Once again, the states are leading the way on health care reform. This past week, the Vermont House and Senate passed two versions of a bill that would essentially get a consultant to design three systems for health care in Vermont: something similar to Canadian single payer, something similar to a private system with a public option, and something similar to the recently passed federal health insurance bill.
At what point do progressives stop being Democrats' whipped dogs and start acting like a movement capable of putting the Dems in their proper place as the party of the people? David Sirota wrote today about Obama's latest call to increase war spending beyond its already ludicrous proportions.
How many of the extreme right-wing and criminal policies of Bush-Cheney has Obama adopted? How many of those extreme right-wing policies has he exceeded? Last month, knowledge that Obama has gone a step further than Bush, authorizing the executive branch to murder American citizens on the flimsiest of rationales. This sh__ has GOT to end.
My political activities now are focusing on the building of a viable third party as a tool of a reinvigorated and independent progressive movement. No efforts to reform the Democratic Party from within can succeed so long as the upper-level of the party establishment is able to crush dissent from within, as is explained here.
[T]the Democratic primaries will be where the action is ... Maybe someone like Kucinich, Feingold ... It will be a "good liberal," not a radical, advocating positions that are reasonable but declared "unrealistic." ("You'll throw the race to the Republicans, we can't have that!") The basis of the campaign will not be a sudden embrace of Bolshevism, but rather Obama's embrace of Wall Street. It will be a mix of angry rank-and-file and disgruntled party machine.
The insurgent candidate will lose. The candidate will not call for a 3rd party, will support Obama after the primaries -- will make a concession speech that would shame the Moscow Show Trials. Many of her or his followers will follow suit. The candidate will not personally work to create an independent infrastructure within the Democratic Party. Obama will probably win, not because of his impressive performance but because the foaming-at-the-mouth Republicans will be splitting. After the election, the Democratic challenger will not lead a 3rd party.
This has been the pattern for decades. There is no one within the Democratic Party willing to lead a progressive breakoff. The day Dennis Kucinich kisses all party support for his re-election to Congress goodbye is the day I will rejoice, but it's not going to happen. So it's on lay progressives to take charge, organize from the ground up, and lead the way to building both the movement and the political organization that will bring it to power within the halls of our nation's capital.
This won't happen overnight; it will take decades for a fully functional progressive political organization to be built, and we will be opposed every step of the way by Democrats, Republicans, and corporations now empowered to spend as much money as their executives want to sway public opinion against us. But we have got to start sometime, and now is as good a time as any.
Those who claim this isn't the right time will not tell us that the "right time" is never going to come -- there will always be the enxt election cycle to worry about, too much at stake to "risk throwing it to the GOP." Never mind that all Democrats ever do is throw elections to Republicans simply by behaving like they're members of their counterpart political party. We must ignore such admonitions and press on. There is no such thing as perfection in politics, to be the enemy of good things that will never come to fruition so long as the existing political structure continues. And there is nothing more to be lost by doing what is right and necessary to take back our country.
The good news is that a Progressive Party already exists in some states. In Missouri, Vermont, and Washington, progressives began rebuilding the political party that bears their name from the ground up, and they used smart strategies and tactics to gain power first at the local level and then at the state level. They are now starting to branch out into national-level politics by running candidates for the House of Representatives, with a Vermont Progressive having run for the House of Representatives in 2008 on a platform that included calling for Bush's impeachment. And David Sirota has written previously about New York's Working Families Party, which has gotten results at the local and state levels.
So the foundation exists for progressives to rebuild our movement. The will is there. What's lacking is leadership. If no one in the 'netroots is willing to assume vital leadership roles, then it is up to each and every one of us to take charge and lead. Enough is enough. Progressives must stand up to the far right, which dominates both major political parties, and end its rule. No more excuses, no more capitulations, no more waiting. Let's get it done.
This entry builds on what Something the Dog Said and rossl wrote in their own entries. Before I get to the meat of my own text, I just want to summarize what each of the previous entries state. Starting any political party, or building an existing one, is going to be a lot of hard work and progressives are going to face an uphill battle regardless of what we do. If we're going to break away from the Democrats, however, it's worth the effort; there are parties such as the Progressives (currently in Vermont and Washington) and the Greens, among others, that have made substantial progress at local and state levels.
