Open Left

A "Progressive Voter's Party-Building Manual"?

In order to "build" not "splinter" ourselves in response to the failings of the Democratic Party, Paul proposes the creation of the following:

geographical community blogs

a structure of locally-based groups, affiliates and individual activists to work collaboratively with a national polling project to do sophisticated issue polling to counter conventional wisdom

nationwide neighborhood councils

.

While these are all good things, it would take no more energy, and the energy that would be far better spent in a coordinated, overt bid to do one of two things.

1. Mobilize progressives to take over the Democratic Party's basic function of running and electing candidates to office

2. Build a new political party that would serve as an agenda-setting, consensus-building and electoral home for the emerging progressive majority of voters.

Many insightful recommendations have been advanced this week-end on Open Left and elsewhere for dealing with the fact that the Democratic Party is now under the tight control the Obama's center-right coalition with moderate Republicans who have no intention of respecting the popular will on health care reform, bailing out failed banks, or withdrawing from global military conflicts initiated by the U.S.

Furthermore, by bringing into the heart of his administration representatives of the business and financial interests who normally reside in the Republican Party, and by allowing Republicans and center-right leaning Blue Dogs to dictate legislation that caters to their interests, the Democratic Party is no longer even remotely favorable to the election of enough progressive candidates to get control of Congress.

Yes, with Herculean efforts, we may elect a few Al Frankens here and there. But the Democratic Party is now poised to become a steamroller flattening most progressive insurgents when it comes to elections. And no amount of grassroots organizing is going to push it off course in the foreseeable future.

From where I sit, the only solution is to build a new political party to provide an agenda-setting, consensus-building home for the emerging progressive majority.

As I have reiterated on numerous occasions, this party must function like no party before it in that it must be run by the voters using web-based bottom-up, self-organizing tools such as the Interactive Voter Choice System.

To explain how this and other web-based democracy-building tools would work to either take over the Democratic Party, if progressive voters so decided, or build a new party, I am thinking about writing a "Progressive Voter's Party-Building Manual".

Stay tuned!

Nancy Bordier is the author of Re-Inventing Democracy: How U.S. Voters Can Get Control of Government and Restore Popular Sovereignty in America. The book can be read free online by clicking here.

A prototype website illustrating how the Interactive Voter Choice System works can be accessed at Citizens Winning Hands.

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by: Nancy Bordier @ Sun Sep 06, 2009 at 20:04:48 PM CDT