In an interview on Progressivism

I think in conjunction with that, probably Michael Harrington’s The Other America in the 1960s was huge for those of us who came of age in that period. It really created the war on poverty and defined Lyndon Johnson’s initiatives and the great social leap forward of that period. And I think Paul Wellstone is an outgrowth of that in every respect. The Conscience of a Liberal spoke to Barry Goldwater’s counterpiece The Conscience of a Conservative, which had a huge impact.

It would be interesting some day to take the two of those, Harrington and Wellstone, and see where they actually come together. I just thought of that. It would be interesting to see where the values actually intersect and what it is that departs. The book also marries an agenda on issues like health care, universal pre-K [pre-kindergarten programmes] and campaign finance reform to core progressive values like opportunity and fairness.

A number of these books, Conscience of a Liberal, The Other America, The Grapes of Wrath, are actually all about inequality and poverty. Some argue that progressives have lost that focus.

There’s not much discussion of it in America and there ought to be more given the divide between the haves and have-nots. What’s happened in terms of incomes in the last 20 years is inexcusable. It’s just that the system has institutionalised this inequity to a much greater degree. That’s part of what this fight on the budget is about right now. That’s really a centerpiece of whether you’re going to address our priorities in a fair-minded way and with some kind of sharing of the burden or not, so I think it’s fundamental to what we’re fighting about right now.