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You didn't read the bill...OK.......Now play it all off like its 100 yrs ago, its not, and its a problem dems are now far underwater about.......
Maybe a 5000 a day threshold had something to do with it too...
Shall we split the 5000 among NYC, Chicago, DC, Denver and San Fran
Its only a thousand a day
Women 47% to 46%..New York Times/Siena College poll
In the Times/Siena poll, Trump led Biden among women by a 47% to 46% margin among likely voters. Meanwhile, men backed Trump over Biden 49% to 42%.
The poll also showed Biden ahead among suburban voters, a key group that will play a significant role in races up and down the ballot.
Among this group, Biden led Trump 47% to 44% among likely voters.
Seems the suburbs and women may be effected by the economy and consider other things too.....Not just one trick ponies as dems seem to take them for granted for....
Times-Siena
https://www.businessinsider.com/poll-biden-trump-women-suburban-voters-economy-inflation-2024-3
You obviously didn't read all the fact checking eh.....Two parties always trying to mislead the US,,,
As said before, one lies, one spins,,,but many consider spin a lie too......
Lankford and dem border misinformation...
You remember him I'm sure....
Dem smugness on immigration has come back to haunt....Deservedly so,,
Now you have to call better than 60% of the country bigots :)
And sanctuary cities ? They aren't being smug about it anymore are they.....
Everyone knows Who's winning and losing Monopoly
Only 2 sides of the board still left playing.......So good analogy, people are 'reminded' of it day in and day out
Monopoly :)
Yeah manners have gone to hell in a hand basket haven't they, and no adults in the room to say, Children! Progressives have of a way of calling out the least of words as offensive, but they are the biggest offenders of all.......
Yep ,from speech to race, religion, politics and on to offensiveness, progressives now define hypocrisy....
So, "Just so you know we see it clearly" ;)
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173999225
looking a bit silly now aren't ya....
So Sorry, used you to make a point about progressives.........
Christian fundamentalists deserve mockery,...So to Muslims, Jews or Hindus? Another double standard progressives have,,,,,Well blatantly hypocritical
Enjoy the show everybody....
Think I'm surprised, even a little bit,,I'd expect nothing less, but always hope for much much more out of such a useful tool...
Doesn't bode well for us does it
Enjoy SNL bet you will get your skit ;) Fingers crossed
So do progressives, lol,,,,,SNL soon!
The populace isn't the least bit interested, but those interested in shaming her aren't interested in them....a world that's finally lost its last ounce of integrity....
Remember this,,,,,,,,
Still worried about KitchenGate eh..... Time for that person--or persons--to step up to the plate.
Maybe a witness will come forward
Hmmm, And the fact checking on Biden was as bad as what's her name rebuttal speech.....
Glad you agree on the article....And you got my reminder about Kennedy......
Didn't say Mockery keeps racism alive...Progressives do, MSNBC, need I say more....
Yeah manners have gone to hell in a hand basket haven't they, and no adults in the room to say, Children! Progressives have of a way of calling out the least of words as offensive, but they are the biggest offenders of all.......
The writing was to how progressives handled and made history in the past dealing with nearly the exact same issues we are today.......
The writer had a point about blowing it, they didn't back then, they did this time around.......
Good SOTU poll.....Rich! you all quoting a poll after all the chit you all have said about them, but I expect no less from this group,,,,,,,,,,Difference is, I listen to the polls and dems haven't only dismissed them and in doing so dismissing the people...... Thats a good poll, means people liked his performance as with most STOU polls....
Things will settle in a week or so as they always do and we'll get another read.........But Biden squandered his last opportunity to make any attempt at unity in this country, like he squandered the last 3 yrs........ I call him Buck, short for Buchanan...
This one 1 is a yr old but to my point,,,,,we will see from here,,,,,,wonder what the same polling would say today
..........................
Biden’s impact on the tone of political debate in the U.S.
Today, 39% of Americans say Biden has changed the tone of national political debate for the worse since taking office, while 20% say he has changed it for the better and 40% say he has not changed it much either way.
About half of Americans (53%) say “stands up for what he believes in” describes Biden very or fairly well, while only about half as many (27%) say “inspiring” describes him similarly. These views are largely unchanged since last August.
About two-thirds of Americans say they are not too or not at all confident in Biden to make wise decisions about immigration policy (65%) or to deal effectively with China (65%). Nearly as many express low levels of confidence in him to work effectively with Congress (62%), to make good decisions about economic policy (61%) or to handle an international crisis (60%).
