A comment sent in by Lew Creary:
In his "Progressive Etymology" posting, Chris Bowers sketches a history of the political usage of the term "progressive" that in effect recognizes four consecutive phases -- a classical phase that ran from the late 19th century until FDR's first campaign for president, a second phase initiated by FDR's use of the term "liberal" to describe his New Deal ideology and ending with widespread abandonment of the progressive banner after Henry Wallace's fourth-place finish in the 1948 presidential election, a third phase consisting of a 1990s revival of the term "progressive" by two quite different political groups (DLC types and Bay-Area entrepreneurs), and a fourth phase, now in progress (2007), in which the term helps to create a "big tent" in which diverse elements of the American center-left can comfortably gather.
Here, I want to call attention to a fifth significant strand in the usage-history of the term "progressive" that overlaps in time each of the four strands that figure in Bowers's account, but which goes unmentioned in that account. This fifth strand is the term's role as the name of a standard-bearing political magazine, The Progressive, which has gone by this name since 1929, and whose direct lineage goes all the way back to U.S. Senator Robert La Follette Sr. of Wisconsin, and his founding of La Follette's Weekly on January 9, 1909.
To quote from the magazine's web site, "In 1929, La Follette's Weekly changed its name to The Progressive, but the views of the magazine have remained remarkably consistent over the years. The Progressive, a monthly since 1948, has steadfastly stood against militarism, the concentration of power in corporate hands, and the disenfranchisement of the citizenry. It has continued to champion peace, social and economic justice, civil rights, civil liberties, human rights, a preserved environment, and a reinvigorated democracy. Its bedrock values remain nonviolence and freedom of speech." In 1979, the magazine successfully (and famously) defended its right under the first amendment to publish a controversial article on the hydrogen bomb [see this for the magazine issue containing (and focused on) the article, and this for a 1999/2003 retrospective analysis of the case and related issues by the author of the H-bomb article].
Bowers is happy with what he sees as the emerging "big tent" function of the term "progressive" because it contributes to a sense of unity among different types of Democrat activists. But this contribution to unity, based as it is on a potentially equivocal political label, has its limits. For example, it seems unlikely that an activist committed to reducing the concentration of power in corporate hands would be willing to compromise that goal away as the price of entering the "big tent" to collaborate with a "New Dem" type on some other, shared, goal. However, the price of such collaboration might be lower than that. Even if key value-differences exist within the big tent, principled, limited collaborations on shared goals may still be possible (and worth seeking out). And such limited collaborations may sometimes be the best we can hope for in the short run, given the values of the participating activists.