Hundreds of Colorado Democrats gathered for the state party’s DemFest over the weekend in a final show of unity before primary elections devolve into all-out knife fighting for the rest of the month. After spending a few hours watching forums, reading campaign literature, and talking to surrogates, I left with one question on my mind:
What the hell is a progressive?
I use the term often. This outlet describes itself using the term. And yet, after hearing it used what must have been 400 times on Saturday, I found myself less certain about what people mean by it than ever before. That question took me back to a topic I have puzzled over since long before the talking points whizzing around DemFest brought it to the forefront of my mind: not necessarily the definition of the term progressive, but the ways in which the political terminology we use obscures the political reality in which we live.
The proximate cause of my question was Colorado’s Democratic gubernatorial primary – which, in addition to being the main draw of the weekend’s festivities, is also a race in which I am still genuinely undecided. On Saturday, the fact of my indecision positioned me to hear a number of pitches from surrogates in each camp, those supporting U.S. Senator Michael Bennet for the state’s top job, and those supporting attorney general Phil Weiser. Given that I have made no secret of the substantial leftward bent of my politics over the years, a number of those pitches revolved around the argument that either Bennet or Weiser is the progressive choice in the race.
Despite my affection and respect for the friends who made those pitches, I may have scoffed out loud a few times. Either Bennet or Weiser will be Colorado’s next governor, and I will get around to voting for one of them, but the idea that either resembles any useful definition of the term “progressive” stretches language to a breaking point, and the fact that surrogates with straight faces could describe either candidate using the term highlights how unhelpful our political terminology has become.
In the context of 21st century American politics, the term “progressive” has typically been used to refer to the cohort which often finds itself to the left of Democratic Party leadership, the status quo, or both. Bernie Sanders. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The rest of the so-called Squad. And that definition was useful enough to get the job done until right around the end of 2016. After that, with Donald Trump in office, Democratic leadership looking to capitalize on anti-Trumpist energy, and young voters having recently demonstrated their affinity for Bernie Sanders, linguistic hell broke loose.
By the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, everybody was a progressive. It wasn’t just Sanders and Elizabeth Warren branding themselves with the P-word. Kamala Harris? Progressive. Pete Buttigieg? Progressive. Joe Biden? Progressive.
Now, of course, most of those people are not progressive. They are the kind of bog standard Democrats in relation to whom the term progressive should be defined. But the term is in vogue, so they use it.
And that’s how our political language breaks down. In lieu of understanding that young people are drawn to progressivism because of the policies it promises, establishment Democrats have treated the term like a spell to invoke relevance and support, often without even attempting to pay lip service to the underlying positions and policies which give progressivism relevance and support in the first place.
Like that, the term becomes what Baudrillard called a simulacrum: a signifier lacking substance, a copy with no connection to the original.
In an age of hypercommunication, our optimized, advertiser-brained political terminology is not just suffering from the death of meaning; it’s also obscuring a categorical error: these “progressives” and “moderates” don’t actually exist as immutable, internally consistent subgroups or demographics. At best, these terms describe tendencies or inclinations, but we treat them as rigid identifiers.
We have named these groups like neat, clean market segments, all the better to advertise to. Progressives want X, so candidates promise them X. Moderates want Y, so candidates promise them Y. In reality, on average, any given person is a jumble of contradictory ideologies and political positions which they have arrived at through a combination of reason and emotion entirely specific to their own lived experience. The idea that candidates can optimize their appeal to voter segments which only exist as a byproduct of the degradation of our language is faulty from the get-go.
More to the point, voters do not sit down, lay out their political opinions on note cards, analyze them, and arrive at conclusions like “oh hey, I guess I’m a moderate,” or “wow, turns out I’ve been a progressive this entire time!” Realistically, there is no connection between how people politically self-identify, and the positions they actually hold. There’s a conservative faction of the Communist Party of China, whether you think that makes any sense or not.
People, it turns out, are complicated.
When it came to the surrogates on Saturday working to convince me that either Michael Bennet or Phil Weiser is a progressive, I knew we must have crossed thoroughly into simulacral use of the word. I will vote for one of the two men, but not because someone convinces me that one or the other is a progressive: as a point of fact, complications of definition and self-identification notwithstanding, neither candidate meets with the traditionally accepted definition of being on the left-wing of the Democratic Party. In fact, if both men had attempted to locate the exact center of the party and build their platforms on what they found there, I’m not sure what would be different from what they’re currently offering.
In virtually every area of substance where less definitionally challenged progressives distinguish themselves from the party establishment, Bennet and Weiser hew not only to the establishment, but to each other, and that’s been the case since I personally moderated the first debate between the two men earlier this year.
Both campaigns – to address an argument made directly to me on Saturday – are awash in dark money. Both Bennet and Weiser are receiving support from outside PACs funded by corporate interests. Bennet’s PAC, which has raised about $8 million, is being funded by folks like Michael Bloomberg, real estate developers, and hedge funders. Weiser’s PAC, which has raised $1.26 million, is being funded by donors from the oil & gas and private equity industries. Bennet being supported by more dark or corporate money does not make him less progressive than Weiser, it just makes him the winner of a game both men decided to play.
Needless to say, progressive candidates often make an effort to transparently distance themselves from corporate influence.
Gaza, where more than 75,000 people have been killed in less than three years, is another issue where progressives have made their feelings known, and where neither Bennet nor Weiser has been willing to meet them.
While the next Governor of Colorado will have no say over arms shipments to Israel, they will have a say in signing or vetoing legislation, and both Bennet and Weiser have staked out distinctly un-progressive ground on that front as well. Neither man will commit to signing the Worker Protection Act, which has been passed by the state legislature twice and vetoed by Gov. Jared Polis twice. Colorado is the only state in the union where two elections are required for the formation of a union, and neither Bennet nor Weiser will commit to signing a bill which would fix that longstanding glitch.
To be clear, this is not meant to be a personal judgement. I’ve had many notably decent interactions with both Bennet and Weiser over the years – but that doesn’t make either of them progressive.
To their credit, despite the arguments surrogates made to a known lefty loud mouth like myself, neither Bennet nor Weiser is actually doing much to brand themselves as progressive. Both seem perfectly comfortable in the moderate lane, and I’m not sure either has the acting chops to actually sell themselves as a bona fide progressive, even if they wanted to – and they clearly don’t.
Still, the well-worn Democratic voter impulse to turn every hard-fought primary into an establishment vs. progressive referendum is on full display. To anyone tempted to fall into that rubric in the Bennet vs. Weiser primary, hear me say: this isn’t that. Putting your hopes in either candidate to govern as a progressive will lead to disappointment.
The next Governor of Colorado will be a Democrat, but the next Governor of Colorado will not be a progressive, and sometimes that’s just the way it goes.
For those like me who regularly find ourselves to the left of Democratic Party leadership, the choices might not be exciting, but that’s nothing new. When your politics are built around values and convictions instead of personalities and candidates, the only thing you ever get to do in the ballot box is compromise.
Later this month, I’ll do my duty like I always do: I’ll choke down my objections, fill out my ballot, and live with the results. The only thing I have left to figure out is what criteria will ultimately make my decision. Until then, I’m all ears.