That's the short version of what Something's and rossl's entries have to say. I highly recommend reading them both in full. Now, on to my own contribution to this subject. Because I want to provide a real-world context to the topic at hand, I'm going to pick an existing political party (The Progressives), though feel free to substitute your own. I'm going to lay out some first steps that can be taken to get the ball rolling.
One more thing before I begin: know WHY you are forming a new political party, know what your goals are, and have realistic expectations about what you hope to accomplish. Don't hold any illusions. Unless either the Democrats or the Republicans implode, chances are you're not going to replace one of them on the national stage. At most, and if you do things right, you'll force the Democrats to shift back to the left. That's it. If a new political party does rise to prominence, great, but that is only icing on the proverbial cake. All you'll want to do is force one of the major parties to experience an ideological shift to the political left. Expect at least a generation to pass before you get this result. It was twenty years between the 1912 election, when Theodore Roosevelt led the Progressive Party and split the presidential election three ways (thus handing it to Democrat Woodrow Wilson) and that of 1932 when Franklin Delano Roosevelt led the New Dealers to power. It was another generation before the Republicans built their party back up to the point where they could begin taking back political power in government. Finally, don't let the progressive movement become subservient to your party - make the party subservient to the progressive movement. David Sirota explains why far better than I can, so I'll let his words do it.
If you've read my previous entries, wherein I tried to get participants to help build a solid platform for progressives to rally around (still a work in progress in need of ideas, submissions, edits, and so on), you probably know that this entry is going to be about joining a "third" party. This shouldn't be surprising; reading my comments on the subject makes my position quite obvious. But unlike many people who talk about a "third" political party more as a vague concept than working reality, I am writing today about one that already exists in at least two states.
1. Fighting for Economic Justice and Security in the U.S. and Global Economies
To uphold the right to universal access to affordable, high quality health care for all.
To preserve guaranteed Social Security benefits for all Americans, protect private pensions, and require corporate accountability.
To invest in America and create new jobs in the U.S. by building more affordable housing, re-building America's schools and physical infrastructure, cleaning up our environment, and improving homeland security.
To export more American products and not more American jobs and demand fair trade.
To reaffirm freedom of association and enforce the right to organize.
To ensure working families can live above the poverty line and with dignity by raising and indexing the minimum wage.
2. Protecting and Preserving Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
To sunset expiring provisions of the Patriot Act and bring remaining provisions into line with the U. S. Constitution.
To protect the personal privacy of all Americans from unbridled police powers and unchecked government intrusion.
To extend the Voting Rights Act and reform our electoral processes.
To fight corporate consolidation of the media and ensure opportunity for all voices to be heard.
To ensure enforcement of all legal rights in the workplace.
To eliminate all forms of discrimination based upon color, race, religion, gender, creed, disability, or sexual orientation.
3. Electoral Reform
Eliminate or reform the Electoral College so that a handful of states cannot game the system to override the will of the electorate;
Introduce Instant Runoff Voting so that a wider variety of political parties may compete in elections;
Eliminate private money in elections by creating a national, mandatory, publicly-funded election pot from which all federal candidates must draw; and
Pass laws, up to and including further amendment(s) to the Constitution, protecting the right of every citizen over the age of eighteen to vote.
4. Promoting Global Peace and Security
To honor and help our overburdened international public servants - both military and civilian.
To bring U. S. troops home from Iraq as soon as possible.
To re-build U.S. alliances around the world, restore international respect for American power and influence, and reaffirm our nation's constructive engagement in the United Nations and other multilateral organizations.
To enhance international cooperation to reduce the threats posed by nuclear proliferation and weapons of mass destruction.
To increase efforts to combat hunger and the scourge of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and other infectious diseases.
To encourage debt relief for poor countries and support efforts to reach the UN's Millennium Goals for Developing Countries.
5. Environmental Protection & Energy Independence
To free ourselves and our economy from dependence upon imported oil and shift to growing reliance upon renewable energy supplies and technologies, thus creating at least three million new jobs, cleansing our environment, and enhancing our nation's security.
To free ourselves and our economy from dependence upon imported oil and shift to growing reliance upon renewable energy supplies and technologies, thus creating at least three million new jobs, cleansing our environment, and enhancing our nation's security.
