INTRODUCTION
The Emerging Progressive Majority

Most Americans are progressive on most issues. By margins of at least two to one, our fellow citizens believe corporations and upper-income people are paying too little in federal taxes; oppose repealing the federal estate tax; favor quality, affordable health care for all “even if it means raising your taxes”; support the idea that the federal Medicare program should negotiate prescription drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies; want federal action to address global warming; would require auto manufacturers to make cars more energy efficient; say laws covering the sale of handguns should be more strict; think labor unions are necessary to protect workers; believe that gays and lesbians should be able to serve openly in the military; and do not want the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.

That’s the good news. Here’s the bad. Most Americans also support traditional conservative principles—limited government, lower taxes, free markets, and personal responsibility. (You’ll see the polling data in Chapter 4.)

In other words, a large group of Americans favor both progressive policy and conservative philosophy. As a result, they may side with either progressives or conservatives, depending on how a political question is framed. These Americans are usually called independents, undecideds, uncommitteds, swing voters, or ticket-splitters. But in this book, they’re called persuadables, because that’s the important thing about them—they’re not part of the progressive/Democratic or conservative/Republican base; they can be persuaded to join either side.

You may well be asking, if they’re so darn persuadable, why have they sided with conservatives so often? During the past four decades, we’ve suffered through twenty-eight years of Republican presidents and “enjoyed” only twelve years with Democratic presidents. From 1994 to 2006, we had a U.S. House of Representatives that was not only controlled by Republicans, but dominated by right-wing extremists. During the same period, the U.S. Senate was only a little less reactionary. Why? Unlike partisans, persuadable voters are usually more interested in a candidate’s philosophy than her list of policy positions.

The Solution

This is not a battle that can be won with a single strategy, a silver bullet. But progressives can go a long way toward altering the balance of power if we agree on and espouse an attractive progressive philosophy. Then voters would favor both our policies and our principles.

This book suggests such a philosophy. The short version is “freedom, opportunity, and security for all.” Chapter 1 explains each of these three concepts, and Chapter 3 lays out the results of a nationwide poll which found that “freedom, opportunity and security for all” is enormously popular among both persuadables and partisans. Most important, it is the only progressive message that outpolls the generic conservative philosophy.

Let me be clear. I am not suggesting that progressives change their positions on public policy. I am saying that there are specific words that represent progressive values, that these values fit together into a coherent vision of a progressive America, and that by using these values, we can communicate our principles in a way that persuadable voters will understand and appreciate. In short, we need to use values to describe our vision—that’s framing the future.

In politics, framing is employed in three ways. An issue can be framed, the way right-wingers have presented the federal estate tax as the “death tax.” A political campaign can be framed, the way Clinton strategists presented the 1992 presidential race as a question of “the economy, stupid.” Or a whole political philosophy can be framed, the way conservatism has been presented as the ideology of “small government, lower taxes, strong military, and moral values.”

Freedom, opportunity, and security can be used in all three situations. It can help progressive candidates defeat their conservative counterparts, help progressive advocates enact legislation, and help rank-and-file progressives win day-to-day arguments.

It’s an Emergency!

There’s no doubt that George W. Bush’s administration has been a catastrophe, and that historians will one day rank him as one of our nation’s very worst presidents. That’s why the next few elections are so critical—the very soul of America hangs in the balance. We’ve got to take back America, and soon, before solutions to national and global problems slip beyond our reach.

But winning elections in the coming years won’t be easy. Despite progressive victories in 2006, the next few elections will be razor close. You can tell by looking at the last few.

In 2000, Vice President Al Gore held all the trump cards. He could claim responsibility for eight years of peace and prosperity. He was smart and flush with accomplishments. His opponent was the tongue-tied son of an unpopular former president. And yet Al Gore won only a bare majority of votes and ultimately lost the election. But if the ballots of just 538 Florida voters who intended to vote for Gore had been counted—Al Gore would have been elected.

In 2004, Senator John Kerry was a terrible standard-bearer. He was as cold as a dead log in the snow. His campaign was as limp as a wet paper napkin. George Bush had all the powers of incumbency, all the money of America’s super-rich, all the party discipline of an authoritarian-style regime—in wartime! And yet, Kerry almost won. If just 59,301 Ohioans had been persuaded to vote for Kerry instead of Bush—less than 0.05 percent of the Americans who voted that day—John Kerry would have been elected.

In 2006, Democrats won control of the United States Senate based on a squeaker in Montana. If a mere 1,782 Montana voters had supported Conrad Burns instead of Jon Tester, the Senate would have remained in GOP hands. The House contest wasn’t quite as close. Still, Republicans would have maintained control if they had won just sixteen more seats. Looking at the closest races, if fewer than 50,000 well-placed voters had switched their support from the Democratic to the Republican candidates, Dennis Hastert would still be Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

And think about what it took for voters to finally embrace the Democrats in 2006: a wildly unpopular president prosecuting a wildly unpopular war; monumental deficits and debt; attempts to destroy bedrock programs like Social Security; corruption on a grand scale (House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Rep. Duke Cunningham, Rep. Bob Ney, and the scandal ignited by lobbyist Jack Abramoff involving Congress, the White House, and Christian conservative Ralph Reed). And even with all that, would Democrats have won if not for the sexual appetites of Congressman Mark Foley?

Here’s some advice for progressives: don’t count on another sex scandal. We get that lucky only once. We’re going to have to win the next election the old-fashioned way—by persuading American voters that progressives have better ideas. Now—what ideas?