Nader v. Norquist
| By MattSinger - Aug 14th, 2006 at 12:59 pm EDT |
| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
Matt Stoller takes a look at the New New Left and thinks the comparisons to both the New Left and the New Right are overblown. He's right, but he's incorrect in a comparison he makes of Ralph Nader and Grover Norquist.
It's an interesting question, but Nader's problem was not single-issue leftism. Nader cannot be pigeon-holed as an enviro or a choice activist, or even one who is "single issue" in the broad way that labor is single issue.
Nader was one of the early multi-issue progressives. He simply unified the multiple issues into a comprehensive narrative -- one of corporate power.
Nader's problem, though, was one of branding and understanding of power relations. Nader believed it was simply enough to have enough people articulating the truth in order to win the public debate. So he built institutions like the PIRGs and Public Citizen, multi-issue groups that are somewhat inherently non-political in nature.
Norquist's strength ironically does not come from his own multi-issue work. Norquist heads a single issue organization and his issue is taxes. Norquist's breakthrough is two-fold: first, realizing that he can better advance his own agenda by subverting it to merely being one of many within a larger coalition (ironically, this is a lesson originally taught by Saul Alinsky in Rules for Radicals -- at least, that is the oldest place I've seen it). Norquist's second breakthrough is simply more fundamentally understanding that power operates in a much more complex environment. See Norquist's embrace of electoral politics and Nader's relative eschewing of it.
Our side wrote the book on growing power through mass movement models. The New Right took that handbook. And our side gave it away.
To the extent that I have a political hero, it's probably Grover Norquist, not Ralph Nader, and a lot of the new progressive organizers I know model themselves and what they are doing after the right-wing's collaborative model rather than the left-wing single issue mindset.
It's an interesting question, but Nader's problem was not single-issue leftism. Nader cannot be pigeon-holed as an enviro or a choice activist, or even one who is "single issue" in the broad way that labor is single issue.
Nader was one of the early multi-issue progressives. He simply unified the multiple issues into a comprehensive narrative -- one of corporate power.
Nader's problem, though, was one of branding and understanding of power relations. Nader believed it was simply enough to have enough people articulating the truth in order to win the public debate. So he built institutions like the PIRGs and Public Citizen, multi-issue groups that are somewhat inherently non-political in nature.
Norquist's strength ironically does not come from his own multi-issue work. Norquist heads a single issue organization and his issue is taxes. Norquist's breakthrough is two-fold: first, realizing that he can better advance his own agenda by subverting it to merely being one of many within a larger coalition (ironically, this is a lesson originally taught by Saul Alinsky in Rules for Radicals -- at least, that is the oldest place I've seen it). Norquist's second breakthrough is simply more fundamentally understanding that power operates in a much more complex environment. See Norquist's embrace of electoral politics and Nader's relative eschewing of it.
Our side wrote the book on growing power through mass movement models. The New Right took that handbook. And our side gave it away.
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You attribute Norquist's success to his "realizing that he can better advance his own agenda by subverting it to merely being one of many within a larger coalition"-- but his agenda isn't really tax reform. Yes, tax reform is important to him, but far more important is the coalition he's created of people who agree with him on tax reform. And he's not "merely" one member, but the organizing member-- the ringleader who connects all these people.
Norquist gets a wide variety of conservative types to the table because they all share a desire to lower taxes-- and even if tax reform isn't their very top issue, it's likely their second or third most pressing agenda item. Either way, they're all meeting and talking and agreeing on something.
So a successful single issue campaign is a uniting single issue campaign-- it's not like jumping on whatever bandwagon passes by makes for a successful movement.
And Norquist's Wednesday meetings and his multi-issue organizing is not just about taxes, it's about a bunch of issues, which is exactly what community organizers realize they need to do to build the coalitions that can win. In other words, you subvert your own agenda in order to make it an item in a broader coalition that has the members to achieve victory.
...So much of what Nader said was downright wrong.
The Green party is not a progressive entity. It's reactionary to the core; in that regard, the comparison to Norquist is apt.