According to recent Gallup Daily Election Polling results, John McCain was leading Barack Obama 46% to 44%, but after Hillary and Bill gave their speeches Barack Obama is now in the lead again with a whopping six point lead, 48% to McCain’s 42%.

I have to say I was impressed much when Bill Clinton came out last night and said,

“Barack Obama is the man for this job.”

Hey, remember the U.S. attorney scandal? Fishy potentially-motivated-by-partisanship firings of nine U.S. attorneys by the White House?

Well, Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, hasn't forgotten. At the Democratic National Convention yesterday, Talking Points Memo's David Kurtz asked Leahy for reaction to the news that a U.S. district court judge has refused to stay an order that former White House aide Harriet Miers is legally required to testify about the firings.

In their earlier posts, Patrick St. John and Jason Richberg began a conversation that I think is long overdue: what the hell is Progressivism?

Our first step in analyzing or creating any political ideology is identifying its core assumptions. These come down to two key questions:

1. What is human nature?

2. What is the role of government?

From these answers come all the different principles, value statements and policy positions that compose the movement's ideology. But before we delve into Progressivism, let's contrast what are about to articulate with what we already know about our rivals on the Right.

A victory for voting rights has occurred in Puerto Rico. Chief Judge Fuste of the U.S. District Court in San Juan, Puerto Rico granted an injunction today requiring the Puerto Rico State Electoral Commission to print ballots and instructions in both English and Spanish for the upcoming November elections. http://www.topix.com/world/puerto-rico/2008/08/fust-ordena-impresi-n-papeleta-biling-e-5-27-p-m-agostos-de-2008-primera-hora-com

Hello,

I am new to the website, and I am looking forward to networking with other young leaders who share the same passions as myself. I am currently a senior at Michigan State University, so I will be graduating this May. My interests include working with children, parents, literacy, traveling, and so much more. I look forward to connecting with you all.  

Like millions of other Americans, I too, anticipated and watched CNN's Black in America. Prior to watching the documentary, my Ethnic Studies background provided me with knowledge on what the program attempted to address. In college, I was constantly reminded of how my undergraduate education would teach me how to "think critically." Similarly, my mom advised me to take all things with "a grain of salt." Consequently, I viewed the documentary from this framework. I knew even CNN's resources and "experts" would not be able to expose everything there is to know about the "black experience" (as if there was only one experience) into a two-part series, but only touch the surface.

Oh, you have a new job? That's awesome! What do you do?

I've been hearing this question a lot lately from important people in my life - my friends, my family, my girlfriend's parents... And when I first started, I would generally mumble something about empowering young leaders in the progressive movement. True, but pretty vague.

I tried to post this last night, but the blog wasn't playing nice. This actually dovetails nicely with Jason's "What is a Progressive?" post.

David Graeber:

Right and Left political perspectives are founded, above all, on different assumptions about the ultimate realities of power. The Right is rooted in a political ontology of violence, where being realistic means taking into account the forces of destruction. In reply the Left has consistently proposed variations on a political ontology of the imagination, in which the forces that are seen as the ultimate realities that need to be taken into account are those (forces of production, creativity...) that bring things into being.

I think this makes a ton of sense (the rest of the essay builds upon this thesis, and it's very much worth reading). Just look at the kind of projects those on the right and the left embark on; the kind of rhetoric they use, and the methods they use for attaining their goals.

It also speaks to the divide over the perennial "Human Nature" question. Those on the left tend to talk about production when they talk about economics; those on the right tend to talk about consumption (at its core a destructive act). Even left and right conceptions of revolution are cast in those terms: the Workers' General Strike versus the Military Coup.

This violence/imagination construct also helps us trace the connection those in the artistic community have traditionally had with the left. Graeber writes:

If artistic avant gardes and social revolutionaries have felt a peculiar affinity for one another ever since, borrowing each other's languages and ideas, it appears to have been insofar as both have remained committed to the idea that the ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and, could just as easily make differently. In this sense, a phrase like "all power to the imagination" [a popular slogan from the May 1968 uprising in France] expresses the very quintessence of the Left.

What is a Progressive?
What are Progressive issues? When you say the word Progressive what
images come to mind? The term
progressive comes from the late 19th and early 20th
Century when the vast changes brought by industrialization and as an
alternative both to the traditional conservative response to both social and
economic issues to the various more or less radical forms of Socialism.

Like many people I wondered if Joe Biden was a good choice for Barack Obama. However after reading a CNN article which analyzes the first national poll taken after Obama’s selection of Biden I don't think so. http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/24/election.2008.poll/index.html