The Long Game of Progress

I love this time of year. People have a back-to-school energy after a [hopeful] holiday break. Three Kings Day. MLK weekend. For me, it's a period of reflection and grounding.

Here's where my head has been.

Progressives seek progress.

We fight for social, economic, and political reforms to improve people's conditions.

These days, that fight can too often feel at best a slog, at worst a nightmare.

We at Raben seek and achieve progress by partnering with clients: delivering strategy, communications, advocacy, and relationships to agreed-upon shared goals toward reform.

Sometimes in the day-to-day of miserable attacks, the progress can get lost. It shouldn't.

At this time last year, I could report that our 2024 efforts were existential toward the decision by President Biden to commute almost all of the death sentences on the federal row to life in prison. The campaign was exhaustive and exhausting, included families of victims, and a pope talking to a president [Biden]. Literally.

2025 held even more — much more.

Two important national wins are worth highlighting because they represent victories in the long game.

In the waning days of 2025, Illinois, Delaware, and New York [pending some changes] have authorized Medical Aid in Dying, aka death with dignity, by law. Raben has been in this fight as a firm from our inception and has fought for and supported a sea change that brings these issues out of the medical closet and gives patients both information and choice. Most eligible people don't avail themselves of hastening their death. Still, the cultural shift that believes and treats people's pain, honors the wishes of the ill [particularly women whose wishes tend to be overridden], and takes the decisions away from the doctors and insurance companies, is enormous.

Thirty years ago, when the conservatives in the House voted to ban the practice, I had to catch up on the policy, law, and culture. Once I learned the facts and experienced my own wrenching circumstances with parents and friends, I was sold on the proposition that this issue — like abortion — goes to the core question of a government's relationship to her people — and whether competent adults with appropriate information and safeguards should be trusted to make the hardest decisions about themselves.

Chair Henry Hyde evoked his wife's awful death and her suffering at the end. He likened it to Jesus's suffering for our redemption as part of the markup on the bill banning what they called "assisted suicide." Hyde was my friend; he walked over to the Senate to testify at my confirmation hearing in a meaningful gesture of bipartisanship. But his role as chair of the Judiciary Committee, stipulating legislation banning a medical practice was G-d's will, was quite something. It is a palpable reminder of how hard the end-of-life care movement's progress has been.

Kudos to the many, including us at Raben, who have worked with me on these reforms over the years. You have delivered relief to millions of people who are competent to say how the last chapter of their life should be written, with dignity and minimal pain.

Second, after a similar amount of time that I have been working on it, President Trump ordered the reclassification of marijuana from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3. President Biden got the ball rolling, but couldn't or wouldn't make his DEA and DOJ do it. Trump will now try. At some point, it will happen. We have worked on this for more than 20 years.

We advised Soros, at his request, on how to spend his money to strengthen the drug reform movement. And, contrary to what people say about us progressives, I advised him to invest strictly in conservatives and people of faith. We had the Left persuaded; it was the failure to engage the Right that had us stuck. We created and staffed coalitions. We brought significant diversity and diversification not just into policy but into the industry itself.

Kudos to the many, including us at Raben, who have worked on sensible drug reform for, well, decades.

And as I said, so much more in 2025.

When philanthropy saw what was happening with the law firms, they honored us to support them in a successful organizing effort to stay strong. When some of the most vulnerable of our institutions and leaders were attacked, they came to us for direct help.

We brought Ranked Choice Voting to the District. We staffed top leaders in academia, NGOs, and foundations with their own voice, books, and messaging. We fought in the face of vicious cutbacks in Education to hold the line on student loan forgiveness and crucial local aid to districts.

The work we get to do with clients affects the lives of millions, shifting power.

Which, for us, is what we came to Raben to do.

Here's to an amazing 2026.

Including Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl.

Robert