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/04/07/assessments-of-biden-and-his-administration/
So the plan is to beat populism with more of the same? Thats a bad plan historically....
So of neither party does anything meaningful that makes it ok? Why are dems so underwater on all the major issues voter are concerned about,,, You lead on one, abortion.....Do you think people will see election hyperbole as your willingness to actually fix anything with the approval the Last three years you have earned?
edit: That's when historically people change the presidency in elections
No, but rwnuts would be a yes........Nice to see some people that see through both
They weren't reforms at all... It was just an expansion of dem policies that weren't to the issues, just payouts from the government that weren't even paid for and lied about constantly by dems on tv.....They would adjust sunset provisions instead of prioritizing.....
Nowhere were they taking on the corps and financial institutions in any meaningful manor
The filibuster?.....No party is worthy of having complete control without some bipartisan support....
People are sick of woke and the tide is turning since you have gone to ridiculous extremes.......Even your KitchenGate shows its hard to take you seriously.......Much rather solve complex problems
Democrats see polls as overestimating Trump’s strength
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4518985-democrats-see-polls-as-overestimating-trumps-strength/amp/
Former President Trump led President Biden in a recent national New York Times/Siena College poll by 5 percentage points, prompting a campaign spokesperson for the Democrat to argue polling “consistently overestimates Donald Trump while underestimating Joe Biden.”
The remark is emblematic of a deeper skepticism of Trump’s strength in certain Democratic circles.
Biden allies point to primary results this cycle that show Trump underperforming his polling numbers and failing to capture moderate voters, as well as nonpresidential cycles under Biden where Democrats outperformed projections.
“We’ve got a long way to go. We’ve got a lot of work to do. But I think everyone in this town … is overestimating their strengths and underestimating ours,” said Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg.
Some Democrats were quick to dismiss The New York Times poll in particular.
Strategists were puzzled at the poll’s finding that women were equally split between Trump and Biden at 46 percent each, given exit polls in 2020 found Biden won women by 15 percentage points.
Democrats also questioned the poll’s findings that Trump was leading Biden by 6 points among Latino voters because Biden won that group by 33 percentage points in 2020, according to exit polls. Multiple Democratic strategists and pollsters noted 97 percent of interviews with Latinos surveyed for the poll were conducted in English.
Even Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), who ended his long-shot primary bid against Biden on Wednesday, was skeptical of the poll’s findings.
“When the NYT/Sienna poll shows me at 12%, you better believe it is flawed,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Only 5% even know who I am.”
The Biden campaign’s belief that Trump is overestimated by polls is largely driven by the fact that voter behavior has not matched projections, including during this year’s primary elections.
Even as Trump has coasted toward the GOP nomination, winning all but two primary contests by huge margins, he has fallen short of what polls projected and has struggled with the voters who will likely play an outsized role in November.
Decision Desk HQ polling averages showed Trump projected to win the Michigan primary by 49 percentage points, and he ultimately defeated Nikki Haley by 42 percentage points. In South Carolina, he was projected to win by 29 points and ultimately carried the state by 20 points over Haley. In New Hampshire, Trump was projected to win by 14 points, according to Decision Desk, and won the primary by 11 points.
At the same time, Trump has hit his numbers in some races, including in Virginia — where polling averages showed him ahead by 25 percent, and he won by 27 percent.
Amy Walter of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report wrote Trump is entering the general election campaign “in strongest shape ever.”
Election Day is still roughly eight months away, but polling has shown Trump leading Biden in a likely rematch of the 2020 race.
The Decision Desk HQ average of national polls shows Trump ahead of Biden by roughly 2 percentage points, a potential warning sign for Democrats given Trump lost the popular vote even when he won the Electoral College vote in 2016.
The swing state data isn’t much better for Biden, according to Decision Desk HQ data.
Tags: Arizona, Donald Trump, Georgia, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Michigan, Pennsylvania leads Biden in Georgia by an average of 7 percentage points, in Arizona by 5 percentage points, in Pennsylvania by an average of 4 percentage points and in Michigan and Wisconsin by an average of 3 percentage points.
Biden won each of those states in 2020, and with particularly narrow margins in Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia.
“No, President Biden, the polls are accurate. Americans just don’t like you for destroying our economy and our borders,” said Jason Miller, a senior Trump campaign adviser.
