A movement "not busy being born is busy dying"

by: jeffroby

Sat Aug 25, 2007 at 17:20:57 PM EDT

1.  how the movement will grow;
2.  stagnation in the blogosphere;
3.  the relationship between the movement and candidates.
4.  our living in a dying empire;

Finally it crystallized with Matt Stoller's piece on "Black Enlistment Crashes in Military" with his observation:  "I took a glance at the drops in polling support for a variety of Democrats over the past month or two, and the drop is concentrated among liberals and African-Americans."  But where are they dropping to?

First, let me make some distinctions among movements, organizations, candidates and elected officials, at the risk of being overly schematic.

First, movement.  At the risk of sounding like a hippie mystic, I must state that Movement entails the spiritual element.  It's been written that we live in both society and history, and most of the time society dominates.  Do nothing that would jeopardize your job, get you arrested, or be socially ostracized.  In history, you live outside yourself - the impulse of a mother rushing into a burning building to save her baby, writ large.  The embattled farmers at Lexington and Concord firing the shot heard around the world.  The Union soldier singing, "as he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free."  The Freedom Riders buried in the swamp and the Suffragettes chained to the fence.

That's where organization comes in.  Organization tries to harness that energy, introduces planning and tactics, tries to unify constituencies into a coherent force, tries to create successes that build morale and further feed the movement.  At the same time, organization plays a conservatizing role.  By consolidating the spirit of the movement at a given moment, when that movement is still surging forward, it becomes more conservative than the movement.  When the movement is demoralized by set backs, organization holds the line until the next wave lurches forward.

Additionally, organizations have, for better or worse, demands and programs and principles.  Movements are broad, organizations more narrow by nature.

Then there are the relationships between organizations as defined above, candidates for office, and officeholders.  An organization can have principles and still support a candidate that falls short of those principles, without abandoning those principles.  An organization can relate to politicians who are dominated by the supposed requirements of their elected office, who may even hold principles antithetical to the principles of the organization, for tactical realpolitik considerations.

Candidates are caught between the so-called qualifications of the offices they aspire to, and the organizations and movements that support them.  Elected officials are another matter.  They sell out.  Like the scorpion, it's their nature.  We deal with them according to our realpolitik strength.

If you accuse me of having stated the obvious, I plead guilty.  But great harm comes about when these distinctions are blurred.  Then, you have members of organizations arguing that the positions of the candidates they favor should be the positions of the organizations that support them.

There's what is right, and there's what a candidate has to say.  I believe in many things that Hillary and Edwards and Obama can't articulate.  I don't on principle have a problem with them not saying them (though I think they are often tactically stupid for not saying them, but that's another matter).  But I am painfully aware of that distinction.

And I think that all too often, supporters of various candidates begin to actually believe their own bullshit.

This is exacerbated by the fact (as I see it) that the blogosphere has the character (not uniquely, but more intensely) of movement and organization and campaign.  As to whether this is a strength or a weakness, I can't say.  But greater clarity around these pushes and pulls would be helpful.

Which brings me at long last back to Stoller's comment:  "I took a glance at the drops in polling support for a variety of Democrats over the past month or two, and the drop is concentrated among liberals and African-Americans."

To put it simply, this "drop in polling support" is real people.  They are part of our movement, and they do not disappear from the planet because they are not supporting Democrats in the polls.  But our vision is skewed because we conflate the progressive wing of the Democratic Party with the progressive movement.

In other words, the progressive movement is broader than the Democratic Party, and embraces a significant number of progressive independents.  Addressing independents is made more difficult by the phony controversy over whether to appeal (left) to the Democratic base or some hypothetical independent center (right) floating somewhere between the Democrats and Republicans in David Broder heaven.  No!  No!  No!  The Washington Post analysis of independents awhile back should have sent that paradigm to its well-deserved grave forever.  When I talk about independents, I'm talking explicitly about progressive independents.  I can't measure their numbers.  I don't care.  I'm convinced they are a significant force, and we are missing the boat.  Bowers references that unaffiliated voters are growing number (about 40% of the electorate by some count, and any chunk of that is significant).

Let's do a little projecting.  Hillary Clinton is elected president (or Edwards or Obama, I don't think it makes a huge difference), with the support of the majority of independents.  Democrats gain ground in the House and Senate.  I cry with joy that the Bush machine has been halted (for the moment).  The war goes on.  Maybe 60,000 troops are brought home by the end of 2009.  The END of 2009.  That leaves 100,000.  The war in Iraq continues.  Did I say troops brought home?  My mistake.  More troops are sent to Afghanistan (which Democrats would support).  Afghanistan turns into a second quagmire.  The government, "guided" by the bipartisan foreign policy establishment, still sees the U.S. as the policeman of the world.  Israel tries to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities.  Congressional Democrats under the thumb of AIPAC cheer.  Shit hits fan. 

