U.S. Sen. Al "Landslide" Franken kicked off a national meeting of progressive leaders in Duluth earlier this month with an opening declaration that "moral indignation is great!’’
Then he added, a little sheepishly and with his trademark perfect timing: “It’s just not very attractive. It's a lesson I've learned.”
His confession, about how his own indignation made his election closer than it should have been, drew knowing laughter from the crowd of about 200 think-tank directors, advocacy groups organizers, and Duluth citizens at a meeting sponsored by the A.H. Zeppa Foundation and directed by the Commonweal Institute, based in California.
And the Progressive Roundtable conference that followed was suffused with the theme that if there is to be a progressive renaissance, it needs to be animated by a spirit of constructive and practical problem-solving, piece-by-piece, and state-by-state.
Tags: values, Progressive Roundtable, Networking, MN, infrastructure, Duluth, Al Franken
Conservative columnist and cable news pundit Amanda Carpenter posted a telling observation on Twitter: "It's remarkable all Palin had to do is say death panels in a Facebook statement to make the President on down start talking about them."
The Daily Show has a snarkier take: "You know a sales pitch is in trouble when it starts with 'look you've got to trust me, we're not going to kill your grandparents.'"
They're both making an important point: the debate over health reform is playing out on the right's terms. The national discourse (if you can call it that) could very well have been about the benefits of a single-payer system, but aside from a sham vote to appease progressives, single-payer is considered anathema in the media and political establishment and instead Democrats are scrambling to respond to a barrage of rightwing talking points.
"We're All In This Together"
A talk by Commonweal Institute Fellow David C. Johnson to supporters of public education, presented March 7, 2007.
A couple of weeks ago I was thinking about how to start this talk, when I came across this video clip from the Sean Hannity show on Fox News:
Tags: media, Education, Dave Johnson, conservative strategy
With the presidential election looking as if it will depend on the votes of nine welders in Cleveland, it was pretty much inevitable that the V-word would rear its head sooner or later. Out on the hustings last week, President Bush said that Senator Kerry is "out of step with the mainstream values that are so important to our country." Meanwhile Kerry was reminding voters of the importance of "relying on the values that made this country great.”
A foreigner listening to those claims might think that this election was simply a question of who has better values, like Walmart versus Costco. But it goes deeper than that -- it's really about what the word "values" means, and what role it should play in political life.
With the presidential election looking as if it will depend on the votes of nine welders in Cleveland, it was pretty much inevitable that the V-word would rear its head sooner or later. Out on the hustings last week, President Bush said that Senator Kerry is "out of step with the mainstream values that are so important to our country." Meanwhile Kerry was reminding voters of the importance of "relying on the values that made this country great.”
A foreigner listening to those claims might think that this election was simply a question of who has better values, like Walmart versus Costco. But it goes deeper than that -- it's really about what the word "values" means, and what role it should play in political life.
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