Category: old Better Donkey (Page 1 of 3)

Cross posted at MyDD.

For the last few months I’ve been thinking about this concept called civic republicanism, a sort of catch all counter philosophy for the overarching theme of the Republican Party (which is I got mine). A “greater good” philosophy would cover all the typical Democratic bases, and bring them together in a way that

The argument for a “greater good” philosophy for the Democratic Party has been focused around what kind of politics we should believe. I’ve even started keeping notes on what I think would be included in a civic republican platform (wiki here).

Last week though, I stumbled on the Blue Tiger Democrats, a group that is convinced (without using the civic republican term) that such a move should go beyond a platform of beliefs, but into how the Democratic Party operates as an entity locally.

It used to be that the Democratic Party was engaged in the local communities where Democrats lived. They supported the poor, acted as a conduit to local government, and provided services to those who needed them. The party acted as a social glue among its members.

From their website:

Blue Tiger Democrats believe that civic engagement must be the first and foremost priority of local Democratic and Progressive organizations across the country.

We advocate channeling the massive volunteerism seen during the 2004 election and recent periods of crisis towards civic engagement just as Democrats did historically from the mid 1800s through World War II.

Far too much Progressive political giving goes to funding 30-second commercials.

Our mission is to encourage you to invest a portion of your funds in strengthening the roots of party organizations at the local level through civic engagement.

By performing civic engagement, local party organizations will regain respect in their communities and therefore be able to play a larger role in vetting and grooming new Democratic candidates and workers.

Blue Tiger Democrats are putting into words something that I’ve been feeling for awhile now. Even our local Democratic clubs are becoming essentially campaign committees, the main focus is to get Democrats elected, and not necessarily do the things that political parties have traditionally done. Its no question why people see politics are being shallow and self serving, the parties are focused on one thing, getting people elected. If other good acts are taken up, they need to feed directly into what we really know is the real purpose.

I think we should shed this single focus for the local parties, and bring up a second purpose: civic engagement. The party itself needs to do good things, not just encourage others to do good. And, our good acts shouldn’t just be cover for our real intent, they should be part of our intent.

In a response to Michael Tomasky’s essay on civic republicanism as a voice for Democrats, Brad Carson writes that we need to move beyond just rhetoric:

The “common interest” is fine as a rhetorical ploy. Tomasky’s “common good” won’t be the Democrats’ grand narrative, though. Because, its linguistic utility notwithstanding, the “common good” lacks any real substance and is incapable of doing the important work of prioritizing among (and adjudicating between) competing ideas. In the first 100 days of a new Democratic president, does the “common interest” dictate that we should first do universal health care, welfare reform, or gays in the military? We’ve been down that road before, and we know the baleful destination already.

I’ve been thinking about this, and I agree, that is as much as putting though into action. So, what would be the political policies of a civic republican agenda?

One idea is the concept of participatory budgeting, or as I like to call it, the Tim Eyman anti-body we should give all our cities and counties. One of the reasons that folks tend to vote themselves tax cuts and demand more service is that there isn’t a connection between them and how their local governments spend money.

Which totally makes sense because local government budgets are written over multiple months, and come to a head during the holiday season.

Participatory budgeting is the opposite of the typical way of developing budgets. It brings citizens close to how decision are made. It opens wide the most basic part of government, and the part that people trust the least.

participatory budgeting has its origins in the radical-left politics of South America. It was first proposed by a political party as part of a platform in the late 80s in Brazil, and first practiced in Porto Algre, Brazil in 1989. The purpose there was to break the lock upper and middle class elites had on the budgeting process.

Here it would be to bring people back into a murky process that we have handed over to elected officials and hired professionals. In Washington there are at least two small examples being played out now in Olympia and Tacoma. Both are limited in scope but have expanded the public dialogue and engagement in budgets.