I don’t know if it is true or not, but supposedly FDR once met with a group of activists who sought his support for bold legislation. He listened to their arguments for some time and then said, “You’ve convinced me. Now go out and make me do it.” Even if it isn’t quite factual, it was, and still is, good advice for democratic minded and progressive activists, when a Democrat sits in the White House. Like now, we have a Democratic President in the White House who is meeting opposition from Republicans and a handful of Democrats to his signature piece of legislation that would materially improve the lives of tens of millions – not to mention represent a break from neoliberalism and Reaganism.

This being so one would think it would be a no brainer for the coalition that elected Biden to “make Congress do it,” that is to, weigh in on the side of this transformative legislation and President in ways that rattle the country and shake up the opponents of this bill. But that hasn’t happened. In fact, the advice has been turned on its head in some progressive and left circles.

Emblematic is a column that appeared in the Nation this week, written by one its most respected journalists, John Nichols. Instead of making a case for popular and massive action in support of Biden’s legislation, Nichols is critical of Biden for his failure to campaign across the country for the bill. I don’t entirely dismiss Nichols’ argument, but it strikes me as ducking the larger problem: the passivity of progressive (and left) organizations and people in the face of this monumental legislative struggle, for their failure to lift barely a finger to “make Congress do it.” I

Isn’t that what the present moment calls for, isn’t the rumbling of hundreds of thousands, better yet a million and more, on the streets what is urgently needed?

It was during the Trump interregnum that I gained a fuller appreciation of the importance of the relative independence of the media and judicial system from the dictates of the political bloc in power, not to mention a more nuanced understanding of the role of the Democratic Party in our politics. Each in their own way were instrumental in bringing down Trump. In fact, it is fair to say in their absence Trump would be sending out his destructive, daily, and sometimes deadly rants from the White House and white nationalist, plutocratic authoritarianism or, maybe worse, would be riding roughshod over the “relative independence” of the institutions of our Republic as well as the rights and liberties of tens of millions.

It also caused me to reflect on my willingness to accept, even defend, their absence in the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries that went belly up 3 decades ago. In that era, I understood democracy in socialist society instrumentally, that is, subordinate to the “wisdom,” decisions, and power requirements of the “Marxist Leninist vanguard party” and mistook, perhaps conveniently, the formal representations of democratic governance and rights as actual ones.

Life is complicated, isn’t it.

To say that you are for a cross class, all peoples coalition to defeat the existential menace of white nationalist, plutocratic authoritarianism, while at the same time remaining in practice at arm’s length from the many positive initiatives of the Biden administration reveals a failure to understand the “concrete” strategic and tactical requirements of this moment if we hope to advance democracy, social progress, and humanity’s future – not to mention win next year’s midterm elections.