When the Good Isn't the Enemy of the Perfect

Yesterday was my first day back at the office in 12 weeks.

For the past three months, I was able to stay home and take care of my newborn daughter. My rock star of a wife graciously took over a total of six months for paid medical and family leave, and I was able to step in when she returned to work in mid-February. This allowed our family to put off paying for childcare for three months and gave me a chance to become a much better dad than I would have been otherwise. Being one of fourteen blue states that provide paid family and medical leave, Massachusetts has always been at the forefront of providing strong social service programs for our vulnerable community members. In 2018, it was the sixth state to enact paid family and medical leave, and the way the law was written made it the strongest PFML program in the country. Eight years later, the program has helped over half a million Bay Staters by giving them critical job security during difficult times. To date, it has been one of the most successful pieces of legislation passed in the last decade. 

And it almost didn't happen. 

The reason it almost didn't happen was the same reason we run into time and time again in the community organizing field: White progressives. It is that demographic that thinks they know better than everyone else. White progressives have allied themselves with some of the most toxic antisemitic groups out there, including DSA, Our Revolution, and U.S. PIRG here in Massachusetts. They share the same objective: to infiltrate the Democratic Party in a way that forces the party to move to the extreme left on key issues. They obsess over "Establishment Democrats" and see veteran politicians (never Bernie, though) as the enemy to progress. Yet they can't even define who or what an "Establishment Democrat" is when it comes time to vote, as evidenced by the 2020 Senate race when these progressive groups endorsed incumbent Senator Ed Markey, a 40-year entrenched Democratic elected official, over Congressman Joe Kennedy, III, simply because Markey supported the Green New Deal. While these groups now prioritize politicians who are for Medicare for All or taxing billionaires (Tom Steyer, anyone?), one thing remains true with their statewide coalition work: no matter what is being proposed, it is never enough.

I saw this firsthand in 2018. With representatives from over 40 statewide nonprofit, faith, labor, and community groups in the room, we had assembled a formidable coalition that was well on its way to bringing both paid family and medical leave as well as an increased minimum wage to the November ballot. At our June meeting, we were reflecting on the success of two separate rounds of signature collection when out of the blue we received a call from the Speaker of the House sharing with us that he had struck a deal with the business community for a "Grand Bargain" that would pass both paid family and medical leave along with an increased minimum wage in exchage for an annual sales tax holiday and the gradual removal of time and a half of Sundays. The Speaker needed our answer within the hour. We didn't have time to consult our members or our boards. All we had time to do was decide, in the room, if we were willing to accept this unforeseen compromise. 

Naturally, there was immediate opposition from the far-left groups mentioned. To them, compromise is and always will be a dirty word. They want it all or nothing at all, so this type of bargain was an immediate nonstarter for them. Yet after they said their piece, the adults in the room stepped in and grounded us back in reality. Sure, the deal wasn't perfect. Sure, it was disappointing to lose time and a half. But agreeing to this deal now saved us not one but two costly statewide ballot campaigns. It would put paid family and medical leave on the governor's desk within the month and would allow us to start collecting employer contributions for paid leave in October and lock in our first minimum wage increase in January of 2019. Agreeing to this now would jumpstart the process and would help get these needed programs off the ground as quickly as possible. If not, we ran the risk of two separate, expensive, and time-consuming campaigns that weren't even guaranteed to win at the ballot box come November.

Right there and then, cooler heads prevailed. And while neither our coalition nor the business community attended the in-person signing of the deal to show our displeasure at having to give up what we did, our side definitely came out on top. An increased minimum wage is a rising tide that lifts all boats. Paid family and medical leave strengthens families and, in turn, strengthens the workforce. These were both laws that made a critical difference statewide, especially for vulnerable communities. While I am fortunate to be a person born of privilege, I, too, benefited from the legislation, and I can't imagine the struggle of having to bring a child into this world in a state where paid leave for parents is not an option. My family is stronger, my child is healthier, and my wife and I have job stability from our employers as a result of the state's paid family and medical leave law. We can always revisit the law and improve it, but to leave it on the cutting room floor because they didn't give us 100% of what we wanted was simply never an option for the overwhelming number of us who truly understood how the game is played.

What I saw then and continue to see now is the far left's inability to play nice with others. They show up in these shared spaces with their ball, and if the team doesn't agree to do exactly as they say, they whine and take their ball and go home. Their inability to compromise is by design. They want to prove that the "establishment" isn't going far enough to enact the type of legislation that they alone deem most important. It's why they never applaud critical advances in climate legislation, because they'd rather have a politician commit to a vague "Green New Deal" than one who works to enact a bill that does exactly what the Green New Deal proposes to do. They have to do this because their whole spiel is how ineffective Democrats are. If Democrats continue to pass imperfect legislation that still accomplishes 80% of the goal, that's a win for them and for their constituents. And every time mainstream Democrats win using the system already in place, the far left loses. That is why they continue to reject any sort of compromise legislation that doesn't fully enact the full 100% of what they support.

The far left are not serious people. I'm glad they got shut down in our coalition space in June of 2018. I'm glad they're losing their influence in regions across the country. Because politics is the art of the compromise. Yes, it's harder to do that with today's GOP. But anytime you can pass 70-80% of the legislation you want, that is a win. Is it perfect? No. But that's the art of politics. You build up relationships and partnerships. You hold elected officials' feet to the fire. You create coalitions and engage the community on the issues. You do all this successfully enough, and the legislature listens. They don't give you 100% of what you ask for, but you gladly take the 75% and come back fighting like hell for that final 25%. You don't throw out the baby with the bath water like the far left wants you to do. That type of zero-sum thinking does not work in the real world. It only works for a movement that is trying desperately to show that Democrats aren't doing enough for the people of this country. It's why the far left continues to protest Democrats and Democrats alone. Because to protest against Republicans would be a bridge too far. Protesting Republicans would mean that Democrats were actually doing something right, a view that the far left refuses to acknowledge. Any time normie Democrats win, the far left loses.

And the people we fight for don't have to lose out on critical legislation because a bunch of cosplay revolutionaries try to enact unrealistic legislation to try to make themselves and their pathetic excuse for a movement feel good.