You know how you can only remember seven of the eight reindeers' names? Or 11 of the 12 Jewish tribes?

Well, I find that "year in review" posts work in the reverse: I never have trouble coming up with what to review. The trouble is in keeping the review to a manageable size.

So consider this post a Starter List for the Progressive Year in Review. What's included or excluded could easily vary from progressive to progressive, let alone folks who don't consider themselves progressive but have insights nonetheless. I've been called everything from a Neo-con to a radical progressive, and I've also been told that I should have my personal blog removed from the Progressive Women's Blog Ring because I'm not progressive enough.

But, if there's one thing I love about BlogHer, it's its ability to entertain opinions from across the spectrum. So, after you read this post, feel free to let 'er rip, no matter where you see yourself on the spectrum, and share where you think Progressives have been this year.

WOMEN

Let's start with the top ten moments of Feminism in 2008, by Jen Nedeau at the Women's Rights channel on Change.org. The list might be a bit controversial and the post has received several comments, but it's hard to argue that more than a few of the noted moments result from and advance the efforts of progressives: Hillary Clinton's 18 Million Cracks, the Sex and The City movie inspiring new and old generations, and Ingrid Betancourt's release from captivity in Columbia.

Other notable moments in feminism which are inextricable from progressive causes, with Jen's explanations, include:

Gov. Sarah Palin: Firing Up Feminists

The nomination of Gov. Sarah Palin as Sen. John McCain's running mate during the 2008 election certainly got everyone to sit up and pay attention - especially the feminists. With her "five children, successful political career, $1.2 million net worth and beauty pageant looks" - she seemed to be the candidate that every woman and man in Republican Party was looking for. However, her nomination also fired up the women's rights movement and brought it front and center within the street fight for the Presidency. While some perceived Palin as part of a post-feminist world, her candidacy turned out to be nothing more than a shallow attempt by the GOP to partake in identity politics. In a historical essay written by Gloria Steinem she helped women understand the severe Catch-22 about Palin:

Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.

But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.

Think about the conversations we wouldn't have had or be having if Palin hadn't been in the race.

Unmarried Women Tip 2008 Election in Favor of Barack Obama

Unmarried women delivered a stunning 70 to 29 percent margin to Barack Obama and delivered similarly strong margins in races for Congress and the U.S. Senate. The 2008 election represented the highest margin recorded and a 16-point net gain at the Presidential level from 2004.

Efforts like Women's Voices Women Vote have been working tirelessly to bring out the best in this demographic. This year saw very obvious results.

Bitch Magazine Forges Ahead in Fiscal Crisis

With the struggling economy, it almost looked like feminists would lose one of their favorite publications - Bitch Magazine. However, when Andi Zeisler and Debbie Rasmussen turned to their friends on the Internet, they were able to exceed their fundraising goal of $40,000. Rasmussen writes on the Bitch blog: "This tremendous and swift outpouring has been honoring and humbling -- particularly because you've offered it during the worst days the U.S. economy has seen this year. Thank you. We're deeply grateful."

And last in this hattip to Jen but by no means least:

Female Bloggers Take On The Internet

The 2008 Blogher conference in San Francisco demonstrated that women are making their mark within the online space - but still face high threats to privacy, deep concerns about sexism in the blogosphere and struggle to find financial independence within the medium. The high attendance, in addition to the attention paid by major corporations and media at this year's conference demonstrated that the Blogher network is an unprecedented way to help women find a voice online. As seen with the recent Motrin ad campaign fiasco, these female bloggers are learning how to wield their influence and hold parties accountable for any online offense.

HEALTH CARE

Several items related to health care popped up on the blogs in regard to the year in Progressive progress.

First up, Beth Frederick at RH Reality Check lists and describes national and international top ten wins this year for women's health. Like Jen's post, the entire list is worth reading, but standout moments include:

U.S. Citizens Turn Back Attempts to Restrict Abortion Access

In November, U.S. voters overwhelmingly rejected ballot measures to restrict access to safe abortion in South Dakota, Colorado, and California. In April, the Council of Europe called for all 47 member countries to make abortion safe and legal.