There are signs Biden may be underestimated, though. While thousands of Democratic primary voters cast ballots for “uncommitted” in protest of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, pollsters said many of those voters are likely to rally to the president’s side once the general election arrives.
“It is clear that there is some protest vote amongst regular Democratic voters in the primaries, and since polls are a snapshot in time this is what they are capturing,” said Scott Tranter, director of data science for Decision Desk HQ. “But historical vote patterns tell us staunch partisans usually come home, and as such I expect Biden to get back many of those voters.”
Rosenberg, the Democratic strategist, argued perhaps the strongest evidence that the polls are wrong about Trump is the reality that Democrats continue to win elections, particularly in the aftermath of the 2022 Supreme Court decision ending Roe v. Wade.
Without Trump on the ballot in 2022, Democrats defied expectations of a “red wave” sweeping Republicans into power in Congress. Democrats added a seat to their Senate majority, while Republicans captured a four-seat majority in the House, a smaller margin than expected.
Polls in Washington’s Senate race between Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and GOP candidate Tiffany Smiley showed a close race in the closing weeks, but Murray won by roughly 15 percentage points.
In 2023, Democrats retained control of the governor’s mansion in deep-red Kentucky and won a key Wisconsin Supreme Court race thanks in large part to abortion messaging.
Voters also voted to protect abortion rights in red states like Kansas and Ohio, and Democrats won special elections in the Pennsylvania state house and most recently in New York’s 3rd Congressional District, where Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), outperformed polls by roughly 4 percentage points.
“To me, the most significant electoral data out there is we keep winning elections,” Rosenberg said.
“It’s important to not rely on polls but to match it with what people are doing when they actually vote. When people go vote, Trump is underperforming public polling,” he added.
The flaw in that argument is Trump was not on the ballot in 2022.
And when Trump has been on the ballot, he’s tended to perform better than polls predict.
Polling in the 2016 presidential race missed significantly, leading to a surprise Trump victory even as he lost the popular vote.
A final RealClearPolitics average of polls in Michigan projected then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton would carry the state by 3.6 percentage points. Trump won the state by 0.3 percent, or less than 11,000 votes.
The RealClearPolitics polling average had Clinton ahead of Trump by 6.5 percentage points in Wisconsin, where Trump won by 0.7 percent.
And in Pennsylvania, Clinton was projected to win by 2.1 percent, according to polling averages, and Trump carried the state by 0.7 percent.
Polling in the 2020 election was much closer to the final result, but even in some cases, Trump overperformed expectations on Election Day.
The final RealClearPolitics average in Georgia had Trump ahead in the state by 1 percentage point, but Biden won the state by 0.3 percent, or about 12,000 votes.
Elsewhere, though, Trump fared better than polling predicted, even in defeat.
The RealClearPolitics average had Trump down 6.7 percentage points in Wisconsin, a state he lost by 0.7 percent. In Michigan, polling averages showed Biden ahead by 4.2 percentage points before Election Day, and he won the state by 2.8 percent.
Trump, who has long quipped to supporters that he only likes polls if they show him ahead, is sure to tout surveys in the 2024 race as long as they are favorable to him. But both sides ultimately expect a close race in November, regardless of what polls show in March.
“National polling, eight months out, confirms what we know to be true: this will be a very close general election contest like all modern presidential elections are — but, we have a clear path to victory,” the Biden campaign wrote in Wednesday’s memo.
Depends what your active about doesn't it.....Most most of the issues back then are the same issues we are once again experiencing...........
Turn MSNBC on see if they are reporting broader issues the effect everyone or is it a narrow field of view based on us v them..........Do the same with fox, you will get the same result
Problem being, no one will tell their followers to shut up and lets start doing what's best for the country.....One thing I note which is counter intuitive,,,, fox will at least report the economy as the majority of the population sees it (only for political purposes mind you, not to solve anything) while the left leaning media reports the economy from the upper 40% of the population view and claim everything is fine just look at this data....Not the effect that data has now created..
If I was to highlight it would be the last sentence...
........................
CNN
—
The public’s long-held pessimism about the economy shows signs of easing since last year, a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS finds. But even with the uptick, many Americans’ views of the economy – and the nation as a whole – remain bleak.
Only 35% of Americans say that things in the country today are going well, but that’s an improvement from the 28% who felt positively about the state of affairs last fall. And while just 26% of Americans say they feel the economy is starting to recover from the problems it faced in the past few years, that’s also up from 20% last summer and 17% in December 2022.
