What is progressive?

The implication is clear: A progressive agenda must be tempered by the need to get things done. Some progressives would argue this pragmatism is an excuse to back away from truly pursuing solutions to such issues as the climate crisis, housing costs and associated discrimination or police misconduct.

Progressive is just one of the terms I use with some frequency when writing about politics. In this lull between campaigns, it seems a good time to question what it means and how it should or should not be used. Moderate is another term that turns up here, and I am not at all sure it can be applied with any degree of accuracy. Another is the word activist, and I am pretty confident in its application.

What difference does any of it make?

Well, as long-winded as this corner can be, I am limited to 800 words. For the sake of economy and, like a lot of journalists, I resort to a kind of shorthand – terms that have a common understanding, at least within the political world I frequent. The risk is that these words — yes, labels — are generalizations, with all the biases and inaccuracies that may attach.

Particularly now, in the political environment of the Peninsula, I confess to some confusion about how to apply terms such as progressive and moderate with confidence in their usefulness as labels — to me, to the people I write about and to those of you who do me the honor of reading.

The Pew Research Center describes progressives as advocating that “U.S. institutions need to be completely rebuilt because of racial bias.”

Pew also notes — and it is abundantly true here — that progressives are among the most politically active Democrats.

Many of Peninsula progressives are young; many of them — not all — are from communities of color, which are slowly emerging as the combined majority on the Peninsula.

They are far-left liberal. Many of them are adherents of the Democratic Socialist principles espoused by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. They are big fans of U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who, responding online to the label of extremist, offered a list of positions she obviously believes are more mainstream than the political establishment believes: Medicare for all, the Green New Deal, ICE is a “rogue agency” that should be dismantled. “I believe in cooperative economics and cooperative democracy, aka democratic socialism,” she wrote.

Incidentally, I have heard more than one candidate say he or she wants to be “the AOC of SMC.” I don’t think this is an AOC county, but there you go.

The complication of describing progressives as a distinct political entity within our local political landscape is that most of the elected officials on the Peninsula — certainly the most prominent ones — can only be described as progressive. Then-Assemblymember Kevin Mullin, running for Congress last year, was described by several progressive groups as one of the leading progressives in the Legislature. He also, most assuredly, is a leading member of the political establishment.

It is notable that the election night comment from Papan was made at the plumbers union hall in Burlingame, a mainstay political setting in the county for decades. Labor has been, perhaps, the key factor in the transition of San Mateo County from staunchly Republican to entirely Democratic. Labor remains the single most influential interest in the county, and unequivocally progressive. But progressives could easily see labor leadership as pragmatic and mainstream establishment. Labor consistently has a strong track record when it comes to supporting candidates who win, which, inarguably, is the ultimate mark of pragmatism.

And this may be the heart of the matter. The real conflict between progressives and pragmatics is that more pragmatics win office — at least for now. This tension plays out in other ways: in votes on political matters at the Democratic Central Committee, or in fights over who goes as delegates to the state Democratic conventions. On these battlegrounds, the sides are evenly split.

There is a core emerging of leading progressive officeholders emerging — county Supervisors David Canepa and Noelia Corzo, San Mateo Mayor Amourence Lee and South San Francisco Councilmember James Coleman among the most notable.

But the real tension may simply be that a younger generation is impatient for an older establishment generation to get out of the way.

And that is as old as politics itself.

Mark Simon is a veteran journalist, whose career included 15 years as an executive at SamTrans and Caltrain. He can be reached at marksimon@smdailyjournal.com.