Sheehan, who has never held political office, recently said that she was leaving the Democratic Party because it "caved" in to the president. Last week, she announced her caravan to Washington, D.C., which she calls the "people's accountability movement."
Counterpunch, among other places, has the full text of Cindy Sheehan's letter on why she is leaving the Democratic Party. The letter does not make it entirely clear that she ever was providing active support to the Democratic Party in the first place, especially when she write in the letter that "I knew having a Democratic Congress would make no difference in grassroots action." Still, I'll take her at her word, and go along with the claim that she was an active, supportive member of the Democratic Party, but has decided to leave it after the Democratic-controlled Congress capitulated by providing more, virtually blank-check, funding of the Iraq war. I am generally not a very skeptical person when it comes to other people, and I have no problem taking them at their word when it comes to claims like this.
Although I have not suffered a personal loss such as hers, I can also at least empathize with the anger and frustration that Sheehan feels at the passage of the funding bill. I was angry and frustrated when it happened, too. Still, my reaction was a little different than hers. Instead of moving about one hundred miles to a nearby congressional district and running a third party challenge against Steny Hoyer, or whoever, I decided to take out my frustrations by picking a fight with Third Way. At the time, I felt groups like Third Way were indirectly responsible for the failure of the 110th Congress to end the war. I know at this point that they are probably opposed to the war, and support redeployment, but I felt that the longstanding practice within certain segments of the Democratic coalition, such as Third Way, to distance themselves from the left had resulted in a situation where even a Congress with a Democratic majority would sometimes still pass right-wing legislation. So, I wrote a post, picked my fight, felt a little bit better for a few minutes, and began thinking about ways that the upcoming September funding fight could be waged more effectively.
(This lengthy post continues in the extended entry).
But then, the next day, something strange happened: Third Way emailed me a response. I guess receiving a response was not so unusual in and of itself, but the type of response they sent certainly was. They discussed, in detail, specific aspects of my original post. They expressed the same worries about triangulation that I had expressed. They placed themselves in a historical context of progressivism in America, as we are struggling to do here at Open Left. They even talked about the progressive movement. In short, what was unusual about the response was, dare I say it, it felt like a "real" blog post. It was not something we bloggers typically receive from a progressive institution, or that I was used to hearing in my discussions with communications staffers from electoral campaigns. In a second article, I went on to still express some concerns about their name. Keeping with the form of their earlier response, they then wrote me a response to the second piece. Again, with both of us pleased with the level of response they sent, Matt and I published their second response on MyDD. Excited by the possibilities this exchange seemed to promise, a few days later we hatched the idea of having a Right To Respond on our new website, which we eventually named Open Left. In fact, the decision to settle on the name Open Left was at least partially rooted in this conversation with third Way, since I wanted to brand us as both not moderate, but still willing to engage in broad discussion with a wide range of progressive groups, including Third Way.
Now, I still disagree with Third Way on a lot of things, but I really like the fact that we are talking to each other. The type of "first past the post" electoral system we have in this country requires a broad coalition to get elected, much less pass public policy once you are elected. I want to pass progressive, left-wing legislation in a number of policy areas, and I know that is never going to happen unless a broad coalition is organized to make that possible. In the end, that is really all the Democratic Party is: a coalition building vessel through which people can be elected and, once elected, public policy can be passed. The Democratic Party does not stand for anything, and I mean that in a good way. It is simply a vessel, a legal structure, and an amalgamation of almost entirely non-ideological bylaws through which electoral and governing coalitions can be built. Right now, it is a place where progressives, moderates, greens, and even some libertarians and conservatives can come together and try to forge an alternative governing coalition to that currently offered by the conservative movement-dominated Republican Party. It is a place where we can all talk to each other, like when lefties such as Matt and myself can talk with Third Way. To leave the Democratic Party is to abandon the largest coalition vessel currently available to progressives in America to win elections and pass public policy.
The Democratic Party, one of the oldest, if not the oldest, continually active political party in the world, does not does not have a single ideological stance that has remained constant throughout its entire, or even the majority, of its existence. In fact, there might not be a single issue on which it has not published at least two diametrically opposed national platform planks. There is not, nor has there ever been, a Democratic Party Constitution that presents a series, or even a single, set of core beliefs. A majority of the population of every single state, and probably every single county, in the entire nation has both voted for and against the Democratic candidate for President at different times. Further, as we all know the majority of Democrats in one region of the country bare little or no resemblance to Democrats in a different region of the country. Still further, the majority of every ideological and demographic group in the country has, at different times, voted both for and against Democratic party candidate for President. In the future, there is no reason to expect that this rapid pattern of change, evolution and redefinition will not continue.
