Sondra Miller is one of the pillars of the New Progressive Alliance. Here she questions what a real progressive is. It is crucial to answer this question to progress.

The new Progressive movement was spawned by the failure of the Democratic Party to

address and resolve some of the basic needs of adequate healthcare, housing, employment,

education and environment the first Progressives of an earlier era addressed over a century

ago. Today, the growing number of politicians, organizations, and caucuses within the

Democratic Party calling themselves progressives, and the number of individual progressives

of questionable ideology who have jumped on the Democratic cultural elitist bandwagon, have

co-opted the current Progressive movement to the extent it has failed to create a separate

identity or political Party like the earlier Progressives of the past century. Therefore, it has

become increasingly difficult for the voting public to define what a Progressive really is.

In the 2016 Presidential election the Democratic candidate ran an elitist, culturally divisive

campaign where she divided her campaign focus into special interest ethnic groups and ran

around telling each group what they wanted to hear. She made different concessions to

Mexicans, Muslims and homosexuals, while her Vice Presidential running mate made

speeches in Spanish to Cubans. At a Hollywood millionaires fund raiser for homosexuals, she

stood up on national TV and called half of American workers a basket of deplorables, while her

supporters called them xenophobes, homophobes, and Islamophobes, as though the only

issue was cultural differences rather than economic issues that affect all regardless of race,

religion, gender, or national origin. She also promoted a violent ultra-right war prone ideology

that discriminates against women and others, after the Saudi Royal Muslims donated over $10

million to her Foundation. Unfortunately, many progressives jumped on this culturally divisive

Democratic bandwagon, and the result was that voters gave control of the House, the Senate,

the White House and most State Legislatures to Republicans.

Would things have been different if a progressive Independent had run on a platform of basic

needs common to all regardless of race, religion, gender or national origin? These basic

needs include adequate healthcare, housing, education, employment and environment. In the

fluid and dynamic world of politics, it’s impossible to know what might have been. However, we

do know that Bernie Sanders campaigned on that progressive platform in the 2016 Democratic

Primary and became so wildly popular and drew such large crowds at his speeches, the polls

showed he could defeat the Republican candidate if the Democratic Party nominated him as

their candidate. But the Democratic Party didn’t do that, and he eventually capitulated to the

cultural elitist ideology of Hillary Clinton and threw his support to her. So one wonders what his

true colors would have been if he had been elected President.

So what then is the new Progressive? Is it a person who wants to work on a plan to provide

adequate healthcare, housing, education, employment, environment and peace for everybody,

or is it a person who wants to prove how culturally liberal they are by embracing and promoting

repressive war prone ideologies they know little or nothing about while calling everyone else

deplorable, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobes ?

References:

1-Continuous Wars