To change incentives in federal tax, procurement, and appropriation policies to:
(A.) Speed commercialization of solar, biomass, and wind power generation, while encouraging state and local policy innovation to link clean energy and job creation;
(B.) Convert domestic assembly lines to manufacture highly efficient vehicles, enhance global competitiveness of U.S. auto industry, and expand consumer choice;
(C.) Increase investment in construction of "green buildings" and more energy-efficient homes and workplaces;
(D.) Link higher energy efficiency standards in appliances to consumer and manufacturing incentives that increase demand for new durable goods and increase investment in U.S. factories;
To eliminate environmental threat posed by global warming and ensuring that America does our part to advance an effective global problem-solving approach.
To expand energy-efficient transportation choices by increasing investment in synthesized networks, including bicycle, local bus and rail transit, regional high-speed rail and magnetic levitation rail projects.
To preserve prudent public interest regulations that encourage sustainable growth and investment, ensure energy diversity and system reliability, protect workers and the environment, reward consumer conservation, and support an expanding marketplace that rewards the commercialization of energy-efficient technologies.
To protect, preserve, restore, and where reasonably possible expand wild lands and animal and plant populations endangered by human activity, reasonably compensating businesses and homeowners for damages or losses incurred by such.
Pass legislation and encourage community leadership to, among other acts: Increase funding to child placement services (foster care agencies); increase funding for comprehensive sex education programs that are proven to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies; increase awareness of the protective benefits of proper use of contraceptives, and increase access to them; increase funding for educational programs to spread awareness of sexually transmitted pathogens including viruses and bacteria, and their effects upon the human body; increase funding for prenatal care for unwed and low-income mothers; and expand daycare and nanny services to assist low-income families and single parents who choose to keep their children after birth.
7. Gun Control and State Militias
Adopt reasonable gun control laws that keep guns out of the hands of criminals, while preserving the 2nd Amendment right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms.
Restore full control of the National Guard units to their respective states, maintaining both a federal standing military and the individual state-controlled and regulated Militias.
8. Legalizing Marijuana
Legalize marijuana, and regulate it like tobacco and alcohol.
Increase funds to existing education and rehabilitation programs; create new programs and expand existing ones where necessary, to reduce addiction; pass common sense drug laws that focus on rehabilitation for non-violent offenders; and engage parents and community leaders to educate their children on the dangers of drugs.
After reading through a number of diaries complaining about Democrats, I felt compelled to write this. Most of us - the sane, honest ones anyway - seem to agree that the problem now isn't the far-right Republican Party, but the equally far-right Democratic Party.* What we don't seem to agree on is what to do about it.
The general point of argument amongst progressives and liberals is whether to leave the Democrats to organize around a third (or fourth or fifth) political party, or to stay the course and try to reform the party from within. I hold that after roughly three decades watching Republicans so put off by their party's ideological excesses join and usurp the Democratic Party for their own warped interests, with cycle after cycle further weakening what passes for the progressive movement in America, we have to accept that we cannot continue trying the one-pronged approach of working from within the belly of the beast. We're being digested, and after that there really is only one outcome.
It is long past time for us to organize around a truly progressive political party. Understand that this is not something we should do lightly. Those of us who make the split do so knowing full well how difficult it will be to form a viable third political party, and the level of venom and hate we'll receive from Democrats in retaliation, but it's got to be done.
The reason for this is that without the very real threat of electoral defeat, no politician is going to take the concerns of his constituents seriously. Look at how H. Ross Perot's candidacies for president affected the Republicans. They did not spend their time trying to suppress third party turnout directly, rather, they actively worked to (in addition to vote fraud and other voter suppression tactics) bring the wayward conservatives back into the fold. They did this by pandering to the entirety of their party, both the lunatic religious bloc and the big business folk. In short, after getting their asses handed to them in two consecutive presidential elections, the GOP got the message: don't ignore your base. Embrace it.
Beginning in 1992, Republicans began the process of winning back disaffected Republicans by focusing on local, state, and finally, national elections. They had the resources to make a huge coordinated effort, and within just two short years managed to win control of the U.S. House of representatives. As they built their power base, Republicans united the disparate factions of their party by unifying their positions on everything from religion in government to tax breaks for the wealthy, and from dismantling the New Deal and progressive Era reforms of the 20th Century to expanding imperialist policies through military supremacy.
