| By Clem Guttata
Up there in our blog header it reads, "Democratic politics, progressive policies, the good life and free living in Wild, Wonderful West Virginia." Most of that sentence is self-explanatory, yet every now and then someone asks, "what exactly makes someone a progressive?"
I don't have a good short answer to that question, but I am glad to share a longer answer from The Commonweal Institute They did a study on "What Do Progressives Believe?" (PDF). Here's the executive summary of that study (I added the numbering):
Over the past 10 years the term "progressive" has been resurrected in political parlance. While the usage of the term has gained popularity in the media and among elites and voters, there is little consensus regarding the meaning of progressive identification. This report takes a step toward understanding modern progressives by analyzing the values, attitudes, and demographic traits of survey respondents who say that they consider themselves progressive and those who report a positive view of the term.
Seven unique sources of data useful for an analysis of progressive individuals were identified. The data come from Democracy Corps, Gallup, Harris Interactive, the Kaiser Foundation, Pew Research Center, Rasmussen Reports, and Zogby International. For comparison, data on liberal identifiers from the American National Election Survey was also analyzed.
The seven surveys identifying progressives used a variety of methods for self-identification. We found that these varying methods had strong effects on the poll results. In particular, when respondents were cued to think of progressive as a substitute for the term liberal, their views looked similar to those of liberals; when they were cued to think of progressive as a substitute for very liberal, their views were more consistently left or liberal. When respondents were asked whether or not they consider themselves progressive independent of other ideological options, their views were less cohesive, and more similar to moderate identifiers.
Our team found:
1) Support for the term "progressive" has increased over time.
2) Self-identified progressives are more supportive of government intervention in the economy, both in terms of regulating business and redistributing income, than the general public.
3) Progressives are protective of civil liberties.
4) When asked to choose between equality and freedom a majority of progressives say that equality is more important.
5) Progressive tend to support government efforts to safeguard the environment.
6) Progressives are less religious on average than other ideological groups.
7) Progressives tend to be unwilling to tolerate government regulation of morality.
8) Progressives tend to have positive views of immigrants.
9) Progressives are committed to diplomacy as the cornerstone of foreign policy.
10) Progressives tend to be better educated and to earn more money than the average respondent.
11) Progressive identification is most popular with respondents under the age of 50 and men.
12) Progressives pay a great deal of attention to politics.
Overall, I think this is a pretty accurate description of what I see as progressive policies.
Key issues for me include economic policies related to regulation of corporate excesses and policies to reduce income inequality (e.g., #2), protections of civil liberties (#3), marriage equality and other forms of non-discrimination (#4), environmental safeguards (#5), keeping government out of the bedroom (#7), welcoming immigration policies (#8), diplomacy over guns (#9), and a believe in the value of citizen engagement (#12).
How about you, what do you think of when you someone calls themselves a progressive Democrat? What does it mean to you to be a progressive? |
