AE Blog

The collapse of the Bush presidency offers progressives and environmentalists the best chance in decades to create a powerful and long-term governing majority. This governing majority could deal with the most serious issues facing America and the world, from energy to health care. But if we are to create this majority we must articulate a vision for the country, and a policy agenda to achieve it, that resonates with changing social values.

Consider how much has changed since the 1960s, when today's progressive and environmental leaders came of age. Americans today are materially wealthier. Our homes and cars are larger, and more of us own them. We take such luxuries as air conditioning, cell phones, and inexpensive air travel for granted. Americans of all colors are living roughly a decade longer, thanks in part to advances in medicine. But we are also more insecure financially. Globalization and America's transition to a service and knowledge economy from an agricultural and manufacturing one have brought outsourcing, downsizing, greater inequality, and rising financial instability with them. Meanwhile, Americans, like the citizens of all wealthy, developed nations, continue to move away from traditional relationships to authority. When it comes to our families, employers, churches, and governments, Americans want more choices and more freedoms. Along with this move away from traditional authority, Americans have adopted a more transactional relationship with traditional institutions. "What's in it for me?" is the question voters tend to ask themselves when thinking about unions, churches, employers, and government.

Polls today show large majorities of Americans supporting a broad variety of progressive policies, from guaranteeing all Americans affordable health insurance to ending poverty to addressing global warming. But again and again, in our research and in the real world, we find that these consensus positions quickly fall apart when it comes time to actually propose a specific solution.

Opinion consensus, whether on global warming or health care, often falls apart around the same concerns: How will it affect me? What will it cost? Who's responsible? Who will actually benefit? Can we trust the government to solve the problem?

And here, if progressives are not careful, the morality of helping the poor or insuring the uninsured or protecting the planet runs into venerable American values like rewarding work, meetings one's obligations to others, being presentable and respectable, and earning one's keep. And while helping the poor or protecting the planet are things that most Americans will agree with, it is those other values that are often more central to their identities.

In this issue we describe new research we've conducted on health care, government, poverty, and climate change. Much of that research challenges long- held progressive orthodoxies. We find that reminding insured Americans how tenuous their own health insurance might be makes them less, not more, charitably disposed toward the uninsured. That requiring that welfare recipients work for their benefits opens the doors to providing greater benefits. And that urging Americans to prepare for the impacts of global warming increases their support for taking action to reduce carbon emissions, whether or not they believe that climate change is primarily caused by humans.

These findings reflect the many shortcuts and proxies that Americans use to navigate an increasingly complex world. And while they challenge many progressive orthodoxies, they do not foreclose the possibility of a powerful progressive politics. Rather, by understanding the values and needs that underlie those shortcuts instead of dismissing them as prejudiced or ignorant, we open a whole new set of possibilities for advancing progressive social change.