What Are We "Progress"ing Toward?

What does it mean to be a Progressive/Liberal in America today? How do Progressives understand that term?

That seems to me to be an extremely important question, which I touched on in my last post.

There was a split in the Democratic Party in the late sixties between (roughly) the economic justice/labor/New Deal left on one side, and the (then) "New" Left/Anti-war/Cultural Revolutionary Left on the other.

One reason Obama excites me as a candidate is that he seems to me to represent a recognition that the old fights are fading in importance: in part because 1968 is, well, 40-years-ago history - the combatants are either mostly dead (the Boomers' parents) or will be in rest homes gumming creamed spinach pretty soon (the real, actual hippies the Right still rants about); and in part because the last 8 years have established beyond a doubt that the old hippie/square shouting matches are a luxury we can no longer afford.

The Democratic Party Coalition

Digby has an interesting conversation going over at Hullabaloo, in which she speculates about the dynamics of a possible (probable?) Democratic controlling majority in Washington in the aftermath of a likely Republican debacle this coming Fall.

Snippet:

The Republicans kept their "moderates" on a very short chain and consciously governed with as few cross over votes as possible in order to keep the other side frustrated and the caucus "pure." They got things done for a while, and protected their president with the loyalty of feral pit bulls, but ended up destroying themselves.

My thoughts: Depends what you mean by "progressive" - if you mean politicians who champion, in a front-burner way, the sorts of things that get the Republican base riled up (Dean's "God, Guns and Gays"), I think you're likely to see problems and rancor - a squandered opportunity.

But if you mean the sorts of things that the New Deal Generation were in consensus about (and that there is still more of less a consensus about - Labor rights, teach-them-to-fish style antipoverty programs...and just the general idea that one of the legitimate and important functions of government is to help balance society by keeping things more equal than they would be under a laissez faire regime) then I think we may see significant progress.