Overall, 26% of Americans currently say that economic conditions have stabilized, and 48% say they believe the economy remains in a downturn. Yet, the US economy has been growing strongly since 2020, and the jobs report released Friday showed a stunning gain of 353,000 jobs last month, a stronger-than expected kickoff for 2024.
Of those who think the economy is recovering, nearly three-quarters (73%) say President Joe Biden’s economic policies have helped to improve things. An even broader 83% of those who say the economy is continuing to devolve say his policies have instead made things worse.
Views of the nation’s economic trajectory are inflected by partisanship, with the uptick in sentiment coming mainly among Democrats (49% now say the economy is recovering, up 10 percentage points from July) and independents (24%, up 7 points). Just 6% of Republicans say they see a recovery beginning, nearly unchanged from last summer.
But within the Democratic Party, there’s also a significant age divide, with most younger Democrats less likely to see the economy on the upswing. About one-third of Democrats younger than 45 (35%) say that the economy is starting to recover, compared with 63% of those 45 and older. And more broadly, a narrow majority of Democratic adults younger than 45 (54%) say that things in the country are going badly, a view shared by only about one-quarter of their older counterparts (22%).
Recent Commerce Department numbers show the US economy remaining robust, CNN reported in January, with the first jobs report for 2024 expected to look strong.
When Americans who say the economy remains in a downturn were asked to explain why they feel that way, most cite inflation and the cost of living generally (50%) or the price of specific items like food (9%) or housing (7%), with many pointing to their own financial situations. Another 13% who feel the economy is still in decline cite Biden or Democratic policies, and 9% name wages and income. Fewer mention jobs, gas prices or the stock market.
“Everything that matters in life is continuing to get more expensive, regardless of what the inflation index says,” wrote one Republican from Georgia who responded to the poll.
“Everything is still expensive and many people are struggling with that,” said a Republican-leaning independent from Louisiana. “Consumer debt is way up. Wall Street is doing well but that doesn’t help the average worker.”
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/02/politics/cnn-poll-economy/index.html
Kitchen Gate? Progressives have been ridiculous this past decade or so....Not the progs of the civil rights movements nor of the past....
No, prog leaders fail their followers by leading them down paths that are removed from common sense and the historic times that are now repeating....
So enjoy your mockery, when mockery and bad jokes have been nearly a whole focus of modern dems, keeping alive racism as if the country hasn't made progress beyond our wildest dreams in comparison to the past....Keep digging for the next ridiculous issue to advocate for instead of the broad realistic problems that effect society.... Make things worse with the modern divide which has grown dangerous beyond comprehension for America instead of better...
Continue to distract from the fact your taking an easy way out when the hard necessary path is left untraveled......May remember Kennedy in his Moon speech, "We do these things because they are hard" and that's how America became great......
I posted this in it's entirety but I wanted you to personally receive the Title and link as you lead folks who willingly follow, but you take them in a downward direction instead of up....
Progressives Should Read Progressive History—So They Don’t Blow It This Time
The original progressive reform movement was flexible and broad. That’s why it worked.
By JOSHUA ZEITZ June 01, 2019
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/06/01/progressives-history-227037/
Progressives Should Read Progressive History-So They Don’t Blow It This Time
The original progressive reform movement was flexible and broad. That’s why it worked.
By JOSHUA ZEITZ June 01, 2019
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/06/01/progressives-history-227037/
"Medicare for All." "The Green New Deal." Calls to overhaul the Supreme Court and replace the Electoral College. Many activists today are heralding a new progressive movement—a successor to the vibrant reform coalition that swept both major political parties in the early years of the 20th century.
There’s more than a little truth to this comparison. America’s current reality—marked by rising income inequality, the concentration of political and economic power and changing patterns of work and leisure—bears uncanny similarity to conditions that produced a burst of reform activity more than 120 years ago, including measures to improve urban health and safety standards, ameliorate labor conditions and introduce more efficiency and transparency in state and local government.
But if contemporary progressives aspire to drive the same degree of change as the progressive movement of the early 20th century, they might take a cue from their ideological forebears.
Many of today’s progressives define their movement by commitment to a specific menu of policies, and those who don’t share this very specific set of goals are easily read out of the progressive movement, typecast as “neoliberals” or “corporate liberals.” This kind of rigidity is something that their progressive forerunners never exhibited. The progressive movement of the early 1900s was successful precisely because it was flexible and incorporated a wide range of views—so much so that the movement defies easy definition.
