Perspective: Progressives, beware centrists’ attempts to co-opt your platform
to defeat Trump in 2020 and advance the party’s legislative agenda.
Ideas about leveling economic and social inequalities animated progressive reformers around the turn of the 20th century, as they do their political descendants today. Beginning at the local and state level, progressive reformers pursued causes and policies that sought to address an array of issues, including worker protections, women’s rights, education, public health, conservation, welfare, representative government and the overall inequality wrought by industrial capitalism.
On the issue of railroad rate regulation, for instance, Roosevelt opted for expediency over real reform proposals, such as those from Sen. Robert M. La Follette , whom Roosevelt regarded as a demagogue. Roosevelt threw his weight behind the Hepburn Act, which helped railroad corporations much more than it helped consumers.
One major obstacle to this agenda was that the Bull Moose Party, which hinged on the cult of personality around Roosevelt, remained a racially exclusive and largely white middle- and upper-class affair, one that relied on big money and political insiders.
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