OpenLeft has regularly acknowledged such possibilities.  BUT THEY DON'T (pardon my shouting) GO ANYWHERE WITH THAT!!!

There are "drops in polling support for a variety of Democrats ... and the drop is concentrated among liberals and African-Americans."  Where do they go?

Bowers wrote an excellent piece on America as a declining empire.  It (and its commenters) note that this kind of thing could inspire "authoritarian tendencies," to say nothing of a menacing fascist reaction.  By fascist, I don't mean nasty and mean.  I mean fascist as shut up or I'll kill you.  BUT NOBODY (pardon my shouting again) GOES ANYWHERE WITH THAT!!!

Global warming threatens the earth with catastrophe within the lifetimes of our young, at least.  Drowned cities, widespread famine, etc.  There is the matter of Peak Oil, a global crunch in energy supplies with potentially catastrophic economic repercussions, to say nothing of confrontation with China and Russia, which still have nukes, as far as I recall.  BUT NOBODY, etc., etc., etc.

At best, the conclusion is that we need to do what we're already doing, but with more energy and commitment.  So the consensus among progressive Democrats is that we made gains last year, we made gains this year, we will make more gains next year.  Yes, it will be a long, hard struggle.  There will inevitably be setbacks, but we will ultimately prevail.  This fundamentally linear analysis yields no consideration that maybe we should be doing something different.  Time is on our side.

Allow me to present a different analysis:  time is not on our side and we are in a race with death.

"... and the drop is concentrated among liberals and African-Americans."

So let's try to put some things together in one possible scenario.  The ranks of progressive Democrats continue to grow, but at the same time, there is hemorrhaging to the left.  The ranks of independents continue to grow, with some of those going left, some going far right, and some either floating in Broderland or sinking into apathy.  America declines.  The eliminationist fascism we've had only glimpses of rises from the ashes of Bushism with corporate backing.  How fast and in what measure this plays out, I don't know, but this is at least part of our historic "cast of characters."

But one thing I firmly believe.  The right will consolidate with increased force and, if the progressives remain fundamentally split between Democrats and independents, we are in deep shit.

Some Democrats might say, well, independents have to support Democrats, it's their fault.  Some progressive independents might say the Democratic Party is corrupt and progressives should start a third party, or else it's their fault.  Those arguments might get good mileage at the pearly gates, but they don't do much good for the living.  Independents in the aggregate are a growing part of the electorate, but the practicality of working within the Democratic Party will always have its charms.

So how do they work together?  In the coming election, it's looking like independents are going to vote Democrat.  I label myself an independent Democrat, and that is my plan for 2008.  It's not my commitment forever.  But how much headway can we make in taking over the Democratic Party?  Not just nominally, but substantially.  Ideologically.  In ending the U.S. role as policeman of the world and making Universal Health Care a reality.  The current campaign against the Bush dogs already highlights the problems with settling for nominal gains.  I don't know.

In the Democrat/independent relationship, the Democratic progressives seem to hold the stronger hand.  Another pathetic Nader-type run has little attraction even among independents.  There is Democratic ground to be taken.  But independents hold some aces in the long run.  However incoherent it may be at present, independents have a gut understanding of the mutual corruption of both Republicans and Democrats.  It ranges from "all politicians are crooks" to sophisticated class analysis, and we can expect it to become more coherent -- and angry -- as a Democratic administration demonstrates its limitations.  Impotent anger?  Perhaps now.  But anger drives movements, and movements yield material force out of proportion to their numbers.  Electoral politics is only one measure of strength.

As has been pointed out ad nauseum, the American winner-take-all system poses terrible difficulties for anything outside the two-party paradigm.  If there is to be a serious third party in this country, I think it won't come bit-by-bit, but as a mighty thunderclap akin to the birth of the Republican Party back when.  I'm not offering easy answers.  But I believe that we have to sort out the distinctions between movements and organizations and candidates in order to even have a more serious discussion of what is to be done.

Let me end this on a nostalgic note.  In the 1964 Free Speech protest at Berkeley, Mario Savio stated:  "There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"

That speech stirred me then, and it stirs me now.  Does it then follow that I think we should wandering the streets looking for gear factories to throw ourselves upon?  (Though I think all the gear factories have moved overseas in any event.)  Obviously not.  But have I lost that outrage?

No.  Have you?