In the right circumstances, progressive groups can work with progressive insiders in government to win big policy changes. In this episode, we consider “inside-outside campaigns,” including what makes them possible and some of the inevitable tensions that they create, for example about when and how to compromise when a coalition doesn’t have enough power to win all its demands. Stephanie and Deepak reflect on their own experiences with living wage campaigns and federal policy, including the campaign to pass the Affordable Care Act in the Obama years. Deepak then talks to Felicia Wong, who played a key role in making the Biden economic agenda much more progressive than most observers expected. Felicia runs the Roosevelt Institute, which has worked to overturn the dominant neoliberal consensus in Washington. Felicia was also among the most progressive members on the Biden transition team and oversaw the appointment of over a hundred officials in key government positions. In a wide-ranging conversation, she explains how Occupy Wall Street, the Fight for $15, and coalitions pushing for a Green New Deal and expanded investments in childcare and home care reshaped the terrain, and how work at the level of ideas, narrative, and organizing came together to shift the parameters of the possible on economic policy. Deepak and Felicia also explore the concept of “policy feedback loops” – how policy can be a vehicle for altering power relations in society, and why the right has been better at this in recent years than progressives.

Episode 8 transcript