Indeed, historians have struggled for decades to characterize the progressive movement. Was it a coalition of middle-class reformers dedicated to good government? A top-down drive by politicians and businessmen to smooth out the sharper edges of industrial capitalism and blunt the appeal of socialism? The political project of urban working men and women who demanded better working and living conditions? A full assault against concentrated economic power? A case could be made for any of these interpretations.
In some ways, the progressive movement is hard to pin down because it was no movement at all, but rather an ever-shifting coalition of organized groups and individuals who agreed on certain issues and disagreed on others. They worked together and in opposition with equal fluidity and enjoyed strongholds within each of the two major political parties. Bound together by a common self-definition and guided by malleable principles, they entertained a diversity of thought and action. It was precisely this wide range of thought and action that made progressivism so powerful.
***
America at the turn of 20th century was a wealthy nation distinguished by widespread income inequality and a growing concentration of wealth and political power. Increasingly, it seemed, a small number of companies controlled access to and pricing for the goods and services that people consumed and dictated how much ordinary families took home in pay. Citizens welcomed the conveniences of new technology and a burgeoning consumer economy but fretted over their general loss of personal autonomy.
Visiting in 1900, an English traveler marveled that “life in the United States is a whirl of telephones, telegrams, phonographs, electric bells, motors, lifts, and automatic instruments.” In constant dollars, adjusted for inflation, the country’s gross national product grew from $11 billion in the 1880s to an eye-popping $84 billion by 1919. By the mid-1920s, almost two-thirds of American households were electrified, representing a dramatic break with the 19th century. It meant that the typical nonrural family (electricity still remained rare in the countryside) could replace hours of labor with the satisfying hum of the electric refrigerator or vacuum cleaner. Americans also ate better and more cheaply than ever before and had more money left over each month to indulge in mass-produced clothing and new “public amusements,” such as professional sporting events, dance halls, amusement parks and nickelodeons. “You just spent your summer canning in 1890,” recalled a housewife from Muncie, Indiana, “but the canned goods you buy today are so good that it isn’t worth your while to do so much.”
But prosperity did not beget equality. In 1890, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans claimed 51 percent of the nation’s real estate and property. Two decades later, the Brookings Institution found that 42 percent of households lived on the edge of rough subsistence. The combined income of the top 0.1 percent of families equaled that of the bottom 42 percent. Cyclical unemployment and underemployment were the norm for many working people. In other words, the material conditions associated with poverty had changed, but many people remained poor.
Business consolidation also created schisms. Between 1895 and 1905 alone, 157 holding companies swallowed thousands of independent businesses and came into control of 40 percent of the market share in their specific industry verticals. Men who had so recently enjoyed a modicum of autonomy as independent farmers and artisans bristled at the regimented and monotonous life of wage work, whether in mines, factories or offices. Working and living conditions in the nation’s bustling cities grew dangerous in the absence of regulation. Farmers chafed at the outsize influence of banks and railroads that dictated their cost basis and profit margins. People increasingly felt themselves powerless at work—helpless in the face of large, influential interests that controlled the nation’s economic life—and pawns in a political system rife with corruption and generally unresponsive to the needs of everyday Americans.
Little wonder, then, that the first two decades of the 20th century gave rise to a vibrant reform spirit that expressed itself in a wide spectrum of political, economic and social causes—from settlement houses, which provided social services to impoverished urban immigrants, and advocacy for public health improvements and municipal reform, to occupational safety regulations (particularly for women and children), the direct election of United States senators, statutes governing the food and drug industries, and crackdowns on economic trusts.
In some basic fashion, these various progressive causes reflected a dissatisfaction with the status quo and a determination to restore economic and political power to ordinary Americans. But to call it a “movement” belies the very clear divisions and points of divergence between the broad cast of characters who identified as progressives.
Some of these divisions are obvious. Rural farmers who championed railroad and bank regulation often had little sympathy for urban Americans—particularly new immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe whose claims to both citizenship and whiteness seemed suspect. Though farmers principally blamed railroads and intermediaries like grain-elevator operators for their troubles—in 1908, a federal commission found that 80 percent of farmers felt they enjoyed no influence over the prices their products commanded—they often lashed out at distant cities, too. In 1900, dairy farmers withheld milk products from Boston until they could secure price increases; syndicates selling to wholesalers in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago soon applied their own supply boycotts.