In short, the Democratic Party, when considered as an abstract concept, over the long term stands for nothing and no one. Instead of serving as an outlet for a fixed ideology or for a particular group of people, it instead serves as an empty vessel into which a temporary, broad coalition can fit, and also as an engine for electing that coalition to public office. Since the make-up of that that coalition is itself always changing, the "Party" itself will always be changing. However, rather than being a negative, I submit that this notion, that the Democratic Party does not stand for anything and is instead an empty vessel serving at the behest of an ever changing coalition, is exactly the reason why independent and third-party progressives, lefties, and radicals should join it.(…)
Most of what I am saying here is not new. We all know and encourage people on the left to help participate in changing the Democratic Party. We all know that the Democratic Party only stands for what its active members demand for it stand and, as such, that its beliefs change over time.
By running a third-party challenge against Nancy Pelosi, Cindy Sheehan has made it perfectly clear that she finds the idea of coalition building in American politics unimportant, and working with people who agree with you on many things, but not on all things, impossible to stomach. She could have chosen to run a primary challenge against Nancy Pelosi, and then run a campaign based on Democratic failures surrounding Iraq and oversight of the executive branch. Not only would such a campaign have held the advantages of taking place sooner, not only would it have focused on a more progressive voter pool that probably would have improved what will almost certainly be an anemic vote total, and not only would such a move have had the advantage of not being entirely overshadowed by the 2008 Presidential election come next October and November, but it also would have demonstrated that she is serious about achieving political results. To thumb your nose at the largest coalition currently available to progressives in America, one that controls Congress, features a large and vibrant Out of Iraq Caucus, an even larger Progressive Caucus, and the only fifteen members of Congress to sign on in favor of impeachment, is to throw away the entire idea that building coalitions is unimportant. Are these people Cindy Sheehan does not want to work with? Who would she caucus with if she were elected? Leaving the Democratic Party means you are leaving those people too.
In fact, even apart from working with other Democrats, who does Cindy Sheehan hope will vote for her? I can only imagine that it is the same people, mainly Democrats, who have voted for Nancy Pelosi on several occasions. In Nancy Pelosi's district, she will need a huge number of Democratic votes to win. She wants Democrats to vote for her, and she wants Democrats to vote her way, but she does not actually want to be associated with those Democrats herself. Or, perhaps I am assuming too much, and she doesn't really care about actually winning the election. In my view, that would once again demonstrate a lack of seriousness about actually changing public policy.
If progressives leave the Democratic Party, it might help them feel uncorrupted, but it won't help them pass progressive policy or build broad coalitions of any sort. If progressives leave the Democratic Party, it might help them further their argument that the Democratic Party is only slightly different from the Republican Party, but it will only be a self-fulfilling action. Of course the Democratic Party will be less progressive if progressives leave it, just as it will become more progressive if more progressives join it! In fact, if Cindy Sheehan were to win, Steny Hoyer would probably become Speaker of the House. Yeah--that will certainly swing the Democratic Party to the left, and result in impeachment charges being brought up against Bush, Cheney, Gonzales and others. Count on it.
The fact is, that if you leave the Democratic Party, it clearly signals that you do not want to work with the people within the Democratic Party anymore. It means you don't care about building coalitions. It means you can't stomach dissent in the party. It means you would rather be pure than build a coalition that would actually pass the sort of public policy you want, including impeaching Bush. The bottom line is this: if Cindy Sheehan were to run her campaign as a Democratic primary challenge to Nancy Pelosi, then her arguments might hold some weight. Personally, I would still encourage people to vote for Nancy Pelosi, but I wouldn't begrudge others who planned to act differently. I think primary challenges are a good thing, a way we can have discussions within our coalition, and a way to pressure fellow Democrats to adopt more of your positions. That is why I wrote the following in my Eight Rules of Progressive Realpolitik:
The Democratic Party is the primary vessel of the progressive coalition. It is impossible to enact real change without an electoral apparatus within your movement. In a two-party system, it is thus necessary to adopt one of the two parties as the electoral vessel of your coalition.
Within the coalition, intra-party democracy must always be adhered to. All party nominees must be determined by an elective primary open to all registered members of the party in the relevant district. The winner of the primary must always be supported by all members of the party apparatus, and all rank and file members should vote for the nominee (especially those who voted in the primary).
Unfortunately, it appears that Cindy Sheehan adheres to the concept of intra-party democracy about as much as Joe Lieberman. That is her decision, and her embrace of irrelevance and self-defeating means of achieving power is her own. It is too bad, really, because two years ago she showed real promise as a new generation of protest leader, whose innovative tactics made the corporate media listen to anti-war protests more than they had to three years of some of the largest protests in the history of the world. I believe, actually, February 15, 2003 was the largest worldwide protest in the history of the world. And she got more attention then that! It was a promising time. This is not.
I am sure that in the coming days Matt will add more depth to our discussion of coalition building, by providing perspective on how to build a coalition around ideas and values. I look forward to that discussion, because building successful coalitions is something we need to talk more about. David Sirota already touched on it in his first piece on Open Left back on Wednesday. We will never be successful alone. We have to work together. We have to build coalitions together. Let's start by talking to each other.
