The progressive struggle writ large

"It is still something that I am struggling with," said progressive Congressman Earl Blumenauer to the New York Times' Carl Hulse. "It has been a hard landing for a lot of the people that I represent," he added, meaning whom the Times called his "largely liberal constituency" in Portland, Ore.

In the interview, Blumenauer's attitude was, of course, intended as shorthand for all elected Beltway progressives, and his constituency as representative of progressives nationwide. And the "question" for both, as the Times put it, is "whether" -- "now [that] political reality has set in" -- "they relent on some of their core beliefs to support less satisfying compromises, despite being in what, on the surface, is a commanding political position."

The published interview was loaded with prefigured answers, beginning with the Times' description of Blumenauer as an experienced pol in possession of a "pragmatic brand of progressivism" and then leaping directly to that seemingly minor but in fact towering dependent clause above: "on the surface."

In other words, with less than 100 declared progressives in the U.S. House, and with less than 40 U.S. senators willing, for instance, to openly align themselves with the progressive rallying cry of a public option, any post-election assumption of progressive Congressional control was only as valid as the preceding numbers should have indicated.

In short, this remains a centrist, if not essentially conservative, Congress.

In the hoopla and zeal of the 2008 elections, with Barack Obama's earnest and stirring calls for "real change," most everyone -- and I would include Mr. Obama in that rather large group -- was inclined to forget about the relentlessly status-quo forces of institutional sluggishness. The returning Democratic majority itself indicated that in 2009 it would behave like New Dealers; and it seemed, briefly, that there was a real shot at just that.

Soon enough, however, Congressional Democrats relinquished their historic charge. As I wrote Saturday: "Democrats had it all -- they indeed controlled their destiny, and that of the nation's. But rather than getting together and behaving like New Dealers, they splintered and behaved like ... Democrats."

I was as fooled as those Portland Oregonians. We thought, as did you, probably, that the rising tide of Obama and Blumenauer et al's progressivism would lift all Congressional boats, whether Democratically moderate or even conservative -- that the latter would, in effect, go with the flow. The election of 2008 was, for a real change, not one of 435 and 30+ isolated races; it was truly national in its sentiment, its expression, and, we thought, its realizable intention. There was ample reason to genuinely believe in center-left Democratic unity, at least for a while.

But, as especially the health-care debate on Capitol Hill has vividly demonstrated, that belief was misplaced. The center/center-right has held. I hasten to add that that should not have been a surprise; we were simply too eager to believe in the center's mutability. (Space does not allow much of a reference here to big money's determining influence in Congressional immutability, but perhaps such a reference is too needlessly obvious, anyway.)

At any rate, where to go from here? On the matter of health care? Congressman Blumenauer soundly indicated at least his "pragmatic progressivism" to come: " 'It would be very hard for me to do,' Mr. Blumenauer said of voting for a final health care overhaul without a public plan. 'But if it gets to the point where the choice is doing some things that will make a significant difference without a public option or letting the whole thing die, that too would be hard.' " Implicitly, too hard.

That's where this is going. And however much it irks, it's the only adult, long-term strategic position for pragmatic progressives to take. His taking of alternative advice from some on the left -- such as that quoted by the Times from one progressive Web site: "The fact is that Earl Blumenauer could stop a bill going through that does not have a public option in it" -- would but lead the electorate to rightly conclude that Democrats, in toto -- and by that I mean including progressives -- simply cannot govern.

And would you like to ponder the party alternative to this admittedly sorry bunch? I wouldn't, and neither would Congressman Blumenauer, and neither, I think, would most adult progressives. Yesterday I noticed, for instance, that Paul Krugman, appearing on ABC's "This Week," seemed to have finally resigned himself to being passably upbeat about an effectively public-optionless bill. "Right now," said Krugman, the president is "about to get health care reform. He's about to get the biggest change in our system since -- since Medicare." Krugman said not a word about a public option being a part of that "biggest change."

That's not to say that Blumenauer's or any progressive's internal "struggle" should not continue; only that the struggle inheres more strategically complex than Congressional progressives becoming, GOPlike, a recalcitrant voting bloc of "No."