William Jennings Bryan, a populist orator who helped ignite the farmer rebellion of the 1890s and later anchored progressive forces in Woodrow Wilson’s Cabinet, was a fierce opponent of large economic combinations—the hulking monopolies and holding companies that had come to dominate the nation’s economy—and supported a state takeover of railroads, arguing that “public ownership is necessary where competition is impossible.” These views were common among progressives, rural and urban alike, but there remained a sharp cleavage between town and country. Bryan tapped into a deep reserve of rural resentment when he famously thundered, “Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.”
Progressives were also divided on race and civil rights. Some prominent white progressives like Oswald Garrison Villard and Joel Spingarn—and, in his own halting way, Theodore Roosevelt—joined black progressives in championing civil rights. Others—notably, Wilson, the Virginia-born progressive president who segregated the federal workforce, and Rebecca Felton, an outspoken feminist from Georgia who became the first woman to serve in the United States Senate—were extreme proponents of Jim Crow laws. Felton famously argued that “if it takes lynching to protect women’s dearest possession from drunken ravening human beasts, then I say lynch a thousand a week.”
Self-styled progressives were also at odds over women’s suffrage. Social reformers, particularly many who came of political age in the settlement movement, agreed with Jane Addams, the founder of Hull-House in Chicago, that women required the vote to fulfill their traditional roles as mothers, wives and guardians of the home. In effect, they didn’t challenge the traditional idea of separate spheres for each gender but used that notion to demand a voice in public affairs. Municipal governments in the early 20th century were notoriously corrupt and inefficient; women, argued Addams and other progressive advocates of women's suffrage, required the vote to ensure the provision of adequate schools, parks, sanitation and building and work codes. Not all progressives agreed. One study of 400 self-identified progressive congressmen who served throughout the era found its respondents almost evenly split on suffrage. Given the central role women played in progressive politics, the struggle for women’s political rights created a notable and often bitter split in reform circles.
It wasn’t just that progressives—like nonprogressive Americans—were divided by region, race and gender. They also differed in how they understood the very meaning of progressivism. For many in the movement—like reform mayors such as Mark Fagan of Jersey City, New Jersey; Seth Low of New York; Tom Johnson of Cleveland; and Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones of Toledo, Ohio—progressivism was principally about checking the power of large interests and providing better and more honest government to citizens. For settlement house leaders like Addams and Florence Kelley, it was about empowering poor urban residents by improving the environment in which they lived.
Progressives even disagreed over so fundamental an issue as what representative democracy should look like. While many in the movement concerned themselves with the reinvigoration of America’s political institutions (the direct election of senators, for example—a landmark progressive achievement), other progressive causes demonstrated darker, antidemocratic tendencies.
In American cities, many of which were rife with mismanagement and corruption, progressives’ infatuation with expertise and organization led to several innovations designed to reduce the power of political machines and increase the power of individual citizens, including the short ballot, which reduced the number of offices up for election at one time, thereby allowing voters to research their options more thoroughly.
But in 1913, the city of Dayton, Ohio, went a step further and introduced the city manager model wherein elected officials delegated administrative authority and responsibilities to a professional manager who had not been elected. As often as not, city managers pulled authority from elected officials who represented growing immigrant and working-class populations. The city manager system might have combated a corrupt political machine, but it also took power from the voting public, generating fissures between working-class voters and middle-class reformers, even as they supported the same health, safety and workplace reforms.
In the same way that middle-class progressives favored managerial expertise over participatory democracy, they also invoked science and standards to lock working-class Americans out of white-collar professions. For many decades, the barrier to practice law or medicine had been low, in keeping with the democratic spirit of Jacksonian America. Yet by 1901, 25 states adopted progressive reforms that required specialized education and licensing for doctors and lawyers.
The process improved standards, but at a price. Institutions that trained women and African Americans failed to achieve or quickly lost accreditation, leaving the professional ranks more white, male and elite. In 1912, the American Bar Association expelled three recently admitted members after learning they were black—a “question of keeping pure the Anglo-Saxon race.” When Wilson nominated Louis Brandeis, a Jewish American, to the Supreme Court in 1916, ABA President Elihu Root, who had served as secretary of State under Theodore Roosevelt, andsix of the organization’s former presidents opposed the appointment. They reasoned that he lacked the proper character to serve.
