Why is this fundamental?
Why is this fundamental?
The WFP exists to build governing power. Government plays a role in almost every aspect of our daily lives, and only government can implement – at scale – the changes that our communities need right now. Therefore, we must control government. And we must build political infrastructure that creates the conditions for governing in a progressive manner.
The main struggle in America
The nature of the main struggle facing America in this historical moment means we often have to work with and inside the Democratic Party. We can not ignore majorities, and in this era, preserving Democratic majorities can literally mean the difference between life and death for our communities.
At the same time, neither the Democratic or Republican parties have ever been working class parties. From their earliest days they have always counted different elements of organized capital inside their big tent coalitions. Even at the height of working class power in the United States, and extending well into the Civil Rights era, the Democratic Party relied on winning large numbers of segregationist Democrats (aka “Dixiecrats”) to maintain a hold on power. Today they count on finance, “green capital,” and affluent suburban voters to put together their electoral majorities.
Therefore, keeping a laser focus on building and sustaining governing power for, by and of the multi-racial working class ensures that we do not lose our primary orientation when navigating this difficult terrain.
Governing Power: How do we think about it?
On a day-to-day level, there are a number of practical things to keep in mind when we think about WFP’s goal to build governing power:
Our ability to govern flows directly from our ability to win elections. To do this we need to organize institutions and individuals who together are strong enough to make meaningful interventions in the electoral sphere. Developing the skills and expertise of our staff, institutions and members to effectively contest and win elections (particularly upsets) with candidates who run on our issues and/or against incumbents who oppose us helps us enact policies that WFP supports.
We are constantly exercising governing power on the way to getting more of it. Governing power isn’t a final destination – it’s an orientation that guides how we do our work. It is also not linear or final; think of all the times power in government shifts between Democrats and Republicans - or how progressive power grows and then sometimes ebbs. Our goal is to use whatever bits of governing power we have to deliver things to our people, or to block bad things from happening. And then we need to constantly be strategizing to increase the power we have to govern on behalf of our people.
The governing power we are able to build also emanates from both the “upstream” and “downstream” activities we do – not just elections. For example, we build candidate pipelines to identify and elect candidates who strengthen our power (particularly in legislatures). Ideally, we get enough people elected to form a caucus that helps our champions be more than the sum or their parts. We also attend to public opinion. Largely through narrative/ideological work, we are seeking to move the center of American political debate to the left. Doing so expands the limits of the possible.
Governing power is also rooted in our ability to serve as a home for movement alignment. This kind of “united front” work can be challenging, and we are often required to build short-term tactical coalitions (and long-term strategic alliances) with a broad range of organizations and constituencies. Our leadership bodies and the people weighing in on our endorsements may range from those who want to “burn it all down” to those who simply want to reform some specific broken part of our system. Keeping our eye on the task of building governing power helps us draw a line between these poles. It prevents our party from spinning out into self-destructive purity tests while at the same time not being content with just making tweaks around the edges of the system. When we say that governing power is focussed on winning “structural reform” it means that we are taking steps on a redistributive path. Election after election, we are building the power to win reforms that shift both resources and influence from those who currently have them to those who do not.
There is no one path to governing power, and conditions on the ground should dictate our approach. While we view states as a fundamental building block of building governing power in America, we are often not ready to build at that level yet. Therefore, we take the approach that we are building governing power “at the highest level possible, at the fastest speed we can responsibly achieve it.”
We count elected officials as a core constituency. In a spirit of co-governance, clearly articulating our party’s governing power orientation allows us to support elected champions to move with strategic clarity. From their vantage point, elected officials are able to see opportunities to advance the cause of building multi-racial working class power and unrigging the political system that works against the interests of our people. When we have a shared language of governing power, our elected champions will better be able to seize opportunities to advance our collective governing project.
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