What's next: In South Dakota, abortion opponents insist that they will try to pass an abortion ban in 2010, and a new organization has formed to push measures in 17 other states similar to the measure to provide rights to a fertilized egg defeated in Colorado. These campaigns are costly and out of touch with a wider global trend of liberalizing abortion laws, according to a recent study by researchers at Harvard School of Public Health and the Center for Reproductive Rights.

We know now that the Bush administration, through newly promulgated regulations (Momcrats has a thorough post about the 11th hour passage of new conscience rules here) has thrown more obstacles in the path of women seeking legal medical care, so the energy that worked toward the successes just noted in the above campaigns will continue to be needed by progressives.

Clinton Global Initiative Prioritizes Adolescent Girls

At the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) annual meeting in September, longtime IWHC partner Bene Madunagu, head of the Girl's Power Initiative (GPI) in Nigeria, spoke to the need for comprehensive sexuality education programs for the 1.5 billion people in the world today between the ages of 10 and 25.

What's next: Over the next two years, IWHC will invest nearly $1 million in 19 organizations in Nigeria, Cameroun, Pakistan, Brazil, Peru, and Mexico to ensure that education and health services for young people integrate human rights, gender equality, health, and sexuality. GPI will continue to collaborate with education officials in four Nigerian states to reach nearly one million young people with information and education about their health and rights.

And finally, something about which I've blogged a fair amount because of the political battles waged in Ohio over this topic (and won by progressives, thanks to Ohio Governor Ted Strickland):

U.S. States Prioritize Youth Health Over Ideology

In 2008, the number of U.S. states refusing to participate in the federal government's abstinence-only-until marriage education program (Title V) reached 25, as state governments recognize what research and evaluations have repeatedly shown: abstinence-only programs are ineffective.

What's next: Despite pushback from the states, Congress may vote to extend Title V for another year or longer. President-elect Obama has repeatedly called for "age-appropriate" and "science-based" sex education in schools. The U.S. federal government and the states now have a new opportunity to work together to develop state and federal programs that support the comprehensive sexuality education young people need to make informed choices about their bodies and their health.

On the employment end of health care, Liz Moore of the SEIU United Health Care Workers points to an effort through which the workers got their voices heard. They continue to amplify their voices in part through a blog [emphasis mine]:

In 2008 the executive board of California's fastest growing healthcare union - made up of more than 80 frontline caregivers, majority women and people of color - took a brave step for patients and working families at great personal risk. Member leaders of United Healthcare Workers voted to stand up for democracy in their national union, SEIU, and publicly oppose the backroom deals by national union officials that were hurting healthcare workers and those in their care and undermining progressive healthcare reform.

That vote became a movement, chronicled on their website, www.seiuvoice.org, that sparked a national conversation about what kind of organizations it takes for working people to have a real voice in their workplace and in society. Democracy Now reported on this growing movement for union democracy (http://www.seiuvoice.org/article.php?id=452), quoting UHW member Maya Morris as she spoke to the national union leadership on the need to guarantee member involvement at every level of the union.

The posts at the SEIVoice.org blog offer a window into the way in which these workers are using web 2.0 methods to promote their cause and achieve their goals.

In yet another twist related to health care, activist Ellen Bravo of 9to5 heralds the victory of paid sick days in Milwaukee and Washington, D.C., and New Jersey's success in becoming the third state to provide family leave insurance. Frankly, I have a hard time even calling these accomplishments progressive because, to me, these are measures that simply level the playing field and improve the quality of life for all workers, male and female. But if I have to be called progressive because I support these successes, I can live with that.

