July 7, 2009 11:12 AM

Endorsing the Progressive Block

There has been quite a bit of appropriate disappointment about the watering down of potentially progressive legislation in Congress. I share that disappointment on too many issues to count. Chris Bowers of OpenLeft has a great post about a strategy that has come to be called "the progressive block" which is intended to strengthen, rather than weaken, legislation. The idea is really quite simple. If there is legislation that House Leadership and the Administration really want to pass, progressives should state clearly their conditions for voting yes and do so in sufficient numbers that the legislation will fail without them.

Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake.com has been actually implementing this strategy on the supplemental appropriations bill for Afghanistan as well as the public option in health insurance. We will be joining that effort and others soon, including most likely on climate change legislation in the Senate.