While the enemy was doing this, the left collapsed under the weight of its own corruption and inability to come together. Divisions between the progressive wing that ushered in the Civil Rights era and the recently-formed and empowered DLC - which represents right-wing, corporate interests - combined with voter backlash to remove Democrats from power. By the time Bush and Cheney stole the 2000 election from Al Gore (with absolutely NO help from Ralph Nader, whether haters want to admit it or not), the party was really nothing more than an extension of the Republicans.
If we can all agree on the fundamentals of this brief and admittedly incomplete history of the last seventeen years, then it's pretty clear that we on the left have our work cut out for us. Given the level to which the Democratic Party has sunk in its shift to the far right, we must honestly evaluate our chances of reforming it from within. According to sources such as OpenSecrets.org, large corporations and their bundlers gave far more money to Democrats last year than they did to Republicans, correctly betting that they could buy out the supposed opposition so as to maintain the status quo. We on the left simply do not have the resources to combat that kind of money-gaming politics.
Another thing we lack is the will to embrace new methods for change. If we can't get past the barriers to shift Democrats back to the left, we have to find ways around it. That's obvious, but too many of us don't seem to want to acknowledge that our options for working from within are now zero. At this point, we can only hope to change things by leaving the right-wing Democratic party and organizing around a new one. This does not mean we should completely abandon it, giving up on any and all attempts to shift its ideology leftward. It simply means we must find an effective way to do it. We have to build a viable third party.
History has shown this method to work. During the 1912 presidential election, progressive Republican Theodore Roosevelt broke away from his party to form the Progressive Party (nicknamed the Bull Moose Party). In so doing, Roosevelt took most of the progressive wing with him, permanently shifting the ideological makeup of the GOP to the right. After causing incumbent William Howard Taft to place last in a three-way race between Roosevelt and Democrat Woodrow Wilson, many Progressives switched over to the latter candidate's party, paving the way for FDR and the New Dealers to come to power just twenty years later. That this led to a long-lasting era of relative prosperity for Americans and the eventual drive to bring civil rights to everyone cannot be in doubt, but it is significant in another way. It drastically altered the existing political structure; Democrats were more left-wing, and the formerly progressive Republicans became solidly right-wing, big business representatives. This can be done again, but not as long as we refuse to do it.
We need to form a third party, maybe a fourth as well, in order to recreate this ideological change. Currently the Progressive Party exists primarily in Vermont and Washington, possibly a few more, and from my research I have seen that it has gotten solid results at the local and state levels. Members have implemented working electoral strategies to win races Democrats no longer try to run in, gaining seats in the state legislatures. There's no reason to pass up the opportunity to rebuild the namesake political party of progressives throughout the country. We can re-open organizations and cooperate with existing ones to craft a solidly progressive, uncompromising platform, and run on it. We would have the advantage of starting from the ground up, taking and keeping control of the process and preventing the corruption that brought down the Democrats. We can also use a viable Progressive Party to build bridges with other independents to bring them on board. While we do this, we can hone our positions so that they, as Bill Maher said, are properly argued and defended.
We should be realistic in our expectations and our goals. We won't get results overnight, and a Progressive Party may or may not become a large enough political bloc to gain appreciable numbers in Congress. We should remember that our primary mission is to swing Democrats back to the left, and if it does generate an enduring presence in the halls of power where we can do the most good, that's a bonus. What we must not allow is for our principles or our determination to be compromised. That way has led to the current disasters we now find ourselves in. Let the cowards and capitulators "compromise" (read: surrender). Let the power-hungry and ambitious join up with the Republicans; it's not as though they don't already side with them on virtually every issue anyway. Let us stop making excuses for not doing what's necessary.
I'd like to hear some ideas for how we can do this. If we're all agreed that this may be our last, best strategy for taking back our government from the wealthy, there are no more excuses.
There is no better time, politically, economically, socially, ideologically, than the present, for a Progressive Party to formalize its existence.
The Republican Party is at its weakest point in recent history: Obama was elected by a populist progressive ideology expressed in many of his speeches. The advantages of a formal party are numerous:
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