The real question, of course, is whether the Democratic Party is going to use its new-found power to push a truly progressive agenda, including vitally important items like national health care and an aggressive approach to global warming. What do you think? Are you optimistic or skeptical?

You know what I think? I don’t think politicians do jack, unless their constituents demand it and pressure them.

I don’t think the mere act of electing a Democratic majority ensures anything. What I’m saying is that I have no confidend the Democratic Party will do anything substantive unless their feet are held to the fire. Progressive change comes from the bottom up, not the top down. I really don’t think FDR would have done what he did simply out of the goodness of his heart. Substantial progressive change almost never comes from politicians or political Parties. They may be the ones that implment polcies and laws that ultimately result in change. But, history is pretty clear on this. The only reason the civil rights movement in the 60s, or the women’s sufferage movement made any headway at all is because of people working in the streets, in the communities, and people being proactively engaged in a sustained way. And they forced politicians to listen to them. That change didn’t come about in the halls of congress.

Goodbye to Mr. Ted, the talking Moose..Goodbye to Ms. Sarah..the architect of the first presidential campaign featuring a shotgun wedding. Run Levi, Run.

The real question, of course, is whether the Democratic Party is going to use its new-found power to push a truly progressive agenda, including vitally important items like national health care and an aggressive approach to global warming. What do you think? Are you optimistic or skeptical?

Everything I’ve seen so far makes me skeptical. For one thing, the splintering of the Republican party shows no sign of abating, and it looks to me like a lot of the fiscal conservatives who have been financing Republican think tanks are going to shift some of their giant piles of oligarchic money over to investing in influence over the Democratic Party. And that does NOT mean the progressive wing of the party, it means the extremely centrist DLC and NDC parts of the party, who tend to be more into compromise with Republicans on various kinds of issues. Obama may have described himself as “not a good candidate for the DLC” but the fact that the Democrats in general have gotten a huge boost in this election means that the stakes have changed.

Meanwhile, the strategy stuff I hear on the grapevine from various kinds of large nonprofits all seems to suggest that every “single-issue” interest group will be clamoring to try and make some gains in their own area. This is nothing new for the disorganized left, but it’s certainly not going to help create major populist political momentum behind any particular area. Prop 8 was terrible, there’s no doubt about it, but part of the fallout is that most of the gay rights orgs are going into Gay Marriage overdrive and ignoring everything else that’s of concern to queer communities, including ignoring opportunities to do intersectional coalition work. People seem to be grabbing their eggs from the communal table and putting them all into one basket — their own baskets.