Congressional Progressive Caucus Slumbers On

You know, I’ve written in the past about my disappointment with the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which managed through the first six years of the Bush administration to preserve its nominal status as an organization but failed to actually do much of anything. There was a lamely plausible excuse for this: with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, any legislation the CPC proposed might have been doomed to failure. The CPC could still have tried, could still have used the megaphone of congressional membership to make a stink, could still have arranged press conferences, could still have arranged hearings, could have, could have, could have, but didn’t.

At least back then the Congressional Progressive Caucus had an excuse. Now, the Democratic Party is in the majority in the House and Senate. So there’s no excuse. Go ahead and visit the Congressional Progressive Caucus homepage, look at it, and ask yourself why the CPC has only made two press releases this year, and none at all for the past two and a half months. Why is the CPC Events Gallery completely blank?

This is similar to the question I’ve been asking myself about Mike Gravel, who has by dint of his status as a presidential candidate gained the potential attention of a whole lot of people, but who (until yesterday) had let his website shrivel and hid press releases dry up, because, because… why was that again? It’s great to see that Gravel’s staff is using his website again to promote his campaign. I’d like to see the Congressional Progressive Caucus follow suit and use its attention-grabbing potential to actually grab attention, affect the course of debate, change people’s assumptions, and, you know, promote progressive policy change! Wild and crazy junk like that.