The meta theme for this blog has always sort of been managing change. That is one of the many things that the “c” is for. There has been a forceful change in this country. If I were a betting man — and I am — I would say that there is going to be eight years of Obama presidency in which to make and deal with some serious change.

To that end, I really want this blog to become more about ideas for change and less about why it has to happen. I think we won that why argument. For the past eight years so much of my and my fellow progressives’ energy has been devoted into political resistance and creating a political environment that is not resistant to change; of creating the era we are now entering.

Now, our challenge is to develop ideas that can move men’s minds; to develop a vision of a new economy and culture that is attractive. So much of the progressive movements’ approach to policy has been one of doom, hair shirts and secrifice. But as a technologist and a future-oriented person I have never bought into that. The first posts on this blog was about the Viridian Movement, an alternative environmental philosophy that said that the enviromnental movement was a design challenge, not a policy challenge.

But, before we begin in earnest, I think is important to talk about why I am so confident that progressives can and should — at least for the time being — put the politics of the past behind us and really focus our energies on policy ideas and a vision for a better city, state, nation and planet.

My own observations over the last two or three decades is that the difference between movement conservatives and movement progressives is one of perception of how their ideas are held by the rest of the country. In most cases if you ask a progressive they will admit that their views are not yet shared by most of the country; that the progressive’s job is ideally selling a solution to a problem. Progressives will, for example press harder on gay marriage not because it is assumed to be popular but becasue marriage equality is to us seen as a broader social good and that the rest of the country needs to be sold on this idea.

In this sense progressives try to operate in a market of ideas. In that market facts are important e.g. gays in the military are overwhelmingly well-behaved and good soldiers/sailors/airmen. Further appeals to a percieved innate sense of social justice among the polulation are considered persuasive e.g. gay rights = civil rights.

To use another example: Governmentsponsored and regulated health care is a good solution because it has an excellent long-term track record in many other countries (factual evidence) and because our present system is self-evidently unfair and broken (appeal to social justice AND self-interest).

Contemporary conservatives on the other hand seem to operate under the assumption that their core beliefs are those of ordinary people, that conservatisim is a defense of those core beliefs against an “elitist,” urban, coastal agenda. If that is true, then the movement requires leaders of a sort of “pure” moral character to embody those values to lead and persuade the people that your ideas are ones they already hold.

Therefore, the conservatives argument is almost always an appeal either to cultural tradition and nativism or to faith, e.g. homosexuality is an innate wrong both because it has long been pushed underground in Western Civilization and the Bible says it is wrong. OR: Government sponsored and regulated health care is a bad solution because it is used by left-leaning countries like France and Sweeden (appeal to cultural/nativist tradition) and because it kills free enterprise among health care providers and insurers (appeal to faith in pure capitalism).

For conservatives, theirs is also a market of ideas, but for them the assumption is either that their ideas are already held or supressed by culture and media. Witness the pevasive belief within the conservative movement that the entire range of the mainstream media (Fox excepted) leans heavilly to the left and skews the entire country in that direction.

With that set of operating assumptions then, what are we to make of the prospects for the Republican Party for the next four to eight years? Over drinks with a former Obama staffer last week, I said that intellectually it is much more interesting to think about the problems of the Republicans than it is of the Democrats.

For Democrats our chief task is really just to persuade our more timid members that we have (albeit temporarily) cleared the field of our enemies and to stiffen their spines enough to actually vote for good policy instead of “compromise” bills, with the rump of the GOP. It all comes down to legislative hallway arm-twisting and constituent pressure on party members who haven’t gotten the “Change Is Here” memo yet. Pretty boring and frustrating stuff.

Republicans on the other hand are faced with somehow completely transforming their party ideologicaly and demographically. The GOP faces a couple of really big hills to climb. One, is that their politics of cultural identity and moral surety is rapidly pushing them into a demographic and geographic box which — unless they drasticaly broaden their reach — they face a future as a purely regional party that is permanently in the minority at the national level.

The party’s other big hill to climb is one that is summed up in the phrase, “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?” In other words, the party’s most recent turn at power in which its policies were given what passes in the US as almost total freedom, was a dismal failure. This is a fact that is recognized by almost everyone but the party’s most faithful supporters.

Barack Obama — and Democratic candidates all up and down the ticket — won not only because of his/their superior policy initiatives. It was the fact that the alternative — essentially more of the same — was so obviously *wrong* that people were more than willing to give the unknown a shot.

Therefore, as long as the Obama administration continues to make even slow but steady progress on its promises, it will probably continue to get the benefit of the doubt from the electorate. And as long as the Republican party resists fundamental change in its character and policies, they will not be able to offer a compelling alternative agenda.

So, that is all just an explanation why I feel pretty comfortable in pulling back somewhat from day to day politics and instead starting to focus on actual ideas for change and transformation and maybe even implementing them.

I think this is a wise thing for many progressive acitivsts to do. Not to abandon politics altogether, but to devote more time to developing ideas for building resliliance and change in our communities; to get our hands dirty doing community organizing and local policy work. Change after all comes from below.

I’ll have more on this soon and later in the month I expect to announce a major community-building project in the Clinton region. In the meantime, enjoy the weekend.