The Center for American Progress commemorated its 10-year anniversary with a day-long conference of A-list speakers whose discussions provided a snapshot of the progressive -- aka Democratic -- movement the past 10 years.
It's no surprise that the speaker/panelist list included A-listers, because CAP was founded by former Clinton Chief of Staff and Obama Advisor and Transition Team leader, John Podesta. Speakers included Secretary of State John Kerry, former Vice President Al Gore, Secretary of Labor Tom Perez, and Governors Jerry Brown of California and Martin O'Malley of Maryland. Panelists included Stephanie Cutter, formerly a long-time campaign and communications strategist for the Obama team who is now at CNN, and former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner, as well as Van Jones, who had a brief and tumultuous moment in the Obama White House, and Ben Jealous, President of the NAACP, as well as Podesta and the current CEO of the Center for American Progress, Neera Tanden.
Here are six takeaways from the commemoration:
1. Democrats need more backbone:
2. The shutdown negatively affected the U.S. standing in the world.
3. GDP, GNP and financial reporting models are out-of-date.
4. The model should be: the "polluter pays,"
5. "The Keystone Pipeline is an atrocity."
6. "If blacks don't vote, greens don't win,"
huffingtonpost