One can see shades of these divisions in our current politics. It’s no less difficult today to sustain a diverse coalition that draws from the ranks of both middle-class professionals and working-class strivers. Their interests are not always aligned.
***
These fractures were on full display during the election of 1912, when two progressive candidates faced off against each other and against the Republican incumbent, William Howard Taft. Running as the Democratic nominee was Wilson, whose closest adviser, Brandeis, was an outspoken opponent of trusts who believed that government should “regulate competition instead of monopoly, for our industrial and our civil freedom go hand in hand.” At the head of the breakaway Bull Moose Party, were Theodore Roosevelt and his adviser Herbert Croly, who accepted the enduring reality of economic trusts and championed an equally strong federal government to check their influence.
Americans—then and now—find the 1912 election confusing, as both candidates embraced many of the same policies: the abolition of child labor, new protections for workers and unions, a moderate tariff to boost American manufacturing, closer government regulation of the banking sector. Indeed, what makes progressivism so difficult to fathom is that its adherents were as often opposed as aligned, and even when they were aligned, they worked from a different set of principles.
However much they differed in background and disagreed on policy and principle, though, progressives shared a common faith. They tended to believe that systemic problems could be solved through study, scientific method and modern methods of governance and bureaucracy. Economists, sociologists and social workers flooded government commissions and offices, while “muckraking” journalists drew on the work of nonprofit think tanks to surface data that, they believed, would compel rational voters to action.
Progressives also shared a basic commitment to checking the rise of big business with the counterweight of organized producer and consumer groups.
Finally, progressives tended to view social disorder—as manifested by such urban ills as crime, vagrancy, spousal abandonment, drunkenness and unemployment—as a byproduct of environment rather than poor morals. This view represented a sharp break with earlier thinking that held individuals solely responsible for their lot in life.
In short, if there were no “progressive movement,” in the strict sense of the term, we can identify strains of a progressive persuasion. And progressives were, for a time, wildly successful. They achieved meaningful workplace, health and safety regulations; reformed the political system largely for the good; championed open space and conservation measures; and created a regulatory regime that was at least somewhat more capable of checking the growing concentration of corporate power and wealth.
But they didn’t achieve this with a single, inflexible voting bloc. Being a progressive in the opening years of the 20th century didn’t require strict adherence to a party line or blanket support for a set of specific legislative proposals. Because there was no progressive “movement,” in the singular and definitive meaning of the word, progressivism could draw freely from all sectors of society without demanding even broad consensus on basic questions like the morality of economic concentration or the right of women to vote. It was a malleable and shifting coalition of people who recognized common problems, believed in a rational and fact-based approach to resolving the challenges of modern society and animated public life with an innovative and optimistic spirit.
The same could be said of the New Deal coalition of the 1930s or the conservative coalition of the 1970s and 1980s, both of which drew from diverse wells of support and thought. Living history in real time, it was easy for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s and Ronald Reagan’s acolytes to believe their movements made perfect sense. But in retrospect, both have proved more difficult to describe with precision.
The lesson for today applies to people engaged in politics across the spectrum—from “new” progressives to free-market conservatives and just about everyone in the middle. Political moments that leave a lasting impression are often more complicated and textured than they seem in the moment. They defy easy definition. They’re made up of a common spirit more than by a legislative laundry list. That’s what makes them so compelling.
Have a good night, and Thanks Again
The great kitchen caper...oh my
Maybe get Garland to appoint a special prosecutor..
Can't wait to see the full report on MSNBC.....Worth recording.....More and more there is little dif between rw crazies and the left wing ones....
Did I mention gullible?
Like cable news, at least you all are entertaining,,,,,, thanks
Remember Enron,,, all the nerds that thought they were cool and how they went on and on till everything collapsed around them....
Its what happens when you find ways to ignore reality....When your behind on all the issues I guess you gotta do something.........Too many fact checks to discuss....
And this is the party that's in power...No wonder
Maybe they have a pizza parlor too....Imagine what they might be doing in the basement
Someone needs to get to the bottom of this:.....Yes by god, important issues like that are top on the important list.....
I said the other day progs were gullible, now a lighting highlight is the news of the day
your misogynistic rant about women..........Nurturing is an endearing quality women have, noting it is not discrimination, misogynistic or anything other than admiring them for it...
Progressives Lol, just don't get how bull like that after what I said is making the whole dem party look like idiots.........
May check that fact checking posted earlier....;)