I’ve been raised to make the world a better place. I’ve worked my whole life to do that. I’ve succeeded in getting nothing accomplished. The major thing I worked for for about twenty years was single payer health reform. Obviously we’re as far from that as ever.
My first fight was for the ERA. That never passed. My next fight was to stop big oil. We wanted to start a government run oil company to compete with regular oil companies and try to keep them honest. That never passed. There were other parts of the platform that I no longer agree with, which also never passed.
I did fight to get Medicaid restored for legal immigrants in New York State. That was one victory. I worked hard on several elections, and won one and lost the rest. I worked less hard on a number of other campaigns (which is to say, hardly at all) and in many of those cases, my person won.
So, out of what I’ve tried to accomplish in life, I’d say I’ve accomplished less than 1%. I have no idea how that compares to others. It depends on the scope of what they’ve tried and what they’ve accomplished. I could measure myself on other areas, like family, children, relationships and artistic work, but those don’t count for much in the public sphere. No one really cares besides me.
So I’m going with less than 1%.