stopped the dangerous Bush onslaught on working people dead in its tracks and gave hope to further electoral victories in this presidential year.
Now it’s 2008 and the Republicans are in free fall. The president’s popularity is at its lowest ebb — somewhere around 37 percent — Americans are war weary, the recession is worsening, wages are stagnant and the health care crisis continues to grow.
At the same time, Democrats are enjoying quite a few advantages. Republicans face fights for 24 Senate seats while the Democrats have only 12 up for election. They’ve been winning in special elections around the country, even capturing the “safe” Republican seat of Speaker Dennis Hastert in that recent special election. We hope this is a bellwether of congressional elections this fall.
Democrats are also enjoying unprecedented turnouts in primaries and caucuses nationwide while the once monolithic Republicans face internal divisions, particularly from the far right. The country is also excited about both Democratic nominees.
Hillary Clinton, our choice for the Democratic nomination, has an outstanding record on progressive issues, especially her health care plan for universal coverage. It mandates that all Americans choose some kind of coverage and respects good employee coverage. She is our best hope to finally achieve universal health care coverage in this country.
Clinton is a staunch defender of labor and education who opposes privatization of Social Security and continued tax breaks for the richest Americans. She favors repairing the damage done to Medicare by the Bush administration and renegotiating NAFTA and other trade agreements in favor of workers’ rights.
What worries me is the possibility of a protracted Democratic contest for the nomination that winds up dividing the party and weakening one or the other candidate for the run against John McCain. I hope the supporters and advocates of Clinton and Barack Obama will not resort to demonizing each other.
It is important to note that the UFT — along with NYSUT and the AFT — were in the vanguard of bipartisan politics, especially on the state and local levels. Republicans and Democrats have often been allies in promoting our members’ public education, labor and human rights interests. Just think of the COLA and pension improvements including the recently passed 55/25 law as well as recent salary increases. It was because of the cooperation of Republicans and Democrats in the state Senate and Assembly and governors (one Republican and one Democratic) that enabled our legislative victories.
But on the national level today there are few moderate Republicans like Jacob Javits or Nelson Rockefeller to work with. In fact, the AFT invited all the presidential candidates from both parties to come before them for consideration. Not one Republican deigned to appear. Since the days of Speaker Newt Gingrich who bragged about making programs like Medicare “wither on the vine,” the national Republican party has grown increasingly conservative. So it is in this context that we approach this year’s congressional and presidential campaigns.
John McCain is a decent man who happens to be all wrong on the issues. He’s wrong in his support of Bush’s attempts to privatize Social Security, wrong on the war, wrong on health care and wrong on taxes. While we can admire and respect his personal qualities, we must oppose his policies and work to defeat him in November.
We’re not going to walk away with this election. Despite our advantages, we will still have a fight on our hands. Hopefully we will have settled on a candidate before the August convention. However and whenever it turns out, we must unite solidly behind whoever that Democratic candidate is and volunteer to work hard on the campaign in whatever capacity we can.
Contributing to COPE is a very important way to help us win in November. There are severe regulations that limit and restrict the use of member dues and union treasury funds to further our political agenda. That is why voluntary COPE contributions are so vital when there is so much at stake.
And retirees have a great deal at stake in the federal, state and city legislative agendas if we are going to stop privatization of Medicare, improve drug coverage under Medicare, seek pension and COLA improvements, protect Social Security and secure national health care. When you think of corporate, pharmaceutical and other well-funded onslaughts arrayed against us, our relatively small individual contributions collectively give us a war chest that enables us to have a powerful voice in the public forum. And this year’s public forum is an election year as important as any in our lifetime.
So take another look at your paystub. Make sure you are a contributor and check how much you are contributing. Perhaps all of us can be a bit more generous in investing in and protecting our own future. We fought to get COPE contributions deducted from our pension checks. This is the time to re-evaluate our contribution level. It is that important.
Remember, we have to keep our eye on the prize. We must win back the White House and widen our margins in Congress. We owe ourselves and the next generation of Americans a New Progressive Era.