Progressives: Don't rest on your laurels

Beginning with the 2012 presidential election and continuing to the present, a number of opinion pieces have celebrated or lamented the impending demographic doom of the Republican Party.
 
People of color are making up a greater share of the electorate, and they vote Democratic! 

Political acceptance of LGBT rights, banking regulations and redistribution is increasing!

Young people are getting politically involved in huge numbers, and their views are more liberal than ever!

Even Texas might turn blue soon!

Despite how strongly I would like to believe these proclamations, I think they are too good to be true.

Progressives cannot rely simply on shifting demographics to deliver the country into our waiting, redistributing, same-sex-marrying hands.

First, we can’t underestimate just how much conservative ideas have worked their way into the very core of our governmental institutions.

Gerrymandering robs huge numbers of progressive voters of their voices by diluting their votes or sectioning them off into one sacrificial district.

States continue to pass more and more misogynistic restrictions on abortions.
With the profoundly conservative Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act, states can now pass laws restricting voting. These laws are racism and classism masquerading as crime prevention.

These problems are the result of progressives concentrating too much on national issues rather than on states.

As long as conservatives control the statehouses, they can continue to enact their policies at the state level while they hold just enough power in D.C. to continue to obstruct federal policies.

We must learn from these past mistakes and realize that simply holding out hope for the future is not a viable tactic.

The fight must be waged at every level, and it must be fought now.

And progressives have not even done a particularly good job at the national level, which is severely alarming.

Conservatives have shifted the window of acceptable political discourse so far to the right that a Republican idea from 20 years ago called the Affordable Care Act is now “socialism.” Marginal tax rates are lower than they have been in years, yet conservatives have convinced half the country that they’re too high.

We’re going through the looking glass. I’m not just talking about Republicans, either.

“Third Way” Democrats continue to push real progressive ideas out of the party in favor of Wall Street. So-called centrists continue to pull the discourse to the right.

So, progressives — don’t rely on demographics to help us. Step up.

Don’t bet on compromise with conservatives as a legitimate means of improvement, no matter how good it looks for the press or the cameras.

Reports of the impending collapse of conservatism in the United States are greatly exaggerated .

We can’t sit back and allow the other side to control institutions and national discourse.

The struggle for justice must continue and progressives cannot afford complacency at a time such as this.

We progressives need to be bold, decisive and most importantly should be able to  sell our ideas to the public.

They’re ready to listen, but we’re not doing enough speaking.