A few recent developments have again highlighted a tension in left politics. One is the public shaming of Trump administration officials, calling them out in venues like restaurants, a tactic encouraged by at least one Democratic congresswoman. Another is a never-say-die mobilization against Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, a campaign that is supremely unlikely to succeed and would, if it did, simply lead to someone else at least as conservative being appointed. A third are calls to abolish ICE, the agency that has been deporting the undocumented, an event about as likely to happen in the near future as the Congress abolishing Trump golf courses.
So, what is the point of calling for such bootless initiatives? Mainly, it appears, it is to energize people, to join them together in righteous and exciting solidarity, to declare their indignation and moral purity. And what about actually getting something done? Not so much.
Left activists have done this before, declaiming outrage, while right activists have more quietly but effectively advanced by focusing on what matters: votes. Some on the left have learned this lesson, as new grass-root groups have flipped Republican-held districts, but others are still stuck in the “Occupy” mind set.
Expressive Politics
Almost seven years ago, the Occupy movement galvanized national attention with its sit-ins and calls for economic reform. (I posted on it here, here, and here). Its energy was palpable and its “collective effervescence” heady. One leader told the press that it reminded him of the May 1968 protests in Paris; Occupy was making it “cool” to be a “lefty” again. Mai 68 fizzled, but perhaps Occupy won’t. Occupiers rejected the suggestion that in order to have a lasting effect they would need to segue into community organizing and political groundwork. One journalist enthused, “if [Occupy] wants to sleep on the streets for a while and not structure itself into a traditional campaign of grassroots organizing, it should … It is succeeding, for now, just by being something different.” Some success. Seven years later, just about everything that Occupy activists objected to is worse than it was before.
Meanwhile, opponents on the right advanced their causes much farther with much less drama. To be sure, gun-toting Tea Party members harangued congressmen at town hall meetings in 2012. But under the radar, movement activists funded by conservative “dark money” did the long, grinding work of getting the votes. Conservatives took over state legislatures, gerrymandered districts, and mobilized successfully for the 2014 and 2016 elections. They got the votes that mattered.
Myth and Reality
Paris aside, in the U.S. street action rarely gets results, especially if unconnected to standard politics. Political scientist Daniel Schlozman points out (as part of a useful forum in the latest issue of Dissent) that “[u]nless radical moments sustain themselves in formal organization, their moment is over when the window for legislation opens up. Insurgents, from Populists in the 1890s down through Occupy, have learned as much—and, as it built itself as a political force, so did the labor movement [successfully] after passage of the Wagner Act.”
The Civil Rights Movement is, as I have argued before, a misleading example of protest success. The movement, based in black churches and black colleges, was very organized, disciplined, funded by and coordinated with northern elites; it focused on growing black votes and passing legislation; and the street part of the strategy involved training activists to become martyrs, not attackers–so different from yelling at administration officials,much less trashing stores. Supporters of street action sometimes point to the Vietnam War, but the research I’ve seen suggests that the protests did little to move public opinion or public policy–battlefield deaths did that–and might well have backfired by agitating Richard Nixon’s “silent majority.” Lyndon Johnson did give up his presidency because of the war, but only after he was embarrassed by the votes Eugene McCarthy garnered, not by the street demos.
Street action–say, the Women’s March, protests of the Muslim Ban at airports–can be effective in drawing attention to a topic, but only if it transitions to the grunge work of organizing votes. A major problem with expressive politics by itself is that, even if does mobilize supporters, it also mobilizes opponents. Marching down the street, yelling against your enemies, will stir up the other side. Going door-to-door with clipboards is likely to be ignored.
It’s all about votes. Even the corrupt money in politics corrupts largely by helping the corrupted get votes.
New Directions?
There are signs–the election-night celebrations of Indivisible, Swing Left, and similar new grassroots organizations–that many on the left are now increasingly focused on votes. They have notched unexpected electoral victories with phone banks and shoe leather. These activists seemed to have eschewed not only noisy marches, yelling at Trump officials, and quixotic campaigns, but also ideological purity, in some places backing candidates only a step or two left of a Trumpish constituency and in other places backing full-blown social democrats. Whatever gets votes. (And there are many votes yet to be gotten among Millennials.)
Standing in the rubble of November 2016, President Obama said that it was “a reminder that elections matter and voting counts.” As people on the left agonize about mass deportations, climate change, huge tax cuts for the rich, evisceration of organized labor, capture of the Supreme Court, subversion of public health care, sell-outs of public lands … you name it, he reminds us that change requires, first, votes, and, second, votes, and, third, votes…. all the way down.
MADE IN AMERICA 