progressive politics as pragmatic transcending • gary e. davis • berkeley


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	progressive politics as pragmatic transcending gary e. davis	September 3, 2024

“Harris is beating Trump by transcending him,” E. J. Dionne wrote mid-August. Needless to say, the laughs at “Bozo” (Nancy Pelosi, PBS News Hour) are well-deserved.

“Kamala Harris’s DNC was a master class in coalition building,” Dionne wrote
the next day. “Harris captures ‘the soul of America’ so excellently,” I commented
in response, “in theme and practical entailment,” which had in mind a pragmatism
of progressive policy (theme) and politics (practical entailment).

One W.Post pundit I like (usually), Philip Bump, believes that “moving on from Donald Trump…will be hard,” but he details that in terms of a retrospective which gives no attention to how Harris is moving on quite successfully. I commented, in part, that “’Turning the page’ is not about immersing oneself again in a genealogy of what we're not going back to. The new way forward is an orientation to taking advantage of emergent opportunity that good government can facilitate.” Besides, Bump’s narrative doesn’t argue credibly that moving on will be difficult, but only that moving on has a viscous history, as if a solution is not evident.

—a history which will be happily transcended with the help of Tim Walz, because evincing futures is the business of teaching. Joe and Jill Biden are educational leaders. Harris and Walz will be too. A W.Post article on the announcement of Walz as running mate, early August, caused a very assertive response from me:

Let's make a couple of things clear: An educator is likely to be “progressive” because more education enlightens a person to the simple humanism of openness to varieties of life and flexible thinking.

The prevailing attitude of an educator is to teach, not to dictate. Every student knows that a great teacher is open to your stage of understanding. That is also true for excellence in leadership.

There should be no surprise that an educator is highly successful as
a political leader.

And let us not forget that educational excellence, across all areas of society, is the highway—high way—to American prosperity. There is no downside to wanting prosperity to accelerate. There is no downside to driving in the left lane when the way is clear.

The next day, at a NYTimes article on Walz’s sudden rise to prominence,
I commented:

Walz’s governance wonderfully exemplifies Biden’s aspiration to advance a “care economy,” and Harris has expressed her determin-
ation to see such a vision of American humanity furthered.

“The soul of America,” the heartland which is our entire continent, realizes itself better as “the good society” (Robert Bellah).

Walz not only exemplifies a society whose north star is care. He has the entire constellation of Democratic governors with him.

The Democratic National Convention will, I’m confident, certify [Sept. 3: and did] that we have Biden’s choices to thank—from decades of public service to passing the torch—for the renewal that America will cause through the Harris/Walz partnership.

So, what’s wrong with pragmatic optimism?

next—> a note on progressive pragmatism in concept