Progressives Launch 'One Nation' Coalition to Counter Tea Party

Progressives Launch 'One Nation' Coalition to Counter Tea Party
Source: The Washington Post

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, the "tea party" movement must be honored.

In an effort to replicate the tea party's success, 170 liberal and civil rights groups are forming a coalition that they hope will match the movement's political energy and influence. They promise to "counter the tea party narrative" and help the progressive movement find its voice again after 18 months of floundering.

The large-scale attempt at liberal unity, dubbed "One Nation," will try to revive themes that energized the progressive grassroots two years ago. In a repurposing of Barack Obama's old campaign slogan, organizers are demanding "all the change" they voted for -- a poke at the White House.

But the liberal groups have long had a kind of sibling rivalry, jostling over competing agendas and seeking to influence some of the same lawmakers. In forming the coalition, the groups struggled to settle on a name. Even now, two of the major players disagree about who came up with the idea of holding a march this fall.

In this respect, at least, the liberal effort already resembles the fractious tea party movement. In February, some tea party groups skipped a long-planned gathering in Nashville in protest of alleged profiteering by convention organizers. Tea partiers have also argued about which candidates represent the movement.

Despite the friction among liberal groups, the effort behind "One Nation" was born of a certain necessity: At one of the first meetings, Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change, said, "Raise your hand if you can push your part of the agenda all by yourself."

No hands shot up.

Indeed, a promised overhaul of immigration law is virtually dead this year. Legislation that labor unions say would make it easier for them to grow their membership are stalled in Congress. The jobless rate is 15.4 percent for blacks and 12.4 percent for Hispanics, compared with 8.6 percent for whites.

"Having been confronted with the specter of the tea party...we felt it urgent to organize the majority of this country, which voted in 2008 and has gone back to the couch," said Benjamin Jealous, president of the NAACP. "We've been split off in different directions."

The groups involved represent the core of the first-time voters who backed President Obama -- including the National Council of La Raza, NAACP, AFL-CIO, SEIU and the United States Student Association. (The effort is separate from the Democratic Party's plan to spend $50 million trying to reach those same voters.)