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Leaders from six progressive groups participating in the “Take Back America” conference this week announced Tuesday that they would undertake the largest and most expensive effort in history to push progressively minded Americans to the polls. “2008 has the potential to be a ‘sea-change’ election,” said Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, the organization that hosts the annual conference. Borosage predicted a political transformation on the order of the conservative realignments that swept through the nation following Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980. The groups represented at Tuesday's press conference were: the AFL-CIO, Women's Voices. Women Vote, MoveOn.org, Rock the Vote, ACORN, and the National Council of La Raza. Encouraged by rising numbers in voter turnout so far in primary elections, many group leaders are hopeful that their efforts to reach young voters, unmarried women, minorities and labor union families will motivate support for a progressive presidential candidate. The coalition will spend $150 million on the November election, according to the website of the Campaign for America’s Future. “This is about building a progressive movement in this country,” said AFL-CIO political director Karen Ackerman. The AFL-CIO will dedicate funds and volunteers to target households of its labor union members. “They hold the key to victory for progressives this year,” Ackerman said. Another group of key voters will be unmarried women, according to Page Gardner, president and founder of Women’s Voices. Women Vote. The self-described nonpartisan organization wants to involve more unwed women in the political process. “Women need change,” she said. “These women will be to progressives what evangelicals were to conservatives.” |
