Andrea Batista Schlesinger delivered the following speech at the opening luncheon of the 2008 Take Back America conference.

You know, I'm from New York. Lately that seems to be a punchline in and of itself. Let"s just say that I’m relieved that we’re having the event at this hotel. But I do want to share some lessons learned from New York, though none of them have to do with wire transfers or crossing state lines.

 In New York, we were all so tired of the Pataki administration, the passivity, the refusal to acknowledge the increasingly insecurity of New Yorkers, the dysfunctionality of Albany, our state capital, in which business was done by close doors, if at all. An upstate without any meaningful investment in infrastructure. A New York City plagued by profound inequality and an increasing number of middle-class families who could no longer afford to live in their own city.

So we elected someone whose slogan was - Change on Day One.

But what we didn’t anticipate – all of us – was that what was more important was Day Two.

 Before we knew it, before we could even blink, our Governor was resisting progressive taxation, aligning himself with the tort "reformers” who think that the cost of health care is going up because regular people want to sue when they are the victims of negligence or malpractice, rather than the insurance industry heads who are getting richer and richer, announcing proposals like giving people drivers licenses regardless of their citizenship – a good idea, an important idea– but without doing any of the base building that could have turned the idea into reality.

 When it comes to building an economy that works for working people in our country, I think what happens on November 5 is more important than November 4 – especially if we elect a Democrat to office.

Who will set the tone of the debate?

There is a profound middle-class squeeze in this country. The essential question of government versus corporate power has been answered, whether it’s about energy, bankruptcy, trade.

So what are we going to do about it? Are we going to think boldly about the next direction?

Will we be talking about retraining programs, school uniforms – as if school uniforms could do anything about the massive inadequacy of our public school system,  targeted tax credits – as if targeted tax credits could repair our economy? Or will we be talking about how to save the labor movement that built America’s middle class? About how to pass an immigration policy that doesn’t start with fences so that we can all try to convince Lou Dobbs we’re “tough,” but with a recognition that the longer people labor in the shadows with no rights, the longer all working Americans are vulnerable? Are we going to give the federal government the ability to negotiate the cost of prescription drugs? Are we going to stop passing these trade bills that undermine American workers? I mean, how many Democrats voted for the Peru trade bill – the same people lamenting the downward spiral of wages and the immigration crisis. Someone said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. That couldn’t be more true than when it comes to our policy on trade. 

Are we going to stop passing diluted energy and tax bills? Are we going to tax hedge funds the way they ought to be taxed, are we going to tell corporate America that we no longer buy their line that too many greedy lawyers and too many lawsuits are the problem, and fight for Americans to have recourse when they are victimized?

In the President’s State of the Union address he talked about the importance of volunteerism, but I didn’t think that would apply to the banking industry. We need a president who is going to eliminate all forms of abusive lending practices and allow judges to modify mortgages so people can stay in their homes.

If we are going to set things right, we need to lay out our economic agenda now, and we need to stick to it. We need to do this before the piddling moderates swoop in – and they will swoop in – with their small ideas that they think are moderate enough to appeal to Americans.  We need to get smart about what the president can do, about what is on the table of Congress – remember there are 470 elections on November 5, not just one, with the entire House up for re-election, and not all of the candidates are as good as Donna Edwards -- and we need to already prepare to devote our collective strength and infrastructure to advancing an agenda before the piddling moderates swoop in.

We have these conversations in the abstract – is government good or bad? What’s the best governing ideology – progressive or conservative? But the best way to show that a progressive government works it to show when it has. We have so many stories. There are workers with paid sick leave in San Francisco, soon there will be paid family leave in New Jersey, there are cities that are leading the way on climate change and transportation. We need to tell these stories.

We are going to need to think about our shared economic interests more broadly. With all due respect to labor, unions will need to organize around progressive taxation, use that as a litmus test, as much as they do around the Employee Free Choice Act. And immigrant rights groups are going to need to organize, march strongly around the Employee Free choice Act just as much as they do comprehensive immigration reform.

I’m going to take the train tomorrow with my head held up high, because the Mann Act (and if you don’t know what that is, but you think maybe you should, look into it) has given us a do-over. But our country isn’t going to have that chance. So we need to pay as much attention to November 5 as we do to November 4. Thank you.

Executive Director of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy