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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.
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