Shifting the focus fully to working women, BlogHer's own Gloria Feldt of Heartfeldt Politics, believes that, "the world turns on human connections and the
small events that don't get the biggest play in the news are often the
lynchpins of change." So, for example, the electorate's rejection of John McCain parallels the rejection of what Gloria called his "wrong answers" to working women:

I believe McCain's "air quotes" and scowl when saying the words
"women's health" during the third presidential debate helped seal the
deal with women--in the negative for McCain. It was a small thing in
the grand scheme of the long election, but it delivered the powerful
subliminal (to some) and visceral (to others) message to women-and many
men--that McCain could not be trusted to respect women as human beings
with intellectual an moral capacity to make their own reproductive
health decisions. This heightened awareness that there really are
people who still today cavalierly dismiss women in turn increased the
turnout of silently pro-choice and undecided voters who contributed to
the defeat all three anti-choice ballot initiatives as well as helping
sweep Obama and 12 new pro-choice members of Congress into office.
Thank you, John McCain--your timing was impeccible to communicate
exactly what many of us had been unable to get through to voters who
wanted desperately to believe you were a moderate.

It is that "getting through" that is the progressive accomplishment: the seeing through the veneer to the core of what motivates someone to speak in such a way. Rejecting John McCain at the voting booth is the most poignant evidence we have of progress in this regard.

OBAMA

I bet you thought that I'd either start or end with Obama, didn't you?

Although several of the women I've quoted so far listed the election of Barack Obama as the crowning achievement of the year, Cynthia Samuels of Don't Gel Too Soon pinpoints two particular instances in Obama's campaign that solidified her sense of just how much progress we've made toward progressive goals, especially from her perspective related to the history of the Civil Rights Movement and now electing, as she says, someone whom she sees as an African American progressive. She writes movingly and with great detail about Obama's accepting the Democratic Party's nomination of him to be its presidential candidate exactly 45 years to the day of the March on Washington and calls his Grant Park acceptance speech on election night, November 4, 2008 like an exorcism of the memories of the 1968 riots.

And as we head into 2009, perhaps the greatest progressive legacy from 2008 is the externalizing of conversations about the diversity in our population, as exemplified in Maria Niles' BlogHer post about the future of race and politics after electing Obama. Such reflections make me feel certain that through communication, more
progress is not only possible but inevitable.

DESSERT SMORGASBORD OF PROGRESSIVE MOMENTS

Despite the quality and quantity of those moments reviewed so far, consider all the issues still to be considered like the Top 10 Victories for LGBT Equality at The Bilerico Project, the Women's Media Centers video collage of their Progressive Women's Voices 2008 media appearances or progressive cable talk show host Rachel Maddow was named one of the 10 smartest people of 2008. And how about the Obama campaign's use of technology and social media that truly can be said to have given "power to the people"? If the conservatives effort to amp up their Internet presence and activity isn't proof of enough of the progressives' success on the cyberworld, I'm not sure what is.

And still, other causes that progressives embraced in 2008, as so many years in the past, include immigration, foreign policy, separation of church and state and race relations. Think of ICE raids, relations between Israelis and Arabs, religious and racial profiling in the name of security. I know I can think of the setbacks - but what about the steps forward? Maybe 2009 will be a better year for these and other issues that matter to progressives.

And, still more: bloggers - how did we do from the left of center, as bloggers from the left of center but also among ourselves, as men, women, bloggers of color? It was not such an easy year: Consider the battle to make sure that convention credentialed bloggers represent all the niches of the blogosphere. Consider the battles over whether sexism or racism was the "worser" -ism (and the rejection of the notion of a hierarchy of "isms"). Consider the disagreements even over the primary nominees themselves.

I'll let that sit for a moment.

Sitting, sitting, sitting.

What progressive activity will you remember from 2008?

***So, do you know, I woke up in the middle of the night thinking of several other topics that are important to progressives that I didn't even mention? I'll be adding in the comments to capture some of those thoughts so as not to make this post longer than it already is!  I hope you'll add ideas in the comments too.