Matthew Yglesias wrote an interesting piece on his Slow Boring substack, entitled “The Two Types of Progressives”, a review and redux of “The 28 Types of Progressives“, a comprehensive piece by Eric Levitz of New York Magazine’s Intelligencer. Yglesias breaks down progressives binarily into “moralists” and “pragmatists”: Moralists who take staunch, unwavering moral stances on issues (e.g., civil rights), and their counterparts, pragmatists who see compromise and “reaching across the aisle” as an essential tool to achieve their goals.
Yglesias shows how both the LGBTQ and African-American civil rights movements engaged heavily in compromise, noting that Obama and Howard Dean both were beneficiaries of LGBTQ pragmatists. While an unwavering stance on equality may be de rigueur for LGBTQ activists today, activists decades ago chose to back candidates willing to make incremental change for the sake of the long-term good. Yglesias notes a decade of civil rights legislation for African-Americans painting a similar picture, with pragmatists’ early bets on compromise in the late 40s having paid off by the late 60s.
Yglesias notes that the shift towards moralistic progressivism has coincided with the rise in affluence among Democratic constituents:
As Democrats have become more upscale, they haven’t shifted their policy platform on economics to the right. But they have become less interested in forming big tent electoral coalitions to maximize the odds of welfare state expansion and more interested in ideological purity and uncompromising moral stands. Because the uncompromising moral stand is more appealing if you are not personally counting on Medicaid expansion to make a concrete difference in your life.
Matthew Yglesias, “The Two Types of Progressives”
The last line struck me like a ton of bricks: it’s true, it’s much easier to say “hell no” when one’s stomach is full. If one isn’t personally relying on the outcome of a bipartisan vote, then it’s easy to say “F them” about the opposing political party in toto. Yglesias hits the nail on the head with this line – many of us progressive and far-left Americans do fall into this trap, of expecting “morality” to be an end-all be-all in “blue” circles.
But, when asked, any progressive familiar with the workings of Capitol Hill would be willing to compromise on some things. Even if just to get a bill passed. Idealism is only an absolute in the mind of one unfamiliar with Washington. I don’t think the pure “moralist” of Yglesias’ piece is likely to be found very often.
I want to put forth that progressives are each their own unique mixture of moralism and pragmatism, we all have the fire of our idealistic past combined with the realizations gleaned through experience. Where progressives differ is the urgency with which we approach an individual cause.
Make no mistake, every progressive is a moralist about SOMETHING.
To someone relying on a Medicaid expansion, health insurance is an extremely pertinent moral issue – “whether my spouse lives or dies” is not generally something people are willing to compromise on. Such a person, their loved ones, their community – will undoubtedly be moralists on this issue. This is a function of urgency. Theirs will not be the language of “pragmatism”, a “compromise” puts their loved one’s life in danger. Ask them about climate change, however, and they may be willing to strike a 50-year-deal.
A victim of hate crime or bullying will see civil rights as a moral issue about which there can be no compromise – they need social change to feel safe going to work the next day. Theirs will be the language of moralism, the urgency driving them to see no compromise as acceptable. A member of a marginalized group being targeted by draconian legislation or unequal treatment will speak in the language of moralism – “whether I keep custody of my kids” is generally, again, not something on which most people are willing to compromise. The “common ground” between one’s safety and one’s attacker’s safety does not exist. Ask these same people about Medicaid expansion, however, and they may be ready to reach across an aisle.
Make no mistake: Every progressive is a “moralist” about something.
Whether it’s climate change, inequality, universal health care, civil rights, or all of the above – every progressive has something about which they will not compromise. It’s why we identify as progressive and not “liberal” or “centrist” . We want to see the radical change on that thing. We want to see a better world now – at least in regards to the issue on which we stand firm.
Of course, different progressives have different issues about which we are moralistic. So then we turn to each other, asking each other, “can you compromise on X so that we can work together on Z?”. Decades of this formula have seen Black communities’ concerns fall to the wayside, LGBTQ concerns placed on backburners, and immigrants’ concerns languish. Generally, it’s the concern that “is for the most good” that gets the attention, and it becomes a function of numbers of beneficiaries.
And then we look to the Democratic Party to take up our cause. To at least be moralistic about our one issue – and then watch as the pragmatism of Congressional realities extinguishes the fire of urgency.
It’s not that “some of us are pragmatists” – it’s that you’re asking the wrong question to the wrong people. Rarely is a progressive “pragmatic” about the issues they care about.
Choosing the path of pragmatism all the time is one of the hallmarks of the Democratic Party. Almost without fail for the past 30 years, we have watched progressive idea after progressive idea fall to the winds of “compromise”. “Reaching across the aisle” turned universal, single-payer health care into “Obamacare”, the Affordable Care Act which is a shadow of its original intent. Compromise gave us decades of “domestic partnerships” and “civil unions” before allowing same-sex marriage. Compromise is why week counts are paramount when determining if one can end a pregnancy.
If we had a progressive party in America, the opposite would be true. It would be moralistic and unwavering about every progressive issue. Rather than tell every group to “wait”, a progressive party would stand up and take the charge of every marginalized group, of every social justice cause. A truly progressive party would always be seeking to make the necessary changes (or the drastic changes, for those of us who are more revolutionary or radical) for every one of its constituencies, forcing other parties to compromise with them to get anything done. Our two-party system all but rules out the possibility of such a party without a drastic social shift, but one thing is for sure:
It’s not the Democratic Party. Progressivism in the Democratic Party is forced to exist inside of the liberal, left-of-center box in which the party places it. Always marginalized next to the Howard Dean-style compromisers, the progressive wing of the party sounds as if it’s being moralistic about everything when on the contrary, we’re the only ones being moralistic about anything.
Instead of saying “it’s easy to be moralistic about civil rights when you don’t have to worry about Medicare expansion”, a progressive party would be moralistic about both civil rights and Medicare expansion. Would it be the easiest party to work with in Congress? Obviously not, but it would be the one about which its constituents had the least doubt about “where they stand”. America doesn’t have a progressive party, it has angry “true blue” Democrats who often languish in wait for the party to “catch up”.
Progressives don’t fit into two camps. We’re all in both camps. The question is “who are you asking?”. Or, more succinctly:
“Which group of ‘die-hard’ Democrats is getting disappointed this week?”
